Digital Technology News, Camera, Camcorder and Cool Gadget Reviews

If you are a fan of listening to music or other audio whilst travelling or in public places, the likelihood is that you own a pair of headphones or ear buds in order to keep your media private and not bother those around you. Listening to music is a great way to pass the time on a boring train or plane journey, or to accompany other activities such as jogging or working.

Listening to music may help you concentrate, as it helps to block out other ambient sounds around you that you may find distracting. The best forms of listening equipment, in this case, are noise cancelling earphones and headphones which not only block out other sound to keep you isolated and able to listen to your music in peace, but also prevent you from disturbing other people.

Noise cancelling headphones, whether passive (isolating your ear to keep other sound out) or active(emitting sound waves to negate intrusive noise before it reaches your ear) are a great way to stop ambient sound from disturbing your solitude. The passive type are more effective at blocking out high frequency sounds like conversation, whilst the active kind best reduce lower frequency, droning noise such as traffic. The best headphones are obviously a combination of the two. Read the rest of this entry »

This latest incarnation of the Ultra HD has a host of improvements, including 50fps video and image stabilisation, so it handles motion on the part of the operator or the subject far better.

The rechargeable battery lasts for around 90 minutes, and the 8GB memory stores two hours of footage.

Next to the micro HDMI connector is the new FlipPort for connecting accessories.

The smaller Flip Mino 3rd generation is similarly priced and specified, but lacks the FlipPort.

The PicoPix looks like a miniature version of a standard projector and is designed to be carried everywhere. It uses an LED lamp and liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) technology to project a 52in diagonal image at 7ft. It can run on batteries for two and a half hours, and play MP4 videos from USB drives.

LCoS is much like digital light processing (DLP) technology, but where DLP uses an array of moving micro-mirrors to reflect a light source either through the lens or away from it, depending on whether the pixel is on or off, LCoS uses liquid crystals on top of a reflective surface. These block light or allow it to reach the reflective surface below – if light is allowed to hit the mirror, it’s reflected out through the lens. In DLP projectors, the light then passes through red, green and blue filters in a spinning colour wheel to produce three colour images, one after another. The fast speed of the wheel tricks your eyes into seeing a full-colour image. Read the rest of this entry »

Sony’s latest external Blu-ray drive supports dual-layer burning, so you can write a massive 50GB of data to a single disc. The BDX-S500U will play Blu-ray movies on a laptop or PC and supports 3D content on a compatible display.

Disc writing speeds were very close to Sony’s estimates, managing 4x when writing 25GB of files to a Blu-ray disc. A 50GB, dual-layer disc took around 45 minutes to burn, which is average for a 4x writer. DVD write speeds were also reasonable, taking 12 minutes for single-layer and 25 minutes for dual-layer discs. Read the rest of this entry »

The MC5150 inkjet MFP is well equipped, with five inks, two paper trays and a built-in duplexer.

There’s a 1,200×2,400 dpi scanner, a PictBridge port and a card reader, but no network port.

It prints high-quality text quickly, colour prints have little banding in the solid fills and gradients of business graphics and photo prints are superb. It’s hard to fault. Read the rest of this entry »

The 470′s light body contains some heavyweight software. The simple interface makes it easy to find a destination and offers postcode searching and predictive text entry.

Maps and spoken directions are clear, and it updates quickly if you change your route. The motorway lane guidance is especially good.

The 470 uses the same maps as TomTom’s devices, and sometimes provided more sensible routes. It’s a brilliant-value satnav. Read the rest of this entry »

The Tactic3D Alpha is a combination of a gaming microphone headset and a USB sound card dongle.The headset has standard 3.5mm jack plugs for headphones and mic, so you can use the dongle or plug them into a sound card.

The supplied THX TruStudio Pro software has several sound enhancements. For games the virtual surround mode isn’t as effective as a dedicated 5.1 headset, but gives games a wide stereo soundscape. The Crystalizer mode adds punch to compressed music, but can sound too bright at high levels.

While the USB dongle improved audio output, the headphones feel cheap and sound muddy.

A good mouse mat can make a massive difference to games. A smooth, non-reflective surface will help your mouse’s sensor track movement accurately and feel more responsive. Cyborg’s 50x40cm cloth mat should work well with any mouse, whether it uses an optical sensor, laser or a ball.

It’s rather thick, and we found the edges sometimes scratched our arms, but this will be a problem only if you lean your whole arm on the desk while playing.

The smooth surface has just the right amount of resistance, so mouse action feels smooth but not slippery. Even when playing fast-paced games, the rubber bottom stopped it from slipping. It’s a great mouse mat if you have the room.

This tiny clip-on microphone certainly does the job if you want to be discreet with your recording.

Ideal for interviews, it clips on to your lapel and picks up sound from a close range. It’s an omnidirectional microphone, however, which means it will pull in sound from all directions.

When recording inside this wasn’t a problem, but outside a lot of background noise was recorded, which the small windshield couldn’t compete with! The six-metre cable and 6.5mm adapter are useful for both on-camera and mixing desk recording.

A simple setup process, a strong feature set, and excellent throughput make for a killer combination for the Netgear N600 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router (WNDR3700). It will appeal to tech-savvy home users and business IT types alike.

The N600 is a dual-band router with a maximum theoretical throughput of 300 Mbps. In real-world usage, if a wireless router can achieve half its theoretical throughput, that’s superb performance. The N600 comes closer than any router we have tested to that level of throughput in bench¬mark results, hitting a maximum throughput of 121 Mbps. That excellent signal also remained fairly steady whether testing right next to or 30 feet away from the router. Read the rest of this entry »