Digital Technology News, Camera, Camcorder and Cool Gadget Reviews

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 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.

With the same excellent Sennheiser quality that can be found on their professional music microphones, the MKE400 is a rugged and compact condenser shotgun mic that’s perfect for use with your Canon D-SLR.

Switching to the Lobar polar pattern means that sound is picked up clearly from the front, with little to no spill-over from the sides and back, although this causes a very isolated recording that may need a little background noise mixed in to sound natural. Supplied with a windshield, battery, cable and shock mounting, it’s ready to go right out of the box.

This super-cardioid condenser mic from Rode offers a compact design with excellent polar sensitivity to the front and sides. This makes voices clear but natural. Ambient sound is nicely controlled with the High Pass Filter switch, and the clever shock mounting helps to minimize sound from movement and handling the camera.

Your EOS has no option to control the sound level but this mic does; we turned it downto -10dB when recording loud music, but when recording quiet talking, we turned it up to +20dB for superb signal-to-noise handing.

This one is not new, it has been around for almost a year, but having spent the last month with it in my palm made me feel it deserves mention here.

It has multi-touch capability, and 360 degree scrolling. The only problem is that its meant for Mac only, and I had to go through quite some trouble to get it working with my Windows 7 netbook.

OCZ seems to be leading the fight to kill the spinning hard drive as of late. After releasing the first 1TB Solid State Drive, TweakTown reports that OCZ is giving the external hard drive market a huge speed upgrade.

Their newly-released Enyo line of hard drives combines the performance of USB 3.0 with the speed and reliability of solid state memory in a trim and sleek aluminum package that has the potential to really shake things up in the external hard drive market.

The Enyo boasts read speeds up to 260 MB/sec and write speeds up to 200 MB/sec. A full 256 GB back up lasts only 12 minutes instead of the 2.5hrs over USB 2.0. Read the rest of this entry »