Review The 687 sits at the top of Mio’s new range of Spirit satnavs and is a good illustration of exactly how much navigational kit you can expect to get for £150 these days. For your money you get a 5in, 480 x 272 screen, voice command, Bluetooth, road maps of 44 European countries, free TMC traffic data and some rather handy navigational niceties.
Streetwise: Mio’s Spirit 687
Voice command is one the Mio’s ‘big ideas’ on the 687 but the system suffers from the need to be activated from the touch screen, which slightly defeats the object of the exercise. Garmin’s launch method of simply yelling “voice command” at its PNDs is a rather more sound approach. Read the rest of this entry »
Review BenQ’s W1200 Full HD projector is shocking. Shockingly good that is. I’ve seen plenty of inexpensive single chip DLP projectors over the past few years, and while I’ve admired their functionality I’ve never hankered after a single one. Typically, they’re noisy to run, prone to rainbow colour fringing – that DLP exclusive image artefact seen around objects of high contrast – and just don’t have the chops for serious AV.
Lost halo: BenQ’s W1200
But the W1200 is different, and after running one for a couple of days actually I actually pondered downsizing from the projector I currently own (which is more than three times the cost of this model). The W1200 is priced around £1200, but can be bought for less. Read the rest of this entry »
Review The fact that rally is a niche market, even among petrolheads, perhaps goes someway to explaining why Codemaster’s Dirt franchise strives to rein in the time challenge aspects of the sport – instead favouring racing, albeit in a way which retains the drifting and suicidal cornering of the motorsport. Codemasters: good decision.
Rally forth fourth?
Indeed, by embracing the mentalness that is Rallycross (whereby drivers race on circuits with as much dirt as tarmac) the company has managed to create a hugely diverse racer. Dirt 3 still just about walks on the simulator side of racing games, but feels arcade-like enough to please speed freaks too; beating Sony’s Motorstorm at its own game in the process. Read the rest of this entry »
Review “Amateur hour is over,” reads the RIM PlayBook ad inside the Office Max shop around the corner from The Register’s San Francisco bureau. As I walk by, looking for a printer cartridge, RIM tells me that its new PlayBook is the world’s first “professional-grade” tablet.
That’s not the most original line in US advertising history, but it says something about the PlayBook and what RIM is trying to achieve with its first tablet, a device with its sights locked on Apple‘s iPad.
Truck-maker GMC claims its vehicles are “professional grade”, too. But that’s meaningless – GMC is capitalizing on the public’s misguided belief that its trucks are somehow tougher, when in reality there’s little in terms of build, technology, or finish to differentiate GMC from rival pickups. A big truck is a big truck is a big truck.
A real professional: RIM’s 16GB PlayBook
Released in April, the PlayBook is slightly thicker than the iPad – 0.4 of an inch versus .34 of an inch. It also feels denser, possibly thanks to its more compressed form factor: it’s about two inches smaller than the iPad in height and width, and lighter by 0.4 pounds. My review unit was the 16GB model, which like its 32GB and 64GB brethren features a seven-inch, 1024-by-600 display, is powered by a 1GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, and runs RIM’s Tablet OS. Read the rest of this entry »
Product Round-up A kitchen is incomplete without a radio. Like a garden without a blade of grass, a song without emotion, or a footballer without a super-injuction, there are many without, but it just isn’t the same. And even though dates for the proposed digital switchover haven’t been set in stone, there’s no harm in being prepared. Indeed, as Radio Ga Ga becomes Lady GaGa, it’s surely time to upgrade from that grease-gunged FM box.
Gathered here are ten DAB radios suited to kitchen use. You may have your doubts about DAB, but it does have some neat features and is a complete no-brainer to use. When stuffing your marrows, anything more than a quick fiddle of a knob, just isn’t practical, really.
Checking signal was always going to be a tricky task, after all Vulture Central is in the heart of London, but we pushed them to their limit by testing in Reg Hardware’s isolation cell. If signal was going to stumble somewhere, it would be in there. DAB radios seem to hark back to the days of valve sets as they take a while to start. The longest to chime took just over six seconds with the rest chirping in around four. Read the rest of this entry »
