Westone 4 earphones review

Westone isn't exactly a household name, even in the earphone universe. But what the company lacks in recognition, it more than makes up for in quality. If you'll recall, we had a listen to its ES5 custom in-ear monitors earlier in the year, and while they cost a staggering $950, they also managed to melt our brain and thoroughly spoil us in the process. Thankfully, there's a budget alternative: the Westone 4. Granted, even 50 percent off still lands you right around $449, but many audiophiles would argue that said price is a small one to pay when looking at a quad-driver setup, a three-way crossover network and an insanely robust set of earbud tips. There's no question that these guys are aimed at the professionals in the crowd, and if you're interested in seriously stepping up your mobile listening game, you owe it to yourself to peek our full review. It's after the break, per usual.

Westone 4 earphones hands-on

There's actually quite a bit of competition at this level in the earbud / in-ear monitor world, but Westone has managed to carve our somewhat of a niche; the 4s offer four balanced armature drivers and a custom set of earbud tips that do a better job of canceling noise than some of the active models we've listened to. Upon cracking open the box, we immediately noticed just how light these guys are. There's a conventional braided cable (which does a better-than-decent job at avoiding tangles) and larger-than-average driver modules. 'Course, Westone anticipates that you'll be wearing these a lot like an in-ear monitor, so the bulk of it the size curls up within your ear. Yeah, it requires a bit of precision when inserting them, but as you'll read below, it's well worth doing right. The company also includes a zippered hardshell case with an in-line volume control and a bag full of varied ear tips (not to mention a tip cleaner).

Outside of that, you won't find any significant bells and / or whistles. No in-line iPod remote, no microphone, and no extension cord. It's pretty clear that the outfit focused its energy on the audio portion, and you'll understand immediately after trying 'em out. The left / right cable split happens around 11 inches from the earbud tips, which is just enough room to wrap each one around the top of your ear and insert the earbud. Would we have preferred a bit more leniency here? Sure, but it's not like wearing the 'buds in this manner is uncomfortable in the least.

We should point out that these ship with a small set of grey foam tips, which fit best after they're smashed a bit before insertion -- think ear plugs, and you'll grok the concept. Also like ear plugs, it takes about 30 seconds for the foam to re-expand once in your ear and create a snug seal, but once that seal is formed, you're in for a treat. We honestly had a very difficult time hearing any outside noise whatsoever once these filled up within our ear, and if you've been shopping for an ideal set of earbuds for your jetsetter lifestyle, we'd estimate that these would be perfect on the airplane.

The real question, however, is this: how does a $449 pair of 'buds handle music? In a word: magically. In a trifecta of them: insanely, incredibly well. There's really just no reason to get complicated here -- regardless of the genre, the Westone 4s managed to perform with precision, and they have instantly become our favorite earbuds in the sub-$500 realm. We tried out seven other eartips that the company included, and none fit our canals as well as the stock foam tips. Granted, those with larger / smaller ears will appreciate the varied sizes and shapes (including a triple-flanged rubber tip), but the seal and sound came from the foamies.

If pressed to describe the sound, we'd compare it to Klipsch's $350 X10i in a lot of ways, but without the iconic Klipsch bump in the mid / high range. Truth be told, we were downright floored by just how level these felt. We didn't sense one iota of distortion, nor did we get the feeling that these had been EQ'd at the factory to bring out one particular frequency range. The music sounds exactly like the producer intended, and we were able to hear layers in jams from The Limousines to Lupe Fiasco to Mumford & Sons that we missed using our lower-end assortment. In general, we tend to fell that perfectly flat headphones end up lacking a bit in the low-end department, but we're absolutely elated to report that it's simply different with the 4s. Mids, highs and lows were all powerful, clear as crystal and easy to discern. If you were doubting the noticeability of those four drivers, don't.

We also pushed the volume to near-uncomfortable levels, and never heard a peek of distortion. Of course, with such an insane seal, you can actually keep the volume at reasonable levels, but those who enjoy destroying one of their most vital senses will definitely enjoy the ride. We also found these guys to be remarkably comfortable even in long-term sessions -- three straight hours of listening left our ears no worse off than they were before.

Frankly, it's tough to justify $449 for a set of earbuds, particularly a set that doesn't double as a smartphone microphone and isn't exactly tailored for gym rats (though they'll definitely remain planted should you choose to sweat on 'em). But if you place an absurdly high value on precision and comfort, and would rather hear your music than the gentle roar of airline engines when flying, we can't help but wholeheartedly recommend the Westone 4s. Are they $100 better than the heralded X10i from Klipsch? Probably not, but if you're dead-set on getting a pair with an in-ear monitor type of fit, your search ends here. Sadly, these guys still aren't shipping, but so long as that "Q1 2011" estimate remains legitimate, it shouldn't be too long now.

Sony Ericsson Xperia Play review

The PlayStation Phone. We've had quite the intimate history with this gamepad-equipped slider, learning of its secretive existence way back in August and then handling a prototype unit in January, so you'll forgive us for feeling sentimental and still entertaining our pet name for it. The Sony Ericsson marketing gurus renamed it the Xperia Play when it finally went official at MWC this year, but the PlayStation connection remains as strong as ever. Aside from the D-pad, iconic game keys, and two touchpads, this device comes with a little app named PlayStation Pocket, which will be serving up dollops of classic PlayStation One gaming to all those with a taste for it. Yes, the Sony influence is strong with this one, and the Android Market will be joining the fun with Xperia Play-optimized titles from third-party developers. So all we really need to know now is whether the Android smartphone underpinning this smash-bang fusion of old and new school entertainment happens to be any good. Shall we get Started?

Xperia Play review

Hardware

The gamepad

There's likely little point in us trying to discuss any of the Xperia Play's external hardware before addressing its literal and figurative centerpiece, the slide-out gamepad. A DualShock attached to your smartphone it is not, but you already knew that. The real question is how close it comes to replicating the console experience rather than how well it competes with it. Judged on such terms, the Play acquits itself very well. The digital directional keys are firm with a satisfying amount of travel and the same goes for the face buttons. Squeezed in between them, Sony Ericsson also throws in a pair of analog pads, which react to your input in much the same fashion as the capacitive touchscreen does -- with the big difference being that while you use the pads you're not obscuring any of the action on screen. Each pad has a handy indented dot at its center, helping to orient your thumb without the need to look down.

An Android Menu button on the bottom left is accompanied by Select and Start keys on the right (at least one of these three buttons feels perfunctory as they serve overlapping functions) and there are two shoulder buttons on the outside, where you would usually find the L1 and R1 controls on the proper console gamepad. Some among our staff have taken to calling them flippers, because they're closer to flaps or paddles in their operation than fully fledged buttons. In actual gameplay, we found them a little too sensitive, which caused us to activate them unintentionally a few times and fail almost completely when prompted by one game to press them simultaneously. We succeeded once out of every six or seven tries, such was the capriciousness of their design.

The sliding mechanism responsible for serving up the gaming controls is pretty much flawless. It's spring-loaded, meaning you only need to slide it halfway up or down to achieve the required opening or closing action and it does the rest by itself. Movement is smooth and consistent, and one-handed operation is no problem either. What impressed us most about it, though, was its sturdiness. There's no tilt to the handset, the screen just slides straight up, and that's the way it stays -- perfectly parallel, no matter the violence of our attempts to find any structural flaws. It's clear to see that Sony Ericsson spent a lot of time refining this slider and we're happy to say it lives up to a very high standard of durability -- an absolute necessity when making a button masher's device such as this.

Moving to the top half of the slider, we find a volume rocker, nestled craftily in between the aforementioned shoulder buttons, a power key, and the usual four Android buttons, arranged in yet another innovative formation. For whatever reason, Sony Ericsson opted to swap the Home and Menu buttons' positions up front, leaving our prototype unit looking desperately out of date and us wondering why it had to be done at all. While we've no complaints to proffer about the power and volume keys, we must express our deep discontentment with the Android set. They're quite spongy, meaning they can absorb a lot of pressure before registering a click, which tends to lead to an inconsistent and frustrating user experience. Even more troublesome is the difficulty to differentiate between them by touch alone, forcing you to look down, which is then amplified by the fact they're not backlit. So yeah, the Xperia Play will give you a whole new reason to be afraid of the dark.

Construction

Squeaks and creaks were sadly too readily apparent with the Play, mostly owing to the poor quality of plastics used in its construction. It's a rigid device and, as already pointed out, there's little questioning its internal structure, but there's no getting around the fact that SE didn't blow the budget on procuring the most high-end of shell materials. The rear cover feels brittle, in spite of its flexibility, and the overall glossy aesthetic lends itself to picking up scuffs and scratches easily. The metallic accents aren't to our tastes, either, mostly because they're not made out of actual metal. And if you're not going to at least insert a little bit of premium material or functional utility in your design, why complicate it? Build quality is, therefore, a mixed bag. We get the feeling that after a while the Xperia Play will end up looking rather like The Terminator -- losing its soft and and pathetic outer shell, but revealing some hardcore engineering within. Maybe that'll be a good look for it.

A final note is merited about the Play's dimensions. At 16mm (0.63 inches) in thickness and 175g (6.2 ounces) in weight, this may easily be the chubbiest flagship Android device you're going to see coming out this year. That said, provided you're not too bothered by its heft (and you shouldn't be), it's actually shaped to sit very neatly in the hand. Its curved rear is reminiscent of the Palm Pre, though to the Play's credit it also manages to lie perfectly flat when rested on horizontal surfaces. When opened up into action mode, the whole device again feels nicely thought out and we doubt there'll be a hand size that won't be suited by its shape.

Internals

Allow your curiosity to drag you past the Play's rear cover and you'll be rewarded with a happy surprise -- both the SIM and MicroSD card slots are accessible without removing the battery. Not many phones make it that convenient and another rarely seen asset the Play can tout is a set of stereo speakers. They're not just two mono outputs, there's actually a tiny little sound stage created by them working in tandem. The quality of the audio they pump out isn't going to threaten a set of dedicated speakers, but it's certainly a lot more tolerable than the general mediocrity we're used to from smartphones. Considering the device's entertainment-centric reason for existence, we believe this to be a big strong point in its favor.

In terms of the hardware that makes the wheels go round, the Xperia Play relies on a 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon chip, which comes with an Adreno 205 GPU. Neither is a slouch, but it's obvious that more could, and perhaps should, have been included in this bargain. Looking around at the spring / summertime smartphone landscape, a potential Play buyer will be confronted by Motorola's Atrix and Droid Bionic, LG's Optimus 2X and Optimus 3D, Samsung's Galaxy S II, and HTC's EVO 3D -- all of whom tout dual-core SOCs and generous apportionments of RAM. Oh yes, about the RAM. There's only 400MB of it on the Xperia Play, don't ask us why. It may seem overly demanding to expect every new smartphone to match up to those benchmark destroyers, but we must remember the Xperia Play is about gaming and games will make use of every last ounce of performance you can give them. As it stands, it's a healthy and sprightly device today, but do be aware of the gathering storm clouds above its future. It's simply not powerful enough for us to give you any assurances about its long-term viability.

We found battery life a little lacking. There's a robust 1500mAh cell inside this handset, but we could only stretch it to about 22 hours under our light use test. It was a day's worth of sporadic use, where checking up on things like Gmail, Twitter and Facebook updates was the phone's most regular exercise. For a comparison, the similarly outfitted -- MSM8255 with Adreno 205 -- Incredible S from HTC managed to squeak past the 50-hour mark in spite of having a battery with 50mAh less juice. Again, both were subjected to light workloads that are unlikely to be representative of everyone's daily routine, but the delta in endurance between the two phones was striking. Not to put too fine a point on it, but something tells us all those software bells and whistles on the Play (hello, Timescape!) are working against Sony Ericsson here. On the bright side, throwing some actual gaming action its way didn't obliterate the battery quite as badly as we feared it might. Our overall impression (from admittedly limited testing) is that this will clearly not be an endurance smartphone because of its software overhead, but Sony Ericsson's promises of five and a half hours of continuous gameplay seem well within reach.

Display

Another thing that's taxing the Play's battery unduly is its screen. The default brightness setting for it is at the very maximum and once you use it for a while, you realize why. It's very dim. We're not talking about it being mediocre or some way short of the best, it's so lacking in brightness that it's borderline dysfunctional. Taking the phone out for an afternoon outside, we couldn't play Crash Bandicoot even on the bus, never mind out in the direct glare of the sun. It's not an unqualified disaster, as viewing angles are pretty wide, the 854 x 480 resolution is decent, and under the right circumstances you can obtain some pleasantly vibrant images from it, but it's still one the worst screens we've seen on a review phone -- hell, review hardware of any kind. This was most apparent to us outdoors when we used it side by side with Sony Ericsson's own Xperia Arc, the latter handset giving us better contrast, saturation, and of course, brightness. Both phones lack an auto-brightness option in their settings, which is a weird omission on Sony Ericsson's part, even if in the case of the Play it'd just be kept at max anyway.

Camera

Speaking of omissions, has anyone at SE HQ heard about the little trend of making 720p video recording a de facto standard feature in high-end Android smartphones? Because, well, the Xperia Play doesn't have it. We know full well that the hardware's capable of it -- a 5 megapixel imager sits round the back, so more than enough pixels can be pulled together to saturate a 1280 x 720 frame, and the 1GHz Snapdragon under the hood pretty much snorts with indignation at the routine task of processing such workloads at 30fps. What gives, we don't know, but the video you do get, recorded at a maximum of 800 x 480, isn't all that great anyhow. The recordings produced during our testing tended to be very soft, with noise suppression algorithms seemingly working overtime to ensure the smudgy appearance. That issue was compounded by poor microphone performance, which muffled and straight up distorted some of the sounds it picked up during recording.

Xperia Play camera samples

Things look much brighter on the still imaging front, however, where we churned out some highly satisfactory results without requiring an excess of effort. Options on Sony Ericsson's custom software are a little limited, but you can adjust exposure, white balance, and focusing mode, which should still be sufficient for most users. Especially praiseworthy among those controls is the Macro mode on the Play, which allowed us to get seriously up close and personal with some of our subjects. On the downside, the Play's camera struggles to focus in low light and noise is no less an issue here than on most other smartphone sensors. One fanciful idea we had, in the absence of a dedicated physical shutter button, was that Sony Ericsson could have used the right shoulder key to double up as one. It's in just about the perfect location for the task and we can't see anything preventing SE (or some enterprising hackers, perchance?) from hooking it up to the picture-taking software. Overall, it's a decent to good camera with some disappointing video recording tacked on.

Software

PlayStation Pocket

As with the hardware section, we'll get straight to the PlayStation meat of the Xperia Play software matter. Two apps will be of foremost interest here: the not at all confusingly named Xperia Play, which serves as a showcase for Android Market games compatible with the Play's controls, and the PlayStation Pocket, which houses the hallowed PS One games that this new smartphone is so primed to enjoy. For the moment at least, we should probably narrow that down to the singular game, since the Play ships with just the one preloaded classic title, Crash Bandicoot, and the rest of the PS One library is still en route. That puts the Play's launch, coming up on April 1st across Europe, into a rather precarious position. It's supposed to be the bringer of great new entertainments to the thumb-equipped masses and yet we're staring at just one original piece of content upon its release. Bruce Lee, FIFA 10, Star Battalion HD, and The Sims 3 do come preloaded to soften the blow, but they're not exclusive to the Play, and in the particular case of The Sims, don't even benefit very much from the physical controls. Still, they're there and the means to accessing them is actually pretty swish. Opening up the slider kicks you straight into the Xperia Play app, where the games you already have on the device are split out from the list of purchasable compatible titles, meaning you're never more than a slide and a tap away from leaping into action.

Loading times for the games aboard the Play were quite tolerable indeed -- nothing was instant, but only the most impatient of gamer would find them a nuisance. In-game performance also gave us no cause for complaint, with smooth frame rates throughout. The basics look to have been well taken care of. One drawback we should highlight, however, is the fact that most, if not all, PS One games were coded for displays with a 4:3 ratio. That means either zooming or stretching the game in order to fill the widescreen panel on the Xperia Play. Both options are available to you in the settings, but Crash was already looking pretty aliased without us zooming in for a closer inspection. Not an ideal situation, but that's where we find ourselves. At least until Sony decides it's a good idea to drop its vast catalog of PSP games atop this device, then we'll have no such worries.

The gamepad is not abandoned completely once you stray outside the gaming arena, as you're able to navigate through lists with the D-pad and select and cancel things with the X and O keys. It's a somewhat inconsistent affair, as this integration doesn't permeate everything on the Play, but we found it useful in the browser and messaging apps.

Android à la Sony Ericsson

The OS underlying SE's new hero device is of course Android. Version 2.3.2 (aka Gingerbread) is shipping out on retail devices, marking this as one of the first non-Google handsets to come preloaded with Mountain View's latest and greatest. That means much-improved text manipulation thanks to the addition of new selection anchors, a general sprucing up of visuals, and a set of extra APIs with a gaming bent. Wonder why Sony Ericsson wanted to run its gaming device atop this platform, eh? Nonetheless, the company's UI designers haven't been sitting around exercising their thumbs and there's a vast amount of aesthetic tweaking done on top of Android. Almost all of it is for the better, in our opinion, as the whole UI benefits from a look of sophistication and maturity that Android has generally lacked. The phone interface is spacious and welcoming, while the contacts and messaging interfaces are extremely attractive, sensibly laid out, and utterly delicious to scroll through. Talk about optimization! The contacts section can also be navigated more rapidly just by initials and, if you have Twitter accounts associated with your buds' numbers, it shows you a snippet of their latest update, very handy. Moreover, entering individual contacts' pages shows their profile pictures nicely blended with the background, reinforcing the overarching theme of refined design. Thankfully, Sony Ericsson's alterations all look to be skin-deep, giving us some cause to believe the company's pledge that it'll be quick in responding to new Android rollouts from the Google mothership. Time will only tell.

There are some downsides to the skinning efforts on the Play, however, as might be expected. One is the aforementioned issue of the battery seemingly running down quicker than it ought to, which you can always offset by making your own adjustments, but obviously that's no great consolation for those hoping the device would just work like it should straight out of the box. Another thing we noticed was that Timescape, albeit a mere removable widget now instead of the overwhelming leviathan it was on the Xperia X10, was still susceptible to slow performance and even the occasional freeze-up. It remains an extremely graphically demanding tool, what with all its overlays and three-dimensional animations, so that's no surprise, but we still enjoy our user experience more without it than with it. It wasn't entirely alone in showing slowdowns, we experienced a few, very minor, hangups and delays while using the Play, but couldn't find any repeatable bugs to report. It feels a mostly solid build, though it's a little disappointing that the aforementioned smoothness of operation in the customized messaging and contacts apps doesn't carry over to the rest of the UX.

Browser performance is mostly decent, but we've definitely seen faster, whether you're talking other Android devices, Windows Phone 7 or iOS. Pinch-to-zoom and scrolling commands are executed, but in a slightly labored fashion. Aliasing is also apparent when zooming out from pages, not unlike what we saw on the Incredible S recently. Finally, SE's onscreen portrait keyboard is a little too cramped for our liking, with the letters being tall but not altogether wide enough to make for comfortable typing. Sony Ericsson might have done well to just stick with the default Gingerbread provision here.

Wrap-up

We've reached out to Sony Ericsson asking for a roadmap of when we can expect the PlayStation Suite and more PlayStation One titles to roll up on the Xperia Play bandwagon and make it worth joining. As it stands today, on the day of review and the precipice of its launch, the Play is looking out on a pretty barren gaming landscape. The Android titles up for grabs are not exclusive to the device and don't necessarily benefit all that greatly from its unique control scheme, whereas the catalog of classic PlayStation content stops after just one entry.

So with almost no differentiating software of its own, the Play is really relying on the strength of its gamepad to round up willing participants in its gaming revolution. We concur that that's indeed the phone's main strength, with good ergonomics and an extremely durable sliding mechanism. Nonetheless, the poor quality of the screen and good, but not great, hardware spec force us to be reluctant about recommending it as a sage purchase at present. Perhaps it picks up a loyal following, from both developers and fans alike, and within a few short weeks, we're all looking at a device with a rich ecosystem of compelling tailor-made content and a ton of reasons to own it. But as for today? We'd rather spend our cash elsewhere in the Android cosmos and hold out hope for the PlayStation Phone 2.0.

Panasonic Lumix GH2 review roundup: impressive video recording, murky still images

In case you're still wondering if Panasonic's mirrorless Lumix GH2 is worth your $900, we've rounded up a handful of reviews to provide a pointer for your next big purchase. While most reviewers agree that this Micro Four Thirds camera appears to be very similar to its predecessor, they universally praise the subtly improved ergonomics, speedy liveview autofocusing, and refined image quality, especially with its 1080p AVCHD video recording (although Digital Camera Resource Page did notice some artifacting in its clips). Noise is also a non-issue up to about ISO 800 or 1600, though it's apparent that the 16 megapixel stills are comparatively dull and, like those from many other MFTs, aren't quite on par with DSLRs -- expect plenty of manual processing work here, as demoed by the good folks over at Digital Photography Review. All in all, the GH2 is a great kit for high quality video capturing, bundled with a pretty good still performance that requires some extra TLC afterwards -- kinda ironic in a way, but hey, this isn't a problem for lovers of video bokeh. Head over to the links below for some in-depth analysis and walk-through before you leave a small dent on your bank account.

Read - Digital Photography Review
Read - Photography Blog
Read - Camera Labs
Read - Digital Camera Resource Page
Read - Let's Go Digital

Samsung Series 9 (NP900X3A) laptop review

Back at CES, Samsung pulled out quite a few surprises, and no, we're not referring to its Zoll-infused press conference -- although, that performance still gives us the willies. Of all the Korean company's announcements at the show, which we'll remind you included an impressive new LTE phone and range of SmartTVs, it was its Series 9 laptop that left us the most stunned. And well, a glance at that picture above should explain why we found ourselves counting down the days until its March launch date. The 2.8-pound system is a complete and total 180 from Samsung's typical bulky mainstream systems, yet its 0.64-inch thick chassis still crams in quite a bit of horsepower with a Core i5-2537M processor, a 128GB SSD, and 4GB of RAM. It's also built from some of the toughest stuff on earth, has a backlit keyboard, and an incredibly high quality 400 nit LCD. You see, the $1,699 machine teeters on having the absolute perfect balance of beauty and brawn, and certainty has the core ingredients to compete with that other extremely popular and super thin ultraportable -- but when you get it home and out of its fancy box, does it truly have the chops? Or is this just yet another rail thin and expensive Windows laptop that falls short? The time has come to find out – hit the break for our full review.

Samsung Series 9 review

Series 9 unboxing / Air compared

Look and feel

We're just going to come out and say it: the Series 9 is one of the most striking laptops we've ever seen. Unlike the Dell Adamo and the Sony VAIO X, which both seemed to try too hard to look like Apple's MacBook Air, the Series 9's deep black case and sharp angled edges give it a seriously distinct look. And it's one of sophistication and simplicity, if you ask us. The entire dark chassis may seem basic and highly minimalistic, but there are small intricacies like the chrome borders, hidden port covers, and wave-shaped hinges that just make this thing feel more like a computing piece of art than a basic bargain-basement PC. But beyond the aesthetics, the system just feels great in hand. The duralumin build, which is the same stuff used in airplane construction, feels insanely solid, and there's absolutely no bend to the top half of the chassis. Unfortunately, the bottom feels like it's made of plastic, though Samsung tells us it's made of a powder coated aluminum. Still, the metal lid and palmrest are very soft, and believe us, you won't be able to resist petting the surface. However, beware of fingerprint streaks -- specifically, the palmrest gets covered pretty quickly, though thankfully, Samsung includes a cloth in its high-end box.

But, of course, the first thing everybody notices about the 9 is its insanely thin profile. Yes, it's one really thin and light machine, and in terms of numbers, it comes extremely close to rivaling the MacBook Air. Samsung claims the Series 9 weighs 2.88 pounds and measures 0.62 to 0.64-inches thick. In comparison, the Air tips the scales to 2.9 pounds and is 0.11-inches at its thinnest point and 0.68 at its thickest. Still, the differences are as minimal in person as they are on paper -- while the Series 9 does seem slightly thicker in hand, it's really not a difference you'd notice everyday, and just like the Air, picking it up off your lap or table requires little to no muscle.

Samsung was able to find a home for quite a few ports on the svelte system as well. The left port cover pulls down to reveal one USB 3.0 port, a mini HDMI socket, and a jack for the included Ethernet adapter. The one on the right hides a USB port 2.0, a microSD card slot, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. It's a decent lineup, we just wish Samsung had gone with a regular SD card slot. Oh, and those worried that the port covers would retract when the system is sitting on the table will be happy to know that it isn't an issue.

Keyboard and touchpad

The best news may come when you open up the Series 9's lid. In fact, we can confidently say the chiclet keyboard and touchpad duo is one of the best we've seen on a Windows laptop. The keyboard itself is extremely well laid out and the keys themselves feel nice and smooth. The panel doesn't bend, though we could have done without the glossy plastic surrounding the keys and the screen. Naturally, we're just elated to see the backlight and the fact that you can adjust the brightness manually with the F7 and F8 buttons. It really makes a world of difference when you get caught in dimly lit environments -- something we wish Apple had remembered when it cut out that feature on its new generation of Airs.

The touchpad -- or what Samsung is calling a SuperButton ClickPad -- has integrated mouse buttons, and it's actually the best we've seen on a shipping Windows laptop. It's still not a perfect experience, but it does use Synaptics' ClickPad Series 3 design with image sensing technology, so using the traditional finger layout – a thumb on a mouse button and an index finger to navigate – is noticeably improved. Additionally, the 4.0 x 3.0-inch matte pad, which has a rubberish feel to it, is also quite spacious and lends itself nicely to multi-finger movements. However, two finger scrolling is still where things aren't exactly perfect – running two fingers down the pad while on this very site still made for a very jittery experience, though adding a bit more pressure helped move things along. However, some other gestures work as advertised – four fingers down brings you to the desktop and four up launches Aero. You can always customize the gestures, though for some reason, the menu for that is buried deep in the Control Panel's mouse settings tab.

The touchpad and keyboard provide hassle-free experiences on their own, but we found in our typical use, that our palms would swipe up against the pad while typing and would subsequently cause the cursor to jump across the screen. Making some adjustments to our wrist positioning helped ease the situation as did turning off the touchpad, but it's something we wish either Samsung or Synaptics would address with some palm rejection tweaks.

Screen

The 13.3-inch display on the Series 9 is yet another place the it rises above the rest. The 1366x768-resolution, 400-nit screen boasts Samsung's SuperBright Plus technology, and its one heck of a viewing experience. The matte screen (yes, it's also matte!) is extremely crisp and colors just look dazzling. The ambient light sensor automatically adjusts brightness, but we opted to disable that function while plugged in and cranked it up to the max. There's also good news for those that plan to do a bit more outdoor computing: without any brightness adjustments, the screen looked extremely crisp when we took it on a field trip to Times Square. Our only ungranted wish comes with the resolution – we would have liked to see a higher-end option, like the 13-inch MacBook Air's 1440 x 900-resolution panel or the VAIO Z's overly dense 1600x900 screen.

Samsung claims wide 160-degree viewing angles with the 9, and we can attest that both horizontal and vertical angles on this thing were top notch. Actually, horizontal angles are almost perfect; sitting to the far right of the system, we were still able to make out everything on the panel. It's indeed impressive. The 1.3 megapixel HD webcam above the display served up decently crisp images of our mug while chatting over Skype, though it seemed to have a slight issue adjusting the brightness as we moved around. The two speakers, which are located on the right and left edge, were surprisingly loud for their size. Unsurprisingly, the sound was rather tinny when listening to Adele's latest on Rdio.

Performance and graphics

We've established that the Series 9 has what it takes to compete on an aesthetics and ergonomics to a large degree, but a large chunk of your green is going to its higher end performance parts. So, is it worth it? The experience is certainly snappy, there's no doubt about that. The 1.4GHz Core i5-2537M processor and 4GB of RAM consistently opened applications quickly and didn't show any signs of slowing down when we worked simultaneously on this review in Microsoft Word 2010, intermittently wrote posts in Firefox 4, edited pictures in GIMP, checked our Twitter feed in TweetDeck, and even video chatted with a friend on Skype.

But don't underestimate the role of the 128GB SSD in launching apps and quickly resuming / booting Windows 7 Home Premium. Similar to what Apple's done with its MacBook Air, Samsung's worked on what it's calling Power Back, which promises to wake the system from sleep in three seconds. And our testing proved that claim to be exactly on the mark. The Air, on the other hand, resumes from sleep in a slightly faster 2.6 seconds, though the Series 9 has Apple's system beat on boot time -- it revved up Windows 7 Home Premium in 20 seconds flat, while our 13-inch Air took 25 seconds.

Graphics-wise, the Series 9 packs Intel's integrated HD 3000 graphics, and as we saw with the Lenovo ThinkPad X220, the performance is markedly improved over the last Core integrated options. It had no problems handling the local and Flash HD clips we threw at it. How does it compare to the NVIDIA's GeForce 320M in the Air? Well, as the benchmarks show, NVIDIA's option is still a stronger choice, but like we said, Intel's solution was extremely nimble when it came to watching 1080p clips.

	PCMarkVantage	3DMark06	Battery Life
Samsung Series 9 (Core i5-2537M)	7582	2240	4:20
13-inch MacBook Air (Core 2 Duo, GeForce 320M)	5170	4643	4:45
ThinkPad X220 (Core i5-2520M)	7635	3517	7:19
ASUS U36Jc (Core i5 / NVIDIA GeForce 310M)	5981	2048 / 3524	5:30
Lenovo IdeaPad U260 (Core i5)	3858	1153	2:56
Dell Vostro V13 (Core 2 Duo)	2687	556	2:39
Toshiba Portege R705 (Core i3-350M)	5024	1739 / 3686	4:25
HP Pavilion dm1z (AMD Zacate E350)	2510	2213	5:02
Notes: the higher the score the better. For 3DMark06, the first number reflects score with GPU off, the second with it on.

Battery life and software

Give its standard voltage processor, we never really had that high of hopes for the Series 9's battery life, and actually, we doubted Samsung's claim of seven hours. However, it fared much better than we anticipated. On our standard video rundown test, which loops the same video at 65 percent brightness and WiFi on, the six-cell 6300mAH battery lasted four hours and twenty minutes. That's quite a taxing test, and in typical use with brightness hovering around 75 percent, we got closer to five hours of juice. Yes, of course, that's not as long as the X220 we just tested, but that had a much larger battery and an additional slice cell. Apple's 13-inch MacBook Air lasts 25 minutes longer on a charge on our battery test, but in use we got closer to 6.5 hours of use with similar brightness adjustments. Either way, we're content with the Series 9's endurance considering its high performance parts and the fact that dragging around its small, one piece charger isn't a bother. We should also note that the rig stayed fairly cool during both corded and cordless use -- the keyboard got slightly warm, but only after quite a bit of use.

Like most of Samsung's laptops, the Series 9 is preloaded with a bit of the company's own utilities. Listed under Samsung in the Start menu are Easy File Share, Easy Migration, Easy Network Management, and other "Easy" tools. Shockingly, the rest of the system is pretty bare on third-party software.

Wrap-up

Finally! The Series 9 gets right what so many other ultrathin PCs have repeatedly gotten wrong. It's got a brand spankin' new and speedy Sandy Bridge Core i5 processor, a fast 128GB SSD as well as a high quality screen and stunning exterior. And on top of all that, it doesn't require that you drag along the AC adapter everywhere you go. But just as we're about to say the Series 9 hits it out of the park, we're hit in the face with its $1,649 price tag. No matter how you slice it, this ultraportable is still meant for a niche user who's willing to shell out over $1,600 for a laptop (although, we are seeing it listed for $1,599 at Best Buy). And while it may have more processing power than Apple's 13-inch MacBook Air and a backlit keyboard, Apple's offering shaves off $350, has a higher resolution display, slightly longer battery life, stronger graphics performance, and a better multitouch touchpad experience, and ultimately, we assume that will be enough for those seeking an incredibly thin laptop. That said, the Series 9 has the horsepower to be one's main system and finally proves that PC manufacturers can build an incredibly thin, head-turning laptop without sacrificing the vitals. And well, despite the Samsung tax, that's quite a feat.

Nintendo 3DS review (Japanese)

It's been almost a year since Nintendo revealed the 3DS to the world, trotted it out at E3, held proudly by a flotilla of genetically-cloned and identically-dressed ladies. Of course we knew about it long before that, but when it comes to glasses-free 3D screens seeing is believing. After that first glimpse we were left intrigued by the technology, but we wouldn't say we were exactly believers. Now, after spending about a week living with one of Nintendo's $250 consoles, working with one, gaming with one, and practicing kana with one, we've seen the light. The fancy-pants screen works, but it only does so with a lot of caveats.

Nintendo 3DS (Japanese)

Hardware

We went with the more colorful of the two 3DS units that Nintendo released in Japan, a hue the company calls Aqua Blue in the US. That's false advertising if you ask us, because whatever palette entry was selected here definitely falls closer to the G than the B in the visible color spectrum. It's a distinctive shade and the metallic sparkles definitely lend a high-class look, but the three-tone effect is a bit unfortunate.

On the bottom it's a light green, a sea foam. The middle is the straight, darker metallic green, and up top the lid has been given what looks to be an extra layer of clear plastic. It's a nice effect and creates a little lip, flipping the console open is made even easier, but the coating creates an even darker hue than the other two layers. That's three shades of green plus a random splotch of silver paint 'round the back, a combination that makes the two-tone '80s design of the original, chubby DS look positively minimalistic.

In retrospect we'd pick the black, but there's little to complain about for the overall design of the console. It's a bit thicker and a bit wider than a DS Lite, almost exactly the same size as the DSi. More importantly, it feels impressively well built. The hinge is light but has a very positive detent to hold the screen just short of 180 degrees. The rubber SD card door amazingly feels like it won't break off.

Inside that door you'll find a 2GB card by default, plenty for game saves and enough to get you started with downloadable titles down the road. 3DS game cartridges slot in around the back, where they have since the original DS, and of course there's nowhere to fit your old Game Boy Advance carts here -- just like on the DSi.

To one side of the cartridge slot is the AC input, the same port used on the DSi and sadly still not microUSB, so make sure you don't lose that proprietary charger. On the other side is the new telescoping stylus, tucked away in a notch that's a little hard to find -- we usually just resorted to just tapping away with a fingernail.

Flip 'er open and it's the analog stick that jumps out at you, what Nintendo calls a circle or slide pad. It stays flat and shifts about, much like the one on the PSP. This one, however, has a comfortable indent and rubberized coating that feels good to use. The D-pad has been shifted down to make way, not so far that it's a reach but if you prefer you can now use the analog stick in classic DS games -- without the use of its analogue sensitivity, naturally.

Buttons spring well and feel responsive, all except for the new Select, Home, and Start buttons beneath the screen. They look like capacitive-touch inputs of the sort you'd find on an Android or WP7 handset, but that's an illusion. They're actual, physical buttons that depress when stabbed and are a little hard to find quickly, something that, admittedly, you won't be often have to do.

The only other physical controls are the volume slider on the left (headphone jack is located front-and-center on the bottom half of the unit), a wireless radio toggle on the right, and a little silver shuttle to the right of the main screen. It doesn't have a label, other than "OFF," but is still worth discussing on its own.

The main screen

That little slider to the right of the main screen controls the 3D effect of the top-mounted, (presumably) Sharp-sourced, 3.5-inch, 800 x 240, glasses-free 3D screen. It uses lenticular lenses to send two separate images rather than one, each intended for only one of your ocular holes. So, an effective resolution of 400 x 240. Each half of the screen is populated by pixels rendered as if there were two in-game cameras, and raising the slider actually moves those two virtual perspectives further apart.

The greater the angular difference the more immediate the illusion of depth and the harder your eyes will need to work to piece things back together again. We found that in order to comfortably use the console at maximum 3D impact it needs to be held in reasonably close proximity to your face, something like 12 inches or so.

When lying prostrate on the couch and holding the console above you that's totally fine, but other times, like sitting in coach -- or even in business class -- a comfortable gaming position has the console much further away. In these situations we needed to drop that 3D slider down, lessening the overall effect but giving our eyes a much easier time of it all.

Drop the slider all the way to its minimum and the 3D effect is completely disabled. At this point the screen is purely 2D, the lenticular trickery is overridden, and your eyes are free to focus and align as normal. We're happy to report that, in this mode, the screen shows no signs of its previous 3D prowess -- it looks just like any other LCD. Better, in fact, thanks to the higher-resolution and wider aspect ratio.

That's important to note, because a lot of people are going to buy a 3DS and find they don't really care for the 3D effect at all, or that it causes too much eyestrain when using it, or maybe due to a freak stylus accident they no longer have stereoscopic vision in the first place. In 2D mode the system still looks very good.

To be clear: the screen is always in 2D mode for older DS games, and given its greater size and higher resolution, those titles are played letterboxed. Thanks to the giant black bezel you actually hardly notice it. The bottom does without the letterbox action, despite the extra resolution three-inch touchscreen (320 x 240 vs. 256 x 192 in the DSi).

Internal hardware

We don't have firm performance figures for the 3DS but it's clearly capable of better graphics processing than its predecessors. Obviously the original DS had no shortage of 3D titles and, while the few 3DS we've seen thus far don't exactly make them look stone age by comparison, there's a definite step forward. Sadly, though, those 3D titles for the DS cannot make use of the display's trickery -- they'll be flat.

The 3DS also features both an accelerometer and a gyroscope. This enables augmented reality games like Face Raiders, which we'll discuss in a moment, but it's hard to not question the practicality of such games on this platform. When you're using the screen's 3D feature you have a specific sweet spot that you need to stay within. Move an inch in any direction and you lose the effect. Since most motion-sensitive games require motion of at least one inch you can surely see the problem.

Stereo speakers still flank both sides of the top screen, and they seem to handle slightly more volume and do it slightly more capably than the speakers in the previous DS models. We're still not talking high-fidelity here, though.

Charging and battery life

The biggest 3DS disappointment is absolutely the battery life. The 1,300mAh battery is 30 percent larger than the one in the DS Lite but simply cannot deliver the same sort of longevity we've come to expect from previous Nintendo consoles, topping out for us at three hours and fifteen minutes with WiFi enabled. Compare that to the 15 hours the DS Lite could manage and you can see why we're disappointed. Disabling WiFi added about another half hour, enough for your average commuter flight, but we're going to be in a bit of a pickle when we cross the Pacific and head to TGS this September. And, since the thing can't charge over USB, there's no hope in scavenging a little power from a laptop so that our mid-flight drift-a-thon can continue.

Realizing that the battery life and charging situation is less than ideal here Nintendo thoughtfully included a charging base. Simply throw the 3DS into it and it starts the electrons flowing, the idea being you'll plop your console in here whenever you're not using it -- or when it's playing a video or the like. When we first saw photos of it we got excited about Nintendo jumping onto the inductive charging bandwagon, but the reality is much more simple: the weight of the console pushes down a lever that causes two conductive prongs to swing out. They touch the back of the console and the juice will flow.

Camera and multimedia

Dual cameras are embedded on the back of the 3DS lid, plus another on the front, each offering one full VGA's worth of pixels -- that's 640 x 480 and laughably low-res these days even for a handheld gaming console. Of course the draw here is that photos can be captured in 3D and naturally viewed again on the screen in the same number of dimensions. however, the results look so bad that the novelty of it all will wear off in record time.

Low-res would be fine if the quality was good, but it isn't. Light sensitivity is poor, so turn on those lamps, and color reproduction disappoints. As of now there's no way to capture moving footage from those VGA monsters, but Nintendo has promised that's coming soonish. 2D photos are stored as JPEGs onto the SD card, while the 3D images get written as .MPO. There's also a simple paint application built into the 3DS and the results of your artistic handiwork likewise get written as JPEG -- at a mere 320 x 216. Finally, the onboard microphone is paired with a simple voice recorder app for sending yourself reminders or for leaving little audible surprises for your nephew.

3DS camera sample photos

Games

We'll leave the detailed games coverage to our compatriots over at Joystiq but here are some brief impressions of the few imported titles we were able to take for a spin.

• Face Raiders - For a game that's built into the 3DS, Face Raiders is surprisingly fun. You take a 3D picture of a friend's mug and it's layered over what can only be described as a disembodied head held aloft by a beanie. In an augmented-reality twist these heads are superimposed over whatever the cameras see, and as they hover about, winking and smiling at you, you're asked to shoot them. To aim you simply move the 3DS around, ensuring this is a game you won't be playing much of in public. It also ensures you won't be playing this game with the 3D effect turned on, but it is still good dumb fun.
• Ridge Racer 3D - Ridge Racer 3D, or Riiiidge Raaacer 3D! as it's also known, is yet another entry in the storied sideways racing series. Little is new here, including recycled tracks, but polished graphics and visual effects make it a bit of a looker. It's not necessarily the best at exhibiting the system's 3D effects, however, something about the speed of the visuals forcing us to keep the 3D slider a little lower than usual.
• Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition - Lots of fighters are collected, some of which you'll have long-since forgotten about since the endless SF releases of yore, and all rendered in 3D and presented in 3D too. The extra depth does serve to make the highly polished graphics look even better, and the way the status bars and round timer hover over the action is a neat effect.
• Samurai Warriors: Chronicles - Somehow the feudal lords at Koei keep finding more brainless goons to fill their armies, so yet another Warriors game is needed to manage their population. It's hack and slashery galore here, as ever, and the 3D effect doesn't do much to make the gameplay more compelling than it has in the past eleventy iterations.
• Winning Eleven 3D Soccer - Depending on your proclivity for European sporting distractions the latest installment in the long-running Winning Eleven series may not have even hit your radar. But, if you're looking for a good exhibition of the console's 3D effect, this is it. Something about the flat green grass and the players rendered atop it results in the cleanest, most eye-friendly visual pop of any of the titles we sampled. It's also, quite simply, a great game of footie.

Ultimately the 3D effect adds nothing to these titles from a gameplay perspective -- you won't be spotting enemies around corners or aiming your passes better thanks to the screen. However, it does add another bit of visual flair, a new and interesting graphical tweak that even your high-end gaming PC probably isn't delivering.

The future

Before closing we should mention that, according to Nintendo, this is just the beginning. The company has yet to exactly clarify exactly how its new 3D downloadable offerings will be consolidated in with the existing DSiWare stuff, but we're expecting a healthy amount of downloadable content, including 3Dified versions of retro classics from the TurboGrafx 16 and Game Gear.

Intriguingly Nintendo is promising Netflix support for the 3DS as well, which could be quite compelling -- particularly should Netflix start offering 3D content. That's mere speculation, but Nintendo itself is pledging to offer 3D video downloads of some sort. We're hoping for best-of collections featuring a variety of madcap Japanese game shows.

Oh, and sadly we're told to expect region locking on all 3DS titles, though naturally we don't have any American carts yet to verify. American DS titles play just fine on this Japanese system, though.

Wrap-up

The 3DS is simply something that needs to be seen -- not because it's so fantastic or because its design is such a departure from those handhelds that have come before it. You have to see it because the screen inspires different reactions from different people. Some start recoiling in horror long before their eyes have adjusted, others can start to get into it but then find themselves crippled by headaches, while others still never want to put the thing down.

Even ignoring that screen altogether, the 3DS is a solid evolution of handheld console design that Nintendo started ages ago. The addition of analog controls makes gaming feel more modern, the increased graphics horsepower makes games look more modern, and the reduced battery life will make gamers feel the all-too modern pangs of battery anxiety. It's not a perfect console, but it's safe to say it's no Virtual Boy.