Hasta La Gadget!

[CES 2013] We’ve witnessed a slew of headphones announced today at CES 2013 in Las Vegas. German audio company Sennheiser is also introducing its own foray into the audio industry by taking the wraps off its MOMENTUM Black headphones. It seems that Sennheiser has perfected the balance between design and performance with this new headphone. Basically, the MOMENTUM black is the newest addition to the company’s Style Selection. It sports a black and urban design that looks elegant and uncompromising in terms of audio quality. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Bem Mobile Speaker, Bem Boom Box,

If you loved Vizio’s 2012 lineup of PCs, you’re going to just love what it has in store for 2013. The company is refreshing nearly its entire line, and while these new models usher in upgraded components, they have the same industrial design as the original lot. Perhaps the biggest change is that all of Vizio’s new PCs going forward will come with touchscreens, so that the Thin + Light is now the Thin + Light Touch, and the All-in-One is now the All-in-One Touch. (Fair enough!) As you can imagine, that makes the laptops in particular slightly thicker and heavier than they had been, but only slightly. Truly, you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference. We were, anyway.

Additionally, Vizio has updated the trackpad drivers, though the touchpad we tested still felt a bit finicky. Just as important, the company’s also re-tooled the keyboard so that the buttons offer a springier feel. They keys have the same flat, close-together design they always had, so don’t be put off if you see these on the shelf at Best Buy. Even in our quick-hands-on, we immediately noticed our typing felt more accurate, more controlled than it had been with the last-gen models. Finally, Vizio says it’s doubled the battery capacity, which is great news because the first-gen laptop we tested couldn’t even crack four hours. This seems like a lofty ,claim given that touchscreens are known to hamper battery life anyway, but we’re vowing to keep our expectations low and hope for the best. All told, these tweaks address most user complaints, though the SD slot is sadly still MIA.

Under the hood, these machines will all have quad-core processors, with most models giving you a choice between an Intel Core i7 CPU and AMD’s high-end A10 chip. Most of them (read: the 15-inch Thin + Light and the 24- and 27-inch all-in-ones) will have 1080p screens, though the smaller 14-inch Thin + Light will rock a lower-res 1,600 x 900 panel. No word just yet on pricing, but we’re told these will go on sale in mid-February. Until then, the performance, sharp touchscreens, bigger battery and re-engineered keyboard look very promising indeed. Only when we test a final unit, though, can we tell whether Vizio finally figured out how to make a quality computer.

Continue reading Spotted: Vizio’s new touchscreen laptops and all-in-ones (hands-on)

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

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[CES 2013] Smart TVs are becoming more commonplace these days, especially since it offers up more functionality and content versus a regular television. Now if you’re shopping about for a new smart TV, Netgear, a company known for its networking solutions, has announced the NeoTV Prime which will be joining the company’s existing lineup of streaming players for the connected home theater equipment, allowing users to search for content such as live TV streams, apps, or even the web via the device which as you can see in the photo above is pretty small and relatively inconspicuous. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Netgear Launches VueZone Wire-Free Night Vision Camera For Home Monitoring, Parrot Flower Power Smart Wireless Plant Sensor – Demo,

This is Acoustic Research’s ARS60, a portable Bluetooth speaker that’s weirdly pint-shaped, pumps out 16 watts of RMS power and has a battery rated for ten hours of play at medium volume. Of course, we’re fairly sure that this is a re-badged SuperTooth Disco 2, albeit slapped with a $120 price-tag. If you’re interested in picking one up, it’ll be available in the Spring, but if you don’t want to wait that long, you could always just buy one of the originals at a cheaper price.

Continue reading Acoustic Research’s $120 ARS60 Bluetooth speakers seem oddly familiar

Filed under: Portable Audio/Video

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Vizio’s not exactly a stranger to tablets — it came out with an Android product back in 2011 — but it’s only just debuting its first Windows 8 slate, the Tablet PC. (How’s that for an appropriate name?) Like so many other Win 8 tablets it has an 11.6-inch screen, but the similarities mostly end there. On the inside, it packs a dual-core, 1GHz AMD Z60 chip, making it one of the few tablets in this class that doesn’t run an Atom processor. At the same time, the screen squeezes in 1,920 x 1,080 pixels — an unusual resolution for a lower-powered product like this. Other known specs: 2GB of RAM, 64GB of flash storage, a 2-megapixel front camera and micro-HDMI / micro-USB ports. So far, we don’t know how much this will cost, or even when it will be available, so it’s going to be a little tough to compare this to other offerings in the marketplace. For now, though, we’ve managed to steal a few minutes of hands-on time here at CES. Meet us past the break for some first thoughts on the design, the performance and that crisp 1080p screen. And stay tuned for video — we’ve got that coming too.

Update: As promised, our video tour of the tablet can be found after the break.

Continue reading Vizio Tablet PC hands-on (update: now with video)

Filed under: Tablets

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