Hasta La Gadget!

Finally, after years of producing large, dense networked speakers, Sonos has gone mini. Last week Sonos announced the Play:1, an entry-level addition to their already impressive line up of hardware. The speakers, about as big as a Foster’s beer can, offer a nearly magical way to extend your wireless speaker network and produce excellent music playback to boot.

The Play:1 speakers are clad in a metal sheet and made of dense, acoustically tuned plastic. They have a 3.5-inch mid-range woofer and two tweeters. They also have two built-in Class D amplifiers and only has two ports – a power plug and an Ethernet plug for wired setup.

To use these speakers you have to own the Sonos Bridge, a small box that connects to your Ethernet router (the $199 Play:1 comes with a free Bridge until after the holidays). The Bridge then controls music selection and playback via an intuitive mobile or desktop app, the Sonos remote. The Bridge then transmits music to the various Sonos components in your home. You can pair Play:1 speakers together to create a single-room stereo setup, connect them with other components like the Play:Bar sound bar to create a surround-sound system, or simply put one unit in a corner or on a shelf. You can also add the Sonos Sub, a sub-woofer, for far richer sound.

You can place multiple Play devices around the house and assign them to separate rooms and then send music via Rdio, Spotify, Pandora, and your own music collection to each speaker. It is, in short, an amazing system that has only gotten better over the years.

The Play:1 adds another interesting new feature to the mix – on-speaker play/pause controls. Whereas previous Sonos components had a “whole room” mute feature and volume buttons, the new system allows you to pause or fast-forward music. This prevents the “silent Sonos” problem where you mute an album or playlist and it keeps going for hours while you’re not listening to it.

While I prefer Sonos speakers to nearly all others I’ve tried simply based on ease of tuning and set-up, it’s important to address a few limitations. The Play:1′s are not very powerful – something remedied by creating a stereo pair – and the audio tends to fuzz just a bit at higher volume. Instrument separation is there, but it’s not as drastic or pleasing as I’d like, and there is a distinct drop in quality from the Play:3 to the Play:1. These tiny speakers are great for smaller rooms and for out of the way spots where absolute fidelity isn’t critically important.

That said, the Play:1′s make excellent satellite speakers for surround-sound use. For example, you can add a Playbar, a Sub, and two Play:1 speakers together to create a working 5.1 system for your home theatre and music playback. The results are amazing – the Play:1′s add a great deal of depth to 5.1 content and the entire setup is so easy to install that it makes competing 5.1 systems-in-a-box look obsolete. Clearly the best feature, however, is the wireless playback. This allows you to place the satellites nearly anywhere in the room and ensures you don’t have to run speaker cable through walls or floors. Anyone who has messed with banana clips and cable snaking can attest to the benefits of the wireless system.

As a die-hard Sonos fan it’s hard to find fault in the Play:1. At $200, they offer those on the fence a chance to try out the system and experience the ease with which Sonos can stream music through the house. While a complete home system can get expensive – the Sub and the Playbar are both $699 and the Play:3s are $299 – all you really need to experience the system potential is a Play:1 (or pair of Play:1) and Bridge. You can (and will) add other hardware to the system over time.

Will audiophiles be blown away? Perhaps not, but those who are sick of catch-as-catch-can whole home audio solutions will rejoice. Because the remote is actually our phone you can select playlists, albums, and songs and even wake up to music or Internet radio, turning the Play:1 into a clock radio. I would argue that the Sonos system, as a whole, is far better than AirPlay, DLNA, and ChromeCast simply because you can bring far more audio sources, you can control playlists and albums with ease, and you can even connect an Apple Airport Express to a Sonos Play:5 speaker to add Airplay audio to the mix.

The Play:1′s are, in short, a great way to expand a current system or learn about the Sonos ecosystem. Whether you need a small speaker for the kitchen or want to add a polyphonic spree to your living room, I see no reason why the average home user wouldn’t want to use Sonos over similarly priced – and less fully-featured – speaker systems. Sonos, to borrow a timeworn cliche, just works.

Samsung has first mover advantage in the smartwatch space, launching its Galaxy Gear wearable last month. However the mobile companion device only worked if you also picked up Samsung’s just released Galaxy Note 3 or Galaxy Note 10.1. Which means the vast majority of Samsung’s existing user-base are currently denied the chance to indulge their smartwatch-owning fantasies unless they also upgraded their main phone or bought a new tablet. But not for much longer.

Samsung has announced the Gear will become compatible with a swathe of its existing handsets via two updates: the Android 4.3 Jelly Bean update, and a separate update due to start rolling out globally at the end of this month.

The list of devices that will add Gear compatibility is the Galaxy S4, Galaxy S3, and Galaxy Note 2 (via the 4.3 update). Samsung said it will also extend Galaxy Gear compatibility to “other Galaxy devices” – specifically saying this will include the Galaxy S4 Mini, S4 Active, Mega 5.8, Mega 6.3, and Galaxy S4 Zoom – via a separate update (which suggests those devices aren’t getting Android 4.3. Or not yet, anyway).

One caveat: Android updates are a notoriously fragmented affair, with carriers acting as gatekeepers to hold back the rollout progress of each update. So it may take a considerable time for the Gear update to be successfully pushed out to all carrier combinations across all markets. “Software update schedules for each device will vary by country and carrier,” is how Samsung couches that caveat in its press release.

As well as enabling S4, S3 and Note 2 owners to buy and hook up a Gear, the v4.3 update will add easier text input, updated graphics and multimedia on the Android side, plus Samsung’s Knox security offering, Smart Switch, HomeSync and Group Play 2.5.

Once these existing device owners have successfully updated, and if they then choose to shell out $299 for the Gear add-on, they can expect to be able to make and answer calls on the smartwatch, and view incoming messages and notifications.

The Gear also has a 1.9MP camera attached to the wristband for taking grainy spy shots without reaching for your main cameraphone. It also has a handful of its own apps, such as a pedometer app.

Reviews of the Galaxy Gear have not been too kind, however – so if you’re buying this smartwatch, you are effectively using your own money to volunteer to be a beta tester for an alpha product.

Apple wrapped its October event at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco earlier today and, as promised, there was plenty to dig into. We’ve pumped out plenty of stories dissecting Apple’s myriad announcements, but in case you’re looking for a highlight reel of sorts, we’ve put together a quick rundown of everything Apple pulled back the curtain on.

The Hardware

New MacBook Pros: Yeah, people tend to swoon about new iGadgets, but the company’s refreshed batch of Retina Macbook Pros are nothing to sneeze at. Apple showed off slimmer 13- and 15-inch versions that sport Intel’s latest Haswell chipsets and bigger batteries and come preloaded with OS X Mavericks.

In the event these things struck your fancy, you can lay claim to yours in the Apple Store starting today. Here are Darrell Etherington’s thoughts on how they compare to past versions based on initial impressions.

New Mac Pro: Many a nerd has salivated over Apple’s curious Mac Pro redesign, and today we got a better look at what’s ticking away under the hood. Long story short, the back provides you all the access to input/output/expandability you could want, and the otherwise unbroken smooth cylinder evokes a ‘Darth Vader’ vibe.

It’s got dual workstation GPUs (proprietary in design but potentially upgradeable down the line) and an amazing Intel processor, making it an awfully powerful machine housed in an awfully pretty body.

The new Mac Pro will be available in December starting at $2,999, and you can see our hands-on impression of the computing powerhouse (courtesy of Matthew Panzarino) here.

iPads: And who could forget the iPads – Apple pulled back the curtain on two new models, the iPad Air and the iPad mini with Retina Display.

The two actually have plenty of things in common: both sport the same 64-bit A7 chip that recently debuted in the iPhone 5s, both have screens that run at 2048-by-1536 resolution (though the smaller screen on the mini will make for much crisper images), and both are going to hit store shelves starting in November. They even resemble each other to an extent – the Air essentially looks like a 10-inch iPad mini, making it significantly slimmer and lighter than the model that came before it.

If you’re not looking to spend too much, though, Apple is keeping some older models around to make sure that anyone who wants to jump on the iPad bandwagon can do so. The (non-Retina) iPad 2 is still kicking and will set you back $399 to start.

The Software

Today it seems the name of the game was ‘free.’ Apple announced that two of its most prominent software suites – iLife for content creation and iWork for, well, work – would now be free with the purchase of any new Mac or iOS device.

But that’s not all. Apple’s next big OS X update, OS X Mavericks, is also free and it’s available right now for all to download. This should help dramatically raise the rate at which users update their software, which has a benefit for security and for developers, too.

Considering that the Apple has been charging for these annual updates since the earliest days of OS X, this is an unexpected (though very welcome) change. It’s true the company has been reducing the cost of updates with each new version, but going completely free was a move almost no one saw coming.

Apple also delivered an update about how quickly people are taking to iOS 7, and the numbers aren’t too shabby. It’s been just over a month since the update went live and started getting pushed to iDevices across the globe, and so far a full 64 percent of those Apple gadgets are now running iOS 7.

And that’s about everything there is to know about Apple’s big fall event, without getting too deep into the nitty gritty. Safe to say, Apple has a lot of new stuff for people to get excited about going into the holiday shopping season.

The first-generation iPad mini was near-perfect in terms of a small tablet, with the one big shortcoming being that it lacked Apple’s impressive Retina high-resolution display. It was hard to go back to a standard-res screen after the iPad 3 and iPhone 4, which is why it’s great that the new version offers a Retina screen.

The eye-boggling 2048 x 1536 screen looks excellent in person, and for anyone coming from a generation one device it’s going to be a dramatic change. The iPad mini itself is very slightly thicker and heavier than its predecessor to accommodate the Retina Display with the same battery life, adding 0.01 inches and 0.05 pounds to the specs of the original, but that makes minimal difference to the actual feel of the product in the hand.

Also new to the iPad mini is a new space gray color scheme, which is lighter than the dark black of the original version. As with the iPhone, it’s an attractive color option, and I suspect also less susceptible to scratches. It’s actually quite close when compared side-by-side to the silver version, but it’s still got the solid black front bezel.

The new case options feel about the same as the existing versions, though they come in new color variants. I’m always a fan of the smart cover, and this time around is no exception. Everything else aside, though, the big attraction here is the Retina display.

Apple may have beefed up the iPad mini’s processor power with the A7 chip and added a 128 GB storage option, plus much better global LTE coverage, but the Retina is what’s really going to make it worth the extra $70 over the original cost of the gen-one iPad mini. And considering that you do get an iPad essentially as powerful as its larger sibling in such a small, one-hand holdable package, it really is worth the minor price hike, based on my initial impressions.

Three years ago, Apple unveiled the original iPad, boxy and thick and heavy by comparison. Four iPads later, we’re here, welcoming the fifth generation iPad into the world.

And boy is it a beauty!

You’ve been waiting long enough, through a summer of rumors, so let’s just get right down to business on the new Apple tablet.

New Design

For the first time since the iPad 2, we’re seeing a brand new design for the iPad (fifth generation).

The new iPad sports the same 9.7-inch display as all of its predecessors, but with an updated shape following the design language of the iPad mini. It weighs just one pound, making it the lightest full size tablet in the world. It’s .4 lbs lighter than previous generations. Also, the iPad Air only 7.5mm thick, which is 25 percent thinner than previous iPads.

The bezel is 43 percent thinner on the sides and the edges of the device are tapered the same way the iPad mini drastically curves along the sides, as opposed to the gradual slope of older iPads.

Unfortunately, there’s no TouchID on this bad boy.

Processor

Apple has updated the new iPad’s processor to the A7, the same you’ll find in the iPhone 5s. It’s 8x faster than the first generation and graphics are 72 times faster than then the first generation iPad. Of course, it would be interesting to hear stats on fourth generation iPad comparison, but you can’t always get what you want from an Apple announcement.

The new processor is also accompanied by that M7 motion co-processor that was used in the iPhone 5s, which focuses on computing information generated from the sensors to make the device smarter all around.

The new A7 processor runs on a 64-bit architecture, like all the new Apple products, with more than 1 billion transistors. Apple also tossed in MIMO technology to help with reliable Wifi, and all that with 10 hours of battery life, according to Apple.

Camera

The camera technology on current iPad models is incredibly outdated, to the point where it’s laughable to see someone hold up their iPad like a camera.

That said, Apple has decided to pay a little more attention to the iPad camera this time around, with an updated 5-megapixel iSight camera, with 1080p FaceTime camera in the front and dual-mics for video chat.

Pricing and Availability

The iPad (fifth generation) will be available in black, white, silver, and space gray (no gold, for some reason), and will replace the current generation (fourth) iPad at a $499 starting price. Wifi + Cellular starts at $629.

Meanwhile, the iPad 2 will remain in the line up for $399.

New iPads will be available on November 1, just in time for the holidays.

This post is being updated as information is available, so please refresh.