Hasta La Gadget!

It’s not even close to an AR.Drone, but the Orbotix Sphero should find a way to eat up your precious productivity when it hits shelves sometime “later this year.” This 4.3-inch LED-lit sphere connects to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch via Bluetooth, and allows you to remotely control it or change its color… and that’s about it. There are two different input modes — one that uses the built in accelerometers and another joystick mode that utilizes a large virtual circular joystick on-screen. The few minutes we spent with the sphere were mildly entertaining, but the lack of cameras or other sensors makes it kind of pointless. Still, we could see young kids going wild for this and refusing to give you back your iPhone to take a call. Orbotix detailed a game dubbed “QuizTug” in which multiple players connect to the same Sphero and try to “score” while the other player completes a math problem or some other type of question — an interesting idea for sure. Operation definitely took a little bit of getting used to, and we still didn’t have it quite down pat after about five or ten minutes but we’re sure with some practice we’d be shredding the half pipe like our demo dude was. The existence of an open API makes us optimistic for the future of this little guy, especially given the sub-$100 pricetag. Check it out in our hands-on gallery or in the video posted after the break, and let us know what you’d do with this thing in the comments.

Continue reading Orbotix Sphero iOS-controlled toy ball hands-on

Orbotix Sphero iOS-controlled toy ball hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 22:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Believe it or not, the tablet world hasn’t all turned into a Honeycomb / Tegra 2 monopoly. Some manufacturers, like industry newbie eFun here, are sticking with ye olde Froyo and looking to conquer a slice of the thrifty consumer market. The Nextbook Next4 is a 10-inch panel aping the iPad in offering a 1024 x 768 resolution and what will be a brushed aluminum back (ours was made out of plastic, but it was just a display prototype). Unfortunately, that’s pretty much where the similarities end, as this device’s software really wasn’t up to scratch. It’s almost stock Android 2.2, by the looks of it, but eFun opted to take the familiar Android soft keys into software, leaving the only capacitive touch for the panel. The biggest problem for us, aside from some instabilities and a random reboot, was lag when navigating through menus and an atypically long load time to get Angry Birds running. Performance might be an issue, in spite of the 1GHz Cortex A8 processor inside, but price likely won’t be. The Next4 is launching in the first quarter of the year with a price somewhere around $350.

Its 7-inch sibling, the Nextbook Next6, is also joining it in Q1 and also eschews Android keys for a software implementation. Its designed primarily for reading ebooks and has a pair of physical keys on the side for flipping pages, which worked well. It had similar issues, however, to its bigger brother, but maybe its target audience will be more forgiving of its lack of immediate responsiveness than we are. It’ll be a Home Shopping Network exclusive for a week when it launches, with an MSRP of $300 that will likely be discounted to $250. Hit up the gallery for the hands-on action!

eFun Nextbook Next4 and Next6 hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 22:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Boxee is here at CES showing off two unreleased products to eager Boxee fans and novices alike. We were sufficiently bummed when both Netflix and Vudu were delayed for the box, but we can report that they’re definitely getting close to primetime. The Vudu app we saw was incredibly polished, quick, and had nice video quality even on the overcongested and questionable internet connection. It actually does a network test the first time you launch the app, but after that you can manually select to watch each program in either SD or HD. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to see the Netflix app in action because “Netflix would not be happy with us” according to Boxee chief and Engadget Show alum Avner Ronen. (It wasn’t even loaded on the demo box — we promise we looked). Head past the break for deets on the iPad app, as well as shots of it in action.

Continue reading Boxee’s unreleased Vudu and iPad apps (hands-on)

Boxee’s unreleased Vudu and iPad apps (hands-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 22:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Do we deliver or what? Just as promised, we went back for seconds with the Samsung 9 Series laptop, and man, it is one beautiful laptop. As you already know, it is incredibly thin, but it also has a very rigid construction thanks to its duralumin build. (Fun fact: apparently they build planes out of the same stuff.) As you will see in the video below, the design is very clean and the sharp edges have been designed to make the system look even slimmer. The lead designer of the system YeoWan Yun told us that the 9 Series was inspired by nature’s beauty, including waves, leaves, and water. But it’s not just the outside of the system that’s beautiful — the matte 400nit, 13-inch display is incredibly bright and crisp and the viewing angles are just top notch. Below that screen is one very nice chiclet keyboard with matte keys. Sammy’s gone with a single button ClickPad, which in our short time with the laptop seemed fine for navigating with our index finger while keeping our thumb on the bottom. Naturally, we weren’t able to get a real sense of the Core i5 performance, but we did notice that the system resumed from sleep rather quickly thanks to its 128GB SSD. Truth is we haven’t been this excited about a Windows ultraportable since the Dell Adamo XPS, we just hope the 9 Series really brings the brawn and battery life with the beauty.

Continue reading Samsung Series 9 hands-on preview (video)

Samsung Series 9 hands-on preview (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 21:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s true, Dell unleashed two new Alienware systems this morning, and naturally we just had to check out the two epically powerful rigs in person. We spent the most time with the new 17-inch M17x, and while the chassis has been updated, it’s still loaded with lots of LEDs, a trippy color-changing backlit keyboard, and chrome accents. The lid and edges have been given a more chiseled aesthetic, so we’d say it looks more muscular than ever. Obviously, the big story with the M17x is that it is now 3D capable. The full HD display is seriously beautiful, and while we didn’t get to check out a Blu-ray 3D movie on the rig, we can only imagine how breathtaking the experience is going to be. We did, however, get to check out its new integrated 1080p streaming capability, which actually is based on an integrated WHDI solution. You’ll need to pick up an extra box and hook it up to your TV, but in the demo we saw there was absolutely no lag between the clip of Final Fantasy on the laptop and on the TV. The unit we saw hanging around was packing a new Core i7 CPU and NVIDIA graphics, but it will apparently be available with AMD’s latest graphics as well.

We also caught sometime with the new Aurora desktop, but like we said it wasn’t much. The tower is still crazily-lit, but has been updated with the most powerful overclockable Intel Core i5 and i7 Sandy Bridge processors as well as new NVIDIA graphics that support 3D Vision. The Aurora should be available this month for a starting price of $1,799 and the M17x for $1,499 on January 10th. Hit the break for some more images and the source link for Engadget Spanish’s short video.

Dell Alienware M17x and Aurora hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 20:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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