I was reminded yesterday of the Droid RAZR launch event. One of the RAZR product managers excitedly leapt at the opportunity to run me through some benchmarks on the demo device, a rare opportunity at these sorts of events. The results were, for the time, startling. Motorola took sometime to optimize the browser in ways that set it head and shoulders above the competition in some benchmarks. The result was a Sunspider score that was fully half of its predecessor the Droid Bionic. 

That's how I felt as I started to run the Motorola Atrix HD through its paces yesterday. The Atrix HD softens the hard edges of the RAZR design philosophy a touch, and to good effect. The white sample we received is understated and rather pretty, though I wonder if I wouldn't have preferred an all white back, rather than that expanse of Kevlar. And inside, Motorola has moved on from the OMAP 4 that won their hearts last year and adopted Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4. Yes, the MSM8960 scores another design win. Read on for our preview of the performance.

ASRock are not afraid of the legacy connections.  Not merely content on having both a floppy drive header and an IDE connector on the Fatal1ty Z77 Professional, they have also put a floppy header on the Z77 Extreme6.  There is reason for this, given that industrial equipment can cost $millions and a shiny new PC to process the data costs a lot less, even if they can only communicate via Floppy.  Today we are looking at the performance and package that comes with the Z77 Extreme6, and see if it holds up with its price tag against the vast array of Z77 motherboards currently on the market.

AZZA is a relatively new company when it comes to enclosures. Their major splash came with the Fusion 4000 enclosure (which we're still slated to review at some point in the future), a case that can house both a full ATX system and a secondary Mini-ITX system simultaneously. Someone over at AZZA is definitely thinking outside the box, and that becomes increasingly evident when we take a look at their most recent launch, the Genesis 9000.

The Genesis 9000 is an incredibly flexible enclosure, not in terms of building materials (which are almost entirely SECC steel) but in terms of assembly. This is a case that looks incredibly daunting to build in (partly because it's 36 pounds on its own) because of how many ways you can actually build a system in it. More than that, AZZA has gone slightly off the beaten path with the cooling system. The result is a very unique case at a remarkably competitive price, and after multiple nights of testing, we're only too happy to share our conclusions with you.

First generation technology is seldom perfect, and the fruit of Intel's ultrabook initiative was no exception. While vendors came out in force with some fairly impressive pieces of hardware, these first shots at the form factor all came away lacking in some way. Be it thermal performance, general performance, build quality, or display quality, no matter where you looked you were forced to make some kind of compromise. Intel's Sandy Bridge architecture wasn't horribly suited to the tasks, either, but it was also clear that at least another generation of processors would be more ideal to the increased thermal constraints of the platform.

We're now into our second generation of ultrabooks. Vendors have had the opportunity to begin working the kinks out of their initial designs (as well as experimenting with some new ones), and Intel's 22nm Ivy Bridge is much better suited to the form factor. Today we have on hand one of the more premium examples of the second generation of ultrabooks, Acer's Aspire S5. At just 15mm thick, Acer claims it's the thinnest ultrabook yet, but it still comes fairly feature rich and includes Intel's Thunderbolt technology. At $1,399 the S5 doesn't come cheaply, though; was Acer able to pack enough value into this new ultrabook to justify the price tag?

I’m working on the Droid Incredible 4G LTE review (there’s a delay resulting from a signal issue where I do battery testing), but in the interim let’s talk about something that seems to have come up about this phone. We don’t often discuss what’s happening on other review sites, even as they get their reviews out much faster than we, but the Incredible 4G LTE has been hit in many reviews for its display, and this surprised me. So, let's take a look at the display and the rest of the device for a quick preview.

We’ve had plenty of Acer laptops come in for review over the years (along with visits from their close relatives, Gateway). Rarely do we find such laptops reaching for the upper echelons of performance, build quality, design, or features, and yet many people buy Acer products. The reason is pretty straightforward: while they may not be the “best” in any single area, what Acer does well is produce well-equipped laptops that target the value conscious buyers. With their new V3 and V5 lines, Acer once again goes after that familiar territory, and today’s V3-571G packs some decent performance into an updated design that addresses a couple of our previous complaints.

Make no mistake, however: this is still an inexpensive Acer laptop, with quite a few questionable choices made in order to hit a lower price point. Those of you longing for decent quality displays are going to want to look elsewhere, and if you’re looking for a sturdy chassis that eschews glossy plastic you’ll also be disappointed. But while those are some significant and sometimes painful omissions, taken as a whole the V3-571G does plenty of things right. Those of you interested in seeing just how much performance you can grab for under $800 might be in for a surprise—like a quad-core processor and switchable NVIDIA Kepler GPU. Can the new V3 hit the sweet spot, or are the compromises too much to stomach? Read on for our full review.

Today we're looking at some inexpensive ATX power supplies with a low output power. In most cases there is no need for a 1KW power supply when 350W to 450W units with an adequate cable configuration will do just fine. This is why we will review a few PSUs from manufacturers throughout the world which come up to these requirements. We have four units manufactured by FSP, three from HEC, one by Enermax, one ATNG, one CWT and one LongYi.

The following review is one more look at seeing if you really get what you pay for—or if you can get high quality without breaking the bank. For this roundup we have 11 power supplies with different prices and power ratings. Will the most expensive unit deliver the best results? Read on to find it out. As usual we will look at the voltage regulation and quality, noise levels, and check out the internal design.

Our monitor reviews frequently go into a lot of depth about the results before and after calibration, but for many users this won’t matter, as they aren’t going to purchase the calibration hardware and software necessary to achieve these results. Getting accurate performance out of the box without needing to spend extra money on hardware is important to many people but it's often very hard to deliver. With their Pro Art monitors, ASUS aims to deliver just that: sRGB and AdobeRGB modes that are reasonably accurate (a dE < 5.0 out of the box), with a full set of controls for users to calibrate it on their own.

ASUS doesn’t stop there as they also offer a 10-bit panel, integrated card reader and USB ports, and a user calibration mode with more controls than I have seen on a consumer monitor to this point. Does the ASUS deliver good color out of the box, and does it have the performance for those that wish to calibrate themselves? Read on for our full review.

If you are an active reader, you might remember our Plextor M3 review from a few months back. As I noted in the review, I wasn't expecting much when I received the SSD; a Marvell based SSD from a relatively unknown brand when it comes to the SSD market isn't all that promising. We had not reviewed any Plextor SSDs before the M3, so I had no idea what to expect. Obviously, I prepared for the worst.

Luckily, my expectations turned out to be very wrong. Plextor's M3 came out as one of the highest performing drives we have tested. Today we are back with M3's big brother: the M3 Pro. Based on the same Marvell 88SS9174 controller and 24nm Toshiba Toggle-Mode MLC NAND, the M3 Pro offers even higher performance according to Plextor. The differences lie exclusively in the firmware, as hardware wise the M3 and M3 Pro are exactly the same. Just how much more performance can Plextor squeeze out of the Marvell controller? Read on and find out!

Ostensibly, Corsair's Carbide line of enclosures are their budget cases; the Obsidian and Graphite lines both start where the beefy Carbide 500R leaves off. Corsair's least expensive entry is the one we have on hand today, the Carbide 300R. Yet like a certain fruit-flavored company we know, they seem unwilling to part with many of the amenities that make their cases such a joy to assemble and work with, and the result is a Carbide that's caught between two worlds.

The Carbide 300R attempts to bring many of the things we've come to know and love and expect from Corsair cases down to a hopefully more palatable $79 price tag. While that's not in the "true budget" arena we've seen companies like Bitfenix and Antec stake out, it's definitely more affordable than most and may hit a sweet spot for users who don't want to spend too much on a case but want something of slightly higher quality. Read on to see how the 300R fares.

Today was an extremely busy day for Google, with the formal announcement of both Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, and two new members of the Nexus family – the Nexus 7 tablet, and Nexus Q streaming device. While I already wrote up impressions about the Nexus Q based on a media center demo, Android 4.1 and Nexus 7 require a closer look to fully appreciate. I got my hands on a loaner Nexus 7 and Galaxy Nexus with Android 4.1 and have been using and testing the devices all day (in addition to catching a session or two). 

Read on for a mini review of both the Nexus 7 and Android 4.1 on a Galaxy Nexus. 

Mechanical keyboards have become increasingly sought after over the past couple of years, with more and more manufacturers jumping on the bandwagon, oftentimes producing gamer-oriented hardware that features mechanical Cherry MX switches. Going mechanical has a lot to offer both the seasoned typist and the serious (or even semi-serious gamer), and we've gone over those benefits in our reviews of Rosewill's RK-9000 keyboard (with Cherry MX Blue switches) and Corsair's Vengeance K60 and K90 keyboards (with Cherry MX Red switches).

For a little while we've also had on hand a trio of Thermaltake's Meka keyboards (along with their Black Element mouse), and all of these keyboards feature Cherry MX Black switches. So we have a few questions to answer here: what's with all these colored switches, what has Thermaltake made out of them, and which one is going to be the best for you? And as a substantial sidenote, in a world dominated by Razer and Logitech mice, what is Thermaltake bringing to the table with the Black Element?

While notebook hardware has steadily improved over the years, outside of the recent MacBook Pro with Retina Display there haven't really been any moves forward in improving desktop real estate in some time. In fact, for productivity-oriented users this continues to be a major reason for sticking with a desktop setup (if not a desktop system): more monitors, more space to work in. This fact of life has resulted in a bit of a niche market in the form of small, USB-powered screens.

We've tested both of GeChic's OnLap monitors and found that while they were flawed in their own ways, they were still able to expand useful work space without incurring too much of an inconvenience in terms of size or power requirements. Yet GeChic's screens need an HDMI or D-SUB port in addition to a USB 2.0 port for power, and if for one reason or another your notebook doesn't offer one of these, you're out of luck. Enter solutions based off of DisplayLink's USB technology, which are able to add another screen driven entirely over USB. Solutions like the screen we have on hand today, Toshiba's catchily-named 14" USB Mobile LCD Monitor.

We've had a remarkably heavy backlog of cases in house in desperate need of review over the past couple of months, and one of the standouts has been BitFenix's Shinobi XL. We were generally pretty pleased with the original Shinobi when we first reviewed it. Seventy bucks for a solid budget enclosure with great styling was a killer deal, and the enclosure itself has a lot of room to grow for the budding enthusiast. As it turns out, the Shinobi has been a pretty big hit for BitFenix. Big enough, in fact, that they decided it needed to go...bigger.

And so it did. BitFenix released the Shinobi XL earlier this year, but reviews for it have been fairly scarce and even a little bit dismissive in some cases. We have an opportunity here to rectify that and determine if the newer, larger Shinobi lives up to the legacy of its little brother, or if BitFenix has lost some of the magic in enlarging their budget design. Read on for our impressions and testing results.

Since the release of the first Eee Pad Transformer (can you believe it's only been about a year?), ASUS has released several members of the Eee Pad and Transformer families. We got a slider, a thinner version called the Transformer Prime, as well as a refreshed entry level Transformer Pad 300. ASUS' experimentation and learning will pay off later this year as it ships the first Windows RT/8 versions. Until then however ASUS isn't done iterating. Today it's officially announcing the final configuration of the Transformer Pad Infinity, the first member of the TF series with a 1920 x 1200 display. It also happens to be the first tablet we've tested to use NVIDIA's higher binned Tegra 3 T33 SoC.

Read on for our full review!

Apple makes the bulk of its revenue from devices that don’t look like traditional personal computers. For the past couple of years I’ve been worried that it would wake up and decide the traditional Mac is a burden, and it should instead be in the business of strictly selling consumer devices. With its announcements two weeks ago in San Francisco, I can happily say that my fears haven’t come true. At least not yet.

It’s been a while since Apple did a really exciting MacBook Pro launch. Much to my surprise, even the move to Sandy Bridge, the first quad-core in a MacBook Pro, was done without even whispers of a press conference. Apple threw up the new products on its online store, shipped inventory to its retail outlets, updated the website and called it a day. Every iPhone and iPad announcement however was accompanied with much fanfare. The MacBook Pro seemed almost forgotten.

With its WWDC unveil however Apple took something that it had resigned to unexciting, dare I say uncool status, and made a huge deal about it. Two weeks ago Apple did the expected and offered relatively modest upgrades to all of its portable Macs, all while introducing something bold.

Apple calls it the MacBook Pro with Retina Display. You’ll see me refer to it as the next-gen MacBook Pro, Retina MacBook Pro, rMBP or some other permutation of these words.

After using it for the past two weeks I can honestly say it’s the best Mac Apple has ever built. And there’s a lot more to it than hardware.

Read on for our full review!

A couple months back, we were contacted by Amped Wireless and offered a chance to look at their latest dual-band 802.11n router, the R20000G. Along with the router, Amped also sent their updated dual-band directional wireless adapter, the UA2000. Instead of your typical omnidirectional antenna, the UA2000 promises increased range and throughput when pointed at your wireless router/access point. Rounding out the review, Amped sent a third product, their SR20000G repeater, which is basically the same as the router but with tweaked firmware and software so that it can extend the range of your wireless network(s).

While there are many wireless routers on the market, there aren’t nearly as many repeaters, and a quick search through Newegg only turned up one other directional wireless USB: Amped’s previous generation UA1000. That certainly piqued our interest, but Amped is also promising better coverage and signal quality thanks to the use of higher power 600mW antennas. Higher power isn’t the only improvement, as Amped also uses higher gain antennas; the former improves the range of your signal (how loud the router “shouts”) while the latter improves the reception, particularly of weaker signals (how well the router can “hear”). Can the router, repeater, and adapter deliver on the promise of better quality wireless networking, with improved range and transfer rates? That’s what we aim to find out.

The GeForce GTX 680 launch marked both the closest and the farthest AMD has ever been from outright beating NVIDIA in modern times. On the one hand NVIDIA beat them by more than usual by achieving the holy trifecta as opposed to focusing just on performance. And yet on the other hand when it comes to raw performance AMD has never been this close. Where the GTX 580 beat the 6970 by 15% the GTX 680 led by just 10%, and even then it lost to the 7970 on some games. With such a close gap an obvious question arises: maybe, just maybe AMD could meet or beat NVIDIA with a higher clocked 7970 and rival them for the performance crown?

Today AMD is putting that idea to the test with the launch of the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. Although AMD is not calling the 7970 GHz Edition a response to the GTX 680 – instead choosing to focus on it being Tahiti’s 6 month birthday – for all intents and purposes this is AMD’s response to the GTX 680. A higher clocked 7970 with AMD’s take on GPU turbo intended to make a run at the GTX 680 and that performance crown. So how does AMD fare? As we’ll see, after today it will no longer be clear who holds the performance crown.

Two weeks ago NVIDIA formally launched the retail GeForce GT 640, catching up to their OEM and laptop offerings with their first GK107 based video card for the retail desktop market. GT 640 is designed to be NVIDIA’s entry-level Kepler video card, joining several Fermi rebadges as the members of the GT 6xx series. With the enthusiasm behind Intel’s Ivy Bridge in the laptop market and the boost in sales it has provided for NVIDIA’s mobile GPUs, NVIDIA is hoping to accomplish the same thing in the desktop market with GT 640.

Today we’ll finally be taking a look at the GT 640 in action. As is common with entry-level video cards there is no reference design intended for retail sale and NVIDIA isn’t sampling any such card. However, NVIDIA’s partners are stepping up to sample cards to the press. Our sample comes from Zotac, who sent over their single slot based Zotac GeForce GT 640.

For the past couple of days I've been playing with, benchmarking, and battery life testing two USA-bound variants of the SGS3 literally nonstop, a white AT&T model with LTE, and a pearl blue model headed to T-Mobile. The USA SGS3 launch is shaping up to be the largest in Samsung's history, and for the first time all of the carriers will get largely the same exact hardware. Samsung has certainly come a long way since the first Galaxy S.

Read on for our full review.