Back when Thunderbolt (then Intel Lightpeak) was optical, I was actively involved in covering the interface, partly out of professional curiosity due to my optical background, partly because I sincerely believe optical interfaces are an inevitable part of the future. When Lightpeak became Thunderbolt and lost the optical layer, it fell under Anand’s beat and the Mac umbrella. I acquired a MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt somewhere around the same time, but never acquired any Thunderbolt peripherals or drives. Since then, Thunderbolt has slowly but surely gained traction with more and more peripherals and host devices. Initial adoption was glacial in part because most of the earliest Thunderbolt peripherals were really aimed at the very high end market with big RAID or JBOD stations, and partly due to what boiled down to Thunderbolt being Apple-only until just recently.

There’s an interesting story as to exactly why most of the initial Thunderbolt peripherals were aimed at such a high-end market, and some of it was purely because of both the TDP, size, and engineering constraints involved with the first generation Thunderbolt controllers. The other half of the equation is that selling external storage isn’t always the most valuable prospect, as shoppers expect commodity pricing and generally know the cost of the drive inside. Thankfully, second generation Thunderbolt controllers with smaller size, TDP, and lower cost are now the norm, and at the same time Apple has unleashed more Macs with the interface of note, meaning that there’s a bigger captive market of potentially interested shoppers.

So when Buffalo dropped us a line about an upcoming 2.5" form factor portable hard drive with both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt interfaces, I couldn’t resist the temptation and jumped at the opportunity to review it. When it comes to single drive external Thunderbolt storage, the only real options at this point are either the Seagate GoFlex, or the new Buffalo MiniStation. Read on for our full review. 

Earlier this year Intel introduced its second SandForce based SSD: the Intel SSD 330. While Intel had previously reserved the 5xx line for 3rd party controllers, the 330 marks the first time Intel has used something other than its own branded controller in a mainstream or 3-series drive.

I don't doubt that I'll eventually get the story of how we got here. Apparently there's a good one behind why Intel's sequential write speed was capped at 100MB/s in the early days of the X25-M's controller. Regardless of how, this is where we are today: every new Intel SSD, with the exception of the high-end PCIe solution, is now powered by SandForce's SF-2281 controller and not Intel's own silicon.

Read on for our full review of Intel's SSD 330.

Earlier today we published our first results using GLBenchmark 2.5, the long awaited update to one of our most frequently used mobile GPU benchmarks. 

In our first article we ran GLBenchmark 2.5 on devices based on Samsung's Exynos dual and quad SoCs, Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4, NVIDIA's Tegra 2/3 and TI's OMAP 4. We had problems getting older devices to run, which is why we only had the abridged set of starting data on Android. In addition, GLBenchmark 2.5 only supports Android 3.x and up.

GLBenchmark 2.5 is already available in the Google Play store, however the iOS version is still in Apple's review process. Thankfully we've been able to get our hands on the iOS version and now have results for the new iPad, iPad 2 as well as the iPhone 4S. Read on to see how the A5 and A5X stack up in Kishonti's latest OpenGL ES benchmark.

For quite a while now, GLBenchmark has been a regular test in our smartphone, tablet, and SoC reviews. As GPU performance has steadily increased, GLbenchmark 2.1.x started hitting vsync more of the time in onscreen tests, necessitating an updated version of the test with heavier assests, reworked rendering code, and improved functionality for testing. 

Today Kishonti Informatics has released GLBenchmark 2.5.0 into the wild, and we're taking a first look at performance across the current crop of devices. 

This year has seen a revitalized Dell aggressively attacking HP on the enterprise workstation front. While HP has been content to recycle last year's models, Dell has made substantial strides in improving their desktop workstation offerings across the board. We had a chance to check out their T3600 this year and found it to be a demonstratively superior offering to the competing HP Z420, and today we have the T1650, a model that updates the lackluster T1600 with a new chassis and some new hardware.

In addition to being our first look at Dell's new entry level workstation, this is also our first look at Intel's new Ivy Bridge based Xeons. While the improvements from Sandy Bridge were underwhelming for enthusiasts and incremental for desktop-using consumers, on the enterprise side the combination of reduced power and thermal envelopes and increased IPC make Ivy Bridge a much, much better value proposition.

BitFenix's Prodigy enclosure, despite a couple of rough spots, emerged as a one-of-a-kind design and a substantial success for the company. BitFenix brought a remarkably flexible Mini-ITX enclosure to market at one of the lowest price tags we've ever seen for that type of enclosure, making it an instant hit with enthusiasts but also a great opportunity for boutiques to produce a variety of LAN boxes to suit the needs of their customers.

While we've already seen small gaming systems from the likes of AVADirect, DigitalStorm, and iBuyPower, what Origin brings us for review today may be one of the best balanced and most impressive LAN boxes we've ever seen. I've maintained since I started reviewing their cases that BitFenix's enclosures were ideal for boutiques: they're inexpensive, they look good, and they're well made. Origin was showing off a few systems utilizing BitFenix's cases at CES, and the Chronos is just the latest iteration in what looks to be a very fruitful partnership.

I viewed Google I/O, Jelly Bean (Android 4.1) and the first Nexus tablet as Google's last chance to deliver a knockout in the tablet space before the onslaught of Windows 8 and Windows RT devices later this year. While the show was undoubtedly a success, I don't know that the market for $499+ Android tablets has a life after Windows 8/RT hit. We should see Windows RT tablets at $499, and Ivy/Haswell based Windows 8 tablets will handle the higher price points.

It seems that Google also realized this as the Nexus 7, its first Nexus branded tablet, starts at just $199. There's a huge market for tablets as a primary computing device, and I believe Windows RT/8 offers something unique and compelling for that usage model. At the same time however, there's decent demand for a tablet to augment your existing computing world. It's a far more specific usage model but one that really demands a lower price point. Users are willing to spend a lot for something that does everything in your life, but for something that's more nice than necessity, price matters even more.

The Nexus 7 is aimed at the latter. It's a device for users who need ultra portability and tons of battery life for content consumption. While Apple has been quietly empowering the iPad to be a content creation device, and dockable Windows 8/RT tablets will attempt to replace your notebook, the Nexus 7 is a more traditional ARM based tablet by default.

At the risk of sounding foolish, more and more it seems that Mini-ITX is very much becoming the new Micro-ATX. Each subsequent hardware generation crams a little more performance and flexibility into the form factor, and Intel's Z77 chipset complete with USB 3.0 makes it that much easier. With Intel's 8 series chipset rumored to halve the power consumption of Z77 while bumping up the number of USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps ports, one has to wonder just how much we'll even need Micro-ATX (let alone ATX) at that point. With all that said, Intel and AMD's advances aren't the only things helping drive forward the adoption of the Mini-ITX form factor.

What used to be the province of specialty motherboards (typically from Zotac) is now a market that enjoys entries from most major motherboard manufacturers, and while cases supporting this form factor used to be moderately expensive oddballs, we now have beefy enclosures like BitFenix's Prodigy going for reasonable prices. Yet the Prodigy is still on the large side; what if we want to build a good-looking Mini-ITX box on the cheap? For that, we turn to today's entrant, the newly released Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced.

The motherboard scene contains around fifty shades of grey – whatever size, whatever feature set, if a user cannot get what they exactly want, something similar should be available.  The only questions that follow are: does it work properly, and is it worth the money?  Today we are looking at the Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H (or the Z77X-UD5H, depending on location), a motherboard with dual NIC, up to ten USB 3.0 ports, mSATA, three-way PCIe 3.0 GPU action without a $30 PCIe enhancing chip, TPM, extra SATA 6 Gbps and the full array of video outputs for only $180.  Read on to find out more.   

Last week Dell’s new XPS 15 L512x landed on our doorstep, and we’ve been hammering on it ever since. Combining many of the best elements of the previous generation XPS 15 (L502x) and XPS 15z (L511z), the new model may finally silence the critics. It’s reasonably thin but more importantly, the new chassis has a solidity that was sorely lacking in previous designs. It’s Dell’s take on Apple’s unibody aluminum construction, and it feels like the type of laptop you could use for several years without it going to pieces.

The Dell XPS 15 (2012) is also our first chance to look at Intel’s new 35W quad-core Ivy Bridge processor, the i7-3612QM. As a premium brand offering, Dell also pairs the XPS 15 with a standard 1080p display (there’s no more 768p option, thankfully) and NVIDIA’s GT 640M GPU with GDDR5 memory. The combination provides for a potentially potent set of hardware capable of serving just about any need, provided of course that everything works properly. Is the latest XPS 15 a Windows laptop we can finally recommend without any reservations? We may not be able to fully answer that question with this First Look, but we’ll try.

If you've been following our SoC related coverage, you'll probably have come across our coverage of Qualcomm's upcoming SoCs in their Mobile Development Platforms (MDPs). It's an interesting way to get both a feeling for the performance of a given platform before things are final, and to see how much OEMs affect the final performance. 

Qualcomm flew us out to San Francisco to take a look at its newest part, APQ8064, which is quad core Krait v2 at up to 1.5 GHz with Qualcomm's new Adreno 320 GPU, and no baseband. This is an SoC destined primarily for tablets, although the combination of APQ8064 and MDM9615 will likely also be a common upcoming platform for the highest end phones. Read on for some benchmarks!

Biostar have always been on the radar for motherboard builders, occupying that niche of ‘bang-for-buck’ if your wallet is looking a little empty this month.  In the grand scheme of things they usually do okay, perhaps a little imperfect in the design or not exactly the premium BIOS and software package we have come to expect from top-tier motherboard manufacturers, but today we look at one of their Z77 range, the Biostar TZ77XE4.  Visually in orange, it provides something different, but is that true of the whole package?  Read on to find out more.

Thanks to a flood of new arrivals, over the next couple of weeks we’ll be taking a look at a range of GTX 670 and GTX 680 cards from Asus, EVGA, MSI, and Zotac. And to kick things off our first card will be what's perhaps the most unique card among them: EVGA's GeForce GTX 680 Classified, our first fully-custom GTX 680.

In EVGA’s product hierarchy the Classified is their top of the line product, where they typically go all-out to make a customized products to scratch the itch of overclockers and premium buyers alike. The GTX 680 Classified in turn is EVGA’s take on an ultra-premium GTX 680, creating a card that is monstrous in virtually every sense of the word. What has EVGA seen fit to do with their fully-custom GTX 680, and does it live up to the hype and the price tag that comes with the Classified name? Let’s find out.

Around November of last year we had a chance to take a look at one of the most popular enclosures from up-and-comer Fractal Design, the Define R3. Impressions were good if not absolutely amazing, but it was easy to see how the case had gotten so popular. A competitive price tag, solid acoustics, understated aesthetics, and fairly flexible design all conspired to produce a case that could conceivably be a silver bullet for a lot of users.

Today Fractal Design is launching their next revision of the Define, the R4. It's easy to mistake it for its predecessor, but as is often the case, the devil is in the details. Fractal Design hasn't radically tweaked the formula, but they've rounded some of the edges and added more value to their design without making very many sacrifices in the process. They've done a lot to improve the Define in the R4, but have they done enough?

With most of the attention from Apple's hardware refresh event centered around iOS 6 and the new Retina MacBook Pro, the updated 2012 edition of the regular MacBook Pro has flown a little bit under the radar. Basically, it’s just an Ivy Bridge-infused version of the venerable unibody MacBook Pro chassis that we’ve known and loved for the last few years. The details don’t bring any particularly earth-shattering revelations, with 13” retaining the dual-core processor and integrated graphics, while the 15” makes the switch from AMD to Nvidia’s new Kepler-based GT 650M dedicated graphics. Along with Ivy Bridge, the 2012 MBP line gets HD 4000 graphics and USB 3.0 across the board, plus a free update to Mountain Lion when it releases later this summer. Naturally, it doesn’t generate the same kind of excitement that the all-new, all-awesome Retina MacBook Pro does. But is a less headline-worthy computer necessarily a worse one?

Last November, we reviewed the Netgear NV+ v2 and came away quite satisfied with the price to performance ratio. However, we had some reservations about the absence of NFS and iSCSI (which happen to be staple features in offerings from other vendors in this particular segment of the market). The maturity of the platform was also a concern (since this was Netgear's first attempt at introducing a NAS based on an ARM chipset).

Netgear recently updated the firmware for the NV+ v2 and Duo v2 units. RAIDiator 5.3.5 added support for a number of new share management protocols including NFS. It also brought along a number of fixes. In the meanwhile, LaCie also contacted us about a firmware update improving RAID-1 performance in the 2big NAS that we reveiewd a couple of months back. Keeping these updates in mind, it is time to take another look at the 2-bay NAS units in our labs. Read on to find out whether the Netgear NV+ v2 has improved, and also a refresh of the benchmark figures for the LaCie 2big NAS.

Plextor is one of those OEMs who have quietly been making their way into the SSD market. They haven't been aggressive with marketing. Their drives are not featured on NewEgg's front page or advertised on most technology sites. 

Prominence in marketing, or a lack thereof, doesn't mean Plextor's drives are something to be ashamed of. We were quite pleased with the M3 and M3 Pro SSDs, and today we are looking at their new M5S SSD. While it's still equipped with the same Marvell 88SS9174 controller, Plextor has switched from Toggle-Mode NAND to ONFi NAND. The M5S is also using a brand new firmware which promises some improvements. So, to find out how the M5S performs in our tests, read on for the full review!

At the very top of HTC’s new lineup are three flagship devices: the One X, its cousin the One XL, and the One S. I say flagship because HTC’s One S is really a device with a level of fit and finish beyond the rest of the high-end to midrange device category. Don’t let its diminutive size and 4.3" display fool you, the One S packs a lot of punch. It’s almost funny to write it, but the T-Mobile One S has been the device I’ve been reaching for more often than a few other larger size phones for a while now. For those wanting a device with arguably the best in-hand feel around, and an outline that isn’t large like the norm, the One S might make more sense than the One X.

Read on for our full review.

Things are getting very blurry.

The MacBook Pro once stood for tons of power plus upgradability. Add a Retina Display and now it's just tons of power. It's a thicker, faster MacBook Air (with an awesome display). It's not bad, in fact it's quite amazing, but it confuses the general order of things.

The MacBook Air doesn't help in the clarity department. You can now order a MacBook Air with up to 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, for the first time in MacBook Air history. Users who were once forced into Pro territory because of RAM and storage requirements can now happily live with an Air. And thanks to Turbo Boost, you do get similar performance in lightly threaded workloads.

Today the MacBook Air is even more affordable. The 11-inch model still starts at $999, but the 13-inch version is only $200 more. From the outside not a lot has changed, but that doesn't mean there's any less to talk about. Ivy Bridge, USB 3.0 and faster SSDs are all on the menu this year. Let's get to it.

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.