The Price:

$160

The Verdict:

Expensive, but worth it.

How do we justify a $160 scale when normal scales are $20 at Target? Think about when the last time your parents replaced their bathroom scale. Was it before you were born? Was it never? $160 isn't too much when you spread it out over a lifetime.

But even if you you just look at the features, the Withings scale is worth it. On the "weighing you" side, it reports your weight in pounds, kilos or the weird British stone, plus calculates out your fat mass and BMI.

The top of the scale is made out of, in their words, "tempered glass slab, covered with a layer of metal", which looks and feels classy. The whole thing feels modern—again, the complete opposite of a normal filthy bathroom scale.

After the Withings weighs you, it'll send all three data points online, to their free website, where it charts and graphs it for you. You can even have different users in your family, each with their own separate data graphs. And (this is probably something you won't use) it'll post your weight updates to Twitter, if you want. It's not mandatory.

And here, for example, is a kid being tracked as she gets older—not a person devolving into a serious eating disorder.

And if you have an iPhone/iTouch, you can access your chart via the free app as well, in case you want to show off to your friends how much weight you're losing.

In essence, the Withings makes for the perfect holiday gift. It's pricey enough to not make you look cheap, yet it still conveys the "I think you're fat" message that's inherent in giving someone a scale. [Withings]

Internet connectivity and functionality is impressive for a scale

Works great as a scale

Slightly expensive

The Omnia II is frustrating from the second you pick it up to the moment you lay it back on your desk, defeated and distraught. There was so much potential here, so much obvious potential. Through a series of bizarre decisions and grating software design, Samsung has managed to squander it. Every. Last. Ounce.

The Hardware Is Decent

This handset is categorically impressive, shipping with a 480x800 AMOLED screen, an 800MHz processor, a 5MP camera with 720x480px video capture, 8GB of internal storage with room for microSD expansion, and FM radio, complementing the standard smartphone trio of GPS/Wi-Fi/3G connectivity.

The screen is beautifully sharp, though the whites—as seems to be common in Samsung's AMOLED screens—often render as slightly blue. It's not that distracting as long as you don't have a whiter screen for reference, and the screen's brightness, sharpness and general color reproduction are satisfying. It's a resistive display, which is still kind of a necessary evil on Windows Mobile; as much as I enjoyed the capacitive panel on the Touch HD2, Windows Mobile 6.5—and specifically, some of its app selection—isn't quite ready to kick the stylus. The screen is no more squishy than any other 3.7-inch layered plastic display.

The design could be described as clean and conservative, if not for two features: the chrome buttons on the front, and the ill-advised secret red accents on the back. It's a bit too tuner-car chic for my tastes, but neither detail is all that offensive. The sides of the phone, which are fairly narrow (the handset is only about 13mm thick—about as thin as a HTC Hero, and slightly thinner than a closed Pre) are littered with buttons and ports, including the 3.5mm headphone jack, the volume rockers, an "OK" button, a microUSB port for charging, and lock and camera shutter buttons, which are a bit close for comfort.

(sample shot)

The 5MP camera benefits from extensive settings options, and the sensor itself is good enough to replace an entry-level point-and-shoot in daytime. The video, though it suffers from motion distortion more than your average pocket camcorder, will suffice in most situations.

The conclusion here is unsurprising: Though it's no HD2, the Omnia II is an impressive piece of hardware. This, sadly, doesn't really matter.

The Software Is Terrible

The Omnia's got a veritable arsenal of software tricks behind that spongy little screen, from the ability to broadcast video over DLNA, to the newest version of Opera Mobile, to the semi-lauded Swype keyboard, which lets you type without lifting your finger, and which takes fairly bold—but generally effective—guesses at what you're gesturing toward. And the crowning achievement, the reason that the Omnia II is worthy of a review over the rest of the same-y Windows Phones that are flooding the market right now, is TouchWiz 2.0, Samsung's take on total interface conversion, which reaches far deeper than the original TouchWiz did on the first Omnia.

And it is a disaster.

It's flawed in the most basic ways a phone interface can be, violently convulsing from one interface paradigm to another through a series of inconsistent, layered, and most importantly slow animations. Seriously, what's going on here? How did all these images come from one phone?:

The widget menu feels like its always about to freeze, and the widgeting system as a whole is laggy and disorganized, more of a free canvas for thoughtlessly-sized shortcuts than an actual, interactive dashboard. The Cube—oh, that horrible fucking cube—is just a six-sided spinning shortcut menu for multimedia apps, which feels like an obstacle, not an interface. Ugh.

And stuff like this is everywhere on the Omnia II—you can't avoid it. Windows Mobile's new Start Menu has been replaced with an iPhone-style set of icon panels, which would be fine if they didn't register half my swipes as taps, opening applications, sometimes more than one at a time, instead of just cycling between screens. The new dialpad crunches the inbuilt recent calls list into a two-item-tall sliver. The SMS interface has been replaced, but only in bits and pieces. Closing an app with one "x" button reveals a second "x" button of a different color and size, attached to that bright green start menu. The Wi-Fi selector is a floating orb of icons, in which you drag one bubble—representing a network—into a larger bubble—representing your phone. The task switcher alternates between a set of panels and a Cover Flow-esque turnstile. The media player app looks like it was hastily ripped from one of Samsung's older PMPs, and the remaining Windows Mobile native elements have been doomed to wear a black and blue neon color scheme that harks back to Windows 98's High Contrast Mode. Haptic feedback accompanies almost all animations, which makes the lagging transitions feel like they're literally grinding.

I won't go on too long about how this interface looks. Let's just say it's oppressively ugly, and leave it at that. But the way it functions is inexplicable, and inexcusable. It's as if Samsung assigned each tiny piece of this phone's software to a different team, and ordered them not to speak to one another under any circumstances. This isn't design by committee. This is worse than design by committee. And the effect on user experience is crippling: Fiddling with this thing for a few minutes is akin to being yelled at by a panel of six men, none of whom speak languages you've ever heard before, and all of whom take pleasure in your cranial pain. You could conceivably get used to this with enough time, but it's an order of magnitude less usable than the regular Windows Mobile 6.5 interface, which hey, isn't that good. Perhaps more importantly, everyone I handed this to was visibly frustrated within seconds. You can't turn it off, either: With a little effort you can kill the homescreen, but the rest of the modifications are there to stay.

The most alarming thing about this interface is that it's Samsung's entire design philosophy now. Matt said of the Android Behold's UI:

TouchWiz is the first custom Android interface that's worse than the standard one, and shows what kind of horrible things emerge when Samsung's interface designers are left unchecked.

It only got more scatological from there. The Omnia II's UI is essentially the same concept, adapted for Android and intended to penetrate a little deeper. There are even some striking similarities between the Omnia II's interface and that of the Omnia HD, a Symbian-based phone from a few months ago. In short, TouchWiz is an epidemic at Samsung. And for all intents and purposes, the pathogen is fatal.

What To Buy Instead

At the $200 price point, it's hard to recommend anything else but the Droid on Verizon's network—it's their clear flagship, and it's an extremely capable phone. But even if you're specifically set on buying a Windows Mobile phone, there are better options, like the HTC Imagio, which benefits from HTC's vastly better TouchFlo or "Sense" UI overhaul, or even the Touch Pro2, which despite having Windows Mobile 6.1 (which you can probably just upgrade yourself) offers a much more pleasant experience. Because unless you replace the software entirely, a pleasant experience is miles from what you'll be having with an Omnia II in your pocket.

It's another in what I expect to be a long line of impressively spec'd Windows Mobile handsets

The camera is better than average, though it still suffers in low light

It's a Windows Mobile phone, which will be a dealbreaker for some, and a feature for others.

It's almost always laggy, despite a fast processor

It gives you a headache to use, like reading tiny text in the dark, or reciting the alphabet backwards when drunk

Price

It's $80, which is about par for the gaming mouse course.

Verdict

It uses the tracking engine that's standard on all of Razer's high-end mice now, a 5600dpi sensor, as mentioned above, with a 1000Hz polling rate for 1ms response time. And, like every other major Razer mouse, it's got onboard memory for storing profiles of macros and DPI settings. These things work well, as they have on previous Razer mice, though how much you need major gun specs is really up to you.

What's different about Imperator is that it's a totally new ergonomic direction for Razer, who's previously iterated the same form factor several times over for its right-handed mice (even Mamba, their wireless mouse, uses a tweaked Death Adder shape). It feels a lot like a Logitech mouse, actually, of the MX500 ilk, to be precise.

It's more compact than the expansive DeathAdder, which you basically sprawled your hand on top of, forcing a more aggressive, and more ergonomic, grip on the mouse. I feel like it's an improvement by taking a definitive ergonomic stand, but it loses that flexibility in how you hold it, which was the real genius of Razer's previous right-handed mice, so former Razer diehards might not be keen on it.

Also new are adjustable thumb buttons—that is, they slide further up or down the mouse, so you can place them where you want. The problem is that they're too thin now, and I'd prefer simply larger thumb buttons that are just easy to hit, wherever your thumb's at. The thick, braided cable is another upgrade, replacing the thin, fragile cable Razer's historically used, bringing them up to speed with gaming mice from Logitech and SteelSeries.

What makes this my favorite Razer mouse yet is the grip, combined with the solid sensor and tracking they've used for a few mice now. Is it worth $80? My answer's the same as it always for gaming mice: If you think so.

Best-feeling Razer mouse yet

It's $80

Thumb buttons are too thin
[Razer]

In brief, the Envy is indeed light system with plenty of power, but it never feels premium, nor does the battery life reach adequate levels.

Sure, it comes in a nice black box labeled "ENVY" with properly monolithic upscalism. And the computer itself is wrapped in a very, very soft black cloth.

But once removed, I can't distinguish this $1,800 laptop from any random PC on a table at Best Buy. HP's premium laptop, one that's been oooh'd and ahhh'd ad nauseam, could have been a $600 budget system.
The aluminum magnesium body, which works well enough in the 13-inch Envy, scales to become a big, synthetic-feeling disappointment. Yes, it's just an inch thick and 5.2lbs (about a pound lighter than peers), but the footprint is so large that, upon opening the packaging, I at first believed HP had sent me a 17-inch system (keep in mind, there's still no room for an internal optical drive).

It was a surprising thought, but at that moment, I realized something: HP is the new Dell. Disregarding their impressive TouchSmart desktops, HP has built the quintessential drab PC laptop and labeled it as "designer." Meanwhile, Dell, with their fashion-forward Adamo line, has left rivals like HP somewhere back in 1995.

Kudos, Dell.

I almost hate to continue describing the system, lest I beat a dead horse. The keyboard is adequate, but every impact reverberates through your finger, making the laptop feel more fragile than it probably is. The trackpad, despite multitouch promises, is dreadful to use. Two-finger scrolling is met with a perpetual half-second (or greater) delay, and clicking the buttonless pad (engineered much like a MacBook Pro pad) screams unfinished prototype.
There's simply nothing elegant about the mechanics, even though the 1920x1080 screen is indeed sharp, HDMI and eSATA connections are convenient and the Beats-branded speakers are very balanced and rich...for laptop speakers.

Performance

But my hate-fest for the Envy ends there. If you don't mind the aesthetics and feel—and at this price, you really should—the system won't disappoint. The 1.6GHz Core i7, coupled with 6GB of RAM, 500GB 7200RPM HDD, and ATI Mobility Radeon 4830 (with 1GB RAM) has gotten performance nods from around the web.

While the system can't best 20fps in the higher tiers of Crysis, it can reach 32fps if you scale the graphics down to 1024x768, according to Notebookcheck. Older and less insane titles perform even better.

PCMag's cross-laptop testing found that the Envy isn't the fastest laptop out there, but it keeps pace with other Core i7 systems to the point that such a distinction doesn't really matter. And it'll shame Core2Duo systems, like the aging MacBook Pro.

In real world use, the speed is a pleasure, and a welcome level of overkill for mediacentric web browsing in an era when Atoms are chugging to just get the job done.

Battery Life

But all this performance comes at a heavy, heavy price. You should only expect the Envy to get a measly 1 hour, 20 minutes of battery life*. Given this system's sizable footprint, it needs to last more than 2 hours under moderate use. Stick a bigger battery in there, HP. Something. Please.

(*nonstop web browsing, Wi-Fi on, screen at 3/4 brightness.)

Misguided Envy

Some of you will be fooled by the light body covered in laser-etched paisley—probably the same among you who can drink instant coffee, listen in 92kbps MP3s and think that SD broadcasts look identical to Blu-ray movies.
And that's fine. I can understand why someone might like the Envy, especially given the processing power and modest 5.2lb weight. It's just a shame that anyone would pay so much for it.

HP, Acer, Toshiba, etc, you think I like giving Apple all my money? There's a staggering amount of design talent in the world. Find it. Fund it. And give it a chance to wipe the smug grin off Cupertino. Offer us all something that we should really be envying.


Light

Fast

Respectable I/O

Feels cheap

Wretched battery life

The Old Champs

If you remember the HD media player battlemodo, I awarded WDTV Live and Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ the two top spots. The WD is still best for people who want a smooth interface and a hopefully increasing number of online services for streamed media. (YouTube and Pandora now, who knows what else?) It's actually the Seagate that gets KO'd by Asus.

The New Buttkicker

More functional than frilly, both the O!Play and the Theater+ handle every video file I could throw their way, they both read Mac- and PC-formatted drives, they both browse the local network well, they both read DVD menus from ripped ISO files, they both have superb video output—and they both suffer from having stupid punctuation characters in their name. But one costs $30 less than the other, according to Amazon's current prices. Not only is the O!Play cheaper, but its second USB jack is also an eSATA port which might come in handy when you start getting 1080p rips of all your favorite movies, and it has a file-copy function that lets you dump stuff from one drive to another, or to drives on the network.

I had only one major complaint with the Asus: Every time I watched a video ripped from DVD, it showed chapter numbers in a big white font for an extended period, about 15 seconds. Not only did pushing every single button I could think of not help this, but I couldn't even advance from one chapter to another by using the skip-forward button, so why do I need to know what chapter it is in the first place? A shame, but probably a bug that can be fixed really easily.

The Final Score

As I said in the battlemodo:

• If you want a full-on pirate kit, with torrent client built-in and everything, go with the Popcorn Hour (or the cheaper, quirky Patriot Box Office).
• If you want something with a nice interface and Pandora streaming music, go with WDTV.
• If you're choosing something to work with your iTunes collection of music and video, or something for your parents, probably still better to pick Apple TV—and tell them to buy or rent all their videos.

But if you want something that can play a ton of home-ripped video, or stuff you've acquired in some other high-bandwidth way, Asus is a better deal than Seagate—just as tough to stump in my battery of file format tests, with a few extra nice features. That's my best and final recommendation for HD video file playback—at least until Roku figures out what the USB jack on the HD-XR is really for. [Asus]

Great price for a high-def HDMI video player

Plays every video file I could throw at it, including DivX 7 MKVs, high-def H.264, even obscure home movies from out-of-date cameras

A bit larger than some products out there, but not by much

No streaming internet services

Annoying bug that shows chapter numbers in a large white font as you watch movies ripped from DVD

The Price

$80

The Verdict

It looks better than it tastes..err...sounds.

I can't deny, my MacBook Pro's tinny speakers have never sounded better than when complemented by the BassJump. Through USB (and some unobtrusive bundled software), the BassJump mixes with your existing laptop speakers to give you a more balanced audio experience.

The tenor range, generally underrepresented by my MBP, is audible with the BassJump. The Beatles, especially, were hugely improved through the richer vocals and guitar riffs provided by the mini sub. Walking to the next room and closing my eyes, I decided my MacBook now sounded like a low-level iPod dock.

Still, the audio isn't especially clear. And despite the BassJump's name, it doesn't really give you bass. It's more like a midrange speaker that's still incapable of bumping R&B.

So while the BassJump certainly looks adorable and legitimately turns MBP music from unpalatable to sort of listenable, its low end capabilities can't match a real dedicated subwoofer. And its overall audio effect, while passable, would be thwarted by most any 2.1 speaker system in its price range. [BassJump]

Charming aesthetic

Quality build

Improves midrange audio but lacks brilliance

Lacks bass

Needs to be either cheaper or better

Price

$250 with mixamp needed to combine chatting and surround sound.

Verdict

I still vastly prefer the convenience of Turtle Beach's wireless X41 headset, but I have to admit, the Astro A40 sounds better.
Playing Borderlands, everything from the growls of skaggs to the cadence of machine gun fire sounded richer and rounder on the A40s than my X41s. Maybe the sounds weren't always as distinct, but especially when cranking the volume on each headset, I realized the general listenability—the whole package of sound—was more pleasant with Atro's product, making me long for hearing loss. It's a difference in mid range that, while not absolutely Earth-shattering, will probably be noticeable to most in a side-by-side test.

Both headsets have extremely similar sound localization. And chatting, on both, is an equal joy.

But there's one, huge, horrible, despicable Achilles' heel to the Astro A40s. To connect the headset to an Xbox 360 (or PS3/PC), wires will invade your entire living room because the console needs to plug twice into a mixamp (the big, retro box you see in the lead photo), then the mixamp connects your headphones and controller. That's confusing, I know. Here's the full workflow:

Xbox 360 optical out and USB cord => A40 Mixamp => Headphones/Mic and Xbox 360 controller.
Ultimately, not only are you negotiating four wires for this one headset, but you'll still be tethered close to your console because of one, generally short/inflexible wire: the optical cord from your Xbox to the Mixamp (you can always opt for stereo plugs, but that sort of spoils the fun).

So while I knew the A40s sounded a bit better than my X41s, I couldn't kick back and enjoy the game in the same way. For one long cord or tight quarters PC gaming, I might opt for the A40s. For four cords sprawled across my living room, I'm sticking with the X41s—especially since they're $50+ less.

Maybe you'll feel differently.

Excellent sound

Headphones work with any 3.5mm source, too

Wiring gets obnoxious

The Price

$100ish (cheaper at retail)

The Verdict

If you upgrade to the new Xbox 360 Wireless Adapter from the old, 802.11g version, you won't notice any difference while gaming. But media streaming over your home network will see a legitimate speed increase.

For a moment, let's ignore Microsoft's traditionally ridiculous price for their Xbox 360 Wi-Fi adapters. Instead, let's just focus on performance.

Upgrading from 802.11g networking to 802.11n has a few key advantages: range is longer, speeds are faster and, since 802.11n sits on the 5GHz band, you won't interfere as much with 2.4GHz frequencies used by 802.11g and basically everything else in existence.

But there's one big thing that stops 802.11n from being any better than 802.11g for gaming: latency. Overall throughput may be faster on 802.11n (the pipe is bigger), but latency is really no less present than on 802.11g (it takes just as long for that first burst of water to come through). So those quick gaming commands aren't faster on n, and my multiplayer testing (Modern Warfare 2 and Borderlands...it was a real chore) confirmed it. Then again, I didn't really notice any lag over my 802.11g adapter to begin with.

Media streaming, however, is where those big throughputs pay off. Using Connect360, I streamed HD episodes of Mad Men from my Mac to the Xbox. I timed from the moment I hit play to to the first frame of video playback. And the difference was noticeable.
Buffering occurred between 2 and 3x faster, which was well beyond my expectations, despite how fast 802.11n is on a spec sheet. Clips went from taking as many as 15 seconds to playing (rounding up) to actually breaking the 5 second barrier. I'd love to have tested 1080P streaming over Live as well, but my DSL is the bottleneck in that scenario.

Yes, the Xbox 360 Wireless Adapter is still profanely expensive. No, if you have an older adapter (or you're just using some other solution), I wouldn't recommend the upgrade (nor do I think Microsoft is even marketing it that way). But it's nice to see a tangible improvement all the same.

Streams intra network media between 2 and 3x faster

Tiny formfactor still unique to the industry

No perceivable speed increases gaming

It's $100.

Costs half the price of a new 360

It'll set you back a month of dinners at McDonalds

I don't even want to think about what that is in White Castles

The Price

$80 on pre-order now.

The Verdict

I like it both more and less than I expected to.

On one hand, AViiQ's portable laptop stand matches my MacBook while angling my keyboard at a truly perfect 12 degrees. And it folds, with relative ease, down to an absurdly thin, near-weightless strip of aluminum that can squeeze into any bag, I'm certain.
On the other, the stand feels cheaper than I'd expect for its $80 price. Sure, we're talking about aluminum, but more like flimsy, pop can aluminum than unibody Mac aluminum. And it folds through a plastic connective tissue that loosens over time but never feels 100% in terms of general structural integrity.

For $20, the investment would be a no-brainer. For $80...well, it's a bit more complicated. Do what you will depending on your particular socioeconomic status.

Super light

Crazy-thin

Excellent ergonomics

I can't help but worry about long-term durability

$80

UPDATE: This, from AViiQ:

"The product IS very light so it may seem less substantial, but in this case, it's a purposeful part of the design to make the product ultralight for easy travel. Alcan, the developer of Hylite, says that the hinges can be folded more than 5000 times without any wear. As for the price tag, like titanium or carbon fiber, lightweight often equals more expensive and Hylite certainly adheres to that truth. We tried making it out of a material that was lightweight and inexpensive, but feathers just don't have the structural strength we required (not to mention the sneezing it caused in the studio)."

The Price

$180 (technically $200, but Amazon sells 'em cheaper)

The History

Read our X4 review if you've never heard of these products before. This article will make a lot more sense.

The Improvements

• 2.4GHz RF instead of IR audio transmission
• USB powered instead of wall jack
• Dolby 7.1 Surround Sound instead of Dolby 5.1

I was skeptical that the Ear Force X41 would be any better than the Ear Force X4. But after using the headset for a week, I'm remiss to return to the X4s I bought last year.

Quite simply, the audio is more consistently clear with the new RF transmission, now that line-of-site and ambient light has become a non-factor. And I think that overall audio quality, while the speaker components themselves remain unchanged, has seen a bump because of this cleaner signal. (For those concerned, I was able to use the headset without interfering with my Xbox's Wi-Fi adapter or my home network—the primary potential hiccup with using RF instead of IR. Results may vary, I'm sure.)

As for the jump from Dolby 5.1 to 7.1 support, you probably won't ever notice. Playing Modern Warfare 2, missiles fly by your head with impressive panning, but the sound localization is no better than it was in the X4s...though to be fair, that's not necessarily a knock, even if the audio lacks the shining moments you'll enjoy in the best surround sound headphones offered by companies like Sony.
Oh, and the headset still requires AAAs as opposed to bundling a rechargeable lithium ion. I will say, however, that the batteries I tested with have broken the 10-hour barrier by a decent margin, and they're still operational.

As a wireless, surround sound headset for the Xbox 360, the X41 is at the top of its class (at least partially because it's still the only product in its class). If you're willing to go wired, you can save about $100+ on a cheaper version of the Ear Force, or you can take a look at the even more expensive but lauded Astro A40s.

In fact, if you guys are interested, let me know in the comments. I may try to call in a pair of those Astros in to hear for myself. [Turtle Beach]

Comfortable

Superb chat quality

RF offers smooth audio transmission

Highly specialized but useful product

Overall audio quality is OK, not stellar

AAA batteries? C'mon!

The Basic Differences in Chips

First off, I should note that the Core i7 chip has what Intel calls a "turbo mode." That is, when it's not utilizing all of its cores, it can dynamically overclock itself up to 3.4GHz on whatever single core is in use. It can, as shown in this video, work in steps. So you get the turbo benefit when using some of the four cores in this iMac's chip, but you also get it when all cores are being partially used. For example, if four cores are running but only at a fraction of their total capacity (less then 100%), the cores can use that electrical/thermal overhead to overclock to varying degrees. This should theoretically make up for the difference between the two-core 3.06GHz chip and the hyperthreaded quad core chip at a base of 2.8GHz.

The other thing to realize about these newer Core i7 chips are that they have no northbridge—or bus—between the memory and CPU. The memory controller is built right into the processor, and there's a new tech called QuickPath interconnect which connects the cores in a point-to-point architecture. Core i7 supports triple-channel memory (which would use three banks at once), but this iMac only came loaded with two banks of RAM filled. Like our other iMac, that's a 2GB + 2GB arrangement.

Matt explains more about i7 here. (And yes, there are differences between i7 and i5, besides clock speed.)

*Note that this machine also had a faster ATI Radeon 4850 video card with 512MB of RAM (versus the 4670 card in the other iMac) which may have impacted performance in several apps. I have no idea which of these apps uses the GPU to accelerate its tasks under Snow Leopard. (For example, Preview may use it to help render JPGs faster, or it may not. Apple could not tell me. In Adobe After Effects, the Radeon series of cards apparently is not supported for OpenCL acceleration. )

Performance with Multithreaded Apps

In short, any task we tried that expressly was written to either a) take advantage of multiple cores, or, b) take advantage of multiple cores through Snow Leopard's multicore middleware, Grand Central Dispatch, were 2 to 3 times faster. (More on that here.) These results include:

• 64-bit versions of Geekbench, which focus on CPU and memory tests.
• Adobe After Effects benchmarks
• Opening 20 images of Tokyo Tower that are 2000x2000 pixels and 35MB each.

Impressive stuff, but honestly, those tests were kind of uninteresting to me. I mean, those tests don't really have any correlation to my daily computing use. So on a whim, after benchmarking, I tested Handbrake, the DVD ripping software I love. It, too, was freaking fast.

I know the app is multithreaded, but I did not know what level of optimization it was written for. I was blown away by a 3x speed multiplier with the i7. On the Core i7 iMac, it took 43 minutes to rip a DVD, Storm Riders, a surfing film from the '70s featuring Gerry Lopez (my favorite) and others. On the Core 2 Duo machine, it took 147 minutes! I know this is basically a DVD read test coupled with decoding and video conversion, but the results have me excited because this is a real task that takes my computer a long time to do, performed by a program that hasn't been revised in a year.

Performance With Single-Core Optimized Apps (Otherwise Known as Reality)

Unfortunately, there are still very few applications that take advantage of multiple cores directly or via Snow Leopard's GCD, not even video-based, let alone general purpose computing.

Photoshop CS4 on the Mac, which is not set up to handle multicore processors, showed almost less than a 3% improvement using the Driver Heaven benchmark. Basic tasks, like booting and shutdown, saw virtually none. Playing the 1080p Quicktime trailer of Avatar consistently showed that the i7 was using 3% less of its total CPU than the Core2Duo, but I wonder if that's a result of the faster graphics card kicking in using CoreCL. Xbench, the old program that does a more comprehensive job of benchmarking a system from disks to processors, showed almost no difference.

I think Xbench, which hasn't been updated in years, is a solid benchmark for that old program that you depend on but has been long abandoned or at least ignored by its developer.

These scores, again, are in relation to the top line 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo iMac we tested. Some benchmarks have come in from the web comparing the i7 to the i5. Here's one that claims a 30% jump using Geekbench. Now we know Geekbench likes and does well with more cores and is a synthetic CPU test. But if the i5 is 30% slower, and the i7 pulls even with the 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo chip in single threaded activity—most day to day activity—does that mean the i5 is slower than the cheaper Core 2 Duo? Maybe. Probably not 30%, since Geekbench is strictly CPU/memory and likes more cores, and this stuff does not translate so literally in the real world. But we can assume the i5 will have 30% less jump from the top tier Core 2 Duos, translating into a mere 1.3X to 2X speed increase from last gen chips on programs that like cores.

Value

For the most part, in our review, I said that you should stick to the preconfigured options, upgrading to Apple's next recommended config before considering upgrades to the lower tier models. How does that advice change now that we've seen the i7? I don't know! I guess it depends if you're a betting man. If you think programs for Snow Leopard using GCD are coming, paying $200 to $500 bucks more from the top line Core 2 Duo chip for an i5 or i7 might make sense. The probability of you getting programs that can use those extra cores goes up if you are a graphics or video professional who expects to see support from Adobe, Apple, etc. (Apple already claims big jumps in Aperture that we weren't able to test.) Or if you rip a lot of DVDs! The rest of you? The Core 2 Duo stuff could be fine for today and fine for tomorrow. But the Core i7 is not worse for today and will definitely be faster tomorrow. It just costs more.

Me personally? I'd opt for the Core i7. I just might wait til the new iMacs refresh a bump and the i7 is cheaper and part of a standard build. But I'm patient like that.

[iMac Review]

TouchWiz is the first custom Android interface that's worse than the standard one, and shows what kind of horrible things emerge when Samsung's interface designers are left unchecked. Here's how I think the design process went, roughly: The designers dropped a bunch of acid, stared at old Atari games while binge eating Taco Bell, then proceeded to shit all over the phone for hours and hours.

If it's not inherently ugly, like text input screens with awful '80s neon orange and blue, it's gratuitous and redundant, like the 3D app cube. Or an entirely separate menu of Samsung icons for apps. And some things, like moving the slide-out menu to the left instead of its traditional place on the bottom, actually work against the way you use the phone—the menu gets in the way now, since I'd often bring it out by accident while changing between desktops. It's just... terrible. Worse, Home Switcher, an app that reverts phones back to the stock Android home screen, can't erase Samsung's disgusting mojo. The Behold II would be 10x better with a vanilla build of Android 1.6.

Even the phone hardware is a mess. The front of the phone is an orgy of buttons: seven, to be precise, not including a d-pad, with a dedicated button for the app cube. The lock key isn't just on the side but it's kind of hidden, flush against the bezel. The USB port is weirdly shoved on top. And, uh, what the hell is up with the back plate?

Two things are good about the Behold II—Samsung's custom camera setup comes straight out of their point-and-shoot cameras, and is packed with features, like extensive manual controls and burst shooting, and it's very fast, unlike the rest of the phone. The other is the AMOLED display which is nice, though marred by the same kind of bluish tint as Samsung's other AMOLED Android phone, the Moment.

Take a good long look at the Behold II though: It's a warning to other developers what not to do, and a scary look at one dark possible future for Android, in its infinite permutations. Not just deep fragmentation of the platform, but customized crimes against humanity, perpetrated in the name of Android. It makes me want to cry, except that my brain's too mushy to make my eyes work.

Call of Duty World at War: Zombies replicates the best part of Treyarch's otherwise inferior Call of Duty game—Nazi Zombies—to the iPhone. It looks great. It sounds great. And parts of it, like the multiplayer over Wi-Fi, work great.

It doesn't feel great though. The controls suck. We're all used to the inherently mediocre virtual joystick, a pale translation of a three-dimensional control implement into a flat two-dimensional space, which here moves you backward and forward, and strafes left and right. Turning and looking up and down is both finicky and imprecise, accomplished by sliding your thumb in the direction you want to turn or look—a longer slide makes you turn faster and further. What's tricky, and tensely uncomfortable, is trying to turn while moving with the virtual joystick. It winds up being jerky and spinny, like your soldier had one two many peppermint schnappes before fighting the undead.

Even with the computer helping your sorry ass aim—a little too much, actually—it just doesn't work. Often, you'll try to turn by swiping your thumb and accidentally tap the button to aim down your sites, or fire, sending your bullets past the zombie, who proceeds to om-nom-nom on your brains. Knifing is still awesome though.

Update: There are two alternate control schemes—a dual joystick mode that confines the turning area to a second joystick, making it slightly more precise than the general corner area controls of the default layout (though it's still tricky), and an accelerometer mode, that's unwieldy, but more fun since you have to swing your whole phone around to aim. Still, it's hard to feel totally in control here.

But in the end, the lack of tight controls crushes the whole experience, which is otherwise a pitch-perfect translation, down to Activision planning to charge for add-on maps on top of the $10 you already paid for the game.

[iTunes]

The $100 Pixi made sense once upon a time, when the Pre was $200 and Palm needed a phone for the masses—like the Centro, oncer upon a time—to establish the webOS as a real platform. A leaner, cheaper version of the Pre was a good idea. Now, you can get the real thing—faster, stronger, screenier—for under a hundred bucks. The Pixi's existential crisis is not insignificant.

What's Neutered vs. the Pre

• Slower processor (using an older ARM11 architecture vs. faster ARM Cortex A8)
• Smaller and squintier 400x320, 2.63-inch, 18-bit color screen (vs. 480x320, 3.1-inch, 24-bit color)
• 2-megapixel camera (vs. 3MP)
• No Wi-Fi

Pixi Perfect Design (Just About)

There has not been a candybar phone more perfectly designed and executed than the Pixi. It's exactly the size and shape a phone that aspires to be small should be. It's a Hot Pocket sliced in half, but flat and glossy on top and round and rubbery on the bottom. It almost feels fake, like a concept that you hope is a real phone but isn't, except that in this case, it really is. It fits inside of an iPhone, if you wanna get more literal.

Plastic, slightly sticky Rice Krispie keys, arranged in four rows form a keyboard so electrifyingly good it's thrilling, like finding an actually sweet wind-up toy in your cereal box (Rice Krispies, of course) every time you type. They keys are tiny, but have a deceptive amount of rise, so your fat thumbs can feel out individual nubs, which pop in this remarkably satisfying way when you click down. The size-to-goodness ratio might just be the best on any keyboard I've used. If there's any reason to pick the Pixi over the Pre, it's if you type a shocking amount on your phone, because the Pixi's is better by like an order of magnitude. Or eleventy.

Between the screen, with its shaved corners, and the keyboard is a stretch of empty space. Until you run your finger along it, and a spark—a line of light, really—emerges. The LED strip, invisible when it's not indicating something, replaces the ball on the Pre, which I always thought was a weird little speed bump when you stroked the gesture area, anyway. It's kind of beautiful, the stark aesthetic of it emotionally tinged with sci-fi imagery, from Gort to Cyclop's visor.

Two things are wrong. The screen lock button on the top left is a little too in touch with the overall robustness of the phone, so it's hard to push and doesn't provide enough feedback. On the opposite end of that spectrum, the trap door covering the micro USB port feels flimsy and aggravatingly snaps shut, making plugging in a USB cable a struggle worthy of a Homerian epic every single time.

Tinkerbell Would Be Pissed

The Pixi is slow.

Achingly.

Maddeningly.

Ripyourhairoutandsmashitagainstthewallingly.

It lags, it hangs, it stutters, it freezes. A lot. A simple fact: Multitasking isn't better than unitasking when it takes longer to get shit done. An example: I wanted to take a picture while I had the browser and and App Catalog open. Simple. The camera froze spectacularly, rendering the entire phone completely unusable for well over 30 seconds—whenever I tried to flick the camera card away (cards are apps), it would shoot halfway off the screen, then appear back in its place. Somewhere between 30-45 seconds later, it regained composure. That's with just three core apps open, and no active syncing happening in the background.

True, I could sometimes have up to four apps running without problems, at least for a minute or so, before things starting getting cludgy. But it hangs even with just a single app running sometimes. (Just try loading the full Gizmodo page.) And every time you open an app, there's a solid expanse of time that elapses that you can feel, and it gets old real quick. Maybe webOS is just more transparent about load times than the iPhone, which masks them with title screens, but the whole experience of using this phone is like swimming through very pretty Jello, with one arm, wearing a cast-iron suit, or something like that.

Screen, Camera and Other Hardware

You get used to the smaller screen and its 80 fewer pixels, mostly. It's cramped, but you'll only be directly, painfully cognizant of it from time to time, like when you're reading some text outside of Palm's own apps or navigating web pages. It's not a crappy screen, but it's not exceptionally bright or vibrant, either. The touch accuracy seemed less spot-on than the Pre too, though that could've been the effect of smaller targets because of the tinier screen, like the drop down menu for apps in the top left corner, which is just a sliver on the Pixi.

The Pixi's 2MP camera is unimpressive. The comparison shot above—of ramen, people—was taken with a 2MP iPhone 3G in the exact same lighting and place, snapped within 10 seconds of each other. The camera app, when it's not freezing up, is quick to shoot once you press the button though, which is definitely something.

And I'll just say it: No Wi-Fi sucks, since there are lots of place in NY where even Sprint's 3G can't penetrate.

Software

The Pixi comes with webOS 1.3.1. Palm's definitely tuned things up since webOS originally shipped in June with stuff like more support for Yahoo services, the ability to buy songs over 3G, performance improvements and other interface sprucing up, but it's not a radically difference experience than the one Chen documented exhaustively here. (In other words, read that for the software review, since it's basically the same, just much slooooower on the Pixi.)

What's different now is that there are over 300 apps in the App Catalog, and Palm's dumping fresh ones in every week. So the app situation is greatly improved. The problem is that it's still behind the rest of the pack though—iPhone, Android and BlackBerry—and being fourth-place development priority for cross-platform developers with limited resources it not a great place to be, so Palm's got a rough road here. Oh, one interesting point, since this is supposed to be the smartphone OS for multitasking, is that while an app is downloading from the App Catalog, you can't browse for other apps—if you leave the download page, it cancels. So I hope you've got good Sprint reception in your house.

The other thing that's changed is iTunes. Palm's former official way to sync your media to your phone is broken. Irrevocably. Even if Palm does restore iTunes syncing with its dirty hack (no really, it is a dirty hack, impersonating an iPod with a false USB ID) the entire model is screwed. Putting people buying your phone in the middle of a stupid pissing match that you're destined to lose isn't cool. In the meantime, Palm's official solution is for people to sideload or use third-party apps like DoubleTwist.

Don't Buy It

The Pixi is screwed. It's totally cannibalized by the technologically superior Pre, which you can find for under $100. Even if you can get the Pixi for $30 at Walmart, it's worth trading up to the Pre for $40 or $50 more if you're absolutely wedded to the idea of a webOS phone, simply for the speed and screen. Mostly the speed, since the Pixi is brain damaged, three-legged dog slow, as nice as the hardware is on the outside.

Not to mention, for a hundred dollars, there are phones that just offer better experiences and aren't in the same awkward position Palm is in the smartphone fight. I'm talking of course, about the Droid Eris, Android's 99-dollar darling on Verizon. The entire reason to buy the Pixi—a value proposition—has completely evaporated. And I almost feel bad about that. Almost.

Incredible keyboard (for the size)

Awesome design and build

webOS is nice

Camera sucks

Palm's dumb iTunes fight

Slow

I mean, slooooooooooooooooooooow

The Price

$100 for a limited time, $120 afterwards. Includes international power adapters and AC charger, but battery is sold separately. Starts shipping 11/25.

The Verdict

It's the same questionably essential yet unquestionably adorable Chumby, with a new case and a lower (and very tempting) price. I have no idea what its makers meant the original beanbag Classic (newly renamed) to be used for, but the One is more than a little reminiscent of old-school clock radios. And if you look at it as simply a badass clock radio, rather than an amorphous connected widget device, you really appreciate it. Imagine waking up to Pandora, then rolling over and checking your email and Twitter before hitting snooze for another ten minutes of sleep. Awesome, right? But what exactly has changed from the Chumby Classic?

Instead of the touchscreen-in-a-beanbag look, it's now rocking a smooth white plastic casing with a big honking volume knob on the side and a 3.5-inch resistive touchscreen. I really like the design: It's playful and chunky and thoroughly charming. Some may be bummed that the One loses the beanbag look, which is kind of a signature of the line, but I don't think it'll make that much difference. The Classic (beanbag) Chumby required a power cable so it's not like you could toss it around, and luckily the new design is still distinctive and fun—and if you really want the beanbag, it's not going anywhere. The One is simply joining the Classic, not replacing it.

The Chumby One does lose a few features found in the Chumby Classic—it only has one USB port compared to the Classic's two, and the formerly stereo 2W dual-speaker set is now mono speaker with the same wattage. The speaker is noticeably more distorted and muddier, and could use definitely use improvement, although it's not horrible and is fine at lower volumes.

But the Chumby One also gains 2GB memory (the Classic has 64MB), a li-ion battery (in addition to AC) and a faster processor. I didn't notice much improvement in speed, but it's not like it really needs a whole lot of muscle to display weather and New York Times headlines. The Chumby One's screen also seems sharper than the Classic's, and the overall package is shorter and narrower, though thicker. Chumby's selection of widgets, by the way, is quite good, with a huge selection of clocks, social networking services, news, RSS feeds, games and other fun little timewasters.

I'm conflicted about the Chumby One. On the one hand, it's totally unnecessary—it can't really do anything a modern smartphone with a dock can't do better, and at $100 it's sort of expensive for an alarm clock. On the other hand, I'm undeniably taken with this thing. It does a good job delivering the time, weather, news and RSS feeds, running Pandora and waking me up, and it looks adorable while doing it. If you're comfortable dropping $100 on a little plastic cube of widgets for your bedside table, go for it.

Awesome retro design with clean and simple UI

Runs widgets admirably

$100—substantial price cut, but not quite impulse-purchase territory

Doesn't do anything your smartphone can't

Price

$30 for the throat mic. $50 for the controller.

Verdict

Both peripherals are decent, but both could stand a $10-$15 price drop, too.
The throat mic is pure adolescent fun. You wrap the ring around your neck and stick a headphone in one ear, and you either feel like a special ops assassin or an erotic asphyxiation aficionado. Either way it's a joy. Unlike a real throat mic, you actually speak at normal volume rather than whisper. Testing online, I was told my voice sounded "fine," just like the standard 360 headset. Unfortunately, the audio I received wasn't quite as good—I noticed an abnormal amount of digital compression in my ear—abnormal but far from inaudible.

The controller, on the other hand, is designed for practicality. Look beyond the green LEDs and the snow camo finish, and you'll notice two mappable buttons on the underside of the controller. They allow you to relocate the XYAB buttons to a position that won't require you take any fingers off the analog sticks. (If you've ever tried to aim in an FPS and melee at the same time, you know what I'm talking about.)
At first, I found the controller off-putting just because it's different from your stock controller. But when I actually played a game with it, I quickly adjusted to less grippy analog sticks and the somewhat awkward position of the small, mappable buttons.

Still, I'd like to see Mad Catz refine their modded controller. At the moment, it's wired (be it wired through a very practical nylon woven cord). And as I said, those mappable buttons are pretty minuscule. As long as Mad Catz is breaking the rules of the traditional controller, I'd like to see them create an even more practical, polished rendition.

But if you're OK with the price and above mentioned limitations, I'd say you can buy either product without resignation. Also, how great is it that mainstream generic controllers are finally incorporating mods and innovative into the mix?

Xbox 360 Throat Communicator

Clear audio out

Functional, faux badass design

Compressed, digital-sounding audio in

Xbox 360 Combat Controller

Controller itself feels decent in your hands

Mappable buttons are as handy as you'd hope

Corded, but the cord itself is premium

Mappable buttons could be larger and better positioned

In case you missed the news, the S1000pj is an utterly unexciting point and shoot camera from Nikon, except for one minor detail: it's got a projector—like a real, don't-look-straight-into-it lamp projector—built right into its face. This is why it's funny, why it's interesting, and why we're writing about it. Moreover, it's why this camera exists in the first place: as a sort of high-profile tech demo for Nikon.

But first!

And for that matter, foremost! This is a standard point and shoot camera, with generally standard point and shoot camera specs. Nowadays, that equates to 12.1 megapixel photo resolution, a 5x lens that's 25mm equivalent on the wide end, built-in vibration reduction and SD storage. A/V connections are served by a single microUSB slot, and the rechargeable battery juices up on a separate charger.

Taking photos on the S1000pj is extremely simple, almost to a fault: ISO and white balance controls, for example, are hidden behind two layers of menus. But for lack of a better word, the point of a point and shoot is to make taking OK pictures as easy as possible, which the S1000pj certainly does.

As you can see in the sample gallery, the shots are never spectacular, but never terrible. The Nikon rarely finds a situation where it can't return a decent shot in auto mode, be it in a dark room, a sunbleached roof or a tungsten-lit kitchen. High ISO performance was a pleasant surprise as well, since Nikon opted for the S1000pj's sensor to automatically draw down to three megapixels during ISO 6400 shooting, which keeps the results from being too spectacularly bad. In fact, ISO 800 shots are clean enough to print, while ISO 400 returns crystal-clear photos, even during longer exposures.

That said, this is still a point and shoot, and not even a very high-end one. The lens isn't spectacularly sharp, and the colors are particularly vivid. The VGA video is dull and mostly lifeless. Button-press-to-shoot time is quick, but still not quite instant. That's the biggest problem for this camera: It'd be a perfectly acceptable—even above average—point and shoot for, say, $250. It costs a good deal more than that, becauuuuuuuuuuse:

Yes, It's Got a Projector

My love affair with the S1000pj didn't start until the day after I got it. It was early evening so my room was dim, and I'd only taken a few photos with camera the day before, as I was unboxing and summarily dismissing the camera in a well-lit office. "This projector looks like ass," I believe I said. "Human ass."

But when I flicked the little projector button this time—it's a dedicated switch on top, next to the projector's manual focus slider—I was stunned. It looked fine. I shut the windows. I backed up, stretching the image to about 40 inches. Now it looked great. This dinky little projector, and hacky and ridiculous as it looks and sounds, is legitimately useful.

It's an instant wow-piece for anyone who uses it, and a great way to show off photos (and yes, videos—though sadly not external inputs) in a bind. And by bind, I mean any time you don't want to ask everyone where you are to crowd around a computer screen and awkwardly watch while you import photos. Now, you just tell them to dim the lights. That'll do fine.

Oh, But You Probably Shouldn't Buy It

It was a tough call not to recommend this outright, but I really can't, unless you've got a wad of cash burning a hole in your pocket, or don't mind paying a $150 (rough) premium for the projector. Yes, the camera itself is capable enough. And yes, the projector concept isn't nearly as ridiculous as most people make it out to be. What's so appealing about this camera is that it's nailed what will be, if not a universal feature, something we'll come to expect in a certain class of camera before too long.

But that makes this product admirable, not buyable. For the Nikon to be a worthy purchase, we'll need to see a change: Either the photographic experience itself gets a little closer to what you'd expect for $430—about how much you're going to end up spending on this now—or the camera drops significantly in price.

Nikon is charging a classic early adopter tax, and you won't just be paying for it in dollars: battery life is predictably bad when using the projector (I could easily lose a quarter of my charge just showing off a set of photos to friends). And this thing isn't particularly svelte, considering the specs. But if you know what you're getting into—and now you do—it's your call.

You will have fun with the Nikon s1000pj, even through the pangs of buyer's remorse.

The projector is surprisingly decent in low light

Chunky design

Adequate photography

Battery drains very quickly when projecting

Hefty early adopter tax

Price

$300 with 2-year AT&T contract, $600 à la carte

Verdict

Nokia has built a great netbook, but they've done nothing to redefine the genre. Their 10-inch Booklet 3G has your typical 1.6GHz Atom, 120GB hard drive and 1GB of RAM. Running Windows 7, that means the performance is just passable. I'd be this close to pounding my head against the wall when a program would begin installing or a video would load.

That's typical.

What's ever so less typical is the sharp, sub-3lb unibody-esque construction (complete with sweet MacBook-like under-hatch battery and a hinge that bends nearly 180-degrees), HDMI output (not that you can really playback HD videos smoothly on an Atom) and, of course, solid integrated 3G and integrated GPS (though Nokia's bundled Ovi software apparently requires a phone or PC to activate, and after 30 minutes of fiddling, I honestly gave up on mapping.)
The battery life is impressive, too. In nonstop 3G browsing and app running with the screen at 80% brightness, the machine's svelte 16-cell battery ran for a bit over 6 hours and 30 minutes. That was a strenuous test, and dimming the screen and/or browsing through Wi-Fi should truly be enough to get you through the workday sans-recharge. (For instance, CrunchGear's John Biggs reported a pretty remarkable 10 hours of movie playback.)

But alas, even for a nice netbook, the Booklet's price is a bit too opulent for what you're really getting: an ever-so gussied up version of the same machine you could buy from Acer, Asus, HP, etc, for half the price (before subsidies). Meanwhile, there are plenty of ULV systems in the $700 range with bigger screens, better performance and portable-minded design (of course, they'll mostly require 3G dongles).

Give me some rhinestones and a bit more power, and we'll talk. Or just hand me back my iPhone.

Quality build

Long battery life

Plastic monitor back makes whole thing feel cheaper

It's still a $600 netbook

Eris is Verizon's other Droid phone. It really is a remodeled Hero, running Android 1.5 and HTC's vaunted Sense candy coating—documented CSI style here—a $200 phone stuffed inside a thinner $100 body, like a Corvette engine shoved inside a Saturn. It's admittedly less exciting than the titular Droid, an industrial beast running Android 2.0. But I have the feeling Verizon is gonna sell a lot more of these things, because, again, it's $100.

Designing for the Middle of the Road

The Eris is rubbery blob, a narrow oval that's as subdued as a phone could possibly be, but there is admittedly something comforting about the Eris's utter lack of personality—it's completely non-threatening, like a middle manager. It's so generic it's almost artful, actually, a design that is nearly perfect for a cheap phone.

The four main Android buttons are touch sensitive, bleeding into the black bezel, hovering over the dead-center trackball and hard chrome buttons for phone and end. I'd like a dedicated camera button, but a volume rocker is all we get. The camera lens stares out the back, disturbingly more reminiscent of an eye than most cameras sticking out the backs of phones, probably because of how stark the rest of the phone is.

Hardware and Camera

The actual guts and screen are the same as past Hero phones—which is to say, nearly the same as all of HTC's other Android phones so far. The 480x320 screen's still nice, even if it feels dated now that the Droid's massive screen, beckoning the next generation, looms large over it. Oh yeah, HTC? Can you get rid of your stupid, pointlessly different version of the mini USB port? Let's go to micro USB now, yeah?

The still camera's better than the Droid though, and about the same as the Sprint version of the Hero, performing pretty decently in low-light situations. Video, not so much:

Software and the Endgame

I've already covered HTC's Sense UI in depth, and it is the exact same on the Eris. It runs just as fast as the Sprint Hero, if not a teeny bit quicker. I will say that after using Android 2.0, it does feel like a step backward in some ways, mostly because of the single Google account limitation. But HTC's confirmed Android 2.0 is coming, so it won't be an issue for every long.

And really, the fact that Android 2.0—half the reason the Droid is excellent—is coming to the Droid Eris is why, in the end, it's such a steal. It's running on Verizon, it's going to have Android 2.0, and it's $100. It's a great phone now, and will be better still soon, making it kind of a perfect storm for people on Verizon looking to ditch their dumbphones—but not Verizon—for something more capable, but who are put off by the Droid, whether it's the steroids or the higher sticker price.

It's last month's darling. But it'll run this month's software. For cheap. And that's pretty spiffy, actually.

You're getting last month's killer Android phone for half price

We'll say it again: This is the best Android deal around

Android 1.5 feels a little dated

Video recording's not exactly amazing

What's New and Dandy

What makes it my favorite Canon so far is actually everything that's completely new to Canon—DP Review has a nice summary here, in pictures. But in short, while this might sound weird, it shoots more like a Nikon than any Canon DSLR I've used. This is primarily because of the new 19-point autofocus system and the color metering system that goes with it. You're able to select AF zones—clusters of AF points—while in the past with Canon you've been limited to a full AF blast or picking out a single point. The system is also more customizable, so it can be locked with different default focus points depending on whether you're holding the camera horizontally and vertically orientations. Against Nikon's D300s, Canon's new AF system mostly kept up, and definitely performs better than autofocus on the 5D Mark II.

The new viewfinder now provides 100 percent coverage, unlike previous Canons in this range, and it uses a new polymer LCD network for the graphical overlay to display AF points, grids and other displays, so it's more flexible and feels more fluid. (It also just looks swankier, and again, more Nikon-like.) Your other viewfinder (when you're shooting video, anyway), the LCD screen, is a 3-inch, 920k dot display like the 5D Mark II and it's still excellent, with a wide viewing angle, nice color and the right amount of crispness.

Sensor and Image Quality

Truthfully, I've been mildly surprised at the quality of photos that've come out of the 7D, which uses an absolutely stuffed 18-megapixel, APS-C sized sensor. (So, there is a 1.6x crop factor.) For comparison, the D300s has a 12MP sensor that's the same physical size (Update: For nitpickers, yes, Nikon's DX format is marginally larger than Canon's APS-C sensor, with the D300s's sensor coming in at 23.6 x 15.8 mm to the 7D's 22.3 x 14.9 mm.) The the D3 only goes for 12 megapixels on its bigger full-frame (35mm-equivalent) sensor. The 5D Mark II has a 21MP full-frame sensor. And typically, the more pixels you try to cram on a sensor of a given size, the more the image quality degrades, especially when it comes to low light, high ISO shots.

I was expecting a noisefest, or at best, seriously noticeable noise reduction employed by the camera's software. It is clear that Canon's using incredibly sophisticated noise reduction algorithms with the dual Digic IV processors onboard, though the effects are less drastic than I expected. It's most apparent, actually, when you directly compare photos taken with the D300s. Looking at photos taken with the 7D and D300s at 100 percent crops, the D300s's images are noisier, but they also preserve more detail. For web-sized images, the 7D's images look better, with less noise and more smoothness.

I've got two sample galleries—an array of sample shots, and then another directly comparing the 7D with the D300s in low light situations, using identical settings for photos. 100 percent zooms follow photos in both galleries. Or you can download full size photos from Flickr here and here.

Video

You can get sense of Canon and Nikon's philosophical differences with the difference in their buttons for video: Canon makes a distinction between Live View and video mode, while Nikon is ready to start shooting video as soon you tap the live view button on the D300s. Creating video is a separate, dedicated event for Canon, in other words, and there is a semi-serious video camera that happens to be built into a DSLR. Nikon's D300s, on the other hand, is a DSLR that happens to shoot video.

With video, the 7D simply has the upper hand—video is very much a legitimized use of this camera, not a secondary one like the D300s. (As expected from a company with an entire wing dedicated to camcorders for pros and consumers.) Not only does it have full manual controls, I find that it's slightly easier to use that the D300s while shooting video—not to mention the whole shooting in a real video codec at 1080p, yadda yadda. Three clips here: A melange of video above, and then by two videos, one from the 7D, one of the D300s, that mirror each other. Both were shot at ISO 6400, and you should be able to catch them at full res if you click over to Vimeo.

Build and Controls

The 7D is heavy, heavier than the 5D, but it's also slightly sturdier, with a build quality and weatherproofing that that's slightly in between the 5D and Canon's definitely pro 1D. It feels about the same in your hand, though. And it's roughly comparable to the D300s.

Controls aren't radically different from other Canon DSLRs of this caliber—that is, it's what you'd mostly expect from a DSLR that sits in between the lower end 50D and the higher end 5DMkII, though it's a bit closer to the latter. While the menu system feels completely unchanged—leaving more advanced features, like the orientation autofocus a bit inscrutable—a few things are new on the outside: The power switch is up on the top left, under the mode dial; there's a dedicated button for switching to RAW/JPEG; a quick action button; and a new toggle switch for Live View and video, which you engage by pressing a start button in the center.

You Already Know If You're Going to Buy This

The real question for Canon users who want something more than the lower end 50D is whether they go for the 7D, at $1700, or full bore to full-frame with the $2700 5D Mark II. The 7D has a 1.6x crop factor which is useful for sports, a better autofocusing system, shoots faster, is slightly more rugged, and is $1000 cheaper. The 5D is full frame—which I suspect is the real consideration for folks—and takes slightly better photos at higher resolutions.

Obviously, if you're locked into Nikon, with thousands of dollars in lenses, you're not going to jump to Canon, or vice versa. But Canon's dedication to DSLR video is proving formidable in carving out a new kind of market that Nikon might have some trouble competing in, since they're a dedicated still camera company, not a video company, too, like Canon. Really, both the D300s and 7D deliver for the money, though I think the 7D delivers more, since it's packed full of newer technology and for the people who want it, the video component is truly killer. Either way, it's proof that competition is good—it clearly wouldn't exist without the D300, and the D400 will be that much better because of it.

New 19-point autofocus and metering systems plus the new viewfinder rock

Excellent 1080p video with full manual controls

Not full-frame, which might put off some people

I'd like a secondary SD card slot, like the D300s

Noise reduction can get pretty aggressive at higher ISO speeds, obscuring detail

BTW, here are some Giz posts shot w/ the 7D:
• Motorola Droid Impressions
• Motorola Droid Review
• Blood Energy Potion Review
• BlackBerry Storm 2 Review
• S90 Review