Review: Clear Spot Portable WiMax Wi-Fi Hotspot

By Wilson Rothman, 

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Today Clearwire yanked the cloth off of its rumored Clear Spot portable WiMax-to-Wi-Fi hotspot, a shiny little battery-powered device that lets you bestow real 4G bandwidth upon anyone in Wi-Fi range.

The $140 thing fits in your pocket, runs for four hours on a lithium-ion battery, connects up to 8 laptops via Wi-Fi, and works like a charm when you’re in a decent WiMax coverage area. (You still need to connect a WiMax modem, which costs $50 and requires a data plan.)

I tested it on the outskirts of Portland, at a Burgerville right off of I-5 in Vancouver, WA, essentially becoming a totally unwired, totally portable wireless hotspot for anybody with a computer or smartphone in the vicinity. Anyone can see the hotspot itself, as it has a standard Wi-Fi SSID, but once on, you have to enter a password, like you do in hotels or airports where the Wi-Fi network itself is technically public.

I can’t make enough of the experience, and how much it could change businesses, sales forces or mobile bloggin’ teams like Gizmodo. You don’t even have to be plugged in, you can just all hop on and work as usual for up to four hours, more if you can find an electric socket. And with WiMax, you’re not nearly as limited as you are with 3G—though there are some constraints, you at least have access to a network that, in certain coverage areas, bestows blistering broadband speeds similar those from today’s wired cable modems.

One big constraint, of course, is that WiMax from Sprint/Clearwire is currently limited to Baltimore and Portland, OR, but is growing this year and next to many cities.

There is also an internal limit to how much WiMax bandwidth you can harness. Since the Clear Spot uses the same Motorola WiMax USB modem that Clearwire sells for its standard WiMax service, I could test how well the bandwidth was passed through.

• What I got when connecting an HP Pavilion dv4 Windows laptop to WiMax: Around 7Mbps
• What I got when connecting the same modem to the Clear Spot, then connected MacBook Pro via Wi-Fi: 3-4Mbps

That does certainly represent a bottleneck, and there’s a reason for it: The wireless hotspot itself—which you might have seen under the brand Cradlepoint for a year or more—was designed for 3G, for whom 3Mbps downstream is a frickin’ miracle. It has a gimped USB port that throttles bandwidth over 5Mbps.

Though that’s a flaw, it’s not a big deal when you consider most Clearwire WiMax plans will be sold with a 4Mbps cap.

Beyond the hardware bottleneck, my other complaints are relatively minor:
• There’s no Ethernet port, so this can’t fundamentally replace home broadband.
• In areas of low coverage, you get an error message saying the modem was not found, which is inaccurate.
• There’s no good way to read WiMax signal strength on the device itself.

The good news for patient people is that, according to Scott Richardson, Clearwire’s chief strategy officer, the company is exploring selling an unfettered WiMax account, so you’d get an experience closer to the one I got in my uncapped testing. Also, Scott tells me there will be another portable WiMax-to-Wi-Fi hotspot device available—probably in the fall—that’s even smaller, and that wouldn’t be restricted by the USB bottleneck.

This is one of those products that’s totally niche but totally cool. Like, even if there are many people who are interested in getting WiMax, or better yet, a combo EVDO/WiMax modem from Sprint, I am not anybody would, at that point, also feel the need to share it with others. Maybe it’s good for bringing your work-supplied modem home, or maybe it’s a good way to split the cost of wireless modem service between a team of people who are always working together, on separate devices.

Regardless of all these scenarios, the fact is, it’s a truly new experience, and hopefully something we see more of in the future. I would say this is one of hell of a reason for Big Cable to be shaking in its boots—that is, if only Comcast wasn’t already part owner in Clearwire.

Peek Pronto Lightning Review: Simple Email Faster

By matt buchanan, 

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Peek Pronto is the faster version of the original Peek, an incredibly stripped down slab of screen and keyboard that does one thing—email—but aims to do it simpler than anyone else.

Hardware
It’s boxy, whimsical minimalism done right. Its unfussy shape and the front’s bubbly keys are friendly and inviting. But its chrome back, and its slimness—thinner than the BlackBerry Curve 8900, the thinnest BlackBerry you can buy—infuse it with the sufficient gadget allure.

The screen is bright—a little dimmer than blinding Curve 8900 screen—and just large and crisp enough to make a text-only device nice to use—a mite higher resolution would always be better, but everything’s clear and readable. The markedly ugly themes are actually the screen’s real undoing.

Whether or not you’ll like the keyboard is largely a matter of taste—I’m usually not fan of chiclet-style keyboards that sacrifice button surface area for spacing between the keys, but even though I don’t particularly like typing on the Peek, my pinpoint accuracy consistently astounds me. I think that this is because the strike point on the keys is deceptively larger than it appears to be, and the way the keys are shaped prevents half-misses from becoming whole misses. They’re are easier to press than on the original Peek—since this is by no means a squishy keyboard, frequent users of the original who didn’t wear iron gauntlets must be afflicted with crippling arthritis by now. The rubber coating is a perfect consistency—not too sticky for your nubs, but you won’t slip off either.

Your primary method of navigation is the scroll wheel, a throwback to the old-school BlackBerry days. Which, in theory is fine, since you’re merely navigating in cardinal directions, not across a plane (like with a trackball) but in practice, I miss the speed of a trackball. Also, considering you have to use it as a button a lot—to bring up the menus that you use to do anything, it’s a bit too thin, making it a harder than necessary target. The back button, which sits just below it, could use some steroids too—obviously, it shouldn’t be too easy to hit, but it should be easier to mash without accidentally hitting the scrollwheel too.

Software and Experience
It’s a simple, minimal experience. I get that. But why does it have to be ugly too? The three color schemes—Slate, Tangerine and Spring are seriously gross. BlackBerry’s latest OS makes a text-oriented screen look pretty snazzy, for the most part—especially in media menus—so I know the Peek guys can do better.

Starting up really is easy: Enter your email account info and name and go. (Yes, you can do multiple, up to five.) And for the people Peek is aimed at, that’s how it should be. When you power up, it takes you directly your inbox. It took a couple minutes before mail started pouring in, but everything flowed in perfectly.

So, the big thing about the Pronto over the past Peek model, as far as the average user is concerned, is that the UI is less sluggish, it uses Push for email, so all of your email arrives automagically, and you get unlimited text messages.

Push indeed seems to works just fine—not much more to say about it than that. Text message implementation is a bit messy—it’s essentially an email converted into a text message, so it’s not a very clean solution, with headers and stuff to wade through on the Peek.

I didn’t spend a whole lot of time with the original Peek, so I can’t say how much faster precisely the Pronto moves—BoingBoing’s Rob and others have complained about its sluggishness—but for the most part, it’s fast enough. Some things are slower than they should be—deleting an email takes about three seconds, though deleting a whole bunch (hold shift and scroll down) takes about four.

While the Pronto adds Exchange support, it still lacks, for instance, IMAP and custom folders. The tricky thing about critiquing something like the Peek, which wears its minimalist monofunctionalism as a badge, is finding the line between missing feature (custom folders) and pointed omission (IMAP?). What exactly should it add? If it keeps adding features, when does it move beyond itself?

Should You Peek?
The Peek Pronto is $80 for the hardware plus $20 a month for the service that rides on T-Mobile’s service. It’s a bit much on the monthly end—$10 would make it immensely more attractive. If you have to ask why you would buy it when you could get a BlackBerry, whose data plan isn’t much more than that, this probably isn’t for you. It doesn’t organize your email (much less your life), browse the web or do anything else but let you—wait for it—peek at your email and execute only the most essential and defining functions of email. It does this pretty well, for the most part. I can’t imagine someone who really wanted email on the go would want something this simple from the outset. But if I wanted to a ditch a full-featured device to more completely untether myself from the world when I get away from my desk, but can’t give it up completely, Peek would be a solid form of Nicorette.

Pogoplug Review: Share Any USB Disk Over the Net (Even to iPhone)

By Jason Chen,

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The people behind Pogoplug may have raised the price to $100, but they managed to deliver a way to share any USB drive over the internet that’s incredibly easy—and it even works with iPhones.

Pogoplug is just a white brick with one USB port, one Ethernet port, and one power cord. You shove in any USB drive into the port and the data instantly gets accessible over the internet. The drives can be formatted in any of the following file systems: NTFS, FAT32, HFS+ (non-journaled) or EXT-2/EXT-3. You can even plug in a USB hub and dock multiple hard drives onto this thing. (No printers or other devices though.)

One of the main points Pogoplug seems to have focused on is getting the setup process automated to such a point that anyone with the ability to plug in things and click the “next” button on a web page can most likely get this working. That means your parents, your grandparents and your spouse (if you married for looks) can get an external USB drive onto the internet with little to no help from you.

Using Pogoplug is just as simple as setting it up. You, as the account owner, can hit up your Pogoplug.com share from any web browser and upload/download/view files from there. If you’re on the same local network as your Pogoplug, it’s smart enough to use your Wi-Fi/Ethernet to transfer files faster. There’s also Mac and Windows software that loads the share as a network-mounted drive.

Other cool things you can do: Grab the iPhone app and stream MP3 files, view JPG files, open PDF/Doc files over Wi-Fi or 3G. If you load your entire music library you can stream your songs, one by one, off the built-in music player. Or, download files locally onto your iPhone. And, you can share anything (it’s folder-based) on your drives to anyone else using their email as a unique login.

Everything about this is good. We streamed songs stutter-free over 3G onto our iPhones. We can keep important files on there so you can grab them on the go without having to punch through your NAT or set up a dynamic DNS service for your router. We can share large files with people without having to upload them first to a file-sharing site.

Here’s the bottom line. It’s insanely easy to use, there’s no monthly fee, and it’s only $100. Other solutions, like Windows Home Server, require you to set up an entirely separate computer. This just needs a USB drive and an elementary level of computer knowledge. The only downside is that you better hope Pogoplug remains in business, or your $100 file-sharing gadget just turned into a $100 projectile.

Incredibly easy to set up and use for Windows and Macs

Has an iPhone client

Easy to share files with others

Costs $100 and can only be used as long as the company remains in business

Samsung P3 Media Player Review: Here Comes a Nano Beater

By Dan Nosowitz, 

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Samsung’s new flagship P3 PMP isn’t an iPod touch killer—despite the touchscreens, the comparison doesn’t hold up. In a shoving match against the iPod nano, however, the P3 trumps it in just about every respect.

The P3 is a followup to Samsung’s successful P2, and while it makes quite a few changes, this is an evolution, rather than a revolution. The P3 boasts a few new tricks from Samsung’s galaxy of phones, like haptic feedback, a teeny-but-clear speaker, “desktop” widgets and an improved GUI, but this is assuredly not a competitor to the iPod touch. The P3 is not a platform: There’s no way to expand the player’s catalog of programs or widgets, and, most importantly, it doesn’t have Wi-Fi. Despite its big ol’ touchscreen and appearance of a fully customizable experience, the P3 is a closed environment, like the nano.

It is, however, one of the best standard flash players on the market—possibly the best. Available in 8/16/32GB sizes (priced at $150/$200/$300, respectively), the P3 comes with a bevy of great extras, a sleek body, and a (mostly) intuitive and pretty GUI. Most importantly, its touchscreen and broad video codec support makes it the best compact video player for the money, and something anyone not suckling at the iTunes teat should get a good look at.

The Physical
The P3 retains the same form factor as its predecessor, which means a gorgeous 3-inch WQVGA touchscreen covering most of its front, a few physical buttons—volume and power/hold, moved to the top for easy in-pocket use—and a very thin metal body. No, it’s not quite as thin as an iPod nano, but there’s only a tenth of an inch difference. Underneath the screen is a marginally useful touch strip, a bit like the upcoming Palm Pre’s. On the bottom is the headphone jack, a mic and Samsung’s proprietary USB port.

The P3 feels really great in the hand; it’s slightly heavier than the P2 and feels very solid. It’s also quite the looker, with a brushed aluminum back, matte front, and chrome accents. To give you an idea of the size, it fits perfectly in that little change pocket of a pair of jeans.

The GUI
The P3’s user interface is, for the most part, similar to the P2’s—a very intuitive, simple, touch-based design. The main screen has three pages, like an iPhone or T-Mobile G1, that can be turned by a swipe in either direction. The center page has the icons you’ll be using most often (Music, Videos, Pictures, FM Radio, etc), and the ones on the left and right house the widgets. Some of the widgets are pretty handy, like a calculator, a calendar and a lightbulb that adjusts screen brightness when tapped.

There’s also a goofy but sort of handy “quick tray” with speaker toggle, Bluetooth and other actions that pulls down from the top when you tap, almost like the system tray on the Android G1.

Some of the widgets are poorly executed, like the 24 subway maps from around the world—the NYC one is awful, devoid of an actual geographic map, making you zoom to view specific stops. Do not rely on this to get you around Hong Kong, or you’ll be sorry. Some of the widgets are overtly purposeless, like a gingerbread man that crumbles when tapped. That’s all he does. Crumbles.

The touch interaction features haptic feedback, that’s supposed to rumble when an item is pressed, thus confirming the selection. Unfortunately, it’s more a gimmick than anything else: It’s fairly weak (more of a buzz than a rumble), inconsistent, and in the end it doesn’t seem to aid the overall accuracy of the touchscreen.

Menus are very easy to navigate and are very intuitive, but scrolling through lists of artist names, albums or what have you isn’t quite as simple as it should be. Lists can be dragged up or down with a finger, but the system isn’t as smart as it is on an iPhone—you can’t turn the “drag” into a flick at the last minute. So when you do drag, you only view about 15 items before you have to pick up your finger and drag again.

The P3 does support the flick motion, but you have to do it deliberately. Besides, it’s more of a delayed reaction and doesn’t feel very organic—one flick will move the list exactly one full page, every time, regardless of how enthusiastically you’ve flicked. There’s also a scroll bar on the side that’s nice for jumping from the As to the Ms, but it’s not particularly accurate. All in all, it’s a little slower to navigate long artist or track lists than I’d like.

There are other gestures as well—tap, double-tap, circle. Some of them will grow into usefulness as people carry and use the P3 for a while, though out of the gate, they’re a little specific to feel intuitive.

Playback Quality
Samsung’s PMPs are some of the best-sounding players out there, and the P3 continues the trend: Bass is full but not overpowering, treble is clear, and mids are focused. Basically, the P3 sounds great, and is powerful enough to drive big Sony MDR headphones while sounding halfway decent in my 16-year-old car’s crappy stereo, too. It supports MP3, WMA, OGG, AAC and even FLAC for you lossless-loving audiophiles.

Video quality is absolutely beautiful—this is the best flash-memory video player I’ve ever seen. With a firmware update (already available), the P3 will play DivX and Xvid files up to 800×600 resolution, which means yes, pirates, this will play your torrented episodes of 30 Rock perfectly without any conversion necessary. In addition to DivX/Xvid AVI files, the P3 supports MPEG-4, WMV and H.264 (though not clear on how high a resolution is supported), which makes it one of the most well-rounded video players on the market. As I mentioned above, the screen is stunning, with nearly flawless viewing angle range.

Nuts and Bolts
The P3 also has an FM radio, though at least out in the suburbs, reception was barely listenable.

Bluetooth works perfectly—it paired with my BlackBerry quickly and easily, and since it has a mic and speaker, it can be used as a speakerphone.

Battery life is rated at 30 hours for audio and 5 for video.

Its default setting is for MTP, which means that, out of the box, it may only work on Windows machines. Fret not, because you can also switch it to UMS to run on Macs and Linux machines. In Windows it will show up as a drive for easy drag-and-drop, and is happily compatible with media software like WinAmp and MediaMonkey. On the Mac, it’s going to be as drag-and-droppable as any USB disk.

Overall
We’ve come to a crossroads in the world of PMPs. High-end devices with Wi-Fi, like the iPod touch, Archos 5/7 and Sony’s upcoming X1000, are the future. The Samsung P3 is not one of these players.

The iPod nano is the elephant in the room here; The P3 is priced to go head-to-head with the nano at the 8/16GB range, although the P3 offers a $300 32GB version as well. I think the P3 holds its own against the nano, besting it in quite a few categories. The hardware looks and feels great, the GUI is prettier and more customizable, the touch interface can be useful, and most importantly frees up real estate for what matters most: a bigger, better screen.

As my catalog of nitpicks above will tell you, the P3 may not have the simplicity of an iProduct. Nevertheless, if you use Windows, or use a Mac but not iTunes, if you download a lot of video, and if you don’t have a hard drive full of DRM’d music—if that describes you, then you would be a fool to buy an iPod nano instead of Samsung’s P3.

Philips Norelco Bodygroom Shaver BG2030 Review (It’s Ballsier)

By Jason Chen, 

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The first Philips Bodygroom was a revolution in below-the-neck (read: genital) shaving. How did Philips manage to improve on that design? Simple: by introducing a better trimmer.

The original concept was already solid. The main body consists of a small trimmer and a shaver, which you can then add one of three plastic guards onto to vary the length of your human forest. The new design keeps the side trimmer and the shaver face intact, but adds a new dedicated trimmer head, plus two attachments with five lengths each.

Shaving with the main head is essentially unchanged. You can maneuver and ‘Tokyo’ drift around corners to get in close without doing damage to sensitive areas. If you like looking like a gigantic, ugly baby then that’s the tool to use.

If you don’t want your logging to go all the way to the stump, there’s the new trimmer head. This, my generously follicled friends, is where the action is.

Cutting through swaths of hair like small arms fire through decayed zombie flesh, the trimmer takes at most two passes to undo what 11 years of nature prepared your body for. It’s painless, not too noisy and much more sanitary than using the same trimmer you use on your beard.

So the only question you need to ask yourself is whether you want the original, which retails for $30, or the updated version, which hits you for $50. People that are “sometimes” shavers, those that are closer to space aliens than apes on the evolutionary scale, can make do with the $30 BG2020. But those “people” that would cause Alec Baldwin to exclaim, “that’s one hairy dude,” need to splurge on the upgraded Bodygroom BG2030. Anyone who has to look at you naked will thank you.

Logitech G19 Keyboard Review

By matt buchanan,

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Logitech’s G19 gaming keyboard—which borders on ludicrous with its embedded Linux mini-computer and full-blown LCD monitor—is the best one they’ve made yet, even if it doesn’t quite reach its full mind-blowing potential.

Holy Crap, There’s a Monitor in My Keyboard
The 320×240 LCD display that hovers over the keyboard is really the G19’s raison d’tre. After incarnations of its G15 keyboard with a monochrome display for game stats and system info, it was really the only place left to go, and for the most part, it’s a comfy place with silk sheets and free Coke in the minibar. I mean, you can watch YouTube or movies while you frag.

The screen’s size and resolution are good, but not exceptional—it’s okay for watching short video or YouTube clips with the built-in client, checking the time, scoping your CPU load and anything else you’d be peeping at a glance. The bezel around it is gigantic, so there’d definitely be some space to make it larger.

What makes it impressive is the fact that it’s its own mini-computer, so matter how intensive the game you’re running is—Left 4 Dead, for instance—you can pop up a YouTube video or your rip of Dawn of the Dead with no slowdown at all, and every applet runs quickly and smoothly. They’re all pretty to use and configure as well.

There are a few annoyances with the video software. The YouTube client, for instance, doesn’t let you hunt for a specific video, you’re stuck browsing through a list of feeds, like top rated and most popular. That said, it’s really fast and easy to use. With the video client for your local files (which monitors a single folder), in my experience it played anything ending in .mpg, but when I tried to play .avi videos it said more codecs were needed.

What’s frustrating is that so much of the display’s potential is still untapped. Logitech so far only provides a handful of applets and “can’t comment on unannounced projects/products.” It doesn’t even do cool things with other Logitech products, like their G35 headset. It is open source, so anyone can develop for it, but we are talking about trying to build a development community around a $200 keyboard. The list of PC games that take advantage of it isn’t mindblowing, so you might wanna check if your favorite is on board (mine weren’t). So the currently anemic selection of software you can run on it might be a dealbreaker, at least for now.

Hardware
If you’ve used a higher end Logitech keyboard before—especially the G11 or G15, you roughly know what you’re getting. Logitech’s keys are a perfect balance of punchy and squishy and just really feel fantastic—it’s why they haven’t messed with the formula in a long time. Overall the G19 a solid piece of hardware, though you might expect something less plastic-y and more tank-like for $200, if only so it felt more likely to survive the onslaught of sweaty hands pummeling keys and Cool Ranch Doritos. The wrist rest is unacceptably cheap and crappy, though.

But Logitech adds a lot of value with little (and big) touches. There are a total of 36 possible macros (you can instantly switch between three sets of 12, which are color-coded. There are media controls galore, as you’d expect from Logitech. I really love the heavy spin wheel for volume, which matches up with the one on their G35 headset (more on that soon). You can make your backlight any color of the rainbow you want (or turn it off). And there’s a toggle to deactive the Windows key, so you don’t accidentally crash your game by popping up the Start menu.

It’s got two high-powered USB ports on the back—standard for gaming keyboards. It works pretty well if you’re just plugging in a mouse and a USB headset, but what I’d like is some audio jacks, so when I plug in my gaming headphones, I don’t have to reach around to the backside of my desktop.

One of the tradeoffs for having dual high-powered USB ports and a mini-computer inside is that you’re going to have to free up a space on your power strip for its power brick.

Game On?
Even with its handful of flaws, it’s a fantastic keyboard that builds on what Logitech’s been doing well for a long time, and it’ll get better as more software is developed for it. But it’s also $200, and its headlining feature isn’t fully fleshed out yet. I love it, but practically speaking, I’d wait a couple of months for the price to come down and more software to make it more excellent.

Elgato turbo.264HD Video Encoder Lightning Review

By Andi Wang,

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The Gadget: Elgato’s turbo.264HD video encoder, a USB dongle meant to be a fast and easy way to potentially speed up video conversions to H.264 file format for your iPhone/iPod/AppleTV.

The Price: $129.95

The Verdict: Elgato’s turbo.264HD is a great encoder for those who need to basically do a lot of video encoding and want it done quickly. It’s extremely intuitive, making it quick and simple to use, and is also the fastest one we’ve tried to date.

Using an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (which was 20.5 minutes long and a 175MB AVI file) as our guinea pig, we tested the turbo.264HD converter against older encoding programs including iSquint and the previous version of turbo.264.

Encoding times for an h.264 file

From these results, iSquint’s conversion times seem to jump drastically depending on what platform it is converting for. But with turbo.264HD and it’s previous version, they were both consistent in their conversions—a couple of them only differing by 3 seconds, with Elgato’s upgrade being consistently faster—up to 5 times as fast as iSquint in some cases— than the others. However, one thing you have to remember with the turbo.264HD though is that you cannot use the program unless you have the USB plugged in, forcing you to use something else (iSquint) if you don’t have it on you. Also, the dongle only works with its designated turbo.264HD software, rendering it useless when used with any other program and with any other application that has Quicktime export as well.

As for quality, I honestly can say that all the encoders produced pretty much the same type of video when converted for the iPod: slightly grainy and blury like a crappy, pirated video rip, but nothing to truly nitpick considering the medium it’s for.

Before purchasing turbo.264HD, it would be smart to think about whether you have $130 worth of video you need encoded, or if you’d rather spend more time encoding to save some money. Basically, what is worth more to you: time or money?

Ideative’s Socket Sense Power Strip Lightning Review

By Andi Wang, 

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The Gadget: Ideative’s Socket Sense surge protector that expands in order to fit more bulky AC adapters all on one strip.

The Price: $29.99

The Verdict: One of the best expandable surge protectors we’ve used yet. It’s incredibly useful on road trips (CES) as well as at home, and beats even the Power Squid in our eyes in a general comparison.

The special thing about Socket Sense is that it can be expanded from 13 to 18 inches and has 6 angled outlets, allowing you to fit more adapters on one strip. Because of this, the Socket Sense is significantly bigger than a lot of other power protectors—fully extended, it is the length of a 5′4” female’s arm—and weighs a lot more too.

However, compared to squid outlets, the design and size of the Socket Sense gives it a heavy, flat bottom, which makes it easier to use without having to deal with bundled up cords and cables all over the place. Moreover, surge protector allows you to individually extend each outlet when needed, allowing you to adjust how much space it takes up to some extent. Also, there is enough tension on extender so that the strip doesn’t flimsily slide open or close, but it doesn’t give off so much resistance that a relatively weak girl can’t extend it easily.

Overall, Socket Sense is a reliable piece of hardware for those who need a power strip that offers more space between each adapter. It has 2160 joules of surge protection, compared to the 540 joules of the $30 power squid (the $50 squid offers 1080 joules and the $70 squid offers 3240 joules). For $30, it’s hard to find a better overall surge protector with this amount of space per socket, although the EZSpace UFO is pretty good as well. [Ideative]

Large enough to allow you to plug in six of just about anything in the strip

Slightly larger than a normal power strip

Slightly pricier than a normal strip at $30

Dell Adamo Full Review: Macho Outside, Sissy Inside

By Mark Wilson, 

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The Dell Adamo is the MacBook Air designed by Batman. I’m not just saying that because I’m holding the dark onyx version of the machine—the first of the production units, ready for serious testing.

The Adamo is both a compliment and an insult to Dell engineering. It’s possibly the most beautiful computer Dell has ever manufactured, but I’m not sure that Dell has caught up to competitors in either aesthetics or power. There have been lots of qualitative Adamo reviews out there, but we got the first of the units that will actually ship to customers, so it’s time for real benchmarks. As it happens, performance is really what’s at stake here.

Design

On one hand, the Adamo is a laptop built from as many parts aluminum as testosterone. It’s decorated with three different finishes of black metal, including a classy matte grain that makes up a majority of the case, but then Dell tops all that blackness off with two more touches of black plastic (keyboard and mouse buttons) and tempered glass (in front and behind the screen) to add a bit of gloss to the mix.

The resulting cacophony of darkness tugs at my heart strings, activating long dormant man-DNA. Add a Batman logo, and I could see the Dark Knight shaping parts of this machine by hand, cave condensation dripping on the keyboard.

But batarangs lack polish. The Adamo has a utilitarian geometry—it’s a block with four rounded edges, which is fine, but that block features a bottom panel with a disconcerting gap in metal…leading to nightmares of the lithium polymer battery leaking all over my lap. (Note: Dell uses two of these gaps for service/repair tool access.)

And the 13.4-inch, 720p (1366×768) screen is so difficult to fold open that it feels like you’re bending a car door the wrong way. Its picture is quite pretty though—you’ll notice sharpness is better on this screen than on the MacBook Air’s.

The trackpad feels smaller than it should on a device with this footprint, and its multitouch gesture shortcuts, like pinch zooming, were often activating when I didn’t want them to. (If you find the gestures useless, as I did, you can just disable them.)

The backlit keyboard is alright—the concave keys are a bit soft for my taste but perfectly passable. And the touch controls above the keyboard, while pleasant on the eyes, aren’t really integral enough or pretty enough to justify their existence. Wouldn’t it be neat if Dell used this space for a superfluously beautiful battery gauge or something? Why not? I really don’t need more buttons to skip through my music.

And while the Adamo is athletically trim (a crazy .66 inches), at 4 pounds, it’s half a pound heavier than the Voodoo Envy, and a full pound heavier than the Lenovo X301 and the MacBook Air, not to mention most netbooks. (Apparently it’s no coincidence that the Adamo drew inspiration from luxury products like Bentleys.)

So is the Adamo thin? Yes. Light? No.

It’s not quiet either. Even with our 128GB SSD configuration, the Adamo is rarely a silent machine. The fan, incidentally hidden behind some of the most stylish vents I’ve ever seen, runs almost nonstop during basic operation.

Still, there are a few points of clever design. Sticking all of the ports in the back of the system is a bit old school, but it also allows for a slimmer side profile. The two USB ports, ethernet jack and DisplayPort aren’t much to speak of, but the inclusion of an eSATA/USB port means that your expansion drives can be just as fast as internals—good news, since there’s no DVD drive. All this junk in the trunk is literally topped off by speakers. (Yup, they’re behind the monitor.)

The only part we were unable to test was the optional integrated HSDPA 3G. You can see, however, that it’s super easy to pop an AT&T SIM into the side of the computer—a solution that’s far more elegant than using a USB stick, and makes use of a larger integrated antenna.

Performance

Our test system was a beefed-up, $2600 Adamo, featuring a 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor (3MB L2 cache), 4GB RAM (800MHz), 128GB SSD and integrated 3G. $2000 only buys you a 1.2GHz processor and 2GB of RAM, but you still get the 128GB SSD.

On paper, the MacBook Air is faster (faster processor, faster front side bus, and double the L2 cache). We ran GeekBench to test the theory. (It proved true.)

But these differences are really somewhat minor performance nitpicks. The biggest mistake Dell made with this system, by far, was the inclusion of Intel’s GMA X4500HD GPU. Nvidia’s GeForce 9400M (which you see in MacBooks etc) would have made a better fit. Nvidia claims their integrated GPUs dominate Intel’s. Here’s a comparison of the two GPUs that pretty much proves that Nvidia is right:

And here we see those principles applied in 3DMark testing. (Note, the 301 and Adamo have the Intel GPU, the MacBook Air has the Nvidia GPU):

I don’t know that the X4500HD GPU is a complete dealbreaker for the Adamo…actually scratch that, it is a dealbreaker. Because if you’re looking to work on graphics intensive programs or do light gaming, this simply cannot be the system for you. Also, keep in mind that Nvidia’s upcoming Ion platform is pretty much an just Intel Atom processor with a 9400M. In other words, $400 netbooks will soon be outperforming this $2,000+ machine in 3D tasks if Dell doesn’t tweak their platform.

However, if you’re only looking to email, use programs like Excel and surf the web, the Adamo’s support for up to 4GB of RAM may be a bigger benefit than the 9400M. (Since the MacBook Air supports a max of 2GB of RAM, it’s a point to keep in mind if you’re comparison shopping.)

Battery Life

Dell will tell you that the Adamo has a “5+ hour battery life,” achieved through a non-removable lithium polymer battery. I tested the system with power saving (lower performance), medium screen brightness, wi-fi on and Bluetooth off. And I was able to play back a high-def WMV for just over half Dell’s claim.

Total Run Time: 2 hours, 40 minutes

I find that, in real world use, it’s very common for laptops to achieve only half their battery rating. The Adamo is clearly no exception. At least the laptop can make it through a full-length movie.

The Dark Knight Returns

The Adamo is a bit of a strange beast. It’s not as feathery as the Lenovo X301 or the MacBook Air, and even with that extra pound of heft, it’s (overall) not as powerful as the MacBook Air—a computer that’s incidentally cheaper than the Adamo in its base configuration.

The Adamo has a few fantastic features: Integrated 3G, eSATA, and a butt that just won’t quit. And its aluminum body, especially in black, simply looks sharp.

Just don’t dare buy this computer until Dell comes to their senses and realizes that $2000+ is absurd for a 4-pound laptop with no graphics muscle. Show some restraint and wait for the sequel. If it’s anything like the Batman franchise, there will be many. [Adamo]

Unique, stylish design

Very thin

Nice selection of ports and extras

It’s the heaviest system in its class by a pound

Mediocre battery life

Weak GPU

iPod Dock 8-Way Battlemodo

By Adrian Covert, 

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It’s that time again, kids! What time, you ask? Time for the iPod Dock Battlemodo where contestants from Bose, Sony, Altec-Lansing, Logitech, Klipsch, iHome, JBL and iLuv battle it out to the death.

One trend that seems to be taking place in the land of iPod docks is that companies seem less concerned with the high end, hi-fi iPod docks. Instead, they’re gravitating towards smaller, lighter docks that sound nice, but are intended more for casual listening. Both Logitech and Klipsch are putting most of their weight behind these smaller docks. In our testing, we checked out:

• Altec Lansing InMotion Max

• Bose SoundDock II

• iHome iP71

• iLuv i398

• JBL OnStage 400p

• Klipsch iGroove SXT (NOTE: Updated product specs for refreshed iGroove SXT not on Klipsch site yet)

• Logitech Pure-Fi Anywhere 2

• Sony SRSGUI0iP

That said, we still went looking for the iPod dock that sounded really good while sticking as close to the $200 mark. Some were much cheaper, or much more expensive, but most of them all had something interesting to offer. Ultimately, overall audio quality had the most weight in helping to pick our winner, but price, design, and the usefulness of smaller features were also taken into consideration:

The Winner:

JBL On Stage 400p: At $250, the On Stage 400p is a bit more expensive than some of the other docks, but it sounds so nice, it was impossible to give top honors to anyone else. It uses a 30w sub to push out the low end, while delivering another 30w of power to the tweeters for the highs and mids. And though it might not wow anyone with its design, it’s nice enough that you don’t have to hide it in your living room. Just might want to wait till it goes on sale later on.

The Runners Up:

Bose SoundDock II: It’s no huge surprise why the SoundDock II out performs the rest of the field: at $300 , Bose’s accessory is outfitted with better hardware. But is the sound quality worth $100 than the rest of the docks? And what’s the chance you’ll ever find it on sale?

Altec Lansing InMotion Max: What the InMotion Max lacks in booming low end, it makes up for in precision audio tuning and a light, slim design. Two 2-inch drivers are bolstered by two, 2-inch passive radiators which sit directly above. The result are nice mids and highs that offer much better sound than the 14w power rating would suggest. Other nice little touches include song info that appears in the backlit display, capacitive touch buttons (which include <</>> controls), battery power that lasts 3.5 hours, and a spring loaded ipod dock connector that slides out. Well done.

Honorable Mentions:

Klipsch iGroove SXT: The new, revamped iGroove SXT (hitting stores this july) packs a lot of punch into a compact bundle. Enhanced acoustics and a dedicated amplifier for each driver give the SXT a nice, deep sound, but sometimes the high-end clarity suffers. Still it’s hard not to like this one, and Klipsch is phasing out its bigger iGroove, so this is it if you love Klipsch.

Logitech Pure-Fi Anywhere 2: Coming in at a lower price point and smaller size than most the other docks here, it’s hard to compare it sonically because most the other docks are bigger and more expensive . But the Pure-Fi Anywhere 2 does manage to improve over the original Pure-Fi Anywhere in the sound department and does what few other docks can do: Travel around easily with a 10 hour battery life. Besides, the larger Pure-Fi Dream system may sound better, but its clock-radio interface leaves too much to be desired.