Mighty Gadget Blog: The latest technology news & reviews in the UK

In the old days pay as you go phones were cheap, cheerful and do everything required out of a phone one would need. They text, they ring. Nowadays, although not packing the super technological goods of an iPhone, HTC Desire or Galaxy S they still do their job and have basic extras. The LG “Cookie Fresh” GS290 is just that. As one of the cheapest touchscreen PAYG phones on the market (from £40ish) you wouldn’t expect too much, but if you want to know more on what we thought of it, then please click on and read our review.

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Recently I have had chance to play with some of Creative’s new products. The first being the Creative ZiiSound D5 Speakers, which to be honest I have heard nothing about until now, so for those of you not in the know:

The ZiiSound D5 speakers redefine the way music is to be enjoyed - wirelessly in pristine form. Sit back and enjoy an audiophile-like experience like no other has done. Our award-winning Bluetooth^® technology present in our Inspire S2 Wireless 2.1 speakers are being ported over to the ZiiSound D5, bringing to you the best wireless audio can offer.

Pair up this premium one-piece speaker system effortlessly with any Bluetooth device, such as your notebook or mobile phone, and immerse in the music that fills up the whole room. Try it on with your iPhone, iPod or iPad, plug in the bundled transmitter to gain total control over the speakers and enjoy immaculate wireless music playback.

So basically we have quite an expensive (£279.99) but possibly quite a unique iPod dock with Bluetooth.

The Bluetooth functionality is quite an interesting choice as I was somewhat concerned about the possible sound quality issues due to the low bandwidth of Bluetooth. However at the same time it is quite a smart move as it moves the speakers away from just being an iPod dock and allowing them to work with anything that has Bluetooth functionality.

My first impressions were of its rather decent build quality, it is a very solid and simple one-piece design. It also comes with a small port to connect your iPod, which initially looked very odd as it is far to small to fit an iPod but in fact it fits the Bluetooth dongle which attaches to the iPod to provide Bluetooth functionality, and then the dongle has connections which will charge your iPod. Overall this works quite well.

My first test was with my 5th Gen iPod classic, I simply connected the Bluetooth dongle, selected my song and away it went. I was quite shocked at just how simple it was. I was sort of expecting to have to pair the device up as you do with so many Bluetooth devices, but it worked immediately.

It is also important to note that the Bluetooth dongle provided by Creative isn't some general Bluetooth device, it actually uses the apt-X audio codec which apparently provides superior Bluetooth stereo audio, and I have to say it did sound pretty good.

Next up I decided to try using my Palm Pre to play music, this is slightly more complex than the iPod option as I had to keep my finger on the sync icon until it flashed then pair them up. This was quite easy though, if you have ever paired anything up in the past you will have no problems at all. In regards to audio quality via normal Bluetooth (rather than the apt-X audio codec) it was perfectly fine, I was expecting the quality to degrade quite a bit but it was pretty good, maybe not quite on par with the Creative.

Finally I tested the 3.5mm aux jack at the device's rear. There is not much to say about this, it performed well just as you would expect!

In general the audio quality of the speakers was excellent, maybe not the best I have heard, but certainly excellent considering the size of the unit. The problem due to its smallish size the bass can be somewhat lacking. Don't get me wrong though, the bass is pretty good thanks to an integrated bass port, but it is just not on par with a dedicated subwoofer. The unit itself can also get pretty loud if you want it too, especially considering its size, but at higher volume levels you may notice the bass not keeping up as much. I never experience the unit suffer from distortion or deterioration in quality with louder volumes, but I didn't go all the way up to full volume.

Lastly it is worth mentioning all the controls on the unit are touch sensitive, which design wise may look nice but they are not always to everyone's liking. There is only volume and sync options so you don't need to worry too much.

In general I am not normally a fan of this type of product, I prefer larger bulky things that can go very loud. For example I use Acoustic Energy Aego M 2.1 speakers at the office, which are fantastic, but the sub is large and they are messy with all the wires. The ZiiSound D5 caters to a slight different market, they are stylish and minimalist while incorporating some pretty handy features. These speakers would be ideal for a bedroom or a kitchen, or just anyone that uses an iPod/iPhone all the time. If the price is not an issue I would be surprised if there are many iPod docks out there that could be the ZiiSound D5.

Last September I had the pleasure of going to Berlin for the IFA and attending the Sony press conference where they revealed the astonishingly good looking Sony Vaio X which is a 14mm thick, sub 800g, carbon fibre netbook.

Recently I was lucky enough to borrow the laptop for a review, and to be quite honest, as much I love Sony and love the looks I approached it with a certain amount of scepticism. Regardless of looks this is still a netbook and it is using an Intel Atom processor while costing in excess of £1500! I have previously reviewed the Dell Mini 9 and while it was a decent little netbook it was woefully underpowered and I was very worried the Vaio X would be the same.

Anyway, when I received the laptop I have to say I was taken back by just how good it looks, the build quality and just how ridiculously light and thin it is, it is seriously like no other laptop I have ever held it is that light. It is also so thing the Ethernet port actually has to be click open because the main body is thinner than the Ethernet socket.

The next big thing i noticed is the way the keyboard is laid out, for Mac and Sony laptop users you are already used to it, but the key are separated apart, now i believe this is a love it or hate it style, personally I love it, it looks smarter and there seems to be less chance of typos especially on a smaller keyboard.

Turning on the Vaio X was shocking to say the least, I was sort of expecting to be waiting around for the sluggish CPU to load Windows 7 but this is not the case at all. The Vaio X comes with an SSD and the boot up time is seconds, far far faster than my Quad Core desktop that uses a mechanical velociraptor HDD.

When it comes down to general use the Vaio X was surprisingly good, I could easily browse the net, use Digsby, go on Spotify at the same time without any obvious slow down. I also tried it out with various types of media this included some standard def AVIs and a 720p MKV and it managed them all fine. The fact that it managed to handle the MKV was quite a surprise as it used integrated graphics and normal Atom CPUs fail with HD content. It is worth noting that this is a 2.00 Ghz Atom with 2GB of ram, whereas the Dell I previously testing was 1.6 Ghz with 1GB of ram.

It is also worth noting the screen is excellent, it is paper thin (ok that's an exaggeration) with a really crisp picture quality and more importantly a decent resolution of 1366×768.

I would say the only down side of the Vaio X is the slightly pathetic speakers but to be quite honest, in a laptop this thin you can hardly expect loud speakers and a built in subwoofer.

In summery I love the Sony Vaio X, a lot, but it is very hard to ignore the price tag. I think it is important to realise that this is clearly not aimed at the mainstream, it is aimed at people with too much money, commuters that need adequate performance while adding negligible weight to their bag. Personally if I was that rich and didn't mind carry something slightly larger at double the weight I would chose the Sony Vaio Z Series where you literally get desktop performance in an ultra portable size.

Warnlaser recently sent us their 20mw Razor Series Laser to review. This is Warnlaser's new series of violet lasers which actually use a genuine Sony Blue-Ray diode.

The Laser we are reviewing currently retails at $99.99/ £60 which does seem quite expensive though this is actually the cheapest in the Razor line with the 200mw laser retailing at $379.99!

However this is no cheap and tacky laser pointer you buy off the market, you can immediately tell it is quality by the quality black case you receive with it similar to what you would get if you bought an expensive pen.

The laser is quite large compared to cheaper laser on the market, and is about the size of a pen, though if you are using this for a presentation it is probably more comfortable to sue this way.

It also comes with an attachment which appears to spread the laser into multiple tiny dots, I am not sure if there is any practical application for this but I guess it looks pretty.

The beam itself is quite appealing and it does appear to have a good range, it manage to cover about 20m of my office with no problems.

Overall I think their is limited appeal to this gadget, it would make quite a nice stocking filler but at £60 it is a bit on the steep side for a stocking filler. If you spend most of your work time doing then presentations then yes this laser definitely will have some appeal.

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The King of Fighters XII (KOF XII) is the latest instalment of The King of Fighters series and is currently available on the PS3 and Xbox 360.

King of Fighters XII is very Street Fighter esque though it uses a 3 on 3 team system with each fight consisting of up to five rounds. Though it is possible to play in a versus mode where you can either have 3 on 3 or 1 on 1 against another player or against a CPU opponent.

One of the main things I noticed about the game were issues with the graphics. All the backgrounds in each fight are colourful and well drawn but the actual characters are blocky and have very poor detail, it was certainly not something I would expect on the PS3 unless it was a PSN game.

KOF XII has a slimmed down roster than previous versions of KOF and this has come under quite a bit of criticism from fans.

In terms of the game play it does play well and the animations of the characters are fluid and if you are not used to fighting games you can chose a simple mode which allows you to pull of character moves without pressing a ridiculous combination of buttons, or if you are more used to fighting games you can play it normally.

The game also has some issues with lag that comes with online multiplayer though I suspect this will eventually be fixed with a patch.

This game without a doubt is focussed on the more seasoned fighting game player and I am sure they will play it, however for other gamers I am unsure how appealing it is. One of the main problems I have with it is the £39.99 asking price. For a game with questionable graphics and problematic online multiplayer this is extortionate.

If the game was £10-£15 and available to download on the PSN I would say go for it, it could provide quite a lot of fun while playing against your friends on a LAN, but as a £40 game I just don't think it is worth it.

The Sony X1000 Walkman has been eagerly anticipated since its announcement at CES this year.

The NWZ range of walkmans was already well known for their excellent sound quality and the X Series ups the game a little further with the inclusion of noise cancelling, an OLED Touch Screen, Wi-Fi and a Web Browser.

These additions mean there is an inevitable comparison to the iPod Touch, but can it really compete with a player that has such a dominant hold on the market?

The X Series is quite a small player measuring 52.5w x 97.4h x 10.5d mm compared to the iPod touch at 61.8w x 110h x 8.5d mm, and this small size means that it has a smaller 3 inch screen compared to the 3.5 inch screen of the Touch. However what the X Series lack in size it makes up with the quality of the screen, its OLED screen far outclasses the iPod Touch screen.

I found the touch screen on the X Series to be excellent, however it doesn’t have the multi-touch or accelerometer of the touch. It does have coverflow, which is excellent though personally I find it easier just using the list view, I find coverflow to be a bit gimmicky. 

In terms of looks I think it will be a bit love it or hate it. It has more angular edges and faux granite sides. I can’t think why someone would come up with the faux granite texture for a PMP but I do quite like it and I generally like the overall style of the X Series.

In the past Sony has got a lot of grief for the abysmal software it used to transfer music to its devices. For some strange reason people still seem to think Sony use Sonicstage. I can assure you this is long gone, in fact I completely ignored any CDs that came with the X Series and just plugged it straight into my laptop. It is recognised as a mass storage device which therefore means that you can drag and drop music onto the device or you can sync it via Windows Media Player. It should also be compatible with iTunes as long as you are not using and files with DRM. Therefore I find the X Series is far much user friendly when it comes to connectivity than any Apple device.

There were a couple of minor issues with the connectivity. I found transfer slightly slow and the device doesn’t accept Flac files. Not a huge deal to me personally but audiophiles tend to have a problem with this. More annoying is the use of a proprietary connector between the device and the PC. This is more of a personal gripe than anything else, a lot of other players do this, including iPods, but I just don't understand why they all cant use mini USB!

When it comes down to playing your music the X Series really shines especially compared to the iPod. The audio quality is far superior than an iPod and the bundled headphones are infinitely better than the crap ones Apple send.

Unfortunately there are a couple of little issues here, I actually found my relatively cheap Sennheiser CX300 sounded better. So if you want to really make the most of the audio quality you probably are best to upgrade your earphones. The other problem here is that the noise cancelling that comes with the X Series actually requires you to use the Sony supplied earphones. This is because the earphones have a microphone in them which is used in the noise cancelling process, but to be fair the noise cancelling wouldn't work if the microphone was on the device itself as it needs to sample the sound as close to your ear as possible.

When it comes to the noise cancelling itself I have mixed feelings for it. While it did seem to work quite well for some reason when I switched it on it started to make me feel slightly nauseas. At first I thought I was imagining it but on further research I found that some other people have experienced it and the explanation given is:

“Sarah Stackpole, a New York ear, nose and throat doctor, speculates that the sound waves that cancel each other out may still transmit enough very low frequency vibrations to stimulate the balance receptors that are connected to the hearing hair cells in the inner ear. These vibrations are akin to those caused by blast explosions or barotrauma in scuba diving, but much less forceful, she says. The disequilibrium that some people may feel from this is made worse because the vibrations falsely signal that the head is moving, but the eyes report that the head is stationary. Those mixed signals make the headphone wearer feel dizzy.”

While I did not get time to check the video capabilities of the player there have been mixed reports. The X Series has a 432 x 240 resolution however the video mode can only handle 320 x 240 clips at a maximum.

As for its Wi-Fi it managed to stream videos nicely but you are forced to use a phone like keypad requiring multiple presses of a key before reaching the correct letter.

The biggest stumbling block of the X Series is the web browser. I personally thought it couldn’t be all that bad, but I decided to try a few websites out and one included Diggnation to see if I could download their podcast. Unfortunately no such luck, the website was completely unusable using the X Series browser.

Lastly the X Series does not have applications that the iTouch has and this seems to be a deal breaker for many. The App store allows the Touch to become much more than just a PMP including a games machine and this certainly gives Apple an advantage over the X Series. I am quite surprised Sony didn't try and integrate it with the PS3 and the Playstation Network somehow, though maybe this will be something that will be added in later generations.

In conclusion the X Series is without a doubt a great device. In terms of a music player it is probably one of the better devices on the market, possibly even the best if you can cope without Flac support. In terms of the extended functionality the player is somewhat of a let down and I think this will mean it does not get the praise it deserves.

At the end of day if you want a device primarily as a music player the X Series is a much better choice than the iPhone, but if you are more interested in being able to play games, browse the net etc the iPod Touch will be a better choice.

It is also worth noting that currently on Amazon the 16GB X Series costs £179.99 while the 16GB iPod Touch costs £196.89 if you then take into account an extra £20 or replace the awful iPod earphones then the the X Series is quite a bit cheaper than the Touch. In fact I wish Sony had priced the X Series at £150 and £200 for the 16GB and 32GB versions as then it would be much easier to recommend the X Series over the Touch.

If you haven't got a copy of Windows 7 yet and would like to try it out then you are in luck as Microsoft have extended the Beta download to February 10th.

While beta OS downloads from Microsoft don't normally sound like a whole lot of fun, largely due to MS being notorious for developing buggy software, Windows 7 could be an exception.

So far it has received a lot of praise from the press and public alike and I have read many reports of people ditching Vista to use Windows 7 as their main OS. Even though it is only in Beta a lot of people are reporting that Windows 7 has good driver support, is stable and is faster than Vista. Many people are even claiming better frame rates for gaming.

The most shocking comments I have read are quite a lot of Mac Fanboys loving it. I find it very rare for Mac users to compliment Windows but some are even considering choosing it over Leopard OSX.

So with all these compliments I decided to install it on my home PC. Recently it has been playing up so I was going to do a fresh install anyway so there was no better time to try out Windows 7.

Download and installation was a breeze, you can get Windows 7 beta from here. The download took a while with my speed only reaching around 0.5 Megabyes per second. Once it had downloaded everything went smoothly.

In terms of load times and how the OS performs my initial impressions are quite similar to Vista to be honest. I don't think I have seen noticeable improvements but I have only played around with it for a short period of time.

Without a doubt the biggest difference most people will notice is the new Windows Taskbar. The new taskbar is no longer just used to manage windows but it is now a full application launcher which is being compared favourably to the OS X Dock. In fact Gizmodo have declared it beats the OS X Dock.

Another important difference you will notice quickly is the removal of Windows Sidebar and the ability to use gadgets on your desktop. Side bar was just a pain in the ass it just ended up getting in the way, however having the Gadgets on the desktop means they never really get in the way, when you minimise everything they are just their nicely visible in any spot you have placed them.

If we look at other review the general consensus appears to be that Windows 7 out performs Vista however Infoworld found that XP still outperforms Windows 7 in terms of multiprocessing. Infoworld did state that this is likely due tot he fact that Windows 7 has a lot of extra code for muticore optimisation's and the benefits of these changes won't be felt until core counts climb well beyond today's dual-core and quad-core implementations. Gizmodo also found that Vista was pretty much unusable on a Dell Inspiron Mini 12 but with Aero switch off it was quite usable and more than capable of light multitasking.

Overall Microsoft seem to be be on with a winner with Windows 7.

Check out some more review of Windows 7:

PC Advisor

Gizmodo: First Impressions

Engadget: First Impressions

CNet

Tech Radar

I am sure most people have noticed there has been a big push by the big mobile phone companies recently towards selling mobile broadband.

Most new mobiles come with 3G and some form of a web browser and most companies sell some form of web access on top of the normal phone contracts. Companies like O2, T-Mobile and Vodafone are also pushing the independent mobile broadband devices where you pay anything from £15+ per month for xGb usage.

This relatively new and compeatative market has led most mobile companies to try and lure the buyer in with free laptops or netbooks if you sign up for a set period of time.

I must admit I have been a bit skeptical about it all, I have had mobile Internet on my past 2 phones. I had Web 'n' Walk from T-Mobile on my Tytn and now I have a bolt on from O2 on my E90 and while I do find it useful I get the feeling the performance is not nearly as good as it is made out to be, nor do I use it as much as I would expect.

Anyway recently I have had chance to try out one of Vodafone's offers. It is the £30 a month mobile broadband with free Dell Inspiron Mini 9.

The contract is for 24 months and the download speed is up to 3.6 Mbps with an upload up to 384Kbps.

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Review

I received the Mini 9 last Friday so I have had some time to play with it.

The specification of the Dell is:

1. Intel® Atom Processor® N270 (1.6GHz/533Mhz FSB/512K cache)
2. Windows® XP Home Edition
3. Glossy 8.9 inch LED display (1024X600)
4. 512MB² DDR2 at 533MHz
5. 4GB³ Solid State Drive
6. Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950
7. Wireless 802.11g Mini Card
8. 32WHr Battery (4 cell) (Over 4 hours battery life claimed)

My initial impression of the Mini 9 were simply its size, I have a 15" Acer and the Mini 9 in literally mini in comparison. My winter coat has massive pockets on it and I can nearly fit the Mini 9 in one of them.

The general look of the Mini 9 is quite basic, it has a glossy shell and it is quite plasticy though you can hardly expect an aluminium casing when the Mini 9  only costs around £250 to buy without a mobile broadband contract. The general build quality does feel excellent.

On booting the Dell I was a bit surprised to see Vodafone have chosen to use Windows. These devices are only really designed to be used on the Internet and for basic activities so Ubuntu would of been more than adequate and it would of reduced the cost for Vodafone.

The initial boot up of Windows did seem very slow which was a bit of a shock as I was expecting it to be much faster as it uses a solid state drive, however this was likely due to the limitations of the processor rather than the SSD. I also found the machine was installed with a lot of the crap associated with Dell computers including Mcafee, Dell's Support Center, Dells Video conferencing etc etc. I am sure all of this will certainly be slowing down the boot time.

Vodafone have only added one piece of software to manage their 3G connections.

The keyboard on the Dell is very small, which is no surprise. I wouldn't want to be typing out a novel on their, however it is still quite usable, the only problem I really had was the right hand shift key as it really is tiny and I always use this key when typing the @ symbol so I frequently made mistakes.

The Screen of the Dell is good, the resolution is 1024X600 so you can comfortably browse the Internet. It is nice and bright though one downside is that it is glossy. To be fair most laptops now use a glossy screen but considering these netbooks are designed for mobility you would think some consideration would be taken for outdoor use. Unfortunately if you are outdoors in the sun viewing the screen can be very hard.

The dell also came with the usual ports and inputs, there were 3x USB, 1x VGA, Ethernet, Card Reader, and audio jacks. I was quite impressed it has 3x USB ports as you would think it wouldn't have room for this many.

The general performance of the Dell was actually quite good. Granted there was a bit of a delay in starting up but once running I was able to do everything I wanted, I was happily running Firefox with half a dozen tabs open and I had a few apps running in the background. I also played an AVI in VLC and it played smoothly. I didn't have any HD files to play but I suspect it would start struggling a bit here.

Finally I found the battery life to be quite good, I had a meeting on Monday in Manchester. I used the Dell on the journey to and from it which was about 2.5 hours in total and the battery was still going. I am not sure if it would last past 4 hours though my use was quite heavy and I did have a 3G connection at the time as well.

Overall I found the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 to be an excellent little netbook and I plan on using it for the foreseeable future on any trips I go on. It can easily handle any daily task while being extremely portable. Yes there are a couple of little issues but they are certainly not big enough to put you off it.

Vodafone Mobile Broadband Review

So now we know that the Dell is a great little netbook how does Vodafone's mobile broadband handle?

Surprisingly very well, connecting to the Vodafone network is a simple task, you just load up thei mobile connect software wait for it to find a connection, click connect and Bobs your Unkle, you are browsing the net.

I checked the speed of the connection via Think Broadband and Speed Test (Maidenhead + Dublin) and was pleasantly surprised with the following results

Think broadband = 1.8 Mbps down and 0.3 Mbps up

Speedtest Maidenhead = 2.5 Mbps down and 0.28 Mbps up

Speedtest Dublin = 2.05 Mbps down and 0.28 Mbps up

I agreed to review the netbook and Vodafone's mobile broadband expecting to slate the performance, I have always been under the impression there is a lot of mis-selling going on in this industry and while I am sure some people sometimes maybe able to get the full speed I always thought that due to reception issues, volume of users etc the average person would not get a fraction of these speeds.

I have even previously tried another mobile broadband connection from 3 and found the connection to be 0.1Mbps down and 0.1Mbps up. This was tested knowing the reception was bad but I was expecting to see similar results from Vodafone. So to receive the above speeds is a very nice surprise indeed, granted I probably wouldn't recommend this type of connection over a ADSL line but for someone on the move then it really is worth it.

Finally now we know the Dell is excellent and Vodafone is excellent is the deal worth it? Well I think it is up to personal opinion. I wouldn't personally go for this deal. £30 per month x 24 months is £720. You can get the same 3Gb monthly allowance without the Dell for £15 per month on a 12 month contract which is £180 this would leave £540 to spare on a laptop which could be used for a better laptop. Granted this would mean an initial outlay of several hundreds of pounds which a lot of people may not have in which case the £30 a month deal is certainly appealing.

So if you want mobile broadband I would 100% recommend Vodafone and all the deals are good, but I would look at the various options and find which one suits you best before you buy.