The new LG LU7000 LCD TV was launched at IFA back in September 2009 and we’ve had the 22” version on long term test for 6 weeks now, so how’s it performed? Read on and find out……

First Impressions

The LU7000 is finished in a very classy looking piano black, has a DVD player tucked away in its sloping stand and looks a million dollars. A thin transparent section below the frame finishes the TV off nicely.

The TV can be mounted on a standard bracket or you can use the inbuilt stand. A small base plate is slipped on to the slopping DVD to make the bottom flat when using the stand. This keeps the TV looking neat when it is hung from a wall.

The viewing angle from left and right is good however, as usual; it’s not so good from below. The LU7000 isn’t full 1080P HD and isn’t 720P either it’s the rather unusual, for TV at least, 1360×768. It does produce some damn good pictures though.

Setup and Menus

As with almost all modern TVs the first time you switch it on it automatically scans for both analogue and digital TV channels including digital radio. All very simple and clear so far but how about the menus that are used to tweak the TV after initial setup?

I’m pleased to report that LG have used a very simple and clear icon based menu system allowing you to easily make adjustments to settings on the TV without the need to move closer. As always inputs can be labelled to make selecting the correct input a simple operation.

One pointer to the intended audience are the clock settings that allow you to specify an on and off time along with a channel and volume level making it the perfect alarm clock for the bedroom.

Integrated Freeview

The integrated Freeview picture quality obviously relies on the quality the channel transmits at. Overall the LG handles Freeview well and the resulting picture quality is bright and sharp with only the occasional artefact.

The EPG is clear and simple and the only real negative is the slight pause when you switch between channels. The LU7000 is not Freeview HD compatible but then there aren’t any other TVs out there at the moment that are either.

Integrated DVD

The integrated DVD player is built into the TV stand and has a novel sliding door mechanism rather than the more usual side mounted slot loader. DVDs are upscaled to 720P and look sharp, bright and vivid. The DVD player isn’t region free and despite searching I couldn’t find a hack to unlock it. Obviously I’ll update this post if I find one.

MP3s and JPGs are handled well although unfortunately DIVX and XVID videos can’t be played. Response and loading times are pleasingly fast and the DVD mechanism is very quiet in operation, you can hardly hear it even when the TV is on mute.

The blue lights around the disc flash on loading and ejecting but fortunately are left off during playback.

HDMI picture quality

The picture quality when using an HDMI source is simply gorgeous whether playing videos or gaming. For reference my source was an Xbox 360 and I couldn’t detect any obvious motion blur during games or video playback. The Xbox correctly identified the 1360×768 resolution of the TV. 

Sound

In common with most with most flat panel TVs there are no obvious speakers on the front and LG use Invisible Speaker technology to achieve this. Sound through the invisible speaker system is good without being great although it is a small TV so this is understandable and there’s an Optical Digital audio output if you want to connect to a more serious sound system.

ECO function

The remote has a dedicated ECO button that allows you to set the level of power saving from minimum through to screen off if you’re listening to music. Also available from the same button are picture mode, sound mode, audio mode, aspect ratio, sleep timer and USB eject as appropriate to the input you’re viewing.

Connections

The LU7000 sports a plethora of connections which is especially impressive considering it’s a relatively small TV. 

Rear connections

• 1 x RGB in PC plug and play.
• 1 x Audio in (for RGB in).
• 2 x HDMI
• 2 x Scart (1 full)
• 1 x Component
• 1 x Composite
• 1 x Optical Digital Audio output.
• 1 x RF Antenna In.

Side connections

• 1 x USB 2.0.
• 1 x CI slot.
• 1 x 3.5mm Headphone socket.

The connections make this an ideal student TV as it can be used as a PC monitor, Freeview TV and games console screen with inputs to spare. When using the screen as a PC monitor the resolution is detected correctly and results in a very usable PC display.

Pros

• Integrated DVD.
• Stylish looks.
• Connectivity.
• USB input.
• Front loading DVD is neat and saves scrabbling around the side for the more usual slot loader.
• Nice remote.

Cons

• No DIVX/XVID from the USB or DVD.
• Slight pause before a Freeview channel is displayed when stepping through channels.

Conclusion

The LG LU7000 LCD TV is a very competent all rounder with excellent connectivity for digital and legacy equipment making it the ideal student TV. It’s also well suited to smaller rooms such as kitchens and bedrooms.

On the negative side it’s a shame that it doesn’t handle DIVX or XVID files like the LG TVs launched at the same time as the LU7000. It is rather a lot to expect from a TV of this size and price though.

All in all if you’re after a TV in the 19 to 22” size range then you should take a serious look at the LU7000. Expect to pay around £300 for the 22” and a little less for the 19” version. 

SPEC

• Size 19 and 22” widescreen (16:9).
• Built-in DVD player.
• Invisible speakers, 10W.
• 1360×768.
• HD ready.
• Digital Audio Out.
• SRS TruSurround XT.
• Freeview.
• USB 2.0 (JPEG/MP3 Playback).
• Energy Saving Recommended.

Back in August we reported on the new Sony TX1 digital camera and its innovative add-on, the party shot base.

We’ve now had a week to run both devices through their paces so read on to see what we thought.

Specifications

The Sony TX1 is a compact 10.2 megapixel camera with a large screen and no optical viewfinder. The headline specifications are:

• 10.2 Megapixel “Exmoor R” CMOS sensor
• 4x optical zoom
• 3” touchscreen
• 10fps maximum shooting speed (burst for 10 shots)
• Optical image stabilisation
• “Sweep panorama” mode
• 720p HD Movie mode

Apart from the expected battery charger and USB cable Sony also include a wrist lanyard, TV connection cable and CD with PDF manual in the box.

In use

The lens of the TX1 is covered by a sliding door – opening this turns the camera on and gets it ready to shoot. The whole camera has a solid, well built feel about it and the smooth sliding action on the lens cover reinforces that.

All camera operations are controlled via menus presented on the 3” touchscreen. There are a variety of manual options possible, for example you can set the ISO and shooting parameters or tap the screen to select a focus point. In practice though the most useful setting is the “Intelligent Picture” mode which is what I left it on for the majority of the review.

This fully automatic mode is very impressive. The TX1 analyses the scene in front of it and selects one of its built in shooting programs, which it displays on the screen so you can see what’s going on. Wave it around outdoors and “Landscape” is chosen, move to a dimly lit building and you see “Twilight” mode selected. All very painless.

Optical image stabilisation works as advertised and you can choose whether to have it active all the time, or only as a photograph is taken. Having it active all the time means you get a steadier image on screen as you frame a shot but it does impact battery life. I’d leave it on because it does make a dramatic difference when zoomed in – if it worries you, you can always carry a spare battery.

The “Sweep Panorama” mode also seems to work well – you just press the shutter and turn around in a circle until the camera stops taking shots. A couple of seconds later you have a seamless panorama in your photo collection. It certainly beats spending hours stitching photos together with Hugin!

The photo on the right attempts to give a sense of scale by showing the camera against an Apple remote. It also shows the battery/memory stick door and tripod socket – an unexpected bonus and handy if you have a GorillaPod or other small travel tripod.

Picture Quality

Subjectively, picture quality is very good from what I could tell and the camera does better than most at low light/high ISO settings. Unfortunately mother nature conspired to make it difficult for me to get out and take any photos during my testing period so the gallery is a little bare – I did get a representative sample of the panorama mode though. I can’t spot the join!

Party-shot base

Available as an optional extra, the Party Shot base is a robotic moving platform that enables the camera to spin and tilt, taking photographs automatically.

When plugged into the base the camera enters a fully automatic mode using its built in smile and face detection features to scan the room looking for pictures of happy, grinning people. When it finds one it takes a photo.

You can control the degree of freedom that the base has to rotate (90, 180 or 360 degrees) so you can put it in a corner and not have it take photos of the wall. You can also choose how often it takes photos and one of 3 different criteria to determine how “smiling” people should be before they’re included. Its all fully automatic so you can just turn it on and walk away.

That’s the idea anyway. In practice I found a few hiccups – firstly, it seemed to have problems recognising people wearing glasses. Given that 4 out of the 6 people in my sample group had glasses on it meant that the camera seemed to single out 2 people obsessively and keep them in the frame! Not always admittedly, but it certainly seemed to have a preference for the naked face.

Secondly the position of the party shot in the middle of a table made for some unflattering photos – the camera is effectively looking up peoples’ noses!

To be fair the party-shot has a tripod screw thread in its base so you do have a lot of freedom in where you position it – a table top tripod would probably have made things look a lot different.

I’d say it works as advertised if you have a need for that sort of thing (I can imagine it being a fun addition to the table cameras at weddings) but in practice it would be hard to find a use for it in everyday life. 

Conclusion

I liked the TX1 – the small size and good automatic mode means it’s easy to just drop it in your pocket and take out for quick photos without thinking about settings. At an RRP of £299, Sony aren’t giving it away though and you’re undoubtedly paying a premium for the technology.

That said, the TX1 does its job well so if you want a stylish, pocket friendly digital camera with a good range of features you should put it on the shortlist.

We recently got our hands on one of LG’s first Windows Mobile phones (in the UK anyway) in the form of the Vodafone exclusive GM750. Read on for the full review…

Overview

The GM750 is a mid-range smartphone with a 240×400 pixel resistive touch screen. It’s shown here with an Apple remote to give some sense of scale.

In the box you get a UK power adapter, telescoping stylus and earbud/headset.

The headline specifications are:

• Windows Mobile 6.5
• 240×400 screen
• 5 Megapixel camera
• MicroSD expansion
• 256MB on board memory
• A-GPS
• Video calling
• Bluetooth/Wifi/3G/HSDPA

In use

LG have skinned Windows Mobile with an approximation of the  “S-class” UI found on their other phones. I’m in two minds about this skin – there are elements of it I like (such as the home screen) but on the whole I think I prefer the bare bones Windows Mobile look and feel. Luckily you get the choice so swapping between them is a matter of flipping an option in the settings screen.

There are dedicated buttons for call start and end, volume and camera as well as one to bring up the task manager screen. The Camera and task manager buttons can be reassigned to other tasks if you prefer.

The 256MB on board RAM can be supplemented by a MicroSD card which is accessible without pulling the phone apart – handy for quick access to photos and mp3s.

The center “button” on the face of the phone can be configured to act as a rather neat optical mouse or a 4 way “D-pad” (operated by swiping your thumb in the appropriate direction). I liked the D-pad option, it worked well and to a certain extent overcomes some of the limitations of the resistive screen.

The touch experience

LG make some superb capacitive touchscreens but sadly the one on the GM750 is a rather basic resistive model. It’s not the most sensitive of screens – it seems to respond well to the included stylus but finger (or fingernail) taps often don’t register.

That’s a shame as the design of the phone means there’s nowhere to store the stylus so you may well find yourself relying on fingers. The stylus is quite a chunky affair and while the size makes it quite comfortable to hold, it also makes it impossible to fit into the phone (or any phone come to think of it).

There is an on-screen QWERTY keyboard available if you want it – I’m not a fan of touchscreen keyboards in general but the GM750 does give you the option of using a “phone keypad” style interface with T9 which works well for all text input except URLs.

Extras

The phone includes tilt sensors which certain applications (Internet Explorer being the obvious one) use to automatically adjust their layout when you turn it sideways. It also has an onboard GPS which seems responsive and accurate.

You can use the phone as a bluetooth modem to a laptop – a nice bluetooth interface makes this fairly intuitive to set up.

Outlook contacts and calendar appointments sync up quite happily and you can download applications from the marketplace. In short, you get the full Windows Mobile experience.

WinMo is taking a beating in the popularity stakes at the moment with competition from Apple and Android but I have to admit to liking it – given that I use a Windows PC, the integration with the phone works for me.

Conclusion

The GM750 is a light, pocketable Windows Mobile phone which doesn’t have much direct competition. It’s free on a £25 contract with Vodafone at the time of writing which, for a decent WinMo smartphone, is pretty cheap.

The new LG GW 520 touch screen phone arrived for review a few weeks ago. First impressions are good and the neat slide out QWERTY keyboard feels very solid and doesn’t wobble once exposed.

LG are aiming their new phone at social networking types in much the same way as Vodafone are with the 360 Samsung H1. The GW520 packs LGs LiveSquare visual alert system which displays the contacts you actually interact with as characters on your home screen allowing you to quickly call or text them.

So how does it feel after a month of use?

Touch screen and User Interface

The 2.8” touch screen is very bright and clear but feels quite clumsy in use in that you sometimes need to prod it a couple of times before getting the desired result. LG do include screen calibration from the phone setting options and although this improves things when you’re trying to open the useful shortcuts menu it can take a number of stabs to persuade it to open.

LG are using a simplified interface on this new slider and I have to say it isn’t quite as slick as the S-Class interface found on the Arena and Chocolate. You move between the widget and LiveSquare screens by swiping a finger to the left or right on either screen.

LG supply a number of useful widgets including the usual clock, calendar, weather, music player, etc. In line with the current fashion a FaceBook widget is also included that opens up the supplied FaceBook app. The 520 also supports a Push Email app that can be started from the strangely named “Good” widget.

LiveSquare

I’m not quite convinced by the LiveSquare visual alerts. On one hand it populates your home screen with all the contacts you actually interact with which is arguably better than pre-selecting your favourite contacts but on the other hand it insists on displaying them as cutesy animals or cartoon like people. The more you interact with a contact the more extras they get. What they get depends on whether you choose the Park or Zoo theme. These themes seem to be aimed at the teen market as the over twenties I let loose on the phone found them a just little too cutesy for their taste.

Touching a contact on LiveSquare selects it and starts the shortcut buttons at the bottom of the screen vibrating showing you what actions are possible with the contact. Typically you can call, look up or text the contact by touching the appropriate vibrating shortcut. Selecting multiple contacts allows you to send the same text to all of them without selecting each contact separately.

LiveSquare is very nearly there and with a more grown up theme it would be a very useful speed dial type feature although I think we could safely loose the; Zebra, Anteater, Giraffe, Duck and Bluebird.

Social Networking and Messaging

The FaceBook application is very neat if a little small to comfortably use with fingers. Of course being a resistive screen means that you have the option of using some form of stylus for better accuracy. A standard plastic pen lid works just fine if you don’t want to buy one.

Although the screen size means that the FaceBook app is not ideal it does suffice if you’re on the move and without access to a netbook or PC. One notable deficiency is the ability to upload photos, however as there’s no Wi-Fi on the GW520 it will at least help keep your data charges down.

The 520 packs both normal email and push email meaning you never need to be out of touch. Email setup is extremely simple with; Hotmail, Google Mail, Yahoo, AOL and generic Internet email setups options available. The push email application works well and new messages appear in your inbox within a minute or so of being sent.

Multimedia

Music playback is hindered somewhat by the combination of cheap packaged headphones and a proprietary connector. I know a single connector for charging, syncing, listening and speaking is cheaper and I know you can buy a cheap headphone adaptor and use your own buds but I just miss just being able to plug in standard headphones.

The audio player does a good job with your music and has all the usual functions we’ve come to expect. The built in speaker’s nothing to write home about musically but it’s quite loud and more than adequate for speakerphone calls.

The screen’s bright and clear and perfect for watching video clips on. It is, however, a little small for comfortably watching movies on.

Camera and Video

The 3 mega pixel camera has no flash or autofocus and so is of limited use indoors but used outside and at a distance it produces reasonable quality photos.

The video camera is similar to the camera giving reasonable outdoor shots but not really suited to indoor or badly lit situations.

Battery Life

With light to medium phone use you’ll need to charge the 520s standard 950mAh battery every three or four days. This is with practically no video usage and minimal time with Bluetooth turned on. Either of these would seriously reduce the battery life.

Conclusion

I have to say that using the LG GW520 has been somewhat of a mixed bag. On the plus side the LG is a well built touch screen phone with some nice UI ideas and a good sized slide out keyboard. It’s a solid workman like phone and should last well.

On the negative side it’s let down by the cutesy LiveSquare interface, fiddly resistive touch screen and a proprietary headphone jack. For some reason the screen seems to be more of a fingerprint magnet than usual.

Available from the Carphone Warehouse, T-Mobile, Three and Orange from free on contract and as little as £130 for PAYG.

Update: Three are currently selling the GW520 in a Christmas Special promotion for just £99.99 which includes free Skype to Skype calls and Windows Live Messenger.

Pros

• LiveSquare is nice idea although it’s a bit too cutesy for grown ups in its present form.
• The slide out keyboard is good and very comfortable to use.
• Feels solid and well made.
• External Micro SD slot.
• FaceBook app.
• Threaded messaging.

Cons

• No 3.5mm jack.
• Low quality headphones.
• No Wi-Fi.
• The touch screen lacks accuracy when using your finger but is better with a stylus.
• No Flash or autofocus limits the usefulness of the camera.

Specification:

• 2.8” touch screen 240×400 262K, TFT resistive with Haptic feedback.
• Dimension: L x W x D (mm) 106.9 x 53 x 15.9
• Slide out QWERTY keyboard.
• 3 Mega pixel camera.
• Video camera.
• Weight with Standard Battery 125.5g
• Battery: Li-Ion, 950mAh
• Standby Time: up to 500 hours
• Talk Time: up to 4.5 hours
• 3G: HSDPA 7.2
• Bluetooth : V2.0 with A2DP
• USB.
• Internal Memory: up to 40MB
• External Memory: Micro SD (up to 8GB)
• Threaded text messaging.
• Email and Push Email.
• LiveSquare visual alerts
• Java (MIDP 2.1)
• FM Radio
• MP3 player
• Internet Browser.
• Document Viewer

Sony are bringing back the “Walkman” brand quite aggressively with various new models at different price points and capabilities. Today we take a look at one of the entry level models, the Walkman B series.

Features and design

Specifications:

• Width (mm): 86
• Height (mm): 23.6
• Depth (mm): 14.5
• Battery life – continuous playback music (h): 18
• Charging time (full charge) (h): 1h 10 min
• Available sizes – 2GB and 4GB

The B series has a simple design, incorporating a 3 line display that shows current track information and allows navigation of the menus (just). Physical buttons are provided for recording, volume and track navigation – for anything more complex than that you’re into the control menus.

In common with most players you get functions to repeat the track or playlist as well as a shuffle option. An FM radio is included and you also get a recording function which can record both voice and radio content.

Voice recordings don’t need a separate microphone or specialised headphones; the device itself has a built in mic which seems to work well for recording simple memos.

There’s also a “zap” button which runs through your playlist, diving into the middle of each song to play you a few seconds of it before moving on to the next. A second press of the button starts playing the selected track properly. It’s a convenient way of navigating through an album or shuffled playlist without resorting to the sometimes fiddly display, but I could have done without the chirpy “Zappin’ in!” and “Zappin’ Out!” voice on each button press.

In use

In common with the X series walkman we previously looked at, connectivity is a breeze. The B series plugs directly into a USB port and is recognised by Windows as a music player. It synchronises with Windows media player if that’s what you want, or you can just treat it like a USB stick and drag MP3s directly onto it.

The compact dimensions of the player lead to a necessarily small screen, which in turn means navigating the menus can be fiddly. Everything is fairly logically laid out so there’s no problem finding anything but you’ll probably want to set up some playlists or browse your music via album/artist/genre as navigating a single folder with several hundred tracks in it takes some button pressing!

Sound quality

The B series is a budget model so the included headphones are fairly basic and you don’t get the electronic enhancements of the more expensive X series. That said, you do get a 5 band equalizer to tune the sound to your taste and with some decent earbuds it sounds fine.

Conclusion

At the £30-£40 price point Sony have some competition from other devices on features but the compact styling and ease of use of the B series makes it stand out.

The LG BL-40 Chocolate has caused quite a buzz with it’s sleek lines and widescreen form factor. I’ve been using one for a week now so it’s time to give some thoughts…

If you’ve not already seen them, take a look at the unboxing photos. The first impression you get is one of quality – the red top and bottom contrast nicely with the high gloss black finish and the scratch resistant glass screen finishes the package nicely.

In terms of usability the capacitive multi touch screen offers a smooth and generally responsive feel. The widescreen form factor of the phone is a mixed blessing. Yes, videos look great and handholding it in landscape becomes easier, so typing messages using the on screen QWERTY keyboard is pretty simple. On the downside you’ll be conscious of it in your pocket – on more than one occasion I felt like I was going to snap it in half when I sat down (it did survive though)

In the box

As you can see, you get all the essentials in the box – USB cable, earbuds with microphone and the installation CD for the sync software. Also included (but not pictured) is a mains charger.

As a multimedia device

MicroSDHC compatibility let me test music and video playback easily by copying a random assortment of files to the card and seeing what the phone did with them.

The Chocolate handles MP3 playback well, dealing with my standard mixed bag of tracks at various bitrates from 128kbps up to 320kbps. Sound quality seemed good – at least on a par with everybody’s favourite MP3 player – and it drove my crazy big Sony headphones through the standard 3.5mm jack with plenty of volume and no distortion.

Video wise the phone will playback MP4 and DivX files. The 800×345 resolution screen is an odd “extra-widescreen” format but in common with most of LG’s recent high-end phones it looks pin sharp and vibrant so no complaints there.

Testing a few different video formats I found that the DivX AVI files played back fine while the high definition .MKV files weren’t recognised. (No great surprise there to be honest but it was worth a try). Surprisingly .MPG files also didn’t play – granted they’re not really common any more but you do still find them.

The Chocolate comes with “Dolby Mobile” – an audio processing engine that in theory compensates for substandard headphones and makes music and videos sound better. It does do a surprisingly good job with the built in speaker – if you find yourself watching videos on the phone then the Dolby mobile processing will come in handy.

You won’t like what it does to the sound on decent headphones but still, it’s nice to have the choice.

FM Transmitter

The phone includes an FM transmitter to send MP3’s to the car stereo. That works well and is capable of delivering clear and clean (albeit low volume) sound in areas where the radio spectrum is empty. If you’re in an area with a lot of radio stations then finding a spare channel could be a problem; the transmitter doesn’t have the power to punch through the commercial radio stations on either side of the selected frequency so the sound can be intermittent and full of interference.

I don’t think the BL-40’s FM transmitter is much worse than any other in that respect so I’ll just say it works as well as can be expected, subject to the environment.

Software

Getting videos and music onto the phone can be done in one of two ways – either copy them directly onto an SDHC card or use the included software.

The LG sync software is, for the most part, friendly and easy to get to grips with. It will sync your contacts and calendar from Outlook or from its own contact/calendar interface.

One thing that I found annoying was that the phone treats “music” and “everything else” as two distinctly different things. When you plug the phone in to the computer, it asks you what you want to do with it. You can use it as a USB storage device to drag and drop files to the SDHC card, you can transfer contacts or you can sync music. While you’re in the “music” mode you can’t transfer contacts or video. Likewise, when you’re in any other mode you can’t transfer music.

The Music mode does allow synchronisation with Windows media player libraries but it’s still a pain to treat separately.

There’s also fun with videos. The LG software will convert existing video files from various formats to play on the phone, but it’s a lengthy process. The end quality is fine but waiting 30+ minutes for a file to copy is just painful.

Both the music and video hassle can be bypassed by just using the phone in “storage” mode, treating it as a drive and dragging your content onto it from Windows. You don’t get any video conversion or automatic music synchronisation with your existing library, but it’s a *lot* less pain.

As a phone

Yes, people still do use mobile phones to make phone calls! The LG fares well in that regard with logical and simple contact/keypad/text functions. They’re all pretty standard implementations of the “S-class” user interface concept debuted on the Arena, so I won’t go into any real detail.

The only difference is that in some of the applications the extra-widescreen form factor is used to present a “split screen” view in landscape mode, allowing more to be shown. The messaging application benefits particularly from this.

The rest

You get a 5MP camera with LED flash which has face detection, geo-tagging using the on board GPS and various special effects. The chocolate also shoots video and a front facing camera allows for video calls.

Conclusion

What’s not to like? It looks slick, has a great screen and does a good job with multimedia. For web browsing the more standard 800×480 screen on competing devices offers more viewable area, but for videos and texting the “mars bar” shape of the Chocolate works well.

Check the ergonomics before buying (i.e make sure it fits in your pocket) and ditch the supplied software for transferring music and video. Other than that, add it to the shortlist.

I’ve been using this unique combined power strip and powerline HD adapter for some time now so it’s about due a review. Read on to get the low-down…

What is powerline?

Many readers will already know what Powerline is all about (in which case, you can skip this bit) but if you don’t: Powerline is a way of using the existing mains cables in your walls to make a network. You just need two free plug sockets – plug an adapter into each one and voila – network!

Unlike wireless, thick walls and long ranges are no impediment to powerline transmission and as far as the PC is concerned, the adapters are just standard Ethernet ports.

The standard for powerline is called “Homeplug” and it comes in different flavours – effectively high speed and low speed. The high speed version is branded as “Powerline HD” and this is what I’ve been testing.

What’s unique about the Piggy6?

Because it uses your house ring main to transmit networking traffic, powerline equipment needs to be plugged directly into a socket for maximum effect. Plugging a powerline adapter into a power strip (especially a surge protected one) will reduce the speed you can achieve. That means you effectively lose a plug socket to the powerline adapter.

The Solwise adapter I’ve been using incorporates its own surge suppressor and 6 way power strip, as well as a 3 port Ethernet hub. This means that a) you don’t lose a plug socket to the adapter and b) you can hang up to 3 computers off the back of it.

Design

OK, so it’s looks like something out of Space Invaders. I don’t think it will be winning any design awards. There’s an upside though – the placement of the plug sockets around the top of the unit means that each one can accommodate a chunky power adapter without interfering with it’s neighbour. That makes all 6 sockets usable, unlike some traditional 6 way power strips.

Installation

If only all PC hardware was this simple. Installation consists of plugging it in. And that’s it  – things get marginally more complicated if you want to encrypt your transmissions (just in case your neighbour shares the same ring) but at a basic level there really is nothing to it.

As an aside, the adapter at the other end of the link doesn’t need to be the same brand – any devices supporting the “Powerline HD” standard should talk to each other quite happily.

Performance and conclusion

Powerline HD promises up to 200mbps. That’s twice as fast as standard “fast” Ethernet and 20 times faster than your broadband. In theory.

In practice, just as with WiFi any number of things can influence this speed. In tests I’ve received between 50 and 80mbps from this adapter. That may sound way short of the theoretical maximum but it also beats the pants off 54g WiFi in the same situation (which gets slightly less than half that speed, about 20mbps)

Meaningless bandwidth testing numbers aside, the reality is that I can stream stutter-free HD video from one side of the house to the other using this setup and I can’t with Wifi.

Overall I’m happy with the technology and I’d recommend this adapter to anyone looking for a hassle free networking solution.

You can find it on BroadbandBuyer for a shade over £60.

So if you’re looking for a relatively cheap joystick to get the most out of your flight sim of choice the Saitek Aviator (or AV8R) is a good place to start.

The Aviator is unique amongst PC joysticks in that it has two throttle controls which can be independently assigned. You also get the usual twist rudder axis and 12 programmable buttons.

Ergonomics

The joystick action is smooth and provides enough resistance to give you some idea of where you are in the motion range. Inputs don’t spike and the throttles are well damped so fine adjustments are possible.

The second throttle axis doesn’t have to be used to control engines either – I find that mapping it to elevator trim makes long flights a lot more manageable.

Programming

The Aviator is programmable via the Saitek SST software (pictured). This software essentially redirects button presses of the joystick to emulate keyboard and mouse strokes, meaning you can assign long complicated keyboard sequences (“Switch radar mode and select weapon” for example) to a single button press. You don’t need to use it if you prefer to set up your joystick via the in-game menus, but it’s nice to have the option.

The software is quite intuitive, making what can be a fairly complex task quite simple.

The large red control at the back of the stick actually switches the joystick into one of three user programmable modes – in this way each button can have three different functions, depending on the position of the switch. Typically I’d have one position for general flight and takeoff/landing and use the others for special scenarios such as combat.

Conclusion

For £20 online you can’t go far wrong, take a look at this if you like (or like the idea of) flight games.

Some of us can remember the original Sony Walkman – a revolution in it’s day but the world has moved on since then and Sony were slow to jump on the MP3 bandwagon, letting a certain Cupertino based company steal the show.

The “Walkman” brand has been used on various devices since then (most commonly phones) but the new X series marks Sony’s most recent attempt to get back into the portable music player business. Read on to see what we think…

Specifications

• Dimensions (W x H x D):Approx. 52.5 x 97.4 x 10.5 mm
• Weight: Approx. 98g
• Audio Formats: MP3, WMA, MP4, 3GP, WAV
• Video Formats: H.264, MPEG-4,
• Wifi Security: WEP/WPA/WPA2
• Built in FM radio

Construction

The first thing that hits you when you power the X series on is how bright and punchy the screen is. It’s a 3” capacitive OLED touch screen with 430×240 resolution that looks sharp and incredibly vivid.

The casing has a textured, slightly marbled effect that will hide scratches well and the screen is quite sensitive. It is a fingerprint magnet though – I suggest keeping a cleaning cloth handy!

The X series is a flash based player (so no hard drives to worry about) and it’s available in 16GB and 32GB capacities.

Software

There’s good and bad news to report here. I only had a Windows 7 PC available to test the Walkman with and the installer for the PC software crashed every time I tried to run it. Because of that I can’t report on the quality of the supplied applications as I never got a chance to run them.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that Windows 7 picked up the Walkman, identified it, found drivers from who knows where and showed it as a device in Windows media player. All very painless – a pleasant change.

Another plus is that it shows as a hard drive in windows explorer so you get a choice of management styles – you can drag and drop MP3’s straight onto the device if you want to, or you can use Windows media player to set up playlists and manage cover art etc.

Usability

Sony get major bonus points for shipping good earbuds with the X series. They’re comfortable to wear and give a very good sound. It’s always problematic describing sound quality as everybody has different expectations so the best thing I can say is that the standard Apple buds made me want to go out and replace them immediately, whereas I can listen to the Sony ones happily.

Another nice feature is noise cancelling. The supplied buds provide a fair bit of isolation, but the walkman can also apply noise cancelling on top of that to silence those annoying co-workers / bus passengers.

It’s not all gravy though – noise cancelling only works with the supplied headphones. Replace them with standard ones and the feature disables itself.

[Edit – Sony have supplied some more information on the noise cancelling – click on the image to expand…]

The touch screen UI works well and is intuitive enough that I didn’t need to resort to the manual during the testing period. Everything fades and glides smoothly in and out making for a very fluid experience.

The sound quality of the walkman is generally very good. You get a lot of control over sound with a programmable equaliser and various enhancing / processing options designed to reverse the worst effects of MP3 compression. It seems to like the supplied headphones better than my beats – I got some odd hissing / interference with the beats at times but with the supplied headphones it was fine.

[Edit – That may not be fair; I think my beats were on the way out anyway and I’ve recently replaced them]

There’s an FM radio (remember those?) built in, accessed by a button on the home screen. What more to say – it works, although it would have been nice to see RDS; having gotten used to that in the car I’ve pretty much forgotten any radio frequencies I knew…

Internet

The X series has Wifi built in, allowing it to connect to the internet. You get a web browser which works well enough as long as you have bookmarks but entering any URLs is a pain on the touch screen – combine that with the limited resolution and I couldn’t see myself using it much.

One unexpected feature is the YouTube link – the UI has an option to search for “related links” on any given song. This will give you other similar tracks in your library and a big “You Tube” button. Following the YouTube link connects you to the net and lets you stream related music videos. It’s a nice touch and works quite well.

Conclusion

The obvious and somewhat inevitable comparison is to the iPod touch but I’m not sure that’s fair. Sony have no app store (or dedicated and loyal fanbase) to expand the functionality of the device and on that basis alone the touch will always win out.

That said, the X series acquits itself very nicely as a music player – it sounds great and is up there with the best of them in terms of style and UI. If you must have an Apple comparison it’s probably fairer to compare it to an iPod Nano: size wise the Sony sits between the Nano and Touch and offers a good range of music features with some additional connectivity and a slick touch screen interface.

If you’re interested in a decent music player and not too worried about the fart app, you should take a look at the X series. It’s available at Amazon from £175.

As regular readers will know I picked up an Arena at an LG event 5 weeks ago. First impressions were good but I promised to write a full review when I’d spent some time with the phone. I’ve used the Arena in place of my Sony Ericsson W980 and now it’s time to tell you what I think of it. This is one feature packed phone and so I’ll limit myself to talking about the highs and lows of the phone rather than get bogged down in too much detail. The full specification and feature list can be found here.

Touch screen and User Interface

The S-Class User Interface is one of the Arena’s major selling points but is it any good? LG have done a great job with the touch screen UI and it’s almost as precise and responsive as the iPod Touch which is high praise indeed. Yes the rotating cube is a bit gimmicky but it does at least give easy access to the four shortcut screens and can also be used to impress you mates down the pub.

The screen is bright and clear but in common with most colour screens it can be difficult to use in bright sunlight. Touch the status bar at the top of the phone screen and a neat shortcut menu drops down giving instant access to: Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Alarm, Music Player, Calendar items and Phone Profile functions.

The Haptic feedback level can be changed or turned off if you don’t like it. I wasn’t a fan at first but I’ve come to like the feedback it gives me.

The UI can occasionally slow down when pressed; for instance when displaying the Multimedia favourites screen. Actually I’m only talking around 6 seconds to display the screen but compared to the speed of the rest of the phone’s UI this feels sluggish. Perhaps this is why you’re limited to just 15 favourite songs and 15 favourite videos/pictures. Your 30 favourite contacts are listed in the order they were initially selected in rather than alphabetic as you might expect.

Messaging

SMS, MMS and Email messaging are all present on the LG as you’d expect. POP3, IMAP and Microsoft Exchange email are catered for. Push Email isn’t supported however so you’ll need to keep hold of your Blackberry for now at least.

Text entry is fast and responsive helped along by a dedicated key that switches text entry in and out of T9 mode. Turning the phone on its side changes the phone keypad into a QWERTY keyboard but unfortunately the keys are then a little small for my fingers making for unreliable text entry.

SMS messaging has a Threaded Inbox view which displays messages too and from a person as a thread. This is a very useful view and it’s a shame LG don’t include this same view for email as well.

Multimedia

Video picture quality is excellent on the bright 3” WVGA (480 x800) tempered glass screen making TV shows and films very watchable. LG supply a free copy of the Mobile DIVX Convertor software to make conversion of your favourite video quick and easy.

Dolby Mobile handles volume levelling automatically so you don’t have to constantly change the volume from track to track. Music and video sound quality from the Arena’s speakers is very good allowing you to inflict your playlist on people whenever you like. The in-ear headphones are also unusually good for a mobile and remind me of my CX-300’s.

When using the music player the display can be in landscape or portrait however the menu is only available in portrait mode and not landscape. When listening from the multimedia favourites the display can only be viewed in portrait mode and no menu is available. This inconsistency means I rarely use the Favourites screen to listen to music. There is a random play/shuffle function but as it’s hidden away under a submenu I didn’t find it until recently (who reads manuals anyway?) so I’ve not been using it.

Camera

The 5MP camera is just about OK in bright light but gives turgid results in low light conditions. The LED flash does nothing to help this situation and is next to useless. If you want a good LG camera phone then you’d be better off picking up the LG Renoir.

LG have implemented a DSLR style settings dial which is a bit of fun and allows you to change settings for both the still and video cameras. Pictures can be edited on the handset but as you have to use you finger on the touch interface this is never very precise. It is however a lot of fun allowing you to add effects, colours and text to your photos. Precision editing will need to be carried out on the PC though.

Video Camera

The video camera can shoot at half, full, double and quadruple speed giving you the opportunity to shoot some interesting footage. Again results are OK in bright light but very muddy in low light conditions. Beware though the zoom level can’t be changed once you start shooting so make sure it’s set correctly before you press the record button.

Phone Lock

The Arena’s dedicated call pick-up and end call buttons are unlocked when a call arrives and this makes it very easy to hit one and hang up on someone as you pull it out of your pocket. Also when an alarm goes off the phone screen unlocks itself leading to alarms accidentally being snoozed or turned off without you realising.

Battery Life

Battery life is reasonable although it obviously suffers when Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or video playback is used. When simply using the Arena as a phone I find myself charging it every third day as I do with my W980. This falls to every day and a half if Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are left on all the time. The battery meter is only made up of three blocks making it hard to judge how much battery life is remaining. Coupled with this that final block does seem to disappear in a big hurry.

To put the battery life into some perspective I’m a light to medium phone user. The standard battery is only 1000mAh and heavy users will wish LG had supplied a higher capacity battery.

Using video playback continuously will display the low battery warning in a little over 3 hours so you’d better keep a charger or spare battery around if you like to watch a lot of video content.

Conclusion

The Arena’s been in my pocket with no cover or screen protector for the entire period of the test and it still looks as good as new with no obvious blemishes or scratches. This bodes well for the longevity of the Arena.

The Arena isn’t perfect but it is a good solid multimedia phone that’ll keep you entertained on the commute and impress your mates in the pub. LG tell us that the Arena is targeted at that all important 16 to 24 age group. It certainly impressed the people in that age range that used the phone. The only negative comments were on the quality of the games that are shipped with it.

Pros

• · Stylish looks and good build quality.
• · Call and multimedia sound quality is very good through both the speakers and standard headphones.
• · The neat Shortcut menu means you can easily turn Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on and off at will and save that battery.
• · Good keypad for number and text entry.
• · 8 GB of built in memory expandable up to 32GB’s with a Micro SD card.
• · Video quality is top notch.
• · Slide cover over the PC/Charging port

Cons

• · The screen is difficult to see in full sunlight.
• · Weak vibration alert makes missed calls a possibility.
• · Phone lock can lead to lost calls and alarms.
• · Inconsistent UI in places.
• · Occasional lock-ups.
• · Very occasionally a DIVX fails to play but will then play on the second try.