Review Horizon

Nook Tablet is together with Kindle Fire one of the most eagerly awaited gadgets of the year. Barnes & Noble’s previous tablet, the Nook Color held an important record – the best selling tablet after Apple’s iPad and that is a not an easy feat considering how crowded the tablet market has become. It is obvious though that pricing correctly sells, and the original Nook Color was priced correctly, the HP Touchpad has been priced correctly ( ) during its fire sale and the current Nook Tablet is also priced correctly at $249. However, it is $50 more than Kindle Fire. Is it worth the extra money? How does it stand against its main competitor from Amazon? These are only some questions we’ll try to answer in this Nook Tablet Review. Read More…

We were fortunate enough to get on of the CoolerMaster’s best looking cases for a review – the CM Storm Trooper, a high grade full tower gaming case with an ambitious design and a price to match ($189.99 retail). On paper, CM Storm Trooper has everything a serious gamer would ever dream to have – a really spacious interior capable of accommodating 8 to 13 drives depending of the chosen configuration, an advanced cooling system, enough space for ATX XL size motherboards and the heftiest graphic cards available plus a well designed cable management system so everything looks nice and clean. Can it provide all it promises? Let’s get into some details in Review Horizon’s CoolerMaster CM Storm Trooper Review. Read More…

RAIDMAX has been on a roll recently launching a plethora of good looking cases on a budget (check our Raidmax Helios Review) and their latest addition, Seiran (MSRP $79.99) is even more ambitious than the other members of the family, at least in terms of specifications. Beside the good looks though, more important is the provided space, ventilation system, motherboard form factors that it can accommodate, overall sturdiness and the degree of finishing, etc. We’ll try to cover all these questions and more in our Raidmax Seiran Review and help you make an informed decision, so read along. Read More…

Kindle Fire was one of the most eagerly awaited gadgets for this year and Amazon certainly created a lot of noise around it, raising the expectations through the roof. While using the term iPad killer is really inappropriate after so many wannabees, most of the analysts expected Amazon to release a tablet significantly cheaper than iPad but capable to offer the same kind of synergy between various media services, eBooks and applications, Amazon being one of the very few companies that can rival Apple in such offerings.

Amazon Kindle Fire was released just a few days ago and the question hot on everybody’s lips is how and if it can compare with iPad, with other Android tablets and with the Nook Tablet, its main competitor. Nobody really doubts of Amazon capability of selling millions of Kindle Fires, but to be Read More…

Today’s computer run faster and faster and with the speed comes increased heat dissipation. The latest CPUs featuring 4, 6 or more cores are power hogs and, especially if you overclock them, the need to keep them happy and cool is stringent. Our latest review will get into details about one of the most popular CPU Coolers on the market today – the Hyper 212 Evo by Cooler Master.

Cooler Master is a name well known to the aftermarket connoisseurs earning numerous design awards for their products. One of their newest products, Hyper 212 Evo is part of the Cooler Master’s 212 series of CPU that have quite a history, with the first member of the family to surface about 4 years ago. While the initial design sporting heatpipes is still followed, the new Hyper 212 EVO model is quite improved in both cooling capabilities and mounting design. How does it perform in the real word? Let’s proceed with the review: Read More…

As I said in my previous article when I reviewed Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket, both me and my wife decided we need larger screens than the ones our current iPhone 4 smartphones have, we were eligible for an early upgrade offer from At&T and it really made no sense paying again for iPhone 4S upgrade over the iPhone 4, so we looked into AT&T’s new 4G LTE capable smartphones based on Android OS, especially since AT&T run a pretty cool promotion. We got to buy the HTC Vivid for only $99 and I choose the Galaxy S2 Skyrocket for myself, the HTC Vivid going to  my wife. We got to play with them for a couple of day and the experience is described in detail in this review. Beside references to the Galaxy Skyrocket, I’ll also compare HTC Vivid to my previous iPhone 4 so you can make an informed purchase decision overall.

In case you don’t know, HTC Vivid is one of the two LTE sets AT&T  just launched. LTE is the new 4G communication standard AT&T is upgrading its network to, it stands for Long Term Evolution. With the current technology LTE should achieve download speeds of 20+Mbs, enough for pretty much everything including 1080p streaming. LTE sets owners report download speeds in excess to 50 Mbs / second, a quite impressive jump over the 3G technology and while LTE is not yet deployed in all AT&T markets, in the areas the technology is deployed you should be in for a treat.

The latest LTE sets should also help position AT&T as a solid Android provider considering that iPhone exclusivity for so many years helped it build a somewhat opposite image. Will they succeed? I guess time will tell.

HTC Vivid Unpacking

It looks like AT&T decided to customize the boxes to look more AT&T-ish than anything else, in an obvious effort to set their brand. The boxes Read More…

After about 4 years (and 3 generations) of Apple phones, I decided it is time for a change. Not because I don’t love my iPhone 4, but because I realize how much better I would like a larger screen. For some reason AT&T website showed us that we qualify for an early upgrade so I also talked with my wife and we decided to give it a try and to replace our iPhone 4 devices with a Samsung Galaxy S2 Skyrocket for me, respectively a HTC Vivid for her. We had a couple of days to play with them and the first impressions (as well as the inevitable comparison with Apple iPhone 4) are detailed in this Samsung Galaxy S2 Skyrocket Review.

A little bit of introduction is in order: Samsung Galaxy S2 Skyrocket (code name SGH-i727) is one of the two LTE sets AT&T  just launched. LTE is the new 4G communication standard AT&T is upgrading its network to, it stands for Long Term Evolution. With the current technology LTE should achieve download speeds of 20+Mbs, enough for pretty much everything including 1080p streaming.

The other AT&T LTE set is built by HTC and called HTC Vision. Throughout this review we’ll compare Samsung Galaxy S2 Skyrocket to HTC Vision, and to iPhone 4 as well to help you make an informed decision. We also reviewed it, so you can read our AT&T HTC Vivid Review for a comparison.

Samsung Galaxy S2 Skyrocket Unpacking Read More…

As the number of mobile devices in our house increased, our reliance on them also increased. Both me and my wife barely touch our PCs anymore (maybe when we do a quick Age of Empires III showdown on our home network, but with two kids, those days are fewer and long in between).

Our family also cut the cable cord quite a while ago, when the Dish Network wanted to increase our bill yet again. While we don’t have a full fledged cable subscription anymore, having Internet service from Time Warner comes with some perks, most notable the free included digital local channels (clear QAM), PBS and a bunch of other free channels as well including NBC sports.As part of my TV watching setup, I am using my Windows Media Center 7 as a local DVR, a number of XBOX 360 consoles as DVR clients to access the live/recorded TV around the house and the only thing missing would be the access of the same channels live and mobile, both from around the house and during my daily 1.5 hours train commute, via my tablet/smartphone over a 3G connections. What to do?

Well, let me tell you I have long searched for a cheap/good software only streaming solution since I already have my MCE server chugging quietly 24/7. I tried ORB and several other solutions that claim to be able to stream Live TV over the internet, but all the solutions found share one major caveat – they don’t work with digital TV tuners. Why? I have no idea, but that’s the way it is. I started to look around and the only reasonable priced solution came from Sling Media (now belonging to Dish Network) and their Slingbox Pro-HD SB300-100, their only model with an embedded ATSC/NTSC/QAM tuner. I built an entire ecosystem around it, streaming to PC, notebooks, iPhone / iPad / Nook Color / HP TouchPad running Android CM7, HTC Vivid and Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket both on my home network and away, and the result of this comprehensive experience is detailed in this review.

1. Slingbox Pro-HD box content

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Introduction

With the introduction of its innovative motion controller, Nintendo Wii changed forever the way we interact with our games (until the launch of Kinect, that is). It didn’t took that long until accessories producers copied the concept hoping to also copy the success Nintendo had. Probably the most well known PC motion sensor controller is the Genius Wizard Stick manufactured by Genius and based on the AIWI software platform, controller that makes the object of today’s review.

Unpacking

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Introduction

Once reserved only for deluxe rigs, fancy cases are now in the price range of everybody that intends to build their own system. We were recently provided with one of RAIDMAX latest gaming computer chassis, the attractive Helios and soon proceeded to install some hardware in it, put it to work for several days at heavy load without interruption and the experience and the results are described in this Raidmax Helios review. let us know what you think of it and, if you have any specific questions, we’ll be more than happy to answer them! Read More…