Bose Wave Music System III
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A premium CD player & radio that finds the competition tough.
- By Gordon Kelly (for TrustedReviews)
- Reviewed 17 May 2012
Price as reviewed £599.95
Overall 6/10
Key Features
- Bose Waveguide speaker technology
- CD player & DAB radio
- Sleep alarm
- BoseLink adds peripherals
Bose product refreshes are rare and for that reason alone the ‘Wave Music System III’ arrives with a significant amount of buzz and media attention. Its modus operandi: a one piece system to play your CDs, the radio and wake you up in the morning… for £600. For most companies this feature/price ratio would be unworkable, but Bose has built its reputation on attracting those who want the very best and are prepared to pay for it. So does the Wave Music System III still have a place in the Android/iOS centric world of today?
Certainly Bose knows how to make an entrance. The Wave Music System III is beautifully packed and at just 369 x 219 x 106mm and 3.9Kg it is compact. Being a stickler for its own tradition (the Wave range has been around since 2004) the design hasn’t changed from its predecessor. This is both good and bad. The Wave line’s looks are iconic amongst Bose fans (if reminiscent of a blend of school projector and laser printer), but the 100 per cent plastic construction could do with the addition of more premium materials in this era of designer docks.
There is also little change at the rear with virtually identical connectivity: an FM antenna, auxiliary and headphone inputs and a BoseLink connector. The notable addition this time around is that of a DAB tuner and accompanying antenna while Bose also claims to have improved the quality of the FM/AM tuner. The proprietary BoseLink is where additional functionality is added with the ‘Wave Bluetooth’ (£130), ‘Wave Connect Kit’ (£130) and ‘Wave Multi-CD Changer’ (£300) adding Bluetooth streaming, an iPod/iPhone dock and a three CD multi-changer respectively.
This is a sample. Read the rest of the review here.
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Cloud Storage Group Test
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Dropbox isn’t the only option anymore, but is it still the best?
- Written by Gordon Kelly (for ITProPortal)
- 04 May, 2012
Introduction
If you didn’t know much about Cloud storage, then the media storm surrounding the launch of Google Drive would suggest you are now well aware of the concept. What you may not realise is that Google Drive arrives late into a crowded market and with many key features missing. So which Cloud storage service should you actually use?
The reigning king is Dropbox, a service whose rise we covered just last month. Dropbox has been on the market since 2008 and attained more than 50m users. Its key is both its simplicity and ubiquity with it appearing on every major operating system: computer, smartphone and tablet. Google clearly thinks it can challenge Dropbox though and it is not alone. Microsoft’s SkyDrive service offers similar functionality and was actually first on the scene launching in 2007. At the opposite end of the scale we have iCloud, Apple’s Cloud storage and backup system for Mac OS X and iOS devices which was released only in October last year.
The sector is not limited to rivals from mega corporations either. Independent company SugarSync has been around for as long as Dropbox and gained numerous fans for its comprehensive functionality. Meanwhile security specialist Trend Micro has managed to win hearts and minds honing its security expertise with potent underdog ‘SafeSync’.
Which to choose can therefore be a matter of personal requirements, but we have found some universal elements to help make your decision that little bit easier:
Capacity - as the saying goes, size matters so how much storage is available on each platform and what are the limits on individual file sizes, if any?
Functionality - what can each Cloud service do beyond being a big online hard drive?
Availability - Cloud storage and synchronisation is meant to make your files available anywhere, but is that really the case?
Privacy - upload your data to a Cloud storage service and what can be done with it? Do you even still own it?
Pricing - how much free data is offered and is it good value to upgrade to large amounts?
Read the full article at ITProPortal for the results…
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Arcam rPAC
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The rPAC may have a single focus, but it is brilliant at it.
- By Gordon Kelly (for TrustedReviews)
- Reviewed 26 April 2012
Price as reviewed £150.00
Overall 9/10
Key Features
- TI Burr-Brown PCM5102 DAC chipset
- 138mW headphone amplifcation
- RF Suppression
- Asynchronous USB
- 3.5mm & phono output
- Independent volume control
The Arcam rPAC is a USB, bus powered DAC (digital to analogue converter) and headphone amplifier that forms part of Arcam’s new ‘R Series’ line of streaming music products – which also includes the excellent drDock. The rPAC has a very simple purpose: make listening to music from your computer better. How it achieves this is rather complex, but you wouldn’t guess that from the setup or design.
Out of the box the rPAC is perhaps the most basic looking device you will see this year. It is a 100 x 62 x 25mm rectangle with USB power and RCA sockets on one side and a 3.5mm jack on the other. On the top are plus and minus volume buttons and a discrete LED which is red when plugged in, switches to green when processing audio and flickers to acknowledge volume adjustment.
Construction and Setup
Despite this minimalism Arcam has continued the good work it started on the drDock as the rPAC is exceptionally well made. The exterior is heavy cast aluminium with a tasteful matt black finish and a damped rubber base. Much like a heavy bottomed glass, the weighty construction (it tips the scales at 300g) feels good in hand and, as the rPAC will most likely live on a desk, makes it mechanically stable and means it isn’t easily knocked over or out of place. We suggested the drDock paid homage to the design and finish of the Apple TV and this is even more apparent here.
You won’t need the instruction manual to get setup… This is a sample. Read the full review on TrustedReviews.
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Arcam drDock
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An iPhone/iPod/iPad dock with integrated DAC and HDMI? Yes please!
- By Gordon Kelly (for TrustedReviews)
- Reviewed 24 April 2012
Price as reviewed £199.00
Overall 9/10
Key Features
- Integrated DAC
- SPDIF and Auxiliary audio outputs
- Charge and sync with iTunes over USB
- Video output over HDMI
The Arcam drDock is the curiously named new addition to Arcam’s iPod dock lineup. Succeeding the irDock and rDock it greatly expands upon both, adding a host of useful features. Its raison d’être is to be the quality interconnect between your iPod, iPhone or iPad and a high end AV system and/or television. To do this it features a built-in DAC as well as SPDIF, analogue and (for the first time) HDMI outputs. It will also charge your iDevice and synchronise it with iTunes over USB. This is quite the feature list but, as with its award winning speaker dock the Arcam rCube, the company has delivered in spades.
The most obvious place to start is the design. The drDock is part of a wave of new ‘R Series’ products from the company (which includes the ‘rDAC’ which we will review in a few days) and they feature a unified aluminium construction and matt black finishes. In photos the drDock looks good, but in hand the build quality is exceptional. Arcam has pulled out all the stops to give the drDock a premium feel, and it succeeds. The overall effect is a little akin to the Apple TV with clean lines and a full rubber base (rather than cheaper rubber feet) which adds solidity and a feeling of quality. The connectors are beautifully carved out too with the SPDIF and analogue connectors finished in signal-friendly gold.
The design has also been radically altered. The sunken well connector of the irDock and rDock have been removed so that iPod touch, iPhone and iPad devices can all sit comfortably. Interestingly the irDock is also surprisingly heavy (415g) which, while not usually a desirable quality in gadgets, is ideal here as an iPad can dock comfortably without feeling like it may topple over at any moment.
That’s the outside, so what about the inside? The beating heart of the drDock is Arcam’s internal Burr Brown DAC, a model used across the new R Series. The DAC takes any iDevice out of the equation by stripping the digital audio before it hits their inferior circuitry and processing it directly before sending it on to your AV system or TV. Also worth mentioning is…
This is a sample. Read the full review on TrustedReviews
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Tripleton Enigma E2 Secure Phone
The world’s most secure mobile phone looks, but doesn’t come, cheap.
- By Gordon Kelly (for TrustedReviews)
- Reviewed 19 April 2012
Price as reviewed £1,320.00
Overall 7/10
Key Features
- 1024bit encrypted digital identification via 2nd Crypto SIM
- Uniquely generated 256bit AES call connection
- Self destructs if tampered with
- 5hrs talk time, 250 hrs standby
- Two E2s required for encrypted calls
- 2.4in 320 x 240 pixel display
- Triband GSM (900, 1800, 1900MHz)
There is a famous scene in The West Wing where a bemused politician’s aid is told by a military official why ashtrays on nuclear submarines cost $400. “It’s off the USS Greenville, a nuclear attack submarine and likely target for a torpedo,” he explains. “When you get hit with one, you’ve got enough problems without glass flying into the eyes of the navigator and the officer of the deck. This one’s built to break into three dull pieces. We lead a slightly different life out there and it costs a little more money.” The scene could have been written about Tripleton’s Enigma E2 secure phone…
Features
Announced late last month the Enigma E2 is no ordinary phone, in fact according to its maker it is the world’s most secure mobile phone. This is not due to an add-on or app, the E2′s security is at a base level built into the hardware and using a custom secure operating system. The result is extreme with 1024bit RSA asymmetric encryption and 256bit AES symmetric encryption with a further two-way user authentication. Unsurprisingly military, politicians and high end enterprise are the intended customers, rather than those living in fear of the latest Facebook privacy leak.
Interestingly, given all this technology, on the surface the Enigma E2 looks like a handset you might buy for an elderly relative. This is because when the E2 isn’t being uber-smart it is being extremely dumb. The specs read like a handset from a time when Nokia ruled the phone world: a 2.4in 320 x 240 pixel display, triband GSM (900, 1800, 1900MHz), a 3MP camera, microSD card slot, WAP 2.0 web browser, unified email inbox, FM radio and Bluetooth. There is MP3 and MPEG4 audio and video playback, but we can’t see much of the latter being done on such a small screen.
Design
The build quality is also nothing to write home about. The E2 is 100 per cent plastic with four different finishes and the faux-metal side band is a bit tacky. Furthermore the video and camera buttons on the side are small and the microSD card slot cover feels particularly flimsy. The screen is also very dull by modern handset standards and the low screen resolution feels jarring in 2012. At 94.5g and 115 x 50 x 14.7mm the E2 isn’t particularly light or compact either.
Furthermore encrypted calls take their toll on the battery life with it lasting for only up to five hours of talk time, though standby is healthier at up to 250 hours. At least it charges over microUSB, though like the microSD card slot it has a similarly flimsy cover. As you might have guessed by these covers, the E2 isn’t ruggedised to withstand additional impacts or to be water resistant. Of course in theory none of this matters because, like the $400 ashtray, the value is in how it performs…
This is a sample, read the full review at TrustedReviews
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Logitech Mini Boombox
A price-busting portable speaker with tonnes of functionality, but there’s a but…
- By Gordon Kelly (for TrustedReviews)
- Reviewed 14 April 2012
Price as reviewed £60.00
Overall 7/10
Key Features
- 2x 3W speakers
- Bluetooth with A2DP wireless streaming
- Wireless speakerphone
- Integrated, rechargeable battery
- Mini USB charge port
- 3.5mm auxiliary jack
Logitech has broken new ground recently impressing us all with its first premium speaker dock, the UE Air. Now the company is back on more familiar ground with the Mini Boombox, a small, portable speaker designed to make the best of the impending (possibly?) British summer.
Design
The Logitech Mini Boombox looks nothing like its showy premium big brother, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The curved rectangular design is akin to a river-worn stone and its smooth edges feel comfortable in hand. At just 219g it is only a little heavier than a big screened smartphone and slightly bigger than a tin of hardboiled sweets. In short, Logitech has aced the portability part.
It hasn’t done too badly in terms of durability either. A choice of red, white and black finishes are available and these differential sections are made from rubber to resist bumps, scuffs and drops. The rubber feet on the bottom of the Mini Boombox provide similar protection with the only weak spot being the piano black top, which reveals touch sensitive controls when the speaker is switched on.
Notably the top is only connected to the rest of the speaker at the front in order to create a vent for the bass, but this does make it feel weak in hand so hope any impacts take place elsewhere.
Controls and connectivity
What of these controls? Play, pause, skip (hold to scan) and volume make predictable appearances and are responsive to the touch, but worthy of note is the dual function Bluetooth/Call key. Calls first – the Mini Boombox has a built in mic that allows it to be used as a speakerphone, the call button used to answer/end calls. This is a sample, continue reading the full article at TrustedReviews
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Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11.5
Siri reignited interest in speech recognition, now the company behind Siri has released its…
By Gordon Kelly (for TrustedReviews)
Reviewed 11 April 2012
Price as reviewed £120.00
Overall 9/10
Key Features
- Over 99 per cent potential accuracy
- Five minute initial setup
- Dictate wirelessly using an iPad or iPhone
- Post straight to Facebook & Twitter
- Compose emails & search Google Maps
- Transcribe audio files
There is something undoubtedly cool about typing without using your hands. The problem is, what seems like such an elegant solution is often more trouble than it’s worth. Speech recognition software has been around for years, but lengthy voice training and hit and miss accuracy have scared many of us away from trying it again. That is a shame, because today it is a whole new ballgame.
Nuance has been around since 1992 in various forms. Its technology powers Siri, the party trick behind the iPhone 4S, and it has been the dominant force in the voice recognition market virtually ever since. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11.5 is the company’s latest attempt to teach us that speaking to our computers is not a waste of time. It succeeds.
Features
As a “.5″ release you would think NaturallySpeaking is more about evolution than revolution, but happily that is not the case. Version 11.5 brings a host of new features including smartphone integration, support for social media, a raft of new commands, welcome refinements to the UI and further improvements to the accuracy and speed of the speech recognition engine. Arguably the most exciting of these is smartphone integration because it has the potential to revolutionise the way people use the software.
Apple TV (2012, 1080p model) [Wired UK]
I’ve long said Apple deliberately plays down the importance of Apple TV. My review for Wired UK points out how Apple TV is the glue which holds the Apple universe together.
- By Gordon Kelly (for Wired UK)
- 02 April 2012
Wired Rating 8/10
Price: £99
Wired: Stylish hardware, refined software, 1080p playback and seamless audio and video AirPlay integration with existing Apple products
Tired: Apple TV remains little more than a TV conduit for more capable devices and without them it flounders
Is it better to be a jack of all trades or a master of one? In today’s ruthless technology jungle the former seems to be true. Convergence crushes single purpose products and we buy by ticking off an ever longer checklist of features and minimum requirements. Against this background the Apple TV is a little odd. All it does is interact with other Apple products and services, but it does so brilliantly.
![11 Apple TV (2012, 1080p model) [Wired UK]](http://gordonkelly.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/11.jpg "11")
The modest, but intense focus is reflected in the Apple TV itself. Now in its third generation and its fifth year Apple’s so-called “hobby” has no time for a distracting redesign. It still looks like a small, square tin of the world’s most expensive hardboiled sweets, it still measures 98 x 98 x 23mm and it still weighs exactly 270g. In fact the only way to tell the difference from the previous Apple TV is to look at the box which has “1080p” written on a single side.
This references arguably the biggest feature of the new Apple TV: the jump from 720p HD video support to “Full HD” 1080p. To achieve this there are further subtle tweaks under the hood. The processor has been upgraded from an Apple A4 chip, as seen in the iPhone 4, to a single-core version of the previously dual-core Apple A5 fitted inside the iPhone 4S and iPad 2. Elsewhere Apple has decided not to mess with a simple formula. There is HDMI, Ethernet and WiFi (802.11b/g/n) connectivity, a port for optical audio output and a power cord.
As such the Apple TV sticks squarely to the Cupertino company’s tried and tested formula. The most compelling reason to buy it is the software and the fact it gets considerably better the more Apple products you own. Read the rest of the review on Wired UK
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Audyssey South of Market
An audacious name for an audacious dock. Superb performance, flexibility and keen pricing make this a real contender.
- By Gordon Kelly (for TrustedReviews)
- Reviewed 04 April 2012
Price as reviewed £299.95
Overall 9/10
Key Features
- 200W output with four discrete amplifiers
- PC compatibility with mic & USB connectivity
- Bluetooth with A2DP wireless streaming
- iOS app allows complete sound customisation
- iPad compatible
In terms of pure bang for your buck the £250 Monitor Audio i-deck 200 offers arguably the best dock audio experience on the market. Following comments on the back of this review, however, another contender was suggested: Audyssey’s colourfully named South of Market. Having now put the dock through its paces it is clear you readers know your stuff.
On the surface, the South of Market dock is an intriguing concept. Unlike traditional docks, Audyssey has designed South of Market (named after a San Francisco neighbourhood) to be a multipurpose product doubling as both a dock and PC/laptop speakers. Given most docks have 3.5mm auxiliary outputs (the NAD Viso 1 excluded) this seems a weak boast, but South of Market also connects directly to a computer’s USB port so docked devices can sync with iTunes. In addition its unusual shape makes it more practical to position alongside a monitor.
This shape is worthy of further discussion. Looking somewhat like a curvy version of theCoolerMaster CM 690 II PC case, it has dimensions of 23 x 28 x 13 cm (H x D x W) making for a narrow, but deep, form factor with a small footprint. At 4.1Kg it is also relatively light, though packs no internal battery or carry handle for easy portability. This is a dock designed to be have a permanent mooring position. On the plus side Audyssey has managed to squeeze the transformer inside the dock meaning there is no leaden power brick on the cable.
Beyond simple differentiation, however, the shape of the Audyssey South of Market dock is fundamental to its audio performance. Taking a leaf from the Arcam rCube, Audyssey has positioned its speakers at opposing angles on each side of the dock to create the widest possible stereo separation.
Separation is a near constant problem for docks. Their small dimensions mean speakers have to sit close together and this is compounded by positioning them in the same direction. In the worst examples this can create a near-mono experience. So does Audyssey’s approach work? More later. Continue reading the full article on TrustedReviews
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Logitech UE Air AirPlay Dock
Two newcomers to the world of premium docks combine to teach the sector something new…
- Reviewed by Gordon Kelly (for TrustedReviews)
- 31 March 2012
Price as reviewed £299.99
Overall 8/10
Key Features
- 2.0 speaker arrangement
- AirPlay Wireless Streaming
- Smart AirPlay setup app
- Slide out Apple dock connector
- Slim & lightweight
The Logitech UE Air AirPlay Speaker is a strangely branded item. For a start it carries both the Logitech and Ultimate Ears brands, the latter of which has not made a dock before. Secondly it is being promoted as a speaker when it is actually fitted with an Apple dock connector. None of which matters when forces come together like this…
Design
The first thing to say about the Air is it is clearly a labour of love for both companies. Apart from a few iconic exceptions like the Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin and Arcam rCube most docks have become variants on a shell/rugby ball theme, but the Air is far more graceful than that. Shaped like a single curved wing, the Air gives the pleasant sense of being familiar but new. If Batman owned a dock, it would be this one.
The Caped Crusader may be tempted to take the Air with him as well since it lives up to its name by weighing just 2.81Kg and measuring only 506 x 152 x 140mm, making it one of the lightest premium docks we’ve tested. Unfortunately he wouldn’t be able to use it on the move since the Air is mains powered only, but it remains easy to shift from room to room in Wayne Manor.
Build quality is good too. An aesthetically pleasing mix of minimal piano black on the top and front slide out dock connector, a matt rear finish (with clear smiley face) to keep away the dust and the dominating material grill covering the front speaker. Those who like to remove their speaker grills should note the Air’s is fixed. That shouldn’t be a deal breaker, however, as working itself further into our affections is the smart dock. Read the rest of this review on TrustedReviews
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