Review: RevoDrive 3 x2 and RevoDrive Hybrid
Posted Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 11:52 am by Bryce Wilson
Last October I was knee deep in SSD technology. Drives here, drives there, drives everywhere, and 2012 is looking to be no different! Today we bring to you OCZ’s well known and critically acclaimed RevoDrive Hybrid, and their enterprise level RevoDrive 3 x2.
Testing Rig:
Motherboard: ASUS M4A89GTD PRO USB3
CPU: AMD Phenom x4 955 Black Edition @ 3.8Ghz
RAM: 8GB DDR3 1600Mhz G-Skill Ripjaws X (9-9-9-24)
GPU: GTX 580 (1.5GB)
Note: All drives were benchmarked as is, out of the box.
Testing Programs:
AS SSD – 1.6.4237.30508
ATTO Disk Benchmark – 2.47
HD Tune Pro – 4.61
As I mentioned above today we have the high priced and even higher performance 480GB RevoDrive 3 x2, and the consumer orientated RevoDrive Hybrid, boasting 1TB of traditional HDD space with a 100MB SSD.
Both drives were wiped before having Windows 7 64 bit installed on them. We then took the drives through a series of tests and benchmarks using common tools, the data and results of which have been provided below for review.
We’ve also included data from the RevoDrive x2 to compared alongside the newest iteration. It is however important to remember that both storage devices are PCI-e, and as such you shouldn’t expect to get similar performance from a SATA based SSD.
Review: Sennheiser X320 Headset for Xbox 360
Posted Sunday, January 29, 2012 at 11:39 am by Jason Cartwright
Gaming on you’re Xbox with the surround sound cranked may be fun, but will likely piss off your neighbours. Either that or the other people in your house. To solve this problem, you should consider some gaming headphones, particularly if you live in an apartment complex with thin walls.
Solving the volume out issue is one thing, but what about the volume in problem, you know, for those Xbox LAN sessions you have in the street.
Over the past month I’ve spent some time with the Sennheiser X320 gaming headset for the Xbox 360. It features a stylish and comfortable design with green accent, which matches the black / green design of the console. Weighing in at just 280grams, they become like a watch after a while, in that you forget you’re wearing them. Other headsets I’ve used become really uncomfortable after a long gaming session, but the X320 over-the-ear design worked great.
The headset also features a microphone that turns on when you flick it down, and off when you flick it up. It may not sound like a big deal, but its a hell of a lot easier than fumbling to find the mute switch between rounds.
The sound quality of the headset is really good, in fact I even picked up some engine noise intricacies in Forza 4 that I hadn’t noticed before. This is likely due to the low noise amplifier built into the X320.
Issues
While the sound quality is solid, there are a few issues with this headset. The first is the connections are overly complex. First there’s the USB cable connection, then there’s the red and white audio pass-through connectors, then there’s the microphone to controller cable. For such a stylish headset, this is a really ineloquent solution. Maybe it’s a technical limitation of the Xbox, but a simply USB cable to carry audio both ways would dramatically simplify the setup.
Like most users, I connect the Xbox 360 via HDMI these days, this means I had to go find the component cable to use these headphones.
The microphone level is adjustable via the in-line control (along with headphone volume and bass boost), but quickly introduce line noise. This is a pretty big flaw in the product, but if you can keep it low and talk louder, you can work around it.
Price
The Sennheiser X320 Xbox gaming headset sells for around A$199. Shop around and you could find it on sale as cheap as $179.
Gallery
Overall
There’s no way around it, these are expensive, but as a premium headset its not unexpected. The biggest issue is the limitation of Xbox-only. I tried plugging the X320 into the PC but they do not work as a regular headset. The only way I could swallow $200 for a headset is if I could use them for absolutely everything from the mobile phone to the TV. Sadly these are Xbox-only. There’s a bunch of gaming headsets in this space, so look at other options but if your after audio quality, keep the X320 in mind.
Review: Nixeus Fusion XS, the Android-powered STB
Posted Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 7:38 pm by Jason Cartwright![Nixeus Fusion XS STB[9]](http://techau.tv/blog/images/Review_112F8/Nixeus-Fusion-XS-STB9.jpg "Nixeus Fusion XS STB[9]")
The Nixeus Fusion XS is an Android-powered set-top-box. Running Google Android 2.2 (Froyo), it’s certainly a few steps behind the latest 4.0 version. But does running a custom build of a mobile operating system on your HDTV make any sense? We spent some time with the device, so get ready for the breakdown.
Hardware
The device itself is a small, compact unit, weighing about the same as an average smart phone. The device contains no fans, meaning operation is silent and wrapped in a glossy black finish to match the rest of your home cinema. From the back we get access to HDMI 1.3, 10/100 Ethernet, 802.11b/g, Optical Audio Out, and couple of USB 2.0 ports for accessing media.
There isn’t any SD or media card slots like some STB competitors, which means photos need to go via a PC before they reach your TV. Using one of the rear USB ports or over your network, the Fusion XS will display JPEG, PNG, GIF, Bitmap or TIFF, basically any common image format, minus RAW support.
Inside the components include dual Sheeva Processors running at 900Mhz and 512MB DDR2 RAM.
The remote is fairly typical, which is actually a negative. This device runs custom software, which means many of the remotes buttons go unused. I’m guessing it was easy to brand a control off the shelf that get one custom made.
Format support is pretty decent, supporting AVI, WMV, MPG, VOB, IFO, MP4, ASF, TP, TS, M2TS, MOV(H.264), MKV, M-JPEG, Rmvb, FLV, MPEG 1/2/4, AVI, H.264, WMV9 and VC1 on the video side. As for audio, the Fusion XS can playback MP3, WMA, AAC, Dolby Digital, DTS, FLAC, OGG, MPEG 1 Layer 2, PCM, WMA PRO.
A full list of specs is available here.
Software
With Google Android 2.2 on-board, the device streams a custom UI suited to HDTV’s. It’s an interesting idea, but sadly has many significant drawbacks.
First of all the interface is slow, at times taking 5-10 seconds to enter an app. Other times the device would freeze all together and require a reboot, not when performing an intensive HD video decode, but simply launching an in-built app. There’s a market available to download additional applications like IMDB, Google Reader and many more.
One of the issues is that many of the apps require a mouse to use. If you are comfortable having a mouse (and likely keyboard) in your living room, then you’ll need to source your own, none ship with the device.
Streaming video from online sources like YouTube worked well, but lacks the ability to control playback like skipping forwards or backwards. While the Fusion XS features solid language support, the videos displayed in YouTube, appeared to be Asia rather than Australian.
Jumping into the Settings, the system really breaks down, revealing raw Android UI where the custom skin ends.
To be fair the Fusion XS does support a Google Chrome browser with support for Flash 10.1 to playback movies on the web. It even supports HTML5, so most modern sites render decently, even at 1080p, you will need a mouse and keyboard to use it though, there’s basic operation possible via the remote, but it’ll make you want to poke out an eye and cut of an arm.
The idea of using Android to get apps to your television is a nice idea in theory, after all its a problem pretty much every TV manufacturer is trying to solve right now. The problem is that Android apps are made for phones, not TVs. Also at Android 2.2, there’s very little in the way of developer support, all the attention (rightly so) has turned to 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich).
Gallery
Price
The device sells for A$199.99 inc GST. With the limitations mentioned above, it’s incredibly hard to justify that cost.
Overall
There’s much better set top box offerings on the market in the sub-$200 price range. Overall, I can’t recommend this device, go for a Boxee Box instead, which has is faster, has a custom remote, better app support, responsiveness and UI. Even at half the price the Nixeus XS wouldn’t be a good solution to your home local/online media streaming needs.
Consumers are wise to bad experiences, especially with a daily use device. For around the same price. the experience of an Xbox 360 with its new Metro apps is far better than this device. Although it lacks a browser, it’d be a better choice overall.
Available from Mwave.com.au
Review: Lexar JumpDrive Triton USB 3.0 Flash Drive
Posted Sunday, January 15, 2012 at 5:49 pm by Bryce Wilson
I remember holding 64 megabytes of thumbdrive glory in my palm and thinking "Wow, this is pretty amazing."
Fast forward a little bit down the track and now I’m holding 16GB of storage power in a much smaller, sleeker, and infinitely powerful more shell and thinking the exact same things.
Lexar recently released a new series of Triton USB 3.0 flash drives, offering 20x the speed of USB 2.0 with suggested reads of 155MB/s and writes of 150MB/s. Copying your favorite 4GB high-definition movie? Well it will only take 35 seconds on this drive, as opposed to 11 minutes on the outdated USB 2.0 band.
We were lucky enough to get our hands on the 16GB model no less than a day after launch and below is our complete review and thoughts on Lexar’s powerful push into USB 3.0 thumbdrive territory.
Testing Rig:
Motherboard: ASUS M4A89GTD PRO USB3
CPU: AMD Phenom x4 955 Black Edition @ 3.8Ghz
RAM: 8GB DDR3 1600Mhz G-Skill Ripjaws X (9-9-9-24)
GPU: GTX 580 (1.5GB)
Note: All drives were benchmarked as is, out of the box.
Testing Programs:
ATTO Disk Benchmark – 2.47
HD Tune Pro – 4.61
CrystalDiskMark – 3.0.1
Test One:ATTO Disk Benchmark
ATTO Disk Benchmark (ATTO from here on out) is one of the most reliable disk storage benchmarking tools available. The freeware tool is widely accepted across the internet for providing accurate figures and results.
Lexar JumpDrive Triton USB 3.0 16GB Flash Drive
The first test in our review of the Lexar JumpDrive proved that the drive could in fact live up to the read promises that were made, and in fact ATTO even pushed it a little bit further than expected.
Unfortunately the drive failed to read the fabled writes of 150MB/s however the results shown were still quite good, and definitely not something to look down on.
Test Two: HD Tune Pro
We used HD Tune Pro in our testing to determine a number of factors in the read only division. Firstly, the program shows the IOPS performance of the drive on both the 512 bytes level, the 1 MB level and when used in a random fashion. We were then able to find out the average speed of the drive across all three size levels, as well as the access time.
Lexar JumpDrive Triton USB 3.0 16GB Flash Drive
When presented similar results to what we saw in our ATTO benchmarking segment, I wasn’t all that surprised. Access times were great across the board, with the Triton even registering access times both close to and better than the OCZ Agility 3 240GB SSD from my last review.
Test Three: CrystalDiskMark
CrystalDiskMark is the final program used for our review, and provides a swathe of results similar to that seen in AS SSD. Testing the drives across a number of fronts, CrystalDiskMark (CDM from here) is another comprehensive and widely recognised testing platform.
We were originally going to present the data and results in graph format however we felt it was easier to interpret the results of the singular product in their raw and original format.
Lexar JumpDrive Triton USB 3.0 16GB Flash Drive 
The sequential read and write speeds were similar, if not almost identical to those seen in the ATTO benchmarking leg of our review. It’s good to see consecutive results, not only to reassure the customer, but also to prove the device can live up to its promises!
The 512k test of CDM shows each drives performance at writing data in 512k blocks, which not only offers real world insights, but also shows us valuable data you can use when purchasing any flash memory based device. The Triton performed admirably in the read section of the 512k test, however failed to above 10MB/s in the writing section.
The 4k test, as with the 512k test, shows writing and reading performance to the drives but with the tiniest of file sizes.
When it came to writing smaller files the Triton excelled, proving that it could do great work for people writing and saving number of word documents at once. You could also use it to compile code directly to, giving you security and piece of mind.
Conclusion
With impressive speeds that not only live up to the advertisements, but also exceed them, the Lexar Triton is an impressive piece of mobile data technology. On the same hand though I see it’s biggest speed drawcard also being the one thing that holds it back.
Being able to copy high-definition movies and large sized files is great, but if the PC you’re taking it to doesn’t have USB 3.0 then you’re out of luck.
With plenty of space, speed, and looks, the Triton should be your first contender when looking at purchasing a USB 3.0 supported flash drive.
Review: Choplifter HD (XBLA)
Posted Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 12:00 pm by Bryce Wilson
Choplifter HD is a perfect conglomerate of various gameplay elements. A healthy mix of awesome old-school platforming, highscore hunting gameplay, and current generation graphics that bring an old classic into the modern age for a new audience.
Set in a 2D side-scrolling universe, Choplifter puts you at the digital reigns of numerous varied helicopters to rescue or taxi people from a number of different environments and scenarios. It sounds repetitive, and at times it is, but there’s a number of different objectives to add some variety to the mix.
The basic back-and-forth nature of rescuing people is soon shaken up when you’re having to change directions, fight enemy combatants, and strategically airlift dying patients before others. When you throw in a rapidly depleting fuel gauge and armor levels into the mix, the deceptively simple game turns into a challenging experience.
Within Choplifter is a plethora of levels and varying objectives, so while the basic formula for each is the same, the core experience changes vastly.
Snipers stun your helicopter later in the game which leaves you vulnerable to rocket attacks, while AA and RPG emplacements wreak havock on thinly armored transport helicopters. Just when you think you’ve got a level figured out, you start second guessing yourself as you realise there are other ways to confront your objectives.
Even later in the game you’re still tailoring your skills and learning new maneuvers to accomplish the task at hand. Once you finish the missions you can then go back through them on higher difficulties, which then allows you to unlock increasingly better helicopters to take on harder missions.
Up there with the likes of Trials HD and Shadow Complex, Choplifter is an extremely rewarding experience once you figure it all out. The arcade gameplay roots are forefront to the whole experience and when combined with the great voice acting, sound, and visuals, Choplifter HD becomes an easy recommendation.
More info @ http://choplifterhd.com
Review: Samsung Galaxy Nexus / Android 4.0
Posted Tuesday, January 3, 2012 at 1:35 pm by Jason Cartwright
The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is the flagship phone for Android right now, being the only device shipping with 4.0 on-board.
Hardware
Screen
The device features one of the largest screen sizes we’ve seen on a smartphone, supporting a Super AMOLED 4.65” display running a massive 1280×720 resolution. This screen is clearly made for content consumption, ideal for watching movies on a plane or train. There is one problem with a screen size that large, it takes a lot of battery to power it.
While the phone sounds huge in size, when you get it in your hand, its actually surprisingly manageable. This is likely due to it’s weight, only a measly 135 grams. The whole device is thin as well, with only the slightest tapering out at the bottom its dimensions are 67.94mm wide, 135.5mm tall, and 8.94mm thick (or thin).
Cameras
The rear camera is 5 megapixel with an LED flash, pretty standard right now. The Galaxy Nexus does also have with continuous auto focus, making it great for shooting objects that are varying distance from your shooting position. Despite being able to fire off photos with almost no shutter lag, you will still need to keep the phone still as blurry photos are still very possible.
The camera can also record 1080p video, which looks gorgeous, particularly when played back on the 4.65” HD display. Naturally with smaller optics, you want good lighting and a stable hand to get the best out of it.
The front facing camera is a 1.3 megapixel standard camera, nothing ground breaking there. It would be great to see some innovation here, its a feature that’s moved from optional, to a requirement, so lets get some more quality up front. Then the photos might actually be useable for more than a postage stamp sized profile photo.
Storage
There’s only one size available, it’s 16GB and isn’t expandable. For most people this won’t be an issue, but enthusiasts with a large number of apps or media collection, this may create a problem.
Performance
Supporting a 1.2Ghz dual-core processor and 1GB RAM, it’s unlikely you’ll come across a phone with higher specs. Paired with Android 4.0, the speed of the device is impressive, although competitors achieve similar speeds with lower specs. The power really comes when delivering intensive 3D games at 1280×720 while running background processes.
NFC
Also known as Android Beam, near field communication is in the Galaxy Nexus, but there’s not really anyone to test it with. Sharing files, applications will become easier, but will needs a wide proliferation of devices to support this before it is feasible. Some early adopters may have MasterCard PayPass or Visa Paywave setup, but right now, it’s early. There’s always a chicken and egg argument when it comes to new technology like this, so for the negligible cost of including an NFC chip and writing software around it, it’s a welcome inclusion for the future.
Networks
With pretty standard HSPA+/3G/EDGE/GPRS support, the Galaxy Nexus unfortunately can’t take advantage of Telstra’s shiny new high-speed 4G network. There’s also no support for Telstra’s HD voice calling, missing the critical WB-AMR (Wideband Adaptive Multi-Rate) support. The Galaxy Nexus does support Telstra’s HD voice calling, one of the few devices that do.
More info at – http://www.google.com.au/nexus/#/tech-specs
Gallery
Software
Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) has been long awaited by Android fans since it was shown off by Google back in October. There’s no carrier or manufacturer skin here, the Galaxy Nexus ships with a pure Google experience. To be honest, there’s really no need for any of them to customise it, Android 4.0 is a solid release. Let’s take a look at what’s new.
Folders
Applications can now be sorted into folders, this works much the same as iOS. Folders can also be docked to one of four positions on the favourites tray. With only 5 home screens available in the default ICS rom, folders will help you load up with a decent catalogue of apps.
Built-in apps
The device ships with a folder of Google apps, these include Maps, Gmail, Calendar, Google+, Music, Market, Talk, YouTube, Navigation and Messenger. This demonstrates the strength of the Google properties, with coverage of almost all core features. Despite these being included out of the box, there is always room for third party apps to innovate and improve on the default offering.
Multi-tasking
With capacitive hardware buttons gone, all operations are now done with software buttons. One of the buttons you quickly become familiar with is the app switching or multi-tasking button. The right-most button of the three displays a really beautiful list of previously run applications. Depending on the app, some of these may be still running, or alternatively paused until your switch back to it. By comparison to both iOS and WP7, this app switcher is the best in the industry right now.
Face unlock
One of the showcase features when ICS was detailed, Face unlock is a gimmick. The biggest problem here is the time taken for the phone to do the analysis and then unlock. The reality is that entering a pin code or swipe gesture is faster. With a task that will be done multiple times per day, fast always wins.
Updates
As a platform, Android 4.0 was supposed to solve the long-running, heavily criticised fragmentation issue, however it seems the issue still remains. The Telstra review unit is still running 4.0.1, despite 4.0.3 being available from Google. It may only contain some additional API changes and bug fixes, but I want the latest release, without delay from carriers.
Panorama stitching
There is a lot of solutions for on-device panorama creation, well thanks for playing, but Google has it under control now. To create a panorama, it’s a simple as firing up the camera app, switch to panorama mode and film left to right, just as if you were shooting video. After a bit of processing, you’ll have your nice landscape panorama. While occasional stitching errors can occur, this is a decent implementation. Like any other photos or videos shot with the phone, your panorama can be shared to your favourite social network right from the app.
Issues
HD app support
With all the extra pixels to play with, you’d expect to see a lot more content fitting on the display. The problem is that most apps are simply scaled up, meaning that you’ll still only see the same number of tweets, Facebook posts or news items. Naturally apps created by Google do support the HD resolution, so the browser, mail and others look fantastic. Over time, some application developers will update their apps to take advantage of the larger screen, but this will take time.
Battery life
Powering a 4.65” display doesn’t come cheap, add to that the power drain of running multiple apps and you start to get an idea of what the battery life is like on the Galaxy Nexus. The short answer is, you’ll struggle to get through a day. The problem exists in most smart phones these days, the more we can do with these pocket computers, the more we use them, the more battery we burn through.
The good news here is that the battery is replaceable, just peel off that flimsy plastic back and insert an extended battery (not included).
Browser
While the techAU website displays fine on most browsers (including older Android browsers) the Android 4.0 browser has a strange issue where the content text in posts was only half the width of the available space. This is by no means an extensive test of websites, but is interesting that it would render a page differently than any other browser, mobile or desktop.
Screen rotation lag
When rotating the device, particularly in the camera / photo apps the delay in response is severe. A pretty basic function, something you’ll likely do multiple times a day, can take a number of seconds to respond. With a dual-core processor, this just shouldn’t happen, there’s really no excuse for it.
Low Audio levels
It seems the speaker in the Galaxy Nexus could have done with some extra dbs. From the music player to incoming calls, the phone on maximum volume isn’t very loud.
Pricing
The Galaxy Nexus I reviewed was from Telstra, which offers the phone from $69pm month +handset repayment on a two year plan. With a phone that begs to be used for media creation and consumption, having good network performance is important. Try uploading a 1080p video on anything else and you’ll want to cry. One thing I was impressed with, was the speed at which multiple applications would download and install simultaneously.
Overall
The Galaxy Nexus is the best Android phone available today. If you’re in the market for an Android phone, this should be your first option. Take a look at the issues section, if none of these really concern you then your set, get the Galaxy Nexus. There is no perfect device, but the Galaxy Nexus is by far the best Android device I’ve used. If your needs dictate that you need something smaller, then wait, Android 4.0 should now be a requirement for your Android purchase.
The Galaxy Nexus stacks up well against competitors and I’d be happy to carry one in my pocket. As for Android, before version 4.0 it was hard for me to recommend Android, but with this release, all the important pieces to a smartphone ecosystem are in place and finally with some design consistency.
More information at http://www.google.com.au/nexus/#/index or buy it from Telstra.
