Review: SteelSeries World of Warcraft MMO Gaming Mouse: Legendary Edition
This mouse might have a bit of a mouthful of a name, but it's made by a company that takes gaming very seriously. This isn't a mouse for just working on spreadsheets – it has been designed with input from professional gaming teams such as SK Gaming and Fnatic Team.
While it's an officially licensed World of Warcraft mouse, its extra buttons and the ability to map commands and key presses to the buttons makes it suitable for MMO and RTS games.
The SteelSeries World of Warcraft MMO Gaming Mouse: Legendary Edition is ergonomically designed and feels comfortable to use, with all 11 buttons easily accessible.
On desk surfaces it doesn't feel as responsive as day-to-day optical mice do, so needs a mouse pad. While this might seem like a step backwards, if you're serious about PC gaming then you're going to want to have a gaming mouse pad.
When used with one of these, the precision and response of the SteelSeries World of Warcraft MMO Gaming Mouse: Legendary Edition was excellent.
Looks-wise this isn't going to be to everyone's taste – especially if you're not much of a World of Warcraft fan. The glowing lights look good, although they're slightly pointless, and the lightning bolt design looks a bit cheap.
Verdict
If you love World of Warcraft then you'll probably love this mouse, but if you're a casual gamer you'd be better off with a cheaper mouse.
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Buying Guide: 6 of the best mid-price monitors for your Mac
6 of the best mid-price monitors for your Mac
Choosing a great display for your Mac is a big decision - and it can be complicated too. It's one of the most expensive purchases you can make outside your Mac (so you'll want to get it right) and yet there are all kinds of choices to make about about screen size, price and the technology inside.One of the biggest changes in technology has been the introduction of LED backlights, which are gradually replacing cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFL). They promise more even lighting across the height and width of the display and offer better contrast ratios, so colours can be truer with more realistic black levels. Or at least that's the claim.
The second biggest change has been the huge improvement in display technology. Vertical Alignment and In-Plane Switching (IPS) displays offer wider viewing angles so you don't have to sit dead centre in front of a display to see its true colours.
Third are the efforts by display makers to improve LCD panel performance by using overdrive technology. This reduces monitor's response time to eliminate ghosting.
We've gathered six £300-£500 models that have some or all of these features on board, and thoroughly compared them against each other. The aim? To help you find the best one for your needs.
Acer S273HLbmii - £300
EIZO FORIS FS2331 - £315
Fujitsu P24W6-IPS - £480
Hazro HZ27WA - £500
Philips Brilliance 273P3LPHES - £349
Samsung C23A750X - £400
Mac monitor reviews
Test one: Design and build
Choosing a new monitor isn't just about what it can do - you have to live with it every day too. In other words, it has to look good, be well built, have lots of connectivity options and be easy to use.
The monitors that come closest to doing all these are the EIZO FORIS FS2331 and the Fujitsu PW24W6-IPS. The EIZO's big win is the simple but brilliant inclusion of a remote control, which saves you from having to tweak its settings using the somewhat fiddly adjustment controls that bedevil other displays.
The EIZO also has a good range of connectivity options, including two HDMI ports, and has a matte display and feels robust.
The Fujitsu PW24W6-IPS is fantastic too. It might be clad in boring beige, but it's the only monitor here to include a DisplayPort and it includes height, tilt and swivel adjustment. The Fujitsu's 24-inch screen can also be rotated by up to 90-degrees - a feature it also shares with the Philips Brilliance 273P3LPHES.
Test results
Test two: Viewing angles
Problems with viewing angles on LCD displays aren't quite the issue they once were, thanks to advances in display technology like In-Plane Switching (IPS) and Vertical Alignment (VA), which help reduce colour shifts and loss of contrast and brightness as you move away from the centre of the screen.
Of the six, the Fujitsu P24W6-IPS and Hazro H27WA both feature IPS panels, while the EIZO FORIS FS2331 includes VA. This gives them all theoretical viewing angles of 178-degrees in both the horizontal and vertical planes - although manufacturer's figures don't always live up to reality.
Of these three, the Hazro is quickest to lose colour fidelity and brightness from the centre, while the Fujitsu and EIZO fare the best.
The Philips Brilliance 273P3LPHES is a fair performer too - there's a subtle but noticeable drop in brightness when you get away from the centre, but its built-in swivel, height and tilt adjustment help to make up for that.
Test results
Test three: Light consistency
One of the biggest tests of any monitor is to see how well it stays evenly lit from edge to edge. Why? Because not only are excessively dark or bright spots annoying when you see them every day, but they also make it less easy to assess differences in colour - something that's important if you do a lot of design or photography work.
Most LCD monitors break down into two different camps: ones with cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFLs) backlighting and others that use LEDs. Both make claims for being able to display the most accurate colours, but LED monitors have the edge when it comes to an even spread of light - or at least that's the theory.
In practice it's the CCFL-backlit Fujitsu and EIZO monitors that are the best performers here. Both are evenly lit, with only a hint of darkness at the edges. The worst performers are the LEDs: the Samsung and Philips both have particularly noticeable dark patches in their corners.
Test results
Test four: Screen test
This test is all about picture quality and it's here that our monitors really start to stand out from each other: can a display that's great at showing off your photos be as accomplished when it comes to playing games, watching movies or making it easy to read and write text?
For a business monitor, Philips Brilliance 273P3LPHES performs surprisingly poorly with text, showing noticeable blurring at even moderate point sizes.
At the other extreme is the EIZO FORIS FS2331, which surprises for precisely the opposite reason, with text staying wonderfully readable right down to four point. The Fujitsu P24W6-IPS comes a very close second.
Both the Philips and Samsung are great with greyscale, clearly distinguishing between 0% and 5% black at one end and 95% to 100% black at the other, with the non-LED EIZO coming closest. It's also the best performer when it comes to playing games - and looks brilliant with HD movies too.
Test results
The best monitor for your Mac: EIZO FORIS FS2331
Spending £300-£500 on a monitor is a big ask these days, so which one is for you?
The first to go are the Samsung C23A750X and Hazro HZ27WA. Both are let down by poor design decisions, non-features and so-so monitor performance.
The Acer S273HLbmii and Philips Brilliance 273P3LPHES fall at similar hurdles, but for different reasons: in the Acer's case, it's a lack of connectivity options, while with the Philips it's poor text quality.
In second place is the Fujitsu P24W6-IPS. It's easy to use and delivers great performance where it counts - on-screen; but our pick is the EIZO FORIS FS2331. From text to games to ease of use, it gets all the right things right and it's sensibly priced at £315.
Final results
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Review: LG 42LV450U
The LG 42LV450U is a classy-looking, slender set that is equipped with edge LED lighting. It's nice to find, too, that there's a USB port available for playing back photo, music and video (including DivX HD) files from USB storage devices.
But this is basically where the interesting specs end. There's no Freeview HD tuner, something LG has always been quick to introduce further down its TV range. There's no sign of any of LG's Smart TV online services, either. Indeed, there isn't even a LAN port to access the internet or files stored on DLNA PCs.
Unfortunately for LG, these missed out features are going to crop up fairly regularly elsewhere on rival TVs at this price point...
The 42LV450U does retain the impressively logical and well presented onscreen menus found further up LG's range. It also retains the endorsement of the Imaging Science Foundation, meaning that this independent calibration organisation believes the 42LV450U has enough tools to allow for professional calibration. These include colour and gamma management.
However, I don't really understand LG's logic here. Surely the mass-market audience the 42LV450U is aimed at would prefer a Freeview HD tuner or some Smart TV functions, rather than professional calibration features they won't use?
Pure light
Thankfully, the 42LV450U starts to make a compelling case for itself with its picture performance. Predominantly bright HD scenes, such as those on the recent Blu-ray release of The Incredibles, look really sumptuous, with plenty of detail and crispness, rich and dynamic colours, and a startling level of raw light output for such a cheap set.Motion causes respectably little judder or blur, and colours can be made pleasingly believable in tone after only a little work in the colour management system.
However, while the 42LV450U thrives with bright HD, it isn't nearly as fond of either dark or standard-def material. The nighttime scenes in Venice on the recently release Don't Look Now Blu-ray betray a marked lack of black level depth versus most of its rivals, with blacks looking grey and shadow detail in short supply.
Nudging down the set's backlight and brightness settings can reduce the grey 'pall', but to overcome it you have to go so dark that images start to look dull and devoid of shadow details.
As for standard definition, while the 42LV450U doesn't lose colour accuracy with broadcasts, it's less successful at upscaling them to the screen's full HD resolution, leaving them looking soft and noisy.
Joining the hit and miss visuals is a similarly inconsistent audio performance. On the upside, trebles are portrayed with almost scary clarity and the mid-range is reasonably open. Predictably, though, the trade-off is a lack of bass to counterpoint the high-range sounds, amounting to a 'lopsided' and harsh soundstage.
Overall, the 42LV450U feels a bit lost and pointless even within LG's own range, given that you can get the far better specified 42LV550T for only a fraction more money.
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Review: Edimax BR-6428nS
If you're looking to upgrade your home wireless network then the Edimax BR-6428nS 300Mbps wireless broadband router offers a decent upgrade for a very good price.
Going from wireless G to wireless N offers a lot of advantages, including faster wireless speeds and a stronger signal that covers a greater range.
The Edimax BR-6428nS 300Mbps wireless broadband router gives you all of that for around £20 – a lot cheaper than wireless routers such as the Asus RT-N56U Dual Band Wireless-N Router.
The low cost comes at the expense of features, however. This is a very basic router that lacks features such as USB ports and gigabit Ethernet that can be found on a lot of other routers.
While its speeds are certainly better than wireless G routers, it struggles to compete with its competitors. Its set-up procedure is also more complicated than the ones found on Belkin and Netgear routers.
Verdict
It's a small and cheap no-frills router that does the job – but if you're after a more accomplished router with much better performance, it pays to spend a bit more money.
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Review: Teufel MediaStation 6
Teufel's MediaStation 6 is huge, heavy and highly specified versus its rivals. The sturdy box is about half the size of a standard DVD player and features a built-in TV tuner and 1TB hard-drive recorder.
On the back are HDMI, component video out, composite video/stereo audio in/out, RF in/out, optical and coaxial digital audio out, and LAN sockets.
Power is from an external supply, and there are two USB Host and one USB Device sockets on the side, plus an SD card slot. If you opt for the Wi-Fi version, a dongle is supplied.
While there are some useful time-shifting and pause-and-rewind tools, there's only a single tuner and it's standard-def.
The operating system isn't too smart either; while you're recording, you can't browse other channels, and the program guide shows you only a single channel at a time. Timer programming doesn't offer a simple way to resolve programme clashes, and recordings are saved in folders by channel, not by title.
Meanwhile, Red Button functions aren't supported. Internet functions including YouTube, Picasa, Flickr, Youku, Weather and News are supported, but there are no UK catch-up TV services, and the Shoutcast internet radio option is poor on UK stations.
Media playback functions, though, are excellent, with comprehensive file support and superb play quality, while providing a useful BitTorrent client function. It's also well built, and playback quality is superb.
Also, it comes with a bundle of cables for all connection eventualities, a huge remote control and stick aerial.
However, This seems like a product designed for the German market which hasn't been properly configured for the UK broadcasting environment.
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