PSP BIOS

Wired.com is hosting a teardown contest with repair company iFixit. You can win a PSP Go or a PS3 Slim by tearing apart your old Sony gadgets and snapping photos of their innards!

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There are some major differences between the PSPgo and the previous PSP 3000. Let Wired’s video show you what those differences are and if Sony’s latest portable is worth your ducats.

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The PSPgo is smaller and lighter than the PSP and PSP Slim. Oh, and it slides, too. Wired’s gallery of the new PSPgo shows it from every sexy angle.

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: Size seems to matter to the folks at Amazon. While the Kindle 2 has a 6-inch (measured diagonally) e-ink screen — roughly the area of a mass-market paperback book — the DX’s 9.7-inch screen resembles a page from a typical hardback. Put another way, the DX flaunts 2.5 times more display space. More text on a page means more lines and, if you prefer, a bigger font, without having to turn the page as often. What does that mean for you? It’s easier to read using the DX.

By elegantly super-sizing the Kindle — and ramping up its ability to read files — Amazon has improved the best all-around e-reader available. But the hefty price tag doesn’t fit Jeff Bezo’s stated philosophy of getting the best value for his customers.

WIRED Big-screen device that’s even more readable than the original Kindle. PDF support is a welcome addition.

TIRED High cost of admission. Pivot mode has hair trigger. Southpaws will find the reader cumbersome.

$490, amazon.com

Read our full Amazon.com Kindle DX review.

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: Shaped like a small bar of shower soap, the dense, ebony Pre matches many (if not all) of the features of its chief competitor, the iPhone. But in one key aspect, the Pre does the iPhone one better. While a lot of the Pre’s features — a bright 3.1-inch touchscreen manipulated by taps, swipes and pinches; apps sold by third parties in an open online bazaar; integration of e-mail, contacts and calendar — are now standard in 3G smartphones, Palm also lets users keep multiple applications running simultaneously.

Its long-term prospects, though, hinge on whether or not all those third-party apps will show up, whether Sprint can satisfy users, and whether Apple has something up its sleeve that counters the Palm’s gambits. Also, of course, the Pre has to prove stable and reliable. (Our test unit occasionally suffered opening-day jitters, including a crash that was fixed only by taking out the removable battery.)

WIRED Great look and superb feel. Well-conceived OS with multitasking and instant notification. Physical keyboard. Utilizes iTunes to load and refresh content.

TIRED Multitasking puts a big suck on the battery. Sprint exclusivity will be annoying to Palm-philes on a contract with AT&T, Verizon or T-Mobile. Keyboard is puny. If Apple blocks the handset’s access to iTunes, Pre users are hosed.

$200 (with two year contract), palm.com

Read our full Palm Pre review.

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: Demonstrating that it’s serious about making a run at the top-end offerings from Canon and Nikon, the K-7 bows with a spankin’ new 14.6 megapixel, 28.1mm (diagonal) CMOS image sensor and an updated Prime II processor. This enables HD-video capture, built-in high dynamic range shooting, a 77-segment metering system, pre- and post-production filtering and distortion correction, all in a form factor more than 10 percent smaller (and actually easier to handle) than its predecessor, the K20D.

By and large, it’s a super quick focusing compact image-maker — once you learn how the menu system works. But it’s just a step or two behind Nikon and Canon in ease of use. In spite of that, Pentax has nearly hit a home run with the K-7. It’s svelte, sturdy, fairly easy to operate, has a great range of available lenses and a feature set that’s unmatched at this price. Think of it as a solid double off the wall, with an RBI.

WIRED Speedy 5.2 frames per second. Super-sturdy construction. Lots of pro features at a prosumer price. Improved battery life and 100 percent field-of-view viewfinder. Faster, more robust processor. Live View with contrast focus and face detection. Shoots 5.2 frames-per-second with shutter speed up to 1/8000. The 77-segment metering system and 11-point AF system are quick and spot on. Internal mechanical shake reduction.

TIRED User interface needs to be simpler and more unified.

$1,300 (body only), pentax.com

Read our full Pentax K-7 DSLR review.

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: The A600’s 21.5-inch screen (1920 x 1080 pixels) is big and dazzlingly bright — so much so that Lenovo includes an automatic screen-dimming system designed to prevent eyestrain. Inside its bowels, this 25-pounder offers substantial specs: 2.13-GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 GB of RAM, and a terabyte hard drive. The ATI Radeon HD 3650 graphics card may be getting a little long in the tooth, but it’s powerful enough to make the A600 more than acceptable to play all but the very latest gaming titles.

That’s a lot of stuff for the price — $1,150 — and stripped-down versions of the IdeaCentre run considerably less. If you don’t need the power but dig the design and screen size, the budget rendition might be an even better bet.

WIRED Very small footprint. Single-cable design is a blessing for technophobes. Swivel base makes adjustments to viewing angle easy. Six USB ports and 802.11n Wi-Fi, plus FireWire, SD and coaxial connectors.

TIRED Keyboard and mouse frequently fall asleep; difficult to awaken. Remote control overly complex and rather homely. Included games feel like an engineer on Quaaludes designed them.

$1,150 (as tested), lenovo.com

Read our full Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 review.

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: Its glossy black finish and polished Darth Vader design makes Samsung’s newest Blu-ray box, the BD-P4600, stand out from every other player on the market. Well, it actually doesn’t stand anywhere at all — it comes with the metal brackets to mount it on a wall or plant it on a desktop pedestal. And like Lord Vader, this model packs some serious force with its built-in streaming for Pandora music and Netflix.

For $100 less, you could pick up Samsung’s BD-P3600 a player that has all the same features as this model but comes in a non-wall-mountable chassis. But really, would you want to watch The Empire Strikes Back on a Blu-ray player that didn’t look like it was made in a dark corner of Coruscant?

WIRED High-end, spacey designed Blu-ray player is loaded with features include ability to wall mount, loads Blu-ray discs exceptional fast and offers exceptional playback.

TIRED Complicated initial setup for its feature set. Cramped underside port-connection compartment. Competitively over priced for what it delivers.

$500, samsung.com

Read our full Samsung BD-P4600 review.

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: Let’s cut to the chase and hit you with the sell: The MSI X340 is a MacBook Air at half the price. Interested? Read on.

For starters, the X340 (aka the X Slim) is considerably better muscled than your typical netbook, featuring a glossy 13.4-inch (1366 x 768 pixels) screen, 320-GB hard drive and 2 GB of RAM. Like Apple’s ultralight, it’s incredibly thin — about 0.8 inches at its thickest — and it actually weighs slightly less than the Air, just 2.9 pounds.

Before you start salivating over the prospects of a half-price Air, note that Apple’s laptop does trump the X340 in a few significant ways. The Air includes Nvidia graphics, while the X340 is stuck with Intel’s integrated chipset.

The screens are night and day: The Air is renowned for having one of the brightest LCDs available, while the X340 is merely average in this department.

WIRED Gorgeous design; slap an Apple sticker over the MSI logo and no one will ever know. Performance bests most netbooks, though it’s hardly top-notch. Surprisingly good graphics and responsiveness. Includes the usual goodies: 1.3-MP webcam, Bluetooth, 802.11n.

TIRED Flaky touchpad. Disappointing battery life.

$900 (as tested), us.msi.com

Read our full MSI X340 review.

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: The first day we took the car for a spin we kept the front-mounted 5.9-liter 470 BHP vehicle on a strict diet of city driving: no freeways, no tightly coiled back roads. Trudging through heavy traffic almost felt sadistic — kind of like taking a thoroughbred racehorse and giving it polio. But after exiting the city limits and tearing down a stretch of asphalt connecting San Francisco with Napa Valley, the DB9 snapped up, greedily devouring 90-degree curves with just a hint of oversteer.

WIRED Fast like a sports car, more refined than a quart of 40-weight. Gorgeous; induces whiplash in head-turning bystanders. Zippy acceleration for a GT — you can’t front on a 4.6-second zero-to-60 time … unless you’re armed with a Ferrari or a Bentley.

TIRED Hood-release switch located in impossibly hard to find/reach nook (as if an Aston owner would ever do that). iPod access tres difficult to set up. Chugs gas like an ASU freshman rips beer-bong hits. Back seat harder to get into than MIT.

$209,000 as tested, astonmartin.com

Read our full Aston Martin DB9 review.

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: If you don’t mind looking like an extra in a 1-800-Dentist commercial and have no reservations about looking like a crazy person yammering to yourself, the Plantronics Voyager Pro may be the perfect Bluetooth headset for you.

This headset is big, bulky and (surprise, surprise) silly looking. The 3-inch boom extending out toward your mouth is the main culprit of these crimes against style. But despite being tacky, the Voyager Pro delivers strong performance. It’s easy to use, withstands drops, bumps and haphazardly tossed laptops, has decent battery life and pairs effortlessly with a range of smartphones, including the iPhone.

WIRED Easy to use. Super sound quality. Stays attached to your ear. You will look like a telephone operator from the ’50s.

TIRED You will look like a telephone operator from the ’50s.

$100, plantronics.com

Read our full Plantronics Voyager Pro Bluetooth Headset review.

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: After a few grim years ceded to the iMac, PC-based all-in-one desktops are making an LL Cool J-esque comeback. Their next move: Make the switch from semi-luxe gear designed for highly aesthetic environments to the megacheap world that the netbook has built.

Specs look exceedingly promising at first: 250 GB of hard drive space, 2 GB of RAM, integrated Wi-Fi, DVD burner, an SD card slot and a very bright 19-inch touchscreen display. If nothing else, it’s one of the best-looking touchscreens (non-capacitive; a stylus works better than your finger) we’ve seen at this screen size.

But the Achilles’ heel of the Wind Top is its baffling choice of an Atom 330 processor to power these guts. Although the dual-core 330 is known as the “fast” version of the Atom (it draws 8 watts instead of the 2.5 watts used by the netbook standard Atom N270 and has double the L2 cache), it’s still woefully inadequate for a computer this ambitious.

WIRED Amazingly affordable and loaded to the gills. Touchscreen makes this a perfect kiddie computer. Slim profile lets it fit just about anywhere. Cuter than a box of puppies.

TIRED Performance problems dog the user at every turn. Flashing blue hard-drive activity light is front and center, terribly distracting and impossible to cover up. Bundled keyboard and mouse are beyond cheap. Webcam aim can’t be adjusted.

$590 (as tested), us.msi.com

Read our full MSI Wind Top AE1900 review.

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: The new Chrome Soyuz is an ambitious (if slightly crazed) reimagining of the urban commuter backpack. It’s a weird hybrid of a river-rafting drybag and laptop case, all contained within a stylish wedge of black and red nylon.

It sits comfortably behind your back, letting you weave through traffic on your fixie without fear of snagging on the projecting mirrors of double-parked delivery trucks. It can ride between your knees on a crowded train. And it tucks neatly below an airplane seat, leaving just enough space on either side to squeeze in your feet so you can stretch your legs.

WIRED Wedge design keeps load balanced, trim and compact. Expandable waterproof compartment shrinks down to nothing when empty. Heavy-duty 1,000-denier cordura nylon withstands abuse. Main compartments are completely waterproof. Heavy-duty metal strap locks make adjustment easy. Glorious enameled metal “Chrome” logo.

TIRED Narrow openings + deep compartments = where the hell did my keys go? Not quite big enough to contain a six-pack (unless you put the bottles in one by one). Padding traps heat, steaming your back on long rides. No hip belt. Pricier than a metric ton of pig iron.

$180, chromebags.com

Read our full Chrome Soyuz Backpack review.

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: The pristine fidelity these headphones deliver is the result of a dual-armature layout, which bathes your tympanic membranes in accurate audio reproduction. The earpiece’s dual drivers have the added benefit of propping up the typically flaccid base that seems to plague many other in-ear monitors.

The only major downside is that great sound comes at a considerable price — $230 to be precise. For most people, that’s likely to be as much (or more) than you spent on your MP3 player. But as my neglected Audio Technicas can attest, in this case, you undoubtedly get what you pay for.

WIRED Exquisite sound reproduction in an insanely small package. Handy in-flight attenuator saves you from Captain Blowhard’s eardrum-exploding announcements. Fuller, richer base and wider frequency response than previous UEs.

TIRED Spendiferous. Cable noise will distract joggers or anyone planning to use the headphones while exercising. Despite its redesign, the pocket case is still too small to fit all the accouterments.

$230, ultimateears.com

Read our full Ultimate Ears 700 Noise-Isolating Earphones review.

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: Digeo’s Moxi HD DVR sports a slick, Emmy-winning (seriously) user interface and all the commercial-skipping accouterments of competitors like TiVo. It even ditches a monthly bill in favor of flat pricing and grants access to online video and music.

The Moxi’s stunning high-def UI is full of slick transitions and responsive performance. Unfortunately, sleek visuals don’t conquer all. Basics like surfing through the program guide (or accessing a previously recorded show) took a lot of hunting and pecking through a menu tree. Finding pre-recorded shows and getting them to play took searching, highlighting, selecting Play, confirming that you selected Play, and then finally watching.

WIRED No monthly bills. Sleek high-def interface has nifty animations and transitions. Hard drive expandable to 1 TB for power recorders. Dual tuners let you watch one show while recording another. Offers a whopping 1.5-hour buffer time per HD channel.

TIRED Hefty entry fee. Online video chops not quite up to snuff. No dedicated Guide button on the remote?! Unnecessarily complicated menus. Programming schedules are displayed in cramped vertical list instead of friendly grid.

$800, moxi.com

Read our full Digeo Moxi HD DVR review.

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: We’re a little dismayed by the E71x. The device is almost identical to the E71: same 3.2-megapixel camera, same .04-inch profile, same vibrant 320 x 240 QVGA display, same business apps and multimedia functionality. The operating system is slightly tweaked so there are some differences in transmissions and page loading. But as a whole, the phone is relatively unchanged.

These are the key differences: a new $100 price tag (good), a black paint job (badass) and the omission of our favorite feature from the original E71 (ugly). We’re talking about the two separate, customizable home screens, something we absolutely loved about the O.G. E71. One screen was designed for business, the other for personal use. It was a great function: You could literally edit spreadsheets from 9 to 5 on one screen, then toggle over to the other and watch a couple of episodes of 30 Rock on the media player.

WIRED Windows interface means you don’t have to learn a new menu convention to browse your old files. Dumping the data of only one (or all) of your multiple PCs takes less than five mouse clicks. You can set up a password in the toolbar.

TIRED Dock and multi-PC backup capability only provided with 500-GB version. Full hard-drive recovery requires booting from a CD. Windows-only means it fails to bridge the gap in inter-OSial households.

$100 with 2-year contract, att.com

Read our full Nokia E71x Smartphone review.

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: The Replica comes with bare-bones software and strikes a good balance between peace of mind and individual-user control.

After the hard drive is plugged in, the Replica starts mirroring your computer’s content. The startup process is short, taking only a couple of minutes, though the actual backup is a time-gobbling endeavor. (It took us about four hours to transfer 130 GB of data). A blue light on the top of the Replica’s case blinks continuously while data is being transferred. It’s also stealthy for a hard drive, emitting only a quiet whir when working at full speed.

WIRED Windows interface means you don’t have to learn a new menu convention to browse your old files. Dumping the data of only one (or all) of your multiple PCs takes less than five mouse clicks. You can set up a password in the toolbar.

TIRED Dock and multi-PC backup capability only provided with 500-GB version. Full hard-drive recovery requires booting from a CD. Windows-only means it fails to bridge the gap in inter-OSial households.

$200, seagate.com

Read our full Seagate Replica 500GB review.

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: Panasonic’s new HDC-TM300 shoots in “Full HD,” marketing speak for 1080p — aka 1080 x 1920 resolution with progressive-scan video. Translation? Stunning Blu-ray-level video that should more than lives up to the most critical expectations of prosumers and video enthusiasts.

The highlight of this shooter is the high-def footage. Not only does the phenomenal zoom reel in distant objects, but thanks to the triple sensors and quality lens, it nails far-off details perfectly. The architectural features of distant buildings we shot in downtown San Francisco showed up like we were standing on the window ledge — not in a park three blocks away.

WIREDReproduces colors like a Crayola factory. Closeups pop with sharp, clear details. Nice performance in low light. Einstein-smart automatic shooting features are like having your own DP built into the camera. 32-GB onboard memory is expandable via SDHC slot. Great zoom tackles action better than Jason Statham.

TIRED Fast pans in bright daylight turns up more artifacts than a Mayan ruin. May require second mortgage.

$1,300, Panasonic.com

Read our full Panasonic HDC-TM300 HD Camcorder review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

: In the aftermath (heh heh) of the bass-heavy Beats by Dre Studio headphones, Monster decided to pack the Doctor’s finicky sound quality specs into two tiny earbuds. Naturally, audiophiles (including myself) were skeptical. Sure the Beats suffered from shoddy construction and fell apart after a few months of ownership, but they also provided some of the best bass we’ve ever heard in a set of cans.

Sure enough, the bass response from these things is rich and full. The lowest frequencies rumble with a force akin to the thud of a decent subwoofer. Keep in mind these are not miniaturized 12-inch Kickers designed to blow your eardrums out. But for a device that is essentially a tiny speaker with no auxiliary power, they’re superb — especially when compared to the white earcruds doled out by Apple with every iDevice.

WIRED Excellent all-around frequency definition and particularly impressive bass response. Monster’s durable, ingenious anti-tangle cable means jumbled cords are a distant unpleasant memory.

TIRED The bright red cable is slightly ostentatious. Peak bass only hits at earwax shattering volumes.

$150, beatsbydre.com

Read our full Monster Beats By Dre Tour High-Resolution In-Ear Headphones review.

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: The UE-11 Pros are packed with four, count ‘em, four drivers: There’s a double dose of bass, one for the midrange and one chiming the highs. If you’re looking for the most precise, separated sound possible, then this is the earphone for you. Throughout the play list I heard clarity and detail in the music I’d never heard before. This rang especially true with classical tunes — it literally feels like sitting in a symphony hall and having every instrument speak directly to you. To get that kind of superior fidelity you’ll certainly have to pay the piper. But you’ll really love the music while Rome — or your bank account — burns.

WIRED Most clear, separated and detailed sound.

TIRED Try convincing your spouse you need a $1,150 set of headphones.

$1,150, ultimateears.com

Read our full UE-11 Pro review.

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: The slate-gray, high-impact polymer body houses three LEDs capable of blasting out a peak 270 lumens for 15 minutes, or a more useful and long-lasting 90 lumens for 60 minutes. Both settings have an emergency low-power 25-lumen mode (equivalent in brightness to most common household D-cell flashlights) for an additional 60 minutes.

WIRED High-power pro flashlight pumps out awesome illumination and recharges ridiculously fast. Flashlight will outlive you. Seriously brilliant, blinding — a boon for flashlight junkies.

TIRED Pricy front-end investment. Comes with a 12-volt car charger.

$170, 511tactical.com

Read our full 5.11 Tactical Light review.

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: In our tests, we threw all things digital at this 68-pound slab. And while it does not perform as superbly as its higher-price brethren from Sony, Samsung and Sharp, it still shows off a completely acceptable high-def image and above-average sound.

So where has Westinghouse cut corners? Oh, let’s see. How about the borderline embarrassing 1000:1 contrast ratio? In a well-lit room, the screen looks more washed out than a warehouse full of Maytags. And even though the set offers the 120-Hz spec, fast motion still looks a bit blurred.

WIRED High resolution and decent sound at incredible rock-bottom price. Convenience features integrated into menu. Quality remote not found in higher-priced TVs.

TIRED Displays some pixelated speckled noise in darker and mid-hue images. Analog-station reproduction is downright blurry. No worries though — analog TV has flatlined.

$700, Westinghouse.com

Read our full Westinghouse TX-42F450S review.

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: It’s not quite a netbook, not quite an ultralight PC. Whatever it is, Samsung’s NC20 is a dazzling feat of engineering: an extremely usable 12-inch laptop with epic battery life, impressive specs and a downright mystifyingly affordable price tag.

But the NC20 doesn’t make depressing tradeoffs to achieve those scores. Battery life is three hours, 40 minutes (22 percent longer than the S10) and weight is just 3.3 pounds, comparable to the Asus Eee PC 1000H. All that and you get a 12.1-inch LCD, too, instead of the usual 10.2-inch netbook display.

WIRED Everything a netbook should be: Offers the best performance available from a computer this portable and inexpensive. Very usable keyboard. Good quality audio. Includes three USB ports, 1.3-megapixel webcam, and SD card slot.

TIRED LCD could be a touch brighter and quality sharper. Chassis design is a bit boring.

$550, samsung.com

Read our full Samsung NC 20 review.

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: Pure Digital’s Flip has proven that it’s possible to build a super-small flash memory camcorder and offer it up for fewer than two hundred bucks. But there are tradeoffs with going small and cheap, like optics and battery life. Canon takes a completely different tack with its newest solid-state cam, the Vixia HF S10, which delivers some fantastically brilliant moving pictures, but at a stiff cost.

Out in the field, auto focus and auto exposure were both very impressive in a wide range of situations, from the intense brightness of the beach to shady and contrasty venues. Every camera suffers indoors, thanks to low light, and everyone complains about it, but the S10 did a credible job with low-light shots and it’s clearly better than previous cams of this ilk.

WIRED Improved audio quality. Big, bright lens. Speedy processor. Lots of creative control options. More intuitive menus than previous generation Canon camcorders.

TIRED Loose lens cover noisier than cutlery caught in a garbage disposal. Still images come off looking a bit overexposed.

$1,300, canon.com

Read our full Canon Vixia HF S10 review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

: Dry your eyes, plasma junkies. The untimely demise of Pioneer’s Kuro line doesn’t mean you’ll have to forgo those deliciously deep blacks and theater-perfect colors for long. In fact, even as the last of the Pioneer Kuro Elites make its way into a few lucky U.S. homes, a new lineup of HDTV sets are already poised to seize the plasma king’s vacant throne.

Key to this plasma’s visual appeal is its integrated THX mode. In addition to blessing various audio components, the home-theater ninjas at THX began bestowing plasma and LCD certification a few years back. Each set is subjected to approximately 400 individual tests, ranging from evaluations in signal processing to luminosity. Basically, the idea behind G10’s THX mode is to recreate the precise color gamut filmmakers use during the in-studio post-production process.

WIRED Mind-boggling blacks with tons of detail. THX mode is a godsend for movie buffs. Integrated SD card slots transform your plasma into a giant digital photo frame. Amazing color saturation.

TIRED THX mode is bit dim for brightly lit rooms. Ethernet connectivity is nice for VieraCast, but Wi-Fi would’ve been better. Three HDMI ports (two in the back, one on the side) don’t cut it. More power-hungry than LCD TVs. Where’s the PiP?

$1,300, panasonic.com

Read our full Panasonic TC-P42G10 Viera G10 Series Plasma review.

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: The PogoPlug is a device, which looks like a supersized AC adapter, plugs into almost any external hard drive (even a USB stick) and then pumps that content onto the web, giving you access anywhere in the world you can get an internet signal — including your iPhone.

But the PogoPlug isn’t without the occasional snafu and annoyances. Only image files are available for preview. PDF, Word documents or even HTML files have to be downloaded before viewing. Worse yet, when we unhooked the device, it caused our PC to crash twice in a row. We’re still not entirely sure if this was due to a glitch in the PogoPlug or in Windows.

WIRED Easy to use. Simple setup. Great utility: I must be able to access my collection of LOLcat photos from anywhere. The iPhone app is solid software.

TIRED No wireless mode … yet. Poor security — it’s a wise idea to keep those tax returns or bank documents off the PogoPlug. Computer crashes are deeply flummoxing. The iPhone is currently the only mobile device that supports remote access.

$100, pogoplug.com

Read our full Cloud Engines PogoPlug review.

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: NatureMill’s Pro edition is an indoor composter we can pretty much dig. Using minimal electricity, a small motor turns a heavy-duty mixing bar, heats the mixing chamber (no sunlight needed) and powers an air pump that works with a carbon air filter to help reduce smell (each filter lasts four to five years).

Just add starter dirt, drop in some sawdust pellets to combat odors and dump your food scraps in. NatureMill recommends that you cut organic material into 4-inch bits before plopping it in. We didn’t, but aside from the motor making some gnarly noises, it didn’t seem to affect compost production. NatureMill’s Pro version also features some automatic activation. We were able to leave ours sitting for weeks without pushing the button even once; it mixed and heated itself just fine.

WIRED Stainless steel mixing bar made short work of uncut banana peels. Relatively small and exceptionally lightweight = easy to stash and transport. Foot pedal eliminates lid touching. Mighty Morphin’ Power Saver: only draws 5 kwh a month (roughly 50 cents on an average electric bill). Not as much of an eyesore as it could be and it’s available in a range of colors (including, you guess it, green).

TIRED Little to no stench — until top opens (that’s hard to remedy, and burger/fish/salad remnants smell worse than a dead wildebeest doused in Eau D’Bile). Polypropylene housing is light, but may not last forever. Disposable carbon filters reduce smell, but also cut down on the green factor. Regular maintenance (scraping the mix chamber walls) isn’t fun.

$400, naturemill.com

Read our full Nature Mill Indoor Composter — Pro Edition review.

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:
You can get away with a lot if you’re beautiful. Such is the case with the new Porsche Design P’9522 phone. In some ways, it’s a wonderful and capable cellphone, but in most others, it’s dumber than the gorgeous block of aluminum it was machined from.

Someone forgot to include e-mail — an absence that had us trying to mar the Porsche phone’s scratchproof screen with claws of rage. Unfortunately, that screen is tough, so the P’9522 will be lauded and drooled over — despite our many gripes with it.

WIRED Gorgeous. Touchscreen interface is easy to understand, if limited and frustrating. Preloaded ringtones include the roaring engines of the 911 GT3 and Turbo. Its 5-megapixel camera has autofocus and captures clean, vivid images. LED flash doubles as a flashlight. Unlocking the phone with its fingerprint scanner is very MI5.

TIRED Fingerprint scanner is also very POS: Who thought it would be a good idea to use fingerprints to access a device you’re likely holding in one hand while juggling multiple other tasks? Preloaded ringtones include bad German techno. Touchscreen is deeply frustrating. Seriously — no e-mail?

$800, porschedesign.com

Read our full Porsche Design P’9522 Phone review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

: Weighing just 140 grams, the handset offers some of the best optics we’ve ever found crammed into a cell phone: sharp, noiseless pics (3,264 × 2,448 pixels) and decent image stabilizer punctuate video capture that puts full-figured handicams from 2008 to shame. You can even shoot VGA at 30 fps or QVGA at a whopping 120 fps (yes, 120!), including slow motion footage in 1/4 and 1/8 speeds.

Amazing, sure, but not a picture perfect phone. The i8510 functions almost exactly like a standard point-and-shoot, except for the zoom button, which is placed inexplicably, and awkwardly at the bottom of the device.

WIRED Beaucoup codecs, including — wait for it — DivX! 2.8-inch screen excellent for playback. Intuitive photo/video editing suite. Equally intuitive navigation. Automatic lens cover. MicroSD slot good for 16 GB (enough for aspiring Scorseses to go epic). All the usual smartphone suspects: 3G, Wi-Fi, USB, Bluetooth, accelerometer, GPS. Decent earbuds with ample cord. 3.5mm audio jack. Most excellent: TV-out capability.

TIRED Side-mounted headphone jack makes phone harder to pocket. Optical control pad is a tad sensitive (between us and you — we don’t want to hurt its feelings). Most bogus: Metal shell retains enough scratches to fill a DJ Shadow album. A little on the clunky side. Most bogus: Flash needs to be brighter.

$500, samsung.com

Read our full Samsung i8510 INNOV8 review.

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: As the successor to Logitech’s G11 and G15, this huge hunk of plastic comes with gaming hardwired in its DNA. Like its relatives, it has a blocky aesthetic that harkens to the days of the Model M. There are, however, a handful of very modern flourishes that make this latest G-board a distinctly modern marvel.

In the end, the G19’s main drawback is the same one that has plagued fancy keyboards since the days of yore: It’s freaking huge. That swiveling LCD? It actually requires a tiny onboard Linux computer to run, which in turn requires its own power source. Should you choose to make use of the two self-powered USB ports, you’ll potentially have more wires shooting out of this thing than your computer.

WIRED More customizable than a box of Legos. Two self-powered USB ports. Dedicated D-pad and menu keys let you control LCD directly from the keyboard. Convenient cable management lanes carved into bottom of unit lessens clutter … slightly. Choose-your-own-color adventure with adjustable backlighting. Keys are pleasantly clicky and responsive.

TIRED Limited desktop space? This is not your keyboard. Price tag to match gargantuan footprint. Requires power brick to run. After its novelty wears off, built-in LCD becomes more of a distraction than a useful tool.

$200, Logitech.com

Read our full Logitech G19 Keyboard review.

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: Want to catch the last episode of Battlestar Galactica while hanging out in the local java joint? Going to download a season of The Simpsons for viewing on the plane? Giving an impromptu screening of your vacation photos at a friend’s house? The Mini 10 is your machine.

But there are infuriating shortcomings to the Mini 10. The trackpad is one of the worst we’ve seen. Dell’s decision to integrate the buttons underneath the pad itself makes using it both unpredictable and challenging. When you click on a button, the cursor may hit the target, wiggle off a centimeter or two, or teleport off into a remote corner of your screen. While it got easier to use after a week of practice, our advice is to invest in a cheap travel mouse.

WIRED Bright, responsive screen. Integrated 1.3-megapixel webcam. Not gunked up with crapware. HDMI-out port shows charming, if unwarranted, optimism about the netbook’s video capabilities. Light weight: Just 2.6 pounds.

TIRED Infuriating trackpad with integrated buttons hidden underneath. Excessively glossy screen produces distracting glare. Windows XP is starting to look pretty tired. What, no solid-state option? Despite the HDMI port, the netbook can’t deliver HD video without fits and starts.

$470 (as tested), dell.com

Read our full Dell Mini 10 Netbook review.

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: The new 370Z upgrades come in the form of a sexy body with a hood, hatch and doors of lightweight aluminum and a chassis significantly stiffer to reduce performance-robbing flex. To make up for the beefier chassis, Nissan’s engineers pared more than 225 pounds from the rest of the car — even the audio system lost 3.5 pounds — and the result is a car that weighs 88 pounds less than the previous 350Z.

Every model gets the same 332-horsepower V6, an engine that makes this Z the quickest yet with a zero-to-60 time of 4.6 seconds. That kind of performance, however, is contingent on your skills as a driver. If you don’t posses Lewis Hamilton levels of talent don’t fret. The Z’s abundant power and excellent handling will let you think you do.

WIRED Insanely easy to drive, insanely quickly. You’ll run out of nerve before you run out of grip. Rev-matching transmission makes heel-toe shifting more obsolete than a gramophone.

TIRED Rev-matching transmission makes heel-toe shifting more obsolete than a vinyl record. Tympani-like tire roar, piccolo-like exhaust note. Hummer-sized blind spots make lane changes a gun-it-and-go-for-it leap of faith. Fake brushed-aluminum interior bits don’t fool anyone.

$33,970 (as tested), nissanusa.com

Read our full Nissan 2009 370Z review.

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: Using the BookReader is simple: Just plunk a novel on the platen, punch a button and you’re relaxing to the dulcet sounds of Jill, a computerized voice with a voracious appetite for literature. All the menus read themselves off when you mouse over them, and they have keyboard shortcuts, which is useful if you have reduced vision. Jill is pretty good at recognizing words. We tried out several books, including one heavy with medical jargon, and she held her own with just a few exceptions.

Useful as it is, we could not help noticing that the BookReader seems to be slightly undercooked. A few of the buttons don’t really do anything, and you can’t customize the dictionary to alter Jill’s interpretation of commonly used, but horribly flubbed words, acronyms or numbers. The unit seems to be terribly overpriced as well. Plustek wants $600 for the BookReader, despite the fact that the OpticBook only costs $250 — and has its own text-to-speech function.

WIRED Reads books to you at the push of a button. Platen glass goes right to the edge to accommodate books without strain. Turns text into MP3s for portability. Includes several accessibility features to help the visually impaired.

TIRED The included software lacks polish and seems rushed. Squat, ugly looks make it seem at home in a cubicle farm. The reader voice may not screw up often, but when it does, it’s a doozy. High price nears gouging territory.

$600, plustek.com

Read our full Plustek BookReader V100 review.

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: Photo: Dylan Tweeny/Wired.comApple’s newest Shuffle (almost 50 percent smaller than previous Shuffles) could easily be mistaken for a stick of Trident, features no buttons, and pimps voice-identification technology. But even given its apparent readily consumable stature, there are a few features on the Shuffle that are a bit tough to swallow.

The biggest gripe on the 4-GB Shuffle we tested is definitely the control set. First off, it’s completely counterintuitive; Apple says you can easily use it without looking. We still don’t have the hang of it after a few days of testing. What’s worse, if you have a decent set of earbuds (say, a pair of Shures or Ultimate Ears) you’re totally hosed — you’ll have to endure the ‘buds that come with the Shuffle or pick up specially made third-party headphones. Our recommendation? Pick up a new Shuffle only if you’re prepared to deal with proprietary headphones and ambiguous controls.

WIRED Thumb-drive size. Can double as a tie clip. Battery life lasts for 12 freaking hours. Short USB sync cord is sexy. Yes, we’ll admit, it’s another beautifully designed piece of hardware from Apple. Battery bonked out after 11 constant hours of blasting Thunderstruck on loop.

TIRED Proprietary headphones required. Control set awkward to use, hard to get used to. So small, it nearly gets lost in the packaging it comes in.

$80, apple.com

Read our full Apple iPod Shuffle 3rd Gen review.

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: Rather than foam, gel or compressed-air cushioning, the soles on Newtons have a series of “actuator lugs” just below the ball of the foot. The lugs are designed to help encourage you to land on your forefoot, to protect that part of the foot, and (best yet) to propel you forward. When you land, the lugs push into hollow chambers in the midsole. This cushions your landing, and helps make it comfy to land midsole or forefoot rather than on the heel as you might be accustomed. As your foot moves forward, these lugs then essentially lever out, and as you lift your foot, they return the energy by pushing up and out in the same direction as your stride. Newton claims this makes them more efficient than traditional foam or gel soles that simply absorb energy but don’t return it.

WIRED So cozy they’re like a Snuggie for your feet. Actuator lugs get you off your heels better than a La-Z-Boy. Lightweight at 10.2 ounces. Designed for all stride types. Stomps cold weather like global warming, and keeps out the drizzle for shizzle.

TIRED Not waterproof. Worse on single-track trails than a skateboard. $175??? OMG, for that much money I could just pay somebody to run for me.

$175, newtonrunning.com

Read our full Newton All Weather Trainer review.

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: The Firebird features a hybrid design — using 2.5-inch hard drives (two 320-GB models) and dual graphics cards originally designed for laptops — but powers it all with a desktop CPU and desktop-sized DIMMs. As with a laptop, wireless is built in, but the power supply is not: To save on wattage, HP breaks out the (enormous) power adapter instead of integrating it into the box.

As cool as the Firebird is on the whole, it isn’t without some foibles. The inclusion of an ExpressCard slot is on the baffling-to-useless side, and the external power supply (it’s huge) is more annoying to deal with than it sounds. But our biggest gripe is that the Firebird’s streamlined shell means it includes no front-mounted ports at all, not even a single USB slot for your thumb drive. Seriously HP, even the Mac Pro finds room for that.

WIRED Amazingly quiet and conscientious in its power consumption. Outstanding design; belongs on top of the desk, not beneath it. Solid all-around performance at a fair price.

TIRED No front USB port. Curvy design means you can’t put anything on top of the case. Functionally locked down, with no real upgrade path.

$2,100 (as tested), hp.com

Read our full HP Firebird 803 review.

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: I shouldn’t love this truck. I should hate it. I purposely do not own a car, and this all-black behemoth represents everything I hate about SUV culture: conspicuous consumption, insensitivity to our rapidly shrinking world and crowded cities, middle finger raised at global warming.

You could slap a cold fusion generator under Big Poppa Cadillac’s hood and the first two issues would still apply, but I was kind of wrong about that last one. Have you ever seen Godzilla vs. Megalon? Where Godzilla fights on behalf of the people of Japan against a giant rhinoceros/cockroach? Sure, Tokyo’s favorite monster still smashes a bunch of buildings and steps on some people, but he’s trying to be good. Same goes for this Hybrid Chromedaddy.

WIRED Decent pickup for a motorized bomb shelter. Combined ABS and regenerative braking system do a terrific job of hauling the beast down from speed. Trick motorized step makes it easy for shorties to climb into your rolling condo.

TIRED Thing has a car phone. No, not Bluetooth, but an actual phone built into infotainment system. (It’s actually just Onstar, but there was no other option for hands-free calling.) What is this, 1989? Cadillac — God love ‘em — uses the fact that this is a hybrid as an excuse to bling up the truck even more: Hybrid badges are plastered on every hard surface, on the sides of the door, even the windshield. —Joe Brown

$74,085 (as tested), Cadillac.com

Read our full Cadillac Escalade Hybrid review.

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:
The Kindle 2 is zippier, with pages turning 20 percent faster (yes, you can tell the difference). It has more memory (2 gigabytes, enough for storing more than 1,500 books onboard). And it flaunts a more powerful built-in battery: Amazon claims that the Kindle lasts four to five days with the wireless on (we got 4.5 days in our first test) and up to two weeks with it off. After a week of limited wireless, my meter is around 50 percent. Amazon also says that after 500 charges, it will hold 80 percent of its original juice. That means that most users won’t have to replace the battery (a $60 procedure) for about a decade or so.

Looking over the horizon, it’s clear that Amazon’s biggest competitor in selling digital books will be Google, whose recent agreement with publishers and authors will make it the virtually exclusive seller for millions of books in copyright but not in print. But right now at least, the Google and Amazon formats aren’t compatible: I was unsuccessful in getting a PDF of a public-domain book downloaded from Google to appear in readable form on my Kindle.

WIRED The best e-reading system on the market. Welcome improvements to aesthetics, more functional industrial design, better graphics and longer battery life. Sleeker than the original: One-third of an inch thick and 10 ounces.

TIRED Quite expensive. Book content shackled with DRM. Interface is improved, sure, but it could be even better.

$360, amazon.com

Read our full Amazon.com Kindle 2 review.

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: The iWOW adapter from SRS Labs promises to coax more “immersive” sound from your iPod, and it actually delivers — provided you’re listening to the right kind of music. Setup is easy: Snap on the slick little 1-inch extension, plug in some spendy headphones, press a button, and you do indeed get a fuller sound with more depth — especially if you enjoy songs like Sting’s “Fragile,” a track hand-picked by SRS to highlight the effect.

But when iWOW was applied to songs that were heavy on low-end thump or had multilayered sound (Exhibit A: Beck’s “Cold Brains”) the iWOW performed more like iMeh. At top volume, bass beats splintered, while at lower volumes tracks sounded muddled and crowded. SRS claims the device “dynamically locates and restores audio detail” and creates a more natural sound. We’re not buying it — most of the audio we threw at the iWOW was punctuated with a subtle hiss and fuzzy bass.

WIRED Relatively small adapter. Snaps easily onto your iPod and lends some oomph to certain tunes.

TIRED The effect is nearly lost when using ear buds, the device won’t work with older generation iPods, and music that already has a fair share of bass sounds muffled.

$70, srslabs.com

Read our full SRS Labs iWOW Adapter for iPod review.

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:

Leaps ahead of other cam phones, the Memoir’s not limited to the 8 megapixels it captures. In shooting mode, the touchscreen has shutterbug controls — zoom, brightness, timer and flash — that float around the image. And just hitting the shutter will take you into camera mode. The Memoir includes a 1-GB microSD to augment the phone’s 100 MB of storage (and it’s an easy-access slot, rather than hidden under the battery).

But for all its convenience, the Memoir simply isn’t a competitor for even the lowliest of dedicated cameras. First off, it’s pokey: slow to focus, slow to snap and very touchy when it comes to movement. And though it touts a 16x digital zoom, it has no optical-zooming option.

WIRED Cool touchscreen and accelerometer helps you shoot or view pictures. Compact, pocket-friendly shape, even for hipsters in painted-on jeans.

TIRED Vampiric light sensitivity makes for washed-out shots. Slow to focus, shoot and recover. E-mail functions are even slower. The screen is hard to see in sunlight. Lens cover doesn’t close all the time, so the lens can get dusty.

$300 (with 2-year contract), t-mobile.com

Read our full Samsung Memoir.

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:
From the outside, the 1000HE doesn’t look much different from other netbooks. But it’s the machine’s heart — the brand new 1.66-GHz Atom N280 processor — that makes it faster, stronger, smarter than its opponents.

Intel claims the silicon slab boosts computing power across the board, especially HD video playback — something that has been woefully horrid in past machines using Atom processors. It’s not lying. This is the fastest netbook we’ve tested (by about 7 percent) in our benchmarks. And HD video playback was noticeably smoother and devoid of chop.

WIRED The first netbook to feature the new Atom N280 chip. MMC and SD media reader slots. Attractive, pearly finish. Decent 1.3-megapixel webcam.

TIRED At 3.1 pounds, it’s one of the heaviest puppies in the netbook litter. Lame keyboard.

$400 as tested, asus.com

Read our full Asus Eee PC 1000HE review.

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: The R50 is remarkably easy to set up and use. As you program each component into the remote using the setup wizard, you test a few controls to make sure it has the right code. The remote instantly recognized all our components, and it took us about 10 minutes to get the AV rig up and running. As part of the setup, you name each component, which then appears as an icon on the screen: in my case, a Sony HDTV, Yamaha amp/receiver, Squeezebox, Oppo DVD player and Soundmatters speaker.

WIRED Cool, reddish backlight perfect for nighttime navigation. No computer or web connection needed for operation. No charging cradle required.

TIRED No user manual means gizmo novices might get lost in setup. $150 price point isn’t super pricey, but then it’s not the cheapest universal remote out there.

$150, universalremote.com

Read our full Universal Remote Digital R50 review.

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:
Like other watches in the 25-year-old G-Shock line, the MTG-1500 is forged with Mr. T levels of toughness: It can easily survive being banged clumsily against tabletops or whacked against a surfboard in a wipeout. And it’s water-resistant to 200 meters. But unlike most other G-Shock watches, which are primarily plastic, the MTG-1500’s body and band are stainless steel, with a few tasteful black plastic accents.

We half expected to find the MTG-1500 lacking in minor features. Surprisingly, it didn’t. It’s got a stopwatch mode, dual time-zone support, five different alarms and a countdown timer. Free abundant sunlight or bright artificial light recharges the battery as you wear the watch. Once fully charged, the battery should be able to power the watch for 6 months without additional light.

WIRED Handsome, two-toned steel-and-black styling doesn’t blare “nerd,” “Swatch-wearing poser” or “too lazy to take off my gym watch.” Self-syncs with superaccurate official time stations. Gives you an excuse to say “solar” and “atomic” in the same sentence.

TIRED Digital display too small and can be obscured by watch hands. LED provides uneven illumination in the dark. $500 can buy a timepiece that’s much fancier, albeit not atomic.

$500, casio.com

Read our full Casio G-Shock MTG-1500 review.

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:
The skinny on this countertop unit is pretty straightforward: It’s the touch-based kitchen computer that won’t put you out of house and home. Don’t go rushing out to cash in that 401(k), though — despite a recession-friendly price, the Eee Top still feels a little light in the loafers.

The glossy white, semi-opaque keyboard and mouse look stylish out of the box, but after extended handling their light, plastic-y build became annoying. The slim chassis sat solid on our countertop, while the bright, 15.6-inch screen and the integrated speaker bar make up the majority of the Top’s sleek profile. Rounding out the device are six USB ports, memory card reader, 1.3-MP web cam and integrated Wi-Fi. We were pretty bummed at the lack of an optical drive, though.

WIRED An all-in-one for the Top Ramen set. Quick, responsive touch interface. Compact design has integrated storage for both keyboard and stylus. Integrated 802.11n and gigabit ethernet ensure throughput thrashings. One-touch shutoff button for hiding porn er, convenience. Runs whisper-quiet.

TIRED Underpowered for heavy web video. A wired keyboard and mouse — on an all-in-one?!? Heats up after extended poke/prod sessions. Anemic 160-GB hard drive. Even a cheapy, noisy optical drive would’ve been nice. No battery means no mobile computing.

$600 (as tested), asus.com

Read our full Asus ET1602 Eee Top review.

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:
This camera is about the size and shape of a pack of chewing gum, and weighs just 0.68 ounces. It records videos at 352 x 288 pixels, encoding them in the 3-GP format used by many cellphones (the videos can be played on your computer using most media-player software, including QuickTime and RealPlayer).

But the MovieStick is oozing with design flaws. The pinhole-sized lens is located on the long side of the device, rather than the short end, limiting your ability to go truly undercover. Add to that a confusing series of lights that supposedly indicate when the cam is charging, turned on or recording, and you end up with more than one inadvertent video of the floor.

WIRED The smallest video camera we’ve seen yet. Simple to set up and use. Makes you look like a double agent.

TIRED Location of camera lens makes it hard to go covert. No internal storage or memory card included. Recorded video is shakier and blurrier than outtakes from The Blair Witch Project.

$120, swannsecurity.com

Read our full Swann Micro-VideoCam Recorder review.

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: Kodak’s Theatre HD’s raison d’être is straightforward: to shuttle the contents of your PC directly to your television using ethernet or Wi-Fi. Pictures, videos, podcasts, music or any other digital content that may be living on your hard drive (as long as it’s not squelched by some DRM straightjacket) can be whisked away by this tiny little box to your television with little to no fuss.

What really sets the Theatre HD Player apart from the rest of the field is how immaculately it performs its tasks. Once you’ve downloaded Kodak’s EasyShare display software, everything is pretty much taken care of. Have a hard drive filled with extra content? No problem. Simply hook it up to one of the player’s USB ports and you’re ready to go.

WIRED Intuitive UI coupled with a handy RF remote makes setup and playback of multimedia a Zen-like experience. Wealth of connectivity options: component, HDMI, optical or RCA audio, dual USB ports. Transforms crappy YouTube video into semi-watchable content.

TIRED Requires Kodak EasyShare software to get the streaming party started. No Mac compatibility (for now). Pricey, especially for a device without a hard drive. Needs more internet content.

$300, Kodak

Read our full Kodak Theatre HD Player review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.: Skidding in at 53 pounds (on the lighter side for this category), Ohm’s mountain bike-inspired geometry and its nine-level power-assist and regeneration system make it a smart, nimble and efficient two-wheeler.

On pavement and trail the BionX power plant, mounted on the rear hub, employs a unique sensor technology that is constantly adjusting the level of assistance it gives you based on the terrain. Encountering some mushy road? More power is delivered to the gears. Gliding down paved asphalt? The juice is dialed back. And if your thighs are flushed with lactic acid on a sheer hill, a flick of the trusty thumb throttle cracks the whip and the motor totally takes over, no pedaling required. But for all this innovation and comfort, you will, however, have to part with a spouse-enraging $3,450. Is it worth it? Well, it is a ton of fun.

WIRED Excellent Shimano parts mix with disc brakes and RockShox suspension fork. Lockable battery compartment hides space for mobile phone, wallet, media player and your other little stuff. Regeneration mode gives extra on-bike battery life. Comfortable suspension seat post. Four- to six-hour charge time.

TIRED Throttle position needs to be improved for optimal bike handling. Price steeper than any hill the bike can handle.

$3450, Ohm Cycles

Read our full Ohm Cycles XS700 review.

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: For about $300 more than the average netbook, the UC7807u offers a scintillating array of grownup specs. Intel 2.0-GHz Core 2 Duo CPU? Check. 250-GB hard drive? Yep. 3 GB of memory, a glossy 13.3-inch display, a slot-loading optical drive and ports galore (three USB and an HDMI)? You betcha! Best of all, with its fetching brushed aluminum chassis, no one will mistake this for a budget notebook.

Unfortunately, the UC7807u also has all the telltale signs of some obvious corner cutting. Forget about gaming. Due to Intel’s torpid integrated GMA 4500MHD graphics card, even moderately intensive titles won’t run properly. But our main beef with the UC7807u is the feeble 6-cell battery which clocked in at a disappointing 3 hours, 25 minutes — a full hour shorter than most other notebooks in this category.

WIRED Recession-worthy price. Built like a tank. Slick, touch-sensitive volume and multimedia controls.

TIRED Tips the scales for a notebook in this category. Battery drains faster than an ATM at a strip club. Epic fail on the tiny circular touchpad. It’s cramped and serves no discernable purpose. Onboard speakers spit out tinny, distorted sound. HDMI, but no Blu-ray?

$800 as tested, Gateway

Read our full Gateway UC7807u review.

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: It’s no wonder this watch ran away with my heart; for the competitive runner or multisport athlete seeking a personal best in 2009, the Polar RS800CX is the required training device. Because of incredibly robust desktop software, tracking of obscure performance metrics, and a wide variety of add-on sensors, the RS800CX can help you measure, analyze and improve nearly every aspect of your training program.

WIRED Offers better heart-rate monitoring than your average hospital. Incredibly customizable from in-watch display, to software interface, to training programs. GPS and barometric altimeter combined with location tracking mean you’ll never wonder where you wandered. Extensible pods make watch more sport-versatile than Lance Armstrong.

TIRED Even beer goggles won’t pretty up this ugly watch face. May need to hire a coach anyway — just to teach you how to use the PC-only desktop software.

$500, Polar

Read our full Polar RS800CX MULTI review.

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: The pocket rocket we’ve been packing in our pants recently (full name: Optoma DLP EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector) is one of the first mini projectors to hit the market. It’s also one of the best, even though a number of flaws spill from the tiny device.

Styled like a ’40s-era Zippo, the piano-black portable feels more natural in the hand than a lot of cellphones. But it’s not size that matters to us, it’s the video components! The projector is comprised of a combo-rig LED lamp and a DLP chip (courtesy of Texas Instruments) that sets the resolution at 480 x 320 pixels with a range output of 9 lumens. Yes, we know this is low compared to full-bodied projectors like Benq’s gargantuan MP512 ST 2500-lumen projector but for something this small, it’s remarkable.

WIRED Perfect projector for parties. Rectangular lens creates wide image that keeps the image from stretching. Fine picture quality, 8-96 inches. Startup time > 4 seconds. Dead-sexy hardware.

TIRED Lithium-ion batteries die after 2 hours’ use; how are we supposed to watch our Battlestar marathon? Battery recharge time 4 frakkin’ hours. Suck-tastic speaker. Unless you have a video-out adapter, you can’t project Office docs from your PC. Projector gets hot enough to fry bacon after running 30 minutes.

$400, Optoma

Read our full Optoma EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector review.

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: Are you the schlemiel who’s always dropping his cellphone or camera at parties? Or maybe you’re the schlemazel who always gets the drink spilled on him? Either way, if you’re looking for a camera to fit a clumsy or accident-prone lifestyle, the shockproof, waterproof, and cold-resistant Stylus 1050 SW can take the beating from fumbles, faceplants or full-speed crashes, and still keep clicking.

About the size and shape as a pack of smokes, the 1050 is equipped with an accelerometer letting you tinker with settings by tapping on the top and the sides. This lets you do useful stuff like turn the flash on and off with a gloved mitt or preview pictures with one hand while you fend off a tiger shark with the other.

WIRED Shockproof to 5 feet and waterproof 10 means you can bang it on the edge of the pool as you fall in with no harm done. Tap feature lets you change settings without futzing with buttons, and the camera can handle alpine frigidity with aplomb. Comes with a microSD adapter for greater media versatility.

TIRED Lens cover slides more easily than Ricky Henderson. The battery is easily inserted backwards, making you think it’s dead or the camera is malfunctioning. Weak zoom and poor macro ability; this camera could use a bifocal upgrade.

$300, Olympus

Read our full Olympus Stylus 1050 SW review.

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: Touted as the thinnest and lightest BlackBerry yet, the Curve 8900 has some much-needed upgrades over its predecessor, but also some disappointments.

Wi-Fi is hot and easy to set up, the camera got a bump to 3.2 megapixels, the 16 GB MicroSD storage can hold up to 20 hours of video, and the high-res screen is fantastic in any light. On the other hand, callers were hard to hear, documents were difficult to create, and RIM’s revamped proprietary browser is good for surfing the Internet but isn’t as smart about automatically resizing webpages as the browsers on competing smartphones.

WIRED Slick, sexy design mashes the best of the Bold and Curve 8830. Brilliant, high-resolution screen is one of the best we’ve seen on a RIM device. Full HTML-rendering on websites. 3.2-megapixel camera is even better when paired with video-recording capabilities; 3.5mm headphone jack means no clumsy adapters. Near 5-hour battery life is most impressive.

TIRED 3G is MIA. Despite the powerful 512-Mhz processor, the software still lags. New website and software don’t perform as well as they should. Phone quality was mixed and loud speakers fail to compensate for somewhat distorted music playback.

$200 with a two year contract, RIM

Read our full RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 review.

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: This handset (which arrives in some of the most gorgeous packaging I’ve ever seen a consumer electronic encased in) is almost laughably banal in its actual construction. A silver slider with wide-spaced keys, it posses a passing resemblance to the Nokia 5200, albeit with a larger (2.2-inch) screen. But, once you switch it on and start using it, things begin to get interesting.

The operating system orbits around Facebook synchronization. Basically you take the phone online, pair it with your Facebook account, and all of your various Facebook applications become active on the mobile. Your Facebook address book syncs up with the phone’s address book. Events from your Facebook calendar become part of the phone’s calendar. Take a picture with the 3.2-megapixel camera, and you can automatically upload those shots to a Facebook album.

WIRED Brightly hued, easy to use, easy-to-sync OS pairs perfectly with your Facebook account. Skype integration is thoughtful. Thoughtfully spaced keys make texting, entering URLs rather pleasant. Camera takes photos that are sharp enough to be a profile picture. Extremely cheap for an unlocked device.

TIRED Humdrum hardware punctuates novel OS. Not offered in the United States … yet. Battery life is clinically depressing when surfing the web, using Skype.

$112 (estimated), Three

Read our full INQ1 Facebook Phone review.

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: HP has been tinkering with touch tech for a couple of years. But they have yet to nail the bull’s eye with a machine that mixes mature hardware with a haptic interface that feels like more than just a half-assed effort. So, we were cautiously optimistic with the TouchSmart tx2z. The good news? As HP’s first multitouch convertible tablet, it’s got a lot of potential.

Converting from notebook to tablet proved painless, thanks to a solid hinge and the included pen. After swinging the 1280 x 800 screen around (and folding it back), we found two goodies. First, using the pen automatically disables the touchscreen (to prevent palm-related havoc), and second, HP included an active digitizer for handwritten input. This made reckless activities like e-mailing while strolling around the block surprisingly easy. Even jotting down quick notes using a finger (instead of the pen) gave us minimal hassle.

WIRED Fully baked as both a touch and tablet device. Travels well with its compact and stylish chassis. Includes quick keys for rotating screen orientation. Mini media remote and pen conveniently hide away in chassis. Altec Lansing speakers strike decent balance between volume and clarity. Extra goodies aplenty: biometric security, webcam, dual headphone jacks, 802.11n compatibility and 5-in-1 card reader.
TIRED Bloated OS hinders performance of otherwise decent specs. Occasionally laggy switches between notebook and tablet mode. No multitouch love for the trackpad. Terrible viewing angles and weak visibility in direct sunlight. Fan sounds like a leaf-blower at a My Bloody Valentine show.

$1550 (as tested), HP

Read our full HP TouchSmart tx2z review.

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: Nero’s LiquidTV TiVo PC looks like a TiVo and acts like a TiVo, but, brother, it ain’t no TiVo.

Actually, the package makes your PC act like a TiVo by adding a USB TV tuner and the same TiVo software that drives the set-tops. You also get a for-reals TiVo remote and an IR receiver so you can command content from the couch.

Ironically, that’s where you’re gonna get pissed. The remote can’t launch the software, so you’ll have to physically walk over and mouse it open. The remote can be programmed to turn your TV on and off, but it can’t put your PC in standby mode or wake it up again. If you do that manually, the IR receiver fails to wake up with the rest of the system.

WIRED Includes a one-year TiVo subscription, and after that it’s a cheaper-than-set-top $99 per year. The software can auto-convert recordings to iPod or Sony PSP format. Integrates with any TiVo boxes you already have. Extra storage is just an external hard drive away.

TIRED The remote lacks necessary PC controls. Not measurably better than Windows Media Center — which, incidentally, is free. The tuner supports ClearQAM, but the software doesn’t, so forget digital channels unless you hook up the antenna.

$125, Tivo

Read our full Nero LiquidTV TiVo PC review.

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: The UE-11 Pros are packed with four, count ‘em, four drivers: There’s a double dose of bass, one for the midrange and one chiming the highs. If you’re looking for the most precise, separated sound possible, then this is the earphone for you. Throughout the play list I heard clarity and detail in the music I’d never heard before. This rang especially true with classical tunes — it literally feels like sitting in a symphony hall and having every instrument speak directly to you. To get that kind of superior fidelity you’ll certainly have to pay the piper. But you’ll really love the music while Rome — or your bank account — burns.

WIRED Most clear, separated and detailed sound.

TIRED Try convincing your spouse you need a $1,150 set of headphones.

$1,150, ultimateears.com

Read our full UE-11 Pro review.

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: The slate-gray, high-impact polymer body houses three LEDs capable of blasting out a peak 270 lumens for 15 minutes, or a more useful and long-lasting 90 lumens for 60 minutes. Both settings have an emergency low-power 25-lumen mode (equivalent in brightness to most common household D-cell flashlights) for an additional 60 minutes.

WIRED High-power pro flashlight pumps out awesome illumination and recharges ridiculously fast. Flashlight will outlive you. Seriously brilliant, blinding — a boon for flashlight junkies.

TIRED Pricy front-end investment. Comes with a 12-volt car charger.

$170, 511tactical.com

Read our full 5.11 Tactical Light review.

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: In our tests, we threw all things digital at this 68-pound slab. And while it does not perform as superbly as its higher-price brethren from Sony, Samsung and Sharp, it still shows off a completely acceptable high-def image and above-average sound.

So where has Westinghouse cut corners? Oh, let’s see. How about the borderline embarrassing 1000:1 contrast ratio? In a well-lit room, the screen looks more washed out than a warehouse full of Maytags. And even though the set offers the 120-Hz spec, fast motion still looks a bit blurred.

WIRED High resolution and decent sound at incredible rock-bottom price. Convenience features integrated into menu. Quality remote not found in higher-priced TVs.

TIRED Displays some pixelated speckled noise in darker and mid-hue images. Analog-station reproduction is downright blurry. No worries though — analog TV has flatlined.

$700, Westinghouse.com

Read our full Westinghouse TX-42F450S review.

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: It’s not quite a netbook, not quite an ultralight PC. Whatever it is, Samsung’s NC20 is a dazzling feat of engineering: an extremely usable 12-inch laptop with epic battery life, impressive specs and a downright mystifyingly affordable price tag.

But the NC20 doesn’t make depressing tradeoffs to achieve those scores. Battery life is three hours, 40 minutes (22 percent longer than the S10) and weight is just 3.3 pounds, comparable to the Asus Eee PC 1000H. All that and you get a 12.1-inch LCD, too, instead of the usual 10.2-inch netbook display.

WIRED Everything a netbook should be: Offers the best performance available from a computer this portable and inexpensive. Very usable keyboard. Good quality audio. Includes three USB ports, 1.3-megapixel webcam, and SD card slot.

TIRED LCD could be a touch brighter and quality sharper. Chassis design is a bit boring.

$550, samsung.com

Read our full Samsung NC 20 review.

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: Pure Digital’s Flip has proven that it’s possible to build a super-small flash memory camcorder and offer it up for fewer than two hundred bucks. But there are tradeoffs with going small and cheap, like optics and battery life. Canon takes a completely different tack with its newest solid-state cam, the Vixia HF S10, which delivers some fantastically brilliant moving pictures, but at a stiff cost.

Out in the field, auto focus and auto exposure were both very impressive in a wide range of situations, from the intense brightness of the beach to shady and contrasty venues. Every camera suffers indoors, thanks to low light, and everyone complains about it, but the S10 did a credible job with low-light shots and it’s clearly better than previous cams of this ilk.

WIRED Improved audio quality. Big, bright lens. Speedy processor. Lots of creative control options. More intuitive menus than previous generation Canon camcorders.

TIRED Loose lens cover noisier than cutlery caught in a garbage disposal. Still images come off looking a bit overexposed.

$1,300, canon.com

Read our full Canon Vixia HF S10 review.

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: Dry your eyes, plasma junkies. The untimely demise of Pioneer’s Kuro line doesn’t mean you’ll have to forgo those deliciously deep blacks and theater-perfect colors for long. In fact, even as the last of the Pioneer Kuro Elites make its way into a few lucky U.S. homes, a new lineup of HDTV sets are already poised to seize the plasma king’s vacant throne.

Key to this plasma’s visual appeal is its integrated THX mode. In addition to blessing various audio components, the home-theater ninjas at THX began bestowing plasma and LCD certification a few years back. Each set is subjected to approximately 400 individual tests, ranging from evaluations in signal processing to luminosity. Basically, the idea behind G10’s THX mode is to recreate the precise color gamut filmmakers use during the in-studio post-production process.

WIRED Mind-boggling blacks with tons of detail. THX mode is a godsend for movie buffs. Integrated SD card slots transform your plasma into a giant digital photo frame. Amazing color saturation.

TIRED THX mode is bit dim for brightly lit rooms. Ethernet connectivity is nice for VieraCast, but Wi-Fi would’ve been better. Three HDMI ports (two in the back, one on the side) don’t cut it. More power-hungry than LCD TVs. Where’s the PiP?

$1,300, panasonic.com

Read our full Panasonic TC-P42G10 Viera G10 Series Plasma review.

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: The PogoPlug is a device, which looks like a supersized AC adapter, plugs into almost any external hard drive (even a USB stick) and then pumps that content onto the web, giving you access anywhere in the world you can get an internet signal — including your iPhone.

But the PogoPlug isn’t without the occasional snafu and annoyances. Only image files are available for preview. PDF, Word documents or even HTML files have to be downloaded before viewing. Worse yet, when we unhooked the device, it caused our PC to crash twice in a row. We’re still not entirely sure if this was due to a glitch in the PogoPlug or in Windows.

WIRED Easy to use. Simple setup. Great utility: I must be able to access my collection of LOLcat photos from anywhere. The iPhone app is solid software.

TIRED No wireless mode … yet. Poor security — it’s a wise idea to keep those tax returns or bank documents off the PogoPlug. Computer crashes are deeply flummoxing. The iPhone is currently the only mobile device that supports remote access.

$100, pogoplug.com

Read our full Cloud Engines PogoPlug review.

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: NatureMill’s Pro edition is an indoor composter we can pretty much dig. Using minimal electricity, a small motor turns a heavy-duty mixing bar, heats the mixing chamber (no sunlight needed) and powers an air pump that works with a carbon air filter to help reduce smell (each filter lasts four to five years).

Just add starter dirt, drop in some sawdust pellets to combat odors and dump your food scraps in. NatureMill recommends that you cut organic material into 4-inch bits before plopping it in. We didn’t, but aside from the motor making some gnarly noises, it didn’t seem to affect compost production. NatureMill’s Pro version also features some automatic activation. We were able to leave ours sitting for weeks without pushing the button even once; it mixed and heated itself just fine.

WIRED Stainless steel mixing bar made short work of uncut banana peels. Relatively small and exceptionally lightweight = easy to stash and transport. Foot pedal eliminates lid touching. Mighty Morphin’ Power Saver: only draws 5 kwh a month (roughly 50 cents on an average electric bill). Not as much of an eyesore as it could be and it’s available in a range of colors (including, you guess it, green).

TIRED Little to no stench — until top opens (that’s hard to remedy, and burger/fish/salad remnants smell worse than a dead wildebeest doused in Eau D’Bile). Polypropylene housing is light, but may not last forever. Disposable carbon filters reduce smell, but also cut down on the green factor. Regular maintenance (scraping the mix chamber walls) isn’t fun.

$400, naturemill.com

Read our full Nature Mill Indoor Composter — Pro Edition review.

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:
You can get away with a lot if you’re beautiful. Such is the case with the new Porsche Design P’9522 phone. In some ways, it’s a wonderful and capable cellphone, but in most others, it’s dumber than the gorgeous block of aluminum it was machined from.

Someone forgot to include e-mail — an absence that had us trying to mar the Porsche phone’s scratchproof screen with claws of rage. Unfortunately, that screen is tough, so the P’9522 will be lauded and drooled over — despite our many gripes with it.

WIRED Gorgeous. Touchscreen interface is easy to understand, if limited and frustrating. Preloaded ringtones include the roaring engines of the 911 GT3 and Turbo. Its 5-megapixel camera has autofocus and captures clean, vivid images. LED flash doubles as a flashlight. Unlocking the phone with its fingerprint scanner is very MI5.

TIRED Fingerprint scanner is also very POS: Who thought it would be a good idea to use fingerprints to access a device you’re likely holding in one hand while juggling multiple other tasks? Preloaded ringtones include bad German techno. Touchscreen is deeply frustrating. Seriously — no e-mail?

$800, porschedesign.com

Read our full Porsche Design P’9522 Phone review.

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: Weighing just 140 grams, the handset offers some of the best optics we’ve ever found crammed into a cell phone: sharp, noiseless pics (3,264 × 2,448 pixels) and decent image stabilizer punctuate video capture that puts full-figured handicams from 2008 to shame. You can even shoot VGA at 30 fps or QVGA at a whopping 120 fps (yes, 120!), including slow motion footage in 1/4 and 1/8 speeds.

Amazing, sure, but not a picture perfect phone. The i8510 functions almost exactly like a standard point-and-shoot, except for the zoom button, which is placed inexplicably, and awkwardly at the bottom of the device.

WIRED Beaucoup codecs, including — wait for it — DivX! 2.8-inch screen excellent for playback. Intuitive photo/video editing suite. Equally intuitive navigation. Automatic lens cover. MicroSD slot good for 16 GB (enough for aspiring Scorseses to go epic). All the usual smartphone suspects: 3G, Wi-Fi, USB, Bluetooth, accelerometer, GPS. Decent earbuds with ample cord. 3.5mm audio jack. Most excellent: TV-out capability.

TIRED Side-mounted headphone jack makes phone harder to pocket. Optical control pad is a tad sensitive (between us and you — we don’t want to hurt its feelings). Most bogus: Metal shell retains enough scratches to fill a DJ Shadow album. A little on the clunky side. Most bogus: Flash needs to be brighter.

$500, samsung.com

Read our full Samsung i8510 INNOV8 review.

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: As the successor to Logitech’s G11 and G15, this huge hunk of plastic comes with gaming hardwired in its DNA. Like its relatives, it has a blocky aesthetic that harkens to the days of the Model M. There are, however, a handful of very modern flourishes that make this latest G-board a distinctly modern marvel.

In the end, the G19’s main drawback is the same one that has plagued fancy keyboards since the days of yore: It’s freaking huge. That swiveling LCD? It actually requires a tiny onboard Linux computer to run, which in turn requires its own power source. Should you choose to make use of the two self-powered USB ports, you’ll potentially have more wires shooting out of this thing than your computer.

WIRED More customizable than a box of Legos. Two self-powered USB ports. Dedicated D-pad and menu keys let you control LCD directly from the keyboard. Convenient cable management lanes carved into bottom of unit lessens clutter … slightly. Choose-your-own-color adventure with adjustable backlighting. Keys are pleasantly clicky and responsive.

TIRED Limited desktop space? This is not your keyboard. Price tag to match gargantuan footprint. Requires power brick to run. After its novelty wears off, built-in LCD becomes more of a distraction than a useful tool.

$200, Logitech.com

Read our full Logitech G19 Keyboard review.

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: Want to catch the last episode of Battlestar Galactica while hanging out in the local java joint? Going to download a season of The Simpsons for viewing on the plane? Giving an impromptu screening of your vacation photos at a friend’s house? The Mini 10 is your machine.

But there are infuriating shortcomings to the Mini 10. The trackpad is one of the worst we’ve seen. Dell’s decision to integrate the buttons underneath the pad itself makes using it both unpredictable and challenging. When you click on a button, the cursor may hit the target, wiggle off a centimeter or two, or teleport off into a remote corner of your screen. While it got easier to use after a week of practice, our advice is to invest in a cheap travel mouse.

WIRED Bright, responsive screen. Integrated 1.3-megapixel webcam. Not gunked up with crapware. HDMI-out port shows charming, if unwarranted, optimism about the netbook’s video capabilities. Light weight: Just 2.6 pounds.

TIRED Infuriating trackpad with integrated buttons hidden underneath. Excessively glossy screen produces distracting glare. Windows XP is starting to look pretty tired. What, no solid-state option? Despite the HDMI port, the netbook can’t deliver HD video without fits and starts.

$470 (as tested), dell.com

Read our full Dell Mini 10 Netbook review.

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: The new 370Z upgrades come in the form of a sexy body with a hood, hatch and doors of lightweight aluminum and a chassis significantly stiffer to reduce performance-robbing flex. To make up for the beefier chassis, Nissan’s engineers pared more than 225 pounds from the rest of the car — even the audio system lost 3.5 pounds — and the result is a car that weighs 88 pounds less than the previous 350Z.

Every model gets the same 332-horsepower V6, an engine that makes this Z the quickest yet with a zero-to-60 time of 4.6 seconds. That kind of performance, however, is contingent on your skills as a driver. If you don’t posses Lewis Hamilton levels of talent don’t fret. The Z’s abundant power and excellent handling will let you think you do.

WIRED Insanely easy to drive, insanely quickly. You’ll run out of nerve before you run out of grip. Rev-matching transmission makes heel-toe shifting more obsolete than a gramophone.

TIRED Rev-matching transmission makes heel-toe shifting more obsolete than a vinyl record. Tympani-like tire roar, piccolo-like exhaust note. Hummer-sized blind spots make lane changes a gun-it-and-go-for-it leap of faith. Fake brushed-aluminum interior bits don’t fool anyone.

$33,970 (as tested), nissanusa.com

Read our full Nissan 2009 370Z review.

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: Using the BookReader is simple: Just plunk a novel on the platen, punch a button and you’re relaxing to the dulcet sounds of Jill, a computerized voice with a voracious appetite for literature. All the menus read themselves off when you mouse over them, and they have keyboard shortcuts, which is useful if you have reduced vision. Jill is pretty good at recognizing words. We tried out several books, including one heavy with medical jargon, and she held her own with just a few exceptions.

Useful as it is, we could not help noticing that the BookReader seems to be slightly undercooked. A few of the buttons don’t really do anything, and you can’t customize the dictionary to alter Jill’s interpretation of commonly used, but horribly flubbed words, acronyms or numbers. The unit seems to be terribly overpriced as well. Plustek wants $600 for the BookReader, despite the fact that the OpticBook only costs $250 — and has its own text-to-speech function.

WIRED Reads books to you at the push of a button. Platen glass goes right to the edge to accommodate books without strain. Turns text into MP3s for portability. Includes several accessibility features to help the visually impaired.

TIRED The included software lacks polish and seems rushed. Squat, ugly looks make it seem at home in a cubicle farm. The reader voice may not screw up often, but when it does, it’s a doozy. High price nears gouging territory.

$600, plustek.com

Read our full Plustek BookReader V100 review.

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: Photo: Dylan Tweeny/Wired.comApple’s newest Shuffle (almost 50 percent smaller than previous Shuffles) could easily be mistaken for a stick of Trident, features no buttons, and pimps voice-identification technology. But even given its apparent readily consumable stature, there are a few features on the Shuffle that are a bit tough to swallow.

The biggest gripe on the 4-GB Shuffle we tested is definitely the control set. First off, it’s completely counterintuitive; Apple says you can easily use it without looking. We still don’t have the hang of it after a few days of testing. What’s worse, if you have a decent set of earbuds (say, a pair of Shures or Ultimate Ears) you’re totally hosed — you’ll have to endure the ‘buds that come with the Shuffle or pick up specially made third-party headphones. Our recommendation? Pick up a new Shuffle only if you’re prepared to deal with proprietary headphones and ambiguous controls.

WIRED Thumb-drive size. Can double as a tie clip. Battery life lasts for 12 freaking hours. Short USB sync cord is sexy. Yes, we’ll admit, it’s another beautifully designed piece of hardware from Apple. Battery bonked out after 11 constant hours of blasting Thunderstruck on loop.

TIRED Proprietary headphones required. Control set awkward to use, hard to get used to. So small, it nearly gets lost in the packaging it comes in.

$80, apple.com

Read our full Apple iPod Shuffle 3rd Gen review.

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: Rather than foam, gel or compressed-air cushioning, the soles on Newtons have a series of “actuator lugs” just below the ball of the foot. The lugs are designed to help encourage you to land on your forefoot, to protect that part of the foot, and (best yet) to propel you forward. When you land, the lugs push into hollow chambers in the midsole. This cushions your landing, and helps make it comfy to land midsole or forefoot rather than on the heel as you might be accustomed. As your foot moves forward, these lugs then essentially lever out, and as you lift your foot, they return the energy by pushing up and out in the same direction as your stride. Newton claims this makes them more efficient than traditional foam or gel soles that simply absorb energy but don’t return it.

WIRED So cozy they’re like a Snuggie for your feet. Actuator lugs get you off your heels better than a La-Z-Boy. Lightweight at 10.2 ounces. Designed for all stride types. Stomps cold weather like global warming, and keeps out the drizzle for shizzle.

TIRED Not waterproof. Worse on single-track trails than a skateboard. $175??? OMG, for that much money I could just pay somebody to run for me.

$175, newtonrunning.com

Read our full Newton All Weather Trainer review.

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: The Firebird features a hybrid design — using 2.5-inch hard drives (two 320-GB models) and dual graphics cards originally designed for laptops — but powers it all with a desktop CPU and desktop-sized DIMMs. As with a laptop, wireless is built in, but the power supply is not: To save on wattage, HP breaks out the (enormous) power adapter instead of integrating it into the box.

As cool as the Firebird is on the whole, it isn’t without some foibles. The inclusion of an ExpressCard slot is on the baffling-to-useless side, and the external power supply (it’s huge) is more annoying to deal with than it sounds. But our biggest gripe is that the Firebird’s streamlined shell means it includes no front-mounted ports at all, not even a single USB slot for your thumb drive. Seriously HP, even the Mac Pro finds room for that.

WIRED Amazingly quiet and conscientious in its power consumption. Outstanding design; belongs on top of the desk, not beneath it. Solid all-around performance at a fair price.

TIRED No front USB port. Curvy design means you can’t put anything on top of the case. Functionally locked down, with no real upgrade path.

$2,100 (as tested), hp.com

Read our full HP Firebird 803 review.

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: I shouldn’t love this truck. I should hate it. I purposely do not own a car, and this all-black behemoth represents everything I hate about SUV culture: conspicuous consumption, insensitivity to our rapidly shrinking world and crowded cities, middle finger raised at global warming.

You could slap a cold fusion generator under Big Poppa Cadillac’s hood and the first two issues would still apply, but I was kind of wrong about that last one. Have you ever seen Godzilla vs. Megalon? Where Godzilla fights on behalf of the people of Japan against a giant rhinoceros/cockroach? Sure, Tokyo’s favorite monster still smashes a bunch of buildings and steps on some people, but he’s trying to be good. Same goes for this Hybrid Chromedaddy.

WIRED Decent pickup for a motorized bomb shelter. Combined ABS and regenerative braking system do a terrific job of hauling the beast down from speed. Trick motorized step makes it easy for shorties to climb into your rolling condo.

TIRED Thing has a car phone. No, not Bluetooth, but an actual phone built into infotainment system. (It’s actually just Onstar, but there was no other option for hands-free calling.) What is this, 1989? Cadillac — God love ‘em — uses the fact that this is a hybrid as an excuse to bling up the truck even more: Hybrid badges are plastered on every hard surface, on the sides of the door, even the windshield. —Joe Brown

$74,085 (as tested), Cadillac.com

Read our full Cadillac Escalade Hybrid review.

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:
The Kindle 2 is zippier, with pages turning 20 percent faster (yes, you can tell the difference). It has more memory (2 gigabytes, enough for storing more than 1,500 books onboard). And it flaunts a more powerful built-in battery: Amazon claims that the Kindle lasts four to five days with the wireless on (we got 4.5 days in our first test) and up to two weeks with it off. After a week of limited wireless, my meter is around 50 percent. Amazon also says that after 500 charges, it will hold 80 percent of its original juice. That means that most users won’t have to replace the battery (a $60 procedure) for about a decade or so.

Looking over the horizon, it’s clear that Amazon’s biggest competitor in selling digital books will be Google, whose recent agreement with publishers and authors will make it the virtually exclusive seller for millions of books in copyright but not in print. But right now at least, the Google and Amazon formats aren’t compatible: I was unsuccessful in getting a PDF of a public-domain book downloaded from Google to appear in readable form on my Kindle.

WIRED The best e-reading system on the market. Welcome improvements to aesthetics, more functional industrial design, better graphics and longer battery life. Sleeker than the original: One-third of an inch thick and 10 ounces.

TIRED Quite expensive. Book content shackled with DRM. Interface is improved, sure, but it could be even better.

$360, amazon.com

Read our full Amazon.com Kindle 2 review.

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: The iWOW adapter from SRS Labs promises to coax more “immersive” sound from your iPod, and it actually delivers — provided you’re listening to the right kind of music. Setup is easy: Snap on the slick little 1-inch extension, plug in some spendy headphones, press a button, and you do indeed get a fuller sound with more depth — especially if you enjoy songs like Sting’s “Fragile,” a track hand-picked by SRS to highlight the effect.

But when iWOW was applied to songs that were heavy on low-end thump or had multilayered sound (Exhibit A: Beck’s “Cold Brains”) the iWOW performed more like iMeh. At top volume, bass beats splintered, while at lower volumes tracks sounded muddled and crowded. SRS claims the device “dynamically locates and restores audio detail” and creates a more natural sound. We’re not buying it — most of the audio we threw at the iWOW was punctuated with a subtle hiss and fuzzy bass.

WIRED Relatively small adapter. Snaps easily onto your iPod and lends some oomph to certain tunes.

TIRED The effect is nearly lost when using ear buds, the device won’t work with older generation iPods, and music that already has a fair share of bass sounds muffled.

$70, srslabs.com

Read our full SRS Labs iWOW Adapter for iPod review.

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:

Leaps ahead of other cam phones, the Memoir’s not limited to the 8 megapixels it captures. In shooting mode, the touchscreen has shutterbug controls — zoom, brightness, timer and flash — that float around the image. And just hitting the shutter will take you into camera mode. The Memoir includes a 1-GB microSD to augment the phone’s 100 MB of storage (and it’s an easy-access slot, rather than hidden under the battery).

But for all its convenience, the Memoir simply isn’t a competitor for even the lowliest of dedicated cameras. First off, it’s pokey: slow to focus, slow to snap and very touchy when it comes to movement. And though it touts a 16x digital zoom, it has no optical-zooming option.

WIRED Cool touchscreen and accelerometer helps you shoot or view pictures. Compact, pocket-friendly shape, even for hipsters in painted-on jeans.

TIRED Vampiric light sensitivity makes for washed-out shots. Slow to focus, shoot and recover. E-mail functions are even slower. The screen is hard to see in sunlight. Lens cover doesn’t close all the time, so the lens can get dusty.

$300 (with 2-year contract), t-mobile.com

Read our full Samsung Memoir.

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:
From the outside, the 1000HE doesn’t look much different from other netbooks. But it’s the machine’s heart — the brand new 1.66-GHz Atom N280 processor — that makes it faster, stronger, smarter than its opponents.

Intel claims the silicon slab boosts computing power across the board, especially HD video playback — something that has been woefully horrid in past machines using Atom processors. It’s not lying. This is the fastest netbook we’ve tested (by about 7 percent) in our benchmarks. And HD video playback was noticeably smoother and devoid of chop.

WIRED The first netbook to feature the new Atom N280 chip. MMC and SD media reader slots. Attractive, pearly finish. Decent 1.3-megapixel webcam.

TIRED At 3.1 pounds, it’s one of the heaviest puppies in the netbook litter. Lame keyboard.

$400 as tested, asus.com

Read our full Asus Eee PC 1000HE review.

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: The R50 is remarkably easy to set up and use. As you program each component into the remote using the setup wizard, you test a few controls to make sure it has the right code. The remote instantly recognized all our components, and it took us about 10 minutes to get the AV rig up and running. As part of the setup, you name each component, which then appears as an icon on the screen: in my case, a Sony HDTV, Yamaha amp/receiver, Squeezebox, Oppo DVD player and Soundmatters speaker.

WIRED Cool, reddish backlight perfect for nighttime navigation. No computer or web connection needed for operation. No charging cradle required.

TIRED No user manual means gizmo novices might get lost in setup. $150 price point isn’t super pricey, but then it’s not the cheapest universal remote out there.

$150, universalremote.com

Read our full Universal Remote Digital R50 review.

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:
Like other watches in the 25-year-old G-Shock line, the MTG-1500 is forged with Mr. T levels of toughness: It can easily survive being banged clumsily against tabletops or whacked against a surfboard in a wipeout. And it’s water-resistant to 200 meters. But unlike most other G-Shock watches, which are primarily plastic, the MTG-1500’s body and band are stainless steel, with a few tasteful black plastic accents.

We half expected to find the MTG-1500 lacking in minor features. Surprisingly, it didn’t. It’s got a stopwatch mode, dual time-zone support, five different alarms and a countdown timer. Free abundant sunlight or bright artificial light recharges the battery as you wear the watch. Once fully charged, the battery should be able to power the watch for 6 months without additional light.

WIRED Handsome, two-toned steel-and-black styling doesn’t blare “nerd,” “Swatch-wearing poser” or “too lazy to take off my gym watch.” Self-syncs with superaccurate official time stations. Gives you an excuse to say “solar” and “atomic” in the same sentence.

TIRED Digital display too small and can be obscured by watch hands. LED provides uneven illumination in the dark. $500 can buy a timepiece that’s much fancier, albeit not atomic.

$500, casio.com

Read our full Casio G-Shock MTG-1500 review.

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:
The skinny on this countertop unit is pretty straightforward: It’s the touch-based kitchen computer that won’t put you out of house and home. Don’t go rushing out to cash in that 401(k), though — despite a recession-friendly price, the Eee Top still feels a little light in the loafers.

The glossy white, semi-opaque keyboard and mouse look stylish out of the box, but after extended handling their light, plastic-y build became annoying. The slim chassis sat solid on our countertop, while the bright, 15.6-inch screen and the integrated speaker bar make up the majority of the Top’s sleek profile. Rounding out the device are six USB ports, memory card reader, 1.3-MP web cam and integrated Wi-Fi. We were pretty bummed at the lack of an optical drive, though.

WIRED An all-in-one for the Top Ramen set. Quick, responsive touch interface. Compact design has integrated storage for both keyboard and stylus. Integrated 802.11n and gigabit ethernet ensure throughput thrashings. One-touch shutoff button for hiding porn er, convenience. Runs whisper-quiet.

TIRED Underpowered for heavy web video. A wired keyboard and mouse — on an all-in-one?!? Heats up after extended poke/prod sessions. Anemic 160-GB hard drive. Even a cheapy, noisy optical drive would’ve been nice. No battery means no mobile computing.

$600 (as tested), asus.com

Read our full Asus ET1602 Eee Top review.

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:
This camera is about the size and shape of a pack of chewing gum, and weighs just 0.68 ounces. It records videos at 352 x 288 pixels, encoding them in the 3-GP format used by many cellphones (the videos can be played on your computer using most media-player software, including QuickTime and RealPlayer).

But the MovieStick is oozing with design flaws. The pinhole-sized lens is located on the long side of the device, rather than the short end, limiting your ability to go truly undercover. Add to that a confusing series of lights that supposedly indicate when the cam is charging, turned on or recording, and you end up with more than one inadvertent video of the floor.

WIRED The smallest video camera we’ve seen yet. Simple to set up and use. Makes you look like a double agent.

TIRED Location of camera lens makes it hard to go covert. No internal storage or memory card included. Recorded video is shakier and blurrier than outtakes from The Blair Witch Project.

$120, swannsecurity.com

Read our full Swann Micro-VideoCam Recorder review.

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: Kodak’s Theatre HD’s raison d’être is straightforward: to shuttle the contents of your PC directly to your television using ethernet or Wi-Fi. Pictures, videos, podcasts, music or any other digital content that may be living on your hard drive (as long as it’s not squelched by some DRM straightjacket) can be whisked away by this tiny little box to your television with little to no fuss.

What really sets the Theatre HD Player apart from the rest of the field is how immaculately it performs its tasks. Once you’ve downloaded Kodak’s EasyShare display software, everything is pretty much taken care of. Have a hard drive filled with extra content? No problem. Simply hook it up to one of the player’s USB ports and you’re ready to go.

WIRED Intuitive UI coupled with a handy RF remote makes setup and playback of multimedia a Zen-like experience. Wealth of connectivity options: component, HDMI, optical or RCA audio, dual USB ports. Transforms crappy YouTube video into semi-watchable content.

TIRED Requires Kodak EasyShare software to get the streaming party started. No Mac compatibility (for now). Pricey, especially for a device without a hard drive. Needs more internet content.

$300, Kodak

Read our full Kodak Theatre HD Player review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.: Skidding in at 53 pounds (on the lighter side for this category), Ohm’s mountain bike-inspired geometry and its nine-level power-assist and regeneration system make it a smart, nimble and efficient two-wheeler.

On pavement and trail the BionX power plant, mounted on the rear hub, employs a unique sensor technology that is constantly adjusting the level of assistance it gives you based on the terrain. Encountering some mushy road? More power is delivered to the gears. Gliding down paved asphalt? The juice is dialed back. And if your thighs are flushed with lactic acid on a sheer hill, a flick of the trusty thumb throttle cracks the whip and the motor totally takes over, no pedaling required. But for all this innovation and comfort, you will, however, have to part with a spouse-enraging $3,450. Is it worth it? Well, it is a ton of fun.

WIRED Excellent Shimano parts mix with disc brakes and RockShox suspension fork. Lockable battery compartment hides space for mobile phone, wallet, media player and your other little stuff. Regeneration mode gives extra on-bike battery life. Comfortable suspension seat post. Four- to six-hour charge time.

TIRED Throttle position needs to be improved for optimal bike handling. Price steeper than any hill the bike can handle.

$3450, Ohm Cycles

Read our full Ohm Cycles XS700 review.

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: For about $300 more than the average netbook, the UC7807u offers a scintillating array of grownup specs. Intel 2.0-GHz Core 2 Duo CPU? Check. 250-GB hard drive? Yep. 3 GB of memory, a glossy 13.3-inch display, a slot-loading optical drive and ports galore (three USB and an HDMI)? You betcha! Best of all, with its fetching brushed aluminum chassis, no one will mistake this for a budget notebook.

Unfortunately, the UC7807u also has all the telltale signs of some obvious corner cutting. Forget about gaming. Due to Intel’s torpid integrated GMA 4500MHD graphics card, even moderately intensive titles won’t run properly. But our main beef with the UC7807u is the feeble 6-cell battery which clocked in at a disappointing 3 hours, 25 minutes — a full hour shorter than most other notebooks in this category.

WIRED Recession-worthy price. Built like a tank. Slick, touch-sensitive volume and multimedia controls.

TIRED Tips the scales for a notebook in this category. Battery drains faster than an ATM at a strip club. Epic fail on the tiny circular touchpad. It’s cramped and serves no discernable purpose. Onboard speakers spit out tinny, distorted sound. HDMI, but no Blu-ray?

$800 as tested, Gateway

Read our full Gateway UC7807u review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.
: It’s no wonder this watch ran away with my heart; for the competitive runner or multisport athlete seeking a personal best in 2009, the Polar RS800CX is the required training device. Because of incredibly robust desktop software, tracking of obscure performance metrics, and a wide variety of add-on sensors, the RS800CX can help you measure, analyze and improve nearly every aspect of your training program.

WIRED Offers better heart-rate monitoring than your average hospital. Incredibly customizable from in-watch display, to software interface, to training programs. GPS and barometric altimeter combined with location tracking mean you’ll never wonder where you wandered. Extensible pods make watch more sport-versatile than Lance Armstrong.

TIRED Even beer goggles won’t pretty up this ugly watch face. May need to hire a coach anyway — just to teach you how to use the PC-only desktop software.

$500, Polar

Read our full Polar RS800CX MULTI review.

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: The pocket rocket we’ve been packing in our pants recently (full name: Optoma DLP EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector) is one of the first mini projectors to hit the market. It’s also one of the best, even though a number of flaws spill from the tiny device.

Styled like a ’40s-era Zippo, the piano-black portable feels more natural in the hand than a lot of cellphones. But it’s not size that matters to us, it’s the video components! The projector is comprised of a combo-rig LED lamp and a DLP chip (courtesy of Texas Instruments) that sets the resolution at 480 x 320 pixels with a range output of 9 lumens. Yes, we know this is low compared to full-bodied projectors like Benq’s gargantuan MP512 ST 2500-lumen projector but for something this small, it’s remarkable.

WIRED Perfect projector for parties. Rectangular lens creates wide image that keeps the image from stretching. Fine picture quality, 8-96 inches. Startup time > 4 seconds. Dead-sexy hardware.

TIRED Lithium-ion batteries die after 2 hours’ use; how are we supposed to watch our Battlestar marathon? Battery recharge time 4 frakkin’ hours. Suck-tastic speaker. Unless you have a video-out adapter, you can’t project Office docs from your PC. Projector gets hot enough to fry bacon after running 30 minutes.

$400, Optoma

Read our full Optoma EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

: Are you the schlemiel who’s always dropping his cellphone or camera at parties? Or maybe you’re the schlemazel who always gets the drink spilled on him? Either way, if you’re looking for a camera to fit a clumsy or accident-prone lifestyle, the shockproof, waterproof, and cold-resistant Stylus 1050 SW can take the beating from fumbles, faceplants or full-speed crashes, and still keep clicking.

About the size and shape as a pack of smokes, the 1050 is equipped with an accelerometer letting you tinker with settings by tapping on the top and the sides. This lets you do useful stuff like turn the flash on and off with a gloved mitt or preview pictures with one hand while you fend off a tiger shark with the other.

WIRED Shockproof to 5 feet and waterproof 10 means you can bang it on the edge of the pool as you fall in with no harm done. Tap feature lets you change settings without futzing with buttons, and the camera can handle alpine frigidity with aplomb. Comes with a microSD adapter for greater media versatility.

TIRED Lens cover slides more easily than Ricky Henderson. The battery is easily inserted backwards, making you think it’s dead or the camera is malfunctioning. Weak zoom and poor macro ability; this camera could use a bifocal upgrade.

$300, Olympus

Read our full Olympus Stylus 1050 SW review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

: Touted as the thinnest and lightest BlackBerry yet, the Curve 8900 has some much-needed upgrades over its predecessor, but also some disappointments.

Wi-Fi is hot and easy to set up, the camera got a bump to 3.2 megapixels, the 16 GB MicroSD storage can hold up to 20 hours of video, and the high-res screen is fantastic in any light. On the other hand, callers were hard to hear, documents were difficult to create, and RIM’s revamped proprietary browser is good for surfing the Internet but isn’t as smart about automatically resizing webpages as the browsers on competing smartphones.

WIRED Slick, sexy design mashes the best of the Bold and Curve 8830. Brilliant, high-resolution screen is one of the best we’ve seen on a RIM device. Full HTML-rendering on websites. 3.2-megapixel camera is even better when paired with video-recording capabilities; 3.5mm headphone jack means no clumsy adapters. Near 5-hour battery life is most impressive.

TIRED 3G is MIA. Despite the powerful 512-Mhz processor, the software still lags. New website and software don’t perform as well as they should. Phone quality was mixed and loud speakers fail to compensate for somewhat distorted music playback.

$200 with a two year contract, RIM

Read our full RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

: This handset (which arrives in some of the most gorgeous packaging I’ve ever seen a consumer electronic encased in) is almost laughably banal in its actual construction. A silver slider with wide-spaced keys, it posses a passing resemblance to the Nokia 5200, albeit with a larger (2.2-inch) screen. But, once you switch it on and start using it, things begin to get interesting.

The operating system orbits around Facebook synchronization. Basically you take the phone online, pair it with your Facebook account, and all of your various Facebook applications become active on the mobile. Your Facebook address book syncs up with the phone’s address book. Events from your Facebook calendar become part of the phone’s calendar. Take a picture with the 3.2-megapixel camera, and you can automatically upload those shots to a Facebook album.

WIRED Brightly hued, easy to use, easy-to-sync OS pairs perfectly with your Facebook account. Skype integration is thoughtful. Thoughtfully spaced keys make texting, entering URLs rather pleasant. Camera takes photos that are sharp enough to be a profile picture. Extremely cheap for an unlocked device.

TIRED Humdrum hardware punctuates novel OS. Not offered in the United States … yet. Battery life is clinically depressing when surfing the web, using Skype.

$112 (estimated), Three

Read our full INQ1 Facebook Phone review.

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: HP has been tinkering with touch tech for a couple of years. But they have yet to nail the bull’s eye with a machine that mixes mature hardware with a haptic interface that feels like more than just a half-assed effort. So, we were cautiously optimistic with the TouchSmart tx2z. The good news? As HP’s first multitouch convertible tablet, it’s got a lot of potential.

Converting from notebook to tablet proved painless, thanks to a solid hinge and the included pen. After swinging the 1280 x 800 screen around (and folding it back), we found two goodies. First, using the pen automatically disables the touchscreen (to prevent palm-related havoc), and second, HP included an active digitizer for handwritten input. This made reckless activities like e-mailing while strolling around the block surprisingly easy. Even jotting down quick notes using a finger (instead of the pen) gave us minimal hassle.

WIRED Fully baked as both a touch and tablet device. Travels well with its compact and stylish chassis. Includes quick keys for rotating screen orientation. Mini media remote and pen conveniently hide away in chassis. Altec Lansing speakers strike decent balance between volume and clarity. Extra goodies aplenty: biometric security, webcam, dual headphone jacks, 802.11n compatibility and 5-in-1 card reader.
TIRED Bloated OS hinders performance of otherwise decent specs. Occasionally laggy switches between notebook and tablet mode. No multitouch love for the trackpad. Terrible viewing angles and weak visibility in direct sunlight. Fan sounds like a leaf-blower at a My Bloody Valentine show.

$1550 (as tested), HP

Read our full HP TouchSmart tx2z review.

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: Nero’s LiquidTV TiVo PC looks like a TiVo and acts like a TiVo, but, brother, it ain’t no TiVo.

Actually, the package makes your PC act like a TiVo by adding a USB TV tuner and the same TiVo software that drives the set-tops. You also get a for-reals TiVo remote and an IR receiver so you can command content from the couch.

Ironically, that’s where you’re gonna get pissed. The remote can’t launch the software, so you’ll have to physically walk over and mouse it open. The remote can be programmed to turn your TV on and off, but it can’t put your PC in standby mode or wake it up again. If you do that manually, the IR receiver fails to wake up with the rest of the system.

WIRED Includes a one-year TiVo subscription, and after that it’s a cheaper-than-set-top $99 per year. The software can auto-convert recordings to iPod or Sony PSP format. Integrates with any TiVo boxes you already have. Extra storage is just an external hard drive away.

TIRED The remote lacks necessary PC controls. Not measurably better than Windows Media Center — which, incidentally, is free. The tuner supports ClearQAM, but the software doesn’t, so forget digital channels unless you hook up the antenna.

$125, Tivo

Read our full Nero LiquidTV TiVo PC review.

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: It’s not quite a netbook, not quite an ultralight PC. Whatever it is, Samsung’s NC20 is a dazzling feat of engineering: an extremely usable 12-inch laptop with epic battery life, impressive specs and a downright mystifyingly affordable price tag.

But the NC20 doesn’t make depressing tradeoffs to achieve those scores. Battery life is three hours, 40 minutes (22 percent longer than the S10) and weight is just 3.3 pounds, comparable to the Asus Eee PC 1000H. All that and you get a 12.1-inch LCD, too, instead of the usual 10.2-inch netbook display.

WIRED Everything a netbook should be: Offers the best performance available from a computer this portable and inexpensive. Very usable keyboard. Good quality audio. Includes three USB ports, 1.3-megapixel webcam, and SD card slot.

TIRED LCD could be a touch brighter and quality sharper. Chassis design is a bit boring.

$550, samsung.com

Read our full Samsung NC 20 review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

: Pure Digital’s Flip has proven that it’s possible to build a super-small flash memory camcorder and offer it up for fewer than two hundred bucks. But there are tradeoffs with going small and cheap, like optics and battery life. Canon takes a completely different tack with its newest solid-state cam, the Vixia HF S10, which delivers some fantastically brilliant moving pictures, but at a stiff cost.

Out in the field, auto focus and auto exposure were both very impressive in a wide range of situations, from the intense brightness of the beach to shady and contrasty venues. Every camera suffers indoors, thanks to low light, and everyone complains about it, but the S10 did a credible job with low-light shots and it’s clearly better than previous cams of this ilk.

WIRED Improved audio quality. Big, bright lens. Speedy processor. Lots of creative control options. More intuitive menus than previous generation Canon camcorders.

TIRED Loose lens cover noisier than cutlery caught in a garbage disposal. Still images come off looking a bit overexposed.

$1,300, canon.com

Read our full Canon Vixia HF S10 review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

: Dry your eyes, plasma junkies. The untimely demise of Pioneer’s Kuro line doesn’t mean you’ll have to forgo those deliciously deep blacks and theater-perfect colors for long. In fact, even as the last of the Pioneer Kuro Elites make its way into a few lucky U.S. homes, a new lineup of HDTV sets are already poised to seize the plasma king’s vacant throne.

Key to this plasma’s visual appeal is its integrated THX mode. In addition to blessing various audio components, the home-theater ninjas at THX began bestowing plasma and LCD certification a few years back. Each set is subjected to approximately 400 individual tests, ranging from evaluations in signal processing to luminosity. Basically, the idea behind G10’s THX mode is to recreate the precise color gamut filmmakers use during the in-studio post-production process.

WIRED Mind-boggling blacks with tons of detail. THX mode is a godsend for movie buffs. Integrated SD card slots transform your plasma into a giant digital photo frame. Amazing color saturation.

TIRED THX mode is bit dim for brightly lit rooms. Ethernet connectivity is nice for VieraCast, but Wi-Fi would’ve been better. Three HDMI ports (two in the back, one on the side) don’t cut it. More power-hungry than LCD TVs. Where’s the PiP?

$1,300, panasonic.com

Read our full Panasonic TC-P42G10 Viera G10 Series Plasma review.

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: The PogoPlug is a device, which looks like a supersized AC adapter, plugs into almost any external hard drive (even a USB stick) and then pumps that content onto the web, giving you access anywhere in the world you can get an internet signal — including your iPhone.

But the PogoPlug isn’t without the occasional snafu and annoyances. Only image files are available for preview. PDF, Word documents or even HTML files have to be downloaded before viewing. Worse yet, when we unhooked the device, it caused our PC to crash twice in a row. We’re still not entirely sure if this was due to a glitch in the PogoPlug or in Windows.

WIRED Easy to use. Simple setup. Great utility: I must be able to access my collection of LOLcat photos from anywhere. The iPhone app is solid software.

TIRED No wireless mode … yet. Poor security — it’s a wise idea to keep those tax returns or bank documents off the PogoPlug. Computer crashes are deeply flummoxing. The iPhone is currently the only mobile device that supports remote access.

$100, pogoplug.com

Read our full Cloud Engines PogoPlug review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

: NatureMill’s Pro edition is an indoor composter we can pretty much dig. Using minimal electricity, a small motor turns a heavy-duty mixing bar, heats the mixing chamber (no sunlight needed) and powers an air pump that works with a carbon air filter to help reduce smell (each filter lasts four to five years).

Just add starter dirt, drop in some sawdust pellets to combat odors and dump your food scraps in. NatureMill recommends that you cut organic material into 4-inch bits before plopping it in. We didn’t, but aside from the motor making some gnarly noises, it didn’t seem to affect compost production. NatureMill’s Pro version also features some automatic activation. We were able to leave ours sitting for weeks without pushing the button even once; it mixed and heated itself just fine.

WIRED Stainless steel mixing bar made short work of uncut banana peels. Relatively small and exceptionally lightweight = easy to stash and transport. Foot pedal eliminates lid touching. Mighty Morphin’ Power Saver: only draws 5 kwh a month (roughly 50 cents on an average electric bill). Not as much of an eyesore as it could be and it’s available in a range of colors (including, you guess it, green).

TIRED Little to no stench — until top opens (that’s hard to remedy, and burger/fish/salad remnants smell worse than a dead wildebeest doused in Eau D’Bile). Polypropylene housing is light, but may not last forever. Disposable carbon filters reduce smell, but also cut down on the green factor. Regular maintenance (scraping the mix chamber walls) isn’t fun.

$400, naturemill.com

Read our full Nature Mill Indoor Composter — Pro Edition review.

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:
You can get away with a lot if you’re beautiful. Such is the case with the new Porsche Design P’9522 phone. In some ways, it’s a wonderful and capable cellphone, but in most others, it’s dumber than the gorgeous block of aluminum it was machined from.

Someone forgot to include e-mail — an absence that had us trying to mar the Porsche phone’s scratchproof screen with claws of rage. Unfortunately, that screen is tough, so the P’9522 will be lauded and drooled over — despite our many gripes with it.

WIRED Gorgeous. Touchscreen interface is easy to understand, if limited and frustrating. Preloaded ringtones include the roaring engines of the 911 GT3 and Turbo. Its 5-megapixel camera has autofocus and captures clean, vivid images. LED flash doubles as a flashlight. Unlocking the phone with its fingerprint scanner is very MI5.

TIRED Fingerprint scanner is also very POS: Who thought it would be a good idea to use fingerprints to access a device you’re likely holding in one hand while juggling multiple other tasks? Preloaded ringtones include bad German techno. Touchscreen is deeply frustrating. Seriously — no e-mail?

$800, porschedesign.com

Read our full Porsche Design P’9522 Phone review.

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: Weighing just 140 grams, the handset offers some of the best optics we’ve ever found crammed into a cell phone: sharp, noiseless pics (3,264 × 2,448 pixels) and decent image stabilizer punctuate video capture that puts full-figured handicams from 2008 to shame. You can even shoot VGA at 30 fps or QVGA at a whopping 120 fps (yes, 120!), including slow motion footage in 1/4 and 1/8 speeds.

Amazing, sure, but not a picture perfect phone. The i8510 functions almost exactly like a standard point-and-shoot, except for the zoom button, which is placed inexplicably, and awkwardly at the bottom of the device.

WIRED Beaucoup codecs, including — wait for it — DivX! 2.8-inch screen excellent for playback. Intuitive photo/video editing suite. Equally intuitive navigation. Automatic lens cover. MicroSD slot good for 16 GB (enough for aspiring Scorseses to go epic). All the usual smartphone suspects: 3G, Wi-Fi, USB, Bluetooth, accelerometer, GPS. Decent earbuds with ample cord. 3.5mm audio jack. Most excellent: TV-out capability.

TIRED Side-mounted headphone jack makes phone harder to pocket. Optical control pad is a tad sensitive (between us and you — we don’t want to hurt its feelings). Most bogus: Metal shell retains enough scratches to fill a DJ Shadow album. A little on the clunky side. Most bogus: Flash needs to be brighter.

$500, samsung.com

Read our full Samsung i8510 INNOV8 review.

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: As the successor to Logitech’s G11 and G15, this huge hunk of plastic comes with gaming hardwired in its DNA. Like its relatives, it has a blocky aesthetic that harkens to the days of the Model M. There are, however, a handful of very modern flourishes that make this latest G-board a distinctly modern marvel.

In the end, the G19’s main drawback is the same one that has plagued fancy keyboards since the days of yore: It’s freaking huge. That swiveling LCD? It actually requires a tiny onboard Linux computer to run, which in turn requires its own power source. Should you choose to make use of the two self-powered USB ports, you’ll potentially have more wires shooting out of this thing than your computer.

WIRED More customizable than a box of Legos. Two self-powered USB ports. Dedicated D-pad and menu keys let you control LCD directly from the keyboard. Convenient cable management lanes carved into bottom of unit lessens clutter … slightly. Choose-your-own-color adventure with adjustable backlighting. Keys are pleasantly clicky and responsive.

TIRED Limited desktop space? This is not your keyboard. Price tag to match gargantuan footprint. Requires power brick to run. After its novelty wears off, built-in LCD becomes more of a distraction than a useful tool.

$200, Logitech.com

Read our full Logitech G19 Keyboard review.

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: Want to catch the last episode of Battlestar Galactica while hanging out in the local java joint? Going to download a season of The Simpsons for viewing on the plane? Giving an impromptu screening of your vacation photos at a friend’s house? The Mini 10 is your machine.

But there are infuriating shortcomings to the Mini 10. The trackpad is one of the worst we’ve seen. Dell’s decision to integrate the buttons underneath the pad itself makes using it both unpredictable and challenging. When you click on a button, the cursor may hit the target, wiggle off a centimeter or two, or teleport off into a remote corner of your screen. While it got easier to use after a week of practice, our advice is to invest in a cheap travel mouse.

WIRED Bright, responsive screen. Integrated 1.3-megapixel webcam. Not gunked up with crapware. HDMI-out port shows charming, if unwarranted, optimism about the netbook’s video capabilities. Light weight: Just 2.6 pounds.

TIRED Infuriating trackpad with integrated buttons hidden underneath. Excessively glossy screen produces distracting glare. Windows XP is starting to look pretty tired. What, no solid-state option? Despite the HDMI port, the netbook can’t deliver HD video without fits and starts.

$470 (as tested), dell.com

Read our full Dell Mini 10 Netbook review.

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: The new 370Z upgrades come in the form of a sexy body with a hood, hatch and doors of lightweight aluminum and a chassis significantly stiffer to reduce performance-robbing flex. To make up for the beefier chassis, Nissan’s engineers pared more than 225 pounds from the rest of the car — even the audio system lost 3.5 pounds — and the result is a car that weighs 88 pounds less than the previous 350Z.

Every model gets the same 332-horsepower V6, an engine that makes this Z the quickest yet with a zero-to-60 time of 4.6 seconds. That kind of performance, however, is contingent on your skills as a driver. If you don’t posses Lewis Hamilton levels of talent don’t fret. The Z’s abundant power and excellent handling will let you think you do.

WIRED Insanely easy to drive, insanely quickly. You’ll run out of nerve before you run out of grip. Rev-matching transmission makes heel-toe shifting more obsolete than a gramophone.

TIRED Rev-matching transmission makes heel-toe shifting more obsolete than a vinyl record. Tympani-like tire roar, piccolo-like exhaust note. Hummer-sized blind spots make lane changes a gun-it-and-go-for-it leap of faith. Fake brushed-aluminum interior bits don’t fool anyone.

$33,970 (as tested), nissanusa.com

Read our full Nissan 2009 370Z review.

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: Using the BookReader is simple: Just plunk a novel on the platen, punch a button and you’re relaxing to the dulcet sounds of Jill, a computerized voice with a voracious appetite for literature. All the menus read themselves off when you mouse over them, and they have keyboard shortcuts, which is useful if you have reduced vision. Jill is pretty good at recognizing words. We tried out several books, including one heavy with medical jargon, and she held her own with just a few exceptions.

Useful as it is, we could not help noticing that the BookReader seems to be slightly undercooked. A few of the buttons don’t really do anything, and you can’t customize the dictionary to alter Jill’s interpretation of commonly used, but horribly flubbed words, acronyms or numbers. The unit seems to be terribly overpriced as well. Plustek wants $600 for the BookReader, despite the fact that the OpticBook only costs $250 — and has its own text-to-speech function.

WIRED Reads books to you at the push of a button. Platen glass goes right to the edge to accommodate books without strain. Turns text into MP3s for portability. Includes several accessibility features to help the visually impaired.

TIRED The included software lacks polish and seems rushed. Squat, ugly looks make it seem at home in a cubicle farm. The reader voice may not screw up often, but when it does, it’s a doozy. High price nears gouging territory.

$600, plustek.com

Read our full Plustek BookReader V100 review.

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: Photo: Dylan Tweeny/Wired.comApple’s newest Shuffle (almost 50 percent smaller than previous Shuffles) could easily be mistaken for a stick of Trident, features no buttons, and pimps voice-identification technology. But even given its apparent readily consumable stature, there are a few features on the Shuffle that are a bit tough to swallow.

The biggest gripe on the 4-GB Shuffle we tested is definitely the control set. First off, it’s completely counterintuitive; Apple says you can easily use it without looking. We still don’t have the hang of it after a few days of testing. What’s worse, if you have a decent set of earbuds (say, a pair of Shures or Ultimate Ears) you’re totally hosed — you’ll have to endure the ‘buds that come with the Shuffle or pick up specially made third-party headphones. Our recommendation? Pick up a new Shuffle only if you’re prepared to deal with proprietary headphones and ambiguous controls.

WIRED Thumb-drive size. Can double as a tie clip. Battery life lasts for 12 freaking hours. Short USB sync cord is sexy. Yes, we’ll admit, it’s another beautifully designed piece of hardware from Apple. Battery bonked out after 11 constant hours of blasting Thunderstruck on loop.

TIRED Proprietary headphones required. Control set awkward to use, hard to get used to. So small, it nearly gets lost in the packaging it comes in.

$80, apple.com

Read our full Apple iPod Shuffle 3rd Gen review.

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: Rather than foam, gel or compressed-air cushioning, the soles on Newtons have a series of “actuator lugs” just below the ball of the foot. The lugs are designed to help encourage you to land on your forefoot, to protect that part of the foot, and (best yet) to propel you forward. When you land, the lugs push into hollow chambers in the midsole. This cushions your landing, and helps make it comfy to land midsole or forefoot rather than on the heel as you might be accustomed. As your foot moves forward, these lugs then essentially lever out, and as you lift your foot, they return the energy by pushing up and out in the same direction as your stride. Newton claims this makes them more efficient than traditional foam or gel soles that simply absorb energy but don’t return it.

WIRED So cozy they’re like a Snuggie for your feet. Actuator lugs get you off your heels better than a La-Z-Boy. Lightweight at 10.2 ounces. Designed for all stride types. Stomps cold weather like global warming, and keeps out the drizzle for shizzle.

TIRED Not waterproof. Worse on single-track trails than a skateboard. $175??? OMG, for that much money I could just pay somebody to run for me.

$175, newtonrunning.com

Read our full Newton All Weather Trainer review.

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: The Firebird features a hybrid design — using 2.5-inch hard drives (two 320-GB models) and dual graphics cards originally designed for laptops — but powers it all with a desktop CPU and desktop-sized DIMMs. As with a laptop, wireless is built in, but the power supply is not: To save on wattage, HP breaks out the (enormous) power adapter instead of integrating it into the box.

As cool as the Firebird is on the whole, it isn’t without some foibles. The inclusion of an ExpressCard slot is on the baffling-to-useless side, and the external power supply (it’s huge) is more annoying to deal with than it sounds. But our biggest gripe is that the Firebird’s streamlined shell means it includes no front-mounted ports at all, not even a single USB slot for your thumb drive. Seriously HP, even the Mac Pro finds room for that.

WIRED Amazingly quiet and conscientious in its power consumption. Outstanding design; belongs on top of the desk, not beneath it. Solid all-around performance at a fair price.

TIRED No front USB port. Curvy design means you can’t put anything on top of the case. Functionally locked down, with no real upgrade path.

$2,100 (as tested), hp.com

Read our full HP Firebird 803 review.

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: I shouldn’t love this truck. I should hate it. I purposely do not own a car, and this all-black behemoth represents everything I hate about SUV culture: conspicuous consumption, insensitivity to our rapidly shrinking world and crowded cities, middle finger raised at global warming.

You could slap a cold fusion generator under Big Poppa Cadillac’s hood and the first two issues would still apply, but I was kind of wrong about that last one. Have you ever seen Godzilla vs. Megalon? Where Godzilla fights on behalf of the people of Japan against a giant rhinoceros/cockroach? Sure, Tokyo’s favorite monster still smashes a bunch of buildings and steps on some people, but he’s trying to be good. Same goes for this Hybrid Chromedaddy.

WIRED Decent pickup for a motorized bomb shelter. Combined ABS and regenerative braking system do a terrific job of hauling the beast down from speed. Trick motorized step makes it easy for shorties to climb into your rolling condo.

TIRED Thing has a car phone. No, not Bluetooth, but an actual phone built into infotainment system. (It’s actually just Onstar, but there was no other option for hands-free calling.) What is this, 1989? Cadillac — God love ‘em — uses the fact that this is a hybrid as an excuse to bling up the truck even more: Hybrid badges are plastered on every hard surface, on the sides of the door, even the windshield. —Joe Brown

$74,085 (as tested), Cadillac.com

Read our full Cadillac Escalade Hybrid review.

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The Kindle 2 is zippier, with pages turning 20 percent faster (yes, you can tell the difference). It has more memory (2 gigabytes, enough for storing more than 1,500 books onboard). And it flaunts a more powerful built-in battery: Amazon claims that the Kindle lasts four to five days with the wireless on (we got 4.5 days in our first test) and up to two weeks with it off. After a week of limited wireless, my meter is around 50 percent. Amazon also says that after 500 charges, it will hold 80 percent of its original juice. That means that most users won’t have to replace the battery (a $60 procedure) for about a decade or so.

Looking over the horizon, it’s clear that Amazon’s biggest competitor in selling digital books will be Google, whose recent agreement with publishers and authors will make it the virtually exclusive seller for millions of books in copyright but not in print. But right now at least, the Google and Amazon formats aren’t compatible: I was unsuccessful in getting a PDF of a public-domain book downloaded from Google to appear in readable form on my Kindle.

WIRED The best e-reading system on the market. Welcome improvements to aesthetics, more functional industrial design, better graphics and longer battery life. Sleeker than the original: One-third of an inch thick and 10 ounces.

TIRED Quite expensive. Book content shackled with DRM. Interface is improved, sure, but it could be even better.

$360, amazon.com

Read our full Amazon.com Kindle 2 review.

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: The iWOW adapter from SRS Labs promises to coax more “immersive” sound from your iPod, and it actually delivers — provided you’re listening to the right kind of music. Setup is easy: Snap on the slick little 1-inch extension, plug in some spendy headphones, press a button, and you do indeed get a fuller sound with more depth — especially if you enjoy songs like Sting’s “Fragile,” a track hand-picked by SRS to highlight the effect.

But when iWOW was applied to songs that were heavy on low-end thump or had multilayered sound (Exhibit A: Beck’s “Cold Brains”) the iWOW performed more like iMeh. At top volume, bass beats splintered, while at lower volumes tracks sounded muddled and crowded. SRS claims the device “dynamically locates and restores audio detail” and creates a more natural sound. We’re not buying it — most of the audio we threw at the iWOW was punctuated with a subtle hiss and fuzzy bass.

WIRED Relatively small adapter. Snaps easily onto your iPod and lends some oomph to certain tunes.

TIRED The effect is nearly lost when using ear buds, the device won’t work with older generation iPods, and music that already has a fair share of bass sounds muffled.

$70, srslabs.com

Read our full SRS Labs iWOW Adapter for iPod review.

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:

Leaps ahead of other cam phones, the Memoir’s not limited to the 8 megapixels it captures. In shooting mode, the touchscreen has shutterbug controls — zoom, brightness, timer and flash — that float around the image. And just hitting the shutter will take you into camera mode. The Memoir includes a 1-GB microSD to augment the phone’s 100 MB of storage (and it’s an easy-access slot, rather than hidden under the battery).

But for all its convenience, the Memoir simply isn’t a competitor for even the lowliest of dedicated cameras. First off, it’s pokey: slow to focus, slow to snap and very touchy when it comes to movement. And though it touts a 16x digital zoom, it has no optical-zooming option.

WIRED Cool touchscreen and accelerometer helps you shoot or view pictures. Compact, pocket-friendly shape, even for hipsters in painted-on jeans.

TIRED Vampiric light sensitivity makes for washed-out shots. Slow to focus, shoot and recover. E-mail functions are even slower. The screen is hard to see in sunlight. Lens cover doesn’t close all the time, so the lens can get dusty.

$300 (with 2-year contract), t-mobile.com

Read our full Samsung Memoir.

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From the outside, the 1000HE doesn’t look much different from other netbooks. But it’s the machine’s heart — the brand new 1.66-GHz Atom N280 processor — that makes it faster, stronger, smarter than its opponents.

Intel claims the silicon slab boosts computing power across the board, especially HD video playback — something that has been woefully horrid in past machines using Atom processors. It’s not lying. This is the fastest netbook we’ve tested (by about 7 percent) in our benchmarks. And HD video playback was noticeably smoother and devoid of chop.

WIRED The first netbook to feature the new Atom N280 chip. MMC and SD media reader slots. Attractive, pearly finish. Decent 1.3-megapixel webcam.

TIRED At 3.1 pounds, it’s one of the heaviest puppies in the netbook litter. Lame keyboard.

$400 as tested, asus.com

Read our full Asus Eee PC 1000HE review.

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: The R50 is remarkably easy to set up and use. As you program each component into the remote using the setup wizard, you test a few controls to make sure it has the right code. The remote instantly recognized all our components, and it took us about 10 minutes to get the AV rig up and running. As part of the setup, you name each component, which then appears as an icon on the screen: in my case, a Sony HDTV, Yamaha amp/receiver, Squeezebox, Oppo DVD player and Soundmatters speaker.

WIRED Cool, reddish backlight perfect for nighttime navigation. No computer or web connection needed for operation. No charging cradle required.

TIRED No user manual means gizmo novices might get lost in setup. $150 price point isn’t super pricey, but then it’s not the cheapest universal remote out there.

$150, universalremote.com

Read our full Universal Remote Digital R50 review.

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:
Like other watches in the 25-year-old G-Shock line, the MTG-1500 is forged with Mr. T levels of toughness: It can easily survive being banged clumsily against tabletops or whacked against a surfboard in a wipeout. And it’s water-resistant to 200 meters. But unlike most other G-Shock watches, which are primarily plastic, the MTG-1500’s body and band are stainless steel, with a few tasteful black plastic accents.

We half expected to find the MTG-1500 lacking in minor features. Surprisingly, it didn’t. It’s got a stopwatch mode, dual time-zone support, five different alarms and a countdown timer. Free abundant sunlight or bright artificial light recharges the battery as you wear the watch. Once fully charged, the battery should be able to power the watch for 6 months without additional light.

WIRED Handsome, two-toned steel-and-black styling doesn’t blare “nerd,” “Swatch-wearing poser” or “too lazy to take off my gym watch.” Self-syncs with superaccurate official time stations. Gives you an excuse to say “solar” and “atomic” in the same sentence.

TIRED Digital display too small and can be obscured by watch hands. LED provides uneven illumination in the dark. $500 can buy a timepiece that’s much fancier, albeit not atomic.

$500, casio.com

Read our full Casio G-Shock MTG-1500 review.

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:
The skinny on this countertop unit is pretty straightforward: It’s the touch-based kitchen computer that won’t put you out of house and home. Don’t go rushing out to cash in that 401(k), though — despite a recession-friendly price, the Eee Top still feels a little light in the loafers.

The glossy white, semi-opaque keyboard and mouse look stylish out of the box, but after extended handling their light, plastic-y build became annoying. The slim chassis sat solid on our countertop, while the bright, 15.6-inch screen and the integrated speaker bar make up the majority of the Top’s sleek profile. Rounding out the device are six USB ports, memory card reader, 1.3-MP web cam and integrated Wi-Fi. We were pretty bummed at the lack of an optical drive, though.

WIRED An all-in-one for the Top Ramen set. Quick, responsive touch interface. Compact design has integrated storage for both keyboard and stylus. Integrated 802.11n and gigabit ethernet ensure throughput thrashings. One-touch shutoff button for hiding porn er, convenience. Runs whisper-quiet.

TIRED Underpowered for heavy web video. A wired keyboard and mouse — on an all-in-one?!? Heats up after extended poke/prod sessions. Anemic 160-GB hard drive. Even a cheapy, noisy optical drive would’ve been nice. No battery means no mobile computing.

$600 (as tested), asus.com

Read our full Asus ET1602 Eee Top review.

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This camera is about the size and shape of a pack of chewing gum, and weighs just 0.68 ounces. It records videos at 352 x 288 pixels, encoding them in the 3-GP format used by many cellphones (the videos can be played on your computer using most media-player software, including QuickTime and RealPlayer).

But the MovieStick is oozing with design flaws. The pinhole-sized lens is located on the long side of the device, rather than the short end, limiting your ability to go truly undercover. Add to that a confusing series of lights that supposedly indicate when the cam is charging, turned on or recording, and you end up with more than one inadvertent video of the floor.

WIRED The smallest video camera we’ve seen yet. Simple to set up and use. Makes you look like a double agent.

TIRED Location of camera lens makes it hard to go covert. No internal storage or memory card included. Recorded video is shakier and blurrier than outtakes from The Blair Witch Project.

$120, swannsecurity.com

Read our full Swann Micro-VideoCam Recorder review.

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: Kodak’s Theatre HD’s raison d’être is straightforward: to shuttle the contents of your PC directly to your television using ethernet or Wi-Fi. Pictures, videos, podcasts, music or any other digital content that may be living on your hard drive (as long as it’s not squelched by some DRM straightjacket) can be whisked away by this tiny little box to your television with little to no fuss.

What really sets the Theatre HD Player apart from the rest of the field is how immaculately it performs its tasks. Once you’ve downloaded Kodak’s EasyShare display software, everything is pretty much taken care of. Have a hard drive filled with extra content? No problem. Simply hook it up to one of the player’s USB ports and you’re ready to go.

WIRED Intuitive UI coupled with a handy RF remote makes setup and playback of multimedia a Zen-like experience. Wealth of connectivity options: component, HDMI, optical or RCA audio, dual USB ports. Transforms crappy YouTube video into semi-watchable content.

TIRED Requires Kodak EasyShare software to get the streaming party started. No Mac compatibility (for now). Pricey, especially for a device without a hard drive. Needs more internet content.

$300, Kodak

Read our full Kodak Theatre HD Player review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.: Skidding in at 53 pounds (on the lighter side for this category), Ohm’s mountain bike-inspired geometry and its nine-level power-assist and regeneration system make it a smart, nimble and efficient two-wheeler.

On pavement and trail the BionX power plant, mounted on the rear hub, employs a unique sensor technology that is constantly adjusting the level of assistance it gives you based on the terrain. Encountering some mushy road? More power is delivered to the gears. Gliding down paved asphalt? The juice is dialed back. And if your thighs are flushed with lactic acid on a sheer hill, a flick of the trusty thumb throttle cracks the whip and the motor totally takes over, no pedaling required. But for all this innovation and comfort, you will, however, have to part with a spouse-enraging $3,450. Is it worth it? Well, it is a ton of fun.

WIRED Excellent Shimano parts mix with disc brakes and RockShox suspension fork. Lockable battery compartment hides space for mobile phone, wallet, media player and your other little stuff. Regeneration mode gives extra on-bike battery life. Comfortable suspension seat post. Four- to six-hour charge time.

TIRED Throttle position needs to be improved for optimal bike handling. Price steeper than any hill the bike can handle.

$3450, Ohm Cycles

Read our full Ohm Cycles XS700 review.

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: For about $300 more than the average netbook, the UC7807u offers a scintillating array of grownup specs. Intel 2.0-GHz Core 2 Duo CPU? Check. 250-GB hard drive? Yep. 3 GB of memory, a glossy 13.3-inch display, a slot-loading optical drive and ports galore (three USB and an HDMI)? You betcha! Best of all, with its fetching brushed aluminum chassis, no one will mistake this for a budget notebook.

Unfortunately, the UC7807u also has all the telltale signs of some obvious corner cutting. Forget about gaming. Due to Intel’s torpid integrated GMA 4500MHD graphics card, even moderately intensive titles won’t run properly. But our main beef with the UC7807u is the feeble 6-cell battery which clocked in at a disappointing 3 hours, 25 minutes — a full hour shorter than most other notebooks in this category.

WIRED Recession-worthy price. Built like a tank. Slick, touch-sensitive volume and multimedia controls.

TIRED Tips the scales for a notebook in this category. Battery drains faster than an ATM at a strip club. Epic fail on the tiny circular touchpad. It’s cramped and serves no discernable purpose. Onboard speakers spit out tinny, distorted sound. HDMI, but no Blu-ray?

$800 as tested, Gateway

Read our full Gateway UC7807u review.

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: It’s no wonder this watch ran away with my heart; for the competitive runner or multisport athlete seeking a personal best in 2009, the Polar RS800CX is the required training device. Because of incredibly robust desktop software, tracking of obscure performance metrics, and a wide variety of add-on sensors, the RS800CX can help you measure, analyze and improve nearly every aspect of your training program.

WIRED Offers better heart-rate monitoring than your average hospital. Incredibly customizable from in-watch display, to software interface, to training programs. GPS and barometric altimeter combined with location tracking mean you’ll never wonder where you wandered. Extensible pods make watch more sport-versatile than Lance Armstrong.

TIRED Even beer goggles won’t pretty up this ugly watch face. May need to hire a coach anyway — just to teach you how to use the PC-only desktop software.

$500, Polar

Read our full Polar RS800CX MULTI review.

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: The pocket rocket we’ve been packing in our pants recently (full name: Optoma DLP EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector) is one of the first mini projectors to hit the market. It’s also one of the best, even though a number of flaws spill from the tiny device.

Styled like a ’40s-era Zippo, the piano-black portable feels more natural in the hand than a lot of cellphones. But it’s not size that matters to us, it’s the video components! The projector is comprised of a combo-rig LED lamp and a DLP chip (courtesy of Texas Instruments) that sets the resolution at 480 x 320 pixels with a range output of 9 lumens. Yes, we know this is low compared to full-bodied projectors like Benq’s gargantuan MP512 ST 2500-lumen projector but for something this small, it’s remarkable.

WIRED Perfect projector for parties. Rectangular lens creates wide image that keeps the image from stretching. Fine picture quality, 8-96 inches. Startup time > 4 seconds. Dead-sexy hardware.

TIRED Lithium-ion batteries die after 2 hours’ use; how are we supposed to watch our Battlestar marathon? Battery recharge time 4 frakkin’ hours. Suck-tastic speaker. Unless you have a video-out adapter, you can’t project Office docs from your PC. Projector gets hot enough to fry bacon after running 30 minutes.

$400, Optoma

Read our full Optoma EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector review.

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: Are you the schlemiel who’s always dropping his cellphone or camera at parties? Or maybe you’re the schlemazel who always gets the drink spilled on him? Either way, if you’re looking for a camera to fit a clumsy or accident-prone lifestyle, the shockproof, waterproof, and cold-resistant Stylus 1050 SW can take the beating from fumbles, faceplants or full-speed crashes, and still keep clicking.

About the size and shape as a pack of smokes, the 1050 is equipped with an accelerometer letting you tinker with settings by tapping on the top and the sides. This lets you do useful stuff like turn the flash on and off with a gloved mitt or preview pictures with one hand while you fend off a tiger shark with the other.

WIRED Shockproof to 5 feet and waterproof 10 means you can bang it on the edge of the pool as you fall in with no harm done. Tap feature lets you change settings without futzing with buttons, and the camera can handle alpine frigidity with aplomb. Comes with a microSD adapter for greater media versatility.

TIRED Lens cover slides more easily than Ricky Henderson. The battery is easily inserted backwards, making you think it’s dead or the camera is malfunctioning. Weak zoom and poor macro ability; this camera could use a bifocal upgrade.

$300, Olympus

Read our full Olympus Stylus 1050 SW review.

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: Touted as the thinnest and lightest BlackBerry yet, the Curve 8900 has some much-needed upgrades over its predecessor, but also some disappointments.

Wi-Fi is hot and easy to set up, the camera got a bump to 3.2 megapixels, the 16 GB MicroSD storage can hold up to 20 hours of video, and the high-res screen is fantastic in any light. On the other hand, callers were hard to hear, documents were difficult to create, and RIM’s revamped proprietary browser is good for surfing the Internet but isn’t as smart about automatically resizing webpages as the browsers on competing smartphones.

WIRED Slick, sexy design mashes the best of the Bold and Curve 8830. Brilliant, high-resolution screen is one of the best we’ve seen on a RIM device. Full HTML-rendering on websites. 3.2-megapixel camera is even better when paired with video-recording capabilities; 3.5mm headphone jack means no clumsy adapters. Near 5-hour battery life is most impressive.

TIRED 3G is MIA. Despite the powerful 512-Mhz processor, the software still lags. New website and software don’t perform as well as they should. Phone quality was mixed and loud speakers fail to compensate for somewhat distorted music playback.

$200 with a two year contract, RIM

Read our full RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 review.

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: This handset (which arrives in some of the most gorgeous packaging I’ve ever seen a consumer electronic encased in) is almost laughably banal in its actual construction. A silver slider with wide-spaced keys, it posses a passing resemblance to the Nokia 5200, albeit with a larger (2.2-inch) screen. But, once you switch it on and start using it, things begin to get interesting.

The operating system orbits around Facebook synchronization. Basically you take the phone online, pair it with your Facebook account, and all of your various Facebook applications become active on the mobile. Your Facebook address book syncs up with the phone’s address book. Events from your Facebook calendar become part of the phone’s calendar. Take a picture with the 3.2-megapixel camera, and you can automatically upload those shots to a Facebook album.

WIRED Brightly hued, easy to use, easy-to-sync OS pairs perfectly with your Facebook account. Skype integration is thoughtful. Thoughtfully spaced keys make texting, entering URLs rather pleasant. Camera takes photos that are sharp enough to be a profile picture. Extremely cheap for an unlocked device.

TIRED Humdrum hardware punctuates novel OS. Not offered in the United States … yet. Battery life is clinically depressing when surfing the web, using Skype.

$112 (estimated), Three

Read our full INQ1 Facebook Phone review.

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: HP has been tinkering with touch tech for a couple of years. But they have yet to nail the bull’s eye with a machine that mixes mature hardware with a haptic interface that feels like more than just a half-assed effort. So, we were cautiously optimistic with the TouchSmart tx2z. The good news? As HP’s first multitouch convertible tablet, it’s got a lot of potential.

Converting from notebook to tablet proved painless, thanks to a solid hinge and the included pen. After swinging the 1280 x 800 screen around (and folding it back), we found two goodies. First, using the pen automatically disables the touchscreen (to prevent palm-related havoc), and second, HP included an active digitizer for handwritten input. This made reckless activities like e-mailing while strolling around the block surprisingly easy. Even jotting down quick notes using a finger (instead of the pen) gave us minimal hassle.

WIRED Fully baked as both a touch and tablet device. Travels well with its compact and stylish chassis. Includes quick keys for rotating screen orientation. Mini media remote and pen conveniently hide away in chassis. Altec Lansing speakers strike decent balance between volume and clarity. Extra goodies aplenty: biometric security, webcam, dual headphone jacks, 802.11n compatibility and 5-in-1 card reader.
TIRED Bloated OS hinders performance of otherwise decent specs. Occasionally laggy switches between notebook and tablet mode. No multitouch love for the trackpad. Terrible viewing angles and weak visibility in direct sunlight. Fan sounds like a leaf-blower at a My Bloody Valentine show.

$1550 (as tested), HP

Read our full HP TouchSmart tx2z review.

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: Nero’s LiquidTV TiVo PC looks like a TiVo and acts like a TiVo, but, brother, it ain’t no TiVo.

Actually, the package makes your PC act like a TiVo by adding a USB TV tuner and the same TiVo software that drives the set-tops. You also get a for-reals TiVo remote and an IR receiver so you can command content from the couch.

Ironically, that’s where you’re gonna get pissed. The remote can’t launch the software, so you’ll have to physically walk over and mouse it open. The remote can be programmed to turn your TV on and off, but it can’t put your PC in standby mode or wake it up again. If you do that manually, the IR receiver fails to wake up with the rest of the system.

WIRED Includes a one-year TiVo subscription, and after that it’s a cheaper-than-set-top $99 per year. The software can auto-convert recordings to iPod or Sony PSP format. Integrates with any TiVo boxes you already have. Extra storage is just an external hard drive away.

TIRED The remote lacks necessary PC controls. Not measurably better than Windows Media Center — which, incidentally, is free. The tuner supports ClearQAM, but the software doesn’t, so forget digital channels unless you hook up the antenna.

$125, Tivo

Read our full Nero LiquidTV TiVo PC review.

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: The PogoPlug is a device, which looks like a supersized AC adapter, plugs into almost any external hard drive (even a USB stick) and then pumps that content onto the web, giving you access anywhere in the world you can get an internet signal — including your iPhone.

But the PogoPlug isn’t without the occasional snafu and annoyances. Only image files are available for preview. PDF, Word documents or even HTML files have to be downloaded before viewing. Worse yet, when we unhooked the device, it caused our PC to crash twice in a row. We’re still not entirely sure if this was due to a glitch in the PogoPlug or in Windows.

WIRED Easy to use. Simple setup. Great utility: I must be able to access my collection of LOLcat photos from anywhere. The iPhone app is solid software.

TIRED No wireless mode … yet. Poor security — it’s a wise idea to keep those tax returns or bank documents off the PogoPlug. Computer crashes are deeply flummoxing. The iPhone is currently the only mobile device that supports remote access.

$100, pogoplug.com

Read our full Cloud Engines PogoPlug review.

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: NatureMill’s Pro edition is an indoor composter we can pretty much dig. Using minimal electricity, a small motor turns a heavy-duty mixing bar, heats the mixing chamber (no sunlight needed) and powers an air pump that works with a carbon air filter to help reduce smell (each filter lasts four to five years).

Just add starter dirt, drop in some sawdust pellets to combat odors and dump your food scraps in. NatureMill recommends that you cut organic material into 4-inch bits before plopping it in. We didn’t, but aside from the motor making some gnarly noises, it didn’t seem to affect compost production. NatureMill’s Pro version also features some automatic activation. We were able to leave ours sitting for weeks without pushing the button even once; it mixed and heated itself just fine.

WIRED Stainless steel mixing bar made short work of uncut banana peels. Relatively small and exceptionally lightweight = easy to stash and transport. Foot pedal eliminates lid touching. Mighty Morphin’ Power Saver: only draws 5 kwh a month (roughly 50 cents on an average electric bill). Not as much of an eyesore as it could be and it’s available in a range of colors (including, you guess it, green).

TIRED Little to no stench — until top opens (that’s hard to remedy, and burger/fish/salad remnants smell worse than a dead wildebeest doused in Eau D’Bile). Polypropylene housing is light, but may not last forever. Disposable carbon filters reduce smell, but also cut down on the green factor. Regular maintenance (scraping the mix chamber walls) isn’t fun.

$400, naturemill.com

Read our full Nature Mill Indoor Composter — Pro Edition review.

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You can get away with a lot if you’re beautiful. Such is the case with the new Porsche Design P’9522 phone. In some ways, it’s a wonderful and capable cellphone, but in most others, it’s dumber than the gorgeous block of aluminum it was machined from.

Someone forgot to include e-mail — an absence that had us trying to mar the Porsche phone’s scratchproof screen with claws of rage. Unfortunately, that screen is tough, so the P’9522 will be lauded and drooled over — despite our many gripes with it.

WIRED Gorgeous. Touchscreen interface is easy to understand, if limited and frustrating. Preloaded ringtones include the roaring engines of the 911 GT3 and Turbo. Its 5-megapixel camera has autofocus and captures clean, vivid images. LED flash doubles as a flashlight. Unlocking the phone with its fingerprint scanner is very MI5.

TIRED Fingerprint scanner is also very POS: Who thought it would be a good idea to use fingerprints to access a device you’re likely holding in one hand while juggling multiple other tasks? Preloaded ringtones include bad German techno. Touchscreen is deeply frustrating. Seriously — no e-mail?

$800, porschedesign.com

Read our full Porsche Design P’9522 Phone review.

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: Weighing just 140 grams, the handset offers some of the best optics we’ve ever found crammed into a cell phone: sharp, noiseless pics (3,264 × 2,448 pixels) and decent image stabilizer punctuate video capture that puts full-figured handicams from 2008 to shame. You can even shoot VGA at 30 fps or QVGA at a whopping 120 fps (yes, 120!), including slow motion footage in 1/4 and 1/8 speeds.

Amazing, sure, but not a picture perfect phone. The i8510 functions almost exactly like a standard point-and-shoot, except for the zoom button, which is placed inexplicably, and awkwardly at the bottom of the device.

WIRED Beaucoup codecs, including — wait for it — DivX! 2.8-inch screen excellent for playback. Intuitive photo/video editing suite. Equally intuitive navigation. Automatic lens cover. MicroSD slot good for 16 GB (enough for aspiring Scorseses to go epic). All the usual smartphone suspects: 3G, Wi-Fi, USB, Bluetooth, accelerometer, GPS. Decent earbuds with ample cord. 3.5mm audio jack. Most excellent: TV-out capability.

TIRED Side-mounted headphone jack makes phone harder to pocket. Optical control pad is a tad sensitive (between us and you — we don’t want to hurt its feelings). Most bogus: Metal shell retains enough scratches to fill a DJ Shadow album. A little on the clunky side. Most bogus: Flash needs to be brighter.

$500, samsung.com

Read our full Samsung i8510 INNOV8 review.

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: As the successor to Logitech’s G11 and G15, this huge hunk of plastic comes with gaming hardwired in its DNA. Like its relatives, it has a blocky aesthetic that harkens to the days of the Model M. There are, however, a handful of very modern flourishes that make this latest G-board a distinctly modern marvel.

In the end, the G19’s main drawback is the same one that has plagued fancy keyboards since the days of yore: It’s freaking huge. That swiveling LCD? It actually requires a tiny onboard Linux computer to run, which in turn requires its own power source. Should you choose to make use of the two self-powered USB ports, you’ll potentially have more wires shooting out of this thing than your computer.

WIRED More customizable than a box of Legos. Two self-powered USB ports. Dedicated D-pad and menu keys let you control LCD directly from the keyboard. Convenient cable management lanes carved into bottom of unit lessens clutter … slightly. Choose-your-own-color adventure with adjustable backlighting. Keys are pleasantly clicky and responsive.

TIRED Limited desktop space? This is not your keyboard. Price tag to match gargantuan footprint. Requires power brick to run. After its novelty wears off, built-in LCD becomes more of a distraction than a useful tool.

$200, Logitech.com

Read our full Logitech G19 Keyboard review.

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: Want to catch the last episode of Battlestar Galactica while hanging out in the local java joint? Going to download a season of The Simpsons for viewing on the plane? Giving an impromptu screening of your vacation photos at a friend’s house? The Mini 10 is your machine.

But there are infuriating shortcomings to the Mini 10. The trackpad is one of the worst we’ve seen. Dell’s decision to integrate the buttons underneath the pad itself makes using it both unpredictable and challenging. When you click on a button, the cursor may hit the target, wiggle off a centimeter or two, or teleport off into a remote corner of your screen. While it got easier to use after a week of practice, our advice is to invest in a cheap travel mouse.

WIRED Bright, responsive screen. Integrated 1.3-megapixel webcam. Not gunked up with crapware. HDMI-out port shows charming, if unwarranted, optimism about the netbook’s video capabilities. Light weight: Just 2.6 pounds.

TIRED Infuriating trackpad with integrated buttons hidden underneath. Excessively glossy screen produces distracting glare. Windows XP is starting to look pretty tired. What, no solid-state option? Despite the HDMI port, the netbook can’t deliver HD video without fits and starts.

$470 (as tested), dell.com

Read our full Dell Mini 10 Netbook review.

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: The new 370Z upgrades come in the form of a sexy body with a hood, hatch and doors of lightweight aluminum and a chassis significantly stiffer to reduce performance-robbing flex. To make up for the beefier chassis, Nissan’s engineers pared more than 225 pounds from the rest of the car — even the audio system lost 3.5 pounds — and the result is a car that weighs 88 pounds less than the previous 350Z.

Every model gets the same 332-horsepower V6, an engine that makes this Z the quickest yet with a zero-to-60 time of 4.6 seconds. That kind of performance, however, is contingent on your skills as a driver. If you don’t posses Lewis Hamilton levels of talent don’t fret. The Z’s abundant power and excellent handling will let you think you do.

WIRED Insanely easy to drive, insanely quickly. You’ll run out of nerve before you run out of grip. Rev-matching transmission makes heel-toe shifting more obsolete than a gramophone.

TIRED Rev-matching transmission makes heel-toe shifting more obsolete than a vinyl record. Tympani-like tire roar, piccolo-like exhaust note. Hummer-sized blind spots make lane changes a gun-it-and-go-for-it leap of faith. Fake brushed-aluminum interior bits don’t fool anyone.

$33,970 (as tested), nissanusa.com

Read our full Nissan 2009 370Z review.

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: Using the BookReader is simple: Just plunk a novel on the platen, punch a button and you’re relaxing to the dulcet sounds of Jill, a computerized voice with a voracious appetite for literature. All the menus read themselves off when you mouse over them, and they have keyboard shortcuts, which is useful if you have reduced vision. Jill is pretty good at recognizing words. We tried out several books, including one heavy with medical jargon, and she held her own with just a few exceptions.

Useful as it is, we could not help noticing that the BookReader seems to be slightly undercooked. A few of the buttons don’t really do anything, and you can’t customize the dictionary to alter Jill’s interpretation of commonly used, but horribly flubbed words, acronyms or numbers. The unit seems to be terribly overpriced as well. Plustek wants $600 for the BookReader, despite the fact that the OpticBook only costs $250 — and has its own text-to-speech function.

WIRED Reads books to you at the push of a button. Platen glass goes right to the edge to accommodate books without strain. Turns text into MP3s for portability. Includes several accessibility features to help the visually impaired.

TIRED The included software lacks polish and seems rushed. Squat, ugly looks make it seem at home in a cubicle farm. The reader voice may not screw up often, but when it does, it’s a doozy. High price nears gouging territory.

$600, plustek.com

Read our full Plustek BookReader V100 review.

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: Photo: Dylan Tweeny/Wired.comApple’s newest Shuffle (almost 50 percent smaller than previous Shuffles) could easily be mistaken for a stick of Trident, features no buttons, and pimps voice-identification technology. But even given its apparent readily consumable stature, there are a few features on the Shuffle that are a bit tough to swallow.

The biggest gripe on the 4-GB Shuffle we tested is definitely the control set. First off, it’s completely counterintuitive; Apple says you can easily use it without looking. We still don’t have the hang of it after a few days of testing. What’s worse, if you have a decent set of earbuds (say, a pair of Shures or Ultimate Ears) you’re totally hosed — you’ll have to endure the ‘buds that come with the Shuffle or pick up specially made third-party headphones. Our recommendation? Pick up a new Shuffle only if you’re prepared to deal with proprietary headphones and ambiguous controls.

WIRED Thumb-drive size. Can double as a tie clip. Battery life lasts for 12 freaking hours. Short USB sync cord is sexy. Yes, we’ll admit, it’s another beautifully designed piece of hardware from Apple. Battery bonked out after 11 constant hours of blasting Thunderstruck on loop.

TIRED Proprietary headphones required. Control set awkward to use, hard to get used to. So small, it nearly gets lost in the packaging it comes in.

$80, apple.com

Read our full Apple iPod Shuffle 3rd Gen review.

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: Rather than foam, gel or compressed-air cushioning, the soles on Newtons have a series of “actuator lugs” just below the ball of the foot. The lugs are designed to help encourage you to land on your forefoot, to protect that part of the foot, and (best yet) to propel you forward. When you land, the lugs push into hollow chambers in the midsole. This cushions your landing, and helps make it comfy to land midsole or forefoot rather than on the heel as you might be accustomed. As your foot moves forward, these lugs then essentially lever out, and as you lift your foot, they return the energy by pushing up and out in the same direction as your stride. Newton claims this makes them more efficient than traditional foam or gel soles that simply absorb energy but don’t return it.

WIRED So cozy they’re like a Snuggie for your feet. Actuator lugs get you off your heels better than a La-Z-Boy. Lightweight at 10.2 ounces. Designed for all stride types. Stomps cold weather like global warming, and keeps out the drizzle for shizzle.

TIRED Not waterproof. Worse on single-track trails than a skateboard. $175??? OMG, for that much money I could just pay somebody to run for me.

$175, newtonrunning.com

Read our full Newton All Weather Trainer review.

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: The Firebird features a hybrid design — using 2.5-inch hard drives (two 320-GB models) and dual graphics cards originally designed for laptops — but powers it all with a desktop CPU and desktop-sized DIMMs. As with a laptop, wireless is built in, but the power supply is not: To save on wattage, HP breaks out the (enormous) power adapter instead of integrating it into the box.

As cool as the Firebird is on the whole, it isn’t without some foibles. The inclusion of an ExpressCard slot is on the baffling-to-useless side, and the external power supply (it’s huge) is more annoying to deal with than it sounds. But our biggest gripe is that the Firebird’s streamlined shell means it includes no front-mounted ports at all, not even a single USB slot for your thumb drive. Seriously HP, even the Mac Pro finds room for that.

WIRED Amazingly quiet and conscientious in its power consumption. Outstanding design; belongs on top of the desk, not beneath it. Solid all-around performance at a fair price.

TIRED No front USB port. Curvy design means you can’t put anything on top of the case. Functionally locked down, with no real upgrade path.

$2,100 (as tested), hp.com

Read our full HP Firebird 803 review.

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: I shouldn’t love this truck. I should hate it. I purposely do not own a car, and this all-black behemoth represents everything I hate about SUV culture: conspicuous consumption, insensitivity to our rapidly shrinking world and crowded cities, middle finger raised at global warming.

You could slap a cold fusion generator under Big Poppa Cadillac’s hood and the first two issues would still apply, but I was kind of wrong about that last one. Have you ever seen Godzilla vs. Megalon? Where Godzilla fights on behalf of the people of Japan against a giant rhinoceros/cockroach? Sure, Tokyo’s favorite monster still smashes a bunch of buildings and steps on some people, but he’s trying to be good. Same goes for this Hybrid Chromedaddy.

WIRED Decent pickup for a motorized bomb shelter. Combined ABS and regenerative braking system do a terrific job of hauling the beast down from speed. Trick motorized step makes it easy for shorties to climb into your rolling condo.

TIRED Thing has a car phone. No, not Bluetooth, but an actual phone built into infotainment system. (It’s actually just Onstar, but there was no other option for hands-free calling.) What is this, 1989? Cadillac — God love ‘em — uses the fact that this is a hybrid as an excuse to bling up the truck even more: Hybrid badges are plastered on every hard surface, on the sides of the door, even the windshield. —Joe Brown

$74,085 (as tested), Cadillac.com

Read our full Cadillac Escalade Hybrid review.

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:
The Kindle 2 is zippier, with pages turning 20 percent faster (yes, you can tell the difference). It has more memory (2 gigabytes, enough for storing more than 1,500 books onboard). And it flaunts a more powerful built-in battery: Amazon claims that the Kindle lasts four to five days with the wireless on (we got 4.5 days in our first test) and up to two weeks with it off. After a week of limited wireless, my meter is around 50 percent. Amazon also says that after 500 charges, it will hold 80 percent of its original juice. That means that most users won’t have to replace the battery (a $60 procedure) for about a decade or so.

Looking over the horizon, it’s clear that Amazon’s biggest competitor in selling digital books will be Google, whose recent agreement with publishers and authors will make it the virtually exclusive seller for millions of books in copyright but not in print. But right now at least, the Google and Amazon formats aren’t compatible: I was unsuccessful in getting a PDF of a public-domain book downloaded from Google to appear in readable form on my Kindle.

WIRED The best e-reading system on the market. Welcome improvements to aesthetics, more functional industrial design, better graphics and longer battery life. Sleeker than the original: One-third of an inch thick and 10 ounces.

TIRED Quite expensive. Book content shackled with DRM. Interface is improved, sure, but it could be even better.

$360, amazon.com

Read our full Amazon.com Kindle 2 review.

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: The iWOW adapter from SRS Labs promises to coax more “immersive” sound from your iPod, and it actually delivers — provided you’re listening to the right kind of music. Setup is easy: Snap on the slick little 1-inch extension, plug in some spendy headphones, press a button, and you do indeed get a fuller sound with more depth — especially if you enjoy songs like Sting’s “Fragile,” a track hand-picked by SRS to highlight the effect.

But when iWOW was applied to songs that were heavy on low-end thump or had multilayered sound (Exhibit A: Beck’s “Cold Brains”) the iWOW performed more like iMeh. At top volume, bass beats splintered, while at lower volumes tracks sounded muddled and crowded. SRS claims the device “dynamically locates and restores audio detail” and creates a more natural sound. We’re not buying it — most of the audio we threw at the iWOW was punctuated with a subtle hiss and fuzzy bass.

WIRED Relatively small adapter. Snaps easily onto your iPod and lends some oomph to certain tunes.

TIRED The effect is nearly lost when using ear buds, the device won’t work with older generation iPods, and music that already has a fair share of bass sounds muffled.

$70, srslabs.com

Read our full SRS Labs iWOW Adapter for iPod review.

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:

Leaps ahead of other cam phones, the Memoir’s not limited to the 8 megapixels it captures. In shooting mode, the touchscreen has shutterbug controls — zoom, brightness, timer and flash — that float around the image. And just hitting the shutter will take you into camera mode. The Memoir includes a 1-GB microSD to augment the phone’s 100 MB of storage (and it’s an easy-access slot, rather than hidden under the battery).

But for all its convenience, the Memoir simply isn’t a competitor for even the lowliest of dedicated cameras. First off, it’s pokey: slow to focus, slow to snap and very touchy when it comes to movement. And though it touts a 16x digital zoom, it has no optical-zooming option.

WIRED Cool touchscreen and accelerometer helps you shoot or view pictures. Compact, pocket-friendly shape, even for hipsters in painted-on jeans.

TIRED Vampiric light sensitivity makes for washed-out shots. Slow to focus, shoot and recover. E-mail functions are even slower. The screen is hard to see in sunlight. Lens cover doesn’t close all the time, so the lens can get dusty.

$300 (with 2-year contract), t-mobile.com

Read our full Samsung Memoir.

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:
From the outside, the 1000HE doesn’t look much different from other netbooks. But it’s the machine’s heart — the brand new 1.66-GHz Atom N280 processor — that makes it faster, stronger, smarter than its opponents.

Intel claims the silicon slab boosts computing power across the board, especially HD video playback — something that has been woefully horrid in past machines using Atom processors. It’s not lying. This is the fastest netbook we’ve tested (by about 7 percent) in our benchmarks. And HD video playback was noticeably smoother and devoid of chop.

WIRED The first netbook to feature the new Atom N280 chip. MMC and SD media reader slots. Attractive, pearly finish. Decent 1.3-megapixel webcam.

TIRED At 3.1 pounds, it’s one of the heaviest puppies in the netbook litter. Lame keyboard.

$400 as tested, asus.com

Read our full Asus Eee PC 1000HE review.

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: The R50 is remarkably easy to set up and use. As you program each component into the remote using the setup wizard, you test a few controls to make sure it has the right code. The remote instantly recognized all our components, and it took us about 10 minutes to get the AV rig up and running. As part of the setup, you name each component, which then appears as an icon on the screen: in my case, a Sony HDTV, Yamaha amp/receiver, Squeezebox, Oppo DVD player and Soundmatters speaker.

WIRED Cool, reddish backlight perfect for nighttime navigation. No computer or web connection needed for operation. No charging cradle required.

TIRED No user manual means gizmo novices might get lost in setup. $150 price point isn’t super pricey, but then it’s not the cheapest universal remote out there.

$150, universalremote.com

Read our full Universal Remote Digital R50 review.

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:
Like other watches in the 25-year-old G-Shock line, the MTG-1500 is forged with Mr. T levels of toughness: It can easily survive being banged clumsily against tabletops or whacked against a surfboard in a wipeout. And it’s water-resistant to 200 meters. But unlike most other G-Shock watches, which are primarily plastic, the MTG-1500’s body and band are stainless steel, with a few tasteful black plastic accents.

We half expected to find the MTG-1500 lacking in minor features. Surprisingly, it didn’t. It’s got a stopwatch mode, dual time-zone support, five different alarms and a countdown timer. Free abundant sunlight or bright artificial light recharges the battery as you wear the watch. Once fully charged, the battery should be able to power the watch for 6 months without additional light.

WIRED Handsome, two-toned steel-and-black styling doesn’t blare “nerd,” “Swatch-wearing poser” or “too lazy to take off my gym watch.” Self-syncs with superaccurate official time stations. Gives you an excuse to say “solar” and “atomic” in the same sentence.

TIRED Digital display too small and can be obscured by watch hands. LED provides uneven illumination in the dark. $500 can buy a timepiece that’s much fancier, albeit not atomic.

$500, casio.com

Read our full Casio G-Shock MTG-1500 review.

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:
The skinny on this countertop unit is pretty straightforward: It’s the touch-based kitchen computer that won’t put you out of house and home. Don’t go rushing out to cash in that 401(k), though — despite a recession-friendly price, the Eee Top still feels a little light in the loafers.

The glossy white, semi-opaque keyboard and mouse look stylish out of the box, but after extended handling their light, plastic-y build became annoying. The slim chassis sat solid on our countertop, while the bright, 15.6-inch screen and the integrated speaker bar make up the majority of the Top’s sleek profile. Rounding out the device are six USB ports, memory card reader, 1.3-MP web cam and integrated Wi-Fi. We were pretty bummed at the lack of an optical drive, though.

WIRED An all-in-one for the Top Ramen set. Quick, responsive touch interface. Compact design has integrated storage for both keyboard and stylus. Integrated 802.11n and gigabit ethernet ensure throughput thrashings. One-touch shutoff button for hiding porn er, convenience. Runs whisper-quiet.

TIRED Underpowered for heavy web video. A wired keyboard and mouse — on an all-in-one?!? Heats up after extended poke/prod sessions. Anemic 160-GB hard drive. Even a cheapy, noisy optical drive would’ve been nice. No battery means no mobile computing.

$600 (as tested), asus.com

Read our full Asus ET1602 Eee Top review.

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:
This camera is about the size and shape of a pack of chewing gum, and weighs just 0.68 ounces. It records videos at 352 x 288 pixels, encoding them in the 3-GP format used by many cellphones (the videos can be played on your computer using most media-player software, including QuickTime and RealPlayer).

But the MovieStick is oozing with design flaws. The pinhole-sized lens is located on the long side of the device, rather than the short end, limiting your ability to go truly undercover. Add to that a confusing series of lights that supposedly indicate when the cam is charging, turned on or recording, and you end up with more than one inadvertent video of the floor.

WIRED The smallest video camera we’ve seen yet. Simple to set up and use. Makes you look like a double agent.

TIRED Location of camera lens makes it hard to go covert. No internal storage or memory card included. Recorded video is shakier and blurrier than outtakes from The Blair Witch Project.

$120, swannsecurity.com

Read our full Swann Micro-VideoCam Recorder review.

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: Kodak’s Theatre HD’s raison d’être is straightforward: to shuttle the contents of your PC directly to your television using ethernet or Wi-Fi. Pictures, videos, podcasts, music or any other digital content that may be living on your hard drive (as long as it’s not squelched by some DRM straightjacket) can be whisked away by this tiny little box to your television with little to no fuss.

What really sets the Theatre HD Player apart from the rest of the field is how immaculately it performs its tasks. Once you’ve downloaded Kodak’s EasyShare display software, everything is pretty much taken care of. Have a hard drive filled with extra content? No problem. Simply hook it up to one of the player’s USB ports and you’re ready to go.

WIRED Intuitive UI coupled with a handy RF remote makes setup and playback of multimedia a Zen-like experience. Wealth of connectivity options: component, HDMI, optical or RCA audio, dual USB ports. Transforms crappy YouTube video into semi-watchable content.

TIRED Requires Kodak EasyShare software to get the streaming party started. No Mac compatibility (for now). Pricey, especially for a device without a hard drive. Needs more internet content.

$300, Kodak

Read our full Kodak Theatre HD Player review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.: Skidding in at 53 pounds (on the lighter side for this category), Ohm’s mountain bike-inspired geometry and its nine-level power-assist and regeneration system make it a smart, nimble and efficient two-wheeler.

On pavement and trail the BionX power plant, mounted on the rear hub, employs a unique sensor technology that is constantly adjusting the level of assistance it gives you based on the terrain. Encountering some mushy road? More power is delivered to the gears. Gliding down paved asphalt? The juice is dialed back. And if your thighs are flushed with lactic acid on a sheer hill, a flick of the trusty thumb throttle cracks the whip and the motor totally takes over, no pedaling required. But for all this innovation and comfort, you will, however, have to part with a spouse-enraging $3,450. Is it worth it? Well, it is a ton of fun.

WIRED Excellent Shimano parts mix with disc brakes and RockShox suspension fork. Lockable battery compartment hides space for mobile phone, wallet, media player and your other little stuff. Regeneration mode gives extra on-bike battery life. Comfortable suspension seat post. Four- to six-hour charge time.

TIRED Throttle position needs to be improved for optimal bike handling. Price steeper than any hill the bike can handle.

$3450, Ohm Cycles

Read our full Ohm Cycles XS700 review.

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: For about $300 more than the average netbook, the UC7807u offers a scintillating array of grownup specs. Intel 2.0-GHz Core 2 Duo CPU? Check. 250-GB hard drive? Yep. 3 GB of memory, a glossy 13.3-inch display, a slot-loading optical drive and ports galore (three USB and an HDMI)? You betcha! Best of all, with its fetching brushed aluminum chassis, no one will mistake this for a budget notebook.

Unfortunately, the UC7807u also has all the telltale signs of some obvious corner cutting. Forget about gaming. Due to Intel’s torpid integrated GMA 4500MHD graphics card, even moderately intensive titles won’t run properly. But our main beef with the UC7807u is the feeble 6-cell battery which clocked in at a disappointing 3 hours, 25 minutes — a full hour shorter than most other notebooks in this category.

WIRED Recession-worthy price. Built like a tank. Slick, touch-sensitive volume and multimedia controls.

TIRED Tips the scales for a notebook in this category. Battery drains faster than an ATM at a strip club. Epic fail on the tiny circular touchpad. It’s cramped and serves no discernable purpose. Onboard speakers spit out tinny, distorted sound. HDMI, but no Blu-ray?

$800 as tested, Gateway

Read our full Gateway UC7807u review.

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: It’s no wonder this watch ran away with my heart; for the competitive runner or multisport athlete seeking a personal best in 2009, the Polar RS800CX is the required training device. Because of incredibly robust desktop software, tracking of obscure performance metrics, and a wide variety of add-on sensors, the RS800CX can help you measure, analyze and improve nearly every aspect of your training program.

WIRED Offers better heart-rate monitoring than your average hospital. Incredibly customizable from in-watch display, to software interface, to training programs. GPS and barometric altimeter combined with location tracking mean you’ll never wonder where you wandered. Extensible pods make watch more sport-versatile than Lance Armstrong.

TIRED Even beer goggles won’t pretty up this ugly watch face. May need to hire a coach anyway — just to teach you how to use the PC-only desktop software.

$500, Polar

Read our full Polar RS800CX MULTI review.

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: The pocket rocket we’ve been packing in our pants recently (full name: Optoma DLP EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector) is one of the first mini projectors to hit the market. It’s also one of the best, even though a number of flaws spill from the tiny device.

Styled like a ’40s-era Zippo, the piano-black portable feels more natural in the hand than a lot of cellphones. But it’s not size that matters to us, it’s the video components! The projector is comprised of a combo-rig LED lamp and a DLP chip (courtesy of Texas Instruments) that sets the resolution at 480 x 320 pixels with a range output of 9 lumens. Yes, we know this is low compared to full-bodied projectors like Benq’s gargantuan MP512 ST 2500-lumen projector but for something this small, it’s remarkable.

WIRED Perfect projector for parties. Rectangular lens creates wide image that keeps the image from stretching. Fine picture quality, 8-96 inches. Startup time > 4 seconds. Dead-sexy hardware.

TIRED Lithium-ion batteries die after 2 hours’ use; how are we supposed to watch our Battlestar marathon? Battery recharge time 4 frakkin’ hours. Suck-tastic speaker. Unless you have a video-out adapter, you can’t project Office docs from your PC. Projector gets hot enough to fry bacon after running 30 minutes.

$400, Optoma

Read our full Optoma EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector review.

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: Are you the schlemiel who’s always dropping his cellphone or camera at parties? Or maybe you’re the schlemazel who always gets the drink spilled on him? Either way, if you’re looking for a camera to fit a clumsy or accident-prone lifestyle, the shockproof, waterproof, and cold-resistant Stylus 1050 SW can take the beating from fumbles, faceplants or full-speed crashes, and still keep clicking.

About the size and shape as a pack of smokes, the 1050 is equipped with an accelerometer letting you tinker with settings by tapping on the top and the sides. This lets you do useful stuff like turn the flash on and off with a gloved mitt or preview pictures with one hand while you fend off a tiger shark with the other.

WIRED Shockproof to 5 feet and waterproof 10 means you can bang it on the edge of the pool as you fall in with no harm done. Tap feature lets you change settings without futzing with buttons, and the camera can handle alpine frigidity with aplomb. Comes with a microSD adapter for greater media versatility.

TIRED Lens cover slides more easily than Ricky Henderson. The battery is easily inserted backwards, making you think it’s dead or the camera is malfunctioning. Weak zoom and poor macro ability; this camera could use a bifocal upgrade.

$300, Olympus

Read our full Olympus Stylus 1050 SW review.

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: Touted as the thinnest and lightest BlackBerry yet, the Curve 8900 has some much-needed upgrades over its predecessor, but also some disappointments.

Wi-Fi is hot and easy to set up, the camera got a bump to 3.2 megapixels, the 16 GB MicroSD storage can hold up to 20 hours of video, and the high-res screen is fantastic in any light. On the other hand, callers were hard to hear, documents were difficult to create, and RIM’s revamped proprietary browser is good for surfing the Internet but isn’t as smart about automatically resizing webpages as the browsers on competing smartphones.

WIRED Slick, sexy design mashes the best of the Bold and Curve 8830. Brilliant, high-resolution screen is one of the best we’ve seen on a RIM device. Full HTML-rendering on websites. 3.2-megapixel camera is even better when paired with video-recording capabilities; 3.5mm headphone jack means no clumsy adapters. Near 5-hour battery life is most impressive.

TIRED 3G is MIA. Despite the powerful 512-Mhz processor, the software still lags. New website and software don’t perform as well as they should. Phone quality was mixed and loud speakers fail to compensate for somewhat distorted music playback.

$200 with a two year contract, RIM

Read our full RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 review.

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: This handset (which arrives in some of the most gorgeous packaging I’ve ever seen a consumer electronic encased in) is almost laughably banal in its actual construction. A silver slider with wide-spaced keys, it posses a passing resemblance to the Nokia 5200, albeit with a larger (2.2-inch) screen. But, once you switch it on and start using it, things begin to get interesting.

The operating system orbits around Facebook synchronization. Basically you take the phone online, pair it with your Facebook account, and all of your various Facebook applications become active on the mobile. Your Facebook address book syncs up with the phone’s address book. Events from your Facebook calendar become part of the phone’s calendar. Take a picture with the 3.2-megapixel camera, and you can automatically upload those shots to a Facebook album.

WIRED Brightly hued, easy to use, easy-to-sync OS pairs perfectly with your Facebook account. Skype integration is thoughtful. Thoughtfully spaced keys make texting, entering URLs rather pleasant. Camera takes photos that are sharp enough to be a profile picture. Extremely cheap for an unlocked device.

TIRED Humdrum hardware punctuates novel OS. Not offered in the United States … yet. Battery life is clinically depressing when surfing the web, using Skype.

$112 (estimated), Three

Read our full INQ1 Facebook Phone review.

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: HP has been tinkering with touch tech for a couple of years. But they have yet to nail the bull’s eye with a machine that mixes mature hardware with a haptic interface that feels like more than just a half-assed effort. So, we were cautiously optimistic with the TouchSmart tx2z. The good news? As HP’s first multitouch convertible tablet, it’s got a lot of potential.

Converting from notebook to tablet proved painless, thanks to a solid hinge and the included pen. After swinging the 1280 x 800 screen around (and folding it back), we found two goodies. First, using the pen automatically disables the touchscreen (to prevent palm-related havoc), and second, HP included an active digitizer for handwritten input. This made reckless activities like e-mailing while strolling around the block surprisingly easy. Even jotting down quick notes using a finger (instead of the pen) gave us minimal hassle.

WIRED Fully baked as both a touch and tablet device. Travels well with its compact and stylish chassis. Includes quick keys for rotating screen orientation. Mini media remote and pen conveniently hide away in chassis. Altec Lansing speakers strike decent balance between volume and clarity. Extra goodies aplenty: biometric security, webcam, dual headphone jacks, 802.11n compatibility and 5-in-1 card reader.
TIRED Bloated OS hinders performance of otherwise decent specs. Occasionally laggy switches between notebook and tablet mode. No multitouch love for the trackpad. Terrible viewing angles and weak visibility in direct sunlight. Fan sounds like a leaf-blower at a My Bloody Valentine show.

$1550 (as tested), HP

Read our full HP TouchSmart tx2z review.

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: Nero’s LiquidTV TiVo PC looks like a TiVo and acts like a TiVo, but, brother, it ain’t no TiVo.

Actually, the package makes your PC act like a TiVo by adding a USB TV tuner and the same TiVo software that drives the set-tops. You also get a for-reals TiVo remote and an IR receiver so you can command content from the couch.

Ironically, that’s where you’re gonna get pissed. The remote can’t launch the software, so you’ll have to physically walk over and mouse it open. The remote can be programmed to turn your TV on and off, but it can’t put your PC in standby mode or wake it up again. If you do that manually, the IR receiver fails to wake up with the rest of the system.

WIRED Includes a one-year TiVo subscription, and after that it’s a cheaper-than-set-top $99 per year. The software can auto-convert recordings to iPod or Sony PSP format. Integrates with any TiVo boxes you already have. Extra storage is just an external hard drive away.

TIRED The remote lacks necessary PC controls. Not measurably better than Windows Media Center — which, incidentally, is free. The tuner supports ClearQAM, but the software doesn’t, so forget digital channels unless you hook up the antenna.

$125, Tivo

Read our full Nero LiquidTV TiVo PC review.

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: Weighing just 140 grams, the handset offers some of the best optics we’ve ever found crammed into a cell phone: sharp, noiseless pics (3,264 × 2,448 pixels) and decent image stabilizer punctuate video capture that puts full-figured handicams from 2008 to shame. You can even shoot VGA at 30 fps or QVGA at a whopping 120 fps (yes, 120!), including slow motion footage in 1/4 and 1/8 speeds.

Amazing, sure, but not a picture perfect phone. The i8510 functions almost exactly like a standard point-and-shoot, except for the zoom button, which is placed inexplicably, and awkwardly at the bottom of the device.

WIRED Beaucoup codecs, including — wait for it — DivX! 2.8-inch screen excellent for playback. Intuitive photo/video editing suite. Equally intuitive navigation. Automatic lens cover. MicroSD slot good for 16 GB (enough for aspiring Scorseses to go epic). All the usual smartphone suspects: 3G, Wi-Fi, USB, Bluetooth, accelerometer, GPS. Decent earbuds with ample cord. 3.5mm audio jack. Most excellent: TV-out capability.

TIRED Side-mounted headphone jack makes phone harder to pocket. Optical control pad is a tad sensitive (between us and you — we don’t want to hurt its feelings). Most bogus: Metal shell retains enough scratches to fill a DJ Shadow album. A little on the clunky side. Most bogus: Flash needs to be brighter.

$500, samsung.com

Read our full Samsung i8510 INNOV8 review.

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: As the successor to Logitech’s G11 and G15, this huge hunk of plastic comes with gaming hardwired in its DNA. Like its relatives, it has a blocky aesthetic that harkens to the days of the Model M. There are, however, a handful of very modern flourishes that make this latest G-board a distinctly modern marvel.

In the end, the G19’s main drawback is the same one that has plagued fancy keyboards since the days of yore: It’s freaking huge. That swiveling LCD? It actually requires a tiny onboard Linux computer to run, which in turn requires its own power source. Should you choose to make use of the two self-powered USB ports, you’ll potentially have more wires shooting out of this thing than your computer.

WIRED More customizable than a box of Legos. Two self-powered USB ports. Dedicated D-pad and menu keys let you control LCD directly from the keyboard. Convenient cable management lanes carved into bottom of unit lessens clutter … slightly. Choose-your-own-color adventure with adjustable backlighting. Keys are pleasantly clicky and responsive.

TIRED Limited desktop space? This is not your keyboard. Price tag to match gargantuan footprint. Requires power brick to run. After its novelty wears off, built-in LCD becomes more of a distraction than a useful tool.

$200, Logitech.com

Read our full Logitech G19 Keyboard review.

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: Want to catch the last episode of Battlestar Galactica while hanging out in the local java joint? Going to download a season of The Simpsons for viewing on the plane? Giving an impromptu screening of your vacation photos at a friend’s house? The Mini 10 is your machine.

But there are infuriating shortcomings to the Mini 10. The trackpad is one of the worst we’ve seen. Dell’s decision to integrate the buttons underneath the pad itself makes using it both unpredictable and challenging. When you click on a button, the cursor may hit the target, wiggle off a centimeter or two, or teleport off into a remote corner of your screen. While it got easier to use after a week of practice, our advice is to invest in a cheap travel mouse.

WIRED Bright, responsive screen. Integrated 1.3-megapixel webcam. Not gunked up with crapware. HDMI-out port shows charming, if unwarranted, optimism about the netbook’s video capabilities. Light weight: Just 2.6 pounds.

TIRED Infuriating trackpad with integrated buttons hidden underneath. Excessively glossy screen produces distracting glare. Windows XP is starting to look pretty tired. What, no solid-state option? Despite the HDMI port, the netbook can’t deliver HD video without fits and starts.

$470 (as tested), dell.com

Read our full Dell Mini 10 Netbook review.

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: The new 370Z upgrades come in the form of a sexy body with a hood, hatch and doors of lightweight aluminum and a chassis significantly stiffer to reduce performance-robbing flex. To make up for the beefier chassis, Nissan’s engineers pared more than 225 pounds from the rest of the car — even the audio system lost 3.5 pounds — and the result is a car that weighs 88 pounds less than the previous 350Z.

Every model gets the same 332-horsepower V6, an engine that makes this Z the quickest yet with a zero-to-60 time of 4.6 seconds. That kind of performance, however, is contingent on your skills as a driver. If you don’t posses Lewis Hamilton levels of talent don’t fret. The Z’s abundant power and excellent handling will let you think you do.

WIRED Insanely easy to drive, insanely quickly. You’ll run out of nerve before you run out of grip. Rev-matching transmission makes heel-toe shifting more obsolete than a gramophone.

TIRED Rev-matching transmission makes heel-toe shifting more obsolete than a vinyl record. Tympani-like tire roar, piccolo-like exhaust note. Hummer-sized blind spots make lane changes a gun-it-and-go-for-it leap of faith. Fake brushed-aluminum interior bits don’t fool anyone.

$33,970 (as tested), nissanusa.com

Read our full Nissan 2009 370Z review.

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: Using the BookReader is simple: Just plunk a novel on the platen, punch a button and you’re relaxing to the dulcet sounds of Jill, a computerized voice with a voracious appetite for literature. All the menus read themselves off when you mouse over them, and they have keyboard shortcuts, which is useful if you have reduced vision. Jill is pretty good at recognizing words. We tried out several books, including one heavy with medical jargon, and she held her own with just a few exceptions.

Useful as it is, we could not help noticing that the BookReader seems to be slightly undercooked. A few of the buttons don’t really do anything, and you can’t customize the dictionary to alter Jill’s interpretation of commonly used, but horribly flubbed words, acronyms or numbers. The unit seems to be terribly overpriced as well. Plustek wants $600 for the BookReader, despite the fact that the OpticBook only costs $250 — and has its own text-to-speech function.

WIRED Reads books to you at the push of a button. Platen glass goes right to the edge to accommodate books without strain. Turns text into MP3s for portability. Includes several accessibility features to help the visually impaired.

TIRED The included software lacks polish and seems rushed. Squat, ugly looks make it seem at home in a cubicle farm. The reader voice may not screw up often, but when it does, it’s a doozy. High price nears gouging territory.

$600, plustek.com

Read our full Plustek BookReader V100 review.

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: Photo: Dylan Tweeny/Wired.comApple’s newest Shuffle (almost 50 percent smaller than previous Shuffles) could easily be mistaken for a stick of Trident, features no buttons, and pimps voice-identification technology. But even given its apparent readily consumable stature, there are a few features on the Shuffle that are a bit tough to swallow.

The biggest gripe on the 4-GB Shuffle we tested is definitely the control set. First off, it’s completely counterintuitive; Apple says you can easily use it without looking. We still don’t have the hang of it after a few days of testing. What’s worse, if you have a decent set of earbuds (say, a pair of Shures or Ultimate Ears) you’re totally hosed — you’ll have to endure the ‘buds that come with the Shuffle or pick up specially made third-party headphones. Our recommendation? Pick up a new Shuffle only if you’re prepared to deal with proprietary headphones and ambiguous controls.

WIRED Thumb-drive size. Can double as a tie clip. Battery life lasts for 12 freaking hours. Short USB sync cord is sexy. Yes, we’ll admit, it’s another beautifully designed piece of hardware from Apple. Battery bonked out after 11 constant hours of blasting Thunderstruck on loop.

TIRED Proprietary headphones required. Control set awkward to use, hard to get used to. So small, it nearly gets lost in the packaging it comes in.

$80, apple.com

Read our full Apple iPod Shuffle 3rd Gen review.

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: Rather than foam, gel or compressed-air cushioning, the soles on Newtons have a series of “actuator lugs” just below the ball of the foot. The lugs are designed to help encourage you to land on your forefoot, to protect that part of the foot, and (best yet) to propel you forward. When you land, the lugs push into hollow chambers in the midsole. This cushions your landing, and helps make it comfy to land midsole or forefoot rather than on the heel as you might be accustomed. As your foot moves forward, these lugs then essentially lever out, and as you lift your foot, they return the energy by pushing up and out in the same direction as your stride. Newton claims this makes them more efficient than traditional foam or gel soles that simply absorb energy but don’t return it.

WIRED So cozy they’re like a Snuggie for your feet. Actuator lugs get you off your heels better than a La-Z-Boy. Lightweight at 10.2 ounces. Designed for all stride types. Stomps cold weather like global warming, and keeps out the drizzle for shizzle.

TIRED Not waterproof. Worse on single-track trails than a skateboard. $175??? OMG, for that much money I could just pay somebody to run for me.

$175, newtonrunning.com

Read our full Newton All Weather Trainer review.

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: The Firebird features a hybrid design — using 2.5-inch hard drives (two 320-GB models) and dual graphics cards originally designed for laptops — but powers it all with a desktop CPU and desktop-sized DIMMs. As with a laptop, wireless is built in, but the power supply is not: To save on wattage, HP breaks out the (enormous) power adapter instead of integrating it into the box.

As cool as the Firebird is on the whole, it isn’t without some foibles. The inclusion of an ExpressCard slot is on the baffling-to-useless side, and the external power supply (it’s huge) is more annoying to deal with than it sounds. But our biggest gripe is that the Firebird’s streamlined shell means it includes no front-mounted ports at all, not even a single USB slot for your thumb drive. Seriously HP, even the Mac Pro finds room for that.

WIRED Amazingly quiet and conscientious in its power consumption. Outstanding design; belongs on top of the desk, not beneath it. Solid all-around performance at a fair price.

TIRED No front USB port. Curvy design means you can’t put anything on top of the case. Functionally locked down, with no real upgrade path.

$2,100 (as tested), hp.com

Read our full HP Firebird 803 review.

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: I shouldn’t love this truck. I should hate it. I purposely do not own a car, and this all-black behemoth represents everything I hate about SUV culture: conspicuous consumption, insensitivity to our rapidly shrinking world and crowded cities, middle finger raised at global warming.

You could slap a cold fusion generator under Big Poppa Cadillac’s hood and the first two issues would still apply, but I was kind of wrong about that last one. Have you ever seen Godzilla vs. Megalon? Where Godzilla fights on behalf of the people of Japan against a giant rhinoceros/cockroach? Sure, Tokyo’s favorite monster still smashes a bunch of buildings and steps on some people, but he’s trying to be good. Same goes for this Hybrid Chromedaddy.

WIRED Decent pickup for a motorized bomb shelter. Combined ABS and regenerative braking system do a terrific job of hauling the beast down from speed. Trick motorized step makes it easy for shorties to climb into your rolling condo.

TIRED Thing has a car phone. No, not Bluetooth, but an actual phone built into infotainment system. (It’s actually just Onstar, but there was no other option for hands-free calling.) What is this, 1989? Cadillac — God love ‘em — uses the fact that this is a hybrid as an excuse to bling up the truck even more: Hybrid badges are plastered on every hard surface, on the sides of the door, even the windshield. —Joe Brown

$74,085 (as tested), Cadillac.com

Read our full Cadillac Escalade Hybrid review.

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:
The Kindle 2 is zippier, with pages turning 20 percent faster (yes, you can tell the difference). It has more memory (2 gigabytes, enough for storing more than 1,500 books onboard). And it flaunts a more powerful built-in battery: Amazon claims that the Kindle lasts four to five days with the wireless on (we got 4.5 days in our first test) and up to two weeks with it off. After a week of limited wireless, my meter is around 50 percent. Amazon also says that after 500 charges, it will hold 80 percent of its original juice. That means that most users won’t have to replace the battery (a $60 procedure) for about a decade or so.

Looking over the horizon, it’s clear that Amazon’s biggest competitor in selling digital books will be Google, whose recent agreement with publishers and authors will make it the virtually exclusive seller for millions of books in copyright but not in print. But right now at least, the Google and Amazon formats aren’t compatible: I was unsuccessful in getting a PDF of a public-domain book downloaded from Google to appear in readable form on my Kindle.

WIRED The best e-reading system on the market. Welcome improvements to aesthetics, more functional industrial design, better graphics and longer battery life. Sleeker than the original: One-third of an inch thick and 10 ounces.

TIRED Quite expensive. Book content shackled with DRM. Interface is improved, sure, but it could be even better.

$360, amazon.com

Read our full Amazon.com Kindle 2 review.

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: The iWOW adapter from SRS Labs promises to coax more “immersive” sound from your iPod, and it actually delivers — provided you’re listening to the right kind of music. Setup is easy: Snap on the slick little 1-inch extension, plug in some spendy headphones, press a button, and you do indeed get a fuller sound with more depth — especially if you enjoy songs like Sting’s “Fragile,” a track hand-picked by SRS to highlight the effect.

But when iWOW was applied to songs that were heavy on low-end thump or had multilayered sound (Exhibit A: Beck’s “Cold Brains”) the iWOW performed more like iMeh. At top volume, bass beats splintered, while at lower volumes tracks sounded muddled and crowded. SRS claims the device “dynamically locates and restores audio detail” and creates a more natural sound. We’re not buying it — most of the audio we threw at the iWOW was punctuated with a subtle hiss and fuzzy bass.

WIRED Relatively small adapter. Snaps easily onto your iPod and lends some oomph to certain tunes.

TIRED The effect is nearly lost when using ear buds, the device won’t work with older generation iPods, and music that already has a fair share of bass sounds muffled.

$70, srslabs.com

Read our full SRS Labs iWOW Adapter for iPod review.

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:

Leaps ahead of other cam phones, the Memoir’s not limited to the 8 megapixels it captures. In shooting mode, the touchscreen has shutterbug controls — zoom, brightness, timer and flash — that float around the image. And just hitting the shutter will take you into camera mode. The Memoir includes a 1-GB microSD to augment the phone’s 100 MB of storage (and it’s an easy-access slot, rather than hidden under the battery).

But for all its convenience, the Memoir simply isn’t a competitor for even the lowliest of dedicated cameras. First off, it’s pokey: slow to focus, slow to snap and very touchy when it comes to movement. And though it touts a 16x digital zoom, it has no optical-zooming option.

WIRED Cool touchscreen and accelerometer helps you shoot or view pictures. Compact, pocket-friendly shape, even for hipsters in painted-on jeans.

TIRED Vampiric light sensitivity makes for washed-out shots. Slow to focus, shoot and recover. E-mail functions are even slower. The screen is hard to see in sunlight. Lens cover doesn’t close all the time, so the lens can get dusty.

$300 (with 2-year contract), t-mobile.com

Read our full Samsung Memoir.

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:
From the outside, the 1000HE doesn’t look much different from other netbooks. But it’s the machine’s heart — the brand new 1.66-GHz Atom N280 processor — that makes it faster, stronger, smarter than its opponents.

Intel claims the silicon slab boosts computing power across the board, especially HD video playback — something that has been woefully horrid in past machines using Atom processors. It’s not lying. This is the fastest netbook we’ve tested (by about 7 percent) in our benchmarks. And HD video playback was noticeably smoother and devoid of chop.

WIRED The first netbook to feature the new Atom N280 chip. MMC and SD media reader slots. Attractive, pearly finish. Decent 1.3-megapixel webcam.

TIRED At 3.1 pounds, it’s one of the heaviest puppies in the netbook litter. Lame keyboard.

$400 as tested, asus.com

Read our full Asus Eee PC 1000HE review.

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: The R50 is remarkably easy to set up and use. As you program each component into the remote using the setup wizard, you test a few controls to make sure it has the right code. The remote instantly recognized all our components, and it took us about 10 minutes to get the AV rig up and running. As part of the setup, you name each component, which then appears as an icon on the screen: in my case, a Sony HDTV, Yamaha amp/receiver, Squeezebox, Oppo DVD player and Soundmatters speaker.

WIRED Cool, reddish backlight perfect for nighttime navigation. No computer or web connection needed for operation. No charging cradle required.

TIRED No user manual means gizmo novices might get lost in setup. $150 price point isn’t super pricey, but then it’s not the cheapest universal remote out there.

$150, universalremote.com

Read our full Universal Remote Digital R50 review.

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:
Like other watches in the 25-year-old G-Shock line, the MTG-1500 is forged with Mr. T levels of toughness: It can easily survive being banged clumsily against tabletops or whacked against a surfboard in a wipeout. And it’s water-resistant to 200 meters. But unlike most other G-Shock watches, which are primarily plastic, the MTG-1500’s body and band are stainless steel, with a few tasteful black plastic accents.

We half expected to find the MTG-1500 lacking in minor features. Surprisingly, it didn’t. It’s got a stopwatch mode, dual time-zone support, five different alarms and a countdown timer. Free abundant sunlight or bright artificial light recharges the battery as you wear the watch. Once fully charged, the battery should be able to power the watch for 6 months without additional light.

WIRED Handsome, two-toned steel-and-black styling doesn’t blare “nerd,” “Swatch-wearing poser” or “too lazy to take off my gym watch.” Self-syncs with superaccurate official time stations. Gives you an excuse to say “solar” and “atomic” in the same sentence.

TIRED Digital display too small and can be obscured by watch hands. LED provides uneven illumination in the dark. $500 can buy a timepiece that’s much fancier, albeit not atomic.

$500, casio.com

Read our full Casio G-Shock MTG-1500 review.

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:
The skinny on this countertop unit is pretty straightforward: It’s the touch-based kitchen computer that won’t put you out of house and home. Don’t go rushing out to cash in that 401(k), though — despite a recession-friendly price, the Eee Top still feels a little light in the loafers.

The glossy white, semi-opaque keyboard and mouse look stylish out of the box, but after extended handling their light, plastic-y build became annoying. The slim chassis sat solid on our countertop, while the bright, 15.6-inch screen and the integrated speaker bar make up the majority of the Top’s sleek profile. Rounding out the device are six USB ports, memory card reader, 1.3-MP web cam and integrated Wi-Fi. We were pretty bummed at the lack of an optical drive, though.

WIRED An all-in-one for the Top Ramen set. Quick, responsive touch interface. Compact design has integrated storage for both keyboard and stylus. Integrated 802.11n and gigabit ethernet ensure throughput thrashings. One-touch shutoff button for hiding porn er, convenience. Runs whisper-quiet.

TIRED Underpowered for heavy web video. A wired keyboard and mouse — on an all-in-one?!? Heats up after extended poke/prod sessions. Anemic 160-GB hard drive. Even a cheapy, noisy optical drive would’ve been nice. No battery means no mobile computing.

$600 (as tested), asus.com

Read our full Asus ET1602 Eee Top review.

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:
This camera is about the size and shape of a pack of chewing gum, and weighs just 0.68 ounces. It records videos at 352 x 288 pixels, encoding them in the 3-GP format used by many cellphones (the videos can be played on your computer using most media-player software, including QuickTime and RealPlayer).

But the MovieStick is oozing with design flaws. The pinhole-sized lens is located on the long side of the device, rather than the short end, limiting your ability to go truly undercover. Add to that a confusing series of lights that supposedly indicate when the cam is charging, turned on or recording, and you end up with more than one inadvertent video of the floor.

WIRED The smallest video camera we’ve seen yet. Simple to set up and use. Makes you look like a double agent.

TIRED Location of camera lens makes it hard to go covert. No internal storage or memory card included. Recorded video is shakier and blurrier than outtakes from The Blair Witch Project.

$120, swannsecurity.com

Read our full Swann Micro-VideoCam Recorder review.

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: Kodak’s Theatre HD’s raison d’être is straightforward: to shuttle the contents of your PC directly to your television using ethernet or Wi-Fi. Pictures, videos, podcasts, music or any other digital content that may be living on your hard drive (as long as it’s not squelched by some DRM straightjacket) can be whisked away by this tiny little box to your television with little to no fuss.

What really sets the Theatre HD Player apart from the rest of the field is how immaculately it performs its tasks. Once you’ve downloaded Kodak’s EasyShare display software, everything is pretty much taken care of. Have a hard drive filled with extra content? No problem. Simply hook it up to one of the player’s USB ports and you’re ready to go.

WIRED Intuitive UI coupled with a handy RF remote makes setup and playback of multimedia a Zen-like experience. Wealth of connectivity options: component, HDMI, optical or RCA audio, dual USB ports. Transforms crappy YouTube video into semi-watchable content.

TIRED Requires Kodak EasyShare software to get the streaming party started. No Mac compatibility (for now). Pricey, especially for a device without a hard drive. Needs more internet content.

$300, Kodak

Read our full Kodak Theatre HD Player review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.: Skidding in at 53 pounds (on the lighter side for this category), Ohm’s mountain bike-inspired geometry and its nine-level power-assist and regeneration system make it a smart, nimble and efficient two-wheeler.

On pavement and trail the BionX power plant, mounted on the rear hub, employs a unique sensor technology that is constantly adjusting the level of assistance it gives you based on the terrain. Encountering some mushy road? More power is delivered to the gears. Gliding down paved asphalt? The juice is dialed back. And if your thighs are flushed with lactic acid on a sheer hill, a flick of the trusty thumb throttle cracks the whip and the motor totally takes over, no pedaling required. But for all this innovation and comfort, you will, however, have to part with a spouse-enraging $3,450. Is it worth it? Well, it is a ton of fun.

WIRED Excellent Shimano parts mix with disc brakes and RockShox suspension fork. Lockable battery compartment hides space for mobile phone, wallet, media player and your other little stuff. Regeneration mode gives extra on-bike battery life. Comfortable suspension seat post. Four- to six-hour charge time.

TIRED Throttle position needs to be improved for optimal bike handling. Price steeper than any hill the bike can handle.

$3450, Ohm Cycles

Read our full Ohm Cycles XS700 review.

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: For about $300 more than the average netbook, the UC7807u offers a scintillating array of grownup specs. Intel 2.0-GHz Core 2 Duo CPU? Check. 250-GB hard drive? Yep. 3 GB of memory, a glossy 13.3-inch display, a slot-loading optical drive and ports galore (three USB and an HDMI)? You betcha! Best of all, with its fetching brushed aluminum chassis, no one will mistake this for a budget notebook.

Unfortunately, the UC7807u also has all the telltale signs of some obvious corner cutting. Forget about gaming. Due to Intel’s torpid integrated GMA 4500MHD graphics card, even moderately intensive titles won’t run properly. But our main beef with the UC7807u is the feeble 6-cell battery which clocked in at a disappointing 3 hours, 25 minutes — a full hour shorter than most other notebooks in this category.

WIRED Recession-worthy price. Built like a tank. Slick, touch-sensitive volume and multimedia controls.

TIRED Tips the scales for a notebook in this category. Battery drains faster than an ATM at a strip club. Epic fail on the tiny circular touchpad. It’s cramped and serves no discernable purpose. Onboard speakers spit out tinny, distorted sound. HDMI, but no Blu-ray?

$800 as tested, Gateway

Read our full Gateway UC7807u review.

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: It’s no wonder this watch ran away with my heart; for the competitive runner or multisport athlete seeking a personal best in 2009, the Polar RS800CX is the required training device. Because of incredibly robust desktop software, tracking of obscure performance metrics, and a wide variety of add-on sensors, the RS800CX can help you measure, analyze and improve nearly every aspect of your training program.

WIRED Offers better heart-rate monitoring than your average hospital. Incredibly customizable from in-watch display, to software interface, to training programs. GPS and barometric altimeter combined with location tracking mean you’ll never wonder where you wandered. Extensible pods make watch more sport-versatile than Lance Armstrong.

TIRED Even beer goggles won’t pretty up this ugly watch face. May need to hire a coach anyway — just to teach you how to use the PC-only desktop software.

$500, Polar

Read our full Polar RS800CX MULTI review.

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: The pocket rocket we’ve been packing in our pants recently (full name: Optoma DLP EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector) is one of the first mini projectors to hit the market. It’s also one of the best, even though a number of flaws spill from the tiny device.

Styled like a ’40s-era Zippo, the piano-black portable feels more natural in the hand than a lot of cellphones. But it’s not size that matters to us, it’s the video components! The projector is comprised of a combo-rig LED lamp and a DLP chip (courtesy of Texas Instruments) that sets the resolution at 480 x 320 pixels with a range output of 9 lumens. Yes, we know this is low compared to full-bodied projectors like Benq’s gargantuan MP512 ST 2500-lumen projector but for something this small, it’s remarkable.

WIRED Perfect projector for parties. Rectangular lens creates wide image that keeps the image from stretching. Fine picture quality, 8-96 inches. Startup time > 4 seconds. Dead-sexy hardware.

TIRED Lithium-ion batteries die after 2 hours’ use; how are we supposed to watch our Battlestar marathon? Battery recharge time 4 frakkin’ hours. Suck-tastic speaker. Unless you have a video-out adapter, you can’t project Office docs from your PC. Projector gets hot enough to fry bacon after running 30 minutes.

$400, Optoma

Read our full Optoma EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector review.

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: Are you the schlemiel who’s always dropping his cellphone or camera at parties? Or maybe you’re the schlemazel who always gets the drink spilled on him? Either way, if you’re looking for a camera to fit a clumsy or accident-prone lifestyle, the shockproof, waterproof, and cold-resistant Stylus 1050 SW can take the beating from fumbles, faceplants or full-speed crashes, and still keep clicking.

About the size and shape as a pack of smokes, the 1050 is equipped with an accelerometer letting you tinker with settings by tapping on the top and the sides. This lets you do useful stuff like turn the flash on and off with a gloved mitt or preview pictures with one hand while you fend off a tiger shark with the other.

WIRED Shockproof to 5 feet and waterproof 10 means you can bang it on the edge of the pool as you fall in with no harm done. Tap feature lets you change settings without futzing with buttons, and the camera can handle alpine frigidity with aplomb. Comes with a microSD adapter for greater media versatility.

TIRED Lens cover slides more easily than Ricky Henderson. The battery is easily inserted backwards, making you think it’s dead or the camera is malfunctioning. Weak zoom and poor macro ability; this camera could use a bifocal upgrade.

$300, Olympus

Read our full Olympus Stylus 1050 SW review.

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: Touted as the thinnest and lightest BlackBerry yet, the Curve 8900 has some much-needed upgrades over its predecessor, but also some disappointments.

Wi-Fi is hot and easy to set up, the camera got a bump to 3.2 megapixels, the 16 GB MicroSD storage can hold up to 20 hours of video, and the high-res screen is fantastic in any light. On the other hand, callers were hard to hear, documents were difficult to create, and RIM’s revamped proprietary browser is good for surfing the Internet but isn’t as smart about automatically resizing webpages as the browsers on competing smartphones.

WIRED Slick, sexy design mashes the best of the Bold and Curve 8830. Brilliant, high-resolution screen is one of the best we’ve seen on a RIM device. Full HTML-rendering on websites. 3.2-megapixel camera is even better when paired with video-recording capabilities; 3.5mm headphone jack means no clumsy adapters. Near 5-hour battery life is most impressive.

TIRED 3G is MIA. Despite the powerful 512-Mhz processor, the software still lags. New website and software don’t perform as well as they should. Phone quality was mixed and loud speakers fail to compensate for somewhat distorted music playback.

$200 with a two year contract, RIM

Read our full RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 review.

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: This handset (which arrives in some of the most gorgeous packaging I’ve ever seen a consumer electronic encased in) is almost laughably banal in its actual construction. A silver slider with wide-spaced keys, it posses a passing resemblance to the Nokia 5200, albeit with a larger (2.2-inch) screen. But, once you switch it on and start using it, things begin to get interesting.

The operating system orbits around Facebook synchronization. Basically you take the phone online, pair it with your Facebook account, and all of your various Facebook applications become active on the mobile. Your Facebook address book syncs up with the phone’s address book. Events from your Facebook calendar become part of the phone’s calendar. Take a picture with the 3.2-megapixel camera, and you can automatically upload those shots to a Facebook album.

WIRED Brightly hued, easy to use, easy-to-sync OS pairs perfectly with your Facebook account. Skype integration is thoughtful. Thoughtfully spaced keys make texting, entering URLs rather pleasant. Camera takes photos that are sharp enough to be a profile picture. Extremely cheap for an unlocked device.

TIRED Humdrum hardware punctuates novel OS. Not offered in the United States … yet. Battery life is clinically depressing when surfing the web, using Skype.

$112 (estimated), Three

Read our full INQ1 Facebook Phone review.

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: HP has been tinkering with touch tech for a couple of years. But they have yet to nail the bull’s eye with a machine that mixes mature hardware with a haptic interface that feels like more than just a half-assed effort. So, we were cautiously optimistic with the TouchSmart tx2z. The good news? As HP’s first multitouch convertible tablet, it’s got a lot of potential.

Converting from notebook to tablet proved painless, thanks to a solid hinge and the included pen. After swinging the 1280 x 800 screen around (and folding it back), we found two goodies. First, using the pen automatically disables the touchscreen (to prevent palm-related havoc), and second, HP included an active digitizer for handwritten input. This made reckless activities like e-mailing while strolling around the block surprisingly easy. Even jotting down quick notes using a finger (instead of the pen) gave us minimal hassle.

WIRED Fully baked as both a touch and tablet device. Travels well with its compact and stylish chassis. Includes quick keys for rotating screen orientation. Mini media remote and pen conveniently hide away in chassis. Altec Lansing speakers strike decent balance between volume and clarity. Extra goodies aplenty: biometric security, webcam, dual headphone jacks, 802.11n compatibility and 5-in-1 card reader.
TIRED Bloated OS hinders performance of otherwise decent specs. Occasionally laggy switches between notebook and tablet mode. No multitouch love for the trackpad. Terrible viewing angles and weak visibility in direct sunlight. Fan sounds like a leaf-blower at a My Bloody Valentine show.

$1550 (as tested), HP

Read our full HP TouchSmart tx2z review.

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: Nero’s LiquidTV TiVo PC looks like a TiVo and acts like a TiVo, but, brother, it ain’t no TiVo.

Actually, the package makes your PC act like a TiVo by adding a USB TV tuner and the same TiVo software that drives the set-tops. You also get a for-reals TiVo remote and an IR receiver so you can command content from the couch.

Ironically, that’s where you’re gonna get pissed. The remote can’t launch the software, so you’ll have to physically walk over and mouse it open. The remote can be programmed to turn your TV on and off, but it can’t put your PC in standby mode or wake it up again. If you do that manually, the IR receiver fails to wake up with the rest of the system.

WIRED Includes a one-year TiVo subscription, and after that it’s a cheaper-than-set-top $99 per year. The software can auto-convert recordings to iPod or Sony PSP format. Integrates with any TiVo boxes you already have. Extra storage is just an external hard drive away.

TIRED The remote lacks necessary PC controls. Not measurably better than Windows Media Center — which, incidentally, is free. The tuner supports ClearQAM, but the software doesn’t, so forget digital channels unless you hook up the antenna.

$125, Tivo

Read our full Nero LiquidTV TiVo PC review.

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: Photo: Dylan Tweeny/Wired.comApple’s newest Shuffle (almost 50 percent smaller than previous Shuffles) could easily be mistaken for a stick of Trident, features no buttons, and pimps voice-identification technology. But even given its apparent readily consumable stature, there are a few features on the Shuffle that are a bit tough to swallow.

The biggest gripe on the 4-GB Shuffle we tested is definitely the control set. First off, it’s completely counterintuitive; Apple says you can easily use it without looking. We still don’t have the hang of it after a few days of testing. What’s worse, if you have a decent set of earbuds (say, a pair of Shures or Ultimate Ears) you’re totally hosed — you’ll have to endure the ‘buds that come with the Shuffle or pick up specially made third-party headphones. Our recommendation? Pick up a new Shuffle only if you’re prepared to deal with proprietary headphones and ambiguous controls.

WIRED Thumb-drive size. Can double as a tie clip. Battery life lasts for 12 freaking hours. Short USB sync cord is sexy. Yes, we’ll admit, it’s another beautifully designed piece of hardware from Apple. Battery bonked out after 11 constant hours of blasting Thunderstruck on loop.

TIRED Proprietary headphones required. Control set awkward to use, hard to get used to. So small, it nearly gets lost in the packaging it comes in.

$80, apple.com

Read our full Apple iPod Shuffle 3rd Gen review.

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: Rather than foam, gel or compressed-air cushioning, the soles on Newtons have a series of “actuator lugs” just below the ball of the foot. The lugs are designed to help encourage you to land on your forefoot, to protect that part of the foot, and (best yet) to propel you forward. When you land, the lugs push into hollow chambers in the midsole. This cushions your landing, and helps make it comfy to land midsole or forefoot rather than on the heel as you might be accustomed. As your foot moves forward, these lugs then essentially lever out, and as you lift your foot, they return the energy by pushing up and out in the same direction as your stride. Newton claims this makes them more efficient than traditional foam or gel soles that simply absorb energy but don’t return it.

WIRED So cozy they’re like a Snuggie for your feet. Actuator lugs get you off your heels better than a La-Z-Boy. Lightweight at 10.2 ounces. Designed for all stride types. Stomps cold weather like global warming, and keeps out the drizzle for shizzle.

TIRED Not waterproof. Worse on single-track trails than a skateboard. $175??? OMG, for that much money I could just pay somebody to run for me.

$175, newtonrunning.com

Read our full Newton All Weather Trainer review.

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: The Firebird features a hybrid design — using 2.5-inch hard drives (two 320-GB models) and dual graphics cards originally designed for laptops — but powers it all with a desktop CPU and desktop-sized DIMMs. As with a laptop, wireless is built in, but the power supply is not: To save on wattage, HP breaks out the (enormous) power adapter instead of integrating it into the box.

As cool as the Firebird is on the whole, it isn’t without some foibles. The inclusion of an ExpressCard slot is on the baffling-to-useless side, and the external power supply (it’s huge) is more annoying to deal with than it sounds. But our biggest gripe is that the Firebird’s streamlined shell means it includes no front-mounted ports at all, not even a single USB slot for your thumb drive. Seriously HP, even the Mac Pro finds room for that.

WIRED Amazingly quiet and conscientious in its power consumption. Outstanding design; belongs on top of the desk, not beneath it. Solid all-around performance at a fair price.

TIRED No front USB port. Curvy design means you can’t put anything on top of the case. Functionally locked down, with no real upgrade path.

$2,100 (as tested), hp.com

Read our full HP Firebird 803 review.

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: I shouldn’t love this truck. I should hate it. I purposely do not own a car, and this all-black behemoth represents everything I hate about SUV culture: conspicuous consumption, insensitivity to our rapidly shrinking world and crowded cities, middle finger raised at global warming.

You could slap a cold fusion generator under Big Poppa Cadillac’s hood and the first two issues would still apply, but I was kind of wrong about that last one. Have you ever seen Godzilla vs. Megalon? Where Godzilla fights on behalf of the people of Japan against a giant rhinoceros/cockroach? Sure, Tokyo’s favorite monster still smashes a bunch of buildings and steps on some people, but he’s trying to be good. Same goes for this Hybrid Chromedaddy.

WIRED Decent pickup for a motorized bomb shelter. Combined ABS and regenerative braking system do a terrific job of hauling the beast down from speed. Trick motorized step makes it easy for shorties to climb into your rolling condo.

TIRED Thing has a car phone. No, not Bluetooth, but an actual phone built into infotainment system. (It’s actually just Onstar, but there was no other option for hands-free calling.) What is this, 1989? Cadillac — God love ‘em — uses the fact that this is a hybrid as an excuse to bling up the truck even more: Hybrid badges are plastered on every hard surface, on the sides of the door, even the windshield. —Joe Brown

$74,085 (as tested), Cadillac.com

Read our full Cadillac Escalade Hybrid review.

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:
The Kindle 2 is zippier, with pages turning 20 percent faster (yes, you can tell the difference). It has more memory (2 gigabytes, enough for storing more than 1,500 books onboard). And it flaunts a more powerful built-in battery: Amazon claims that the Kindle lasts four to five days with the wireless on (we got 4.5 days in our first test) and up to two weeks with it off. After a week of limited wireless, my meter is around 50 percent. Amazon also says that after 500 charges, it will hold 80 percent of its original juice. That means that most users won’t have to replace the battery (a $60 procedure) for about a decade or so.

Looking over the horizon, it’s clear that Amazon’s biggest competitor in selling digital books will be Google, whose recent agreement with publishers and authors will make it the virtually exclusive seller for millions of books in copyright but not in print. But right now at least, the Google and Amazon formats aren’t compatible: I was unsuccessful in getting a PDF of a public-domain book downloaded from Google to appear in readable form on my Kindle.

WIRED The best e-reading system on the market. Welcome improvements to aesthetics, more functional industrial design, better graphics and longer battery life. Sleeker than the original: One-third of an inch thick and 10 ounces.

TIRED Quite expensive. Book content shackled with DRM. Interface is improved, sure, but it could be even better.

$360, amazon.com

Read our full Amazon.com Kindle 2 review.

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: The iWOW adapter from SRS Labs promises to coax more “immersive” sound from your iPod, and it actually delivers — provided you’re listening to the right kind of music. Setup is easy: Snap on the slick little 1-inch extension, plug in some spendy headphones, press a button, and you do indeed get a fuller sound with more depth — especially if you enjoy songs like Sting’s “Fragile,” a track hand-picked by SRS to highlight the effect.

But when iWOW was applied to songs that were heavy on low-end thump or had multilayered sound (Exhibit A: Beck’s “Cold Brains”) the iWOW performed more like iMeh. At top volume, bass beats splintered, while at lower volumes tracks sounded muddled and crowded. SRS claims the device “dynamically locates and restores audio detail” and creates a more natural sound. We’re not buying it — most of the audio we threw at the iWOW was punctuated with a subtle hiss and fuzzy bass.

WIRED Relatively small adapter. Snaps easily onto your iPod and lends some oomph to certain tunes.

TIRED The effect is nearly lost when using ear buds, the device won’t work with older generation iPods, and music that already has a fair share of bass sounds muffled.

$70, srslabs.com

Read our full SRS Labs iWOW Adapter for iPod review.

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:

Leaps ahead of other cam phones, the Memoir’s not limited to the 8 megapixels it captures. In shooting mode, the touchscreen has shutterbug controls — zoom, brightness, timer and flash — that float around the image. And just hitting the shutter will take you into camera mode. The Memoir includes a 1-GB microSD to augment the phone’s 100 MB of storage (and it’s an easy-access slot, rather than hidden under the battery).

But for all its convenience, the Memoir simply isn’t a competitor for even the lowliest of dedicated cameras. First off, it’s pokey: slow to focus, slow to snap and very touchy when it comes to movement. And though it touts a 16x digital zoom, it has no optical-zooming option.

WIRED Cool touchscreen and accelerometer helps you shoot or view pictures. Compact, pocket-friendly shape, even for hipsters in painted-on jeans.

TIRED Vampiric light sensitivity makes for washed-out shots. Slow to focus, shoot and recover. E-mail functions are even slower. The screen is hard to see in sunlight. Lens cover doesn’t close all the time, so the lens can get dusty.

$300 (with 2-year contract), t-mobile.com

Read our full Samsung Memoir.

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:
From the outside, the 1000HE doesn’t look much different from other netbooks. But it’s the machine’s heart — the brand new 1.66-GHz Atom N280 processor — that makes it faster, stronger, smarter than its opponents.

Intel claims the silicon slab boosts computing power across the board, especially HD video playback — something that has been woefully horrid in past machines using Atom processors. It’s not lying. This is the fastest netbook we’ve tested (by about 7 percent) in our benchmarks. And HD video playback was noticeably smoother and devoid of chop.

WIRED The first netbook to feature the new Atom N280 chip. MMC and SD media reader slots. Attractive, pearly finish. Decent 1.3-megapixel webcam.

TIRED At 3.1 pounds, it’s one of the heaviest puppies in the netbook litter. Lame keyboard.

$400 as tested, asus.com

Read our full Asus Eee PC 1000HE review.

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: The R50 is remarkably easy to set up and use. As you program each component into the remote using the setup wizard, you test a few controls to make sure it has the right code. The remote instantly recognized all our components, and it took us about 10 minutes to get the AV rig up and running. As part of the setup, you name each component, which then appears as an icon on the screen: in my case, a Sony HDTV, Yamaha amp/receiver, Squeezebox, Oppo DVD player and Soundmatters speaker.

WIRED Cool, reddish backlight perfect for nighttime navigation. No computer or web connection needed for operation. No charging cradle required.

TIRED No user manual means gizmo novices might get lost in setup. $150 price point isn’t super pricey, but then it’s not the cheapest universal remote out there.

$150, universalremote.com

Read our full Universal Remote Digital R50 review.

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:
Like other watches in the 25-year-old G-Shock line, the MTG-1500 is forged with Mr. T levels of toughness: It can easily survive being banged clumsily against tabletops or whacked against a surfboard in a wipeout. And it’s water-resistant to 200 meters. But unlike most other G-Shock watches, which are primarily plastic, the MTG-1500’s body and band are stainless steel, with a few tasteful black plastic accents.

We half expected to find the MTG-1500 lacking in minor features. Surprisingly, it didn’t. It’s got a stopwatch mode, dual time-zone support, five different alarms and a countdown timer. Free abundant sunlight or bright artificial light recharges the battery as you wear the watch. Once fully charged, the battery should be able to power the watch for 6 months without additional light.

WIRED Handsome, two-toned steel-and-black styling doesn’t blare “nerd,” “Swatch-wearing poser” or “too lazy to take off my gym watch.” Self-syncs with superaccurate official time stations. Gives you an excuse to say “solar” and “atomic” in the same sentence.

TIRED Digital display too small and can be obscured by watch hands. LED provides uneven illumination in the dark. $500 can buy a timepiece that’s much fancier, albeit not atomic.

$500, casio.com

Read our full Casio G-Shock MTG-1500 review.

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:
The skinny on this countertop unit is pretty straightforward: It’s the touch-based kitchen computer that won’t put you out of house and home. Don’t go rushing out to cash in that 401(k), though — despite a recession-friendly price, the Eee Top still feels a little light in the loafers.

The glossy white, semi-opaque keyboard and mouse look stylish out of the box, but after extended handling their light, plastic-y build became annoying. The slim chassis sat solid on our countertop, while the bright, 15.6-inch screen and the integrated speaker bar make up the majority of the Top’s sleek profile. Rounding out the device are six USB ports, memory card reader, 1.3-MP web cam and integrated Wi-Fi. We were pretty bummed at the lack of an optical drive, though.

WIRED An all-in-one for the Top Ramen set. Quick, responsive touch interface. Compact design has integrated storage for both keyboard and stylus. Integrated 802.11n and gigabit ethernet ensure throughput thrashings. One-touch shutoff button for hiding porn er, convenience. Runs whisper-quiet.

TIRED Underpowered for heavy web video. A wired keyboard and mouse — on an all-in-one?!? Heats up after extended poke/prod sessions. Anemic 160-GB hard drive. Even a cheapy, noisy optical drive would’ve been nice. No battery means no mobile computing.

$600 (as tested), asus.com

Read our full Asus ET1602 Eee Top review.

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:
This camera is about the size and shape of a pack of chewing gum, and weighs just 0.68 ounces. It records videos at 352 x 288 pixels, encoding them in the 3-GP format used by many cellphones (the videos can be played on your computer using most media-player software, including QuickTime and RealPlayer).

But the MovieStick is oozing with design flaws. The pinhole-sized lens is located on the long side of the device, rather than the short end, limiting your ability to go truly undercover. Add to that a confusing series of lights that supposedly indicate when the cam is charging, turned on or recording, and you end up with more than one inadvertent video of the floor.

WIRED The smallest video camera we’ve seen yet. Simple to set up and use. Makes you look like a double agent.

TIRED Location of camera lens makes it hard to go covert. No internal storage or memory card included. Recorded video is shakier and blurrier than outtakes from The Blair Witch Project.

$120, swannsecurity.com

Read our full Swann Micro-VideoCam Recorder review.

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: Kodak’s Theatre HD’s raison d’être is straightforward: to shuttle the contents of your PC directly to your television using ethernet or Wi-Fi. Pictures, videos, podcasts, music or any other digital content that may be living on your hard drive (as long as it’s not squelched by some DRM straightjacket) can be whisked away by this tiny little box to your television with little to no fuss.

What really sets the Theatre HD Player apart from the rest of the field is how immaculately it performs its tasks. Once you’ve downloaded Kodak’s EasyShare display software, everything is pretty much taken care of. Have a hard drive filled with extra content? No problem. Simply hook it up to one of the player’s USB ports and you’re ready to go.

WIRED Intuitive UI coupled with a handy RF remote makes setup and playback of multimedia a Zen-like experience. Wealth of connectivity options: component, HDMI, optical or RCA audio, dual USB ports. Transforms crappy YouTube video into semi-watchable content.

TIRED Requires Kodak EasyShare software to get the streaming party started. No Mac compatibility (for now). Pricey, especially for a device without a hard drive. Needs more internet content.

$300, Kodak

Read our full Kodak Theatre HD Player review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.: Skidding in at 53 pounds (on the lighter side for this category), Ohm’s mountain bike-inspired geometry and its nine-level power-assist and regeneration system make it a smart, nimble and efficient two-wheeler.

On pavement and trail the BionX power plant, mounted on the rear hub, employs a unique sensor technology that is constantly adjusting the level of assistance it gives you based on the terrain. Encountering some mushy road? More power is delivered to the gears. Gliding down paved asphalt? The juice is dialed back. And if your thighs are flushed with lactic acid on a sheer hill, a flick of the trusty thumb throttle cracks the whip and the motor totally takes over, no pedaling required. But for all this innovation and comfort, you will, however, have to part with a spouse-enraging $3,450. Is it worth it? Well, it is a ton of fun.

WIRED Excellent Shimano parts mix with disc brakes and RockShox suspension fork. Lockable battery compartment hides space for mobile phone, wallet, media player and your other little stuff. Regeneration mode gives extra on-bike battery life. Comfortable suspension seat post. Four- to six-hour charge time.

TIRED Throttle position needs to be improved for optimal bike handling. Price steeper than any hill the bike can handle.

$3450, Ohm Cycles

Read our full Ohm Cycles XS700 review.

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: For about $300 more than the average netbook, the UC7807u offers a scintillating array of grownup specs. Intel 2.0-GHz Core 2 Duo CPU? Check. 250-GB hard drive? Yep. 3 GB of memory, a glossy 13.3-inch display, a slot-loading optical drive and ports galore (three USB and an HDMI)? You betcha! Best of all, with its fetching brushed aluminum chassis, no one will mistake this for a budget notebook.

Unfortunately, the UC7807u also has all the telltale signs of some obvious corner cutting. Forget about gaming. Due to Intel’s torpid integrated GMA 4500MHD graphics card, even moderately intensive titles won’t run properly. But our main beef with the UC7807u is the feeble 6-cell battery which clocked in at a disappointing 3 hours, 25 minutes — a full hour shorter than most other notebooks in this category.

WIRED Recession-worthy price. Built like a tank. Slick, touch-sensitive volume and multimedia controls.

TIRED Tips the scales for a notebook in this category. Battery drains faster than an ATM at a strip club. Epic fail on the tiny circular touchpad. It’s cramped and serves no discernable purpose. Onboard speakers spit out tinny, distorted sound. HDMI, but no Blu-ray?

$800 as tested, Gateway

Read our full Gateway UC7807u review.

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: It’s no wonder this watch ran away with my heart; for the competitive runner or multisport athlete seeking a personal best in 2009, the Polar RS800CX is the required training device. Because of incredibly robust desktop software, tracking of obscure performance metrics, and a wide variety of add-on sensors, the RS800CX can help you measure, analyze and improve nearly every aspect of your training program.

WIRED Offers better heart-rate monitoring than your average hospital. Incredibly customizable from in-watch display, to software interface, to training programs. GPS and barometric altimeter combined with location tracking mean you’ll never wonder where you wandered. Extensible pods make watch more sport-versatile than Lance Armstrong.

TIRED Even beer goggles won’t pretty up this ugly watch face. May need to hire a coach anyway — just to teach you how to use the PC-only desktop software.

$500, Polar

Read our full Polar RS800CX MULTI review.

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: The pocket rocket we’ve been packing in our pants recently (full name: Optoma DLP EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector) is one of the first mini projectors to hit the market. It’s also one of the best, even though a number of flaws spill from the tiny device.

Styled like a ’40s-era Zippo, the piano-black portable feels more natural in the hand than a lot of cellphones. But it’s not size that matters to us, it’s the video components! The projector is comprised of a combo-rig LED lamp and a DLP chip (courtesy of Texas Instruments) that sets the resolution at 480 x 320 pixels with a range output of 9 lumens. Yes, we know this is low compared to full-bodied projectors like Benq’s gargantuan MP512 ST 2500-lumen projector but for something this small, it’s remarkable.

WIRED Perfect projector for parties. Rectangular lens creates wide image that keeps the image from stretching. Fine picture quality, 8-96 inches. Startup time > 4 seconds. Dead-sexy hardware.

TIRED Lithium-ion batteries die after 2 hours’ use; how are we supposed to watch our Battlestar marathon? Battery recharge time 4 frakkin’ hours. Suck-tastic speaker. Unless you have a video-out adapter, you can’t project Office docs from your PC. Projector gets hot enough to fry bacon after running 30 minutes.

$400, Optoma

Read our full Optoma EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector review.

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: Are you the schlemiel who’s always dropping his cellphone or camera at parties? Or maybe you’re the schlemazel who always gets the drink spilled on him? Either way, if you’re looking for a camera to fit a clumsy or accident-prone lifestyle, the shockproof, waterproof, and cold-resistant Stylus 1050 SW can take the beating from fumbles, faceplants or full-speed crashes, and still keep clicking.

About the size and shape as a pack of smokes, the 1050 is equipped with an accelerometer letting you tinker with settings by tapping on the top and the sides. This lets you do useful stuff like turn the flash on and off with a gloved mitt or preview pictures with one hand while you fend off a tiger shark with the other.

WIRED Shockproof to 5 feet and waterproof 10 means you can bang it on the edge of the pool as you fall in with no harm done. Tap feature lets you change settings without futzing with buttons, and the camera can handle alpine frigidity with aplomb. Comes with a microSD adapter for greater media versatility.

TIRED Lens cover slides more easily than Ricky Henderson. The battery is easily inserted backwards, making you think it’s dead or the camera is malfunctioning. Weak zoom and poor macro ability; this camera could use a bifocal upgrade.

$300, Olympus

Read our full Olympus Stylus 1050 SW review.

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: Touted as the thinnest and lightest BlackBerry yet, the Curve 8900 has some much-needed upgrades over its predecessor, but also some disappointments.

Wi-Fi is hot and easy to set up, the camera got a bump to 3.2 megapixels, the 16 GB MicroSD storage can hold up to 20 hours of video, and the high-res screen is fantastic in any light. On the other hand, callers were hard to hear, documents were difficult to create, and RIM’s revamped proprietary browser is good for surfing the Internet but isn’t as smart about automatically resizing webpages as the browsers on competing smartphones.

WIRED Slick, sexy design mashes the best of the Bold and Curve 8830. Brilliant, high-resolution screen is one of the best we’ve seen on a RIM device. Full HTML-rendering on websites. 3.2-megapixel camera is even better when paired with video-recording capabilities; 3.5mm headphone jack means no clumsy adapters. Near 5-hour battery life is most impressive.

TIRED 3G is MIA. Despite the powerful 512-Mhz processor, the software still lags. New website and software don’t perform as well as they should. Phone quality was mixed and loud speakers fail to compensate for somewhat distorted music playback.

$200 with a two year contract, RIM

Read our full RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 review.

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: This handset (which arrives in some of the most gorgeous packaging I’ve ever seen a consumer electronic encased in) is almost laughably banal in its actual construction. A silver slider with wide-spaced keys, it posses a passing resemblance to the Nokia 5200, albeit with a larger (2.2-inch) screen. But, once you switch it on and start using it, things begin to get interesting.

The operating system orbits around Facebook synchronization. Basically you take the phone online, pair it with your Facebook account, and all of your various Facebook applications become active on the mobile. Your Facebook address book syncs up with the phone’s address book. Events from your Facebook calendar become part of the phone’s calendar. Take a picture with the 3.2-megapixel camera, and you can automatically upload those shots to a Facebook album.

WIRED Brightly hued, easy to use, easy-to-sync OS pairs perfectly with your Facebook account. Skype integration is thoughtful. Thoughtfully spaced keys make texting, entering URLs rather pleasant. Camera takes photos that are sharp enough to be a profile picture. Extremely cheap for an unlocked device.

TIRED Humdrum hardware punctuates novel OS. Not offered in the United States … yet. Battery life is clinically depressing when surfing the web, using Skype.

$112 (estimated), Three

Read our full INQ1 Facebook Phone review.

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: HP has been tinkering with touch tech for a couple of years. But they have yet to nail the bull’s eye with a machine that mixes mature hardware with a haptic interface that feels like more than just a half-assed effort. So, we were cautiously optimistic with the TouchSmart tx2z. The good news? As HP’s first multitouch convertible tablet, it’s got a lot of potential.

Converting from notebook to tablet proved painless, thanks to a solid hinge and the included pen. After swinging the 1280 x 800 screen around (and folding it back), we found two goodies. First, using the pen automatically disables the touchscreen (to prevent palm-related havoc), and second, HP included an active digitizer for handwritten input. This made reckless activities like e-mailing while strolling around the block surprisingly easy. Even jotting down quick notes using a finger (instead of the pen) gave us minimal hassle.

WIRED Fully baked as both a touch and tablet device. Travels well with its compact and stylish chassis. Includes quick keys for rotating screen orientation. Mini media remote and pen conveniently hide away in chassis. Altec Lansing speakers strike decent balance between volume and clarity. Extra goodies aplenty: biometric security, webcam, dual headphone jacks, 802.11n compatibility and 5-in-1 card reader.
TIRED Bloated OS hinders performance of otherwise decent specs. Occasionally laggy switches between notebook and tablet mode. No multitouch love for the trackpad. Terrible viewing angles and weak visibility in direct sunlight. Fan sounds like a leaf-blower at a My Bloody Valentine show.

$1550 (as tested), HP

Read our full HP TouchSmart tx2z review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

: Nero’s LiquidTV TiVo PC looks like a TiVo and acts like a TiVo, but, brother, it ain’t no TiVo.

Actually, the package makes your PC act like a TiVo by adding a USB TV tuner and the same TiVo software that drives the set-tops. You also get a for-reals TiVo remote and an IR receiver so you can command content from the couch.

Ironically, that’s where you’re gonna get pissed. The remote can’t launch the software, so you’ll have to physically walk over and mouse it open. The remote can be programmed to turn your TV on and off, but it can’t put your PC in standby mode or wake it up again. If you do that manually, the IR receiver fails to wake up with the rest of the system.

WIRED Includes a one-year TiVo subscription, and after that it’s a cheaper-than-set-top $99 per year. The software can auto-convert recordings to iPod or Sony PSP format. Integrates with any TiVo boxes you already have. Extra storage is just an external hard drive away.

TIRED The remote lacks necessary PC controls. Not measurably better than Windows Media Center — which, incidentally, is free. The tuner supports ClearQAM, but the software doesn’t, so forget digital channels unless you hook up the antenna.

$125, Tivo

Read our full Nero LiquidTV TiVo PC review.

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: The R50 is remarkably easy to set up and use. As you program each component into the remote using the setup wizard, you test a few controls to make sure it has the right code. The remote instantly recognized all our components, and it took us about 10 minutes to get the AV rig up and running. As part of the setup, you name each component, which then appears as an icon on the screen: in my case, a Sony HDTV, Yamaha amp/receiver, Squeezebox, Oppo DVD player and Soundmatters speaker.

WIRED: Cool, reddish backlight perfect for nighttime navigation. No computer or web connection needed for operation. No charging cradle required.

TIRED: No user manual means gizmo novices might get lost in setup. $150 price point isn’t super pricey, but then it’s not the cheapest universal remote out there.

$150, universalremote.com

Read our full Universal Remote Digital R50 review.

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:
Like other watches in the 25-year-old G-Shock line, the MTG-1500 is forged with Mr. T levels of toughness: It can easily survive being banged clumsily against tabletops or whacked against a surfboard in a wipeout. And it’s water-resistant to 200 meters. But unlike most other G-Shock watches, which are primarily plastic, the MTG-1500’s body and band are stainless steel, with a few tasteful black plastic accents.

We half expected to find the MTG-1500 lacking in minor features. Surprisingly, it didn’t. It’s got a stopwatch mode, dual time-zone support, five different alarms and a countdown timer. Free abundant sunlight or bright artificial light recharges the battery as you wear the watch. Once fully charged, the battery should be able to power the watch for 6 months without additional light.

WIRED: Handsome, two-toned steel-and-black styling doesn’t blare “nerd,” “Swatch-wearing poser” or “too lazy to take off my gym watch.” Self-syncs with superaccurate official time stations. Gives you an excuse to say “solar” and “atomic” in the same sentence.

TIRED: Digital display too small and can be obscured by watch hands. LED provides uneven illumination in the dark. $500 can buy a timepiece that’s much fancier, albeit not atomic.

$500, casio.com

Read our full Casio G-Shock MTG-1500 review.

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:
The skinny on this countertop unit is pretty straightforward: It’s the touch-based kitchen computer that won’t put you out of house and home. Don’t go rushing out to cash in that 401(k), though — despite a recession-friendly price, the Eee Top still feels a little light in the loafers.

The glossy white, semi-opaque keyboard and mouse look stylish out of the box, but after extended handling their light, plastic-y build became annoying. The slim chassis sat solid on our countertop, while the bright, 15.6-inch screen and the integrated speaker bar make up the majority of the Top’s sleek profile. Rounding out the device are six USB ports, memory card reader, 1.3-MP web cam and integrated Wi-Fi. We were pretty bummed at the lack of an optical drive, though.

WIRED: An all-in-one for the Top Ramen set. Quick, responsive touch interface. Compact design has integrated storage for both keyboard and stylus. Integrated 802.11n and gigabit ethernet ensure throughput thrashings. One-touch shutoff button for hiding porn er, convenience. Runs whisper-quiet.

TIRED: Underpowered for heavy web video. A wired keyboard and mouse — on an all-in-one?!? Heats up after extended poke/prod sessions. Anemic 160-GB hard drive. Even a cheapy, noisy optical drive would’ve been nice. No battery means no mobile computing.

$600 (as tested), asus.com

Read our full Asus ET1602 Eee Top review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

:
This camera is about the size and shape of a pack of chewing gum, and weighs just 0.68 ounces. It records videos at 352 x 288 pixels, encoding them in the 3-GP format used by many cellphones (the videos can be played on your computer using most media-player software, including QuickTime and RealPlayer).

But the MovieStick is oozing with design flaws. The pinhole-sized lens is located on the long side of the device, rather than the short end, limiting your ability to go truly undercover. Add to that a confusing series of lights that supposedly indicate when the cam is charging, turned on or recording, and you end up with more than one inadvertent video of the floor.

WIRED: The smallest video camera we’ve seen yet. Simple to set up and use. Makes you look like a double agent.

TIRED: Location of camera lens makes it hard to go covert. No internal storage or memory card included. Recorded video is shakier and blurrier than outtakes from The Blair Witch Project.

$120, swannsecurity.com

Read our full Swann Micro-VideoCam Recorder review.

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: Kodak’s Theatre HD’s raison d’être is straightforward: to shuttle the contents of your PC directly to your television using ethernet or Wi-Fi. Pictures, videos, podcasts, music or any other digital content that may be living on your hard drive (as long as it’s not squelched by some DRM straightjacket) can be whisked away by this tiny little box to your television with little to no fuss.

What really sets the Theatre HD Player apart from the rest of the field is how immaculately it performs its tasks. Once you’ve downloaded Kodak’s EasyShare display software, everything is pretty much taken care of. Have a hard drive filled with extra content? No problem. Simply hook it up to one of the player’s USB ports and you’re ready to go.

WIRED: Intuitive UI coupled with a handy RF remote makes setup and playback of multimedia a Zen-like experience. Wealth of connectivity options: component, HDMI, optical or RCA audio, dual USB ports. Transforms crappy YouTube video into semi-watchable content.

TIRED: Requires Kodak EasyShare software to get the streaming party started. No Mac compatibility (for now). Pricey, especially for a device without a hard drive. Needs more internet content.

$300, Kodak

Read our full Kodak Theatre HD Player review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.: Skidding in at 53 pounds (on the lighter side for this category), Ohm’s mountain bike-inspired geometry and its nine-level power-assist and regeneration system make it a smart, nimble and efficient two-wheeler.

On pavement and trail the BionX power plant, mounted on the rear hub, employs a unique sensor technology that is constantly adjusting the level of assistance it gives you based on the terrain. Encountering some mushy road? More power is delivered to the gears. Gliding down paved asphalt? The juice is dialed back. And if your thighs are flushed with lactic acid on a sheer hill, a flick of the trusty thumb throttle cracks the whip and the motor totally takes over, no pedaling required. But for all this innovation and comfort, you will, however, have to part with a spouse-enraging $3,450. Is it worth it? Well, it is a ton of fun.

WIRED: Excellent Shimano parts mix with disc brakes and RockShox suspension fork. Lockable battery compartment hides space for mobile phone, wallet, media player and your other little stuff. Regeneration mode gives extra on-bike battery life. Comfortable suspension seat post. Four- to six-hour charge time.

TIRED: Throttle position needs to be improved for optimal bike handling. Price steeper than any hill the bike can handle.

$3450, Ohm Cycles

Read our full Ohm Cycles XS700 review.

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: For about $300 more than the average netbook, the UC7807u offers a scintillating array of grownup specs. Intel 2.0-GHz Core 2 Duo CPU? Check. 250-GB hard drive? Yep. 3 GB of memory, a glossy 13.3-inch display, a slot-loading optical drive and ports galore (three USB and an HDMI)? You betcha! Best of all, with its fetching brushed aluminum chassis, no one will mistake this for a budget notebook.

Unfortunately, the UC7807u also has all the telltale signs of some obvious corner cutting. Forget about gaming. Due to Intel’s torpid integrated GMA 4500MHD graphics card, even moderately intensive titles won’t run properly. But our main beef with the UC7807u is the feeble 6-cell battery which clocked in at a disappointing 3 hours, 25 minutes — a full hour shorter than most other notebooks in this category.

WIRED: Recession-worthy price. Built like a tank. Slick, touch-sensitive volume and multimedia controls.

TIRED: Tips the scales for a notebook in this category. Battery drains faster than an ATM at a strip club. Epic fail on the tiny circular touchpad. It’s cramped and serves no discernable purpose. Onboard speakers spit out tinny, distorted sound. HDMI, but no Blu-ray?

$800 as tested, Gateway

Read our full Gateway UC7807u review.

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: It’s no wonder this watch ran away with my heart; for the competitive runner or multisport athlete seeking a personal best in 2009, the Polar RS800CX is the required training device. Because of incredibly robust desktop software, tracking of obscure performance metrics, and a wide variety of add-on sensors, the RS800CX can help you measure, analyze and improve nearly every aspect of your training program.

WIRED: Offers better heart-rate monitoring than your average hospital. Incredibly customizable from in-watch display, to software interface, to training programs. GPS and barometric altimeter combined with location tracking mean you’ll never wonder where you wandered. Extensible pods make watch more sport-versatile than Lance Armstrong

TIRED: Even beer goggles won’t pretty up this ugly watch face. May need to hire a coach anyway — just to teach you how to use the PC-only desktop software.

$500, Polar

Read our full Polar RS800CX MULTI review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

: The pocket rocket we’ve been packing in our pants recently (full name: Optoma DLP EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector) is one of the first mini projectors to hit the market. It’s also one of the best, even though a number of flaws spill from the tiny device.

Styled like a ’40s-era Zippo, the piano-black portable feels more natural in the hand than a lot of cellphones. But it’s not size that matters to us, it’s the video components! The projector is comprised of a combo-rig LED lamp and a DLP chip (courtesy of Texas Instruments) that sets the resolution at 480 x 320 pixels with a range output of 9 lumens. Yes, we know this is low compared to full-bodied projectors like Benq’s gargantuan MP512 ST 2500-lumen projector but for something this small, it’s remarkable.

WIRED: Perfect projector for parties. Rectangular lens creates wide image that keeps the image from stretching. Fine picture quality, 8-96 inches. Startup time > 4 seconds. Dead-sexy hardware.

TIRED: Lithium-ion batteries die after 2 hours’ use; how are we supposed to watch our Battlestar marathon? Battery recharge time 4 frakkin’ hours. Suck-tastic speaker. Unless you have a video-out adapter, you can’t project Office docs from your PC. Projector gets hot enough to fry bacon after running 30 minutes.

$400, Optoma

Read our full Optoma EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

: Are you the schlemiel who’s always dropping his cellphone or camera at parties? Or maybe you’re the schlemazel who always gets the drink spilled on him? Either way, if you’re looking for a camera to fit a clumsy or accident-prone lifestyle, the shockproof, waterproof, and cold-resistant Stylus 1050 SW can take the beating from fumbles, faceplants or full-speed crashes, and still keep clicking.

About the size and shape as a pack of smokes, the 1050 is equipped with an accelerometer letting you tinker with settings by tapping on the top and the sides. This lets you do useful stuff like turn the flash on and off with a gloved mitt or preview pictures with one hand while you fend off a tiger shark with the other.

WIRED: Shockproof to 5 feet and waterproof 10 means you can bang it on the edge of the pool as you fall in with no harm done. Tap feature lets you change settings without futzing with buttons, and the camera can handle alpine frigidity with aplomb. Comes with a microSD adapter for greater media versatility.

TIRED: Lens cover slides more easily than Ricky Henderson. The battery is easily inserted backwards, making you think it’s dead or the camera is malfunctioning. Weak zoom and poor macro ability; this camera could use a bifocal upgrade.

$300, Olympus

Read our full Olympus Stylus 1050 SW review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

: Touted as the thinnest and lightest BlackBerry yet, the Curve 8900 has some much-needed upgrades over its predecessor, but also some disappointments.

Wi-Fi is hot and easy to set up, the camera got a bump to 3.2 megapixels, the 16 GB MicroSD storage can hold up to 20 hours of video, and the high-res screen is fantastic in any light. On the other hand, callers were hard to hear, documents were difficult to create, and RIM’s revamped proprietary browser is good for surfing the Internet but isn’t as smart about automatically resizing webpages as the browsers on competing smartphones.

WIRED: Slick, sexy design mashes the best of the Bold and Curve 8830. Brilliant, high-resolution screen is one of the best we’ve seen on a RIM device. Full HTML-rendering on websites. 3.2-megapixel camera is even better when paired with video-recording capabilities; 3.5mm headphone jack means no clumsy adapters. Near 5-hour battery life is most impressive.

TIRED: 3G is MIA. Despite the powerful 512-Mhz processor, the software still lags. New website and software don’t perform as well as they should. Phone quality was mixed and loud speakers fail to compensate for somewhat distorted music playback.

$200 with a two year contract, RIM

Read our full RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

: This handset (which arrives in some of the most gorgeous packaging I’ve ever seen a consumer electronic encased in) is almost laughably banal in its actual construction. A silver slider with wide-spaced keys, it posses a passing resemblance to the Nokia 5200, albeit with a larger (2.2-inch) screen. But, once you switch it on and start using it, things begin to get interesting.

The operating system orbits around Facebook synchronization. Basically you take the phone online, pair it with your Facebook account, and all of your various Facebook applications become active on the mobile. Your Facebook address book syncs up with the phone’s address book. Events from your Facebook calendar become part of the phone’s calendar. Take a picture with the 3.2-megapixel camera, and you can automatically upload those shots to a Facebook album.

WIRED: Brightly hued, easy to use, easy-to-sync OS pairs perfectly with your Facebook account. Skype integration is thoughtful. Thoughtfully spaced keys make texting, entering URLs rather pleasant. Camera takes photos that are sharp enough to be a profile picture. Extremely cheap for an unlocked device.

TIRED: Humdrum hardware punctuates novel OS. Not offered in the United States … yet. Battery life is clinically depressing when surfing the web, using Skype.

$112 (estimated), Three

Read our full INQ1 Facebook Phone review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

: HP has been tinkering with touch tech for a couple of years. But they have yet to nail the bull’s eye with a machine that mixes mature hardware with a haptic interface that feels like more than just a half-assed effort. So, we were cautiously optimistic with the TouchSmart tx2z. The good news? As HP’s first multitouch convertible tablet, it’s got a lot of potential.

Converting from notebook to tablet proved painless, thanks to a solid hinge and the included pen. After swinging the 1280 x 800 screen around (and folding it back), we found two goodies. First, using the pen automatically disables the touchscreen (to prevent palm-related havoc), and second, HP included an active digitizer for handwritten input. This made reckless activities like e-mailing while strolling around the block surprisingly easy. Even jotting down quick notes using a finger (instead of the pen) gave us minimal hassle.

WIRED: Fully baked as both a touch and tablet device. Travels well with its compact and stylish chassis. Includes quick keys for rotating screen orientation. Mini media remote and pen conveniently hide away in chassis. Altec Lansing speakers strike decent balance between volume and clarity. Extra goodies aplenty: biometric security, webcam, dual headphone jacks, 802.11n compatibility and 5-in-1 card reader.
TIRED: Bloated OS hinders performance of otherwise decent specs. Occasionally laggy switches between notebook and tablet mode. No multitouch love for the trackpad. Terrible viewing angles and weak visibility in direct sunlight. Fan sounds like a leaf-blower at a My Bloody Valentine show.

$1550 (as tested), HP

Read our full HP TouchSmart tx2z review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

: Nero’s LiquidTV TiVo PC looks like a TiVo and acts like a TiVo, but, brother, it ain’t no TiVo.

Actually, the package makes your PC act like a TiVo by adding a USB TV tuner and the same TiVo software that drives the set-tops. You also get a for-reals TiVo remote and an IR receiver so you can command content from the couch.

Ironically, that’s where you’re gonna get pissed. The remote can’t launch the software, so you’ll have to physically walk over and mouse it open. The remote can be programmed to turn your TV on and off, but it can’t put your PC in standby mode or wake it up again. If you do that manually, the IR receiver fails to wake up with the rest of the system.

WIRED: Includes a one-year TiVo subscription, and after that it’s a cheaper-than-set-top $99 per year. The software can auto-convert recordings to iPod or Sony PSP format. Integrates with any TiVo boxes you already have. Extra storage is just an external hard drive away.

TIRED: The remote lacks necessary PC controls. Not measurably better than Windows Media Center — which, incidentally, is free. The tuner supports ClearQAM, but the software doesn’t, so forget digital channels unless you hook up the antenna.

$125, Tivo

Read our full Nero LiquidTV TiVo PC review.

Check Wired.com’s latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

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