Portronics Soundbox review

Music is a great way to kill boredom while you’re on a long journey or sitting at home doing nothing. Some prefer listening to music while working or in the kitchen. The most convenient source for music listening is the cellphone. Nowadays, even the most basic models have multimedia functions such as FM radio, MP3 player and memory expansion via microSD card. But, you have to compromise on battery life and the quality of the speakers isn’t quite up to the mark. If you don’t mind carrying an extra device that irons out these issues, you might want to consider this portable music player by Portronics called Soundbox.

Features
This device is slightly larger than an average candybar phone, but twice as thick, which still makes it quite compact and portable. For its size, the feature set that it offers is quite impressive. It can play songs in MP3 and WMA audio formats directly from microSD memory card and USB flash drives.

Connectivity options

The memory card slot and USB port are located at the bottom along with a mini USB port and a 3.5 mm audio jack. The mini USB port serves only as power input for charging the li-ion battery via the PC’s USB port and not as mass storage interface which would have been useful for transferring songs to the memory card. The li-ion battery is Nokia BL-5C type which is easily available should it need to be replaced. The Soundbox uses two 35 mm neodymium drivers for playback.

Ergonomics and user interface
The Soundbox sports a 3 cm mono LCD display which is divided into two sections. The top portion with yellow backlight is a sort of a status bar which displays the equalizer mode, bit rate, current source and battery level. The lower portion with Blue backlight displays the artist and song title, playback time and visualization. The controls lie on top, which comprises of four buttons. The first two buttons are for previous and next track and when long-pressed they serve as volume control – you cannot fast forward and rewind songs. Next is the Menu buttons, which lists functions for the current mode. For example, repeat mode, EQ settings and lyrics for music playback and FM record and auto-scan for FM radio.

Easily accessible buttons

When long-pressed, the Menu button allows selecting from Soundbox’s main functions – Calendar, Music, FM radio and Settings. Menu navigation is easy but the UI is very sluggish requiring the user to be patient especially while navigating the songs when there are hundreds of files and folders.

Build quality
Portronics Soundbox is available in three colours – apart from the Stone Blue piece that we got our hands on, it’s available in Active Orange and Crystal Purple. The build quality is not exceptional, but quite good. The finish is nice and the shell is very sturdy. What we didn’t like is the glossy shell, which gets stained too easily.

Performance
The sound quality of the speakers outweighs all the drawbacks of this device. We underestimated the output of the two tiny neodymium drivers, but we were taken back when we started playing songs. The lows and mids are excellent, but the highs could be a lot better. The overall quality is very good and the sound doesn’t distort even at full volume.

Verdict
 

A simple and neat design

For Rs.1,799 (MRP) the Portronics Soundbox is an excellent option as a portable music player. The sound quality is awesome and so is the list of things it can do. Apart from its niggles, it would have been nice if the Soundbox had the voice recorder function and came bundled with a good pair of earphones and at least a 2 GB memory card.

source:     http://tech2.in.com/reviews/pmps/portronics-soundbox-review/256022

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Posted in Portronics Soundbox India Launch , Portronics Soundbox India Price , Portronics Soundbox Price in India , Portronics Soundbox Release Date , Portronics Soundbox Review

QNAP TS-459 Pro II Review

Network access storages are ideal when high amounts of data need to be dumped on and retrieved from a server. Besides that, they do provide a range of back up and security options that might be essential for home and small business users. They’re also simpler and cheaper to run than large-sized servers. QNAP have launched their new TurboNAS TS-459 Pro II in the market and here’s what we think about it.

Design and Build Quality
The QNAP Pro II has a dual-tone finish of Black and Gray. It’s got a metallized Black and a plastic front that houses the display LCD and four lockable hard drive slots. The build looks pretty sturdy and it’s got a whole range of connectivity solutions in the relatively tiny rectangular box.

Small, but powerful

Moving on to the software bit, the web interface occupies a big chunk of the usability of the NAS and it’s pretty well-built. The interface is neat and the home screen consists of sliding windows for  various options like administration, web file manager and server. The icons in the subsections are large and colourful and the interface is a big improvement from the really poor ones you generally see on routers and network devices. The design is intuitive and easy to understand, even for new comers.

Features 
Hardware and Software
The hardware running the QNAP TS-459 Pro II consists of an Intel Atom 1.8 GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM, which is expandable up to 3GB. As far as software is concerned, the NAS works on an embedded Linux operating system, so all the internal HDDs will be formatted with the EXT3, EXT4 format.

Setting it up
Setting up the device is fairly simple. Unlock the drive slot, check the alignment for connection, place the drive in the slot and lock it. It takes a little while (5 minutes) to boot up the first time and load its drivers following which it displays its IP address. Administrators need to log in and set up the device via the setup wizard, thereafter. It’s easy to create users, and user groups with a high level of customization for them. Quota settings are disabled by default and you’ll have to go to the Rights management section to enable them. Folder sharing over the network has three options - read, read/write and deny access, so the admin can select which data can be accessible to which user.

A host of connectivity options on the back

Connectivity
The NAS is pretty much loaded in terms of connectivity options. The front consists of a USB 3.0 slot and a power on button. The back houses quite a few connectivity options, including four USB 2.0 ports, a USB 3.0 port, two Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports, two eSATA ports, the Kensington lock and the VGA port. The cooling fan vent is housed at the back, as well.  Notification LEDs for LAN, USB, eSATA and Status are located right underneath the display. There are two buttons, Enter and Select to navigate through the onboard interface for the drive. The NAS has an option of adding a Wi-Fi module via the USB slot for wireless access. Disk management choices include RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 and 10.

Network Services

Network and Security
The QNAP TS-459 supports IPv4 and IPv6 networking with the Dual Gigabit NICs. Automatic DHCP client and network service discovery is allowed for UPnP (for PC) and Bonjour (for Mac). Wireless LAN is supported via USB.  Network file sharing supports CIFS, AFP, NFS, FTP and WebDAV protocols.

Security options are pretty much covered with IP filtering, encrypted access for HTTPS, FTP and Remote Replication, so your data won’t be compromised. There’s AES 256-bit Volume-based encryption, so all the content on your hard drive sits pretty safe.

 source:     http://tech2.in.com/reviews/nas/qnap-ts459-pro-ii-review/256662

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MSI GE620 gaming notebook Review

What constitutes a gaming notebook? High-end specifications and some fancy lighting? Well, at least that’s the general route companies take when designing one. But if you strip away the neon lights and aggressive styling, you’ll notice that many multimedia notebooks also make for good, if not great, gaming notebooks. MSI’s GE620 is one such example. Although it’s from their gaming series of notebooks, it lacks the extra ‘bling’ if you will, which is also why it’s quite a bit cheaper.

 

On Video: MSI GE620

Design and Build
Looking at it, there’s no way of telling if this is a gaming notebook as it looks really plain and ordinary. In fact, it looks similar to some of their budget series notebooks and in a way, even feels like one. The only thing that gives it away is the handful of stickers you’ll find on the palm rest. The plastics used don’t really scream quality and the lid, while sturdy, does suffer from flex issues. The rest of the chassis as well is mostly made up of plastic so don’t be fooled by the brushed metal look of the notebook. Overall, the design is pretty straight forward and simple but we wish the build quality and choice of plastics would have been better.

Plain and ordinary looks

The exhaust vents are placed on the left along with the charging point, HDMI, USB 3.0 (x2) and the microphone and headphone jacks. The third USB 2.0 port is placed on the right along with the VGA port and LAN jack. MSI throws in a DVD burner as well although a Blu-ray combo drive is an option. There are plenty of vents underneath GE620 for ventilation. You can pop open the bottom panel to access the RAM and hard drive. The keyboard is chiclet styled and you even get a Numpad.

Full-sized keyboard

The keys themselves have a extra soft feel which some may not find too comfortable when typing. Also, MSI doesn’t seem to have addressed the issue of the keyboard panel itself and just like their earlier models, it feels a bit flimsy. The trackpad is nice and wide but the ribbed design hinders smooth movement.

Features
The GE620 comes with a 15.6-inch LED backlit screen and sports a resolution of 1366x768 so it’s not as sharp as a Full HD screen but at least it’s easy on the GPU for gaming. The notebook is powered by a Core i5-2410M Intel CPU that runs at a stock speed of 2.3GHz and Turbos up to 2.9GHz. Along with this, we have 4GB of RAM, 640GB hard drive and Nvidia’s GT 540M GPU with Optimus technology. MSI ships the notebook with Windows 7 Home Premium as well.

A good desktop replacement option

The notebook also features some of their own software like i-Charger which delivers more power to the USB port allowing you to charge the iPad as well. The ‘S-Bar’ application gives you quick access to certain programs like Windows Media Player, etc. but more importantly, it let’s you operate the row of shortcut buttons above the keyboard. Here’s where we ran into a small problem. The DVD drive can only be opened via the eject button on the notebook, which will only work if the software’s installed. In terms of software customizations, MSI’s approach isn’t as polished or refined as we’ve seen in other notebooks from Asus, Dell, Sony, etc.

Next, let’s see how the notebook performs in our benchmarks

source:     http://tech2.in.com/reviews/notebooks/msi-ge620-gaming-notebook-review/256612

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Brag M’Joy Review

Brag has come up with several high-end gaming PCs and home theater PCs in the past. Their latest M’joy is a home theater PC for those who are on a shoe string budget. Keeping this in mind, the PC is configured using entry-level components, but with attention paid to performance.

Features
The M’Joy is powered by the AMD Athlon II X4 645 processor, which has a good deal of power to handle media playback, as well as basic everyday applications such as office suite and web browsing. The memory module used is a single 4GB stick of G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3-1600. It provides headroom for overclocking, but bear in mind that the motherboard and CPU aren’t too overclocking friendly, because they are entry-level components. Also the CPU cooler uses the stock cooler that comes bundled with the processor.

The cables are neatly routed and there’s plenty of room for air circulation.

To keep the price low, Brag has opted to use the Radeon HD 4250 integrated graphics, which is a part of the AMD 880G chipset. However, with the Gigabyte 880GM-USB 3 motherboard, you have two USB 3.0 ports on the rear and a PCIE x16 expansion slot. You can upgrade to discrete graphics, but you’ll need a low-profile graphics card such as the Radeon HD 6450 or 6570. The motherboard has one PCIE x1 and two PCI slots. A 300 Mb/s Wi-Fi adapter is fitted into one of the PCI slots.

Apart from the low profile cards, the rest of the components are of standard form factor thanks to the Silverstone Milo ML03 PC case. Low-profile slots are provided to keep the form factor slim. The storage comprises of OCZ Vertex 2, 60GB SSD for system drive and Seagate Barracuda Green, 2TB for secondary storage. So, you get quick response time and plenty of storage space at the same time. Being an entry-level PC, you get a standard tray-loading DVD-writer. M’Joy’s configuration is very power-friendly and hence doesn’t require a high-end power supply unit. The one installed is the FSP Saga II 400W.

The rear panel includes USB 3.0, FireWire, eSATA and HDMI ports

One of the aspects that we liked about all the PCs by Brag, so far, is cable routing. It’s more challenging in a compact HTPC such as this one due to the lack of space in the case. The power and SATA cables are neatly tied up and routed along the sides of the case to conceal the clutter and facilitate air circulation. The case has provision for adding fans for enhancing air circulation within, but not a single fan is added which is a minor flaw. The cooling is entirely taken care of by the CPU cooler and an intake fan housed in the power supply.

Performance
For an entry-level configuration, the performance of the Brag M’Joy is very good. It scored 10145 points in PCMark Vantage and 3.46 points in CineBench R 11.5. These scores indicate that this PC is far more powerful than a similar rig powered by a Core i3 Sandy Bridge processor. It goes without saying that processors by AMD are great value for money in the entry-level segment.

A cost-effective solution for those on a low budget

Further, it took 55 seconds to compress 100 MB of multiple files into 7.zip format using ‘Ultra’ profile and 51 seconds to transcode a 1 minute MPEG video to H.264 format. The OCZ Vertex 2 SSD is a great performer – HD Tune Pro reported average read speed of 136 MB/s, whereas the Seagate Barracuda Green reported 111 MB/s, which is good for a regular desktop hard drive. The PC comes sans any discrete graphics, hence it isn’t suited for gaming. But you can expect decent frame rates at low settings with a Radeon HD 6570.

Verdict
The M’Joy is a good attempt by Brag and we appreciate the fact that it has carved out something for the budget-conscious audience. If you want an entry-level home theater PC that doesn’t compromise on performance and the quality of components used, this will keep you satisfied.

source:     http://tech2.in.com/reviews/htpcs/brag-mjoy-review/256892

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Creative WP-350 Review

Although the previous model i.e. the WP-300 proved to be top notch in the quality department, the rather “heavy” price tag and lack of some relevant features were an issue. The WP-350 is the slightly higher end model launched by Creative and is designed to try and fill in the blanks, so to speak. Of course quality is the key factor and for those who appreciate good quality tech, even price takes a back seat. Keeping that in mind, here’s a closer at Creative’s WP-350 A2DP enabled Bluetooth headset.

Form Factor
In terms of design the WP-350 is the 300’s twin. That pretty much translates to – it’s extremely comfortable to wear even for long periods of time. The WP-350 weighs in at just 108gms, which also makes it light weight. Leatherette cushioning over the earpieces make it comfortable to wear but using them while working out might not be a good idea. Once the earpieces get a little wet they tend to become a little slippery. The earpieces fold inward making the headset slightly flatter and a bit more convenient for portability. It would have been a whole lot better if they could have folded some more so it would be just a little more compact. Nevertheless it’s still not an issue most users will raise so much as an eyebrow over. It supports A2DP and AVRCP as well.

Comfortable form

The buttons are placed very neatly on the earpieces with the main controls located on the Right side. The Call take/End (single button) key also serves as the power button and what you’d use to pair up the headset with compatible devices. Volume buttons are placed on the underside of the right speaker casing so you can easily increase or decrease the volume with you thumb by holding the earpiece. A micro USB charging port is placed on the under side of the left earpiece. Unlike the WP-300 though, this model is equipped with a microphone for taking calls.

Features
Pairing is a simple process as there are no passwords or keys to enter into your device. Simply search for the device and click connect and you’re good to go. Once you’re “switched-on” you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the overall experience. Loaded up with features like aptX technology from Creative you’re quite assured of smooth streaming without delay or lag of any kind. Creative has also thrown in a set of Neodymium drivers that are designed to enhance audio quality to quite an extent and also assist audio performance for calls. Creative also employs their ClearSpeech technology to help make voice calls better.

"Invisible" Mic

Performance
When it comes to audio performance in the music department, the WP-350 is top notch. Bass comes in loud and clear and still manages to keep the “thump” from creating any sort of distortion when the volume is peaked. The higher frequencies are very well balanced providing a neat jar-free audio experience devoid of sharp or shrill tones. On the whole when listening to music or watching videos the audio quality is superb.

The issue that needs to be addressed is the actual quality of voice while on calls. What we noticed on calls is that the audio, in some cases was quite muffled. Although what the person is saying is quite legible, there’s just a bit of an issue when it comes too overall clarity. Sure there are plenty of enhancements provided, as mentioned, but that merely makes the point of better quality being provided all the more relevant. When asked if our voice was clear to the person on the other end, seven of out 10 users said that they were able to hear us quite clearly even if we were in a closed room or out in the open. That’s not a bad average.

Easy to manage set up and remote control system

The range of the WP-350 headset is easily usable even if your device is a little outside of 28 meters away. Of course it’s not that great going through walls.

Battery Life
Creative speaks of the WP-350 offering a 9 hour battery life. In real time and with our audio testing, the device managed to come quite close, clocking in at 8 hours and about 35 minutes on a full charge. It’ll take you a little over an hour to charge fully but you’ll be good for a day with that, provided you’re not wearing the headset for 24 hours of course.

Neatly folds for portability

Bottom Line
With a price tag of Rs. 5,999 (MOP), the WP-350 proves to be a slightly better option than its predecessor. For the mobile phone users this product will help enhance your audio experience while offering you wireless freedom. It offers excellent audio quality with decent quality on calls on the whole. It might seem a little bit on the steep side but with a premium quality look and feel with the kind of quality and comfort the device offers, it’s quite worth it.

source:     http://tech2.in.com/reviews/accessories/creative-wp350-review/256952

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LG Optimus Net Review

LG were one of the first companies to get into the low-budget Android phones segment with their Optimus One, which made quite a mark in the Android world. Now, the company has announced the successor to its Optimus One, the new LG Optimus Net. The P690 places itself as a budget Android phone as well, but is it worth a purchase? Let’s find out.

The top consists of the tiny power button and 3.5 mm jack

Design and Build Quality
The Optimus Net looks very much like the original Optimus P500 phone. It’s got a 320x480, 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen, so the display size hasn’t changed from its predecessor. The back and the sides are quite glossy, so fingerprints will be a problem, which you’ll have to get used to. The phone does feel quite light at 122 grams, but at the same time, it looks and feels quite plasticy, which is a disappointment. The volume rocker buttons are located on the left, while the microUSB slot is housed underneath a protective flap on the right of the phone. The top consists of the tiny power button and the 3.5mm headphone jack. The rear flap is easy to remove and only the SIM card is placed under the battery, so the memory card is hot swappable.

The build feels quite flimsy and cheap

The physical button layout at the bottom has the options key on the left, followed by the home, return key and search buttons. There are two separate panels with the home and back button in one block, and the other two in the exterior block.  The center block buttons feel just fine, but the menu button feels lighter, hollower, and doesn’t have a very consistent feel to it. This complaint extends to the side volume buttons as well. LG could have done a lot better with the build quality of the Net.

Features
Interface
The Optimus Net runs on an 800MHz processor with an Adreno 200 GPU and on first impression the phone runs pretty quick. The P690 has a fluid interface and navigation through the home screen and the various menus is fast and lag-free. But the one problem the interface has, like the other LG phones, is that it’s not polished. Take for example the drop down notification bar. The icons have a very sharp and contrasting feel to them and it looks like several separate sections have been stitched together into one menu. The interface doesn’t look as appealing as the HTC Explorer we reviewed earlier.

Homescreen interface

The Optimus Net has a similar UI to the Optimus 3D.  Long pressing on the home screen brings up a pop up window to load widgets and shortcuts. Music playback can be controlled without unlocking the screen. There’s a new Social+ integration widget that gives you the latest news feeds from your social networking accounts. We’re not big fans of the Excuse Msg feature present on the phone, which automatically sends messages to your contacts, in case you don’t pick up their call. It’s not customizable to include only local calls and in our case, the phone sent a couple of international messages on its own accord. A 3.2-inch screen more often than not makes typing a nightmare, especially in the portrait mode, but the keyboard is spaced pretty well and is easy to use. In terms of synthetic benchmarks, the Optimus Net falls shorter of the Explorer in the AnTuTu application. The Net got a score of 1445, as opposed to the 2099 that the Explorer received, so that’s definitely not a good score for a phone with a better processor.

The benchmark scores

Media
The P690 provides a pretty basic media experience. There are no equalizers or sound enhancements. In fact, the only options available in the music player are Shuffle, Repeat and Party Shuffle. Video and audio format support is pretty standard and you’ll have to download a third party app, if you want to get more out of your phone.

source:     http://tech2.in.com/reviews/smartphones/lg-optimus-net-review/257342

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Posted in LG Optimus Net , LG Optimus Net P690 Review , LG Optimus Net Price , LG Optimus Net Review , LG Optimus Net Specification , LG Optimus Net Specs , LG Optimus P690 Review