Panasonic DMP-BDT270 Review | Impressive 4K upscaling and 3D playback convinces Jamie Carter that this affordable Blu-ray player could find a place in a budget AV setupUnder fire from the likes of Netflix and an incoming Ultra HD format, the received wisdom is that the basic Blu-ray player is on borrowed time. The compact quality … Read more
Orange Pi Zero single-board computer ships The developer board includes a quad-core ARM processor and Wi-Fi, reveals A new Raspberry Pi competitor called Orange Pi Zero has been launched. It can be used to make electronics or robots, or it can fill in as a file or media server. Such developer boards are also used … Read more
Sony 65X9300E Review – SONY’S NEW IMAGE PROCESSOR DELIVERS EXTREME RESULTS. A LOT OF talk has surrounded the release of Sony’s A1 OLED television (a set that’s out in the UK and US, but still awaiting release in Australia), but if you don’t care enough about self-lighting pixels to wait, its new X9300E 4K HDR TV … Read more
A 10-inch tablet for less If we look a bit overexcited here in the Top New Review office, it’s not because of the BBC’s recent retro sitcom season. No, it’s the sight of a brand new low-cost tablet. While you can’t move for cheap laptops, tablets under are thin on the ground. With Teseo’s Hudl … Read more
Is this the most economical route into digital medium format photography? Just add any classic 500 Series Hasselblad body to the CFV 50c capture back and you’re ready to go. You may not know this, but digital photography began with interchangeable capture devices – better known simply as backs – fitted to existing medium format … Read more
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM DICTATES that the ideal PC storage setup – the sweet spot between performance and affordability – is an SSD master drive with a mechanical hard disk providing extra capacity. It makes perfect sense: you get a few hundred gigabytes of solid-state storage to keep Windows and some choice applications nice and responsive, while … Read more
Apple HomePod review – WE’LL PREFACE THIS review by saying the Apple HomePod isn’t for everyone. As good as it is at playing music, and as cool as it is at being able to perform a variety of functions using voice commands — both of which we’ll cover in more detail later — its various limitations … Read more
Alexa the voice-controlled PA for just 50 quid, and you can plug in your own speaker It happens to us all, I suppose, but the older I get the more things slip my mind. I was intrigued by the possibilities when I saw my son’s Amazon Echo in action, so I bought one for myself … Read more
What you need: Windows 10; USB stick (minimum 4GB) Time required: 40 minutes If, when you power up your PC, Windows 10 fails to start, your PC should automatically boot to a menu of troubleshooting tools for fixing start-up errors, returning to earlier system restore points and more. The trouble is, this menu doesn’t always appear when … Read more
Steve May is enamoured by Amazon’s cutest smart assistant The Echo Spot packs a 1.4in full-range driver IT’S EASY TO overlook Amazon’s Echo Spot. It’s not overtly a living room smart speaker, like its bigger Echo brothers, and it doesn’t have a (relatively) large screen display like the Echo Show. To all intents and purposes … Read more
The GPU in the Raspberry Pi is remarkably powerful and energy-efficient. Tim Anderson talks to its creators…“This is for me probably the finest bit of engineering I’ve ever been involved in,” says Eben Upton, founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. He is talking about VideoCore IV, the Broadcom GPU (graphics processing unit) in both the … Read more
When you need to transfer files between computers or just keep a copy somewhere safe, a USB stick is the obvious solution. The problem is they are very easy to lose, and whoever finds it can plug one into any PC and read your data. Most of us deal with files that we’d like to … Read more