Huawei Ascend P2

The Ascend P2 was announced amid much fanfare at this year's Mobile World Congress, but it took until the summer for it to become available. Since then, Huawei has announced the similar and similarly-priced Ascend P6, which has the same 4.7in, 1,280x720-pixel display as the P2, but is 2mm thinner and runs Android 4.2 rather than the P2's Android 4.1, as well as the latest version of Huawei's Emotion interface.

The upcoming phone may also have an 8 rather than 12-megapixel camera, but we're still not quite sure why you'd choose the P2 rather than wait for the slimmer and prettier P6; we can't quite work out Huawei's strategy.

Nonetheless, the P2 is still a big-screen quad-core smartphone for around £340, so is worth a serious look. First impressions are good. The phone is a good-looking three-tone unibody design, with a black screen, silver sides and, on our review model, a glossy white rear (the P2 is also available in black). The unibody means you can’t replace the phone's battery, and there's no microSD slot, so you'll have to make do with the built-in 16GB of storage.

The P2's rear may be all plastic, but it’s good-quality stuff and the phone as a whole feels well made. We were impressed with the screen, too. It may not be Full HD, but Android still looks great on 1,280x720 pixels; you just have to zoom in slightly to read text on Desktop mode web pages. It also has vibrant colours and bright whites; a Samsung Galaxy S3's whites looked almost grey by comparison.

The display also coped well with bright sunlight, but there was a bug with the software which made it reset the brightness from full to halfway every couple of minutes, which was maddening when we were trying to use the phone to navigate on a sunny day.

Huawei has done its usual heavy customisation of Android. The Emotion UI brings new icons, which are rounded and friendly, but controversially gets rid of the app tray. Instead of having homescreens full of widgets and your selection of app shortcuts, with the rest of your apps living in the app tray, the P2 has all your apps and widgets living together on the homescreens.

While some may like the fact that all your apps are in one place, others find it creates unnecessary clutter as you can't hide away less-frequently-used apps. It also leaves much less room for widgets. If you're already an Android fan you may find the changes too much to take, but those coming from other platforms may relish the UI's simplicity.

Huawei describes the P2 as "The World's Fastest 4G LTE Smartphone" but the company is referring to the speed of its 4G data chip rather than the processor. This is a good thing, as we found the P2's performance to be variable. It's beautifully smooth flicking through screens of apps, for example, but the default keyboard isn't particularly responsive.

We'd also certainly recommend using an alternative web browser such as Google Chrome instead of the P2's default Mozilla-based app. We usually find Mozilla-based mobile browsers to be pretty quick, but this one's a slug. It completed the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark in 3,328ms, which is the slowest score we've ever seen, and pauses and jerks when scrolling around graphics-heavy web pages such as www.guardian.co.uk.

Chrome is much better, with far smoother web browsing and a much faster Sunspider score of 1,634ms, showing there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the P2's hardware. We just feel that Huawei could do with optimising some aspects of its Android build to show the P2 in its best light.

The phone did acquit itself better in the 3DMark Ice Storm benchmark, with a score of 3,131; an above-average score, but we still saw some occasional jerkiness in 3D games such as Riptide GP.

Courtesy to Expertviews

Sony VAIO Fit

Sony has trimmed down its vast range of different models and configurations into a smaller number of customisable laptops, of which the VAIO Fit is (appropriately) the first one we've seen. The name's a good fit too, with a slim and trim chassis.

It’s still quite sizeable, as it has to pack in a 15.5in display, but its slim aluminium frame and black glossy bezel look very smart and stylish. Measuring 22.5mm thick, the Fit could almost be an Ultrabook if not for its 2.4kg weight. It even uses the same low-voltage processors as an Ultrabook, but it has the potential to be a far greater all-rounder than such ultra-portable designs.

The VAIO Fit is an appropriately slender design

PERFORMANCE

It’s available in a variety of specifications, but our review sample came with a 2GHz Intel Core i7-3537U processor and 8GB of RAM. It scored 51 overall in our multimedia benchmarks, which is exactly what we'd expect from this type of processor, but it’s still fast enough to run multiple programs at once as well as those that require multi-threading.

Our sample also came with a dedicated 2GB Nvidia GeForce GT 735M graphics chip for playing games. This mid-range chip isn’t quite as powerful as other dedicated graphics chips you’ll find on other general purpose laptops in this price range, but it still produced a respectable 40.2fps in our Dirt Showdown test on High quality settings at a 1,280x720 resolution.

This is a great score for a non-gaming laptop, but enjoying games at its native 1,920x1,080 resolution will require a few adjustments as we only managed 25.6fps on High quality when we re-ran the test at this resolution. Instead, we had to drop the settings down to Low and disable the anti-aliasing to get a smoother 50fps at 1,080p, but you should still be able to run older games at higher quality settings.

It was no match for our more demanding Crysis 2 test, though, as it only stuttered through with an average of 8.5fps on Ultra at its native resolution. Even knocking the settings down to High, which is the lowest quality setting on Crysis 2, it only scraped 17.3fps, so we’d recommend sticking with a lower resolution if you want to play the very latest 3D games.

DISPLAY

It may not be a gaming powerhouse, but the Fit’s 15.5in Full HD display looks great and its glossy finish really helps colours to stand out. Reds, greens and blues were bright and vibrant and whites were uniformly lit across the screen. Much like theSony VAIO Pro and Sony Duo 13, though, the Fit’s average viewing angles let it down slightly. While blacks were very deep, the lower part of the screen always looked a fraction lighter than the top half, and it was all the more noticeable in our high contrast images. While colours looked very rich, its contrast levels were fairly mediocre and we found it difficult to pick out a high level of detail in the darker areas of each photo. The reflective nature of the screen certainly didn’t help in this case, but we’ve seen better. Our sample also had an optional touchscreen, but this will set you back another £80.

As you tilt the display back it raises the Fit's rear, putting the keyboard at a slight angle for easier typing

INPUT DEVICES

The backlit keyboard also has room for improvement. It’s large enough to fit in a number pad, but while its flat Chiclet style keys are all very well spaced, there could have been a lot more travel between keys to give a better level of tactile feedback. Some keys, such as the left Shift key, could also have benefitted from being a little larger. Sony has pushed the keyboard very high up the chassis, which helps your posture if you're typing in a tight space as your hands sit further from your body.

The keyboard has been shifted up the chassis, which should improve your posture when typing

The touchpad doesn’t make use of the extra space beneath the keyboard though, we'd have preferred it a little lower down. It’s very responsive, though, despite its lack of physical buttons, and we had no problem using it to navigate the desktop or perform Windows 8 shortcuts. Some multi-touch gestures like pinch-zooming were a little over-sensitive, but two-finger scrolling worked perfectly.

The Fit has a good range of ports, with everything you'd expect. Along with a DVD optical drive, there’s one USB2 and two USB3 ports, an HDMI video output for connecting it up to an external display, an SD card reader and a Gigabit Ethernet port. Its battery life was pretty average, though, as it only lasted 5 hours in our light use test with the screen set to half brightness. We would have liked to have seen at least six hours considering its low-voltage processor, but unless you’re planning on hefting it about with you day-to-day, this shouldn’t be too much of a concern.

Plenty of ports are on offer, plus a built-in optical drive

CONCLUSION

The Sony VAIO Fit is certainly a huge improvement on other full-sized VAIO laptops we’ve seen in the last year and there’s a great deal of value to be found in the various configuration options available through Sony’s online store. Our review specification is already better value than the Best-Buy winning Samsung Series 7 Ultra, but its keyboard and screen aren’t quite good enough to edge it into award territory.

Courtesy to ExpertViews

BlackBerry Q5

When the BlackBerry Z10 launched earlier this year, with a brand-new operating system and an incredibly bright screen, it faced two main criticisms. One was the lack of a keyboard and the other was the high price.

The Q10 solved the keyboard problem but kept the expense. The Q5, however, is similar to the Q10 but is available a cheaper price, so you can enjoy BlackBerry 10's excellent messaging features for less.

The Q5 still isn't cheap, especially when you can buy superb Android phones such as the Sony Xperia SP for a similar price SIM-free, but it is at least free on a £21-per-month contract. Unfortunately, it's not especially stylish, being made of hard plastic. The material feels tough, though, and the Q5 feels like it could survive a tumble.

Unlike the more expensive Q10, the Q5's dual-core processor runs at 1.2GHz instead of 1.5GHz, the camera's sensor has five rather than eight megapixels and the Q5 is a sealed unit, which means you can't replace the battery. This may trouble those who travel extensively, but the phone's relatively large 2,180mAh battery lasted over 12 hours in our video playback test, so you shouldn’t have to worry too much; we usually saw a couple of days' use between charges.

We also didn’t find the slower clock speed to be a problem; the phone may have only managed a relaxed 2,328ms in the Sunspider 0.91 JavaScript benchmark (the Blackberry 10 OS doesn’t support all the Sunspider 1.0 tests) but it renders web pages quickly and pans around them smoothly. The Q5 can also handle BlackBerry OS well; we saw occasional jerks in the menus, but the Z10 suffered from these as well.

We also liked the Q5's 3.1in, 720x720-pixel display. It doesn't have the deepest blacks we’ve seen, but whites are white and text is sharp. The Q5's screen doesn’t have the amazing outdoor performance of the super-bright Z10 display, though. Outside in bright sunlight, the screen was still usable, but wasn't anywhere near as bright as the Nokia Lumia 925 we used for comparison (neither the BlackBerry Q10 nor Z10 were available for testing).

BlackBerry 10 is a refined OS that's fantastic for messaging. You're never far from accessing your communications, whether they're email, texts, social media mentions, voicemails or phone calls. Gestures are the key to using BlackBerry 10 OS efficiently. Swiping up on the gesture bar above the keyboard displays a sidebar, and if you have any messages you want to look at a quick swipe right will go to the last inbox you visited.

Swipe left again and you will see a list of all the accounts on the phone, complete with the number of unread messages or notifications. At the top is the BlackBerry Hub, which aggregates all these accounts into one box, making the prospect of keeping tabs on all the info streaming into your smartphone a bit less daunting.

BlackBerry 10 also makes it easy to keep tabs on running apps. No matter which app you are currently running, swiping up from the gesture bar will pause it and go to a screen with all your running apps, depicted as cards. You can then switch to any of these apps or close them with a tap.

Samsung Ecobubble WF80F5E5U4W

The Samsung Ecobubble WF80F5E5U4W isn’t your average washing machine, and is packed full of the latest technology. As well as Ecobubble technology to ‘froth’ detergent and penetrate fabrics faster, saving energy and money, it even works with a smartphone app to diagnose problems and errors. All the hype aside, the most important thing is washing performance. Thankfully, it delivers here, too.

POWER AND WATER USAGE

Here’s where the Samsung Ecobubble WF80F5E5U4W really comes into its own. With the Ecobubble technology working its magic, we found that the 15C Super Eco cycle was exactly that – washing clothes so economically that it provided our best wash figures so far, on a par with the 12kg Ecobubble WF1124XAC that we tested previously.

Washing at 15C, and with a spin speed of 1,200rpm, we found that it used just 0.19kW of power and 45L of water with our 3kg test load. This worked out at a total cost per cycle of 15p, which is incredibly efficient. However, this cycle retained 1.6kg of water, which is quite a high figure.

Washing on a cotton wash at 30C saw our cost per cycle more than double at 31p. Power usage was fairly high at 0.82kW, water used was average at 66L, but water retention was significantly better than the Super Eco cycle at 1.1kg, thanks to the 1,400rpm spin speed.

Increasing the temperature to 40C saw interesting results. The cost per cycle actually reduced by 4p to 27p. While power was around about the same at 0.81kW, it used quite a lot less water – 53L. It was the same story when we ran it on a 40C Synthetic cycle – it reduced again, although this time just by a penny at 26p per cycle. Water usage was 53L, but power was reduced to 0.69kW on a 1,200rpm spin speed. Despite not being the cheapest we’ve seen, these costs were generally quite competitive overall.

EcoBubble technology means very low running costs for low-temperature washes

We also calculated running costs based on the EU Energy Label, which gives you annual electricity and water consumption figures for a year’s use, based on 220 full loads using a variety of programmed cycles. From this we can work out the average cost of a wash cycle.

To get our yearly running costs, we first have to create a level playing field. We do this by working out the total yearly weight of washing, by multiplying the UK average number of washing loads (274), by our high, medium and low individual wash loads of 6kg, 4.5kg and 3kg respectively. This gives us a total yearly high usage of 1,688kg, medium usage of 1,233kg and low usage of 822kg. By dividing these weights by the washing machine’s drum size, we can calculate how many loads it would require to fulfil each. For example, the Ecobubble WF80F5E5U4W’s 8kg drum means that it requires 205.5 cycles for a year’s high use washing.

With these calculations we worked out that this machine costs £49.68 for high usage, £37.26 for medium usage and £24.84 for low usage. These costs include water, waste water and electricity based on the UK average. For an 8kg machine, that’s pretty efficient and costs less to run than some others we’ve seen, although the Panasonic NA-168VG4 is cheaper still.

Renault Captur

The awkwardly named Renault Captur is a supermini crossover vehicle designed to compete with the very popular Nissan Juke. Indeed, it shares the same powertrain as the Juke due to a Renault and Nissan partnership.

The version we drove had a 1.5-litre, four cylinder turbocharged diesel engine that develops a maximum output of 90bhp at 4,000rpm, as well as a manual five-gear transmission. Although it looks like a 4x4, it’s front-wheel drive, as are all other Captur models. That doesn’t really matter, though, as the Captur is designed to provide the space and versatility of an MPV, the high driving position and looks of an SUV and the small form factor of a supermini.

It certainly looks the part, with its sporty yet conventional styling and 200mm ground clearance. The Captur’s more mainstream in appearance than the Juke, and we think it’s prettier, but the Juke’s quirky styling is a big part of its attraction and character.

However, a big selling point of the Captur is the ability to personalise it with two different colour tones, which does add a little quirkiness to the Captur. You could, for example, have an orange body and black roof or vice versa. Inside, you could then have a predominantly dark interior with orange plastic trim around switchgear and on the seats. It’d be easy to dismiss this personalisation as a gimmick, but it’s actually a very good way of livening up the interior of your car and adding a little bit of individuality.

For instance, we initially drove a black Captur with dark trim, and it felt miserable, boring and uninviting. Later, we drove a Captur with a black and orange trim, which really lifted the feel of the car and made it a much nicer and pleasant place to be.

The Captur’s cabin is on par with the trim levels of a typical supermini. It’s predominantly plastic, but it feels solid and well built. It looks modern and stylish, if a little spartan. The three rear seats should carry adults comfortably over short distances. Conveniently, you can adjust the rear seats to provide more luggage space in the boot or more legroom for your passengers.

Its boot has a maximum capacity of 377 litres, which isn’t huge, but that can be increased further to 1235 litres if you fold the rear seats down fully. You can also split the rear seats if required.

Microsoft Surface Pro

When Microsoft released the Surface RT at the end of last year, there were several complaints about the limitations of the Windows RT operating system, such as the limited range of apps. The Surface Pro rectifies this by coming with the full version of Windows 8 Pro, giving you much more flexibility when it comes to installing your own programs and apps. It’s available with 64GB or 128GB of storage, and it might just be the best Windows tablet ever made.

The Surface Pro is a little chunkier than the RT, but it runs full Windows 8

On the outside, very little has changed from the Surface RT. It’s a little chunkier than its predecessor, at 13.5mm thick instead of 9.5mm and weighing 916g rather than 682g, but it still has a beautiful edge-to-edge glass display and a gunmetal-grey magnesium chassis. The integrated kickstand is back, which flips out from the back panel, so you can stand the tablet on a desk. It’s still not height-adjustable, sadly, but we think it’s angled slightly better on the Surface Pro, making it much more comfortable to work on.

The integrated kickstand is neat and the 10.1in screen is excellent

Its 10.1in touchscreen is gorgeous and its Full HD resolution makes everything look razor sharp. At first we were concerned that such a high resolution on a screen this small would make using the touchscreen quite fiddly, but it was a joy to use and we had hardly any trouble tapping and opening individual files and web pages using the Start screen apps. On the Desktop it's not quite as good, as menus and the Taskbar are quite small and a bit tricky to read; fortunately, you can increase the size of icons to make these easier to see and use. We found that the display has excellent viewing angles and we could still see what was onscreen from a variety of different positions.

Roccat Isku FX

The Isku FX looks similar to the original Isku keyboard, but the FX edition has customisable key backlighting. It also has a bank of five macro keys to the left and multimedia shortcuts at the top. Roccat’s unique Thumbster keys are also here, giving you quick access to in-game shortcuts without taking your hands off the WASD keys. The wrist rest made typing comfortable, and although the membrane keys aren’t as desirable for gamers as mechanical keys, they were responsive.

Unlike the original Isku, the FX is just as easy to use in bright light as it is in the dark. You can pick a colour, set a rotating pattern or fading effect and turn off the backlighting completely, but you can’t set different colours to individual keys. Annoyingly, there’s no way to change the profile or Thumbster key LEDs, which are permanently blue.

The FX is a real improvement over the original Isku. Some gamers may prefer mechanical keys, but if you want complete control over your backlight, we can see its appeal.

Meridian Audio Explorer

If you're fed up with the mediocre sound quality and unstable drivers that commonly afflict motherboard-based audio systems then you need a good USB audio device, such as the Meridian Explorer.

Cambridgeshire-based Meridian, still managed by its founders, has a proven track record in digital audio. It created the first digital surround-sound processor as well as key parts of the Dolby TrueHD audio standard that’s intended for use on DVD and Blu-ray discs.

The UK-manufactured Meridian Explorer is one of the smallest dedicated USB audio devices we've reviewed and it’s also one of the most expensive. It measures just 15x110x30mm, and is a compact aluminium tube you can easily hold in one hand. It's slim enough to fit into even the tiniest laptop bag and comes with a soft protective sleeve. At one end is a mini USB port that connects the Explorer to your computer. At the other end are two 3.5mm audio outputs: a headphone port and a combined line and optical (mini-TOSlink) S/PDIF output. Audio is sent to both outputs simultaneously.

Unlike many USB audio devices, which use the drivers built into your operating system, you must download drivers from Meridian’s website to use the Explorer. A setup leaflet provides instructions. It doesn't give you a precise location for the driver, but it's easy enough to locate on Meridian's site. Mac and Linux users can simply plug it in and use it.

The Explorer uses an asynchronous USB connection, which means it uses a built-in clock to control the rate at which data is transferred instead of your PC's clock. This minimises the risk of glitches and other sound artefacts appearing in the audio. It contains a Texas Instruments Burr-Brown PCM5102 DAC as well as a variety of components derived from Meridian's 800 series customisable amp.

Should you use the Explorer’s S/PDIF output, bear in mind that S/PDIF supports a maximum sample rate of 96KHz, whereas the Explorer supports a 192KHz sample rate. Few people have such high resolution audio files, but if you do they'll be down sampled before being sent to the S/PDIF output. It’s also worth noting that it only supports stereo audio, so you won't be able to use it as a throughput for digital surround sound.

When used via its analogue outputs, the Explorer has a maximum 24-bit bit-depth and 192KHz sample rate. Three lights on the device denote the current sample rate. It sounds great if you use high resolution audio files, but audio above the 96KHz Blu-ray standard is still incredibly rare. Windows users will have to remember to configure the audio device's properties accordingly, as it defaults to DVD-quality 24-but/48KHz sound.

SOUND QUALITY

We tested the Explorer against our reference Kef X300A speaker set, which uses a Texas Instruments Burr Brown PCM1754 DAC. We also did comparative listening tests against Arcam's rPAC USB audio device, which uses similar hardware to the Explorer.

When listening to CD-quality audio, there's little to distinguish between the Arcam rPAC and the Meridian Explorer, but both devices sounded better than the Kef X300A speaker system, providing more precise and less boxed-in sound. This is particularly true of treble detail such as strings and cymbals.

The Meridian Explorer provides a brilliant sense of positional audio. A lively, precise bass makes the most of everything from squelchy synths to melodic picked bass or the vibrato of classical string sections. Both the line and headphone outputs have the kind of rich, balanced sound that we desire from computer audio.

Needless to say, sound quality still depends on the quality of your speakers or headphones. Our music sounded very good though our Best Buy winning SoundMagic e10 dynamic earphones, the sound card's output quality is good enough to make the most of premium equipment such as Shure's insanely expensive SE530 earphones or high-end speakers.

CONCLUSION

The Meridian Explorer is an unquestionably brilliant audio processor. It's got one of our favourite DAC chips and has more features than many of its rivals, but it's very expensive. The Arcam rPAC, which also uses the PCM5102, sounded virtually indistinguishable in our side-by-side tests and costs much less. However, it's a bit chunkier than the Explorer, lacks an S/PDIF output and has a lower maximum sample resolution. If you need those exra features and don't mind paying for them, the Meridian Explorer is easily one of the best external audio devices you can buy.

Samsung HMX-QF30

The Samsung HMX-QF30 is ostensibly an updated version of the HMX-QF20, but little seems to have changed. The HMX-QF30 has a 1/4in sensor, just like the HMX-QF20, as well as a 20x optical zoom and 40x digital zoom. It also has a maximum pixel count of 5.1 megapixels and an effective pixel count of 1.75 megapixels. Both camcorders also have a built-in Wi-Fi adaptor, although the HMX-QF30 can do more with it.

The HMX-QF20 allowed you to upload your videos and photos to social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube, but the HMX-QF30 lets you transfer videos to your mobile and broadcast live on the internet with the Ustream web service.

Physically, the HMX-QF30 is as long as a typical compact camcorder, but it’s not very high. This, combined with the thin, unpadded handstrap, makes it uncomfortable to hold and use. Having all the major buttons on the back, such as record and zoom, exacerbates the problem, because you must use your thumb to control them rather than your index finger. This can cause you to nudge the QF30, adding judder to your videos and slightly altering the angle. This might not be a problem if you have small hands, but we think most adults would find it uncomfortable.

TOUCHSCREEN

The HMX-QF30 has a 2.7in colour touchscreen monitor, which is bright, clear and colourful. Its 230,000-pixel is a little, and although icons do look low-res, they’re also colourful and convey their purpose well.

Even though it’s a relatively small screen, the icons are sensibly arranged along the left- and right-hand sides of the screen, with recording time displayed along the top of the monitor. This leaves much of the display clear to view your scene, and you can remove the icons with a simple tap of the screen.

Sadly, we found the touchscreen difficult to use and often unresponsive. It sometimes wouldn’t recognise our swipes, for example, and it would often prove nigh on impossible to traverse a menu because it interpreted our swipe as a selection, taking us into another menu. We found this infuriating.

IMAGE QUALITY

The HMX-QF30 records videos in the MP4 format. This keeps file sizes low, but it also introduces quite a few compression artefacts. The HMX-QF30 can record at a resolution of 1,920x1,080 and a frame rate of 50fps interlaced. At this setting, the bitrate is a fairly low 15.5Kbit/s. Other than Full HD, you can also shoot in “web quality” and 1,920x720 at 50fps progressive.

There’s more mosquito noise than we expected to see in our outdoor footage, as well as the effects of compression such as blocky detailing and jagged edges. There was also quite a bit of chroma noise around certain objects.

We noticed a lack of detail, with some surfaces appearing washed out. We could see the mortar between the bricks of a wall at a distance of 10 metres, for instance, but it looked a little indistinct, with no texture detail or staining on the bricks. Certain surfaces looked a little washed out, too. The detail became more noticeable when we zoomed in on the wall, but the effects of compression were still evident. Often, the automatic focus had slight trouble focusing, and would noticeably pulsate in and out of focus ever so slightly.

The Canon Legria HF R48 isn’t perfect in this respect, but its footage does look sharper, and although there are some compression artefacts, they’re a lot less noticeable.

Even so, we think the footage is acceptable for a camcorder at this price, and it reproduced colour pretty well. It performed similarly in our studio footage, although the chroma and mosquito noise was more evident in this darker environment.

LOOK MUM, NO WIRES

There are two ways of using the HMX-QF30’s built-in Wi-Fi adaptor. One is to connect your smartphone to the camcorder directly in order to transfer photos or you can connect it to your router in order to upload photos and videos to social networking sites.

You can also use the the Samsung MobileLink app with it, which is available from the App Store and Google Play, and is used to transfer videos to your smartphone or tablet. Transferring photos is as easy as selecting them on the camcorder, then your phone and then clicking a button. Transfers were fairly slow, but the app is slick and simple.

As with the HMX-QF20, you can upload directly to Facebook, Picasa and YouTube. You must connect to a router in order to do this, which can be tricky, as you can easily ‘mistype’ the network password thanks to the touchscreen’s small keyboard and lag.

The HMX-QF30 has no connections other than A/V and Mini HDMI outputs and a Mini USB output, not even a headphone output. Considering the price of the HMX-QF30, this isn’t such a bad omission, and many users won’t notice the lack of ports.

If you already have the HMX-QF20, the HMX-QF30 probably isn’t worth the upgrade, but if you simply want a cheap Wi-Fi-enabled camcorder it could be a good buy, especially if you’re shooting quick footage for the web. There’s a lot of compression and noise, and the more expensive Canon Legria HF R48 provides better video quality and a better user interface. If you can spend more on the Canon Legria HF R48, you should do so.

Samsung BD-F8500M

Samsung's combined Blu-ray player-cum-PVR set-top boxes are more than just space savers, they give you almost complete control over your home cinema setup from one remote control, and the BD-F8500M is no exception. It combines a 500GB internal hard disk, online services and twin Freeview HD tuners with a Blu-ray player, so there should be plenty to keep you entertained.

A curved right edge sets it apart from generic home cinema boxes. The BD-F8500M is relatively slim but is about as wide as any other set-top box. Its touch-sensitive buttons are located on the right edge of its top panel, and are comprised of Power, Play, Stop and Eject buttons. The front panel contains the disc tray, a single line LED display and a plastic flap that covers the solitary USB port.

On the back, there’s just a single HDMI video output, digital optical audio out, antenna inputs and outputs and a second USB port. You can connect to the internet via the unit’s Ethernet port or its built-in Wi-Fi adaptor.

You'll definitely want to connect to the internet, as it share many of the excellent online services as Samsung's 2013 range of TVs. The movie recommendations system, which can highlight content from any of the on-demand movie services built in to the TV, points you to titles you're most likely to enjoy. It takes about a week of viewing for it to provide intriguing suggestions, but its algorithms made accurate suggestions based on the content we watched. As well as on-demand movies from LoveFilm and Netflix, you'll also find the major British TV catch-up services, including BBC iPlayer, 4oD, Demand 5 and ITV Player, which adds real value to the BD-F8500M.

Multimedia playback from a USB flash drive was excellent, with support for all major file formats and several more obscure ones, including AVCHD and MKV. You can also stream content from a hard disk or NAS device on your network.

There's plenty of flexibility when it comes to broadcast TV, too; twin tuners let you record one channel while watching another, or record two channels at once. You can schedule recordings, use series link and rewind or pause live TV. There's a slight delay between each action, but it's a lot faster than many other PVRs we've used in the past. Picture-in-Picture lets you keep an eye on one channel while watching another, or superimpose a smaller TV window over the top of the integrated web browser.

Standard definition upscaling is easily on par with everything else we've seen this year, but predictably it doesn’t look as good as native Full HD footage. However, the DTV Smart Resolution setting helps sharpen standard-definition video without adding a significant amount of digital noise, even during fast moving scenes.

Even though high-definition TV streams have plenty of detail, the BD-F8500M excels at playing Blu-rays. Colours look accurate out of the box, with deep blacks and sharp edges. Blu-ray discs also load incredibly quickly, with Samsung's Quick Start mode bringing the player out of sleep mode in less than a second. Naturally for a high-end Blu-ray player, the F8500M supports 3D as well as 2D discs, with a separate settings menu to control depth effects should you not like the default appearance.

Dig deeper into the menus and you’ll discover even more options to control Samsung's DVD and digital TV upscaling settings, 24p movie mode and HDMI deep colour, but there are no in-depth image settings; you must calibrate your TV if you aren't happy with Blu-ray playback out of the box.

Here's a 1:1 crop of Blu-ray playback on the BD-F8500M - click to enlarge

For reference, here's the same scene played through a PS3 console - click to enlarge

The F8500M is expensive if you already have a Virgin Media TiVo or Sky+ HD box. It’s great if you don’t already own a PVR, though, and its online features are excellent. It's also a quick and capable Blu-ray player that looks great and will play virtually anything you throw at it.

Senneheiser Momentum On-Ear

We were blown away by the Sennheiser Momentum headphones, released earlier this year, but their size and price meant that they certainly weren't suitable for everyone. With the new Momentum On-Ear headphones, Sennheiser has retained the build quality of the larger over-ear headphones in a more compact form.

Sennheiser has successfully retained the larger headphones' audio quality in this smaller design, too. The bass is vibrant and prominent in the overall sound, but doesn't overwhelm treble and mid-range detail, although it was quite noticeable when compared to our flatter reference, particularly on busy tracks with a pulsing bassline. This was particularly audible on our metal and industrial test tracks, particularly at high volumes. However, we were pleased by the absolute clarity of heavily layered instruments and vocals in our most complex test tracks and loved their reproduction of jazz and world music.

Vocals in general sounded brilliant, with every subtle vocal detail of complex choral sections clearly audible on tracks from Coope, Boyes and Simpson's a cappella Jerusalem Revisited to the full orchestra, band and choir of Turisas's End of an Empire. Less bombastic recordings also fared well, with the emotive vocals and strings of Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World benefiting from the headphones' spacious sound and excellent stereo separation.

The headphones are available in four colours: white, blue, green and pink, with further shades to follow later in the year. They're beautifully designed, sturdy and remarkably light, which is always desirable in a pair of headphones you intend to use on the move. The padded cups sat comfortably on our ears without exerting any uncomfortable pressure. Despite their soft fabric finish, they didn't get too hot even on a warm summer's day, although we imagine they could become a little unpleasant if you get sweaty.

There's not much sound isolation, but with our music switched on, not too much background noise from our office was audible. Trains were a little more challenging, though, forcing us to raise the volume to overcome background sound. While at low volumes you're unlikely to disturb those around you, the on-ear design meant that some sound was able to escape and be heard by our neighbours, despite the headphones' closed-backed cups.

The Momentum headphones come with two detachable cables. One has an in-line microphone and volume control for use with a mobile phone and the other is a straight stereo cable for use with your computer. Both measure 1.4m. Also supplied is a bulky, semi-rigid carrying case and a thin cloth pouch. When travelling, we spent more time with the headphones on our ears or around our neck than in their case.

Although they don't have particularly good sound isolation, the Momentum On-Ears are a great buy if you want headphones that you can use comfortably in a variety settings, whether you're in a quiet room at home, in the office, or on public transport. Their light weight makes them far more comfortable and practical to wear on the move than most headphones capable of producing this kind of sound quality.

Lacie 5big Pro 10TB

The Lacie 5big NAS Pro is a stylish block of silver plastic with a glowing blue button in the middle of it that doubles as a power switch. It has four USB ports at its rear, of which two are USB3, along with two Gigabit Ethernet ports. It also has a VGA port to which you can attach a monitor should you need to use its data recovery or system rescue features.

If you like to keep your NAS on show, the 5big won't embarrass you

The 5big NAS Pro comes with a software disc that includes Lacie Network Assistant, a utility that helps you locate the device on your local network. The first time you use the 5big NAS Pro, you’ll be asked to update the firmware and set a network name, admin password and time zone. After that, you can log in and configure it for use.

The 5big Pro web interface isn't as polished as those of many of its rivals, and it doesn’t have a Windows-style user interface, as seen on Synology devices. Instead, every function listed on the Home screen has a screen of its own, and it takes a couple of seconds to load each one. You can’t click the Back button of your web browser to return to the previous screen and there’s no Back button on the web interface. Instead, you must press the Home button and return to the top-level menu.

Not the slickest web interface but it's easy to use

The various menu screens are at least clearly labelled and it's incredibly easy to create public and private shared directories. There’s also a general settings screen where you can enable and disable core features such as SMB and FTP file sharing, and gain access to the fiddly iSCSI configuration screen. Annoyingly, you can only set the size of iSCSI targets with a very inaccurate slider. We’d much prefer to type the size.

Other features within the NAS's web interface include a slightly sluggish file manager, options for configuring different users, groups and privileges and a tool to configure automated backups from your NAS to a local or remote drive, among others. It also has eco management tools that let you set the times when the NAS will be on and active and a clearly designed “download machine” that lets you download content from the internet. Unlike rival NAS devices from Synology and QNAP, you can’t download third-party apps such as IP camera surveillance and control systems or IP telephony servers.

Owners of the Lacie 5big Pro can bene fit from Wuala’s secure cloud storage. 5GB of cloud storage is included free, but you can also make use of a three-month trial that gives you five user accounts and 100GB of cloud storage. The Windows version neatly integrates with Windows Explorer's right-click menu and creates a shortcut to your cloud-based virtual drive. It'll also automatically associate the NAS with your account and make its contents accessible via the Wuala app. It's a really easy way to provide access to your NAS to users anywhere in the world, but it's not accessible via the web, only the app.

You can also reconfigure the NAS's RAID settings. The five 2TB Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001-9YN164 hard disks are configured as an 8TB Lacie SimplyRAID volume by default. It’s effectively a RAID 5 configuration, which provides a massive 8TB of space, but it only provides redundancy against the failure of one drive. The 5big Pro provided large file SMB write speeds of 84.5MB/s and read speeds of 106MB/s for an average of 95.3MB/s. In our more challenging small file test, we saw write speeds of 15.8MB/s and read speeds of 28.4MB/s for an average of 22.1MB/s. These are great transfer speeds.

Virgin Media new Super Hub

Virgin Media has launched a new combined cable modem and router, the 'new' Super Hub or Super Hub 2 as we're calling it. The big draw here is the addition of simultaneous 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi, so you can use one for general compatibility and reserve the other for high-importance and -bandwidth jobs such as streaming HD video. There are five internal aerials, two for 2.4GHz and three for 5GHz. This gives the latter a theoretical 450Mbit/s maximum transfer speed.

The new router doesn’t look as stylish as the last one, it’s a little chunkier, has a matt black finish and integrated stand; it just isn’t as cool as the more slender lines and gloss finish of the previous model. There’s still a WPS button for easy connection of compatible devices, just press the button and connect with no password needed, but it’s not like the big, cool-looking button with the Virgin Media logo on the last model, a minor quibble admittedly.

You can set the brightness of the blue indicators

On the upside the LED indicators - for 5.0GHz, 2.4GHz, cable connection, network traffic and power - are clearly labelled. You can adjust the brightness of these in the settings if they bother you, or you want them even clearer to see.

On the bottom of the router is a sticker your router’s SSIDs (one for each radio), password, WPS PIN, plus the web address and default password for the router’s setting pages (more on which below). A new addition is the QR code on the side, which lets you connect a mobile device by simply pointing its camera at the sticker, as long as you have the right software installed.

There's four Gigabit Ethernet ports, but no USB device support

Around the back is a full set of four Gigabit Ethernet ports, so there should be no problem with connecting multiple high-speed devices for the fastest possible file transfers. There’s a USB port here too, but it has been stickered over and there’s no mention of it in the settings.

DUAL WIELD

Based on the specs and looking at Virgin’s claims, the new Super Hub’s modem won’t improve the speed of your cable connection to the router itself. However, its improved wireless capabilities mean you will be able to connect high-speed 5GHz devices and older 2.4GHz ones at the same time.

In our test we found the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi was respectable at 1m and 10m distances, scoring 45Mbit/s and 33Mbit/s respectively, but it fell off sharply in our 25m test failing to complete the test and registering a score. We set the router to its maximum speed for these tests, though, and in another locale we did get a clear signal at this range by reducing the theoretical maximum speed down to 144Mbit/s. This will impact on speeds of closer devices, but for 2.4GHz range and stability are the key factors for most users and in this respect it worked fine.

At 5GHz the new Super Hub was far more impressive scoring 93.2Mbit/s at close range, 74.1Mbit/s at 10m and 12.9Mbit/s at 25m. All these tests are conducted through multiple walls in a place with higher-than-normal electrical interference. There are certainly faster routers out there, even discounting 802.11ac devices, but these are respectable scores.

FEATURELESS

There’s not much in the way of features on this device, there’s no support for storage devices or printers and no media server. It’s not surprising, Virgin Media is providing straightforward internet access here, anything extra would go unused by the vast majority of customers and generate a lot of support calls. Still having print and storage servers would have made this a more rounded device.

There's not much to play with, even in 'Advanced Settings'

The interface is divided into four sections, though most people will only need two of these. The first is Wireless Network Settings, which contains everything you need to get decent reception and get your devices connected. 2.4GHz comes set to the usual default of channel 6, though it’s worth trying 1 and 11 too to see if either improves performance. The 5GHz channel comes set to an Auto Compatibility mode, defaulting to channels 40+36, but you can set the channels manually from a drop-down list if you prefer. It’s all really neatly laid out with pop-up tips that give you basic advice on what each setting is for.

The settings are well laid out and easy to understand

The Super Hub settings screen includes changing the admin password, which you should do immediately, switching the device to modem mode so you can use it with another router, and activating the remote access, so that you or an engineer can change settings via the internet. This last option is disabled by default for maximum security.

The Device Connection Status menu does exactly what it says, letting you know what devices are connected, on what IP addresses, plus whether the cable modem is connected, what its WAN address is and how long its been connected for.

The Advanced Settings menu is where you go if you want to mess about with things a little more. You can limit the wireless speeds here to improve compatibility and range (54, 144 and 300Mbit/s for 2.4GHz and 54, 217 and 450Mbit/s for 5GHz). You can also set up four guest networks, 2 per radio, with their own passwords, security settings and MAC filtering. There’s all the usual port forwarding and DHCP settings but nothing else of note, so no Dynamic DNS settings, no QoS settings and no parental controls.

BEST ROUTE?

The Super Hub 2 will be provided for free to new broadband customers on 60Mb or 100Mb speeds. Those already on those speeds, or upgrading to them, can request a new Super Hub to replace their current model, but it will cost them £50. The Super Hub 2 isn’t currently available to those on 30Mb broadband. It’s a shame that Virgin Media isn’t rolling it out to all subscribers for free, but then we wouldn’t want to see millions of cable modems and current Super Hubs in landfill either (Virgin Media has 4m broadband customers in the UK).

As per usual with Virgin Media kit this is an installation fee, so someone will come to your house, set-up the box and get it working for you. However, you don’t actually own the router; this is a good thing, as you get an effective lifetime warranty with Virgin Media replacing it should it go wrong - the downside is it’s not yours to sell on, but it’s a minor point we feel.

Instead of spending that money on a Super Hub 2 you could buy a similarly specified router with a wider range of features for around £80, such as the TP-Link WDR4300. That model has two USB ports for sharing storage devices, media files and printers. However, you would have to link this to your existing cable router or modem.

At £50 then the Super Hub 2 is a good upgrade if you want better speeds and increased range over the current model, without losing the neat all-in-one look. However, it’s only for those who want straightforward internet access from their router, if you’re looking for a wider range of networking features then you should invest in a new router instead and plug that into your current router.

AOC q2963Pm

The AOC q2963Pm isn't the most attractive 29in monitor we've ever seen, but there's a lot to like about this ultra-wide display. Its industrial slab-like design is a world away from the sleek curves of the LG 29EA93, but this 2,560x1,080 IPS display is great for multitasking with lots of individual windows and lending a more cinematic feel to your films and games.

Despite having a huge stand, the AOC q2963Pm is not height-adjustable, so it felt a little low on our desk. You can’t tilt the screen very far, either. Thankfully, its viewing angles are superb and we had to look at the display side on before we noticed any considerable shift in contrast.

The AOC q2963Pm’s huge stand accommodates three inputs in the form of DisplayPort, dual-link DVI-D and VGA connections. There’s also a second DisplayPort located at the base of the stand. This is handy for daisy chaining other monitors. It has two 3.5mm audio jacks, one for input and one for output. Although the q2963Pm has a HDMI port, it’s only for use with MHL-compatible phones and tablets. MHL is still novel, but we’re seeing it on more and more monitors. It lets you display the content of your mobile device’s screen on the q2963Pm, and charges the device at the same time.

We tried the q2963Pm’s MHL function with the HTC One X+. As with the LG 29EA93, the content of the phone's screen is displayed horizontally and is blown up to fill the majority of the screen. It doesn't look particularly good, though, as images have jagged edges and the q2963Pm’s 21:9 aspect ratio stretches them. Thankfully, the q2963Pm lets you adjust the aspect ratio to 16:9, 16:10, 4:3 or 1:1, but images still looked jagged at an aspect ratio of 1:1.

This is a fairly good selection of connections, but we’d prefer to have a proper HDMI input too, and we’re a little disappointed that it doesn’t have a USB hub. The q2963Pm also has a pair of speakers, but they produce very little bass, so you’d be better off using external speakers if you want to listen to music.

IMAGE QUALITY

The monitor's overall image quality was very impressive. The panel uses IPS technology and our colour calibrator showed it was displaying 98.9 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut at its default settings, with only a tiny weakness in its red coverage. This is an excellent score, particularly for an IPS display, and we even managed to increase it to a near-perfect 99.9 per cent coverage after calibration. This puts it on par with the Dell U2913WM, and it means the q2963Pm provides excellent colour accuracy.

It certainly made a difference in our subjective image tests, with solid reds, greens and blues being just as bright and vibrant as on our reference monitor. Blacks were deep and true, which reflected our low black level reading of 0.32cd/m². Whites were a little grey, but everything was uniformly lit across the screen and there was no evidence of backlight bleeding.

The only thing that lets the q2963Pm down is its slightly weak contrast levels. We recorded a contrast ratio of 655:1 before calibration, which is quite a lot lower than AOC's claimed figure of 1,000:1, and it affected our high contrast test images. It coped well with areas of detail in lighter parts of our photos, but darker areas were simply black.

The q2963Pm's physical menu controls were also a little fiddly to use, but thankfully the monitor comes with AOC's i-Menu software. This lets you change the settings using your mouse and keyboard, and was much easier to use than the buttons on the side of the bezel.

As the AOC q2963Pm is so wide, you can comfortably fit multiple windows in it. AOC provides its own software for dividing your screen space between programs, but it's not very easy to use. You have to drag windows onto a grid instead of configuring the screen how you want. We could only get it to recognise Windows Explorer windows. It wouldn't organise Word documents, web pages or our email client, so you'll be better off arranging them yourself.

The AOC q2963Pm is a great monitor that’s on par with the LG 29EA93 for colour accuracy, but it lags behind on contrast, making it less suitable for fine photo editing and watching films. It may be the cheapest 29in monitor we've seen so far, but its grey looks won't appeal to everyone and we'd rather spend extra money and buy the prettier LG 29EA93 (review soon).

IRIS IRIScan Book 3 Executive

Many mobile document scanners need a PC to work, but the IRIScan Book 3 Executive is different. It’s a thin, lightweight scanner that takes its power from four AAA batteries and it saves scan data directly to a microSD card. Even better, a 2GB card is supplied with the unit so you can save data to it straight away. Scans can be transferred to a PC using the memory card, a USB connection or the Iriscan Book 3 Executive’s built-in Wi-Fi adaptor.

The built-in Wi-Fi adaptor is also a convenient way of sending scanned documents to devices other than PCs, such as smartphones and tablets. There are free Android and iOS apps, but you need iOS 5.1 or Android 4.0 or later to use them. The scanner works in access point (AP) mode only, so to connect a device you must temporarily disconnect from whatever wireless network you’re using. Once connected the app lets you download and view scans then email them or open them in another app. You can also crop scans or paint on them using your finger. It makes scanning and sharing documents very easy if you’re in a location such as a library and don’t have a PC to hand. It also means you can cut down on the amount of heavy machinery you need to carry with you.

You can view scans using an Android or iOS device, and it has basic editing functions

You can also connect to the Book 3 Executive using its web interface, which is handy if you’ve connected to it with your PC. The web interface lets you download and delete scans, and you can also upload files.

Computer users can access scans stored on the Book 3 Executive over Wi-Fi via this basic web interface.

Despite its compact size, the Book 3 Executive feels like a sturdy device, although we weren't too impressed with its rattly WiFi switch and dim LED status lights. There are two buttons to let you toggle between 300, 600 and 900dpi scan resolutions and change the output format between colour or black and white scans, while a third starts and stops scanning. You can save scans as PDF or Jpeg files.

The software for direct scanning over USB is extremely simple, but it does work well

Unlike most other document scanners, the Book 3 Executive foregoes a powered document feed. Instead, you must move it across a stationary document yourself. While this can be cumbersome, it does allow you to scan thick or curved originals that would defeat a typical sheet-fed scanner. It took a few attempts for us to learn the right movement speed for the different resolutions and formats, but most A4 scans took less than 10 seconds. It took 15 seconds to create a colour PDF at 900dpi. Going too fast or losing contact with the page generates an error, which means you’ll then have to start again.

The supplied Direct Mode software lets you scan to a PC over a USB connection. It's very basic, only having options for language, colour and horizontal or vertical scan orientation. Scans are transferred to the Clipboard only, so each must be pasted and saved in graphics software such as Paint.

The included optical character recognition (OCR) software is the excellent Readiris Pro 14. This software retails at £65, which adds great value to the IRIScan Book 3 Executive. It performed well. Only a few words weren’t properly recognised, and these were located in a section of small print.

IRIS bundles Readiris Pro 14 software with the Book 3 Executive, and it's a good OCR package

We wondered if we could get the same OCR results if we shot a document with our smartphone’s camera and then fed it through Readiris Pro 14, but this method was much less accurate the character recognition process much slower.

While not great, the Book 3 Executive’s image quality was fine for archiving documents and for optical character recognition (OCR) with the supplied Readiris Pro 14 software. It's a useful device, and its built-in Wi-Fi adaptor makes the scanning of documents while out and about much easier. If you need a highly portable scanner that you can use with your tablet or smartphone, the IRIScan Book 3 Executive is for you.