The Good: Huge sound, decent looks, good connectivity The Bad: Poor trebles, plasticky build quality, expensive for its features The Bottom Line: For the audio perfectionist, the Boom Evolution may fail to impress. For bass lovers, it will probably be unrelentingly pleasing. Any speaker with “Boom” in its name tends to fall into one of two categories —…
The Pros: Well-made, classy design, good comfort, superb audio clarity and depth The Cons: No head strap cushioning, and no clip to stop the arms folding The Bottom Line: Exceptional sound with pleasing build quality at a competitive price — what’s not to like? When you find the words “Made in England” emblazoned across a…
The Good: Decent design, wireless connectivity, good remote control, loud and bassy sound The Bad: Lacklustre looks, plasticky parts, poor touch controls, sound quality degradation at high frequencies The Bottom Line: At £200, the Cayman is far from the worst speaker you could buy in this price range, but neither is it the best Modern…
KitSound is one such outfit, and the Pocket Hive is the most portable speaker in the British firm’s range. It is unusually shaped — hexagonal, mimicking honeycomb — and competitively priced at a R.R.P. of £40.
The Liberate BT has Marley’s signature look, and at £99.99 it fits into the firm’s usual mid-range price point. But can it deliver the sound quality and usability to match?
The Good: Nice range of colours, decent sound, impressive battery life The Bad: Poor build quality, confused remote, no music sync The Bottom Line: The colours are pretty and the sound is decent, but it looks and feels seriously cheap When we review speakers, sound is often studied and contrasted as a standalone medium. But vision can…
The ECOXBT Bluetooth speaker is meant to be completely waterproof, but can it really be that protected from H2O and still produce good sound? Time to find out.
The Good: Shallow learning curve, good automation features, good looking. The Bad: Slightly puzzling UI. The Bottom Line: A great introduction to automation, with an occasional cause for initial confusion. Trusty old Automator. It has been a steadfast ever-present in OS X since Tiger 10.4, offering to make instant workflows out of the repetitive tasks…
Braven’s claims of 12-hour battery life and mobile phone charging are certainly impressive; but can an open-air specialist make it in the crowded mainstream? I took the 705 for a test drive to find out…
Pixelmator is a lightweight and modestly priced image editing application for Mac OS X. If you’re after a more affordable and easier to use image editor, read our review here.