Ashley Cornell, email: [email protected]

With so many companies making cell phones, one has to wonder why any network operator would want to launch a private label cell phone. But we’ve seen O2 do this on a number of occasions, most recently with its idiosyncratic Cocoon.

Orange has decided to try its hand at branded telephony and has developed two handsets in quick succession with the prospect of more to come. They are named after cities and the two announced so far are Berlin and Tokyo. I’ll look at Dual-Band Tokyo first and come to Berlin later.

Tokyo is a tiny phone that I suspect is aimed at those who want to look rather snazzy but don’t necessarily need a ton of impressive features. The phone certainly does the trick in the looks department, with silver and black the paintwork of choice and a rather nice brushed metal finish for the battery case on the back.

Weighing just 68g, this phone is barely noticeable in your pocket, and it’s also really small in your hand at just 92mm high, 35mm wide and 14mm thick. Holding it in your hand feels like it’s meant to be a little slider, but it’s actually a standard candy bar handset.

The screen and number pad are a mixed bag. The former is pretty disappointing. It’s very, very small, measuring about 1.3 inches from corner to corner, 21mm wide and 26mm high. It delivers 128 x 160 pixels in this space and runs at 65,000 colors. To be fair, the screen couldn’t be much bigger and still fit in this tiny phone, and it’s sharp and clear enough to read indoors. However, it is difficult to read from the outside, which is particularly annoying when handling the camera.

However, I’m happier about the number pad and other front buttons. The number keys are as large as the front of the phone allows, individually shaped and beautifully backlit. The call and end buttons, as well as two soft menu buttons, are relatively large and very clearly labeled, making them well defined.

The navigation pad isn’t the biggest in the world, but I had no problem using it with my flat thumb, and its center selection button is slightly rounded and raised. All of these design features make the keys easy to find and hit. However, I have fairly small hands, so if you have big hands you might not find it that comfortable to use.

When it comes to amenities, the Tokyo is adequate, but quality is generally below mid-range. The phone does support mobile email, but the screen really is too small to do it seriously. You can browse WAP sites and I even managed to get onto a few websites, but the screen size makes the whole exercise a little pointless – you just can’t see enough information to make browsing useful.

Bluetooth is built in and there’s also a calendar, to-do list manager, alarm and world clock, calculator, currency converter, unit converter, sound recorder, stopwatch and three games. You can also create your own ringtones.

The composition software is pretty clever. You use the number keys to place notes on an on-screen staff. The “0” key inserts a pause, the “8” key generates a vibration, and the “9” key flashes the alarm light.

You can choose between three playback speeds: fast, normal and slow. You can choose a variety of instruments: piano, guitar, violin, saxophone, steel drums, flute, harmonica, trumpet, music box and xylophone. And no, none of them sound like the real instrument, but they are all noticeably different from each other.

On the storage front is a 512MB microSD card that comes with the phone to expand internal storage and its slot is on the left edge of the case. You can use Cards to store music played by the phone, photos taken with the camera, and other files.

And so I come to the camera. It has a 1.3-megapixel sensor (1280 x 1024 pixels), which is below average for any phone these days. There’s a self-portrait mirror, but no flash, and not much good to say about it.

When in use, the screen doesn’t quite frame the entire photo area, so you can’t see the edges of a shot. You also have to keep the phone still for quite a while to avoid blurry or mis-framed photos due to the shutter lag.

As for image quality, my photo of the colored dish, taken indoors and under normal household lighting conditions, is grainy, dull, and unevenly lit. Outdoors, the camera never did well with naturally lit subjects, as evidenced by the smeared yellow flowers. The resolution is poor and the exposure varies greatly.

The bowl of chili peppers is a better photo, but the background should be black and white and not contain those loud pinks and blues, especially since it was shot at ISO-100 sensitivity. Even the chilies themselves are grainy and lack clarity. Compare this photo to the one I took of the same subject with the Nokia N95 8B’s 5 megapixel camera.

“‘Verdict”‘

When the Tokyo came out of the box I really wanted to like it. It is small and delicate in the hand and has a beautiful design. But for £160 it just doesn’t deliver what it’s supposed to.

How we test phones

We put every cell phone we test through its paces. We use industry standard tests to properly compare features and we use the phone as our main device during the review period. We will always tell you what we find and we never accept money to rate a product.

Learn more about how we test in our Ethics Policy.

Used as our main phone during the period

Verified against respected industry benchmarks and real-world tests

Always has a SIM card installed

Tested with phone calls, games and popular apps

points in detail

• Ease of use 7

• value 6

• functions 6

Lexmark has added wireless connectivity to many of its new printers and all-in-ones, and the Z1520 is at the top of its printer lineup, with automatic duplex printing and photo printing. It’s also available at a price well below the RRP.

Long and low are the best adjectives for the Z1520. Housed in a blocky white and silver body, it has a black panel highlight at the top and a smoke black flip-up input tray that can hold a hundred sheets. A gray plastic output tray slides out of the front of the printer, and a gray bulge on the back houses the built-in duplexer.

Onboard controls are minimal, with buttons for two-sided printing, paper handling, and power. Next to the small Wi-Fi antenna on the back is a USB 2.0 socket that offers two standard connections to the outside world.

A USB installation of the printer is straightforward; Just run the setup software and you’ll end up with a reasonable set of Lexmark applets, including a driver that supports page imposition and the built-in duplexer.

Installation for wireless, a key reason to buy this model, isn’t much more difficult, although you do need to temporarily connect the printer via the included USB installation cable, so you’ll need to have it near a PC during installation. You can then move it to a cheaper location if needed. The setup software automatically detects networks and all you have to do is confirm which one you want to connect the printer to.

Lexmark inkjet printers have never been staggeringly fast, and as always, manufacturers’ speed claims don’t bear much resemblance to typical, everyday printing. Lexmark states 10ppm for black and white printing and 4ppm for colour, while we saw 4.7ppm and 1.8ppm, respectively. Speeds over the Wi-Fi connection were slightly faster than with a USB cable, which is unusual.

Since the printer comes standard with a duplexer, we also ran our 20-page duplex document test, which took 4:49 minutes and showed a speed of 4:15 pages per minute. That’s about twice as fast as Canon’s PIXMA MP610, mainly due to the much shorter drying time between printing the first and second page.

The other speed anomaly occurs when printing PictBridge from a digital camera. This took around 35 seconds longer per 15 x 10 cm print than printing directly from an SD card, which was itself 18 seconds slower than printing from a PC. We tried two different digital cameras and experienced the same slow PictBridge speeds.

Print quality is very similar to Lexmark all-in-ones we’ve recently tested. Black text print shows some ink bleed into the paper and in one or two places where registration from one print pass to the next is not optimal.

Color printing is better, with spot colors and good black overprints. Color tones are also fairly accurate, making this a reasonable device for home office use. While the photo prints offer smooth gradations of tones and well-chosen foregrounds, they lack much detail in the shadows and are marred by scuffing from the pickup rollers, suggesting an over-rush to keep print times down.

Interestingly, not to say annoyingly, the driver software halted our print run and prompted us to replace the color cartridge, even though the color output showed no sign of degrading. It allowed black printing to continue until obvious ink depletion occurred. That kind of protection is adequate in a printer with permanent printheads, but the Z1520 has Lexmark’s heads built into each cartridge, so you won’t damage anything important while printing until the ink is really gone.

Comparing the page numbers we’ve seen with Lexmark’s claimed ISO page yields shows that their estimates are fairly accurate, so we used the company’s numbers. This gives a cost per page of black text of 3.73p and a cost of color of 8.68p. These numbers are reasonable and roughly mid-range for printers in this price range. They rely on the use of high-yield ink cartridges, even though lower-capacity, standard-yield consumables ship with the printer

“‘Verdict”‘

There are many features in the Z1520 that make the spec sheet look good, but once again it’s the core technology that lets the printer down. Black text on multipurpose paper isn’t as sharp as it should be, and photo prints suffer from overcolor. It’s time Lexmark updated its inkjet technology if it wants to compete with the likes of Canon and HP.

On the other hand, the wireless connection works well and increases the printer’s flexibility, and the duplexer performs better than its competitors when it comes to printing double-sided pages at reasonable speeds. If you’re happy with decent print quality and are on a budget, check out this device.

points in detail

• print speed 7

• functions 9

• value 8

• print quality 6

Once Creative’s Vision M digital media player was the envy of all, and the rest of the music player lineup was impressive enough to rival even the most prolific rivals. However, things have been quiet lately. Only the low-end Zen Stone and Zen Stone Plus have broken the eerie silence in recent months, and in the meantime the Vision M has been quietly phased out. With Creative now lacking a mid-range hard drive player to rival the iPod Classic and a line in dire need of an update, can the new Flash-based Zen begin to reclaim lost ground?

When Riyad played with a back for the first time at IFA in early September he was quite impressed and I have to say that initial impressions are positive in that regard too. The design is unpretentious but chic – unlike the cheap looking Stone and the mighty gorgeous Vision W – with a polished black plastic front and a beautifully finished matte black back. It’s not as thin as the iPod nano at a relatively chubby 12mm, or quite as colorful – it only comes in black, but in a fun way that’s not a handicap. It actually feels a little more comfortable – and less soapy in the hand.

But despite its small dimensions, the Zen looks extremely well equipped on closer inspection. Its 2.5-inch screen is not only larger than the Nano’s 2-inch screen, it’s also the same size as the larger, hard drive-based iPod Classic. And it’s also a very nice screen. At a full 16.7 million colors – which, as Riyad pointed out in his preview, is impressive for a PC LCD panel, let alone one in a tiny media player like this; Video looks sharp, clean and vibrant, and 30fps playback capability means fast action is smooth and viewable.

The Zen also seems to have pretty good video format support: it plays DivX 4 and 5 and XviD formats natively, plus WMV9, MJPEG and MPEG4-SP formats. But before you get too excited, this isn’t as good as it sounds. The Zen isn’t DivX Certified and won’t downscale videos at a higher resolution than the screen, meaning you can’t just drag an old file onto it – you’ll still have to re-encode most downloaded videos to 320×240 first. This becomes a relatively easy task thanks to the Zen’s excellent management and browsing software, which integrates with the Windows Explorer tree and allows you to convert, sync and transfer music and videos without launching a separate application need, but it’s still an unnecessary hassle. However, it does not differ from the Nano in this respect.

The Zen outperforms the iPod nano in other ways, too. Firstly, it is available in larger capacities. I was sent the 4GB version to review, but it’s also available in 8GB and 16GB capacities – the Nano stops at 8GB where the much larger Touch takes over – and there’s an SD card expansion slot too , so you could theoretically take the storage and add up to an impressive 12GB, which is on par with some lower-capacity HDD-based players.

Other reasons to buy the Zen before the Nano include an FM tuner, the ability to charge and transfer files with a standard USB-to-mini-USB cable rather than a proprietary one, and the fact that you can charge for file transfer are not tied to iTunes and device management. You can use the included Creative Media Explorer or Windows Media Player if you want to listen to DRM tracks; or any other music management software you might want to mention if you had the sense to just buy CDs and rip them yourself. You can also just drag and drop files onto the player if you want – it will even warn you if the files you’re trying to copy aren’t supported by the Zen.

Battery life is also slightly better than the Nano at 25 hours for audio and five hours for video. Note, however, that you only get the former if you play 128kbps MP3s continuously without skipping tracks or other navigation. There’s no search function, though, which is one of the few advantages the Nano has over the Zen.

Once you have your music and video on the Zen, navigating the attractive looking menu system is very easy. The four-way directional pad isn’t as pleasant to use as the Nano’s click wheel, and the rest of the buttons aren’t immediately intuitive either, as they contain fairly ambiguous symbols. Before long, however, you’ll be flipping from screen to screen and creating playlists on the fly without even thinking about it. An excellent feature shared by this and other creative players is index navigation: right-click on the device’s directional pad and you can then navigate by the first letter. This makes it a breeze to navigate through long lists quickly. Another nice touch is the album-of-the-day feature, which selects and plays a random selection of tracks from a random album with the click of a button. It’s an excellent idea and feature to have in your pocket, allowing for quick subject changes without having to look at the screen.

How does the Zen fare in terms of audio quality? It’s not a good start, with disappointingly limited file format support. Despite the fact that the player supports AAC without DRM in addition to the usual WMA and MP3 formats, there is no support for lossless codecs or OGG Vorbis.

The lack of audiophile options is a disappointment, not just from a features perspective, but because the Zen is good enough in terms of performance to take full advantage of the increased quality. To test it out, I hooked up my high-end Grado SR325i reference headphones – if these can’t reveal a source’s weaknesses, it won’t do anything – and found the Zen to be a very capable player.

The first thing to point out is that it doesn’t have the loudest volume in the world. It’s fine if you’re listening with noise-isolating in-ear headphones, but some people just can’t handle putting things in their ears, and it doesn’t get larger headphones to the same levels as, say, the Trekstor I tested Vibez player a few months back.

However, this was soon forgotten once I started listening to a few sample tracks. Creative players have always been pretty good sounding machines and the Zen continues that tradition. In back-to-back tests against the Trekstor Vibez, which I currently use as my reference player, I found the Zen just as good, but in a different way. When listening to a piece of dinner jazz by Swedish singer Lisa Ekdahl, the zen doesn’t quite have the same openness as the vibez. But the rest of the sound spectrum is cleaner and a little mellower, with plucked double-bass notes in the background that are more pleasing to the ear.

That strength comes through when you hear something less civilized. Biffy Clyro’s “Puzzle” is a current favorite of mine, and the Ayrshire formation’s unorthodox guitar rock gets to the zen with an energy, power, and punch that many other players lack. Its dynamics and clean, tight bass are simply excellent and even a class ahead of the excellent Trekstor Vibez.

Next I fed the Zen a few tracks from a new band I discovered. Sowena plays an intriguing mix of acoustic guitars and reggae beats, and her well-produced and recorded music is the perfect test of Zen skill. It excelled here, making the music ring out with cheerful abandon.

Finally, I fed the Zen with my usual selection of challenging classical works, from Mozart’s “Requiem” to the dramatic prelude to Mahler’s “5. Symphony”. And here it coped just as well, dispatching complex choral refrains and the tremendous dynamics of orchestral hits with realism, impact and subtlety.

So all in all, a pretty impressive feat. It’s a little disappointing that you can’t delete video files with higher resolutions than the player’s screen, and I’d also have liked to see support for lossless codecs, but the player’s big, clean sound makes up for that and then some. If you’re looking for an alternative to the iPod nano, that alone should put the Zen at the top of your shortlist and make it worthy of the recommended award.

“‘Verdict”‘

Creative has come up trumps with its new Flash-based mini media player. As a direct competitor to the iPod nano, it beats it on most fronts, with the one exception being that its physical controls aren’t quite as pleasant to use. It’s available in a larger capacity range, has a larger screen and, most importantly, isn’t tied to iTunes or a proprietary cable for syncing and charging. It also comes at around the same price, the 4GB version selling for just under £100.

“‘Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 – Xbox 360 version verified.”‘

When I watched Clive Barker’s Jericho in August, my main concern wasn’t that the game felt like another “me too” shooter (it wasn’t) or that the game was lacking in promises (it had plenty of them). No, my biggest concern was whether it had a chance to stand out in what was already looking like the best year for a 3D shooter in a long time. Could it live up to its potential, or would it fall short of the mark and lie flat on the face?

After playing the final product, the answer isn’t as simple as I expected. In some ways, Jericho surpasses my first impressions. In others, it’s a much worse game than I feared. There is real evidence of innovative thinking and artistic and technical prowess here, but there is also plenty of evidence of shoddy design, poor execution and cliched or just generic work. In a way, that actually makes me sadder than if Jericho were just your average wet squib.

If you read the preview, you already know that the game is a squad-based shooter, but with the usual military babble exchanged for a dark, gory horror theme. The seven-strong Jericho Squad – a secret military unit of psychic warriors – are sent on a mission to close a dimensional rift before a terrifying Elder entity can be unleashed upon humanity. The rift is enclosed in what the characters describe as “the box”; some kind of transdimensional prison that protects it. The rift has indeed opened multiple times during humanity’s lifetime, and each time it has crated a distorted version of the local architecture and population. Therefore, the Jericho Squad’s journey is divided into four thematic acts, the Barker versions of World War II, covering Crusades, Roman and Sumerian locales.

Funnily enough, the game’s real USP doesn’t turn out to be Barker’s story, which – frankly – doesn’t seem a million miles removed from the X-Files meets Doom meets Cthulu meets Aliens nonsense we’ve seen a million times before. Nor are the characters who similarly fit well-established sci-fi and horror stereotypes. Instead, the USP turns out to be what the characters can do. As mentioned in the preview, each member of Jericho Squad has their own specific weapons and powers. For example, in Gears of War mode, Delgado is a huge guy armed with a massive chain gun and can unleash a fiery spirit that can seek out and destroy enemies in sight. Black is a sniper, but she’s also gifted with telekinetic powers that allow her to push down barriers and guide bullets to their target in slow motion. Cole can slow time, while Church can perform blood rites that anchor enemies in place or set them ablaze. You’ll get along with everyone as your initially playable character finishes early but – awesomely – survives by owning his squadmates. You can switch to another member of Jericho by simply aiming at that character and pressing X, or by pressing X and then selecting with the D-Pad.

What the preview didn’t reveal was how complex and well developed these special abilities are, or how important they are to the game. Play Jericho as a pure 3D shooter and you won’t last five minutes; Your enemies are too tough and too numerous. Meanwhile, the simple d-pad based command system and poor squad AI (much more on that topic later) also make it impossible to play as a squad-based strategic shooter. The trick, then, is to quickly switch between characters and use their powers as needed to clear out the hundreds of skull-faced zombies and grisly metallo mutants coming your way.

Faced with a gang of grinning boneheads hauling exploding crossbow bolts? Black can take them out one by one from afar using her psychically enhanced sniper skills. Flame-throwing enemies along the way? Use Delgado to take some of the heat, then have the rest of the squad wipe them out. Why not see if Jones, your friendly seer, can possess a monster and use something nearby to cause disruption? Or maybe Church can hold this flying demon in place with a blood rite so the rest of the team can fill the agile little jerk with lead.

Jericho also makes a bit of an effort to incorporate these powers into other aspects of the gameplay, although these mostly boil down to lever-pulling or a little solo run. At times, the game also deliberately divides the team, forcing you to deal with certain characters and abilities that you would normally ignore. Let’s be clear right away: there’s some fun, imaginative stuff lurking here, and it has to be said that Jericho really doesn’t play or feel like your average FPS.

And while we’re giving praise, let’s also say that the guys at MercurySteam have much of their visual work to be proud of. Their custom engine is capable of some stunning results, and when the monsters, colors, and architecture come together like they do in the Crusade section of the game, Jericho reaches Gears of War greatness. Add in some huge monsters, generally a great creature design from the Clive Barker school with flayed skin and gory organs, and you have a game that always looks good, and often looks great – with one major caveat I’ll get to later will come back.

You see, with all the good stuff, it’s impossible to ignore that Jericho just isn’t that enjoyable a game.

Problem number one: AI. Your enemies don’t seem to have one, or at least none that has evolved significantly since the days of Quake II. It’s good. We don’t expect zombies to behave cleverly, and the game would probably be impossible if they did. What’s a problem is that your squadmates are clueless as well. I’ve seen them stand with their backs to a hail of bullets as they contemplate their next move. I groaned as they took turns going into the target zone of a encamped jerk with explosive projectiles, apparently because they wanted to join their comrades who had already been knocked down in the same spot. From the start you’ll be attacked by explosive zombie enemies, but even hours on your troops haven’t learned that a crashed exploder always detonates a second or two after it collapses. They also don’t seem able to attack the yellow weak spot pustules on the beasts. These guys are supposed to be seasoned veterans? Then why are they so fat?

To mitigate this, Jericho throws in a Gears of War healing system where downed buddies can be revived by approaching and pressing X. However, combine this with Jericho’s tendency to throw an endless stream of enemies at you, and at times the game becomes an absurd heal-em-up where you run around like a headless chicken trying to kill as many fighters from the Jericho- Keeping your squad as fit as possible – just because it’s the best and only way to avoid tripping to the reload screen again.

And sometimes you’ll fail, partly due to the sheer volume and ridiculous bullet resistance of even the simplest baddies, and partly due to your squad’s lemming-like tendencies. To make this really annoying, checkpointing is often very poorly done, meaning you’re faced with a 10-minute hike through the same four battles every time your team goes down. To add insult to injury, you have to go through a yes/no prompt every time you reload, and Jericho even throws in annoying in-game cinematics right after a few checkpoints, meaning you’ll end up with the same weak lines of dialogue many times to be able to enjoy.

Worse still, this is a game that doesn’t need to get any more repetitive. The only major criticism of the art design is that each zone of the “box” uses a similar architecture over and over again, and that the game as a whole uses a very limited color palette. It’s all very dark and gothic, but after a while the black, red and brown become stale. Worse, the game is also structurally repetitive. It’s dumbly linear, and basically boils down to “Squad enters a new area, squad fights back hordes of baddies, repeat until level ends.” It’s no coincidence that the times the game picks up speed, the Times are when it’s daring enough to abandon the formula and have a more interesting encounter or fight with big bosses. It’s as if all the imagination went into the powers, leaving too little for what could and should be done with them.

And, please, please, please, please – can we stop having games ruined by quick time event sequences? Jericho has one within the first five minutes that will make your teeth jittery, and then sporadically throws in more to keep you trying to wear them down as the game progresses. The speed at which the button icon toggles on and off and the responsiveness required makes each one a nightmare. Most annoyingly, at one point you’re forced to kill a creature you’ve already knocked down twice by other means with a QTE sequence just because the developers wanted to throw in a cinematic payoff. Grrr…..

Well, I could probably live with some of those irritations, but the final issue Jericho has is the atmosphere – it just doesn’t have enough of it. You should clearly be intrigued by the game’s mythos and horrified by its dark visions, but after a while all that blood and guts melts into the background and you focus on the mechanics to progress from one fight to the next. Perhaps it’s not fair to compare it to survival horror titles when it’s always turned out to be a thriller rather than a chiller, but Jericho never pulls you into its strange underworld like a Silent Hill or Project Zero would. As an FPS, on the other hand, it’s not nearly as nerve-racking as Bioshock, Half-Life 2 or – ironically – Clive Barker’s previous game project Undying.

So the end result is a game full of good ideas and impressive graphics, but ruined by poor execution and design. If you’re a huge fan of scary movies and the Liverpudlian horror author and you absolutely have to have it, my only advice is to persevere; The game gets better the longer it goes. My real advice right now, though, would be to just not bother. If you look at what’s coming or coming out in the FPS genre, we’ve never had it so good. Good for us, hard for Jericho. But even without games like Bioshock, The Darkness, and The Orange Box, I would have a hard time recommending this game wholeheartedly.

“‘Verdict”‘

The design documentation was probably a great piece of work, but the Jericho minute-by-minute experience is a disappointment. While the game improves over time, it’s too buggy and annoying to be worth your money.

characteristics

I’ve been following Ricoh’s digital camera development with interest for a number of years. The first digital camera I ever owned was a Ricoh RDC-5000 in 1999. It was one of the first 2.3 megapixel cameras to hit the market and was the most compact and powerful digital camera on the market at the time. Of course, by today’s standards it resembles a single-lens brick and could gobble up a set of four AA batteries in about 20 minutes, but even then it had some innovative features we take for granted today, such as: B. a metal body, an automatic lens cover, USB connection and 4 cm macro focusing. Ricoh has continually innovated and improved over the years, and its products have rarely strayed far from the pinnacle of digital camera design. Models like the Caplio R3, the R5 and the excellent R6 that launched earlier this year have all received high marks in reviews, although they never seem to get the market share they deserve. This must be due to bad advertising, because in terms of quality and performance, Ricoh’s cameras can compete with the best of the competition.

The Ricoh Caplio R7 is the latest in the range and was launched in August this year. It is an 8.15-megapixel compact camera with a 2.7-inch monitor with a resolution of 230,000 pixels, mechanical image stabilization with a moving sensor and a flush retractable 7.1x f/3 optical zoom lens, 3 to f/5.2 with a zoom range of 28-200mm. Despite this spec, the camera is exactly the same size and weight as the Caplio R6, measuring 99.6 x 55 x 23.3mm and weighing 161g including the card and battery. At least from the front, the body design is also the same as the R6, which is not a bad thing as it is very attractive. There are a few tweaks on the rear, however, with a new larger rubberized thumb grip and a slightly different control layout to accommodate a few new features.

There are relatively few cameras on the market that can match the R7’s specs, but one that immediately springs to mind is the Panasonic Lumix TZ3, which offers a 10x zoom lens and 28mm wide-angle but only 7.1 megapixels, is larger and heavier and has a smaller monitor. It also costs around £235, while the Ricoh R7 currently sells for around £220. Otherwise, it’s pretty much in a league of its own. There are other cameras with longer zoom ranges, but none that combine longer zoom with 28mm wide angle, image stabilization and an almost ultra-compact form factor.

As with previous Ricoh Caplio models, first impressions are very positive. The body is all metal, with excellent build quality and good fit and finish of the controls and hatch. It’s not a flashy looking camera, but it has a distinctive style that’s instantly recognizable. For some reason, possibly the relative size of the lens mount, the R7 looks slightly larger than it actually is at first glance. Sitting it on my desk alongside a bunch of Pentax and Casio ultra-compacts reveals that the R7 is surprisingly small, only a few millimeters from the Optio M40. It is slightly thicker at 23.3 mm, but still fits unobtrusively in any pocket or handbag.

In addition to the new sensor, the R7 has a few other new features. The first is the new Smooth Imaging Engine III, the camera’s image processor, the output of which we’ll discuss in a moment. Externally, the main new feature is the ADJ control, a small joystick-like four-way controller that’s separate from the main D-Pad. This allows for quick on-screen adjustment of up to four user-selectable parameters, with exposure compensation, ISO setting and white balance as default settings, although image quality, focus and metering modes, sharpness, contrast or bracketing can be substituted via the main menu. It’s an extremely effective system and much simpler than the multi-function menus favored by other manufacturers.

Some new features are also available in playback mode. Contrast and hue can be adjusted after capture, and a deskew feature automatically corrects images of text pages, whiteboards, or other rectangular objects to make the pages parallel.

Aside from these additions, the R7 retains all the features of the R6, including eleven scene modes with face detection in portrait mode, two custom shooting modes and a 30fps VGA movie mode, although like the R6 the zoom lens can’t be used when filming. It also features the same moving-sensor image stabilization system developed by Ricoh.

The overall performance of the R7 hasn’t changed much from its predecessor either. It starts up in just over two seconds, which is pretty snappy, and shuts down in under two seconds. The AF system is very fast even in good light, focusing in a fraction regardless of range and zoom setting. It slows down noticeably in weak light, but works very reliably in low-light focusing and, with the bright AF auxiliary light, focuses without any problems even in the dark at a distance of several meters. As with the R6, the firing speed is extremely impressive. In single-shot mode it can capture over one frame per second, and in burst mode it can shoot two frames per second at full resolution and keep doing this until the memory card is full. The R7 is powered by a 1000mAh rechargeable lithium-ion battery, which is larger than the R6. I couldn’t find any specific statement about battery life, but I took over 150 photos and the charge indicator was still full.

The only negative about the R7’s performance that might put some people off is how noisy it is. I’m not talking about image noise here, I’m talking about the actual mechanical noise when the camera is operating. Powering on, zooming and focusing are all accompanied by a loud whirring sound as the motors and cogs spin in the camera. It’s a lot louder than any comparable compact camera and makes the camera sound a bit clunky and primitive when nothing could be further from the truth.

With the higher resolution sensor and new processing engine, image quality is also improved over the already impressive R6. The 256-segment metering gives very accurate exposures, although I found that where it reached the limits of its dynamic range, it tended to burn out highlights to preserve shadow detail. Color reproduction is also a bit more saturated than usual by default, but a quick adjustment in the menu resulted in a more natural tone. The level of detail is overall very good, if not better than I’d expect from an 8-megapixel camera, but again the standout feature is the lens, which offers superb corner-to-corner sharpness and detail throughout the focal length range, with virtually no barrel distortion at all in wide-angle and just the tiniest hint of chromatic aberration in the corners of the frame. Noise reduction at higher ISO settings is excellent too, with usable images up to 800 ISO.

“‘Verdict”‘

Once again Ricoh proves that its cameras are among the best on the market in terms of technology and value for money. The Caplio R7 is an exceptionally versatile pocket-sized compact camera with an unrivaled list of features. It’s stylish, well-made, has incredibly fast performance and great image quality at a price that beats its few rivals. If it doesn’t sell like hotcakes this Christmas, Ricoh will have to fire its ad agency.

“On the next few pages we show a series of test shots. On this page, the full-size image at the minimum and maximum ISO settings has been scaled down to allow you to see the full image, and a series of full-resolution crops have been made from original images at a range of ISO settings to enhance overall image quality to show. ”

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This ISO 64 shot is slightly overexposed but the overall image quality is very good with no noise whatsoever.

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Exposure is more accurate this time, and at 100 ISO there’s still no noise.

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The noise level is still very low at 200 ISO, with only a little luminance noise in the mid-tones.

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400 ISO and it looks like a very impressive performance from the R7, with little fine-grained noise at this setting.

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Even at 800 ISO the image is printable, with good color balance and very little annoying noise.

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Image quality drops at a maximum of 1600 ISO, with lots of color noise and a shift in overall color balance.

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This is the full frame image at 1600 ISO.

“On the next two pages you will find a series of general test shots. In some cases, the full-size image has been scaled down for bandwidth reasons and a crop of the original full-resolution image has been placed underneath to show the overall image quality. Some other images can be clicked to view the full-size original image.”

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Here is my usual detail test shot of Exeter Cathedral’s west window for you to compare with other cameras. See below for a full resolution snippet, or click to see the full image.

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The level of detail is good overall, but no better than most 8MP cameras.

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The Ricoh lens does an excellent job, with barely a hint of barrel distortion in this wide-angle shot.

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The sharpness in the center of the picture is very good.

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Sharpness is still good around the edges of the frame, although there is a slight hint of chromatic aberration.

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“On the next two pages you will find a series of general test shots. In some cases, the full-size image has been scaled down for bandwidth reasons and a crop of the original full-resolution image has been placed underneath to show the overall image quality. Some other images can be clicked to view the full-size original image.”

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There are very few compact cameras that have a 28mm equivalent wide-angle end…

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…and fewer still who also have a 200mm equivalent telephoto lens.

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Color reproduction is very good thanks to the new processing engine.

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The exposure system tends to burn out highlights to preserve shadow detail.

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Versatile zoom range allows for creative control.

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characteristics

Once upon a time, not so long ago, a projector like Epson’s EMP-TW1000, which offered Full HD resolution for less than two grand, almost took our breath away. But now that they’re barely £10, there are certainly other Full HD projectors under £2,000. What’s more, they’re no longer unique to the LCD world, with Optoma’s HD80 now bringing Full HD DLP into the frame.

All of this is sort of a long-winded expression of how, with so much stiff competition, the TW1000 has some work to do to really impress us, low price or no low price.

It starts off pretty well, mind you. The body, for example, is really cute with its glossy black finish and somewhat elegant curves. It also feels pretty sturdy for such an affordable Full HD model.

It’s also remarkably easy and flexible to set up. Particularly likable is the incredibly simple vertical and horizontal lens shift system, which allows the image to be moved vast distances along any axis by simply turning two ‘wheels’ built into the top of the projector. The amount of optical zoom available is also amazing, offering a zoom ratio of 1-2.1:1, which should make it adaptable to almost any size living room.

The first small disappointment comes with the connections of the TW1000, because we only find a single digital video input: an HDMI. There’s actually another digital socket, a little D4 affair, but while this unexpectedly allows a SCART cable to be connected via an included adapter, it’s only useful in Japan when it comes to digital connections.

There’s good news about the lonely HDMI, though, and that’s its v1.3 designation, which makes it compatible with the Deep Color image enhancement system – so should sources appear that actually use Deep Color.

Elsewhere you’ll find a component video input, a D-Sub PC connection, a 12V trigger output to drive a motorized screen and an RS 232 connection allowing the projector to be integrated into a full home cinema installation.

A look at the data sheet of the TW1000 reveals some impressive numbers. Because in addition to the decisive Full HD pixel count of 1,920 x 1,080, there is an enormous contrast ratio of 12,000:1 and a high maximum brightness (for this price point) of 1,200 ANSI lumens.

Stepping into the TW1000’s on-screen menus we find a neatly presented system that’s relatively easy to navigate but just a little overloaded with options. We can well imagine archery tinkerers getting themselves – or rather the images from the projector – into quite a mess if they’re not careful.

Among the most intriguing of the options available is a handy array of themed picture presets, including two “theater” modes for home theater purposes, a living room mode for viewing in low natural light, and a dynamic mode for console or PC gaming. There is also a color temperature adjustment in Kelvin; an auto iris function, in which the projector automatically reduces its light output in dark scenes in order to increase the black level; motion detection processing; noise reduction; Turn output scaling on or off (select “Off” while watching HD); gamma adjustments; and a skin tone tweaker.

The sad thing, though, is that when you put all of the TW1000’s extreme imaging flexibility in the context of its actual imaging performance, the one phrase that comes to mind is “You can’t make a silk bag out of a sow’s ear”.

In other words, no matter how much we’ve played with all the plentiful picture tweaks available, the inherent quality of the TW1000’s pictures just aren’t high enough to allow us to achieve anything truly satisfying.

The main problem is one that is common with LCD projectors: black level response. Coming to the TW1000 at the back of a range of DLP projectors, it’s simply impossible not to feel disheartened by the amount of gray hanging over parts of the image that should be black. This makes supposedly large-scale dark scenes like the giant egg chamber on the crashed ship in Alien look decidedly flat and lifeless, and obscures the kind of subtle background detail that helps dark parts of the image appear properly integrated into the image as a whole.

The gray has another knock-on effect on colour, with hues in dark scenes tending to appear rather muted and washed out by the gray ‘wall’ that stands between them and your eyes.

In fact, the more we look at the TW1000’s black level shortcomings, the more we’re beginning to feel that it’s not just DLP that outperforms it in this crucial department; even some LCD models have delivered slightly more black level capabilities than this.

So that nobody at Epson has any leeway on this topic, we can say for the record that we really tried everything to make the pictures of the TW1000 better; the auto iris, the lamp power levels, the image presets, the individual contrast and brightness settings, the gamma control, the skin tone levels… Seriously, we’ve left no stone unturned to make the TW1000’s images more personable. After all, no one could have been more interested in liking a Full HD projector that costs just £1800 than we can.

But in the end we had no choice but to throw up our arms and admit defeat. Bottom line, the TW1000’s images just don’t have enough black levels to convince and there’s nothing you can do about it.

This is all the more demoralizing because the TW1000 is pretty good in a few other key areas. For example, there is absolutely no trace of motion artifacts or blurring, giving even action-packed scenes like the Battle of the Immortals in 300’s HD DVD a sense of smooth, clear purity that is second to none.

The Full HD resolution also means there is no “screen door” effect, which causes the LCD pixel structure to show up in the picture, and there is no problem with the flickering color bands in your peripheral field of view that many affordable DLP projectors (the so-called “rainbow effect”).

LCD images can sometimes look a bit grainy and over-sharpened around contours, but again the TW1000 performs well here, with a smooth, polished, even and impressively silent display, at least when it comes to HD recording.

While we’ve seen sharper LCD images, there’s enough subtlety in textures and color blending to confirm that this is definitely a Full HD rather than just HD Ready projector.

The final string to the TW1000’s bow is that it runs impressively quiet, at least when the low lamp power option is selected.

“‘Verdict”‘

On paper, Epson has put together a terrifying offering with the EMP-TW1000. But we’re sorry to say that some fairly fundamental issues, particularly in the black level department, mean it falls short of its apparent potential.

How we test televisions

We test every TV we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use industry standard tests to properly compare features. We will always tell you what we find. We never accept money to rate a product.

Learn more about how we test in our Ethics Policy.

Used as the main TV during the period

Tested over a week

Tested with industry calibrated tools, discs and real world use

Tested with broadcast content (HD/SD), video streams and demo discs

When I wrote the article “A Student’s Guide to Technology” in July, one thing that wasn’t covered was TV tuners. This wasn’t due to neglect, but simply because we hadn’t looked at a TV tuner for notebooks in a long time, and since we don’t make blind recommendations, there was nothing we could do about it. Until now, anyway, as I’m looking at an ExpressCard TV tuner from AVerMedia.

The AVerTV DVB-T Express retails at just under £60 and comes with a digital tuner and, as you might expect, timeshift and recording capabilities. In the box you get the ExpressCard device itself, which is a 34mm card, a small portable antenna, and an adapter for a standard RF connector. An enclosed CD also contains the AVerTV 6 software, whereby the device is of course compatible with both XP Media Center Edition and Vista Media Center.

The installation was surprisingly painless. To test the card, I plugged it into a notebook running Vista, and then prayed while it checked for drivers. As many may appreciate, Vista driver support can be a patchy affair, but to AVerMedia’s great credit, Windows Update searched for, found, and successfully installed drivers for the card in minutes. This was certainly a good start and bodes well for the rest of the review.

Next came the AVerTV 6 software. Installation was easy enough, and running on Vista didn’t cause any real problems other than the fact that it goes into raw mode because the program can’t handle Aero Glass features. At first glance it’s quite comprehensive software with support for a 7-day EPG, Picture-in-Picture, Picture-out-of-Picture and the UK’s MHEG-5 digital teletext service.

However, as is common with many of these private label software solutions, the user interface leaves a lot to be desired. The skin panel has stepped straight out of dodgy freeware media player territory, with lots of little buttons whose purpose isn’t immediately apparent from the tiny icons. This is illustrated no better than in the 7-day EPG which, while fairly navigable, is narrow and rather ugly to look at.

Luckily, while there’s nothing fancy about the presentation, “most” things at least work. Digital teletext is a nice touch, although a little disappointing that you have to navigate through an external window as it can’t be popped up like a regular TV. However, unlike regular TVs, the service is super fast and navigating with the cursor keys is quick and easy. Unfortunately, the PiP and PoP functions were rather less intuitive, and what was worse, resulted in some dreaded “Blue Screen of Death” crashes. That’s a bit of a shame; However, the player is happy to play in an always-on-top window if you want to watch football while browsing the web or working.

Another feature that was a little disappointing was the 16 channel preview, which shows the next 16 channels and what they show in a full screen grid. While it’s a nice idea in theory, in practice it took far too long to load the 16 other channels to be practical or useful.

No such issues were encountered when using the timeshift or recording features, whether with the AVerTV software or the media center. This particular model records, or rather captures, in MPEG-2 format, the same format in which Freeview broadcasts are encoded. It’s not the most efficient codec on the market and an hour-long program produced a video file just under 2GB in size, but the picture and sound quality of the recordings and broadcasts themselves were fine – or at least no worse than what we normally expect from Freeview -shipments would expect.

It’s also worth noting that some other AVerMedia tuners, including the Express X version, which also comes with a remote control, can record in h.264 at up to 320×240; This makes them ideal for recording shows that you can later watch on your small screen iPod or PMP. Unfortunately, this version doesn’t have such a feature, although you could quite easily transcode the MPEG-2 recordings to the format you want using a number of software tools available on the web.

Alternatively, there is also a hybrid version that provides digital and analogue tuners as part of the package. This may certainly appeal to some, especially if you want to watch TV while recording on another channel, which this model obviously can’t do.

Overall, though, this is a capable and reliable ExpressCard-based TV tuner. The software might not be perfect, but it’s perfectly usable, and you can always use the far more attractive media center. Although the device does get quite warm during use, we haven’t had any issues with quality degradation or crashes due to device overheating. So if you prefer not to use a USB solution and don’t have a PC Card slot on your notebook then this is an excellent choice.

“‘Verdict”‘

A few software glitches aside, this is an excellent ExpressCard-based TV tuner that fully supports XP Media Center Edition and Vista. Installation is quick and easy, and if ExpressCard is definitely what you’re looking for, there aren’t too many other places to look right now.

How we test laptops

Unlike other websites, we thoroughly test every laptop we review over an extended period of time. We use industry standard tests to properly compare features. We will always tell you what we find. We never accept money to rate a product.

Learn more about how we test in our Ethics Policy.

Used as our main laptop during the period

Tested for at least a week

Consistent benchmarks used for fair comparisons to other laptops

Verified against recognized industry benchmarks and real-world usage

DAB radio has its critics, but at this stage in its existence, it’s now an integral part of the audio landscape, as this report confirms. DAB radios have come down in price so much these days that you can buy one for under £25. I’ve looked at high-end models like the Pure Evoke 3 with features like pause and rewind, but this sleek model from Bush is a lot more straightforward.

Well, I’ve always associated Bush more with the dedicated budget end of things, but this radio might make me change my mind. The TRO4DAB may have a somewhat clumsy title, but optically there is certainly nothing wrong with it. Instead of the traditional wood effect that Pure favors, the Bush goes for a glossy all-black finish, although it’s a bit plasticky on closer inspection. There are no hard edges, just smooth plastic with curves. The grille on the front looks deliberately retro, but the final overall effect is somehow certainly modern. You can also pick it up in white and at the time of writing this was the only version available from the Asda online shop, the only place I could find it.

Much of this has to do with touch-sensitive buttons at the top of the device. Touch-sensitive technology is ubiquitous right now and will only continue to gain traction. The surface comes to life at the touch of a finger and is illuminated by a cool blue backlight. This will create an “ooooh” the first time, and I suspect that will of itself push some of these radios off the shelves. If you think it’s just a gimmick – well, you’re right, it is. But don’t worry, the buttons are easy to use and very responsive. The only real downside is that the slick surface picks up fingerprints fairly easily, so you’ll need to clean it periodically.

In the center of the top surface is a small two-line LCD display that some may find a bit limiting compared to the Evoke 3. However, the Bush doesn’t offer any recording capabilities, so a large screen isn’t necessary. unnecessary. In fact, the display is bright and legible, and the text scrolls at quite a speed, so this isn’t too much of a problem.

The buttons above are pretty self-explanatory, with one standby and five preset buttons. There are actually ten presets, but you have to press a shift key to get to presets 6-10, which is a bit awkward but not the end of the world. There are arrow keys to switch between stations and a select button to choose what you like.

A display button allows you to toggle between different pieces of information – station name, time and date, bit rate, the message the station is broadcasting and the station’s frequency in the multiplex. There’s even a counter that tells you how many errors the signal contains, with anything below 50 being acceptable. This probably gives you a good idea of ​​how good the signal is, although I imagine you can get a pretty good idea of ​​what the station in question sounded like.

There are also volume up and volume down buttons, and I was pleased that you could use these by simply holding down your finger instead of having to keep tapping.

A menu button lets you enable or disable Dynamic Range Control (DRC), which adds or removes levels of compression to eliminate the difference in loudness between stations – although I think this will only be an issue if you switch between stations frequently change stations. There is a bass boost button to amplify the sound and a mute button.

The radio has a large antenna, which should help when the signal strength is borderline. There’s also a handle so you have to push the antenna down if you want to lift the radio. The bush can be powered without being tethered to a wall as long as you’re willing to find six large R14 batteries to fit in, which regularly seems like an expensive proposition.

What struck me as soon as I pressed the standby buttons on the radio was how quickly it turned on and started playing. The Pure Evoke 3 looks very sluggish in comparison. Scanning for new channels was very quick the first time, and switching between channels was free from lag or lag. This made it very easy to use.

There’s a proper off switch on the side, which you might want to use to save power if you don’t use it regularly. Next to it is a line-out for feeding an external source and a headphone jack for private listening.

A point worth noting is how good the manual is, well written in plain English – that seems like too much to ask of many manufacturers these days.

As well as DAB, pressing the mode button toggles to FM, which is a good backup should DAB not be available. However, there is no medium wave or long wave. In FM mode you can use the arrows to scan frequencies as you would expect and the ten presets can be used and will not overwrite your DAB presets.

FM radio performance wasn’t great, however, and I didn’t manage to get a clear, interference-free signal in testing. However, where DAB reception was present the Bush did very well indeed, with loud, clear sound that could seemingly get quite loud for the 1.5W RMS speakers without too much distortion. At normal volume, the sound was also easy and clear to hear.

The Bush TR04 doesn’t have the advanced features offered by competitors like Pure’s higher-end models, such as: B. rewind live radio, recordings or alarms. This means that it is best placed in a place like the study or kitchen rather than the bedroom. It looks great, sounds good and is easy to use, but it really needs to fit your setup to make it worth paying the asking price, which is double the asking price of some DAB radios.

“‘Verdict”‘

If you’re looking for a DAB radio that looks stylish, is easy to use and sounds great then this Bush is easy to recommend. The blue-backlit touch-sensitive keys are cool and work well, but they pick up fingerprints easily, so keep your cleaning cloth handy.