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Friday, January 11, 2013

Plextor trots out M5M series mSATA drives at CES

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/11/plextor-m5m-msata/

Plextor just unearthed a new lineup of mSATA drives that will be targeted at enthusiasts looking to give their ultraportables an additional shot of adrenaline. Known as the M5M series, the diminutive chips will come in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB sizes, each which boast a highly respectable sequential read speed of 540 MB/s. Meanwhile, sequential write speed for the three models is rated at 160 MB/s, 320 MB/s and 430 MB/s, respectively. The M5M series carries a mean time before failure (MTBF) of 2.4 million hours, and is said to become available this quarter. No word yet about pricing, however. To learn about the security features of the Plextor M5M series, feel free to hit up the PR after the break.

[Image credit: AnandTech]

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Filed under: Peripherals

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Thursday, January 10, 2013

BenQ's RL2455HM gaming monitor cranks up response time to 1ms

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/10/benqs-rl2455hm-gaming-monitor-cranks-up-response-time-to-1ms/

CES rolls on, and BenQ's got a new monitor to vie for your gaming dollars. The new RL2455HM "professional gaming monitor" is based off last year's RL2450HT but with increased GTG response time, 2-watt stereo speakers as well as a pair of HDMI ports. BenQ's Black eQualizer, Display Mode and Smart Scaling custom settings will also be in attendance, but the company is pitching its new monitor at console gamers, with that zippy response time and 60Hz refresh rate hopefully making all the difference in high-tempo FPS' and fighting games. It'll arrive inside gaming dens this March, priced at $229.

Continue reading BenQ's RL2455HM gaming monitor cranks up response time to 1ms

Filed under: Displays, Gaming

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The Most Awesomest Televisions at CES 2013

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5974654/the-most-awesomest-televisions-at-ces-2013

2013 is shaping up to be a huge year for huge televisions. Almost every major brand is rolling out gigantic sets and packing them with four times the resolution of current TVs. One curved display is even redefining what constitutes a "flat screen" TV, period. Here's what to watch in 2013.

Westinghouse's 110-Inch 4K TV

It's 110 inches of 4K glory. It's also $300,000. This is the only television at the show that requires a second mortgage.

Samsung's 85-Inch Ultra-HD TV

Samsung builds a gorgeous UHD display. Then, for reasons we may never fully understand, decides to mount it permanently into an easel like it's a dry erase board. Still, the monitor itself is stunning.

Sony's 56-Inch 4K OLED TV

A brand new technology like OLED is good. A not-yet-on-the-market technology like 4K is even better. Putting the two together must be even better, right? Right.

Hisense's 110-inch XT900

Hisense is a bit of a dark horse brand here in the states but with incredible displays like the six it rolled out at CES—especially like this 110-inch stunner—it'll be a household name in no time.

LG's Curved 3D OLED TV

Why would you build a curved 3D OLED display? Wait a second. Why wouldn't you build a curved 3D OLED display?

REDRAY Hands-On: A Giant Black Death Star Full of Beauty

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5974990/redray-hands+on-a-giant-black-death-star-full-of-beauty

The only problem with 4K TV, other than being too expensive for anyone who isn't a Prince William, is that there's no good way to get 4K stuff to watch. Right? RED is selling a super-HD streaming box that says otherwise.

The Redray—and I'm not going to spell it in all-caps anymore because I hate that—is a dedicated deck for 4K movies. It's packing a 1 TB hard drive inside, plus an SD port and USB 2.0 (ugh) for loading up video on that big sucker. You'll also be able to download films from a cloud service called Odemax, which I've never heard of, and won't tell us what movies will be available.

So, on paper it's not that great. But on a Toshiba 4K display, the box beats its paper rep: even compressed way down in file size, the movies look phenomenal. And that compression bit is crucial: native 4K video is enormously, ludicrously giant. Nobody will be able to download them for a long time, and they won't fit on any disc. So knowing that shrinking them to 2.5 MB/sec doesn't ruin the footage—far from it!—is terrific news. Every single scene looked phenomenal, without any noticeable artifacting or video blemishes. So, if RED can solidify a less ambiguous means of buying (or renting!) 4K files, this thing could make owning a 4K set, someday, less painful. At least when (or if) it ever comes down from a pro-only price of $1,450. [Redray]

AMD shows off a reference device with a quad-core, x86-based Temash chip

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/10/amd-temash-reference-laptop-hands-on/

Earlier today AMD's director of global business units marketing, John Taylor, joined us on our CES stage to talk chips. Specifically, tablet chips, and laptop chips, and chips for products that have elements of both. While he was up there, Mr. Taylor flashed a reference device -- a laptop hybrid with the keyboard and touchpad built into the carrying case. Obviously, we weren't satisfied with just a quick tease, so we caught up with him afterward to learn a bit more. As it turns out, it runs a quad-core version of AMD's new Temash chip, which is being billed as the first quad-core, x86-based SoC. (There's also a dual-core version.) Built into the chip is an HD Radeon 8000 series GPU with AMD's Graphics Core Next architecture, so in theory you should be able to pull off PC-caliber gaming even on a tablet-style device.

All told, it promises 50 percent more performance than AMD's Hondo processor, which you can find in Vizio's new Windows 8 tablet. Of course, those are just marketing claims, and besides we haven't had a chance to benchmark either a Hondo or a Temash system yet. So, to put that in better context, it might be helpful to hear AMD talk about its competitors. Obviously, Intel is a biggie, but in particular AMD says Temash should be able to compete with Clover Trail tablet chips, going all the way up to Core i3 on laptops. We're told Temash will ship sometim! e in the first half of this year, and that AMD will be revealing more details about the platform at Mobile World Congress, which kicks off in late February. Until then, we've got hands-on photos of the unit below, along with some performance impressions after the break.

Gallery: AMD Temash hands-on