Name: Fez

Genre: Puzzler/Platformer

Platform: Xbox 360 XBLA

Price: 800 Microsoft Points (£6.85)

The star of a much-hyped video game movie and the lovechild of one of the indie gaming community's most outspoken developers, can Fez ride the wave of expectation that's greeted it at every blocky, 8-bit corner? Read on for our review of the puzzler/platformer hybrid to find out.

At first glance, Fez looks to be jumping onto the retro-revivalist bandwagon that has served the likes of Super Meat Boy and Sword and Sworcery EP so well. In some respects, that's an apt observation; the game is indeed indebted to the 8-bit games of old, with its colourful pixel-pushing art style, chiptune soundtrack and side scrolling platforming action.

However, it doesn't take long for Fez to burst beyond your initial preconceptions and bloom into something altogether more marvellous.

Fez puts you in control of Gomez, a fez-wearing little 8-bit dude who lives in a 2D world. It's a charming, self-aware universe that oozes humour; it's many inhabitants are set in their ways, totally disbelieving of the potential for a third dimensional plane. They'll remark for instance on how wonderfully "flat" you're looking today. But their comfortable little lives are shattered when a mysterious 3D cube appears and explodes, making the world 3D along with it. With everyone else in a blind panic (and Gomez the only person able to navigate this extra dimension) it's up to the dapper little hero to explore the world and literally pick up the pieces of the shattered cube to set things straight and flat again.

This is when things get really interesting. Though a 2D side-scroller, Gomez has the ability to twist the world on its axis, letting him access previously inaccessible areas. It's a slightly difficult concept to explain, but imagine each level being like a four-sided cube; turning the cube-world around may make what seemed to be a flat wall transform into a bridge across an impassable gap, or a single line of pixels reveal themselves to be a ladder letting you reach a higher platform. It's a wildly inventive concept that the developers Polytron explore every avenue of, making your brain twist and turn just as much as the levels themselves.

What makes the game such a joy to play is the leisurely pace at which it rolls out in. There's no timer, little to threaten Gomez and no real penalty for death. Instead, you're free to explore Fez as you wish, letting you discover the intricate world as you please. Though you can rush through the game if you're that way inclined, the real pleasure comes from eking out every hidden corner of the world. It gives a sense of achievement rarely felt in modern gaming.

In the same way that Fez plays with old-skool gaming conventions, it also pushes the boundaries of what can be achieved with modern-day innovations. These mostly come in the shape of Easter eggs for the most dedicated gamers. It's hard to describe them without spoiling surprises, but taking a close look at the achievements list and having a QR code scanner handy can lead to some great discoveries. Not only does Fez invite you to to get lost in its intricate world, it also encroaches on the real-world in order to squeeze the maximum amount of enjoyment from you. It's often a revelatory experience, and one we cant recommend highly enough.
Verdict:

From its deceptively simple visuals to its humour to its focus on exploration, Fez is a joy to play from start to finish. Beautifully executed, it's another top-drawer Xbox Live Arcade offering and one that'll wrestle with Braid and Shadow Complex for the title of the best downloadable game on the Xbox 360. Simply stunning.

Name: Sennheiser RS 220

Type: Pro-level Wired Headphones

Key Specs: 40mm drivers / 8-44,000Hz frequency response / Open-back design

Price: Circa £600

A mid-range audiophile offering may sound like a clumsy stepping stone for Sennheiser between their HD 650s and HD 800 headphones, but the HD 700s are anything but. We dive into sonic sublimity with the Sennheiser HD 700 headphones in our full review.


Sennheiser set the standard for dynamic headphone driver design with the open-backed HD-800 headphones roughly three years ago. Offering a wide, incredibly detailed soundstage, the sci-fi stylings of the HD 800s were just as beautiful to look at as they were to listen to. But beauty comes at a high price, with the cans even now commanding a price tag around the £1,000 mark.

Enter then the HD 700s. A few hundred quid cheaper than the HD 800s, but sharing plenty of the same technology, they're a frightfully tempting proposition.

Aesthetically, the HD 700s are an evolution of the now familiar HD 800 look. Again, they have a science fiction style tinge to the build, with an open-backed design shaped to look a little like slightly-squashed UFOs. A mix of chromes, greys and blacks, it's a striking design, and while the HD 700s are quite bulky, they stay relatively light at around 270 grams. It's about half the weight you'd expect of open-backed headphones of this size, and yet still sit comfortably on the head thanks to a firm headband and tight-yet-spacious earcups. Detachable cables pop into the underside of each can, joining up at a fabric-coated cable which helps massively in preventing the lead from becoming tangled.

As you've probably already guessed, we're big fans of the HD 700s, and much of this is down to the clever design of the SYS 40 transducer. The Sennheiser audio whizzes have done lots to keep their new cans from distorting, with added damping to prevent the diaphragm from warping too much, as well as adding extra air vents to encourage air flow, keeping your ears cool and compression to a minimum. There's also a tweaked magnet cage design inside, leading to more balanced frequency response levels and reining back distortion at high volume levels.

This all leads to a fabulous listening experience. Offering a wide and clear soundstage, the HD 700s are nigh-on perfectly balanced. Bass bellows deep with a strong kick, without ever becoming muddy or overpowered. Mid ranges are detailed with supreme clarity, while the treble presence is high but never shrill. The ultra-defiend resolution of the HD 800s is missing of course (there had to be a reason somewhere why these headphones are so much cheaper) but that's not to put down what the HD 700s offer. They sound excellent, with their extra warmth and action making them best suited to thumping rock tracks.

However, while the open-back design allows for a wide, clear soundstage, you're also going to get considerable audio leakage too. In other words, if you're in a quiet environment like a library, you're going to annoy the hell out of everyone around you, while if you're walking down the street you'll also have your tunes interrupted by all the ambient sounds surrounding you. You'll want to settle down for a nice private listening session with the HD 700s to really appreciate them.

Though cheaper than the HD 800s by a considerable margin, that counts for little if you need a super-expensive audiophile-grade amp to drive them. While the HD 700s will indeed perform at their best when hooked up to a more expensive main rig, even portable amps like the Fiio E7 can produce wonderful results. Our humble iPod managed to drive the HD 700s reasonably easily too, showing the HD 700s to be a much more versatile pair than their more expensive stable mates.

While the HD 800s give a more consistently defined sound across the spectrum, they're tons harder to drive, and apart from the extreme ends, sound quality is practically like-for-like. As a result, the HD 700s could prove the more popular pair thanks to the lower price point and improved portability.

Verdict

It's another direct hit from Sennheiser who, after the equally impressive RS 220 wireless headphones, are well on course for a stellar line up this year. Comfortable, detailed, easy to drive and a fair sight cheaper than the HD 800s, the HD 700 headphones deliver the sonic goods without breaking the bank.

Name: Logitech Z623 2.1 THX-certified PC Speakers

Type: 2.1 Desktop Speaker

Specifications: Click here for full specs

Price: RRP £149.99

Logitech are looking to add a bit of oomph to your sonic desktop escapades with the Z623 2.1 speaker system. Complete with THX-certification and a whopping 200 watts RMS output, it packs a mighty punch. But can it deliver quality and clarity too? Read on to find out.

If your PC is the centre of your media-consuming life, buying a decent set of speakers is a must. With so many sets offered by Logitech at so many different price points, they're likely the first port of call for those on the market for a new set of speakers. While their low end speakers have a bit of a patchy track record, Logitech offer great bang-for-the-buck as you open your wallet that little bit wider. The Z623 2.1 speaker set is no exception, offering masses of output power, a robust design and sound quality that's not half bad for little more than £100 from some retailers.

Being a 2.1 set, the Z623 comprises a pair of satellite speakers and a subwoofer. The satellites (each rated at 35W RMS power) are magnetically shielded to protect your screen from discolouring, with fixed cables at their bases and a single single mid-bass 3-inch driver in each, hidden behind a fixed grille. The right speaker also holds the power switch (handily meaning you don't have to fiddle around the back of the sub to switch the set off), bass and volume control knobs, and 3.5mm stereo jacks for aux-in and popping in a pair of headphones. Finished in black and with a good bit of weight behind them, they feel solid and tough, despite being primarily made of plastic.

By PC speaker standards, the Z623's subwoofer is a beast, measuring 302x282x264mm, something to take into consideration if you're strapped for space by your desk. A wooden enclosure, it houses an 8-inch front-facing driver with a side bass port, again protected by a metal grille. On the rear you'll find a 3.5mm stereo jack, alongside RCA inputs for connecting two separate audio sources. Along with the ports on the side of the right satellite, it's very convenient to have the option of hooking up so many audio sources at once. The left and right satellites are connected to a RCA port and a D-sub port respectively on the sub. Again, the subwoofer feels weighty (about 8 kilograms) and solid, which will help when throwing out rumbling bass frequencies.

And boy does it deliver some earth-shaking sounds! Max out the bass dial and your neighbours a few doors down will feel the floor shaking too, delivering a deep response that you feel just as much as hear, with no noticeable rattle from the enclosure. It makes for a great companion to explosive movies and games, making the system actually worth consideration if you're looking for a simple upgrade for your TV in the living room too.

Mids and highs are also good, if not quite of the impressive stature of the sub's bass response. The THX-certification is well earned; you get a very distinct separation across the stereo set-up, making for a wide and enveloping sound when in close proximity on your desk. The satellites lack a little in clarity and detail at the top and mid ranges, meaning they're perhaps not best suited for delicate classical music or jazz though, but instead dance or hip-hop's thudding beats.

Verdict:

They're fairly pricey, but gamers and movie fans will get a lot out of the Logitech Z623 speakers. Superb bass response and an excellent stab at immersive THX audio make them easy to recommend, even if the satellites lack a little in detail.

Name: Kinect Star Wars

Genre: Motion-Controlled Adventure/Party

Platform: Xbox 360

Price as reviewed: £31.99 from Amazon

It was first announced a long time ago (June 2010) at an E3 conference far, far away (Los Angeles) but Kinect Star Wars sadly is not the game you're looking for. Read on to find out why it's got more in common with Jar Jar than Darth Vader.


Kinect Star Wars' main premise is a sound one that many fans of George Lucas' sci-fi space opera have longed to be able to partake in since first seeing the original movie way back in 1977; wield the Force, and slash up baddies with a lightsaber in a way marginally less embarrassing than the Star Wars Kid managed. Many games over the years have of course offered these abilities, but all have previously tethered you to a controller. The unique difference with Kinect Star Wars is that it exclusively uses the Xbox 360's motion controller to direct the onscreen action.

Sadly, the game rarely manages to accurately track a players movements, leading to a title that frustrates far more often than it entertains, with a patchwork selection of game modes that are as inconsistent as the controls that are designed to support them.
The main part of the game is the Jedi Destiny: Dark Side rising campaign. Set in the Episode One era of the series, you play as a Padawan Jedi-in-training that gets caught up in a galactic plot to shake the Republic. As far as story-telling goes, it's not too bad, with decent voice acting and visuals that take their cues from the Clone Wars TV show.

Playing the game however, is far less compelling. As previously mentioned, the entire game is controlled by the Kinect sensor. You'll use one hand to wave a lightsaber and slice through enemies, another to use Force powers, and leaning and jumping movements to direct your character through the linear pathways of each level. All again in theory fine, but in practice it's a mess; even when taking great care to accurately pull off the gestures required to attack the game regularly failed to track my actions. When it did recognise what I wanted it to do, it suffered from awful lag, meaning any sequences that needed careful timing were maddeningly difficult. Use of the Force is also disappointingly underpowered; many enemies are immune to it, meaning its usefulness is only really limited to heavily scripted sequences that, for instance, see you clearing a pathway using a Force lift.

Pacing is jarring too. Guiding you from one scripted battle to the next, there's never a real flow to the action, to the point where sometimes you'll wonder if you've even regained control of your character yet. Apart from a few missions that see you take control of a star fighter (showing the obvious potential that there is in the game's concepts) it's all just very disappointing.
The main story mode is short with a 5 or 6 hour length at most, give or take innumerable re-runs through areas caused by cheap deaths. To compensate for this, the game also has a number of mini-game modes to extend the game's lifespan. For the most part, these fare much better than main story mode.

The least successful minigame is the Duels of Fate mode, putting you, as you've probably guessed, in a lightsaber duel against the likes of Count Dooku and Darth Vader. As with the main game, it suffers from a lack of subtlety in strikes, and is generally unresponsive. It's an exercise in arm-flailing.

Next up is the Podracer mode, which is a fair revamp of the great N64 racer. Holding your arms out ahead of you and pulling them back as if pulling on levers, you'll boost around tracks in six races across five planets. It's not much of a challenge, but the pace is fast and the tracks are fairly detailed. It's one of the game's highlights.

Next up is the Galactic Dance Off mode, a bizarre addition that sees Star Wars characters pulling shapes on dance-floors across the galaxy, featuring 15 real world pop tunes with their lyrics changed to fit the Star Wars theme. It's frankly a bit weird, but considering the scorn Star Wars fans have poured on it since it was first revealed, it's actually probably the best part of the game. Dance moves register smoothly, a host of familiar faces make tongue-in-cheek cameos; it's perfect party fodder.

Lastly is the Rancor Rampage mode, a homage to the 1980s arcade classic that sees you control a Rancor monster (as seen in Jabba's palace in Return of the Jedi) and terrorise the inhabitants of Mos Eisley, Naboo and other familiar locations. You'll stamp down buildings and throw aliens around levels. It doesn't require much finesse, but its destructive simplicity is enjoyable.

It's not all bad therefore, but let me stress that there are problems at the core of this game, and that these aren't the ramblings of a wizened old Star Wars fan. Indeed, I'm a big fan, but not one that's against squeezing as much joy out of the franchise as possible. While plenty of detractors on the internet for instance have been up in arms following leaked videos of Han Solo getting his groove on in the dance mode, that's not too big a deal for me. Sure, it's a little incongruous (Star Wars is hardly known for its ballroom scenes), but the series has always been as hammy as it is cool. It's part of the charm. What's not charming is a disregard for the people who are invested in the series; there's a definite "cash-in" feel here, and the sense that broken controls and weak content can be labelled "good enough" for fans so long as Star Wars branding is liberally emblazoned on the cover.Still, the game may find a welcome place in your collection as a family party title to entertain the "younglings", as Yoda calls them, for a short while. Each of the game modes (aside from Podracing) can be played alongside a second gamer and, as is often the case with games of this nature, raise more smiles as a shared experience. It'll also double the amount of curse words when the failed controls lead to a cheap in-game death too, so perhaps put a pair of ear muffs on your kids while playing with them. Regardless, the young Star Wars fans that this game is predominately aimed at will likely be more forgiving, and hopefully less cynical about inclusions like the Galactic Dance Off mode, but fans of well-built games in general will feel patronised.

Verdict:

It sounded like a sure-fire recipe for success, but Kinect Star Wars is ultimately a failure. We're not against a motion-controlled Star Wars game, but any future attempts will have to be far more polished than what's being offered here. While there are few alternatives when it comes to Star Wars-themed party games, we'd encourage older gamers looking for a digital Star Wars fix to grab one of the Knights of the Old Republic games, Podracer for the N64 or maybe even one from the Star Wars Battlefront series if you're after some action.

Name: Sennheiser RS 220

Type: Wireless Headphones

Specs: Click here for full specs

Price as reviewed: £349.99

Wireless headphones can be a hit-or-miss affair, but Sennheiser's RS 220 cans are among the best we've ever seen. From a neat design to superb sound quality, you'll want these things living over your ears permanently. Read on to find out just what makes them so good.


We've been burnt many times before by the promise of wireless headphones. Expensive, eating through batteries like Pac-Man gobbling little yellow pellets and generally sounding considerably worse than their wired cousins, there's often been little reason to recommend them over a premium, reliable pair of wired headphones with an extra long lead.

Sennheiser's RS 220 wireless headphones however are among the most compelling sets we've ever seen. In terms of both design and sound quality, they're head and shoulders above much of the wireless competition, and above many wired offerings too.
The RS 220 kit is comprised of the headphones themselves and a lectern-shaped docking cradle. Finished in black they look great and complement each other well.

The dock has a black gloss-plastic front with a matte black finish on the rear, with two touch-sensitive buttons on the front for power and input selection. LED lights on the front indicate input selection (Analog, Optical and Coaxial) as well as power and battery status. Stereo phono, optical and coaxial connections each are given both input and output sockets, meaning the dock can be used as a pass-through when also hooked up to a separate speaker and amp. On the rear you will also find a dial to set the base's volume level, and a button for pairing the dock to the wireless headphones.

The versatility of the connectivity options (as well as the sharp looks) would be reason enough to praise the docking unit, but they really come into their own when paired with the headphones themselves. Tucked inside a recess at the top of each headphone cup is a spot for a rechargeable 800mAh AAA battery, as well as a small metal contact strip. When the headphones are placed on top of the dock this contact strip can be used not only to secure the headphones in place, but also to recharge the batteries sitting inside.There's a lengthy initial overnight charging session to get the most from the batteries, and they'll only be good for 7 or so hours per charge, but having them recharge when docked means only those who sit for marathon listening sessions will notice. It's a superb idea, and the use of standard AAA batteries not only means replacements are readily available, but that the whole headset stays light at around the 330g mark.

The headphones themselves look a treat too. A padded black leather headband leads on to the almost-crescent shaped cans, which feature a small outer grille and chrome trim. Offering a good deal of pivot and flex, an open-back design with velour pads make for a very comfortable set, keeping your ears cool.

Thin winding buttons for input and power sit on the left underside cup, and volume and balance on the right cup. Here perhaps, along with the open-back design, are where the Sennheiser headphones show their only minor flaws; the buttons are a little bit fiddly, while the open-back cans lead to plenty of sound leakage. You won't be able to pop these on for a late night heavy metal session without waking up your nearby other half.
These small issues aside, the RS 220s continue to shine through with superb wireless performance. Using the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi wavelength rather than the Bluetooth streaming standard that many other manufacturers opt for, we never once experienced a drop out in signal. Sennheiser claim the RS 220s will serve you well up to ranges of 100 metres, and while that may be a slight exaggeration (particularly if you take interior walls into account), we had a few happy afternoons sitting at the back of the garden a good distance away with the docking unit tucked in our office upstairs.

Sonically, the RS 220s again impress. They're not quite of the audiophile nature that Sennheiser's HD 800s may be, but definitely fare favourably against their mid-range HD 650 offerings.

Sound is wide and rich thanks to the open design and the use of uncompressed wireless transmission, giving an expansive soundstage that lends itself well to dynamic classical music and the challenging range of action movies too. Smooth and warm, they sit perhaps a little too comfortably in the mid-range, but offer a solid bass response and detailed top end too.

You'll get more crunch and attack from closed-back headphones, but it's only a minimal drop in punch. Nonetheless, the headphones, as previously stated, serve classical music best of all, and likewise do well when faced with the tight beats of electronic music. Rock music is perhaps a little less well served; the chiming guitars of The Smiths' Queen is Dead album danced across the cans with much more dynamism than At The Drive-In's Relationship of Command for instance. But let us stress; whatever you're listening to with the RS 220s, it'll sound fantastic.

Verdict

Everything about the Sennheiser RS 220 wireless headphones oozes quality. From the smart design to the comfortable weight and fit, they're a product very much worthy of their premium pricing. Sounding just as great as they look, with clever features like the charging station built into the base, they're a joy to use. It's not a particularly cluttered market when it comes to wireless headphones, but the RS 220s would shine even if it were. If you're after both convenience and superb sound quality, Sennheiser's latest effort should be at the top of your wish list.

Name: Kinect Rush: A Disney Pixar Adventure

Genre: Motion-Controlled Adventure/Party

Platform: Xbox 360

Price: £39.73 from Amazon

After a sterling effort with Disneyland: Kinect Adventures, it's the turn of Pixar's finest characters to take centre-stage on the Xbox 360. Can lightning strike twice for motion-controlled magic?


Disneyland: Kinect Adventures took everyone by surprise late last year. Though aimed pretty much at toddlers, it provided perhaps the best example of what's possible with the Xbox 360's Kinect peripheral, letting gamers use their bodies to explore a nearly-to-scale digital recreation of the Disneyland park, interacting with their favourite characters and playing a handful of well-realised mini-games along the way. It didn't overstretch the system's limits, and offered a relatively responsive, fun way for younger kids to immerse themselves in the world of their favourite characters.

Kinect Rush: A Disney Pixar Adventure looks to do much the same, but with a focus on Pixar's animated heroes instead, featuring characters from Up!, Toy Story and The Incredibles amongst others.

You'll begin playing by creating an avatar with which to navigate the Pixar world. It's done here by standing in front of the Kinect sensor, having it take a picture of you and it generating an in-game likeness to play with. It struggled to pick up my 6-foot frame, but when playing with my 5-year old nephew (the game's obvious target audience) it did a much better job.

After that, your character will be thrust into a hub world, which connects a series of fully-realised worlds based on locations from the movies Up!, Ratatouille, The Incredibles, Cars, and Toy Story. These areas each have a string of missions attached, often putting you side-by-side with stars such as Buzz Lightyear and Cars' Lightning McQueen. Progressing through missions unlocks further challenges and, in some cases, the ability to play as Pixar's more familiar characters.

Visually, the game does a great job of capturing the spirit of Pixar's flicks. Their CGI characters lend themselves well to videogame adaptation, while the backdrops to each mission are totally in keeping with the art style of the movies they represent. It's faithfully, carefully done.

However, things aren't quite as good in the gameplay department. For starters, when compared to Disneyland: Kinect Adventures' vibrant hub world, full of interactive elements and Disney characters to meet, the Pixar hub feels sparse. You'll have little to do except move from mission to mission, and misses out on a great opportunity to have some magical moments of exploration.

It's a problem exacerbated by the control scheme. Whereas Disneyland: Kinect Adventures developers Frontier had a pretty spot on understanding of Kinect's limitations, Kinect Rush developers Asobo Studio expect a little too much. To move around, you've got to swing your arms in order to move forward through the 3D worlds, turning your shoulders to turn your character, jumping to cause an in-game jump. All too often the motion sensing is marred by lag, or movements being mistaken for another gesture, leading to unpredictable control.

That's fine when navigating the simple hub world, but with many of the missions based on platforming challenges, accuracy is a must, and accuracy is something Kinect still often lacks. Much of the re-playability of the game comes from chasing new high-scores on these missions, which rely on getting fastest times or high coin collection scores in the predominately platform-based gameplay. But with controls being a little unwieldy, you're going to be more frustrated than pumped when chasing gold medal ratings.

It's not all bad though, and when the game turns its attentions towards more casual challenges (alá Disneyland: Kinect Adventures, unsurprisingly) it fares much better. Missions based on the Cars franchise for instance were great, having you hold an invisible steering wheel in front of yourself and turning it to steer the quipping cars. It was much more responsive, and as a result, much more fun.

Verdict:

If you're looking for a game to keep the younger players in your family busy over the Easter break, you could do a lot worse than Kinect Rush. Like last year's Disneyland : Kinect Adventures, it manages to successfully recreate the charm of a Pixar/Disney movie on a console. It falls down in its gameplay choices (platforming is ill-suited to Kinect controls), but younger, more forgiving gamers will just be happy to be able to hang out with Buzz and Woody once more.

Name: Mass Effect 3 - From Ashes (DLC)

Genre: Third-person action RPG (Downloadable Content Pack)

Platform: Xbox 360 (reviewed), PS3, PC

Price: 800 Microsoft Points (£6.85) on Xbox 360
£6.80 PS3
£6.80 PC

Image Gallery: Click here

In a first for the series, Mass Effect 3's first pack of downloadable content landed on launch day alongside the game. But is it worth the extra cash, or should it have been in the game for free in the first place?


NOTE: This review is only looking at the From Ashes DLC content, and as such wont go into detail on the mechanics and gameplay of the main game.

For our full thoughts on Mass Effect 3, check our complete review of the game.

From Ashes focusses around gaining the services of a new squad-mate for your galaxy-saving ordeal. In it, you'll uncover Javik , the last surviving Prothean, whose species fought back against the menace of the Reapers tens of thousands of years ago and nearly won. They built the Citadel spaceport, were eventually turned into the creepy Collectors of Mass Effect 2 and popped their collected cultural knowledge into Mass Effect 1's beacon which propelled Sheppard to the vanguard of the galactic war in the first place.

Taking place on Eden Prime, the very first location from Mass Effect 1, the mission to acquire Javik can be taken on any time after you download the pack.

The mission itself sees you fending off Cerberus archaeologists who have uncovered a Prothean relic site, with one of the key finds being a tomb/stasis pod, in which lies Javik. Cerberus obviously offer up fierce resistance, and you're tasked with taking them down without harming Javik's shelter.

Though the Eden Prime map is a little more open than other Mass Effect locations (there are plenty of shacks and structures to explore), it's nothing that you wont find elsewhere in the game, and requires the same cover and power-throwing tactics that lead to success throughout the game, against foes you've probably seen a hundred times before. In this respect From Ashes is a bit of a let down, as it brings nothing new to the table in terms of gameplay. The actual mission itself is over in around 35-45 minutes, after which Javik can be called upon as a squadmate, and his laser be added to your armoury.

From a storytelling perspective it's rather more interesting though. Javik is quite a prickly character (as you'd probably imagine after waking up after an aeons-long nap to find your whole race devastated), and though certainly scripted to be unlikeable, does offer a neat glimpse into the psyche of Mass Effect's most enigmatic species.

But perhaps not in the way you'd expect: Javik is a gruff soldier, not the god-like architects of the universe we're so often led to believe the Protheans were. That's not to say they weren't highly advanced, but rather that Javik is not one of their intellectual elite. Antagonistic to practically Sheppard's entire crew, he has a particularly disillusioning effect on Liara, the blue alien history buff who has spent most of her life studying and admiring the Protheans. The exchanges between her and Javik prove to be the best moments in From Ashes.

Javik also offers quips and commentary from his quarters in the ship should you approach him across the course of the game, meaning that the DLC is most valuable if you tackle it as early as possible.

It's also suggestive that it should always have been in the game in the first place, rather than something gamers can pop in at any time during the adventure. BioWare have been criticised for what appears to be them withholding content in order to grab a cheap buck from fans, and while it was there in the N7 collectors edition of the game, it seems a bit stingy to have not offered From Ashes up for free for all players.

Verdict:

Whether From Ashes is worth your money or not is solely down to how big a Mass Effect 3 fan you are. If you've now seen all the series has to offer, it introduces a brand new character who, while not the most affable in the universe, offers an interesting look at one of the game's most cryptic of races. However, it's not bursting with action, and arguably should have been included in the game to begin with. There's some great dialogue included here, and if you come for the storytelling in Mass Effect the pack adds another layer of depth to Liara's character in particular. On the whole though, it's one probably best left for the inevitable DLC sales season.

Mass Effect 3 - GALLERY

Name: D-Link DCS-942L mydlink-enabled Enhanced Wireless N Day/Night Home Network Camera

Type: Wireless web-connected security camera

Specs: Click here for full specs

Price: RRP £149.99

Whether you see it as step towards an Orwellian surveillance state or a necessary measure to ensure the protection of your home, there's no denying that DIY home security camera kits are big business these days. D-Link have recently launched a web-connected model, the The DCS-942L, which offers mobile monitoring, motion detection and night-vision recording at an attractive price. But with a series of bugs, can it be relied upon to help keep an eye on your home? Read on to find out.

The DCS-942L is fairly unassuming in design, with its white plastic casing and chrome-rimmed lens. It should fit in nicely with most décors, and considering you're likely going to be dotting a few of these units around your home, it's small 27.2 x 60 x 96mm size should mean it can fit in plenty of nooks, snugly out of sight. Weighing only 76.9 grams with the bracket and stand removed, it should be fairly easy to wall mount the DCS-942L should you require too.

It's not, however, the most practical of designs. Though a wireless camera, it of course requires power, and the AC adaptor that comes with it has a frustratingly short cable, roughly a metre and a half in length, which greatly restricts where you can place the DCS-942L.

Similar problems occur when using the supplied stand, which allows you to angle and lock the direction of the camera to ensure it's facing where you want it to. Again, though wireless, the camera offers the option of an Ethernet connection to your network should you have signal issues. But with the Ethernet port located at the top of the camera, the weight of the cable pulls the lightweight DCS-942L down, meaning you'll need a fair bit of blu-tac, and patience, to keep the camera and stand in place.

This would be less of an issue if the wireless functionality of the camera was more robust, but it too proved to have problems. For instance, the WPS functionality (letting your router wirelessly add the DCS-942L to your network) failed to connect, meaning we had to laboriously cable the camera up to our router before setting it up where we had planned to leave it.

To view the feeds from the camera, you'll have to create a myDLink account, which uses a web-based Java plug-in to present the video. Once set up, this works nicely, offering a simple interface with which to grab snapshots from the feed, complete with date stamp details. The camera also offers a local microSD card recording option with a 16GB card thrown in free, which is useful for making hard copies of your recordings.

However, this web interface again had its own share of problems. With few physical buttons on the camera itself, changing its many settings (for instance, swapping between H.264 and MPEG4 recording codecs at 640 x 480, 320 x 240 and 160 x 120 resolutions) is done through menus on the web. We could never change these settings though, as the link to the corresponding options pages only ever returned a "404 Not Found" error.

Though only maxing out at a 640 x 480 resolution (presumably to allow for long, continuous recordings; the 16GB card can hold as much as 7 days worth of continuous footage before overwriting its earliest entries) the image quality from the DCS-942L was acceptable, with strong colours and reasonably smooth motion at 30fps. The camera also works in pitch black darkness, though the light sensor could be triggered a little too easily (i.e just by casting a shadow by standing too closely to it), which hampered its usefulness somewhat. There's also a motion detector onboard if you only want the record function to be triggered when movement is caught by the camera.

If the DCS-942L has a saving grace, it's with its use of Android and iOS apps. Using a similar system to the web based monitoring options, these bespoke apps allow you to monitor the camera feed on-the-go over 3G. Those worried about the security of their property will find comfort in the ability to monitor the recordings wherever on the globe they may be.

Verdict

We really like the idea of affordable home security camera kits, and while on paper D-Link's DCS-942L fits the bill, in reality it is hard to recommend. While the mobile Android and iOS viewing options are commendable, little else here is. Cheaply constructed, difficult to set up and backed by buggy web software, you'll struggle to balance the importance of monitoring your home against the hassle of using the D-Link camera.

Name: Mass Effect 3

Genre: Third-person action RPG

Platform: Xbox 360 (reviewed), PS3, PC

Price: £37.90 from Amazon on Xbox 360
£37.90 from Amazon on PS3
£29.90 from Amazon on PC

Image Gallery: Click here

It's the end of the world, nay, the universe as we know it, and in Mass Effect 3's capable hands we feel fine. A stunning game, read on to find out just how good the concluding entry in Bioware's sci-fi space opera trilogy is.


Can you remember a time when you didn't know what happened at the end of Return of the Jedi? Sure, the Ewoks and other muppets softened the impact of that particular science fiction series' dramatic conclusion, but on the back of the quality of the first two films excitement had you coiled tighter than an ACME spring. It's no act of hyperbole to place Mass Effect 3 in a similar position, with anticipation as to what that the trilogy's conclusion will bring palpable across not just the gaming and sci-fi communities, but with near anyone whose looked up at the stars and dreamed.

That Mass Effect 3 manages to exceed expectations, placing its fiction firmly among the canon of both the greatest gaming and sci-fi worlds ever created, is an achievement rarely pulled off by the medium.

It's in no small part thanks to the blisteringly tense plot Mass Effect 3 is built upon. After uncovering an aeons old plot to bring around the destruction of the known universe in the first two games, the war against the ancient, evil, devastatingly powerful Reapers has finally begun. Across the galaxy entire worlds are being wiped out, with people of all races, creeds and intergalactic species being obliterated at a rate of millions every day. Even Earth is under fire, and time is quickly running out.

As with other entries into the series, your lead hero Sheppard (be the hardened space soldier a male, female, gay or straight human of any racial background), yet again has to rally the Milky Way against the threat. This time however, he has to win over entire species rather than a handful of warriors. The Mass Effect lore is rich with inter-species rivalries (heck, the Salarians even practically committed genocide on the gruff Krogans), but Sheppard will have to make them unite should life as we know it continue to exist.

Told through some of the best spoken dialogue and incredible cut scenes you're likely to see in gaming, with a score that swells from orchestral magnificence to taut futuristic synths, it's an emotional and thrilling tale. With more at stake than ever before, the cast assembled by BioWare in this outing are more fully rounded than any that have gone before. Probing each character with questions, uncovering their back story and making true emotional connections over the course of the game is every bit as rewarding as the action that bookends the game's exploration and plot exposition.

Lets not forget that the choices you make in Mass Effect games define the overall outcome of your game, meaning that every conversation you have, every sacrifice you make or act of selfishness you indulge in game is recorded, changing the branching path of the story that you are told. Your angelic "Paragon" acts will be weighed against your baddass "Renegade" moments, often resulting in wildly different variations of events, and encouraging multiple play-throughs. Remember also that the game does not exist inside a vacuum; should you have played through the first two Mass Effect games you can (as with Mass Effect 2) import your previous Sheppard character, choices and all, into this concluding part. With all the potential choices of the first two games factored in, there are around 1,000 variables in play during Mass Effect 3. It's as much your story as the one BioWare are telling, and playing through the first two games before starting with Mass Effect 3 is highly recommended.

As with other Mass Effect games it's pretty much a 50/50 split between exploration, discovery and discussions with non-playable characters and third-person cover-based shooting combat. Straight away you notice that here too BioWare has refined what has gone before. Sheppard can now jump around the battlefield, clambering over rubble and leaping over the odd gap. Overall, levels have more verticality, often tiered to offer different tactical vantage points for each battle. It's not turned into "Mass Uncharted: Sheppard's Credits", or anything like that, but it does add variation to the series' mostly physically flat battlegrounds.

If you've decided to build an all new character for Mass Effect 3, you again have the choice of specialising in conventional weaponry, tech, biotics, or a combination of them. Each plays slightly differently, with a weapon based character leading to a more Gears of War style experience than a tech-biotic hybrid in move of an assisting role. Through the story of the game you'll meet and fight alongside a squad of pals, each also falling into one of these categories, who can be commanded about the battleground. Enemy AI, for the most part, is improved too. Not only is the array of foes more varied than in previous games, but they more clearly work in tandem to flush you out of hiding spots, with a keener sense of self preservation. It's not perfect, but AI here requires at least a few moments worth of tactical thought before being overcome.

With the level-cap pushed to 60, you'll likely have to play through more than once to max out every character's skills, but a tough-as-nails New Game+ mode, paired with the chance to try out different storyline paths, make that a joy rather than a chore.

That's not to say Mass Effect 3 gets everything right. While on the one hand real annoying time-sinks like planet scanning are removed completely (thank God) while the game's wonderful intergalactic encyclopedia Codex is deeper than ever, the previously often wonderful side-quests are less rewarding than in earlier entries. Fetch quests for space-faring nobodies just don't resonate when all existence as we know it as at stake. There often isn't enough tying the side-quests to the over-arching story for you to truly feel invested in them, nor are they thoughtful enough to stand out on their own. They're far from terrible, but don't live up to the main drive of the narrative, making a dozen of the game's 30 or 40 hours feel a little less polished.

Visually, the game looks a treat. Of course, the Xbox 360 is now beginning to show its age, but BioWare have still managed a slight visual upgrade over Mass Effect 2, with sharper textures and more realistic lighting. The game really shines in terms of art direction though; the cast of alien characters are as colourful and thoughtful as ever, and the locations are some of the most memorable in all of science fiction.

Mass Effect 3 also adds two brand new elements to the series; Kinect integration and multiplayer. We'll look first at Kinect. Using the Microsoft sensor's microphone, you can now literally bark orders at your squad mates and see them performed on screen, reducing the amount of time you have to pull up the radial skill selection menu, which slows dramatically the pace of battle. Now, you merely have to speak the commands you want your team to pull of, and thy will be done. As with all voice recognition apps, it's not always accurate, but when you manage to chain together a handful of commands that see an enemies shields destroyed, rooted to the spot before another character tosses them against the wall, just by having spoken, it's pretty awesome.

Lastly, the controversial inclusion of multiplayer. We've had admittedly little time with Mass Effect 3's multiplayer modes, and our opinion of them could change drastically once the masses of gamers hit the servers, but for the most part it's a very fun (if wholly unnecessary) addition. It's co-operatively based, seeing you take on increasingly powerful waves of adversaries, much like the Gears of War "Horde" mode. You'll level up, unlock achievements and purchase upgrades alongside three real-world pals. Though it's not necessary to play through in order to finish the single player mode, its framing story does still play into the larger Mass Effect 3 lore and is worth at least dabbling with for that reason alone.

Verdict:

In short, Mass Effect 3 is pretty much as excellent as you had hoped it would be. The story is perfectly paced, hitting all the right notes and expertly rounding off a beloved series that each individual gamer has helped to shape. The save import system is wildly ambitious, and with everything from visuals to combat being tightened up, a few ropey side missions are easily overlooked. Even multiplayer modes and Kinect integration turn out better than many would have expected, with BioWare delivering on every front they promised to.

It's also bittersweet though, too. What now for the Mass Effect universe, after the conclusion of the trilogy? We're already itching to get back into the furthest reaches of space. With any luck, this superb game marks only the beginning of more Mass Effect adventures to come.

Mass Effect 3 - GALLERY

Name: Roku 2 XS

Type: Streaming Player

Specs: Click here for full specs

Price: £99.99 from Amazon

Already holding the title of the most popular TV streaming box in the US, Roku are now setting their sights on the UK market. The Roku 2 XS, with its Bluetooth motion controlled gaming capabilities and access to Netflix movie streaming, is their top of the line streaming box. Read on for our verdict.

Sitting snugly in the palm of your hand, the Roku 2 XS is as small as streaming players get. An 84mm x 84 mm x 23mm box with rounded corners, it weighs just 85 grams, with a gloss-black finish that will see it hide away easily among your other AV gear. Connecting to the internet over 802.11n Wi-Fi or an Ethernet connection, the rear of the Roku 2 XS player has four simple connections; HDMI (with 5.1 surround sound pass-through) an A/V out port (which uses an included bespoke mini-jack to left/right/composite video RCA cable), the afore-mentioned Ethernet port and an AC socket. Using less than 2W of power when streaming HD video, there's no power button, with an auto-standby mode kicking in after a short period of inactivity and using only minuscule amounts of energy. You'll also find a USB port on the left hand side for playback of a modest range of media files.

Once everything is plugged in, you'll need to head online to activate your Roku 2 XS box. A reasonably short web form has to be filled out on the Roku website (which includes your credit card details, though these will only be used if you purchase premium content through the box), after which you'll be given an activation code for your streaming unit. It's a shame that this couldn't have somehow been achieved with a set-up process through the XS itself, and if you're a subscriber to the likes of Netflix, you'll also have to manually add your credentials to some of the streaming channels too.

Considering how clunky the initial set up is, using the Roku 2 XS after that point is as simple as can be. The XS comes with a Bluetooth-enabled remote, which looks much like a squat black Wii controller, complete with a D-Pad, A and B gaming buttons and Home, Back, Return and playback controls. There's even a little wrist-strap to stop it flying out of your grasp. The remote is used to navigate the tile-based UI, as well as the odd bit of text entry in search fields. It can also be used for motion-based gaming, which we'll get onto in a minute.
The first, home screen of the Roku 2 XS box has the settings and Channel Store tabs, and also houses the channels you download from the store, scrolling left to right. With hundreds of channels available and more on the way, this area may quickly fill up and become a little unwieldy, but for now works well enough.

Heading over to the Channel Store tile brings up the wide-range of content available to be streamed through the Roku 2 XS box, some available for free, others requiring a subscription to access.. As well as big name providers like Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Flixster and Vimeo, there are tons of niche channels whose content ranges from everything from religious sermons to retro public announcement videos. There are a few notable omissions however, and we'd have loved to have seen for instance a YouTube channel, as well as some other UK broadcaster's catch-up offerings, such as Channel 4's 4oD and the ITV Player. Having said that, there are also some excellent, rarely seen VOD offerings, such as the inspirational lectures from the TED channel, as well as plenty of web radio options.

Though not officially supported by Roku, you can also use the Roku website to access a large number of "private" channels, which are downloaded to your Roku 2 XS player by inputting a code on the website. These range from international video content streams to adults-only movies. Some really useful channels, like a third-party Last.fm build, are available, and if you do fancy putting a bit of blue on your Roku, there are password protection options to keep young eyes from stumbling on what they shouldn't. As "private" channels are often beta builds or made by enthusiasts, there is however no guarantee they will forever be available on the streaming box.
For the most part, the channels make use of a tile-scrolling navigation set up, barring a few exceptions, such as the iPlayer's bespoke UI (familiar to anyone who has browsed the platform on any number of other devices). It's easy to browse with the directional pad, but not so easy to search; few channels allow you to look for specific content by keyword, and when you do, it's a painstaking task of scrolling around a virtual keyboard, press by press. As such, it's mostly a curated experience. With such a vast array of video content to browse through, we'd have loved the chance to favourite videos for later viewing, but the functionality is missing. On one isolated occasion we found that the UI inexplicably slowed down to a crawl making it impossible to use, but a hard reset achieved by disconnecting the XS from the mains solved the problem, and it hasn't happened again since.

The quality of the streams however are uniformly excellent. Thanks to an adaptive streaming system, you'll rarely, if ever see a buffering sign on the Roku 2 XS, with the stream's visual quality adapting to match that of your web connections capabilities. Even with a modest connection however you should be able to view stutter-free 1080p HD streaming. Using the Netflix app as an example, its 1080p high resolution output was pretty much a match to that found on the PS3, with clear, sharp images that just fall short of Blu-ray quality.
Also available from the Channel Store are a dozen or so gaming apps. Though most are premium, paid for downloads, Angry Birds is included for free. Thanks to the Roku 2 XS's motion capabilities, it controls much like a Wii game, with a wave of the hand translating to a yank of the in-game catapult. While admittedly basic stuff, it worked surprisingly well for what is first and foremost a TV streaming box, and we look forward to more big-screen gaming on the Roku XS. Also, thanks to the Bluetooth nature of the controller, playing games doesn't require line-of-sight with the Roku box, meaning it can be tucked away behind a TV without disrupting play.

If there's one real disappointment with the Roku 2 XS, it's with its lack of robust media playback options from a local USB storage device. The only formats supported are MP4 (H.264) video, AAC and MP3 audio and JPG and PNG image files. Pair this with a lack of DLNA functionality and the Roku 2 XS falls short of being a comprehensive multimedia experience.

Verdict

The Roku 2 XS streaming box is a great bit of kit. With access to so much online TV content, much of it of a high quality nature thanks to the likes of Netflix, TED and the BBC iPlayer channels, it's more than a match for its Apple TV rival. Of course, you're going to have to have a paid subscription with a few of the channels to get the most out of the box, but that's no different than with the Roku 2 XS's competitors. The visual quality of the streams, particularly where HD content is available, is superb, and navigating all the features is fairly simple.

Where the Roku 2 XS is found lacking is in its poor file support over USB storage and lack of DLNA features. For a UK audience, there are also a few notable catch-up providers missing but there's every chance these will be added in due course.

The real question is whether or not you need the Roku box. If you've got a HD games console or a Smart TV, you've probably already got access to many of the Roku's features. If you don't already have access to these services, the Roku 2 XS does however come highly recommended.

Name: Sony PlayStation Vita (PS Vita)

Type: Handheld Gaming Console

Specs: Click here for full specs

Price: Starting at £197 (Wi-Fi only) from Amazon

Sony's long-awaited PSP successor, the PlayStation Vita, is finally here. The most powerful handheld gaming console of all time, there's no denying it's a mightily impressive bit of kit. But in this age of tablet and smartphone apps, not to mention having a direct rival in the form of the Nintendo 3DS, is there room for another gaming device in our already stuffed pockets? Read on to find out.


Build

The PS Vita is big. Game Gear big, almost. But thankfully, it's rarely uncomfortable. Measuring 182mm across, 83.5mm tall and 18.6mm thick, it looks fairly similar to the PSP 1000 model, but scaled upwards slightly. Therefore you've still got a black, elongated oval-ish shape in your hands, with two shoulder buttons, a D-Pad, and the four Cross, Square, Triangle and Circle buttons. There are also start, select and a PlayStation-branded home button for jumping out of games or back through menu screens, as well as a modest 0.3MP camera on the front.

The most significant difference from a purely gaming perspective when it comes to design is the inclusion of dual thumb sticks. In 3D games for instance, this means you get control over both your character and the camera, or in a shooter control over both movement and aiming. Though smaller than you'd find on a PS3 controller, they're responsive, and sit in a comfortable position on the console.

The rear houses another 0.3MP camera, and two small indentations with which to better grip the console. At only 260 grams for the Wi-Fi version and 279 grams for the Vita with 3G added, you're unlikely to find holding the console over long periods too uncomfortable. That is, barring one new addition; the rear, touch-sensitive backplate. Its uses vary depending on the game played, but we often found our fingers straying onto it unintentionally, triggering actions in-game that we hadn't wished too. Hopefully many games will make its use optional.

Onto the edges! Underneath, you'll find the headphone socket and proprietary charging port, which has a USB connection on the other end of its cable for PC file transfer. The top edge has those two shoulder buttons of course, as well as volume and power buttons, and two covered slots, one for Vita game sticks and the other being an accessory port. If you pick up a 3G version, you'll find a SIM card slot on the side too.

Lastly, the screen. It's a beauty, measuring 5 inches in size, with full multi-touch capabilities. Being an OLED display, it's not too massive a drain on battery levels compared to LCD, and is bright and vibrantly coloured no matter what angle you're looking at it from. Just shy of a HD resolution at 960 x 544, 220 pixels per inch, the Vita still offers sharp visuals.

Gaming Performance

Powered by a quad core ARM Cortex-A9 processor and a quad core SGX543MP4+ graphics processing unit, the PS Vita is a veritable gaming beast. While we'll leave the specifics of which games look and perform the best for a future feature, needless to say the PS Vita is graphically the most impressive handheld gaming console we've ever seen. It blows even the iPad 2's best efforts (like Infinity Blade 2) out of the water, and even recent 3DS visual showcases like Resident Evil: Revelations can't hold a candle to the stunning looks of Vita launch titles like Uncharted: Golden Abyss. Speedier games like WipEout 2048 run at a brisk pace, with little or no sign of slowdown. It's not quite as pretty as a PS3, but the fact that it's even comparable is mind-boggling.

The Vita is not without its faults though. Loading times, whether pulling your downloaded games from onboard storage or retail sticks, can be lengthy. Again, I'll state I'm not a fan of the rear-touchpad, which requires insane dexterity to use efficiently. Some may also find the face buttons and sticks a little too small as well. For the most part though, this is an incredibly impressive offering from Sony, who really are giving the hardcore gaming crowd the handheld they've yearned so long for.

With all its bells and whistles though, the console still also has lots to offer the casual market. Touchscreen controls and augmented reality gaming through the onboard cameras and gyroscope open up the potential for more casually-orientated games too, not to mention the secondary functions such as web browsing the device offers.

Pretty much every base is covered here, bar one; backwards compatibility. Though you can go back into the PS Store and again grab downloadable copies of your old PSP games, what of your titles stored on UMD discs? Japan have been offered the UMD Passport, allowing gamers register a bought UMD game on your PSP and then download a digital copy to your Vita for a tiny fee. No word yet on a similar scheme for UK users, which will have some Sony fanboys no doubt fuming.

Interface and Software

Sony have stuck loyally to their Xross Media Bar for a long time now, and while it's not a bad interface, it's more or less done away with in the PS Vita. It's replaced by a touch-focussed, colourful UI that will look more than a little familiar to any iPad fans. Applications and settings are housed in little bubbles that, while circular, have more than a passing resemblance to App icons. That's fine in our books; we'd rather a recognisable and intuitive interface that tips its hat to a rival than one that takes an engineering degree to figure out. Multiple screens full of these bubbles can be rearranged and customised through long presses, which will also be familiar to Android or iOS users.

Straight out of the box, you have access to a ton of pre-installed applications on the PS Vita, and even more if you delve into the PS Store application, where you can also download full games and videos.

For instance, you've got a multi-touch enabled web browser, that handles navigation and bookmark management as solidly as any mobile browser, Party, Friends and Group Messaging apps for getting in touch with your pals and organising online gaming showdowns, PS Trophies which also sync data to and from your PS3 trophy collection, as well as offerings from the likes of Skype, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Foursquare.

Media playback is great too through the Music and Video apps, with the console handling pretty much every conceivable music or video file, as well as the ability to rent or buy movies through the PS Store. The great screen makes it a joy to watch over prolonged periods, and neat features like Scene Search (splitting video files into chapter-like image thumbnails) even gives it the edge over dedicated PMP players in some cases.

Remote Play functionality returns from the PSP allowing you to access content and games stored on your PS3 through your PS Vita's screen instead. So far it's limited to select PS3 and Vita titles, and lets you also prepare downloads between your Vita and PS3 while out and about. However, we've already seen hacks showing Batman: Arkham Asylum playing on the machine, as well as Battlefield 3, meaning there's real potential for some mad streamed-gaming abilities here.

When it comes to secondary capabilities, the real let down is the cameras. At 0.3MP, you're hardly going to be taking shots to with which to fill your personal gallery with the Vita. The snaps captured are fuzzy and lack real vibrancy, and the same goes for videos captured too.

Battery life

With a giant, bright screen, quad-core processor and Wi-Fi/3G connectivity, the battery life on the PS Vita isn't all that great. Play a graphically demanding game with brightness levels at full blast and dipping in and out of online play, you'll squeeze 3 hours at a time out of the console. Scale back the brightness, avoid web connectivity and play through only a couple of songs or movies, you might stretch that towards the 5 or 6 hour mark.

It's not great therefore, and the sealed battery compartment makes hot-swapping to a spare battery not an option. You'll also have to wait a few minutes before the console fires up again once it's been totally drained, even if plugged into the mains.

It's annoyingly weedy in terms of battery life but, in the Vita's defence, it is comparable to rivals, with the 3DS producing similar results with it's 3D screen cranked up, and iPhones and iPods lasting similar lengths of time when pushed to their gaming limits. Tablets, thanks to their larger size and ability to house larger capacity batteries, are the only remotely comparable devices where the Vita genuinely plays second fiddle in terms of playtime.

Value

Arguably, the most pressing point of all; is the PS Vita worth your money? Lets take a quick look at a rough breakdown of the costs then.

The Wi-Fi console has a price tag hovering around the £200 mark, with the 3G version closer to £260. If you opt for the 3G version, you're going to have to shell out for a monthly data plan to go with it, with even the most conservative of plans kicking off at the £10 mark at the very least.

Retail games are fairly expensive, sitting at around £35 a throw, and are similarly priced when downloaded through the PS Store. Without any internal memory, you're going to have to invest in a memory card should you want to download games or movies. It's really frustrating, and borderline greedy, that Sony chose to use a proprietary storage format, meaning your SD and microSD cards are no good here. Kicking off with 4GB cards and going up to 8GB and 16GB, even the 4GB cards cost at least £15.

Though there are bundle offers available which run the cost down considerably, you're most likely going to be shelling out over £300 for a console and a couple of games then. It's not cheap, but for a hardcore gamer you're investing in genuine gaming quality here, not mere Angry Birds puff. You get what you pay for, as the old adage goes.

Verdict

The PS Vita delivers exactly what Sony promised it would; a no-compromises hardcore gaming experience that wows instantly and blows the socks off the competition. It's the most fully featured handheld to date, with its touch controls, dual sticks, 3G connectivity and plethora of downloadable content and apps, even if some of its features (here's looking at you trackpad and cameras) don't shine like they ought to.

It's not cheap, but get the PS Vita in your hands and you'll realise that it really shouldn't be undersold either. It's a premium bit of kit that delivers a premium experience, at a premium price. Whether or not the masses jump onboard as a result is yet to be seen, but Sony certainly have this reviewer sold.

Name: Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Type: Android Smartphone

Specifications: Click here for full specs

Price: £40 per month on The One Plan from Three

As the flagship Ice Cream Sandwich Android phone, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus has a lot riding on it. Can both hardware and software come together tidily enough to shake Apple's iPhone 4S from the top of the smartphone pile? Read on to find out!

Design

Though much of the focus of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus will be its use of the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android, we've got to take our hats off to Samsung when it comes to the hardware design of the smartphone. It's an absolutely gorgeous design, with slight curves and lightweight feel in the hand.

Measuring 135.5 x 67.9 x 8.9mm, it's a tad bigger than a Galaxy S II, and a little heavier at 135g. An entirely black front houses just the front-facing camera and a light sensor. There are now touch buttons on the Galaxy Nexus, just the screen, which is a feature specification of Ice Cream Sandwhich we'll go into more detail on in the next section.

The edges of the phone also have few buttons. There's a volume rocker on the left edge, a 3.5mm headphone jack on the bottom alongside a micro USB/charger port, and on the right just the power button and three inset pins for use with docking products.

Flip it over and you find the 5MP camera sensor, and the textured backplate that hides the battery and SIM compartments. The grip on the rear is nice, but replacing the backplate itself was actually a little fiddly. It's quite a long phone, but it's very cleanly designed overall.

Inside the phone is a speedy 1.2 GHz processor, HSDPA connectivity and NFC tech, among a whole host of other sensors. NFC isn't really much use at the moment, but this is a future proofing tech that will come into its own later in the year once more devices become compatible with the Android Beam NFC feature. From a virtual wallet to a digital business card, it'll let you swap all manner of data very soon, just by placing the device next to another NFC enabled gadget.

There's no storage expansion option though. Without microSD support, you're left with just 16GB of built-in storage, which may not be enough for those who like to load their phones up with rich media.

However, most praise most be showered on the 4.65 inch Super AMOLED HD touchscreen. Running at a resolution of 720 x 1280, it's got a ppi of 316, making it pin sharp, with superbly vibrant colours and brightness levels too. It makes the phone feel like a truly premium device, but is a killer drain on the battery. You're going to want to charge the Galaxy Nexus long before the sun has set on the day.

Interface and apps

If you're picking up a Samsung Galaxy Nexus, it's likely because you want to be among the first to have Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), the latest release of Google's Android mobile OS, on your smartphone. As with all versions of Android, it taps into your Google accounts, grabbing contact info and Gmail details from the off, as well as giving you instant access to Google products like Docs and Maps, with all your settings synced automatically. If Honeycomb and Gingerbread were bridging steps, ICS finally feels like Android is catching Apple's iOS in terms of slickness. Keep in mind that this is the vanilla version of ICS too; as more companies take on the new build, they'll tweak it with their own skins and features too.

Though it retains many familiar Android elements, ICS can still feel a slightly jarring departure on first use. As we mentioned earlier, there are no buttons below the screen here; everything is controlled by context-sensitive onscreen buttons that adapt depending on the scenario à la Honeycomb. For the most part they sit as three soft keys at the bottom of the screen: back, home and multitasking. Note that we say three and not four, as once was the case with Android mobiles. The options button is now gone, which often doesn't make a difference, but can mean a little extra menu-digging in apps, and a few extra presses when customising your homescreens with widgets and app shortcuts. In a neat touch, the soft buttons disappear when they're not needed, giving you more of that gorgeous screen to gawk at.

The notifications bar has also been given an overhaul. It still drags down from the top of the screen, but it's now slightly transparent, and gives quick access to settings, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, storage, display brightness and more. There's also a clever Data Usage monitor, which will be handy if you're using this smartphone on a tight data plan. Mutlitasking management is also made easier thanks to the updated notifactions bar; you'll now get a scrolling preview view of all the apps you've got open, showing what's going on on those screens at present. Tapping them opens them, swiping them clears them away. This also works with notifications like SMS messages, Facebook updates and emails.

The apps view, or Apps Drawer as it's often known, has been changed too, scrolling from left to right rather than down. Though buttons at the top let you jump from an Apps to a Widgets view, scroll right past all your apps and you'll hit the Widgets area anyway. Having a dedicated widgets preview area is great too; you know longer have to long-press on a widget to get a grasp of how it will look on your screen. Many widgets can also be re-sized too, though not all of them, like some third-party apps allow for. With such simple customisation improvements, it's a shame then that you only get access to five homescreens, and that the exploded pinch-accessed helicopter view is missing.

Another big selling point of ICS is the facial recognition unlock, with the phone taking a snap of your mug, and then using it as a reference, allowing you to access your phone just by popping your head in-front of the front-facing camera. It works flawlessly, even when we tried to confuse it with a contorted face or a look-a-like pal. We still wouldn't recommend using it as your sole security method though, with a pin being a more fool-proof method.

If we've got one major fault with ICS, it's the lack of built-in social support. We understand that this is a "pure Google" product, but it would be nice to see Twitter and Facebook now be part of the core Android experience. Of course, other manufacturers, like HTC with their incredible Sense UI, will add these features a ta later date with re-skinning efforts. But if Apple's iOS can do it with Twitter, we can't see why Google can't open up too.

Internet

No Flash? NO FLASH? It's one of Android's best selling points over Apple's mobile products, but quite staggeringly, it's not pre-installed on the Galaxy Nexus. Initially not compatible with ICS, as a result any buyers of the Galaxy Nexus will have to manually install the plug-in through the Android market, which is quite annoying.

Other than that, the Galaxy Nexus offers a very pleasant browsing experience, once Adobe's kit is squeezed in. Over either Wi-Fi or HSDPA pages load at a brisk pace, and swiping around the pages causes no problems with lag thanks to the strong processing abilities.

All the regular multi-touch and tap-to-zoom features are present, and text re-flow, pushing long lines of text onto the screen so you don't have to slide through paragraphs, works very well. A Read-It Later option saves pages for offline viewing, turning pages into flat screens that lack the same interaction as their online counterparts. That's a fine concession for offline reading.

Bookmarks sit in a card-like interface, similar to that seen when multitasking, which can be accessed and changed from a tab at the top of the screen.

All in, the Galaxy Nexus, once updated with Flash, makes for a marvellous browsing device.

Calling and Messaging

As with the rest of the UI, the Contacts and Dialler areas get a fresh lick of paint with ICS. A lighter mix of blues and whites, the Contacts view lists alphabetically all your pals, with a little thumbnail image of each person next to their names. Hit their name and you open up their contact card, with deeper details such as their placement in your groups, and their email address. Each contact card has a big picture attached to it too, though an annoyingly placed blue bar with their name and the option to favourite them can obscure it slightly. Paired with the new electric blue dialler, it's all very tidy and unified, with top notch call quality from both ends with the mics and speakers.

Messaging, be it SMS or email, is handled just as well. Fortunate, considering the afore-mentioned lack of built in social networking.

SMS gets a basic update, with black headers on a white background added to the conversation view, with your contact's picture also shown in a thumbnail. Gmail gets a more drastic update though. Options are now laid out on the bottom of the screen in the inbox view, which saves digging through some menu screens. Swiping left or right once in an email moves on to the next or previous message. POP , IMAP and Exchange mail is handled with a near-identical app, bar support for labels and other Gmail-specific features. You can also send an email direct from one of the contact cards described earlier.

The keyboard will feel very familiar to Gingerbread users, as it's a slight upgrade from that version. Keys still feel a little bunched up for our tastes, but excellent predictive text often smooths over any stray letter taps, with satisfying haptic feedback for each tap. There's still the option to use voice dictation, but it was too inconsistent to be of much use.

Media Playback
Android's stock music player gets a slight revamp. Apart from a few stylistic changes, you get new equaliser settings, such as a 3D effect and a basic playback control widget. We didn't encounter any audio files that wouldn't work, though the lack of an FM radio was a disappointment.

Though the video playback app is simple at best, watching videos on the handset is great. The screen is sharp, with deep blacks thanks to the improved contrast ratio that Super AMOLED displays allow for. The speaker is loud too, making it comfortable to watch a show in bed without the need for headphones. All major video file types (baring Apple's .mov) worked flawlessly, including MPEG4 and DivX. If you're looking for new things to watch, the app does however give you the option of jumping into the Google video store, which is well priced and well stocked. DLNA sharing is supported, but you'll need a third party app to get sharing videos and music between devices.

The big problem is storage space. With just 16GB of storage space and no option for microSD expansion, you may struggle to justify the handset as a true PMP replacement. That's a damn shame, considering the quality of the screen on offer.

Still Camera and Video

Coming off the back of the superb cameras on the Samsung Galaxy S II, the Galaxy Nexus is quite a let down.

For starters, the sensor maxes out at 5MP images, but that's not the only problem. Low light performance is terrible, there's no macro mode, and trying to focus on a moving target is near-impossible. The camera seems to constantly be looking for an autofocus point, leading to many blurred images. If you're taking still photos on a bright day, the results can be rather nice, but the camera has too many limitations to heartily recommend.

Even nice little extras like the ability to take a panorama photo are hindered by the sensor, as it's too slow to smoothly take the elongated snaps. Even stitching the photos together took the best part of a minute. There are also few image tweaking settings or filters when compared to rivals.

Video fares far better, offering smooth, stutter-free recording of 1080p clips. The quality of the sound capture is great, and the light sensor also handles sudden changes in brightness well too. For some strange reason, Samsung have opted to put more "crazy" filters in the video mode than with the camera, many of which are useless. The "space" video filter was a particularly trippy affair.

Verdict:

Samsung's Galaxy Nexus has loads going for it. It offers a mouth-watering taste of Ice Cream Sandwich, has a superb screen, great media playback options, smart Google account integration, future-proofed NFC features and a lovely industrial design.

But it suffers from a fair few things holding it back from getting full marks in our review. Battery life is just not good enough here; if the screen is going to be such a drain, the battery must match it. If it means a few extra millimetres thickness, so be it; I'd rather have my pockets filled with marginally bigger phones than charging cables. The storage space offered here, at 16GB, is paltry for a premium priced phone too, especially one with a screen that tempts the user to fill it up with HD video. Likewise, the camera was very disappointing, particularly given the quality of the imaging systems in the Galaxy S II.

Yet, as a showcase for Ice Cream Sandwich, it's a job well done. It's placed the slickness of Android right alongside Apple's iOS, meaning the next year's worth of smartphone battles should be very interesting indeed.

Name: PRADA Phone by LG 3.0 (LG P940)

Type: Android Smartphone

Specifications: Click here for full specs

Price: £429.99 from Play.com, SIM-free

LG team up with fashion brand Prada in what may be the partnership's most accomplished device yet. With a re-skinned Android UI and sleek hardware design it certainly looks the part, but is it a case of style of substance? Read on to find out!

Design

With a big name fashion brand like Prada behind you, you really need to be pushing the boat out when it comes to design with a smartphone for it to be anything more than a cash-in on brand loyalty (if anyone has the money to afford to be loyal to Prada, that is). LG have done a reasonably good job in this department, though the name (PRADA Phone by LG 3.0) is rather clunky. We'll be calling it, for simplicity's sake, the LG Prada 3.0 for the rest of the review.

Measuring just 127.5 x 69 x 8.5mm, the LG Prada 3.0 is large enough to feature a generous 4.3 inch capacitive touchscreen, but remains light in the hand and catwalk-model slim. It'll fit easily into a pocket and, while those with littler hands might need to use both paws to move around the large screen, it'll be comfortable over prolonged use, both in calls and when navigating the screen.

Almost entirely black, there's a Prada logo sitting at the top of the phone and one on the back alongside an LG logo. Two volume buttons sit on the left hand edge of the device, while on the top edge sits the 3.5mm headphone socket, a neat chrome slider that hides away the charge/USB connection and two identical round chrome buttons for activating the camera app and switching off the phone. It's a very tidy set-up, though we found the camera/power buttons a little confusing, and a little difficult to press.

On the rear backplate of the phone, Prada's famous Saffiano  pattern is in full force, giving a textured grip to the device that's very welcome. It's a minimalist look overall, and one that well please both fashion fans and tech heads alike.

Under the hood, the LG Prada 3.0 packs in a 1GHz dual core processor backed by 1GB of RAM, 8GB of built-in storage space a microSD card slot, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, DLNA and NFC capabilities. On the rear you'll find also an 8 megapixel camera and a 1 megapixel camera on the front. Sadly, it's lacking a HDMI port, and though the 1540mAh battery sounds large, any media or GPS-intensive activities see it drain rather quickly. You'll struggle to get an entire day's use per charge from the LG Prada 3.0

Interface and apps

Perhaps the most striking thing about the LG Prada 3.0 is the way its build of Android 2.3 has been re-skinned. Almost entirely black and white, many of the stock Android icons have been redrawn, as well as plenty of the widgets too.

At first glance it looks great; a slick, again-minimalist interface that has the phone really showing off its fashion chops. Sadly, it's just a little too inconsistent. Once you scroll away from the landing homescreen (there are seven overall) you'll soon encounter full-colour Google icons, Facebook and Twitter feeds. Even some of the LG re-skinned widgets that appear to be in black and white turn out to be just a front for their regular full colour versions when you dig into them a little deeper, like the main homescreen's weather app. We can appreciate that LG probably struggled to get permission to alter some icons from their parent companies, but it leads to a patchwork feeling in what could have otherwise been a very strong unique selling point.

Regardless of the homescreen you're on, you'll always have four soft buttons on screen, giving access to the dialler, contacts, messaging and applications.

The stock four Android buttons (Home, Back, Menu and Search) sit on a little touch strip below the screen with vibrating feedback. Backlit, the buttons never glow long enough, meaning you're going to have to memorise the placement of these buttons if you're to avoid tapping the screen each time to fire up the backlight before hitting one.

As well as the regular raft of Google Android apps (including Gmail, Maps, Latitude and the official Android Market app) LG have squeezed quite a few other apps in from the off too, many of which are actually quite good.

Polaris Office lets you create Word, Excel and PowerPoint-compatible documents on the go from your mobile. An image editing app is fairly robust, letting you crop photos and images, add filters, borders and more. Richnote is also quite useful, letting you combine text, hand-drawn notes, pictures and audio files, and then email them to others.

There's also a few apps that tweak the phone for use in different scenarios. Desk Home looks great, adding a large flip-over style clock that will make for a good overnight charging screen, while Car Home simplifies everything into large icons for safer use when on the road, giving direct access to navigation features, music controls and contacts, all voice controlled.

Of course, with this phone being Android, you can easily customise the layout of all the homescreens, moving about apps and dropping live widgets more or less where you please.

Internet

With such a generously large screen, the LG Prada 3.0 is well suited to web browsing. Featuring both Wi-Fi and HSDPA (3G+), it's well kitted out for surfing the web either indoors or out, with HDSPA supporting  21Mbps download speeds over the standard 7.2Mbps. Get into an area which supports the speedy data rates and you're flying here.

All the usual touch gestures are onboard the browser here, including pinch and/or double tap to zoom. Text reflow is good too, squeezing lines of text to be read in a more natural way rather than having to scroll around, making the browser a comfortable read. Scrolling around in general though is a pleasure, with a smooth, stutter-free feel.

Flash support is just as smooth, even when running content on multiple pages. Our one bug bear with the browser was the Read It Later button, which is slightly misleading. Rather than saving stuff for offline reading, it's just a glorified bookmark tool, requiring a web connection to access your saved stories.

Calling and Messaging

The LG Prada 3.0 handles contacts and calling very well. Sign into your Google account and all of your contacts and details fall into the address book too. You'll get double entries if you're using an old SIM card, but the app does manage to filter and intelligently add details when you sync Twitter and Facebook contacts too.

Smart dialling is built into the phone, meaning you can tap a contact's name in rather than their number to get hold of their digits. Considering the size of the screen, it's a pity only one contact can be brought onscreen by the smart dialler at once, which makes the tool a little redundant if you have a large contacts book. You have to access a drop down menu to see other close matches, by which point you may as well have browsed the entire contacts book.

Call quality on the LG Prada 3.0 is particularly good. Two microphones (one for voice and one for noise cancellation) ensure that the audio you send is clear and loud, while the speaker delivers an equally clear quality for you to receive. In a nice touch you can send a series of pre-written "Excuse" messages with just a few presses, should you need to screen and avoid a call, telling your caller that you are, for instance, "in a meeting".

Social networking is integrated reasonably heavily into the phone. One of the pre-set homescreens for instance houses the Social+ widget, which pulls in feeds from Facebook, Twitter and (rather anachronistically) Myspace too. It automatically updates with new messages from pals, and you can even set the increment at which it refreshes to save on mobile data charges. Facebook updates can be sent, messages replied to and friend requests answered, while with Twitter you can tweet, @ reply, and send DMs. The button to switch between networks is a little fiddly, but other than that it's all good.

SMS and Email messaging, for the most part was good. The keyboard, particularly when used in landscape, is large and easy to tap at. The black and white interface keeps things simple, and the conversation flow is easy to read. Annoyingly though, there's no tap-and-hold function for accessing symbols; you'll have to tap through to another keyboard screen to get to ?,!, and @ signs, among others.

Media Playback

Media playback, both video and audio, is handled incredibly well by the LG Prada 3.0. All manner of formats we threw at the device worked perfectly, including MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+,DTS, and EC3 audio and DivX, MPEG4 and H.264 video files. Videos look great on the screen despite the relatively low resolution (800x480) and, at this comfortable size, makes the phone a capable PMP replacement. Even the speakers, which won't trouble dedicated audio devices of course, performed as well as the best smartphone offerings.

The interfaces with which to browse your media files look great too. They cut artwork in favour of the previously-detailed black and white look, but in the wider context of the rest of the phone's UI, it makes sense.

DLNA sharing through LG's SmartShare app was simple to use too, allowing us to share to and from networked media devices and our phone, which went some way towards making up for the lack of a HDMI port.

Still Camera and Video

The 8MP rear camera has a flash, and is accessed through a nice interface that plenty of options and settings in a thing left-hand edge bar on screen. What it does lack however is filters and borders, which rather bizarrely can only be applied with the afore-mentioned image editing tool.

Image quality is decent, without being mind blowing. You'll get a fairly accurate colour reproduction from your stills, and the autofocus was accurate consistently. Images took a noticeable hit when in low light situations though, and often came out softer than we'd have liked.

Video shooting , captured at qualities up to 1080p, was reasonably sharp, and managed not to jump and stutter too much with movement. It did suffer however in low lighting situations, meaning this handset wont fully replace a dedicated camcorder or camera.

Verdict:

It may be aimed more at fashionistas than hardcore tech fans, but LG's latest Prada phone ticks many of the boxes that even the most demanding of gadget fans chase. It's built well, looks great and is comfortably slim in the pocket. Its UI, though inconsistent, is unique and stylish. Its processor allows for swift application usage and media playback, and though its imaging systems leave little to be desired, its call quality is top notch. Though we'd still be a little wary of recommending the handset to a tech whizz, near-everyone else will be pleasantly surprised by its quality.

Name: Western Digital My Book Essential 3TB

Type: 3TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive (PC/Mac)

Specifications: Click here for full specs

Price: £168.75 from Amazon seller

If you're looking to do some super-quick, super-painless PC spring cleaning, you'll want to grab an external hard drive with USB 3.0 transfer speeds. Western Digital's My Book Essential range offers as much as a massive 3TB of external storage, and transfer speeds three times as fast as USB 2.0 thanks to their USB 3.0 connectivity options. We took a 3TB model for a spin. Read on for our thoughts!

As far as external hard drives go, the My Book Essential looks pretty snazzy, with its gloss black plastic casing and curved front. Three edges house discrete venting, with the front curved edge a white LED light that stays on constantly when the drive is in use, and blinks when in standby, which it tends to do quite a lot as the onboard software powers down the drive after a few minutes of inactivity. In a neat touch, the drive powers completely down automatically when your PC shuts down, and fires back up when the computer is switched on. When it comes to power management then, the drive is particularly savvy.

Though it shouldn't be treated as a portable drive, the My Book Essential is surprisingly small given its 3TB storage space inside. It measures just 165mm x 135mm x 48mm, and weighs only 1.18kg. It's also quiet as a mouse, barely audible when reading from or writing to its disk. Though rubber feet on the underside edge suggest the drive should be used in an upright position, we've had it running laid horizontally flat with no problems.

Though the drive is listed as a 3 terrabyte, as with all drives the actual usable space onboard is significantly smaller. You've in fact got 2794GB of space to play about with. This is by no means a fault of the drive (all hard drives have this quirk), but is worth mentioning if you're after specifically 3TB of external storage.

Things were going well until we started to install the latest drivers for the My Book Essential. While the onboard drivers worked fine, upgrading to firmware version 3.1.0.11 caused our system to go haywire, with the My Book Essential randomly connecting and disconnecting, our failing to appear at all when connected to our PC. It took a system restore to the initial driver settings before things calmed down again.

Using the USB 3.0 connection (the drive is also USB 2.0 compatible), we were very impressed with the My Book Essential's transfer speeds. See the chart below for our findings using CystalDiskMark:

As you can see, 5 passes at 1000MB saw average read speeds of 125.2MB/s and average write speeds of 92.61Mb/s, revealing solid transfer rates. In real world usage, we found it took just 49.4 seconds to transfer a 2.94GB ISO image file, with an average transfer rate of around 59.5 Mb/s. Not quite as good as the CystalDiskMark findings, but still impressive. Likewise, smaller file sizes transferred speedily at around the 70Mb/s mark, but wrote more slowly at closer to 30.5 Mb/s. It's still up with the best transfer speeds with experienced from USB 3.0, nonetheless, with each result averaging almost 3x as fast as when performed with a USB 2.0 connection.

The My Book Essential also ships with an impressive back-up software suite called SmartWare, pre-loaded onto the drive. Once a simple configuration process has been carried out, it works quietly in the background backing up your whole computer (or just files and folders of your choosing), keeping an eye out for changes and backing up accordingly. It's incredibly easy to use, and automates all of the tedious work that protecting your files can present.

Likewise, the security offerings onboard are equally impressive, with the ability to apply encrypted passwords and support for Kensington physical security locks.

Verdict:

A one-stop solution for your back-up needs, the My Book Essential offers speed, space, security and reliability. Were it not for the driver debacle we'd give this external drive a perfect score, but regardless it still comes very highly recommended.

Name: Samsung Galaxy Note

Type: Android Smartphone

Specifications: Click here for full specs

Price: £499.91 from Amazon, SIM-free

The Samsung Galaxy Note, AKA the Samsung Galaxy Personality Crisis. Is it a smartphone? Is it a tablet? Is it some altogether new-fangled tech beast? And is it any good? All these questions and more answered in our full review!

Design

Samsung's Galaxy Note is gigantic. If you thought the HTC Sensation XL was big, or even Samsung's own Galaxy S II, you've got another thing coming. The Note is Texas big. Brian Blessed big. With a 5.3 inch screen, it sits somewhere between a smartphone and tablet, while never really feeling quite like one or the other. It'll fit in your hand relatively comfortably, and will cover half your face when making a call.

Big doesn't mean heavy though. Like the Galaxy S II before it, it's very light for its size, weighing just 178g. Despite being so large, it will fit in a generous trouser pocket, though it'll fit more comfortably in a jacket pocket or bag.

The trade off here of course is that whopping screen. While an iPhone may sit snugly in a shirt pocket, it offers nothing close to the visual bang that the Note does. Thanks to 5.3 inches of WXGA (1280 x 800) Super AMOLED Plus goodness at 285ppi, there's little to match the Note's screen in terms of clarity, brightness and vibrancy. A 1.4GHz Exynos SoC (system on chip) processor is onboard, and is basically a slightly souped up version of the processor found in the Galaxy S II. As a result, the phone swipes through screens without any difficulties, and showed very signs of lag.

Measuring just 146.85 x 82.95 x 9.65mm, the handset adopts a fairly minimalist approach to design. A single hardware button sits on the bottom of the Note's front, with a power switch on its right edge, a volume rocker on its left, a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top edge and a recess to tuck away the Note's true USP, the S-Pen stylus, along the bottom edge. More on the S-Pen later, but for now take comfort in the fact that, thanks to a large 2,500mAh battery, you'll get easily a day's worth of use per charge, even with the screen running at its brightest.

The S-Pen stylus

Touchscreen phones were meant to kill off the stylus, right? The late Apple boss Steve Jobs' personal bug bear has even been dropped by long-time supporters Microsoft with Windows Phone 7, but Samsung still see a place for the stylus, resurrected here with the Note as the S-Pen.

Despite a major part of the marketing of the Note (the combo of a large screen and pen-like device is supposed to kill off the need for paper and pencil) the S-Pen proves little more than a gimmick. Though it's comfortable to hold and slips tidily away into a recess on the underside of the phone, it's practically pointless.

You've got note taking apps pre-installed and ones for jotting down doodles, but this is nothing new in and of itself. The note taking app could have had some decent application were its handwriting recognition up to scratch, but in reality it's prone to mistakes and slower to use than simply tapping out a message on a keyboard. The S-Pen may well have 100 levels of sensitivity, but it still sometimes didn't register input, and the software tended to lag slightly behind our preferred scribbling speed.

Sure, it's nice to be able to sign documents properly from your phone, and annotate the odd image or website, but it's a mostly needless addition.

Calling and Messaging

It may be gigantic, but the Note is still a phone at the end of the day. You'll look like a plonker holding it up to your ear, but it's not as ridiculous as using, say, a Galaxy Tab as a phone. Your best bet is to pair it with a Bluetooth headset, though that's not a necessity, providing you've got reasonable mates who wont twist your arm too much for the size of your phone.

The dialler is pretty much standard Android fare, but has a few Samsung stylings of its own. Along the top of the app are tabs for the keypad, call logs, contacts, favourites and groups. You can manually attach Twitter and Facebook info to contacts too, though it is not handled quite a slickly as HTC's Sense manages to.

If you can brave putting the Note to your ear, call quality proves excellent, with no interference and clear noise reduction. Signal strength remained consistently high too. As you'd imagine, the phone is a perfect fit for video calling apps, using the Note's 2MP front-facing camera.

For email, you get the standard Android Gmail client with is always excellent, and Samsung's own Mail app which can also pull in all manner of  POP3/IMAP and Exchange accounts you may use. It also makes full use of the large screen, offering a split, two-pane view of your messages when put in landscape orientation.

The standard Gignerbread keyboard is here for email and SMS messaging, but with the screen the size it is, you'll only comfortably be able to tap out messages with two hands. Of course, you could use the S-Pen, but as we stated above, that's just as clumsy.

Interface and apps

Just missing out on Ice Cream Sandwich, the Note is running Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread) out of the box, with Samsung's light TouchWiz re-skinning over the top. Again, if you've used a Galaxy S II, you'll feel right at home, with "Hubs" collecting apps for social sites like Twitter or Facebook, gaming portals and apps in the Gaming hub, book buying and reading apps in the Reader hub and music and media playback in the Music hub.

As with all Android phones you get ample ability to customise the experience, and Samsung offer a strong array of live widgets (many of which can be resized) for displaying information at a glance across the seven homescreens. Pinching the screen gives an exploded view of all seven homescreens at once, letting you jump quickly from one to another. It's a little fiddly, but apps can be arranged into folders too.

Drag down from the top of the screen and you'll be presented with the Android notifications bar, housing all your email, app, or social network updates. Samsung place a quick settings toolbar in here too, which is handy for quickly accessing GPS, Wi-Fi and profile options.

All the usual Google apps are onboard, including Maps, Talk, Latitude and Places, and you get access to the Android Market app store for grabbing new software. Voice control comes courtesy of a premium version of Vlingo; it's not quite as fully featured as Apple's Siri, but you can quickly train it to navigate media and jump to contacts with the power of your voice alone.

Samsung's Internet browser is the star of the pre-installed app line up though, and again that's mostly thanks to the quality of the screen in the first place. It's so big as to make full screen browsing not far off the experience you'd have with a tablet device, with eminently readable, crisp text and vibrant images. This being an Android device, you have none of the Flash woes that hamstring Apple's devices when it comes to browsing.

The extra screen real estate allows for a few useful additions to the browser UI, such as dedicated page forward and back buttons, as well as dedicated button for jumping between open tabs. There's even static page name info above the address bar. Though text reflow could at times be a little erratic when pinching and zooming on pages, it's still the closest we've come to a desktop browsing experience from a pocketable device.

Media playback and Gaming

The Galaxy Note really comes into its own when it comes to media playback. With a screen this big, and this gorgeous, it'll be a godsend come lengthy car trips or when you're stuck for something to watch in bed. Grab something like the Netflix movie and TV streaming app and you may find yourself glued to the Note all day long. There's even a setting that pushes the brightness levels of the screen even further for viewing in direct sunlight, though be prepared to take a noticeable knock to your battery level as a result.

Samsung have done a good job of providing solid file-format support with their video player, with the device expertly handling everything we threw at it, including MP4, M4V, Xvid, DivX, AVI and 3GP file types. Throw in DLNA support and you're sharing video to and from the Note to all manner of devices, making it an expert media experience. Samsung's video playing app even allows for some basic editing work to be done, which is handy if you're looking to upload to YouTube directly from the device.

Though competent enough, the music player is basically stock Android with a slight re-skinning. You can muck about with EQ settings, and get album cover artwork, but for a deeper music organisational experience you may want to download a third party app.

Gaming on the Note is also really strong. With a powerful processor and impressive screen, you're approaching iPad levels of playability. This was best illustrated with a quick game of the Grand Theft Auto III Android edition, where there wasn't a hint of stutter and the the virtual control pad didn't impede the view of the action in any significant way.

Still Camera and Video

The Note uses an identical 8MP rear camera as that found in the Galaxy S II. That's no bad thing, as that smartphone was capable of some superb shots. Thanks to the dual-core processor, you can boot the phone up from off and be in the camera app shooting snaps within little more than 5 seconds, which is great when you've got to capture a fleeting moment.

Images are crisp and detailed, with accurate auto-focus and colour reproduction. You also get a decent array of manual controls such as ISO settings, as well as Panorama modes and plenty of scene selection settings to scroll through to add a smidgen of Instagram-like cool to your shots.

Despite its strong image capturing chops, the Note is hardly the ideal snapper though. As it's so large, it's actually quite cumbersome to hold when taking a picture. With no dedicated shutter button, you'll be tapping away at the screen to take shots, which means you have to hold the over-sized device in some quite awkward positions. The size of the screen also makes it far too easy to accidentally brush it while taking a photo, leading to unintentional shifts in focus.

Video shooting still impresses though, with Full HD recording at 1080p/30fps possible. The results are sharp, and the image stabilisation does a good job of keeping moving images from being too jumpy. It suffers a little from noise in dark scenes though, and sometimes takes a little longer than we'd have liked to find a sensible point of focus using AF.

Verdict:

Samsung's Galaxy Note has all the trappings of a great phone. Its re-skinned version of Android gingerbread is understated and makes useful changes. Its screen is gorgeous to look at and a joy to use. Its processor allows for demanding multitasking and its camera offers both detailed still photography and clear HD video capture. However, its main selling point (its large screen) is also its downfall, as it's just impractical as an everyday device. It's just too cumbersome to replace a smaller, more versatile smartphone. Also, the Note's S-Pen is a massive disappointment, a gimmick that doesn't really add any useful functionality to an already-responsive UI and touchscreen combo. While it's a superb multimedia device, its going to take a person with very unique needs for it to be their ideal smartphone.