Just recently one of my friends (Geoff in case you were wondering) bought a pair of Brainwavz M3 IEMs (In ear monitors) to my skepticism. When he first mentioned the brand, I was quick to dismiss it as some bass-heavy earphone that would generally squash anything that isn’t bass. In fact, I had never heard of the brand before, and thought the name was incredibly cheesy, and similar to another mainstream bass-heavy brand “Skullcandy”. As it turns out, “Brainwavz” is one of many Chinese brands, along with “SoundMagic” and “Fiio”, that are pushing into the market with what are being presented as cheap-high-quality audio solutions for the average consumer. So, I was curious to try them anyway, to see whether or not they are real competitors to the well established brands such as Sennheiser and Ultimate Ears.
Continue reading Brainwavz M3 IEM Earphones – Unboxing
Over the last three years or there abouts, I’ve been purchasing a new portable media player pretty much every six months, some as upgrades, and some just for convenience. My very first mp3 was a Creative ZEN, and I grew to love it, (even though it broke twice). I then churned through a Creative ZEN Stone (which I lost), a Samsung S2 (Or the “Pebble”, which I eventually sold off), a Creative ZEN X-fi, a Creative ZEN Stone Plus w/Speaker (which I also have lost), and have finally calmed down with a Cowon iAudio E2, and a 32gb Microsoft Zune HD.
Continue reading One year on with my Cowon iAudio E2
My friend Geoff recently ordered himself a pair of Alessandro Music Series One (MS-1i) Headphones (the additional “i” extension refers to the revised 2009 version of the original MS-1 headphones) through me (taking advantage of the falling US Dollar), and they arrived at my place two days ago. I managed to open them, take a few photos, and do a bit of testing. I do like my high-quality audio, but I’m far from an audiophile, having relatively little experience with high-end equipment.
Continue reading Alessandro MS-1i Headphones – Unboxing
:: School Related
Phew… New term at school, incredibly busy, lots of work being done, organisation and catch-up. Despite getting a lowly 34% for my Prelim Exam for 3 Unit Maths, I’m having a go at doing 4 Units of Maths for my HSC… Which should be interesting… First lesson was simple enough, learning about “Complex Numbers” and “Iota” which, frankly, are magical concepts to me… Why didn’t they just teach us this back when we were in primary school? We were so much more gullible back then, we would have stuck with the idea and 4 unit maths would probably be so much easier than what it’s made out to be at the moment. XD
The results of my other tests weren’t very good for my standards… Generally hovering around the course average for all my subjects, which is somewhat worrying if I want to get an ATAR of 96 to get into Architecture in Uni…
Considering joining the Formal Committee after being nagged by the current members, (though particularly Shannon and Janice…) Am in talks with Leon about whether we want to join/plan to strike some form of deal. However, Leon and I have written ourselves down for the Yearbook Committee, which should be interesting…
:: Anime Related
Should be receiving confirmation e-mail for a ‘ready order’ for my Nanoha and Angel Beats Nendoroids as Leon’s release has been delayed to late December… O_o
Been watching “Bakuman” and “” as part of the Fall season of Anime. Both have been great so far and I’m loving all the references to ‘real anime and otakudom’ in “My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute”. I won’t be posting too much about them unless something incredibly notable comes up. Though my good friend Leon is keeping up with them and regularly posting his thoughts of some of the other anime that’s being shown this season on his blog.
:: Technology/Gadget Related
Windows Phone 7 has officially been launched and I am SO EXCITED!!! The land down under will be one of the first to officially get WP7 on October 21 with the release of the HTC Mozart, HTC Trophy, and the Samsung Omnia 7, being released on Telstra, Vodafone and Optus respectively.
Though, I’m super-eager to get my hands on a Dell Venue Pro, originally known as “Lightning” back when Engadget leaked the details in April. Sadly, there’s no official release date for it anywhere at the moment, and the only carrier details are that it’ll be on T-Mobile in America.
My Shure SE420 Earphones (that I got in exchange for a continually breaking pair of Ultimate Ears Super.Fi 5 Extended Bass Earphones) have been sent in to get a frequency response check after the lack of bass in them finally led me to ask if there was a possible fault with my earphones… Will see how that goes.
Geoff ordered a pair of Alessandro MS-1 Headphones through me (taking advantage of the falling US Dollar), and they arrived yesterday. I managed to give them a test run and take a few photos of them before he came by to take them away, and I was rather impressed with how they sounded out of the box. I’ll do a more formal write up a little later.
As always, late on the bandwagon, but, I am now one of the hundred or so people who probably have a Zune in Australia!
Continue reading Hello Zune!
Okay, so I don’t normally do posts like this, and… I don’t normally listen to Lady Gaga… Really, all I know is “Raaa-raaa-raa-aa-a! Romma-raaa-aaa!”… but after listening to a CNET’s Mp3 Insider podcast a while back, and the recent “First Look” video at the Monster Beat’s “Lady Gaga Heartbeats” In-ear earphones, (I WANT THAT SQUID/OCTOPUS SHE’S WEARING) it prompted me to watch the music video, as senior editor Jasmine France noticed the fair amount of Monster Beats advertising in the music video. I mean, the video itself is crazy enough, and now I know why they say Lady Gaga is so… weird…
“These earphones aren’t for the faint at heart. -Oh yeah, I went there.” ~Jasmine France
Continue reading Monster “Beats” Headphones in Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” Music Video
So, it was about time that the folks at abi released their review for the Archos 5 Internet Media Tablet with Android. As you may know, I myself got me an Archos 5 a few weeks ago. I probably should have waited for abi’s review before diving in for the purchase, but I was already well aware of the issues that it has had, and am experiencing them first hand as well.
>> Click here for anythingbutipod.com’s Two Part Review of the Archos 5 Internet Media Tablet with Android
They have written a VERY long review that goes nicely in-depth about the Archos 5 in terms of how it works. If you are unfamiliar with the Android OS, or have no idea what I’m on about, I suggest you read the review, especially if you’re looking to purchase an Archos 5 yourself. Like I may should have done… =P
My official thoughts on my Archos 5 shall be posted here within the coming weeks, as well as a bit on my Cowon iAudio E2.
Wow… It really was a heptic week last week… Trying to keep up to date with all the Consumer Electronics Show news was a challenge, and I really must give LOTS of credit and thanks to the efforts of technology blog sites that followed CES. The main ones I followed were CNET and Engadget, who quite frankly, really do deserve some sleep… I am stealing a lot of info off Engadget by the way…
I must say that I was a little dissapointed at what was announced at CES this year, especially in the digital audio player market… We saw a lot of Televisions, Netbooks, Tablets and E-Readers… Too many e-readers if you ask me… Speaking of which I saw someone with an Amazon Kindle the other day in the city. The Kindle doensn’t really interest me that much, and I thought I didn’t like the design of it, but as I walked past it, I was “Wow… That looks pretty awesome”…
Anyway, here’s a list of the tech that I was most interested over the CES period.
 Sony Dash
It’s not a tablet or anything really uber, but I certainly thought it was a nice product I’d like to have in my room as an alarm clock. The Sony Dash features a 7 inch touch screen, runs the “Chumby” OS (Which I thought was interesting), has Wi-fi and really is basically a super-special-awesome clock-radio gadget that you put on your bedside table or something. If it weren’t expecting a sale price of $199US, I’d probably buy it. Engadget Link
Lenovo IdeaPad U1 Hybrid
It’s been getting a lot of attention, and I too think, that it is a pretty cool laptop. The Lenovo U1 is essentially your normal laptop with an Intel Core 2 Duo, 128GB solid state drive, and it runs Windows 7 Home Premium. But what really makes it stand out, is how the screen is detachable, and it becomes an 11 inch tablet device! The tablet moves to Lenovo’s “Skylight” OS, and runs on the Snapdragon 1Ghz processor. It’s pretty awesome, and I wouldn’t mind my hands on one, but I don’t think it will be my laptop of choice. It should be shipping in June for $999US… Engadget Link
 HP TouchSmart TM2 Laptop Convertible
I don’t really want to “remove” the screen, I’d much rather it convertible, hence why I much prefer this, and will probably be my laptop/netbook of purchase for this year. It has a 12.1 inch screen, and has a Core 2 Duo processor, and has a 9 hour battery life (which I like). The laptop is tablet convertible by flipping the screen around, and laying it flat on the keyboard. From the pictures, it looks very pretty, and it is cheaper than the Lenovo U1 Hybrid. It will be avaliable in the US for $949US by the end of January too! Engadget Link
MSI Dual Screen Netbook/E-reader
Rather novelty, and at the moment, it’s still just a concept, but I think it is awesome. It has an Atom Z Series processor and runs Windows 7 Home Premium. Other than that, there’s not much news about it. MSI had a prototype and engadget did a hands on video. Engadget Link
Samsung LED 9000 Series Television
I love LED screens. They are super-pretty, and Samsung makes them super awesome. The 9000 series is less than 7mm thick! It’s thinner than a pencil! And I love the design of it! So sleek… So slim! I’d expect some great picture quality too! It also comes with an awesome remote, as well as some other awesome features! I want one. Engadget Link
HTC/Google Nexus One
Not technically CES related, but it was announced during the week of CES. The latest and most awesome Android running phone, it has a 3.7 inch AMOLED screen with an 800×480 resolution. (Awesome!) It also has the 1Ghz Snapdragon processor inside it, as well as having an awesome kind of “industrial” design. 512MB of RAM, as well as having a removable battery and microSD slot, it’s a nice phone! Though it’s not a media phone, so I can’t say it’d be my immediate phone of choice once available here, but it is still awesome. Engadget Link
Inbrics M1
Another phone that runs Android. Engadget describes it as “probably everything we ever wanted”. Like the Nexus One, it has a 3.7-inch WVGA AMOLED display, but has a a full QWERTY keyboard that the Nexus One lacks. It is similar to the Motorola Droid, though the Inbrics does focus more on media though, which I like the sound of. Not much about it though… I may be keeping my eye out for news on it. Engadget Link
 Viliv P3
Suprisingly not a phone, but a portable media player! It has some nice specs, and if it released here, I’d like to get my hands on one. It has some nice specs! Runs Google Android, 800×480 AMOLED display an 800MHz processor, 32gb internal storage, with microSD expansion and has Windows CE dual-boot capability?!?! I’d expect it’d have some good codec support too! So… I’ll be looking out for more info on this! (I like how Engadget compares it to the Zii EGG) Engadget Link
iRiver K1
Something that also caught my interest nearing the end of CES, iRiver finally moves into close to iPod Touch competition with the announcements for specs of the K1 “Smart HD” portable media player. It has a 3.5-inch display with a 480 x 320 resolution, (same as the Touch) WiFi, and supports a lot of formats including .mkv, .flac and .ogg! I’d like to know a little more about it before saying “I want one” but from the specs, if it’s cheap, and works well, I may just get me one. No word on pricing or anything just yet though… Engadget Link
What better way to start off the new year in gadgets than with product announcements at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas? As CES 2010 kicks off on Thursday, I thought I’d do a little top 10 predictions for 2010 in relation to gadgets and consumer electronics. Of course, this’ll mainly focus on what I’m looking for in my gadgets… But anyway, here are my top ten predictions in relation to tech, for 2010. Touch screens will continue to be all the rage.
10 -USB 3.0 will be slowly introduced… Kinda obvious since there are already motherboards and crap with USB 3.0 out, but I don’t expect USB 3.0 to become fully standard and universal until 2011 at the earliest. It’ll be a niche kind of product at first, and companies will slowly introduce USB 3.0 enabled gadgets. I certainly can’t wait for faster transfer speeds myself! I’m a little tired of waiting half-an-hour to transfer a a few gigs of data to an external hard-drive.
9 – E-Book readers… A fairly large number of them too… I don’t see how this will be a huge market (or even is a huge market), but I can see there can be some innovations to e-book readers, such as the Barns and Noble “Nook”. Amazon’s Kindle will definately be around for a while, but increasing competition in the e-reader market should help see prices drop, and possible media/e-book readers, either as pocketable candy-bar form gadgets, or wi-fi/netbook style tablets.
 8 – Creative will either come out with a product for the commercial market containing the hyped-up last year “Zii” chip that will a) be really successful or b) be a complete waste of effort and no-one will buy it. I personally think it is very much about time Creative really showed off to the general consumer public as for what their “Zii” chip is really made of… We’ve already sort of seen the results of the Zii EGG and the recently announced concept “Zii Trinity” phone, but nothing to consumers as of yet…
7 – Google’s Chrome OS won’t be successful. (At least not in the beginning) I do question whether or not Google’s Chrome OS will really be any good… I mean the aim for Chrome’s OS is simple, a quick starting OS on netbooks to access the internet… It is a cheaper option, and as
6 – Sony will release a new generation PSP, possibly running NVIDIA’s Tegra chip. There was an “accidental” leak supposedly suggesting a new generation PSP… If it does come out, I expect it’ll look a lot better than the PSP Go!, which was kinda… fail… and similar to the PSP Go, it won’t use the UMDs. It will probably be that same proprietary Sony memory stick stuff too. It will probably have a touch screen of some sort (resistive) and probably won’t be that much of use. Sony will also probably either make the next PSP super-aweosme, or like the Go, another “fail”.
 5 – GPS navigations, will really begin to die out, similar to the current dedicated mp3 player market. Ever since phones, began having mp3 capabilities, and now many having GPS capabilities, these two markets are slowly dying, though GPS will probably die out first, possibly this year too… Comapnies such as TomTom and Garman etc had their share prices fall last year, with thanks to Google. mp3 players may still have an edge, as no phone will be able to carry your entire music library… Hence why the iPod is still super-succesful…
4 – Google Android will continue to expand rapidly, and I would like to see it possibly, catching up very closely, or taking over Windows Mobile, in terms of popularity in mobile operating systems. There are already a fair few Android running hand-held devices around, but some of them still lack the qualities that the other mobile OSs have, especially Apple’s iPhone OS. No doubt we will be seeing a lot more phones running Android, and the newly announced Nexus One “superphone” was released today, and is available for purchase. Other phones such as the XPERIA from Sony should further strengthen Android’s hold in the mobile OS world. Whether it’ll take over iPhone…
3 – 3DTV will be commercially available and be like how HDTVs were around when they first came out… As in, like, how when HDTVs were out, they were on displays at stores all over the place, and only like… “One of my friends have one” and you yourself won’t have one till maybe a few years after they came out… Though, there is an issue with the whole “always wearing glasses” to see 3D that is… Though apparently, some companies will be displaying 3D TVs where you don’t need the glasses? Well, they’re saying, if we’re gonna see that happening, CES is the place.
 2 – The Apple Tablet – Just like many of those in the tech world, I belive that Apple will come out with some form of tablet. Whether it be a super-large iPhone of sorts, an e-reader that does media playback, or as a netbook sort of slate device, Apple will release something like that, sometime this year. There has already been many “claims” of leaked specs and pricing, but of course, there is nothing concrete as of yet. Though even if Apple does release an “iTablet”, would you actually buy one? Rumors do have them out as around the US$800/900…
1 – Google will take over the world. Okay, maybe not in 2010… But expect to see A LOT more Google in the world, way more than what you’ve seen so far.
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