Sony VAIO Y Series Is Sleek and Well-Equipped

Upon first seeing the new Sony VAIO Y Series laptop (model VPCYB15KX), your first thought will likely be, "That is a very pink laptop." Virtually everyone in the PCWorld offices who saw our test unit felt the need to express just that thought. Of course, that's just this particular test system. If you're neither a 13-year-old girl, nor especially into promoting breast cancer awareness, you can get the system with silver styling instead.
The Y Series is Sony's first foray into using AMD's new Fusion CPUs. It utilizes the fastest of the lot, the E-350: a dual-core CPU that runs at 1.6GHz and integrates a Radeon HD 6310 graphics unit. Sony equips the system with a nice 4GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive, though the drive only spins at 5400 rpm, which makes launching apps and loading large amounts of data a little on the slow side.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH2

It may not be a "true DSLR," but the interchangeable-lens Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH2 has features that outclass some of today's DSLRs, and the camera may indicate where future DSLRs are headed with regard to controls and video options.
The GH2 offers touchscreen controls to accompany more-traditional buttons and knobs, and those touch controls are all the more engaging in a camera equipped with a large sensor, a high-quality lens, a fast autofocus, and high-end image quality. The result is a unique camera whose touch-to-focus controls enable you to pull off complex focusing tricks with ease.
Priced from $999.95

Dell V313w Inkjet MFP Offers Low-Cost

Dell's V313w color inkjet multifunction printer is priced at a mere $100 as of March 4, 2011, and it seems to receive regular discounting on Dell's Website. But while it looks like a good deal--especially in view of its integrated wireless functionality--it's ultimately a mediocre product overall, with expensive inks.
The V313w's few nice features are tacked onto an otherwise unremarkable machine. The Wi-Fi works fine, and the front of the unit includes both a USB port and a card reader for MMC, MS, SD, and xD media. Though the control panel is easy to use, the buttons are inexplicably small, given the vast amount of space available. The panel tilts upward for easier viewing, but you have to bend the underbody of the panel to retract it.

AVADirect Clevo P151HM: 15-Inch Gaming Powerhouse

My initial impression of the AVADirect Clevo P151HM all-purpose laptop, with its unassuming, matte-black exterior and hefty size, wasn't entirely positive: I'm no fan of bulky, nearly 9-pound (with power brick) 15-inch laptops--I've seen lighter 17-inch units. But as I used the P151HM more, my attitude definitely softened. Some users certainly will love this laptop, despite its bulk. Although I wouldn't want to lug it around, that extra weight has been put to good use.
Most of that additional heft goes toward performance. On our WorldBench 6 suite, the P151HM achieved a solid score of 132, but its gaming performance was truly impressive. The P151HM carries an Nvidia GTX 460M with 1.5GB of video memory and full support for DirectX 11. On 3DMark 2011 its score was 1800--one of the better marks I've seen from a laptop in this class. On the Far Cry 2 benchmark the system delivered a rate of 56.8 frames per second (without antialiasing), which is pretty darned good. Even better, it ran the highly demanding Metro 2033 at 30 fps, albeit at medium settings. Finally, it ran the F1 2010 Formula One racing game, with the high preset enabled, at 67 fps--not too shabby.

Apple iPad 2 Review

A year ago, nobody had an iPad. Then Apple sold 15 million of them in just nine months, creating a whole new category of technology product. The iPad may have become, in the words of Steve Jobs, "the most successful consumer product ever launched."
It turns out that a lot of people saw the iPad's appeal: It's a supremely portable device that's well suited for checking e-mail, surfing the Web, playing games, reading books and other stuff you get off the Internet, and even for getting work done. Kids and the elderly have embraced it, too.

Dell Vostro 460 Business PC

The Dell Vostro 460 is a speedy business desktop equipped with Intel's recently launched Sandy Bridge processor. It starts at $529 (as of March 10, 2011), but our review configuration--which came with a 21.5-inch widescreen monitor--is priced at $1393 ($1163 sans monitor). The system we reviewed packs a decent feature set, including an Intel Core i7-2600 processor, 4GB of RAM (upgradable to 16GB), and Windows 7 Professional 64-bit.
Designwise, the Vostro 460 is nothing special; it's housed in a black plastic minitower case with a smooth, simple front. This is par for the course for machines aimed at small businesses, which tend to eschew the fancier designs of consumer models. The front of the minitower sports a shiny Dell logo above a small, silver power button, as well as a door that slides down to reveal four USB ports, one USB 3.0 port, and headphone and microphone jacks. The PC also has a DVD drive, as well as an additional unoccupied optical bay with a preinstalled eject button.

Origin Genesis Midtower

I know what you're thinking -- didn't PCWorld already review the Origin Genesis Midtower? Good job, young Padawan, because you're right -- we did. However, this variant of Origin's Genesis line is equipped with midrange components, and a slightly less potent Sandy Bridge processor (the Intel Core i5-2500K). Don't let this fool you, though -- Origin's latest actually outstripped its predecessor on our WorldBench 6 tests, thanks in part to it's RAID 0 array, and an overabundance of RAM.
The Genesis Midtower Mainstream ($2,254 as of 3/7/11) packs a party of impressive features under its unassuming hood. Aside from the second-generation Intel i5-2500K (overclocked to 4.5GHz), the Mainstream sports 16GB of RAM, a terabyte of hard drive space (actually a pair of 640GB drives, arranged in RAID 0), and a pair of Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti graphics cards in SLI. You'll also find a DVD-burner, and Windows Home 7 premium (64-bit).

Fujitsu Lifebook T580

Carrying around and using the Fujitsu Lifebook T580 illustrates everything that's right, and wrong, with the Windows Tablet PC model.
First, the upside: the combination of a multitouch screen with gesture recognition and a more traditional, stylus-based interface mesh well together. Given my weird combination of cursive and printing, handwriting recognition works surprisingly well using the stylus. The included Microsoft Touch Pack showcases the Windows 7 multitouch interface quite well. Having a sort of portable notepad seems like a useful thing.

Priced from $941.00 - $999.99

Fujifilm FinePix Real 3D W3

These days, quite a few compact cameras take 3D photos, but the Fujifilm FinePix Real 3D W3 ($500 as of 3/14/2011) is the most full-featured of the pack. It's the only big-name 3D still camera with two lenses and sensors, meaning that it can shoot 3D video as well as still photos; and while other 3D-capable cameras on the market from Sony, Panasonic, and Olympus treat 3D shooting as an additional scene mode, the 3D capabilities in this Finepix camera are front-and-center. This is a 3D camera first, but it also has a range of 2D shooting modes.
It's also a hard camera to rate, since it's as groundbreaking as it is frustrating. It's the best 3D camera we've tested to date, but it's also in a class of its own and has its share of quirks. For all the points it scores in the innovation and wow-factor departments (a glasses-free display, manual controls over both the aperture and parallax controls, and compose-your-own 3D modes that give you independent control over each lens), it's also not for everyone: The display has both sweet spots and headache-inducing spots, the manual controls are hit-or-miss, and getting the hang of composing your own 3D shots takes a bit of time.

Priced from $384.99 - $499.99

HTC Arrive Average WP7 Phone

Windows Phone 7 adds another to its ranks with its first CDMA offering, the HTC Arrive on Sprint. The Arrive (Price TBA with a new two-year contract) is not the best looking phone out there, but its dazzling screen will draw quite a few eyes.
Design
When I first saw the Arrive, it immediately reminded me of HTC's other offering on Sprint, the HTC EVO Shift 4G. Both phones sport 3.6-inch capacitive displays and are roughly the same dimensions (4.63-by-2.32 -by-0.61 inches). The Arrive, however, is slightly heavier at 6.49 ounces.
The Arrive feels a little chunky in your hand and you will definitely feel it in your pocket while walking around. That is because, like the Shift, the Arrive features a slide-out full-QWERTY keyboard for when you don't want to touch type on the screen. The keyboard was easy enough to type on, but I wish that certain keys (like the spacebar) were a tad bigger.
When you slide the keyboard out, a small spring pops your screen up for a better angle. While this is a nice touch, I found the spring to be a little on the flimsy side. To close the keyboard, you have to press down on the screen then slide it back. The entire process is awkward and definitely takes some getting used to.

ViewSonic VT4210: A Thin, Attractive LED HDTV

 The ViewSonic VT4210 LED HDTV is simple and unassuming, and it's a decent choice if you're shopping for a TV without all the frills common in today's sets. This 42-inch set sports an antiglare, antireflective TFT active-matrix LCD and 1080p image resolution, but it also has zero Web features, few input ports, and less-than-excellent speakers. The VT4210 (about $750 as of March 18, 2011) is surprisingly thin and light, however, so if it's a basic TV you're seeking, this may be the one.
Designwise, the VT4210 is rather unremarkable. Surrounding the HDTV's LED screen is a thin, shiny black bezel with sharp, squared-off corners. The bezel has few embellishments save for the mirrored silver ViewSonic logo at the bottom and a small power light on the bottom left. You can wall-mount the HDTV (it weighs just 29.7 pounds) or place it on a sharply rectangular, shiny black stand. The stand weighs an additional 6.6 pounds and is fixed (it does not swivel). That is just as well, since the TV's off-axis viewing angles are mediocre.

Sceptre E420BV-F120 LED HDTV: Disappointing Picture

The Sceptre E420BV-F120 has a list price of $1299 (as of March 23, 2011), but can be found around the Internet for about half that price--and it's not really a surprise as to why. This 42-inch 1080p LED HDTV is slim and simple, but it seriously falls short in the picture department. You can find some pluses--for example, this Sceptre generously offers five HDMI ports--but ultimately its picture quality leaves too much to be desired, from leaking light around the screen edges to extreme noisiness and graininess in the initial out-of-the-box setup.
The E420BV-F120 is a moderately thin, light HDTV with an attractive design. Surrounding the 42-inch screen is a thin, shiny black bezel; the Sceptre logo, in mirrored silver script, is located at the bottom center of the bezel. The speakers are positioned below the bezel, but are so subtly integrated into the design (in the form of a thin, black strip) that you'll barely notice them. The TV perches on an oval, tempered-glass stand with a wide swivel range--45 degrees to either side. The stand is clear around the edges and black on the inside.

Price from: $699.99 

Haier HL46XSL2 LED HDTV

The Haier HL46XSL2 LED edge-lit LCD HDTV retails for around $850 (as of March 18, 2011), making it a good deal for a 46-inch HDTV. But you get what you pay for: This TV posted mediocre scores in both performance and design, and it's fairly bare-bones features-wise.
The HL46XSL2 stands out from other HDTV models, but not for the reasons you might expect. Unlike most HDTVs, which have dark, muted bezels and casing, this HDTV is white.

 $2295.00

Acer Aspire One 522

The Acer Aspire One 522 (model BZ897) is a good, classic netbook with a very reasonable price ($330 as of March 18, 2011). Petite and slim, with a handsome 10.1-inch widescreen LED-backlit display, a 250GB hard drive, an integrated 1.3-megapixel Webcam, and a multitouch touchpad, this portable does a solid job with multimedia and boasts pretty good battery life--nearly 7 hours on the provided six-cell battery, in our tests.
If you're looking for anything approaching ultraportable-class computing power, though, don't expect to find it here. Outfitted with AMD's new 1GHz Fusion C50 dual-core CPU, 1GB of DDR3 1066 MHz RAM (of which 256MB is reserved for the integrated Radeon HD 6250 graphics), and Windows 7 Starter Edition, the Aspire One 522 turned in a puny mark of 32 on our WorldBench 6 test suite, slightly worse than the scores that some Intel Atom-powered competitors have managed and well below the level of most dual-core notebooks. (You might get more oomph by upgrading the memory to the supported 2GB of RAM.) Gaming scores were poor, too, even for a netbook.
Still, while I wouldn't want to run large spreadsheets or edit video on the Aspire One 522, it's certainly adequate for watching Web video or making a video call. The 1280-by-768 display is exceptionally bright and crisp, the audio is fairly robust for a netbook, and the Webcam captures okay video. In a Skype call I made to family members in China, the Aspire One dropped some frames here and there, but otherwise call quality was fine. I also enjoyed watching a bunch of YouTube music videos on the machine.

Digital Storm Enix

The first thing you'll notice about the Digital Storm Enix is its shape. Quite a few high-end PCs come through our labs--the performance desktop category is full of them--but this is the first time a well-equipped gaming rig looked so very much like a mini-fridge, and we don't often see this much power packed so elegantly into such a small space.
Priced at $3627 (as of March 22, 2011), the Enix sports some powerful hardware. It carries an Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge processor, overclocked from 3.4GHz to a speedy 4.7GHz. The Enix also offers two Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 graphics cards in SLI, 8GB of RAM, a 128GB solid-state boot drive, and a 1TB drive for storage.
The Enix is housed in a SilverStone Fortress FT03 black aluminum chassis with fire-engine-red detailing. The case is narrow and tall (19.2 inches high), and practically square-shaped at 9.25 inches wide by 11.2 inches deep. The front, back, and sides are smooth and nearly unblemished, save for a red plastic mesh door on the left side and a front-loading Blu-ray drive slot/Digital Storm logo on the front. The Blu-ray slot has no eject button, which is attractively minimalist but inconvenient for users who don't have an eject button on their keyboard.