Noise canceling headphones are not new to the market and we showed at least a couple of them in the past, but this time we took Creative’s Aurvana X-Fi for a test drive and will definitely tell you everything about it.

Weighing about 250 grams, with a great design using the black and silver scheme, these headphones use two AAA batteries and have on-ear controls to switch the device on and off or to adjust volume levels. But these are somehow standard, so why not get deeper and see why it would be worth it to buy and why wouldn’t.

PROs on the new Creative Aurvana X-Fi Noise Cancelling Headphones

• The noise canceling feature is great. It cancels out ambient noise really well and makes your music sound much more clearer.
• The “cans” are larger, extremely easy to wear and will offer the great comfort we all need when listening to music.
• Aurvana X-Fi is adjustable for a variety of different head sizes and comfort levels
• The X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity feature will restore detail and will expand your music and movies to surround sound.
• The X-Fi CMSS-3D feature is a virtual surround-sound effect that you’ll want to use with movies and games because it gives the sound a sense of physical depth
• The X-Fi Crystalizer feature really makes music sound better - it really does work with lossy files
• There’s the possibility to turn on and off the noise-canceling and other features.

Of course there are disadvantages so here’s what could have been built better:

• We would have appreciate a li-ion battery instead of two AAA even though it means it works just right after taking it out of the box
• The size and the weight of the headphones, are a big drawback. However I do agree that comfort and great noise-canceling need larger cans.

Price is somewhere at $300 so if you’re picky with your headsets, that would be a great solution.

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These days I’ve been working on redesigning my apartment so I really had a hard time to decide if I should install a home theater system in my living room (office, too) so I took some time reading reviews about all sorts of devices. Some were cheap some were expensive, but now I can tell that I’ve made my mind.

I got Sony’s utra-compact 5.1 home cinema system that an average person could setup in no time, Sony DAV-IS10 got my attention with its black finish and the slick hidden controls that light up once touched.

Sony’s new technology, Bravia Theater Sync, the whole system is extremely powerful : 5 satellites x 50W and 2-way subwoofer x 100W. That makes a total of 450 watts which is more than my neighbors can bear. But I still love it. It also comes with a compact, single disc DVD/CD player/ receiver with touch-sensitive controls, has a Digital Media Port to enable WiFi and Bluetooth streaming and an iPod docking.

The specs are speaking for themselves and I still can’t understand how a satellite as big as an apple can sport 50W (real) but it’s a Sony. They know stuff.

Just to be brief, here are the things I enjoyed the most with the new Sony DAV-IS10:

• Incredibly small surround satellites. Despite their size, they deliver a surprisingly powerful performance.
• The active subwoofer fills the gap. It has dual drivers that take care of the midrange frequencies that the satellites can’t manage.
• Image quality is excellent. Colors are rich and vibrant without overwhelming natural tones and there is very little noise, especially with upscaled images.
• The stylish design is impressive, but you would’ve expected this from a Sony, wouldn’t you?

A review wouldn’t be complete if we wouldn’t tell you what are the weaknesses of this home theater system.

• Though it was built for maximum discretion, we’d go for slightly bigger cabinets for more midrange depth and detail.
• I’d love it to have 1080p video upscaling

That would be all on Sony’s DAV-IS10. Do you own one? Do you love it?

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It’s that time of the month again when we get great products to review, and this time we got the Creative GigaWorks T20 to please our ears. They are a standard 2.0 speakers solution for desktop PCs that every gamer or computer user will appreciate because they offer quality sound at an affordable price. It’s the best in the GigaWorks brand so far, so you may want to stay on and read the rest.

With a sleek and eye-catching design, with a mid/low range driver and a high range tweeter, finished in smart dark metallic grey plastic with rounded corners, GigaWorks T20 speakers are pretty large. But, and there’s a but, wish they wouldn’t be THAT rounded. Might be a bit unstable. All in all, I like the looks really much, so let’s go on.

It has the Bass, Treble and Volume controls as well as the headphone jack and auxiliary-in (for easy connection to an MP3 player) on the right channel speaker. It also features a twin phono to 3.5mm adapter and a two metre 3.5mm cable for connection to a PC, so you can only imagine that game consoles or other devices can be linked to it, easily.

Though you may believe a 2.0 system without a subwoofer to give the bass that extra ‘oomph’ wouldn’t perform well, you got that wrong. Really wrong. Most of the time the subwoofer is usually responsible for problems involving poor bass and resulting in a lot of cross over between the speakers. This is why the GigaWorks T20 feature a porthole - dubbed a BasXPort by Creative - in the top of their slender, that will offer a fuller sound and compensating for a subwoofer.

The best thing about the Creative GigaWorks T20 is obviously the quality you get for its price. Some $80 in the US. You may want to buy that set of speakers yourself and see they’re great.

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Lenovo is throwing new models of laptops at us like there is no tomorrow, like there is a new chipset and they want to be the first ones to overcrowd the market with new stuff. It’s their new and improved line of ThinkPads.

At the starting line we have first the SL series intended to be a small business line. The price ranges from $699 to $1199, they have an optional HDMI port, Blu-ray and 3G add-on from AT&T, Ericsson and WiMax for around $30. The SL series will come in 3 models: SL300 (13-inch), SL400 (14-inch) and SL500 (15-inch).

Second at the starting line, as a new entry is the W series (split from the T series). They try to steal our eyes with Switchable Graphics, which lets you switch from discreet to integrated graphics without rebooting the computer, along with Display Port.

There’s also the R series that represents the budget series.

All of these models have one thing in common, they all run on Centrino 2 schemes. As for the pricing, the SL400 and SL500 (already in stores) starts at $799, while the others will hit the shops in August and will go from $899 and may reach $1999 for the W500.

via Engadget

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Everyone kept telling me that this little piece from Nokia, the N95 is such a great phone and that we should do a review on DevicePedia.com. So what we did? We got one, used it for 2 weeks and now we’re ready to tell you why Nokia N95 rocks and something about those nasty things that you only find out, using one.

So I got myself a Nokia N95 8GB and used it intensly. But here are the first things that we’ll start with. The GOOD part. The specs, which are great.

• Screen 240×320 px, 2.6 inch, TFT LCD - Exceptional video quality, vivid colors and high brightness controlled by ambient light detector
• Camera 5 Megapixels (Back): it’s a 2592×1944 resolution, autofocus camera with Carl Zeiss Tessar optics (f/2.8, 5.6 mm, 10 cm ~ infinity focusing range) and 1/1000th ~ 1/3rd s mechanical shutter provide the best quality you can get from a camera phone.
• Second camera CIF video call (Front)
• Operating system Symbian OS v9.2, S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 1
• Input Keypad
• MicroSD memory card if 8GB is not enough
• Networks HSDPA (3.5G), Quad band GSM / GPRS / EDGE GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900
• Connectivity: wireless LAN (802.11 b/g, up to 54 Mbit/s) and UPnP (Universal Plug and Play), Bluetooth 2.0 EDR (up to 3 Mbit/s) and USB 2.0 Full Speed (12 Mbit/s) via Mini USB with mass storage class support.
• Built-in GPS receiver and the Smart2Go software
• Exceptional video quality, vivid colors and high brightness controlled by ambient light detector
• Standard 3.5mm jack that’s great with your new pair of expensive headphones
• Runs on Symbian OS 9.2 S60 3.1 (3rd Edition Feature Pack 1)
• TV-quality video recording @ VGA resolution and 30 frames per second
• powerful ARM11-based TI OMAP2420 processor running at 330 MHz
• Form factor Slider. Slide up to reveal the keyboard, slide down to reveal the multimedia buttons.

Not all is great with our Nokia N95 8GB Review so there are things we didn’t like. The BAD.

• The battery. The specs Nokia comes gave us, are only true when you disable GPS, WiFi or if you don’t surf the Internet. Because if you do, you’ll have to recharge the battery daily. We won’t mention those that speak at least 2 hours on the phone daily (business people) which may see this as a big drawback.
• I would have enjoyed the Sirf Star III GPS chipset instead of the Sirf Star II (which is older and less precise).
• The sliding part is a tad too loose - moves and rattles. Also, I would enjoy a lock to prevent it from sliding out.
• The 22MB free RAM is just too little for this beast

All in all, that’s a great mobile phone that we’d have put a better battery inside to make it one of the best.

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