Everyone who takes notes should have a Livescribe pen—but maybe not this one, at least not yet. The new Sky Wifi Smartpen ($169.95-$249.95 direct) lets you take synchronized ink and audio notes on paper. In theory, it effortlessly uploads those notes to the Internet, where you can check them on any device capable of running Evernote. In practice, the software isn't quite finished yet.First, paper. While many people take notes on laptops nowadays, there are still a lot of places where paper is better. Laptops are awkward when you're standing up. When you're interviewing someone, a laptop creates a visual and psychological barrier that makes them a little less likely to open up.Phone and tablet note-taking apps such as Evernote and Skitch try to fill the gap, but they can't quite make it. There's a little too much lag, and tablet styli aren't precise enough for you to write small, and the lack of friction makes it difficult to write without looking at the screen.Enter the Livescribe. Paired with special notebooks, this digital pen lets you take ordinary notes on paper, sync them with audio recordings, and play the notes back later. Tap on any point in your writing and you'll hear what was recorded at that moment. Livescribe calls synced ink-and-audio recordings "pencasts."I've used a Livescribe pen for years, and it's indispensable in my line of work. Syncing the ink with audio recordings means I can go back into any point of any interview, checking to see exactly what someone said. It makes quoting people much, much easier. Reach for the Sky
The Sky uses the same body and paper as the earlier 0.5-by-6.2-by-0.8 inch, 1.3 ounce Livescribe Echo , although it traded out the Echo's soft-touch barrel for a less-useful shiny silver-gray one. Both pens are large and somewhat flattened, with a small 12-character LED display on the front, a Power button, and USB and headphone jacks on the top. Yes, it feels more like a marker than like a pen, but as someone who's taken notes for eight hours straight with a Livescribe, I can tell you it isn't too heavy.The actual 'pen' part is just a ballpoint tip that fits into a slot in the front of the pen. You can buy five-packs of tips for $6.95 and they come in black, blue, or red. The tips themselves just feel like cheap ballpoints. They're a little scratchy, but they get the job done. They don't smear, and the fine points are quite fine.With ink, you need paper. The pen comes bundled with a 50-sheet, spiral-bound notebook to get you started. I prefer the 200-page black journals, which run $25 for two, but you can also get different styles of notebooks and notepads, for about $9-$14 each. If you have a 600dpi laser (not inkjet) printer, you can also print your own paper.Then you're ready to get started. Charge the pen via the micro USB port with the included cable, switch it on, and you're recording what you write. Tap on a little icon on the special paper, and you're recording what the pen hears, synced up. The pen's microphone is heavily biased towards nearby sounds, which is fine if you're interviewing somebody one-on-one, but in meetings, you have to turn up the volume to hear people at the other end of a long table.The Sky comes in three models: a 2GB version for $169.95, a 4GB version for $199.95, and an 8GB version for $249.95. All three come with 500MB of Evernote storage (enough for 50-75 hours of audio) and the most expensive model comes with a year's worth of Evernote Premium, a $45 value. As far as I'm concerned, since you'll probably sync the pen at least once a day, there's little reason to get the higher-storage models. I tested the 2GB model.Unfinished Integration
The Sky's major shift is in ditching Livescribe's old, balky desktop software in exchange for Wi-Fi-based integration with Evernote. That's a great idea, but it needs another software rev before it works properly. You lose the oddball Java apps that used to run on the Echo pen, but super-easy syncing with any device is worth the trade-off.Here's the idea: You set up the Sky with a Wi-Fi network using an easy login process. Every time you stop an audio recording, it uploads your audio and ink to Evernote, where it appears online. If, while you're recording, you're not within range of the Wi-Fi network, everything will be uploaded as soon as you return to the network. And since Evernote works with nearly every PC, tablet, and smartphone in existence, you can read back your notes on anything.That's the theory. In practice, it's awkward. I'll set aside the bugs, which Livescribe says will be fixed by launch. Even beyond that, audio notes arrived with the wrong times attached to them and no obvious sign of which note was associated with which page. In my tests, clicking on ink notes to play audio spawned a separate Web window, the Livescribe Player, so you can't play synced audio when offline, at all. You also can't alter the speed of the audio playback, a feature from the old desktop software that I really miss.Individual pages appear as separate notes in Evernote, even though most note-taking sessions involve a bunch of pages. Audio recordings appear as different notes, without a clear guide as to which audio notes are connected to which pages. Since the audio notes are interleaved with the text notes, you can't flip through pages naturally. Some of my audio notes didn't show up in Evernote until hours after I took them, and then they all appeared in a batch.Fortunately, all of the on-pen playback functionality still works fine. You can plug headphones into your pen, tap on ink in your paper notebook and hear what you recorded. You can speed up and slow down playback by tapping on icons in the notebook. But this is a step backwards in functionality: Livescribe took away useful Echo features like controlling playback speed and the optional MyScript handwriting recognition without replacing them yet. Those features may be coming, but they're not here today.Also, struggling with Wi-Fi kills the Sky's battery. On one test day, the pen had terrible trouble syncing, and I ended up with just 4.5 hours of heavy note taking and audio recording on a single charge. Better connectivity on a different day pushed the battery life closer to six hours of audio before I needed to recharge.If you don't have Wi-Fi, you can sync with Evernote using a cable and a desktop helper app, which wasn't available for me to review.Hoping for Better
Livescribe is a cool technology and the Sky is a great idea. But it needs upgrades both to the pen firmware and to Evernote to realize its potential. Syncing needs to be quick and efficient, and Evernote should showcase pencasts, not separate them into their text and audio components or have to launch a helper app.The whole idea of pencasts is the integration between text and audio; the whole idea of a notebook is a seamless, easy to flip through sequence of pages. By breaking every page into a separate note, it's difficult to cruise through the notes you took in a session. By interleaving the audio notes as separate content, it breaks up the experience. By forcing it to spawn the Web-based player to play your synced notes, it adds a step.That said, Livescribe tells me that a lot of positive changes are coming over the next few months. This is a radical shift in direction for the company; it's sort of like having a version 1.0 all over again.I'd advise that Livescribe owners stick with their current pens until the software here improves. If you're a student, journalist, therapist, or other frequent note-taker who also has a Mac or PC, you can pick up this pen and agree to bear with what is sure to be an improving software experience, or go with the Echo, which syncs with Livescribe's balky, but at least consistent, desktop software.We'll revisit this review in a few months after the software is improved. I like where Livescribe is going, it justs need a little more time to get there.
Friday, 2 November 2012
Babbel
Pros Inexpensive online language-learning program. Good quality. Speech-recognition technologies well implemented. Blends listening, reading, writing, and speaking.Cons Quantity of content varies by language. No real-time Web classes. Bottom Line For an inexpensive and little-known language-learning program, Babbel exceeds expectations, delivering high quality courses for anyone who doesn't mind an online-only program.By Jill Duffy 
When I was a high school student learning Spanish, I simply couldn't afford expensive language-learning programs to supplement my studies. Back then, even simplistic audio CDs with workbooks—a format I honestly don't mind—started around $50 or $100, but that would be for just a few lessons. Oh, how times have changed. But can a little-known, online-only, multi-sensory language-learning program that's also very inexpensive be any good? For Babbel (from $12.95 per month), the answer is yes.
I've been exploring Babbel's courses for a few weeks, focusing on German but dabbling in Spanish and Italian a bit to get a sense of how much different courses vary. Considering I had never heard of Babbel before I started testing it, I approached the online language-learning program with more than an ounce of skepticism regarding quality of the content. Boy was I in for a pleasant surprise.
I'd put it on par with Living Language (Platinum) ($179 per year, 3.5 stars) in many respects. I like Babbel's core content better, as well as the ability to pay per month and quit any time, but I also can't deny the huge value-add in Living Language's unlimited real-time Web classes, hosted by trained instructors. Babbel doesn't have that.
Another online-only program that's comparable is Duolingo (free, 4 stars), an Editors' Choice for its ability to deliver outstanding and challenging language-learning content for free, although it's limited to just four languages. Budget-conscious learners who can't find their language of choice in Duolingo (which has Spanish, German, English for Spanish speakers, and French in beta) should give Babbel a whirl, but be sure to take the free trial offer first to gauge the quantity of content for your tongue, as it varies drastically. For more program suggestions, see "The Best Software for Learning a Language."
Languages Offered
Babbel is available in Dutch, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.
That's not quite so many languages as offered by the highly interactive Editors' Choice Rosetta Stone version 4 TOTALe (with even more languages offered if you search beyond "version 4"), or the mostly audio program Pimsleur Comprehensive. If you're looking for a language that's not in high demand, try either of those programs.
Quality and Quantity
As mentioned, Babbel's quality exceeded my fairly modest expectations. I have yet to encounter an error, poorly designed feature, or truly lackluster exercise. Even in competing programs, like Living Language, I came across a few boring mini-games or long stretches of text that I would ultimately just skim. Babbel keeps most of its reading material to tight segments that enhance and reinforce concepts as you learn them.
The overall structure makes sense, too, and progress markers mostly do their job of tracking your work (more on those two points on the next page). All the audio content sounds fine, with the occasional microphone plosive here and there. It's not music-studio grade recording, but it's not low-fi either.
Quantity of content, on the other hand, varies by language. If you're looking to learn Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese, or German, for example, you'll find much more content than if you're working on Dutch, Indonesian, or Polish. Luckily, you can take up Babbel on its free trial to make sure what's included matches your learning level, and if you do subscribe to the service and still find that it's not what you expected, you can leave after a month having only shelled out about $13.
Price
A big selling point for Babbel is price. The online-only program offers three subscriptions: $12.95 per month; $26.85 every three months; or $44.70 every six months.
Compare that with Tell Me More, which charges $199 for a three-month Web pass, or Living Language's $179 price for year-long access, and Babbel seems like a great bargain. With Living Language, you also get to take as many 30-minute webinar-style classes with a live teacher as you can cram into a year. That's a huge value-add and should be something conversational-level learners should consider.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown
Pros Challenging and engaging. Lots of replayability with customization options and random missions.Cons Not quite as complex as the original X-Com. Bottom Line XCOM: Enemy Unknown brings the tight, strategic X-Com experience to PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3, and is a worthy reboot of the classic series. 
By Will Greenwald
By Will Greenwald 2K Games and Firaxis have succeeded in rekindling a long-dead franchise with XCOM: Enemy Unknown. This turn-based strategy game is a reimagining of 1994's X-COM: UFO Defense, a long-beloved game that last saw a sequel in 2001 with the ill-received X-COM: Enforcer, a shooter that didn't have any of the first game's strategy. XCOM: Enemy Unknown feels like a straight remake of the original, bringing almost everything gamers loved about it to the PC, Xbox 360 , and PlayStation 3 , with updated graphics, streamlined gameplay, and plenty of challenge. I reviewed the PC version.
Aliens Attack
The premise of XCOM: Enemy Unknown is simple. Aliens are invading. They're starting with abductions, but as the game progresses it becomes all-out war against Earth. That's where you come in. You command XCOM, a global team that has to fight the aliens. You alternate between the strategic organization level and the tactical combat level, winning battles and building your forces to be ready for new threats.
Half of the game takes place in XCOM headquarters, where you have to manage a large underground installation with multiple types of facilities and uses. Scientists research alien equipment you bring back and let you equip your squads with newer and better weapons and armor. Engineers build the new equipment and excavate and construct new facilities in your headquarters. Soldiers can be given different types of equipment and assigned different skills based on their randomly-assigned class (Assault, Heavy, Support, and Sniper) and their rank, which acts as a level system that rewards soldiers you keep alive and in missions. The Situation Room lets you monitor levels of panic around the world and deploy satellites to improve your cash flow and ability to track threats. These are are important because new equipment and facilities cost money and if too many countries and areas panic and leave the XCOM alliance, the shadowy council will pull the plug on it. Finally, Mission Control lets you scan the planet for threats, respond to requests for aid, and scramble interceptors to shoot down UFOs. Time slowly ticks by in the headquarters unless you speed it up by scanning the world, and those hours and days that pass mean you can research new equipment and build new facilities. The more time that passes, the more time the aliens have to send bigger threats your way, so you have to balance between focusing on shoring up your equipment and taking the fight to them.
Future Warfare
The other half of the game takes place on the ground in different combat missions. You control a squad of up to six soldiers who kill aliens, rescue civilians, defuse bombs, and perform other tasks in large, tile-based, multi-level maps. Each turn, your soldiers can perform up to two actions: move and shoot, move twice as far, move and use items, and perform special attacks like fire rocket launchers (for heavy soldiers) and deal extra damage with head shots (for snipers). As soldiers grow by killing aliens and surviving missions, they get new skills. However, if they die in combat, they're gone and you have to replace them with a less experienced soldier. Since each soldier can be given unique names and looks, it's easy to become attached to them as you walk them through multiple missions, and it makes it that much harder to see them get disintegrated by an alien laser pistol. You'll constantly weigh the merits of aggressively moving forward to complete the mission and trying to keep all your squad alive. The soldier customization isn't quite as robust as in the original XCOM, but it has enough options to give you control over your squad and make you feel attached to your soldiers.
Cover and maneuvering are every bit as important as skills and equipment in battle. Each map is covered in a fog of war, and you need to carefully move your squad forward while keeping them out of the open to find the aliens without getting everyone killed in a few moves. Cover like cars, walls, and wreckage afford your soldiers protection and can mean the difference between an alien winging a soldier and putting him in the infirmary for a week and outright blowing his head off. It's a simple, vital element that is easy enough to use (move your soldiers to objects on the battlefield that show shields or half-shields, depending on how much cover they give in different directions) and keeps the game from becoming a question of loading up heavy weapons and rushing the enemy.
Each playthrough randomizes events, and missions are randomly generated from a pool of maps and objectives (most involving killing all the aliens). It gives the game some variety, but the maps and missions tend to feel similar as you play a full game. Like Diablo III , XCOM: Enemy Unknown would have benefitted from a more granular, tile-based system that procedurally generates maps instead of taking huge, familiar game chunks and bringing them together. It feels less random than the original X-Com, like Diablo III feels less random than Diablo II.
PC Gameplay
I played the PC version, which uses a mouse and keyboard to control the game. Since the action is tile-based, moving soldiers and making them fire is as easily as right-clicking on a location and left-clicking on an enemy. The gamepad controls of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions are about as accessible, using the analog stick instead of a mouse but otherwise offering the same tactical control.
A multiplayer mode lets you face off against friends, but it's fairly limited. Multiplayer games are squad-based with point limits, giving each unit both human (based on equipment) and alien a point value. Players can have small squads of a few very powerful units or a full squad of weak or modest units, and there's no single right way to do it. It's a fun way to play the alien units, but there isn't much depth to it.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown is the return of a beloved and forgotten sci-fi franchise that will entertain tactics fans and satisfy classic gaming fans. More randomized maps and more online options would have been great, but as it stands XCOM: Enemy Unknown is already an excellent strategy game, despite the features it lacks.
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Kanex Sydnee
Pros Clean design. Four 2.1-amp USB ports. Cradles up to three tablets. Occupies one power outlet. Cons Expensive. No bundled Lightning connectors. Bottom Line The Kanex Sydnee stand and charging dock offers a nice way to store, organize, and charge multiple iPads or other USB devices. By Eugene Kim
For many, the $149 (direct) Kanex Sydnee will seem like a superfluous item—who needs to be able to charge three iPads or other tablets simultaneously? Well, as Apple made clear in its latest iPad event, tablets are finding their way into more and more classrooms and businesses. That means multiple iPads in a single location, all of which will need regular juicing. For those applications, the Sydnee makes sense, with a clean design that makes it easy to cradle and charge up to four devices, eliminating the mess of cables and lack of available power outlets. And though it's designed with iDevices in mind, the bring-your-own-cable design means it'll work with just about any USB powered device. It's a little pricey, but if organization is a key concern, the Sydnee is a good solution.
Like many Apple-centric accessories, the Sydnee, available in black or white, adheres to a clean and modern design aesthetic. The smooth lines and glossy finish are attractive, but the stand is constructed from all plastic, so there's a little flex and rattle when you're swapping tablets in and out, but overall, it feels sturdy. There's a small lip on the front of the stand and an interior space that's separated into two compartments by a clear plastic divider. The stand can easily cradle three iPads, even in moderately bulky cases, and there's some rubber padding in the cradle spots, but not enough to fully protect your iPad if the stand gets jostled.
Around back are four USB ports, each delivering 2.1 amps of power, which is sufficient for all iPads, iPhones, and pretty much any USB-powered tablet or smartphone. Kanex includes three 16-inch 30-pin Apple cables, which, of course, won't be compatible with the 4th-generation iPad or the iPad mini without adapters. Fortunately, since the cables aren't built in, you can bring your own cable or add an adapter as necessary. There's a plastic arm on the back of the stand to wrap lengthy cords around, while a slotted rubber piece up top lets you thread and organize all the cables. A power cord extends from the back of the stand, which occupy a single power outlet.
In my tests, the Sydnee was able to charge three iPads simultaneously, with the fourth USB port open for, say, an iPhone or another USB-powered device. It also worked with various Android powered tablets. You'll only be able to use the outermost tablet while docked, and only in landscape orientation, since there is no cutout for the power adapter on the front lip.
At $150, the Kanex Sydnee does seem somewhat overpriced since it's essentially a 4-port USB hub (which you can get for about $20 online), married to a simple plastic tablet cradle. Still, you get three 30-pin cables in the box, and if you have multiple iPads or other tablets in a single location, the Sydnee will make storing and charging them an easy and organized affair. Otherwise, the appeal is, admittedly, a bit limited.
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Nikon AF-S Nikkor 24-120mm f/4G ED VR
Pros Very sharp. 5x zoom range. Fixed aperture.Cons Pricey. Noticeable distortion. Bottom Line The Nikon AF-S Nikkor 24-120mm f/4G ED VR is the standard zoom lens for full-frame Nikon cameras. It's sharp, but exhibits some barrel and pincushion distortion.By Jim Fisher
The Nikon AF-S Nikkor 24-120mm f/4G ED VR ($1,299.95 direct) has long been the standard zoom lens for full-frame Nikon cameras. Only recently has it been joined by a lesser-priced counterpart, the AF-S Nikkor 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5G ED VR. That lens is only $700, but has a shorter zoom range and a slower aperture on the telephoto end. If you're buying on price alone, the 24-85mm will get the job done, but the longer zoom range and fixed aperture of the 24-120mm make it a more versatile lens.
The lens itself is pretty compact, especially compared with the AF-S Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED . It measures 4.1 by 3.3 inches (HD) and weighs just under 1.5 pounds. A bayonet mount hood is included, and the lens is compatible with standard 77mm filters. It can focus as close as 1.5 feet at any focal length, which is quite useful for working tight—but it's no substitute for a real macro lens like the Carl Zeiss Makro-Planar T* 2/100 .
We tested the sharpness and distortion characteristics of the lens using the Nikon D600 and the Imatest software package. It exceeds the 1,800 lines per picture height required for a sharp image at all tested focal lengths and apertures. At 24mm f/4 it records 2,680 lines, a figure that increases to 2,850 by f/8. Barrel distortion is 3.7 percent here, which is about the same as the 24-85mm. It's noticeable in images—straight lines will appear curved outwards—but can be corrected pretty easily using Photoshop.
At about the midpoint of its zoom range, 70mm, the lens notches 2,088 lines at f/4, increasing steadily to 2,978 lines at f/8. At 120mm f/4 it notches 2,300 lines and hits 2,779 lines at f/8. Distortion is of the pincushion variety at these focal lengths, which makes straight lines curve inward. It exhibits 2.9 percent at 70mm and 2.6 percent at 120mm, figures which are noticeable in field conditions, but once again can be corrected with a few clicks in Lightroom.
The Nikon AF-S Nikkor 24-120mm f/4G ED VR is one of a few Nikon FX zoom lenses that start at 24mm. Of them, it has the longest zoom ratio at 5x, but the middle price point and aperture. As such, it represents the best balance of value and performance of the bunch—its f/4 aperture only captures half the light of an f/2.8 lens, but is fine for event photography, especially when coupled with a good Speedlight. The 24-85mm is a solid choice if you're on a budget, but its $700 price tag comes with a lesser zoom range. The 24-70mm f/2.8G ED is the most expensive of the bunch at $1,900, but its fixed f/2.8 aperture comes in handy when it's not permissible or feasible to use a flash.
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LG 42CS560
Pros Inexpensive. Accurate colors. Very bright. Cons Dismal black levels. Only two HDMI ports. Bottom Line You'll make some compromises, but LG's CS560 series of CCFL-backlt LCD HDTVs offer solid overall picture quality with excellent colors at very reasonable prices.By Will Greenwald
These days, you don't have to spent a lot of money for an HDTV. Budget screens are becoming less and less expensive, and you can pick up a solid 42-inch set for under $700 with relative ease. At that price, you'll have to makes some compromises, though. LG's CS560 series of 1080p CCFL-backlit HDTVs are barebones when it comes to features, but they offer excellent color reproduction and a very bright picture. The downside: Black levels aren't great, and shadow details suffer. But the 42-inch model we tested, the 42CS560, retails for just $629.99 (list), so it's tough to deny the price appeal.
Design
As a budget set, the 42CS560 won't win any points for good looks. It's flat, plain, and black, with a bezel that measures 1.5 inches around the screen and a thickish 3-inch profile. It's 29.5 pounds and can be easily mounted on a wall, but doesn't keep a particularly low profile. A small, nearly invisible row of touch-sensitive controls sit on the lower right corner of the bezel, controlling power, volume, channels, and menu navigation, though you'll likely be using the simple remote most of the time. Around back, there are just two HDMI ports, component and composite video inputs, and an Ethernet port. A single USB port sits on the side, making it the only port you can conveniently access while the screen is mounted on a wall.
The 7.2-inch remote has plain rubber buttons and isn't backlit. You get four color buttons for various contextual uses, and the SimpLink button provides access to the TV's DLNA feature. It's a big departure from the remotes on LG's high-end HDTVs, which often come in pairs; one long, sleek conventional remote and one motion-sensing magic wand.
You won't find any online services or other extra features on the 42CS560. It supports DLNA through Ethernet so you can play media from computers and other devices over your home network, and has a tuner so you can watch over-the-air or basic (clearQAM) cable without any extra devices, but that's it. Again, it's a strictly barebones HDTV.
Performance
We test HDTVs with DisplayMate test patterns, SpectraCal's CalMAN software, and a Konica Minolta CS 200 Chroma Meter. While the 42CS560 suffers in black levels, it gets very bright and its color accuracy out of the box is excellent. In our tests, after basic contrast and brightness calibration, the 42CS560 displayed 335.48 cd/m2 (candelas per square inch) peak brightness. However, at those settings, it only reached a black level of 0.34 cd/m2, a very poor showing for any type of HDTV. Cranking the backlight down cut the black level to a still-poor 0.17 cd/m2, but it cut peak brightness in half as well. You might be able to coax the blacks darker, but the contrast won't differ much from the tested 987:1 contrast ratio we measured. Our Editors' Choice budget HDTV, the 720p plasma Samsung PN51E490B4F, reached a much better, but still mediocre 0.08 cd/m2. If you want dark black levels, look elsewhere, but you probably won't find levels lower than 0.05 cd/m2 without spending upward of $1,000.
The 42CS560 fares much better in color response. Out of the box, with color temperature set to Warm, blues and reds were nearly perfect and green registered as only slightly cool. As the CIE color measurement chart below shows, the screen shows colors that are very close to ideal (the circles represent the recorded colors, and the squares represent the ideal levels). If the colors seem slightly off to you, the 42CS560 has a plethora of advanced color options, including individual saturation and tint settings for six color channels.
I watched Piranha on Blu-ray on the 42CS560, and while the bright, vibrant colors looked good during the party sequences above the water, the poor black levels hurt the dark scenes under the water. Deep reds and bluish greens of the blood and water made the scenes above pop, but in the murky deeps shadows looked pale and uninspiring.
As a CCFL-backlit LCD HDTV, the 42CS560 is a bit of a power hog. With no energy saving features enabled, it consumes 136 watts, high for its size. With energy saving set to Medium, it consumes a more modest 80 watts while keeping the screen bright enough to be comfortably watched. The Auto and Maximum energy saving modes cut the power down to 60 watts, but made the screen slightly too dark. In comparison, the Sony KDL-46EX750 LED-backlit LCD HDTV consumes only 67 watts with no power saving features turned on and 48 watts with power saving enabled.
Overall, the CS560 series offers excellent color reproduction, but its poor black levels keep us from recommending it wholeheartedly. While it offers a 1080p picture for a very low price, you're also getting a serious lack of features, few HDMI ports, and sketchy shadow detail. The 720p, 51-inch Samsung PN51E490B4F plasma remains our Editors' Choice for budget HDTVs, with darker black levels and 3D support with glasses for nearly the same price. If you can spend a bit more, the Vizio E601-A33 offers a much more full-featured experience with online services, built-in Wi-Fi, and a larger, 60-inch panel at about $1,000.
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Subjekt Pulse Bluetooth Headphones (PLS-9600)
Pros Strong wireless audio performance, with ample bass response and crisp highs. Comfortable, simple design. Built-in remote controls and microphone for calls and music playback on mobile devices.Cons Overpriced compared with the direct competition. Sound leaks from on-ear design. No charger included, only a charging cable. Microphone call clarity is not a strength. Bottom Line Despite the general quality of the Subjekt Pulse Bluetooth Headphones (PLS-9600), there's a dead ringer on the market that is far more affordable.By Tim Gideon
Stereo Bluetooth headphones are sounding a lot better than they used to, thanks to serious improvements with Bluetooth codecs. Suddenly, we have a lot of options to consider—even budget-friendly options—that offer surprisingly good sound. Subjekt's Pulse Bluetooth Headphones ($99.99 direct) are one such pair, providing solid audio performance for their under-$100 price. The only problem: So does another pair we've reviewed...a pair that, to understate things, looks and sounds very similar, yet costs $30 less. So, our generally positive review of the Pulse now becomes a side-by-side comparision of the Pulse and the eerily similar Outdoor Technology DJ Slims .
Design
There's no other way to put it: The Subjekt Pulse looks alarmingly like the DJ Slims. Both pairs feature a wide black plastic headband and near-identical controls—the only obvious differences are in ear pad size and paint job. Even the metallic headband adjustors look the same, and when you remove the earpads, the enclosures and grilles housing the drivers look identical (same size and number of holes, same swivel-type mount to the headband). There are some other subtle differentiators, like the use of different headband material textures (rubberized on the DJ Slims, glossy on the Pulse) and a raised, stylized button surface on the DJ Slims—see the picture below for a side-by-side comparison.
The Power button and controls are located on the right earpiece, and a dummy set of controls (that look like buttons but aren't) covers the left earpiece's outer panel, presumably for aesthetic symmetry. Yup, same setup on the DJ Slims. The blinking blue status LED is sized and placed identically on both pairs—something, by the way, that's not optimal. The light could be smaller, and placed somewhere so that those around you don't have to see it flashing constantly while you wear them.
Basically, it looks like Outdoor Technology and Subjekt bought their headphone frames from the same OEM. Does that mean they sound identical? Hard to say! We'll discuss this more at length later on in the review, but we have to give Subjekt the benefit of the doubt here, because there are enough physical differences (the contour of the controls, the glossy versus rubberized headband materials) that it's possible the internals are slightly different, as well.
The Subjekt Pulse comes with a charging cable but no actual charger—this is increasingly the standard for Bluetooth headsets, but it's not a good thing. It ensures that you'll need a computer with a USB port (or charger) around in order to get juice when the battery needs recharging—but what if you want to travel light? Isn't the point of highly mobile, wireless headphones to cut down on the clutter? For the record, the DJ Slims are guilty of the same crime.
Subjekt rates battery life for the Pulse at about 10-11 hours, which is comparable to the DJ Slims. The Pulse supports Bluetooth 2.1 and headset, hands-free, A2DP, and AVRCP Bluetooth profiles.
Performance
The Pulse delivers deep bass cleanly, even at maximum volumes—there may be a hint of distortion when both the sound source and the headphones are at maximum volume on tracks like our bass test track, "Silent Shout," by the Knife, but it is barely noticeable.
The mids and highs sound tweaked and sculpted, and the end result is very crisp, and ideal for a lot of popular modern music styles. It works well on classical tracks, too, like John Adams' "The Chairman Dances," bringing out higher register strings and percussion, while adding a bit of low-end boost to the lower register percussion and strings. It's never over the top, but it's clear that this is not really a flat-response sound signature, so audiophiles and purists will likely want to steer clear.
Call clarity on the Pulse is not a strength—my call partners often said I sounded muffled, as did their audio at times. I was using an iPhone 4S, which isn't exactly the king of call clarity to begin with, but this seemed a bit more muffled than usual. Regardless, it was never so unintelligible that we couldn't understand each other. Operating the on-ear controls for volume, playback, and answering calls was a snap.
Okay, now let's bring back the side-by-side comparison. There's no denying that the two pairs sound very similar, in terms of brightness and bass response. It did seem, with both pairs at maximum volume as well as the iPhone 4S source maxed out, that the Subjekt Pulse was slightly louder, but this could be anything from a slight disparity between two (possibly) identical products, a slight variance in performance due to the two pairs using slightly different drivers, or even the thickness and shape of the foam ear pads could make the difference.
It's hard to say for sure if the Pulse and the DJ Slims are the same pair of headphones wearing different costumes. Probably. But it's hardly a unique situation; enterprising young companies often choose to put their own stamp on models also offered to their direct competition by OEMs.
It also doesn't mean the Pulse is ripping off the DJ Slims, or vice-versa—they're both quality budget Bluetooth headphone options. What it really comes down to is price. Regardless of whether these are the same OEM model or not, they sound very similar, but the DJ Slims are a full $30 less. That's quite a discount. It's enough that we forgive the DJ Slims some shortcomings because it's priced at about $70, while we are less forgiving of the Pulse, which is priced around $100.
This was a complicated review to write: I don't think the Subjekt Pulse is anything but a solid, affordable pair of Bluetooth headphones. There just happens to be a far more affordable option offering the same performance for $30 less. Obviously, this affects the rating. If these side-by-side comparisons give you a headache, I don't blame you. The good news is, there are other quality Bluetooth options too. The Sennheiser MM 100 is a well-priced, behind-the-head headband style pair, and if you have some more money to spend, the recent Beats by Dr. Dre Wireless offers audio that may be highly sculpted, but still sounds great, especially if you're a bass lover. If you'd rather go the in-ear route, the Phiaton PS 20 BT is another inexpensive Bluetooth option.
More Headphone Reviews:
• Subjekt Pulse Bluetooth Headphones (PLS-9600)
• Heir Audio 4.Ai Universal In-Ear Monitor
• Phiaton Moderna MS 200
• RHA SA950i
• Audiofly AF78
• more
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