Review Roundup: This week&#39;s hottest reviews on TechRadar

Saturday, 17 December 2011

Review Roundup: This week's hottest reviews on TechRadar

This week's reviews on TechRadar

We've had some fantastic gear in the TechRadar offices this week, including the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime, the Motorola Xoom 2 and the splendid Samsung UE46D8000 TV,

Read on for this week's most popular reviews on TechRadar.

Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime review

The original Asus Eee Pad Transformer is still one of the best Android tablets around, but the Prime is the best of them all. It's one step better than its predecessor in every respect, and is the first tablet to launch with Nvidia's quad-core Tegra 3 CPU which adds super-powers and increased power efficiency.

It's also the thinnest tablet we've yet seen, and comes with a gorgeous keyboard dock which adds an additional 8-hours of battery life to the tablet unit's 9-hours. It's the best Android tablet yet launched, and it'll be unleashed on the UK in January in one single 32GB flavour with keyboard dock and a £499 price tag.

Motorola Xoom 2 review

The Motorola Xoom 2's most noticeable upgrade might be in the chassis, but it's also had an upgrade to a 1.2GHz CPU, along with Android 3.2. This has produced a tablet that's quite snappy overall, though it does still suffer from the odd moment where swipes take a moment to register.

In all honesty, we're rather disappointed with the Xoom 2. It's not the all-conquering tablet we were hoping it was going to be. It doesn't quite match the best Android tablets out there or the iPad for quality, and many good Android tablets have it beaten for price. Ultimately, the Xoom 2 is an improvement over the original Xoom, but not over the competition.

Motorola xoom

Samsung Galaxy Y review

The Samsung Galaxy Y is yet another low-cost smartphone. It doesn't have any features that stand out particularly, and indeed it has some which make it rather less attractive than other low cost options.

The small screen we can forgive. After all, costs have to be kept down. But the low resolution is not something we forgive so lightly. Over a year ago Orange produced its 480 x 800 3.5-inch screened San Francisco, and against it the Samsung Galaxy Y's screen looks pedestrian. The camera is poor too. We weren't able to test video recording, but its low resolution is a worry, and at 2 megapixels for stills we aren't impressed.

Samsung galaxy y

Samsung UE46D8000 review

From the moment you first lay eyes on it, the UE46D8000 is a very special TV. The thin bezel, super-slim profile and gorgeous silver stand make it an absolute stunner design-wise. But its feature list is equally attractive, offering the latest mod cons like network media streaming and Smart Hub, as well as support for 3D, external HDD recording and multimedia formats.

But there's substance behind the style too. In terms of picture quality it may not boast the direct LED backlighting of its higher-end brethren, but it deploys its edge LEDs to devastating effect, bringing you sharp, nuanced and deep hi-def pictures with both 2D and 3D material.

UE46D8000

Samsung MV800 review

The key feature of the Samsung MV800 is of course its tilting screen, which makes it one of the only compact cameras to feature an adjustable screen, especially at this price point. While other screens articulate round to the side of a camera, the Samsung MV800's flips up to the top, making it the world's first compact camera to feature such a screen.

But ultimately for the price point we think it's a disappointment and would encourage anyone thinking of buying this compact camera to wait and see if it reduces in price first.

MV800