Second, the specter of Lucas, the British company famous for faulty parts, inhabits the electronics. The parking brake, despite its classic-looking lever, is electronically actuated, and proved troublesome to release. The radio display occasionally got stuck in phone mode, and the only way to force it to switch to the audio interface was to plug an iPod or USB into the car.

However, those issues make little difference when gazing upon the tight, roadster body with its classic proportions, or when listening to the rough growl of the 4.7-liter engine when the revs climb. Pushing the button labeled Sport and pointing the stiff-bodied Vantage into a turn, feeling its tail happily slide out, will emphasize the view out the windshield, sidelining any concern over tuning in a satellite radio station.

2012 Aston Martin V8 Vantage Roadster (photos)

The new Vantage incorporates Aston Martin design quirks, such as the row of buttons on the dashboard that serves as a drive selector. In the midst of these buttons sits the slot for the crystal ignition fob. Drivers will also need to get used the counter-rotating speedometer and tachometer. Much of what puts the V8 Vantage Roadster’s price well over $100,000 is the coachwork, which favors leather and metal instead of plastic.

V-12 engines power most of Aston Martin’s models, but the company downsized the engine for the V8 Vantage to make it more affordable. This new 4.7-liter V-8 engine, with its massive intake manifold, looks powerful, but is not all that special. Its output of 420 horsepower and 346 pound-feet of torque comes in under that of the latest V-8 Ford Mustangs.

Despite the power, the V8 Vantage hits 60 mph in a very respectable 4.7 seconds. And it does it with a thrilling exhaust note, a throaty growl that rises and falls with the gear shifts. The naturally aspirated engine delivers its power easily, and the Sport button makes the accelerator even more responsive. Fuel economy, 14 mpg city and 21 mpg highway, is about average for an engine of this size.

With the automated manual transmission, the driver selects the drive mode using dashboard buttons.

(Credit:
Josh Miller/CNET)

But those gear shifts are a problem. CNET’s car came with Aston Martin’s new single-clutch automated manual transmission, and it is only good at high revs on a track. On public roads in full automatic mode, steady acceleration led to big power dips during gear changes. The car literally slowed enough at each change to throw my head forward.

Using the paddle shifters to row through the transmission’s seven gears did not help, either. Asking for a gear change up or down lead to similar dips as the transmission took its time to engage the next gear, disengaging the engine from the wheels. In traffic, this behavior could be particularly frustrating, as I occasionally needed power for a lane change or merge right when the transmission was changing gears. These power dips were not as much in evidence when I could keep the revs up, racing the car through a set of turns.

However, I’m not counting the transmission as a reason not to buy the V8 Vantage Roadster simply because it is only an option. The six-speed manual base transmission will make the car much more drivable in everyday circumstances.

The tachometer needle turns counterclockwise, which takes getting used to.

(Credit:
Josh Miller/CNET)

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Beyond the budget price is a nice 4-inch Super AMOLED display, a 1.4GHz processor, a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera that captures 720p HD video, and a front-facing camera. While the Focus 2 will certainly lure in new Windows Phone users and deal-lovers, those looking for stepped-up camera resolution and larger memory storage should consider either of ATT’s other two LTE phones, or if data speed isn’t a worry, then the Samsung Focus S.

Samsung Focus 2 (photos)

Design
Samsung is taking a cue from the cultural color zeitgeist and offering the Focus 2 in white, accented by a silvery trim. Although the Focus 2 is constructed of durable-feeling, hard-molded plastic, the smooth finish makes it look fairly classy. The coating may be a little too glossy, however. While it felt silky to the touch, it also slipped out of my hands and off my lap more than once. This would have been a good candidate for at least a patch of textured backing, preferably a soft rubberized area, to lend some grip. The Focus 2 may not be vying for the title of slimmest phone, but I found the dimensions comfortable, fairly compact, and easy to fit in a jeans pocket or purse. The handset measures about 4.7 inches tall by 2.5 inches wide by 0.5 inch deep and weighs 4.3 ounces. It’s no lightweight, but it has about the right amount of heft.

The Samsung Focus 2 has good midrange features and a price tag you have to appreciate.

(Credit:
Josh Miller/CNET)

A 4-inch Super AMOLED display greets you on the phone’s face, with a 800×480-pixel (WVGA) resolution that’s pretty standard for a screen this size. The simplicity of the Windows Phone OS tiles works well with the resolution, and text looks pretty sharply defined to the naked eye. As usual, Samsung’s chosen display makes blacks look black and colors pop. In fact, compared with screens by other phone makers, Samsung’s Super AMOLED screens make colors look oversaturated. While this works to the phone’s advantage in most cases, your photos may look a little candy-coated (but more on this later.)

Above the touch screen is a front-facing VGA camera. Below the display are three backlit, touch-sensitive navigation buttons for back, home, and search. The secondary functions are there as well: press and hold the back button to see and select your recently opened apps, and do the same for the home button to launch voice actions. The search button pulls up Bing, from which you can also scan bar codes and identify music, in addition to other functions.

Silvery buttons on the right spine control power and the camera shutter. The volume rocker is on the left spine. A Micro-USB charging port is on the bottom and up top is the 3.5mm headset jack. Flip over the phone to see the 5-megapixel camera lens and flash. No current Windows Phone devices have expandable memory, so you won’t find a microSD card slot, try as you might. The Focus 2 uses a micro-SIM card.

Features
Microsoft sits in between Android and iOS when it comes to how locked-down the operating system is to manufacturer enhancements, but in general there’s tremendous uniformity among the devices. If you know Windows Phone on one phone, you know it on them all. To recap, you’ll find support for the hallmark connection and communication features: Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, maps, e-mail, and text and multimedia messaging. There’s also hot-spot support, some neat integration with your phone contacts and social-networking services, built-in podcast subscription support, and Xbox Live.

Backlit touch-sensitive navigation buttons stand out against the phone’s glossy white plastic shell.

(Credit:
Josh Miller/CNET)

Microsoft made an effort to bake certain useful enhancements into the OS, including the aforementioned voice actions, music ID, and bar code scanning for identification and shopping uses. There’s also Yelp-like functionality in Local Scout, social network check-in from the personal profile on the Start screen, and auto-fix editing features in the camera app.

ATT and Samsung slipped in their usual complement of apps as well. In Samsung’s case, these are tidily corralled in the Samsung Zone within the application Marketplace. They include the Tango video chat app, Photo Studio, and a daily headline, to name but a few. Also in the Marketplace is ATT Featured, where you’ll find the excellent Pandora competitor Slacker Radio, Yellow Pages mobile (YP), and a bushel of ATT account management apps.

The Focus 2 took nice shots with its 5-megapixel camera.

(Credit:
Josh Miller/CNET)

You’ll see many of the carrier’s apps repeated on the app launch screen: ATT Code Scanner, Family Map, and My ATT. A subscription to ATT Navigator delivers turn-by-turn voice directions, and signing up for ATT U-verse Mobile gives you access to TV and videos. In addition to these are Microsoft’s essential tools, which include an alarm, a calculator, a calendar, Internet Explorer, and folders for People, Games, and Music + Video.

Chicago’s Millennium Park sparkling in the sunlight, courtesy of the Focus 2.

(Credit:
Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

The quality of what you get from the Focus 2′s 5-megapixel rear-facing camera is variable, depending on how you fuss with the settings. Samsung’s Windows phones have a bad habit of defaulting to the medium sharpness, even though they can increase two more sharpness levels. I’m someone who would prefer a “sharp” or “maximum” default, and only manually set a middle-of-the-road resolution if I want to be careful about the file size for mobile sharing or uploading.

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Image quality
The F3′s photos generally look very good, though I wish raw file support were available, because I suspect the F3′s raw photos at ISO 400 look a lot better. There’s a visible loss of detail in the JPEGs between ISO 200 and ISO 400. Taken at face value, however, without comparing across various sensitivities, the camera’s photos are good for its price class. ISO 200 JPEGs look clean and free of artifacts, and low-light JPEGs are usable at least up through ISO 800, and depending upon their content and how you plan to display them, as high as ISO 3200. They do get pretty soft, and you can definitely see noise in flat, dark areas, but it preserves the dynamic range and white balance quite well. If you’re looking for a camera with better low-light photo quality than a point-and-shoot, the NEX-F3 definitely qualifies.

Click to view/download ISO 100

ISO 800
ISO 3200

Color and exposure look about right as well, and though there’s no neutral color style the default doesn’t push the saturation so much that you get hue shifts.

Sony Alpha NEX-F3 photo samples

Video looks good as well; though there are aliasing and moiré artifacts at the best quality, in part because it’s interlaced rather than progressive, in dim and dark lighting there’s surprisingly little noise. In decent light it’s fairly flat and soft, but it’s still far better than what comes out of Sony’s entry-level camcorders.

Performance
While the F3 is generally pretty fast and an overall improvement over the C3, it can also be irksomely inconsistent. It’s relatively slow to wake, taking 1.6 seconds to power on, focus, and shoot. That’s assuming you haven’t used an unfamiliar SD card; Sony’s cameras automatically begin a Create Image Database cycle when you insert the card, which can get downright annoying.

By the numbers, the shot lag looks really good: only 0.3 second to focus and shoot in bright light and 0.4 second in low-contrast light. In practice, low-light autofocus can be iffy. As with other consumer NEX models, if it’s having trouble focusing in low light it will automatically jump to wide-area AF, which embraces the entire scene, and you may end up with a focus lock, but on the wrong subject. And with some lenses — the mediocre 50mm f1.8, for example — it frequently hunts without locking. During video capture, the continous autofocus pulses a bit as well, even on a still subject.

At 0.7 second, it matches its peers on shot-to-shot speeds, and the flash recycles pretty quickly, adding only about 0.1 second to the sequential shooting overhead. Continuous shooting is a bit sluggish, but overall the camera should be able to keep up with a toddler in bright sunlight.

Design and features
Though it’s a little bigger and heavier than the C3, I nevertheless like the extra bulk of the F3. It’s got a deeper grip, for one thing, which makes it easier to shoot single-handed. The body’s made of polycarbonate, and feels a little cheaper than previous models, but it still feels pretty well-constructed.

On top are a redesigned power switch, a newly added built-in pop-up flash, and a covered accessory connector for add-ons like a microphone. As on Panasonic’s ILCs, the flash can be tilted backward for bounced indirect lighting in order to produce a much better shot. The movie record and playback buttons sit behind the power switch on the angled edge of the back. There’s a lip around the record button to prevent accidental pressing, but I find it makes it annoyingly difficult to stop and start video.

Article source: http://reviews.cnet.com/Sony_Alpha_NEX_F3_with_18_55mm_lens_Black/4505-6501_7-35299020.html?subj=fdba&part=rss&tag=rb_content%3Brb_mtx_Digital+cameras

Image quality
The F3′s photos generally look very good, though I wish raw file support were available, because I suspect the F3′s raw photos at ISO 400 look a lot better. There’s a visible loss of detail in the JPEGs between ISO 200 and ISO 400. Taken at face value, however, without comparing across various sensitivities, the camera’s photos are good for its price class. ISO 200 JPEGs look clean and free of artifacts, and low-light JPEGs are usable at least up through ISO 800, and depending upon their content and how you plan to display them, as high as ISO 3200. They do get pretty soft, and you can definitely see noise in flat, dark areas, but it preserves the dynamic range and white balance quite well. If you’re looking for a camera with better low-light photo quality than a point-and-shoot, the NEX-F3 definitely qualifies.

Click to view/download ISO 100

ISO 800
ISO 3200

Color and exposure look about right as well, and though there’s no neutral color style the default doesn’t push the saturation so much that you get hue shifts.

Sony Alpha NEX-F3 photo samples

Video looks good as well; though there are aliasing and moiré artifacts at the best quality, in part because it’s interlaced rather than progressive, in dim and dark lighting there’s surprisingly little noise. In decent light it’s fairly flat and soft, but it’s still far better than what comes out of Sony’s entry-level camcorders.

Performance
While the F3 is generally pretty fast and an overall improvement over the C3, it can also be irksomely inconsistent. It’s relatively slow to wake, taking 1.6 seconds to power on, focus, and shoot. That’s assuming you haven’t used an unfamiliar SD card; Sony’s cameras automatically begin a Create Image Database cycle when you insert the card, which can get downright annoying.

By the numbers, the shot lag looks really good: only 0.3 second to focus and shoot in bright light and 0.4 second in low-contrast light. In practice, low-light autofocus can be iffy. As with other consumer NEX models, if it’s having trouble focusing in low light it will automatically jump to wide-area AF, which embraces the entire scene, and you may end up with a focus lock, but on the wrong subject. And with some lenses — the mediocre 50mm f1.8, for example — it frequently hunts without locking. During video capture, the continous autofocus pulses a bit as well, even on a still subject.

At 0.7 second, it matches its peers on shot-to-shot speeds, and the flash recycles pretty quickly, adding only about 0.1 second to the sequential shooting overhead. Continuous shooting is a bit sluggish, but overall the camera should be able to keep up with a toddler in bright sunlight.

Design and features
Though it’s a little bigger and heavier than the C3, I nevertheless like the extra bulk of the F3. It’s got a deeper grip, for one thing, which makes it easier to shoot single-handed. The body’s made of polycarbonate, and feels a little cheaper than previous models, but it still feels pretty well-constructed.

On top are a redesigned power switch, a newly added built-in pop-up flash, and a covered accessory connector for add-ons like a microphone. As on Panasonic’s ILCs, the flash can be tilted backward for bounced indirect lighting in order to produce a much better shot. The movie record and playback buttons sit behind the power switch on the angled edge of the back. There’s a lip around the record button to prevent accidental pressing, but I find it makes it annoyingly difficult to stop and start video.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cnet/YIff/~3/vO8gN9OJBzI/4505-6501_7-35299019.html

Let’s start with the positives. The Stretch, which also goes by the model number TR 55LX (or Philips SHO9567BK/28) and comes in a white model, lists for $79.99 but can be found online for less than $50. And for $50 it offers good value, particularly in the design department.

Attractive design
For over-the-ear headphones, these are pretty lightweight and have nicely cushioned earcups. Aside from the relatively plush padding, what makes these guys comfortable is the dual-headband design. They have an auto-fit inner headband that’s covered in stretchy “wet-suit inspired” Neoprene padding (thus, the O’Neill connection).

What’s great about the auto-fit feature is that you don’t have to worry about adjusting the size of the headphone band, you just put the headphones on and you’re good to go (that said, these may not fit folks who have very large heads).

As for the outer headband, it’s made of highly flexible translucent nylon. We gave it a good twist and it didn’t break, so the headphones — or at least their outer headband — seems pretty durable.

The outer headband is made of highly flexible translucent nylon.

(Credit:
Sarah Tew/CNET)

When I put these on, my immediate reaction was, “Wow, these are comfortable.” Editor Justin Yu had the same reaction, and they’re definitely headphones that you can wear at home (or the office), as well as on the go, though your ears will get a little steamy if you were them outside on warm days, due to their closed-back design. The upside to the closed-back design is that these headphones do a good job passively sealing out noise and they don’t leak sound.

I also liked that the cord on The Stretch is detachable from the earcup and that it’s covered in a cloth material (think of the cord as a shoelace on a hiking boot). Alas, there’s no integrated microphone for making cell-phone calls, though a step-up model (the Philips SHO9567BK/28 or Philips SHO9567WT/28) does offer this feature for around $10 more.

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Next-generation Intel processors are always seen first in higher-end laptops, and true to form, the Asus G75VW-AS71 incorporates a quad-core third-gen Core i7 processor and upgraded Nvidia GeForce GTX 660M graphics, a big upgrade from the Asus G74SX-A2 CNET reviewed at the end of last year.

While the internal specs are upgraded, the body is largely the same: a heavy 17.3-inch black laptop that’s as far from portable as a laptop could be, although its clever angles and matte finish hide a lot of its bulk from casual view. While it may not seem so, the G75VW is actually lighter and thinner than last year’s G74, too.

(Credit:
Sarah Tew)

At $1,499, the Asus G75VW-AS71 is a far more affordable laptop than most Alienware gaming rigs, or the through-the-roof Origin EON17-S. It’s also less powerful. However, it’s more than capable of playing mainstream games very well. It’s hard to call a $1,699 laptop a bargain, but with all that this gaming laptop brings to the table, that might be the best description I can think of.

Much like last year’s G74, the G75VW is a big, big beast of a machine: weighing in at 9.5 pounds, this is a laptop you’ll want to keep on your desk. Place it on your lap and you’ll realize how much of the G75V’s bulk is hidden with sleek angling and a hinge-forward screen that masks a big rear with a racecar-like vent exhaust. With this laptop on my lap I felt like a tiny child with a very large cookie. Believe it or not, but this year’s model is lighter and thinner: 9.5 pounds and up to 2 inches thick at the beefiest point, versus 10 pounds and 2.4 inches thick for the G74. We’ll take the improvement, but must people won’t notice: it’s still the Lincoln Town Car of laptops.

(Credit:
Sarah Tew)

Mock it if you must (I sometimes did), but the Asus G75 has a somewhat attractive design. Somewhere between dorm-room gamer chic and something more understated, Asus has left most of the glaring sports-car touches for that rear vent. Some might like to appreciate such over-the-top touches head-on, but I prefer my laptop grille out of sight.

The feature-free interior has only a keyboard, a large touch pad, a few status indicator lights (HDD access, Wi-Fi, and so on), and power/quick-launch buttons. You’re unlikely to ever deliberately use the quick-launch pre-Windows operating system, especially as this laptop is designed to stay tethered to your desk full-time, but since the two buttons sit right next to each other, it’s easy to accidentally hit the wrong one. When the system is already running Windows, that second button activates a quiet mode to reduce fan noise.

The whole affair feels several notches below a premium product, which is a shame because it’s certainly not a budget-priced machine.

A huge amount of keyboard tray space means that the raised backlit keyboard and adjacent number pad are plenty far apart. The directional arrow buttons are placed in-between. The key travel is comfortable and crisp, matching what you’d normally find on a midrange laptop. Due to its size, this Asus has plenty of comfortable palm-rest space, even with the touch pad shifted over to line up with the keyboard’s off-center space bar. A soft matte finish offers good traction and grip without collecting too many smudges.

(Credit:
Sarah Tew)

A larger-than-average multitouch touch pad underneath has discrete buttons with a rubberized finish. Like most Windows touch pads, two-finger gestures aren’t as smoothly handled as you’d expect. Scrolling down a Web page, for instance, was touch-and-no-go.

The Asus G75VW is blessed with an excellent screen, perhaps one of the best I’ve seen in a large laptop. The 17.3-inch 1,920×1,080-pixel-resolution display has a matte coating instead of glossy, a trend that seems on the rise in laptops.

The benefit of less glare has no drawbacks: the screen’s still extremely bright, and the viewing angles are superb. Adding that antiglare screen addresses one of our issues with the previous G74’s overly glossy topcoat. It’s a step below the quality of the Razer Blade’s standout screen, but better than average. Colors pop, and both games and Blu-ray movies looked sharp. Unfortunately, the construction quality around the screen is less than stellar: matte black plastic forms a thick bezel, and part of the bezel warped away from the screen in our review unit.

Stereo speakers installed above the keyboard under a metal grille and a subwoofer located on the underside offer up big, booming sound: not as high-quality as premium speakers, but suitable for immersive gaming. Adjusting the volume via the volume-control keys above the keyboard (not function-reversed, alas) was finicky on our unit: the low-end volume still sounded much higher than the average. The volume controls are secondary functions of the F9, F10, and F11 keys, so you’ll need to fumble around a bit to adjust volume on the fly.

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In my testing, however, it was anything but similar to the R10000G in performance. The router offered relatively long range but terrible data rates on the 2.4GHz band. On the 5GHz band, conversely, it showed comparatively short range but very good data transfer speeds. All in all, the R20000G, at $180, is a good router for short distances, but it’s not for those who need good wireless coverage over a large area. The R10000G, which currently costs about $50 less, is still better. Also check out other routers if you want something that offers more features and solid performance.

Setup and design
The R20000G is almost exactly the same as the R10000G in terms of design, with the exception of the more solid chassis and the added USB port on the back. Like the R10000G, the new router comes with two extra-large detachable antennas that really crowd the four LAN ports and one WAN port on the back. These ports are Gigabit, meaning you’re guaranteed to have a fast wired network with the device. The USB port can also be used to host an external storage device and not printers.

The router arrives with two LAN (CAT5) cables, one plugged into its WAN port and one plugged into one of its LAN ports. This can make life a little easier for router novices since it helps speed up the setup process. You just need to connect the cable in the WAN port to an Internet source such as a broadband modem, and you are set. (You can plug the other LAN cable into a computer that doesn’t have a built-in Wi-Fi adapter, or ignore it if all of your devices are Wi-Fi-enabled.) Now you can use the preconfigured wireless network information printed on the router’s bottom to connect the devices to the network. The router also comes with a Wi-Fi Protected Setup button on the back that makes it possible to connect WPS-enabled clients to the network without you having to know the preconfigured wireless network information at all.

The router is designed to be put flat on a surface with four rubber feet. It also comes with a small detachable base so it can be placed in a vertical position. I wouldn’t recommend using the base, however, since it’s very light and doesn’t hold the router reliably. The router can also be mounted on a wall.

On the front of the R20000G is an array of LED lights showing the status of the ports on the back, the connection to the Internet, and the router’s power status.

If you’re not happy with the router’s default settings and want to customize them, including turning off Wi-Fi Protected Setup, that can be easily done by pointing a connected computer’s browser to the router’s default IP address, which is 192.168.3.1. The default log-in information for the Web interface is also printed on the bottom of the router.

Features
Like the R10000G, the new R20000G doesn’t have a lot of features, but it has enough for most home or even simple office needs. The router’s interface supplies a wizard for customizing the network’s settings, and you can also customize Web filtering, quality of service, firewall, port forwarding, and so on.

The R20000G’s networked storage feature is also very simple. Once an external hard drive is plugged into the router’s USB port, its entire content will be shared across the network with everybody having full access to it. There’s no way to customize this. In addition to this simple sharing method, you can set up an FTP server targeting the external drive. In my trials, the USB port worked with external hard drives formatted in either NTFS or FAT file systems and was able to handle drives that already contained data, quickly sharing a drive’s content with the rest of the network.

Like the R10000G, the R20000G has a feature called Wireless Coverage that allows you to manage its wireless power, setting it anywhere from 100 percent to 15 percent. I don’t know when you’d want to use this feature since I tested the router at 100 percent and its performance still didn’t impress.

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Announced last February at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, the Sony Xperia P joins the Xperia S and Xperia U in featuring Sony’s NXT design.

Design
Compared with the Xperia S, the slightly smaller Xperia P is much easier to hold, and the brushed metal has a solid feel. With its 4-inch display, the Xperia P is still usable with just one hand, even if it’s slightly wider than Apple’s iPhone 4S.

Located above the micro-SIM card tray on the left side are the Micro-USB and Micro-HDMI ports. In a change from the Xperia S, the ports don’t have plastic covers. Up top is the 3.5mm headphone jack, and on the right side are your power, volume, and camera shutter buttons. Note that the handset’s speakers are located on the right side, as well. That’s an interesting design choice, to be sure.

The handset sports a 4-inch qHD (960×540-pixel resolution) display, which Sony claims is bright enough for comfortable viewing in direct sunlight. I found this to be true and had no difficulties when using the phone outdoors.

Below the display is the same opaque band that we saw on the Xperia U and Xperia S. It also lights up in various colors, which you can change, and it has the icons for the Back, Home, and Menu touch controls. Yet, instead of the annoying arrangement on Xperia S where the controls are actually above the icons, Sony combined them on the Xperia P. That makes much more sense.

Weighing 4.23 ounces, the Xperia P feels light enough in my hands, though at 0.41 inch deep it’s much thicker than most phones. Lastly, the handset comes with a nonremovable 1,500mAh battery.

Features
Unlike the smaller Xperia U, the Xperia P has built-in NFC, which will allow you to make full use of the Sony Xperia SmartTags the company is touting. With the programmable tags you can quickly launch apps and services by simply tapping a tag with your Xperia P. Unfortunately, though, no SmartTags are included in the package. See our Xperia S review for more about this feature.

Other connectivity features include HSPA, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi. The handset comes with 16GB of onboard storage, though only 13GB is available for use. Unfortunately, the phone doesn’t have an expandable memory slot.

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It’s completely reasonable to expect a particular product, in this case a camera, to get better with each generation. That’s not the case with the Nikon Coolpix L810.

Sure, on paper, Nikon is offering more for your money than the L810′s predecessor, the L120. But that’s simply specs; you get a wider, longer lens and a higher-resolution sensor, neither of which get you better photos. No, it seems some quality and performance trade-offs were made so Nikon could keep the price the same as the L120, but still offer “more.”

Also, despite its looks, the L810 is very much a basic point-and-shoot camera, offering little more than fully automatic shooting. Not that that’s a bad thing and, in fact, if all you need is a decent auto mode and a long lens for shooting in daylight for photos going straight to Facebook, the L810 might be plenty.

Like most entry-level point-and-shoots, you’ll want to give the L810 as much light as possible. Photos are best at and below ISO 200. As the sensitivities increase, so does the noise and smeary details from noise reduction. Also, colors appear slightly washed out and muddy from noise from ISO 400 and above. This, combined with the increased softness at higher sensitivities, means the indoor and low-light photo quality just isn’t very good. So again, as long as you have plenty of light and don’t do more than share photos online or make the occasional 4×6-inch print, the L810 has good snapshot quality.

Photo quality gets noticeably worse above ISO 200.

(Credit:
Matthew Fitzgerald/CNET)

The camera’s color performance is its best attribute, though again it’s dependent on using ISO 200 or lower. At those sensitivities, colors appear bright and vibrant. Exposure is good, but as usual with compact cameras, highlights will occasionally blow out. Its white balance is good overall, though the auto white balance is warm under unnatural lighting.

Video quality is the same as photo quality; good enough for Web use at small sizes. Panning the camera will create a little judder and you may notice some motion blur with fast-moving subjects; that’s typical of the video from most compact cameras. The zoom lens does work while recording, which is definitely a selling point with such a long lens. Its movement is slow — as is the autofocus, if it focuses at all — and you will hear it moving in your clips.

As I mentioned earlier, if you’re looking for an uncomplicated automatic point-and-shoot, that’s exactly what this is. There are two Auto modes on this camera. One is Easy Auto, which uses scene recognition (Nikon calls it Scene Auto Selector) and adjusts settings appropriately based on six common scene types. If the scene doesn’t match any of those, it defaults to a general-use Auto. Then there is an Auto mode, which is similar to the program AE modes on other point-and-shoots, giving you a modicum of control over your end results. You can change ISO, white balance, and exposure compensation as well as color, flash, and continuous shooting modes. Light metering is locked to multipattern unless you’re using the digital zoom, and the focus area is fixed to the center of the frame.

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With a host of new mechanics and modes, Street Fighter X Tekken has a lot to offer fighting fans of all skill levels. However, there are a few issues unique to the PC version that detract from the standard set by its console counterparts.

6376441FenrirVIII (Guile and Marduk) takes on TimeWakko (Bison and Ogre) in this online match.480none

Street Fighter X Tekken is a 2D fighter with two-on-two combat. Each side is in control of two fighters and can swap between them on the fly. Players can even team up cooperatively and fight on the same team, just like in last year’s . This means up to four players can take part in a fight. However, when one fighter on a team is knocked out, that team loses the round–regardless of how much health the remaining fighter has. Therefore, you must treat your two fighters as one unit. There are numerous ways to switch between your fighters, and mastering good synergy between them is the key to building devastating combos and winning matches.

The game includes many of the fighting mechanics seen in , with several new additions. It has a six-button layout, with three punches and three kicks, and a three-section energy meter with numerous functions. This meter is earned quickly and spent quickly on devastating super arts, EX special moves, and more. But one of its most important functions is cross-canceling. For one block of meter you can tag in your partner mid-combo to continue the assault. At first this “two-as-one” style can be difficult to put into practice. It’s much easier to fight with one character until his or her health gets low, switch characters, and repeat. However, in doing so, you lose a lot of what makes this game unique, as well as sacrifice an edge in combat.

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