Gadget Hunter

  

HP and its boutique/luxe division Voodoo deserve serious praise for what they’ve accomplished with the Firebird 803. Taking a mix of laptop and desktop guts, juicing it up with high-end components, cooling it with liquid goo instead of noisy fans, and encasing it inside a gorgeous, curvy shell that would make most industrial designers weep with envy, the Firebird is a testament to how the envelope can be pushed in the typically boring PC world.

It’s also a veritable bargain, priced at $2,100, fully loaded.

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Pioneer markets its Elite lineup of plasma TVs to appeal to the hard-core home theater enthusiast, and that means pricing these panels above and beyond just about anything else. The enthusiast who can afford one, however, can rest assured that the 50-inch PRO-111FD performs above and beyond anything else on the market today. This display has the best black levels (aside from OLED) and most accurate color of any HDTV we’ve ever reviewed, and it’s hard to find fault with other aspects of its picture quality. A picture mode entitled Pure is exactly that, delivering better out-of-the-box settings–before we performed any adjustments–than any preset picture mode we’ve tested, including THX on models like the Panazonic 50-PZ. A stratospheric price disqualifies the Elite from consideration as our Editors’ Choice, but make no mistake: If you have the cash to burn, this plasma or its 60 inch brother is best flat-panel HDTV you can buy today, period.

Design
Pioneer’s no-nonsense, all-black look gives the PRO-111FD an ultraserious air, backed up by the unadorned, glossy-black frame with a simple gold “Elite” tattooed on the bottom. The sharp-cornered frame is characteristically chunky for a 50-inch plasma, and unlike most HDTVs, Pioneer mounts the speakers to both sides, making for an expansive wingspan. We appreciated that the speakers can be detached, as can the glossy black, nonswiveling stand.

Including stand and speakers, the PRO-111FD measures approximately 56.9 inches wide by 31 inches high by 13.8 inches deep and weighs 88 pounds. By itself, the panel measures 48.8 by 28.5 by 3.7 inches and weighs 74.5 pounds.

Pioneer’s remote was redesigned after last year, and we really don’t like it. Gone are the different shapes for secondary functions; instead, almost all of the keys on the new remote share the same square shape, tiny size, and are arranged in a staid grid. While that may make the clicker look cooler in some designer’s opinions, it sure doesn’t help navigate the scads of buttons. Sure, we liked the direct access to each of the inputs and the red-backlit keys, but we can’t forgive the unforgiving grid.

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Performance
Simply put, the Pioneer Elite PRO-111FD produced the best picture of any flat-panel HDTV we’ve tested to date. It delivered the deepest blacks we’ve seen from any large-screen display, as well as the most-accurate color. Video processing was superb, its glare-reducing screen is the best we’ve seen on any plasma TV, and we could find almost nothing to complain about in other areas. Given its superb performance, the PRO-111FD scores the first “10″ we’ve ever awarded in overall picture quality. To us, that score doesn’t represent perfection–hey, nothing’s perfect–but instead a picture that’s solidly superior to anything else we’ve seen in the flat-panel HDTV category.

Our standard calibration turned out to be a simple affair, despite the PRO-111FD’s sizable complement of picture controls. The key was the Pure picture mode, which automatically engages Color Space 2, which in turn adheres very closely to the Rec. 709 HD color standard. We tweaked the color temperature a bit, removing a slight reddish cast, and touched up Magenta and Green by three total pips in the color-management system, but that was about it. The default Gamma 2 setting measured a nearly perfect 2.181 gamma; light output and black level were almost dead-on, and our main change was to bump up saturation (Color).

Produces the deepest black levels of any large-screen display we’ve tested; extremely accurate color points and color temperature; superb antireflective screen; 72Hz refresh mode works well with 1080p/24 sources; Pure picture mode delivers superior settings out of the box; extensive picture controls; excellent connectivity, including 4 HDMI and one PC input; styling that’s all business.

One look at Axiotron’s slate Modbook tablet and it’s clear the company has given Apple’s 13-inch entry-level laptop the full Steve Austin treatment. Well, minus the 20:1 bionic eye with infrared capabilities. Nevertheless, the end result is a better, (slightly) faster, and, yes, even stronger Mac tablet. Sure, it’s the only Mac tablet for now, but this baby is certain to give anyone who dabbles in the dark graphical arts exquisitely rendered heart palpitations.

One minor nit before we start examining the goods. Some reviews have described the Modbook as a touchscreen device. While, technically, this is true, it’s important to note we’re not talking capacitive touching here. In fact, you can only use the provided Wacom digitizer pen and its 11 nibs as an input device. While that lack of skin on screen action, coupled with its high price, probably keeps the Modbook from being a truly mainstream device, it is by no means a deal breaker.

The tablet touts both Bluetooth and the standard two USB ports should you want to use it with a full-size keyboard and mouse. Hell, you can even mount it on your wall or hook it up to an external monitor via the standard mini-DVI port (like we did), if you prefer a slightly larger screen to show off your squiggly Garfield drawings.

Plenty of gadgets claim to be tough without actually being tough. (You know the type; loud as a motorbike, but wouldn’t bust a grape in a food fight.) But the Olympus LS-10 digital recorder actually walks the walk. Its first-rate audio recording clarity builds on a sturdy appearance, and proves to be a great appendage for reckless audio aficionados.

Using the recorder is like peeling some sort of magical golden onion. Transferring files to and from a PC takes only a few moments. The UI folder structure is easy to navigate with little direction (There are 5 folders with a 200-file max, plus one Music folder.) It uses SD memory (2 GIG internal, lasting 3-69 hours, contingent on the recording setting) and it can record audio (from best quality on down) as 96 kHz/24bit Linear PCM (Pulsed Code Modulation), WAV, MP3, and WMA files.

It’s also physically stout and sturdy as hell. The recorder got dropped, smacked, and tossed without any discernible loss in performance. The 5.33-ounce weight lends a solid heft to the device and the brush finish and stylish rounded corners give it (dare we say?) a sexy look. Even the buttons are designed in a way that it prevents accidental switching and flicking. Students, journalists, and other folks who toss gadgets haphazardly in a bag will know this is heaven’s sent.

As a portable music-listening device, it doesn’t work that well. If you transfer an MP3 to the player and listen to it (through headphones) before listening to (awesome) input recordings on the PC for the first time, you’ll be kinda bummed by the average tone. No, it’s not expected to be good as an MP3 player (hey, the iPod sucks as a recorder), but leads to the dreaded pocket bulging misery of taking two media devices at once. And it’s way too expensive. At this price, we would prefer the hardware-software integrated simplicity of an iTunes-type program. That’s not too much to ask.

But what about the all important audio recording quality? We tested the LS-10 in a variety of noisy situations including live narration in the middle of a crowded street (complete with a random lunatic ranting about getting kicked out of Old Navy.) Our recording came out perfectly clear without a scratch of background fuzz. Even when we recorded an indoor musical performance, little nuances in the notes became apparent on playback. The only  time we heard any sort of popping  or distortion was when we turned the device off and listened to other recorders in our collection.