Pros: Cheap and looks new?
Cons: Hard to say this is new, seems like a shoddy refurb that wasn't assembled properly.
Overall Review: As the previous review mentioned, the camera overheats in under a few minutes just with the app open. Taking pictures or video reduces this to under a minute before closing the app. The phone failed the "pressure test" to determine its IP68 worthiness. The pressure test using the internal pressure sensor to detect internal pressure chances when you squeeze the phone frame. Since the internal pressure doesn't change a bit, there are leaks around the seals. No surprise since the back cover is basically peeling off and unglued from the frame. I'm going to try to return. This is shady. Said it was a new phone.
Pros: Very good picture, aesthetic design, ergonomics, OSD, integrated camera lens cover, inputs, and value.
Cons: The speakers are terrible. Business audio applications only. They are on par with cheap laptop internal speakers. The webcam is equally disappointing. Saturation and distortion no matter how well lit the room is. Again, on par with a cheap laptop webcam. Loses an egg for the above cheapouts from HP. Could have spent a few dollars toward the BOM making this a great monitor.
Overall Review: Great business monitor, although there will inevitably be applications where people will demand a set of speakers since the internal speakers of this monitor are useless for anything other than dings and beeps. Even voicemail playback are barely legible through these speakers. The webcam is basically on par with what we are used too from webcams so that isn't as big of an issue,
Pros: -Decent performance -Mature Sandforce controller -MLC -Reliable -Inexpensive
Cons: -Typical Sandforce compressed data performance issues -Not the newest/fastest/feature-filled controller
Overall Review: I was compelled to write a review because of all the bad luck I've seen people having with these drives. What everyone needs to realize is the ECO2 is basically a Chronos, down to the SF-2281 and NAND. It's possible the NAND is slightly lower binned but some user benchmarks show the drive virtually identical in performance to the Chronos. Mushkin has decades of experience in binning memory, and clearly has a mature firmware for the ECO2 from the growing pains they had with the Chronos line from 2013. It shows, as I haven't had a unit fail (out of 30 or so purchased throughout 2014-2015.) These were as equally good value as the Crucial BX100 and Sandisk SSD Plus, and like those, it is being phased out to be replaced by the ECO3, a TLC drive that like the BX200 and Ultra II, is going to be slower and less durable in every way. My advice is...buy them while you can, because soon there won't be ANY MLC drives left at this price. The BX100 still takes the cake for most modern MLC SSD in the budget market, but since it is discontinued, it's price has spiked and costs around 20% more than the ECO2, and in my opinion, it isn't 20% better. The only TLC drives worth considering are the Samsung EVO's, because they're VNAND, not typical TLC, so they don't seem to lose performance. But they are much more expensive than the ECO2, and for a typical desktop/laptop, the ECO2 fits in perfectly.
Pros: Inexpensive for Intel CPU machine Good keyboard Good screen Thin for this price tier Decent construction
Cons: Lots of wasted space inside empty optical drive bay, could have been thinner/smaller. Strange BIOS/recovery button (you don't just hold DEL at boot, you push a paperclip into a hole) Trackpad needs a lot of tweaking to get the sensitivity right (update drivers) Wifi card is 802.11n 1x1, lacks Bluetooth
Overall Review: Hard to hold the cons against this machine for a sub-$300 machine. It has a decent amount of bloatware loaded on it that'll take time to remove, but I ended up putting a 120GB SSD in and reinstalling Windows 10 from scratch, which activated itself properly. The drivers were fairly easy to find on Lenovo's site. There are various updates including BIOS but nothing important/relevant has been fixed/improved with the exception of the ELAN trackpad that was greatly improved from the newer driver. I recommend this machine, but I would definitely clean out the bloatware before putting into service, and as with most laptops, an SSD makes a lot more sense than a mechanical drive. The installation was fairly easy (6 screws to remove cover and drive, 4 more screws to remove drive from tray - all Phillips #0) Remember to boot from a USB stick to reinstall Windows, you must push the BIOS/recovery button on the bottom right side, and set USB boot Enabled. I successfully, with some driver hassle, installed Windows 7 Pro x64 on this machine and it works perfectly - the Windows 10 x64 drivers worked in combination with the chipset and IGP drivers from Intel's site.
Pros: Inexpensive Fresh Windows 7 image
Cons: Poorly glued corner where machine was previously cracked Rattles when shaken, near the fan (!) Keyboard caps have stickers on them to presumably replace worn key etching...is it really too expensive to replace the keyboard? Oily/not clean Ding on lid
Overall Review: Returning. If I wanted a scratch & dent machine I could have just bought one on Fleabay or from Arrow-Direct for half the price. Joy Systems severely disappoints this time around. If you are going to sell something as refurbished, at least refurbish it and grade the outcome.
Pros: Decent price for an overclocked 970 ASUS warranty\support\software Free game Rebate was honored quickly.
Cons: Underperforming blower design Fan simply doesn't push a lot of air - no comparison to Titan-style coolers Fan has a rumble...very audible at all speeds - again, no comparison to a Titan cooler.
Overall Review: My GTX 770's cooler (the vapor chamber) is substantially better than the 100% plastic cooler ASUS has come up with here. I replaced this card with a PNY 970, also a blower, and also 100% plastic, and the card is quieter and exhausts more air than ASUS' trick "dual intake" cooler that actually doesn't seem to work. Just putting your hand next to the fan is proof enough the air is just being 'blown around' and not actually out the rear of the card. To make it worse, the full ball bearing design is very loud. In the end, the cooler, the selling point of this model, actually ruins it. Very disappointing.
Pros: Very professional presentation - no glossy plastics, clean design, height/tilt adjustable stand, square (not oval) base and well laid out menu structure. Excellent screen quality, viewing angles, brightness, accuracy and adjustments Speakers are actually good for a monitor, only rivaled by displays using a ported sound bar (Dell/HP.) The volume is quite good with low distortion and decent reproduction - but as expected there is little bass.
Cons: No analog input. The DVI is only DVI-D, then you have HDMI and DisplayPort (which can't be converted to analog using an adapter in reverse - I tried. External power adapter. These are just annoying. Would prefer a built-in power supply but that is becoming rare on sub-$500 monitors.
Overall Review: This is a really good monitor. Ultrawide is a great format and is well supported by everything from games to productivity applications. The only real con about this monitor is the lack of analog input. This is unfortunate because one of the best scenarios for an ultrawide could be on a technician workbench where you can work on two machines at a time, and often older machines in for repair only have DSUB-out, as do most KVM's. Everything else is really good. If the lack of DSUB doesn't bother you, this monitor is virtually perfect. There are reviews complaining about the height and even the menu's. One guy went as far to say "do your own research on 21:9" and gave the thing 1 star. I guess he should have taken his own advice. But yes, this monitor is 29" and only as tall as a 23" and it is what it is. It isn't trying to deceive anybody, the specs are right there. As far as complaining about the menu, there is little to complain about. The joystick is intuitive and keeps buttons off the face of the monitor. It is so configurable you can even chose to turn the power LED off. That is a high-end option rarely seen outside of NEC Multisync's and HP Z-displays. Recommended for anyone looking to take the ultrawide dive, this is probably the best display out there. If you want something "taller" there is a 34" model available, but keep in mind, I've that at work and it is enormous, even if it is only 14.5" tall.
Pros: Inexpensive Decently fast Tried-and-true SF2200 chipset
Cons: Time will tell as to firmware reliability and support
Overall Review: Purchased three of these a few months ago when they came out. Finally got around to installing them. I cloned three 500GB drives from Lenovo Thinkcentre M92 workstations with Acronis TrueImage 2014 booting from USB. All three SSD's have been running solid for a month, all have around 70GB free since most files are stored on a NAS at this particular client. Reliability is my primary concern and I normally stick to Crucial and Intel, but I ran the costs past them and even if these SSD's fail, no data is stored on them, so it's a test-case for me to see if I can trust these in the future. Hopefully I can. Mushkin is a great company and I don't think they'd put their name on junk. I've used their memory for 15 years going back to SDRAM.
Pros: Moves a LOT of air Very high quality, metal motor housing, thick power wiring. Probably very reliable
Cons: Creates a pulsating "clicking" even at low speeds. Minimum fan speed is around 900RPM and moves virtually no air at this speed, while still pulsing a noise.
Overall Review: It's important to point out this is a server chassis fan. It doesn't belong in a home or office PC. It will simply create too much mechanical noise. At full speed I can hear it from my office through two sets of doors in the server closet, it's almost as loud as a vacuum cleaner. Fortunately this fan will rarely ever hit 20% with our workload. Buy accordingly!
Pros: I have the Asus version of this drive, and can rate it 5 stars based on its performance: Excellent price Reads scratched discs well (error correction) Classic bezel design
Cons: Is price $5 more than the Asus model, which is identical.
Overall Review: Keith L seems to think he knows more than he actually does. While his analysis of copying digital data is partially true, he has forgotten or simply doesn't know about two important factors when coping this type of data. Have you ever wondered why some programs, specifically CD audio ripping programs, recommend copying at a lower speed? Error correction. This is an inherent feature of the drives firmware and the quality\condition of the laser. A good firmware will have efficient error correction and isolation\retry arithmetic. THIS COULD BE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ASUS AND PLEXTOR MODEL. I don't know if it is, but if a reviewer wrote he believes one model produced better results than the other, this could be why.
Pros: Excellent quality Pleasing deep. low-pitch hum at high speed Standard 4-pin connector; no adapters, no extra wires. braided sheath cable Rubber mounts
Cons: Price Lower CFM than many 120MM All-plastic construction
Overall Review: This is an excellent general cooler for medium to large cases. It has lower CFM than most 120MM fans, but it is extremely quiet even at full speed, and it doesn't vibrate or emit a high-pitch whine like many cheap fans do. Overall its worth the price, but if you are building a small ITX case or need more airflaw, the Delta ACF1212 is the way to go and the only fan I'd recommend over this one. However, it is louder than the Delta ACF1212, which is about the same sound pressure at 40% as the Gelid FN-PC12-15 at 100%. The Gelid actually pushes more air than the Delta at 40% as well. But the Delta has greater overall cooling capabilities and is the only fan with superior construction to the Gelid. Avoid Coolermaster, Corsair, Arctic Cooling, Deepcool/Rosewill and most other fans with gimmicky blades, designs and wiring. Gelid keeps cooling traditional in the footsteps of Delta with a quality motor and a properly engineered conventional, balanced blade design.
Pros: Inexpensive Short PCB/ITX Friendly Decent quality cooler
Cons: Fairly loud...to be expected with such demanding heat dissipation on such a small card. As another reviewer said, too bad the PCIe 8-Pin conector isn't facing to the rear...it'd make more sense since the card is so short!
Overall Review: In reality, the only things wrong with this card are the cooler (and perhaps the aforementioned PCIe power connector location.) When you consider this cards target audience, ITX and miniature builds, open-air coolers don't make sense. I know it'd be quite a feat to get a blower on a 7" long card, but EVGA has a 970 with a blower that's only 9.5" long. Unfortunately it's almost impossible to find. The end result is an open-air cooler that is incredibly loud. Most of the time, it's blowers that are this loud. And of course, this results in higher case temperatures instead of exhausting the heat out. I can't dock the card ANY points, because it is the best (perhaps only) ITX option available outside of the rare Zotac and EVGA models (which are still longer) My FT03-mini has a 10" maximum length restriction, and this card fit like a charm. It replaced an EVGA 660Ti 3GB blower that feels like a mammoth in comparison.
Pros: Probably most powerful half-height card in existence Runs off PCIe power source, ok for OEM power supply! Quiet Cool Quad-output
Cons: Expensive for 750Ti
Overall Review: This is a pretty unique card. I picked it up locally in a pinch to replace a Matrox card that failed on a client that needed 4 monitor support. Obviously I needed a bunch of adapters to work with his DVI monitors, but the HDMI-DVI and DP-DVI adapters were $15/ea. The DVI port on this card is appropriately the primary output. This is more power than they need for business tasks, but the irony is this card is STILL cheaper than most other quad-output half-height cards. Great niche product, good job Gigabyte!
Pros: Good screen, bright and colorful Decent for gaming Aesthetically pleasing Low price
Cons: Integrated speakers are terrible, anything above headphone volume and they are distorted. Useless for anything but Windows sound effects. Glossy panel (to be expected of a touch screen)
Overall Review: If it weren't for the useless integrated speakers, it'd be a 5-star product. But this doesn't mean you shouldn't buy it; unless integrated speakers are a must for your desktop.
Pros: Inexpensive Sandforce drive with decent warranty
Cons: Possibly less reliable than other Sandforce drives from Intel?
Overall Review: Overall this drive has been more reliable than SP610's I have out in the field. Two of those models have been RMA'd; one had corruption issues and the other "locked" after the user ran it low on space causing it to no longer detect. The S900's have been reliable and are actually a bit faster. A solid Sandforce drive. It's worth mentioning the RMA process for the SP610's was very fluid with a short turnaround. And the James L below with the SSD failure...don't defrag your SSD unless you want it to commit suicide. No wonder it died.
Pros: Good quality Cheap Niche' product, amazing its even a thing.
Cons: Instructions Not really more than metal beams and plyboard, cards don't even screw in.
Overall Review: I use this bench for ASIC's. I had another piece of plyboard cut at home depot and drilled a few 1/2" holes in to run cables. The bottom rack is for 3x 750 watt PC PSU's, 1 management console and two ASIC modules, and the top has 8 ASIC modules. I use an Airking clip fan to just blow air across the top. The size is perfect, I have it under my desk to (carefully) rest my feet on. Definitely cheaper than a 100% DIY solution and the construction is good quality. No wobbles or flex. The beams seem to be powdercoated. You couldn't do this yourself for $30.
Pros: Cleans hard wood, tile and low carpet well Battery outlasts dustbin Filters and agitator "brushes" are durable 2 years old and still works, even with my 1yr old riding it. USB port for updating firmware (recently added Spot Clean) Entertaining for cat and children Cleans under TV stand, couch, etc, where I can't.
Cons: Doesn't get tight corners (no side brush like Roomba) Dust bin fills up quickly, especially if you have pets Does not clean shag or thick carpet The "barrier" strips are primitive compared to Roomba's iR dividers
Overall Review: We named it Mo (from WALL-E) and almost feel like he's a family member. Our daughter loves it. It does a generally acceptable job but obviously lacks a dirt sensor so can't determine is a spot needs more focus, etc. It occasionally bumps in to furniture as is expected. If we don't run it more than once a week, it quickly fills up with pet hair and needs a bin dump half-way through cleaning. Even with these shortcomings, we have never regretted the purchase. The company has done a great job of supporting older models with firmware updates, and upgrades. We've been using the newer style pleated filters for the past year, as the flat filters definitely cause lost suction after a few runs. Fortunately, both filters can be rinsed and reused. You can run them through the dishwasher from what I've read, but that could cause damage to your dishwasher garbage disposal which isn't designed to grind up pet fur. The unit helps keep floors clean, is simply, and very reliable. It isn't a replacement for a vacuum, but an accessory. We usually run it at the same time we vacuum other rooms with carpeting; essentially cuts the job time in half.
Pros: Price
Cons: Constant "scratching" head park noises Fast for burst transfers Crippled firmware Does not work internally Runs extremely hot after transferring just a few GB Aggressive power-saving, spin-down, and head parking cause system to hang while waiting for spin-up every few minutes.
Overall Review: Because of the terrible overall performance and consistency of data transfers in the external enclosure, I decided to pull the drive out and use it internally. Obviously, as others have stated, that does not work. This drive has a crippled CC41 firmware that has an APM value of 64 (250 or higher is ideal for performance) causing constant head parking and spindown, both wearing out the drive. Since it has a 1 year warranty, I think this, in addition to the non-existent cooling of the enclosure, is obviously intentional on Seagate's part. The firmware is also apparently crippled to not run AHCI in an again obvious attempt to prevent people from getting the "cheaper" external USB drives that carry a weak warranty, in order to push them toward more expensive internal retail drives. Seagate, you're bean counters just lost you a lifetime customer. It isn't as if there isn't other competitors that DON'T do this to chose from. I pulled a 4TB drive out of a Hitachi enclosure and had no problems. This drive is a 200 door stop. I wouldn't trust my data on it if it was free.
Pros: Holds lots of drives Cable routing is easy Clean overall design Sides are interchangeable Can hold two radiators
Cons: Steel construction is terrible at dissipating heat. Front 200mm fan has tiny intake inlets, is starved. Front fan has virtually no airflow with drive cage installed Design basically requires a blower-style video card cooler Expensive for not being aluminum
Overall Review: Spend $20-$30 more on a quality aluminum case from Lian-Li or Silverstone. This case is a good deal if it's $40 and only used for holding a bunch of hard disks (which will run hot, mine run around 47c.) It can't adequately cool a video card beyond a 650Ti.
Pros: quiet fast for being passive-cooled doesn't need 6-pin power/works in OEM PC's warranty
Cons: failure prone faster cards can be had for less if you are willing to sacrifice the passive-cooling warranty is lengthy process to fill
Overall Review: I've had this card for a year, and have had it fail twice. The first time, after a month, it would BSOD in games after about 20 minutes. I tested it in another machine and it would BSOD consistently after 20-30 minutes. I tried underclocking and it would work "better" but eventually BSOD (45-60 minutes of BF3) I mailed it to ASUS for warranty, which took 2 weeks to receive the card back. The second card, which I've had for almost a year, is now exhibiting a behavior where it will occasionally not initialize after standby/resume. Also occasionally, when booting windows, it freezes at the windows boot screen, and just like if freezing upon standby resume, hitting the reset button to reboot the PC will bring you back to the desktop fine. Again, tested in two computers, does same thing. 1 in 3 standby resumes, specifically ones lasting more than 24 hours, will not re-init the video. I replaced it with a $20 Radeon 5450 and the computer is completely stable running the same drivers, never failing to resume from standby. So I need to mail it back, again. Twice in a year.
Pros: General performance is good Burst performance is excellent So far (8 months) very reliable Quiet 3-year warranty (many drives now are only 2-year)
Cons: Not a 5-year warranty, but 3-years is still decent Expensive for the capacity, but still considerably less than an SSD Obviously uses more power than an SSD, and not shock resistant.
Overall Review: For those that are curious how this technology works: The drive caches (keeps a copy) of common LBA accesses. This cache is not files, but raw 0's and 1's of various sectors that have a high "hit" rate. In order to rank up the hit rate for data you want to have better performance on, you need to access the files a few times. For instance, rebooting a few times will rank up your startup files (although the firmware is precalibrated to seek out startup data and rank it high, out of the box, which works fairly well.) If you load a game a few times, the startup data and common maps you play will rank up, and that data will have SSD-like performance. The same goes for programs like Outlook, parts of your PST file, even torrents you commonly seed. You have 8GB of rankable space. This doesn't seem like a lot, but only when your considering raw file size does it seem small. From an LBA sector perspective, this is a decent amount of cache. The best part about this technology is how resilient it is. The cache is never used for writing data (so write performance will always be physically limited to the platter) but the advantage is high data integrity during a power failure or BSOD. The cache is immune to file system errors since it only caches LBA data and is file-system independent. This means the drive works universally well in Linux and Mac OSX. Basically there is no reason for all hard disks not to be like this. There is no downside other than the slightly higher price.
Pros: Most inexpensive 4TB drive. Fast. Quiet*
Cons: Quiet* when not "parking/loading" heads, which it does every 60 seconds. Inbuilt Self-Destruction. 2-year warranty, and you'll probably end up using it.
Overall Review: Like many newer drives (especially Seagate and WD) this drive has an excessive APM configuration of 128. Anything below 250 is generally unacceptable, and most drives, like NAS/RAID drives, are set at 255 (which is disabled APM.) The idea behind APM (advanced power management) is to reduce heat and power usage. But it causes a LOT of wear on a drives heads, especially when set aggressively. A program called HDPARM can be configured to send a config command to your drive(s) at boot up. I recommend 255 for heavy use drives (like torrent seeding/servers) which disabled power management and head parking, and 250 for drives that are used for cold\occasional storage, which will occasionally park the heads after a prolonged period of inactivity. Note that HDPARM does not affect acoustics management or disk "spin-down." This is simply to prevent the drive from self destructing. Most drives are only designed for 250,000 head parks through their lifetime. I was able to rack up 93,000 load/unloads in 8 months on a WD Green drive.
Pros: Decent, consistent performance Runs cool, even after writing 50GB of data Inexpensive No initial problems NOT Sandforce
Cons: No long-term reliability data
Overall Review: I'm relieved we are finally seeing budget SSD's that are not Sandforce-based. It seems Intel is the only manufacture to figure out the 2281, as every other SSD I've had that was Sandforce based has failed (specifically, OCZ and ADATA drives) This JMICRON chipset just feel more consistant. No lagging or slowdowns, no jumping mouse cursor during random garbage collection, and most importantly, no complex compression algorithms that will certainly trash your indirection table during a power failure. Overall for the price, happier than I am with the Crucial M500 120GB (which is also solid, but notably slower)
Pros: Excellent quality/reliability. sub-$100. Decent support/BIOS updates. Overclocks well.
Cons: Lacks the software sophistication of its Asus rival. SATA connectors in center of the board, not on an edge. Other boards have 8 USB ports on rear IO, this one has 6.
Overall Review: I've been running this board since October without an issue. I have it mildly overclocked to 4GHz with an i5-4670k. It runs XMP profiles without any stability issues. Basically this board renders its competitive offering from Asus (H87I-Plus ITX) irrelevent on many fronts. I own both boards (the Asus is in my HTPC) so I can compare them side-by-side. The Asus offers one compelling advantage: it's layout. The connectors are all more plentiful and in better locations. But that's it. The ASRock H87M-ITX has a better audio codec, less buggy NIC, and the color scheme is more professional looking. The software is for the most part, identical to Asus Ai Suite, but the fan control curves aren't as tweakable unless you go into the BIOS (at which point they are just as customizable as the Asus) The nail in the coffin is the price. The ASRock board can be had for 20% less.
Pros: SMART Pass Physically perfect Functionally perfect - quiet and no weird noises 25 power cycles 2400 Load\Unload cycles (very low, drive doesn't appear to have aggressive APM head parking)
Cons: A lot of hours, almost 7 years of continuous use Poor packing (drive was wrapped in a bubble mailer, and placed inside a medium priority mail flat pack)
Overall Review: Great price for what I paid, assuming I get a few years out of it in my DVR. Hitachi drives are among the most reliable I've ever seen (which was the reason for my purchase) and probably the only drive I would consider buying used.