Pros: It toasts things pretty evenly, and it's got a bagel setting and does a good job. I can't complain, I wanted a simple toaster that looked relatively nice and toasted. I got what I wanted at a reasonable price.
Cons: I don't use it often enough or care about toasters enough to have any complaints.
Overall Review: I'm not that picky about my toasters. If you were asking me about blenders, rice cookers or something I care a lot about, I'd have a more detailed review, and 5-eggs might mean more, but if your in the market for a high end toaster and you care about those details, you're probably not looking at this.
Pros: Mine works, and it does the job I'm using it for...but I'm now aware of the restrictions of this device, and how to use it so that I don't end up frying something important.
Cons: There are definitely some wonky power issues with this device. To copy the manufacturer's response from a 2-egg review: "The issue might be caused by the linear power adapter. If the loading of the USB device is low (eg. 100mA), the voltage will be higher than 5V. The characteristic of the 5V 2A linear power adapter is that when the loading is near to 2A, the voltage will be 5V. If the loading is much less than 2A, the voltage might increase. To solve the issue, please do not connect the power adapter when the loading is small (like a USB flash drive or mouse). There is no need to plug a power supply when using low power loading devices. Only use power supply when using 4 USB devices at the same time. Thank you!" I shouldn't have to unplug and replug a power adapter based on what devices are plugged into the port, nor should I have to worry about frying a device by plugging it into a USB port.
Overall Review: I keep my phone and other important devices plugged directly into my computer, which means this hub is hardly providing me with the functionality I expected from it. I debated giving it 2 eggs instead of 1 because it *if* you know it's limitations and when to use (and when not to use) the power adapter with it, it seems to work fine. However, that's not what I bought this USB hub for, and I am definitely disappointed that I can't leave all four of my USB devices plugged into this and plug and unplug them at my convenience.
Pros: We had an IH cooktop in Japan that we used, but did not bring with us when we moved because of the different power standard in America. We purchased this to use with our existing IH approved cookware, and the fact that it came with a stainless steel pot was a nice bonus. We've had no problems with it in the few times we've used it so far, and it's not overly noisy or difficult to use.
Cons: It is substantially taller than we'd expected, and taller than the IH cooktop we previously owned. That said, if it keeps it from being unsafe, overly loud or prohibitively expensive, I'd rather have it affordable, quiet and safe.
Overall Review: Definitely glad I picked it up. It's safer and easier than using a gas canister solution, and for meals where having a heated pot simmering in the center of the table, it's an excellent thing to have.
Pros: This board does what I need it to do right now. I've got a 2500K that I'm overclocking to 4.5 GHz at 1.3V with absolutely zero stability problems, and a 7970 HD that I've overclocked to 1125 Mhz GPU (the max +20%) and 1575 Mhz memory (the max +20%). Everything works very well, which is likely due to the excellent cooling capabilities of the Rosewill Thor case and the EVGA Superclock CPU Cooler. (Yes the CPU is only air cooled) I have not had a single BSOD in any of the manual overclock settings that I've tried, I simply stopped at x45 multiplier because I don't see enough benefit to try to keep pushing. The card has three USB ports, *barely* fits all four DIMMs modules and the EVGA Supercooler (which necessates one DIMM slightly angled, resting against the base of the heat sink, but it works with no problems). For a single graphics card and overclocked CPU card, it works very well, and I am happy with it's performance and stability. It does come with two SATA III cables.
Cons: The quick start physical documentation does not include many details, such as how to remove a PCI-E video card, which is a basic that would be good to explicitly explain in the paper manual. The one BSOD I have had is related to the preset overclock settings in BIOS, which I don't recommend. If you reset your BIOS, it defaults to IDE mode instead of AHCI, which I only noticed because my boot times increased my HDD score dropped from 7.9 to 7.3. The board still has an onboard USB 3.0 front panel plug outlined and labeled in white, although the pins are not there. I looked at a high resolution, top view picture of the board before ordering it, and while the specification did not say it had a plug for front panel USB 3.0, I was hopeful it would. It was only when I received it that I realized it did not. There is no onboard VGA port, but there is a floppy drive plug and PS/2 keyboard and mouse support, which seems like an odd choice. The drivers install disk...
Overall Review: The drivers install disk also wants to install a Zynga shortcut, Adobe products and other non-motherboard related programs. Hopefully that makes it more affordable, but I don't regret buying this board, as I got what the description said I would, but I wish I had a port for front panel USB 3.0. Higher quality sound and front panel USB 3.0 are both functions that can be added with additional cards, but additional graphic card slots are not. Weight the cost and features of this board against your needs and planned use, and you may find it's a very good match for what you need.
Pros: This chair is more or less what I was expecting, and thanks to a NewEgg e-mail special, I got it for a very good price, with free shipping. I'm pretty happy with the chair, and it's my work chair, which means I use it for 8-10 hours at a time on a regular basis. It's not that difficult to assemble, and I've had zero problems with the chair after I had to RMA the first.
Cons: I've bought a dozen or so Rosewill items (PC case, IH heater, 72-in-1 card reader, keyboards, all kinds of stuff), and I've found a pretty clear pattern. Three times I've had items show up DOA, or with the wrong parts, or with problems straight out of the box. Every time, I've contacted NewEgg and we've set up an RMA or hot-swap RMA painlessly, and it's taken nothing but time and energy to get the item back in the box and shipped back to NewEgg.
Overall Review: I'm 6'2",185 lbs and I find the chair very comfortable. It's basically what I expected, which is a moderately firm chair. The chair lists a weight limit of 250 lbs, which something that might be important, and not immediately obvious, for some people.
Pros: I print to this from multiple PCs, as it's connected to and shared by one of the PCs we have. It's extremely quick and we still haven't run out of the trial toner after several months and hundreds of pages. I can't comment on the fax functionality, but it also does a great job as a scanner, and the ultra low power standby mode that it comes out of very quickly is definitely something I appreciate.
Cons: It's black and white only, which is the trade off that comes with an affordable laser printer, and does take up a reasonable amount of space. It does not have a network port, which would be nice, but I knew it didn't have that feature when I bought it, as it wasn't worth the extra cost to me.
Pros: Having had a water boiler & warmer, or however you'd describe this product, in Japan for several years, we wanted to make sure we had one ready and waiting for us in the states and ordered this shortly before we moved to America. While the fahrenheit temperatures took a bit of adjusting to, the device did not. The lid even has the Japanese characters for "push" stamped on to the top, and performs identically to the Tiger device we used in Japan. It does a great job of keeping the water at the right temperature for our uses (primarily teas), and is very efficient.
Cons: The mineral buildup inside the water boiler is based on the difference in the quality of water here and in Japan, but we find we need to use Citric Acid to clean the white mineral build up inside the water boiler on a semi-regular basis, something I don't think we ever had to do with our water boiler in Japan. The other complaint I would have is the inability to change between fahrenheit and celsius. An option to change the display to celsius would have been nice.
Pros: My wife is Japanese and I've spent 10 years living in Japan, so I have much higher expectations and requirements than the average American looking to buy a rice cooker. In using various types of Japanese rice grown in California, my wife and I have come to the conclusion that this rice cooker is a better rice cooker than the rice cookers we have owned and used in Japan. That should come as no surprise, as it was the latest and greatest offering from Zojirushi, which is a major player in the rice cooker space in Japan.
Cons: I cannot thing of any complaints. We use it regularly and it does everything we ask of it.
Overall Review: I would highly recommend Zojirushi products to anyone looking for a rice cooker or water boiler in the US.
Pros: Mass Effect 2 has a great game and a great story. It is absolutely one of the best games I have ever played, and I highly recommend it to anyone regardless of whether or not you have played the first Mass Effect.
Cons: If you have a save file from the Mass Effect game, it will take information regarding decisions and outcomes from that game and they will influence the characters you meet and the experiences you have in Mass Effect 2. However, if you do not have a save file from Mass Effect, the game has preset outcomes for all those variables, and there is no way to change those settings short of playing the first Mass Effect through and then loading a save file.
Overall Review: I bought this in March of 2011, but listed my ownership as more than a year because I borrowed a copy from a friends for a few months for my initial play-through of the game before buying a copy of my own.
Pros: This game does have some great music, colors, art and design, and it does have unique game play and is very enjoyable at times. That said, it's not a great game.
Cons: I played a decent chunk of the game, but it became repetitive, and I didn't care enough for the mechanics or about the story to see the game to the end. Your options are not always intuitive, and the game does not adjust based on your successes or failures. If you are stuck on a roof with no help and no apparent way to proceed, no amount of waiting or dying will cause the game to show you what to do. Figuring out how to solve a section you recognize as a puzzle is enjoyable, but other sections that were probably not intended to be puzzles are unintuitive, break the flow of the game, and ultimately compound the games other problems, such as repetitiveness and control issues.
Overall Review: I wanted to like this game so much more than I did. I picked it up for an attractive price because the main complaint I'd heard was it was too short, and I'm not opposed to paying for a good short game. But I still couldn't get around to finishing it. It's got nice aesthetics, it tries new things, and I don't regret picking it up, but it's lacking something.
Pros: I used this to copy all the data from my 1.2 TB (1.6 TB RAID5) NAS before moving from Japan to the states. I've used it for our photos, videos, media and various other files from one computer to another since then. I've used it on USB 3.0 ports and USB 2.0 ports. I have no complaints about it's size, noise, weight, performance...it'd done everything I've hoped it would do, and compared to what I paid for a new HDD a few weeks ago, I got this for steal back in March.
Cons: It comes preloaded with a lot of movies that you can't watch, or it did when I bought it. That's probably part of a marketing deal that helps lower the cost of the devices, but the box advertised a free copy of Star Trek that was no longer available when I purchased this.
Overall Review: Especially back when I bought this, this was a lot of space for a portable 2.5" drive, and it does a great job powering itself off one USB port.
Pros: Probably a bit late in writing a review for this, but it deserves all 5 stars. No read/write issues, or any issues to speak of. Used in a few different camera, mainly a Nikon D80, and thrown in and out of pockets and camera bags over the last 4 years without problem.
Cons: If you're buying a card today, there are much larger cards available.
Pros: I'm rating this five stars based on price performance. It's an attractive monitor, it's got nice colors, nice contrast, nice consistency and nice response time for the price. I wouldn't nit pick unless I was going to do professional image editing on this, which I'm not. The monitor comes with a printed quick start guide, a CD manual, an audio cable (nice surprise), DVI cable and VGA cable. The speakers are quiet and relatively cheap, but what do you expect out of built in speakers? I use them when my wife and I are playing L.A. Noire together with no complaints. (Otherwise I use headphones) No dead/stuck pixels in a white, green, blue, red or black screen tests.
Cons: The monitor's bezel would ideally be smaller for use in Eyefinity setups. The base is not hinged, so you cannot adjust the monitor angle. The interface is reasonably intuitive, but you're limited to a small number of buttons to adjust all of your settings. There are no USB ports or USB connection/functionality. None of those things are things I expected when I bought this, although I was *hoping* the monitor would be hinged.
Overall Review: If you're looking for a frills free screen with good performance or a screen with quiet built in speakers, this is a great option. I bought it when it was a NewEgg e-mail special, and I am very pleased with what I paid and what I got. I am thinking of buying two more if it goes on sale again to use in a dedicated Eyefinity setup.
Pros: I'm using this along side a 240GB HyperX SSD in a very fast system. As such, when this HDD is in us, it's normally the bottleneck. The other PCs and laptops I use have slower drives than this, but for the computer it's in, this is the slowest (weakest) link. It also doesn't help that it's price was bumped up as a result of the flooding in Thailand, meaning that I paid more per GB for this drive than I did for the Seagate 1.5TB USB 3.0 external drive that I bought back in April. It does it's job reasonably well, reasonably quietly and I haven't had any issues with it, but I can't give it five stars based on it's price/performance.
Cons: It's OEM, so it doesn't come with any cables or documentation. While it is a fast HDD, it can't hold a candle to recent SSD performance, and it's only a small capacity of the largest HDDs. That said, it does have reasonably good price performance for people who are looking for a relatively fast 3.5" HDD.
Overall Review: I'm not disappointed with the drive, and I'm glad I have the extra storage space, but it's hard to be excited about the speed or price of this drive when my SSD runs circles around it and the 2.5" external drive I bought 9 months ago was cheaper *and* larger than this product is as I type this review.
Pros: I bought two pair of these. (16GB), the heat sink and the very large CPU cooler (EVGA Superclock CPU cooler) means that one of the DIMMs rests up against the CPU cooler and is angled. While that is suboptimal, I have had zero problems with stability or performance. I haven't bothered trying to overclock them at all, but for what I paid (Thanks to a NewEgg e-mail special), 16GB of 9-9-9-24 at PC3 12800 is great, and I'll settle for the Windows Experience 7.8 score...no need to worry about that last 0.1 point.
Cons: As I mentioned, the memory module does rest up against the large CPU heatsink I'm using. I didn't even bother trying to remove the heatsink, but there are no instructions that tell you if they can be removed, how to remove them if you want to, and whether or not they can be refitted after removing them. Not a big deal, but a detail that would have been appreciated.
Pros: It's quiet, it does a good job delivering the voltages it should, and it has plenty of cables. It comes with cable ties, and is worthy of the positive reviews I read about it before buying it.
Cons: It's not modular, but I knew that before I bought it. It's olive green instead of black, on the off chance that really matters to someone. It's 80 Bronze, not 80 Platinum, but that's pretty obvious to anyone who's looking at buying it. No, those aren't the reason for four eggs, although they play a small factor as a group. I would say this PSU is above average, but the reason I haven't given it the full five eggs is because of the cables. The proper orientation of the 4 pins when plugging the 20+4 and 4+4 into a 24-pin and 8-pin motherboard, or the 2 pins when plugging in the 6+2 into a 8 pin plug on a graphics card, is not clear. Some larger tabs on the plugs that made it easier to line up and use all 24, 8 or 8 pins without worrying that the 4/2 pins have become turned around would have made using this PSU that much easier and error-proof. No, I did not have any problems plugging the pins in the right way the first time, but I did have to take a moment to look and confirm
Overall Review: It's a good PSU if you're not looking for something modular. I'm using it in a Rosewill Thor with a ASRock P67 Pro 3 and AMD 7970, which is hardly going to tax it's limits, but it does the job well and as long as you have good lighting and take the time to make sure you get your plugs right, you should have no problems with this one.
Pros: I found this straight forward and easy to install, and it works with a lot of different chip types, which is nice. I was a bit concerned before opening it, based on earlier reviews, but honestly, I thought it was pretty cleverly designed and easy to assemble and install. (I'm sure some who've found this confusing would have no problems with things I have found difficult.) In all of my manual tweaks of my 2500K, I have never seen the temperature go above 68C (max in Prime95 and Intel Burn Test), and I have never seen a BSOD. I have had one BSOD from trying a motherboard OC preset (ASRock P67 Pro 3), but in my manual settings, I simply stopped tweaking at 4.5GHz at 1.3V, as I didn't see any benefits to going higher. Again, I never had a temperature, stability or performance issue that caused me to stop there or choose that voltage...I simply don't see a need to go higher or use a lower voltage. Very impressed with the 2500K and the cooling capabilities of this cooler.
Cons: If someone wanted to find cons, they could talk about how big this is or the lack of ability to mount a second fan or the high RPMs (and thus noise) of the fan...but for what I was looking for, this delivered and then some. The copper pipes do their job, and the performance has given me what I was hoping for. The no-name thermal paste that comes with the cooler may or may not be decent, I don't know because I used Arctic Silver 5, and have had no problems.
Overall Review: This thing is big. I'm using all four RAM slots on my motherboard, and the fourth does not fit straight...it is slightly angled because it's resting up against the heatsink, but I have had no stability issues. My case (Rosewill Thor) is giant, so the size of the heatsink is not an issue for me, but you will definitely want to double check the dimensions of your board and case if you have any concerns about this fitting. It's big, which helps it do it's job as well as it does.
Pros: I've got a relatively cheap motherboard (ASRock P67 Pro 3), with an EVGA Superclock CPU Cooler (single fan CPU cooler) and Rosewill Thor case (large case with great cooling properties) and I have run my processor through multiple burn tests, hours of gaming and other high loads at 4.5 GHz with absolutely no problems. The ONLY crash I have had is using one of the ASRock motherboard's preset settings. Setting the CPU to 45x Ratio with 1.3V has been rock solid. Not a single BSOD, crash or other error to speak of. I could probably go higher, but who'd complain about 100% stability at 4.5GHz with an air cooled solution that's surprisingly quiet? (My max temp (at 4.5GHz) under multiple runs of the Intel Burn Test and Prime95 has been 68C.
Cons: It only has four cores. If you need a lot of cores, be aware that this only has four. If you're playing games and want a great processor or using your PC in ways that you won't see much improvement with a 5th or 6th core, I can't think of a con.
Overall Review: I picked this up when it was on sale hoping for 4.0GHz without too much noise. The stability and temperature/volume at 4.5GHz has been exceptional, and while I'm almost certain I could go higher, I see no reason to mess with settings that have already far exceeded my expectations.
Pros: This chair is more or less what I was expecting, and thanks to a NewEgg e-mail special, I got it for a very good price, with free shipping. I'm pretty happy with the chair, and it's my work chair, which means I use it for 8-10 hours at a time on a regular basis. It's not that difficult to assemble, and I've had zero problems with the chair after I had to RMA the first.
Cons: I've bought a dozen or so Rosewill items (PC case, IH heater, 72-in-1 card reader, keyboards, all kinds of stuff), and I've found a pretty clear pattern. Three times I've had items show up DOA, or with the wrong parts, or with problems straight out of the box. Every time, I've contacted NewEgg and we've set up an RMA or hot-swap RMA painlessly, and it's taken nothing but time and energy to get the item back in the box and shipped back to NewEgg. This chair is one of those three. It showed up with an incorrect part, and was thus impossible to assemble. The replacement chair showed up the day after I RMAed it (I'm in upstate NY, and this ships from NJ), and had all the right parts. I've been using it for several months with no problems, but putting the chair together twice and dealing with RMAs are the risk you take when ordering Rosewill.
Overall Review: I'm 6'2",185 lbs and I find the chair very comfortable. It's basically what I expected, which is a moderately firm chair. The chair lists a weight limit of 250 lbs, which something that might be important, and not immediately obvious, for some people.
Pros: Wow. I had high expectations for the SSD, but it blew me away. Windows starts before the windows logo animation finishes. The difference between using AHCI and IDE is extremely noticeable, and the 7.9 (max score) that Windows gives to this drive is very well deserved. I had one BSOD while trying to tweak the overclock settings of my 2500K, so I updated the firmware, just in case that might have an impact. I have had no issues otherwise, and I don't think the drive was responsible for the one BSOD I've had. Kingston went the extra step with the packaging, making the box, presentation and drive all look like it's worth what you need to pay for it. Unless it's price or the limits of SATA III, you'd have a hard time finding something to complain about with this drive.
Cons: Obviously, I thought it was worth what I paid for it, as I did buy it. I could list the rebate as a con, as I'm not a fan of those, and I think, at times, this drive is limited by the SATA III interface, but barring price, interface limits and the rebate, I have nothing to complain about, hence the five eggs.
Overall Review: Highly recommended to be used in AHCI mode. Anyone buying this to use in IDE mode should save their money and buy a cheaper and slower SSD.
Pros: Very happy with this. Came with an active Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter and an HDMI to DVI adapter. I am very pleased with the performance of the card, and have been able to overclock both the memory and the GPU to their max (AMD GUI) settings with no problem. The card is surprising quiet at default settings, and I'm playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution with Eyefinity using a single card, which impresses me.
Cons: I paid MSRP for a very pricey card, and I'm sure there are weaker cards that give you more bang for your buck, but for a single card, single GPU option, this is currently as good as it gets.
Overall Review: It's a reference card, and Gigabyte's done a good job with the packaging and extras. I'm using it in Rosewill Thor, which probably helps keep the card cooler than some other cases.
Pros: Fantastic performance is almost every aspect. Refresh rates available are awesome. I like the stand and UI. Great colors out of the box.
Cons: Still 4ms GtG, Blur Busters UFO Motion Tests don't sell this monitor. My monitor has some very uneven back light brightness issues, the entire left side lights up quite noticeably. Worse yet, my monitor has a dead pixel (green) in the dead center of the screen. The first time I walked through a dark tunnel, I thought I had a reticle overlay on on the monitor or that there was something glowing in the distance. It's extremely noticeable and distracting.
Overall Review: Between the awful variance of the backlight and the dead green pixel of THIS monitor, I am unwilling to try the refurb version of this item again. I've seen it on display in store without these issues, and it is a great monitor if you don't have those issues. At this point, if I'm buying new, I'm waiting for the 4K 144Hz from ASUS or Acer. I won't be rolling the dice a refurb again any time soon. Hats off to NewEgg for making the return easy. One of the reasons I do business with them.