Fractal Design makes outstanding cases for not a lot of money. No matter which one we review the outcome has always been the same – solid, well designed, and a great value. So it is great to see them iterating the focused-on-silence Define series with the new R5 which will only run $110-120 depending on whether you want a side […]
Read more
There are many different types of home theater PC (HTPC) enclosures; with most falling somewhere in the spectrum between a throw-everything-including-a-big-O’-GPU-in-the-box and the small-silent-discrete varieties. Supporting only Thin-ITX motherboards the $160 Perfect Home Theater (PHT) T-ITX-6 is firmly located in the latter category. That’s not to say that expansion is strictly limited to just an optical disc drive (ODD) however, […]
Read more
Back in April, we took a look at the 5-Bay NAS N5550 from Thecus, which was one of their first NAS units including an HDMI port to allow hybrid functionality by combining the reliability of a NAS with some of the features of a dedicated HTPC (home theater PC). With conventional hard drives reaching 6TB these days, support for five […]
Read more
It isn’t safe to call it a glut, but we are increasingly spoiled for choice when it comes to 802.11AC routers. Choice is never a bad thing so it was great to see D-Link bringing an AC1900 (1300Mbps 5GHz + 600Mbps 2.4GHz) entrant, the DIR-880L, into the fray. At $175 street ($209 SRP) this wireless router/bridge is $10-$20 cheaper than […]
Read moreThere was a time when the whole ZigBee v. Bluetooth (BT) question would have been kind of silly. BT was very capable, but its power characteristics made unsuitable for the types of devices that a Home Automation (HA) protocol like ZigBee is intended to address. That has changed significantly over the last couple years, with BT LE (Low Energy) taking […]
Read more
The rapid expansion of products in the Home Automation (HA) space this year has been amazing. As the “Internet of Things” gains ground, OEMs who have only dabbled in the past are focusing more on delivering holistic solutions. Today, NETGEAR becomes one of these vendors with their Arlo product line. Currently this only manifests as wireless video monitoring solution that […]
Read more