HANNSG HG216DP high-res 22-inch HDMI-capable monitor
If you’ve been holding off buying an HD-ready monitor until you felt the price was low enough for you to afford, then now might be a good time to invest in one. HANNSG has a reputation for producing stylish monitors with a good performance record, and you’d be hard pushed to find many better deals for 22-inch monitors than the HG216DP; it’s officially valued at £179 but has been spotted on the Web for as little as £135.
Once you get it out of the box you’ll be able to appreciate its chic silver and black design and the cool neon blue logo that lights up when you power on, although it’s a lot chunkier than many of its rivals, at 518mm x 230mm x 412mm and 5.8kg.
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Tagged Under : HANNSG, HDMI, LCD, Monitor
NEC - MultiSync LCD2690WUXi
The NEC MultiSync 2690WUXi has a nominal size of 26 inches and, even though the true diagonal measurement is a mere 25.5 inches, this is still a very large TFT display.
The resolution is also huge at 1,920 x 1,200 pixels, so the NEC is capable of displaying 1080 HD TV. However, that isn’t what this display is about. There are no HDMI or Component inputs but instead you get one DVI-I, one DVI-D and one VGA connector. In the box you get a DVI-to-DVI cable plus a DVI-to-VGA cable.
If you choose you can connect three input devices simultaneously - two PCs and a laptop would fit the bill - and then switch from one input to another. This may sound like an odd course of action, but the NEC monitor is very expensive and is unlikely to end up on every desk in the office, so you can expect it to be a shared resource within a workgroup.
Tagged Under : HDMI, LCD, LCD2690WUXi, multisync, Nec, TFT
Microsoft - Xbox 360 Elite
The enhanced version of Microsoft’s successful gaming console has to realistically be marked down as a missed opportunity. On one hand it’s undoubtedly a powerful beast, and better equipped to go toe-to-toe with Sony’s Playstation 3 machine. But on the other, there was a real chance to seize the initiative here, one that Microsoft appears to have squandered.
The machine itself, to all intents and purposes, is an Xbox 360 with some welcome additions. Over the Premium version of the console, the Elite sports a 120GB hard drive compared with a 20GB device (comparing favourably to the PS3’s 60GB), and there’s an HDMI port on the back of the machine to allow easy and proper support of 1080p output (a connection that was picked up and optimised immediately when we hooked it up to our 52-inch 1080p test screen). Finished off in smart black, the list of enhancements stops right about there. (more…)