Reviews & Articles

The Konnet Power Pyramid charger is a powerhouse for gamers that play for hours on end with PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. I like this Konnet charger, but I don’t think the price tag is low enough for today’s market.

The LevelUp Nintendo DS Element storage tray bares the official Nintendo DS logo on the front and back of the tray. This tray is designed to be compact, but the LevelUp team also created this tray to store a good portion of your DS gear. It stores your Nintendo DS system, styluses, games and power cable all in one plastic compact case.

Wow ... that is the only word to come to mind when thinking of Plantronics Gamecom X95 wireless headset for the Xbox 360.

Keep in mind for this review, I was playing Battlefield Bad Company 2, because I thought the overall sound structure of the game is beyond amazing-

I have had a ton of headsets that claim to be the best, but I must say after all is said and done, the GameCom X95 takes the proverbial cake.

If you are like most anyone in this connected age, you have several gadgets that all come with their own chargers of varying voltages and charging tips. A cell phone, a Bluetooth headset for that cell phone, a camera, an MP3 player, a Nintendo DS and perhaps a PSP as well. Half your desk is covered with those little “wall warts” as you have two in the wall and bought a power strip for the rest.

It is no secret I am a fan of anything Plantronics puts out. So when I received the GameCom 777 headset, I was really excited. I have used quite a few 5.1 headsets but never a 7.1, so I was quite interested in how/if there was a difference in quality.

Several years ago, the concept of a market for gaming optics was a hard one to imagine. As playing console and PC games have become more mainstream, so have the trials and tribulations of gamers who put in hard hours playing their favorite games. Although hands and shoulders may cramp, the eyes suffer in silence after lengthy play sessions. Oakley has been one of the leaders in eyewear and sunglasses for a long time, only recently taking its expertise into multimedia performance eyewear. Gunnar has been in the field for a few years, focusing more exclusively on the plight of gamers squinting from eyestrain after their 50th consecutive hour of Call of Duty or World of Warcraft.

At the2011 Consumer Electronics Show, Android and Windows 7 tablets, tablet and smartphone accessories and 3-D televisions dominated a large portion of the expo floor. Oh, and headphones and headsets. Lots and lots of headphones and headsets. It takes a lot of uniqueness to stand out at CES if you’ve got something to offer that comes from these types of products. With the in-development Admiral, and especially the Admiral Touch headsets, NOX Audio managed to achieve that rare feat of standing out from the crowd of categorically similar product.

CompuExpert is an ambiguously named distribution company that would seemingly match up as well selling PC power supplies and printer cables as it would gamer-caliber hardware. In fact, CompuExpert typically specializes in higher-quality European-originated gear like headsets and mice. Two of its marquee product lines showcased at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show are headsets from Sharkoon and mice from Mionix.

The Consumer Electronics Show is a playground for a mind-boggling spectrum of technologies, many of which will affect the way we play games now and in the future. New tablets, displays, speakers, headsets, software and much more that connect to gamers and the technology they use every day are sprinkled through the almost 2 million square feet of expo space. Let’s take a look at a handful of some of the more interesting technologies I ran across while burning calories and putting miles on my feet during CES.

If I was told many moons ago that controllers would no longer be wired, I would have looked at the person like he was crazy — and then think it would be really cool. The main problem with wired controllers is that they chained you somewhere nearby, regardless if it was favorite seat. Wireless controllers, as you can probably guess, remove that problem. There’s nothing like playing a game in bed or laying on the couch feeling ill and not having to worry about moving the system as close as possible. Are you aware of the problem we old-school gamers had? Sometimes we had to edge the system so close it presented a tripping hazard. The main problems wireless controllers present is that they need to be charged and, ideally, a place to be stored. Allow me to introduce to the Konnet Power Pyramid.

Wired controllers have always had a habit of getting in your way when you are right in the middle of playing your favorite game. I have always liked wireless controllers for the PlayStation 3 and PC. I got to try the Thrustmaster: F1 Wireless Gamepad Ferrari F60 Limited Edition, which doesn’t get in your way like wired controllers of the past, is compatible for our games and makes perfect sense to us game junkies.

The T-Freestyle NW by Thrustmaster is an awesome accessory for the Wii. It’s an actual full-size skateboard body (wood, not plastic and minus the wheels) that latches onto the Wii Balance Board. It even pivots side to side like a real skateboard — the kind I can’t stand up on in the real world. The construction is solid, and it easily attaches and removes from the Wii Balance Board.

Third-party peripherals can be a tough sell for the discriminating gamer. Uncomfortable grips, superfluous functions and misshapen buttons have long been the calling card of off-brand controllers — which is why I found Performance Designed Products’ E3 spread especially refreshing.

The Thrustmaster: Tennis Duo Pack is very easy to use if you know how to use a racket of any type. Using this accessory enhances your experience with the game, and the possibility to lose weight is always a plus. With all of the peripherals for the Wii, this is one of my favorites — despite a few disappointments.

I am a pretty picky guy. I admit it. However, being picky is a good thing. It has allowed me to cull items that are worth mine and other people’s time. I was fortunate enough to meet with Alex Verrey, a public relations representative of Mad Catz. He was excited to show me some of the products his co-workers are working hard on. This article previews upcoming peripherals for your favorite systems, Rock Band 3 and the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops.

We have been on a quest to find the right cooler for my daughter’s Dell laptop. Between the money spent on models that don’t work and the outraged screams of my daughter that I ruined her laptop (no, logic doesn’t work on my 10-year-old with autism), I’d about reached the end of my tether on this.

A good pair of headphones can be hard to find. Luckily, NOX Audio was at E3 to show off two pairs of headphones specially designed to deliver clear, crisp audio for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and any mobile device you’d care to name.

At an E3 inundated with alternative control interfaces, one of the most potentially groundbreaking pieces of technology wasn’t even on the show floor. I met with NeuroSky’s Vice President of Marketing and Business Development David Westendorf, in a crowded café at the Los Angeles Convention Center. David had something in his bag he wanted to show me.

Augmented reality and 3-D are two of the biggest watch words in technology and gaming right now. Someday we’ll be playing games that overlay high-resolution graphics with the world around us, played by GPS-located social gamers using virtual reality helmets or neural implants. Now, before all this technology is sprung upon us unsuspecting gamers, the hardware junkies at Vuzix are making sure to ease into the future a little more gently. They’re already implementing a taste of the future with their current top-of-the-line product, the Wrap 920, and expanding upon it with the upcoming Wrap 920AR and the 6-DoF Tracker. At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, I steeled my nerves for future shock and took a quick tour of one company’s look at where the visuals of gaming might be going.

The Thrustmaster Sports Pack+ NW is a set of accessories to use with your Wii-mote and is compatible with the new Wii MotionPlus add-on. And accessories often make gameplay more realistic and lots of fun.

It was at the Consumer Electronics Show that our esteemed editor Sarah (aka “monolysis”) tossed a power strip at me and said, “Review that, would you?” And my response was, “Sure.”

Have you ever made a flip book? A flip book is a collection of sequenced images that when the pages are turned quickly, you see an animation. Now, what if you remove some of those images? Or many of them? It’s just a jumbled, headache-inducing mess to watch. A similar result of stuttering gameplay is what happens to an online game when you introduce lag. Limiting that latency — at least on a user’s computer — is the main argument for Bigfoot Network’s Killer Xeno Pro network adapter card.

I was asked to review a laptop cooler. I responded in the affirmative, wondering what there was to review. A laptop cooler is a laptop cooler, but I do have a hot-running Toshiba that’s a productivity workhorse — though I don’t use it for gaming. Sometimes, on cold winter nights, I would watch a movie in bed and have it warm up the bed nicely. So I had a suitable test subject.

I’ve lived in rural areas for more than half my life. When I first started using the Internet, dial-up was the only thing available, so that worked. Now, about 10 years later, there are glorious high-speed Internet capabilities. Sadly, I’m again living in the boonies, and the main thing available is dial-up. Luckily, there’s another option: Novatel Wireless MiFi Intelligent Mobile Hotspot.

One of the coolest products I saw at the Consumer Electronics Show was the PEREGRINE glove, which is basically a keyboard that fits snug on your hand for comfortable gaming or anything else you use a keyboard for.

I’ll admit it: I don’t know much about hardware and what’s involved with building and maintaining a badass PC. I DO know, however, that a quality system tricked out with good gear needs to have a quality way to keep it from overheating. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, I got to see CoolIT Systems’ latest in liquid cooling: ECO, Maestro, VANTAGE and OMNI. Hopefully, we’ll be able to offer a more in-depth look at these products in the future. For now, here’s a quick overview.

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas had a lot of neat gadgets, and gaming peripherals seemed to be the top gaming focus. I got to see some great Nyko products, including and SpeakerCom for the Xbox 360; Wand+ for the Nintendo Wii; the Charge Base Quad IC for Wii-motes; Perfect Shot Pro for Wii; and the Intercooler Slim and Media Hub Slim for the PlayStation 3. All are quality peripherals we’ve come to expect from Nyko.

I recently purchased the Razer Moray earbuds. I was looking for something that would fit nicely in my ears and had an in-line microphone. I found what I was looking for, and I’ve loved my earbuds ever since. While on my way to an appointment at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, I walked by the Razer room and decided to see what they were showing. I’m glad I did. The three things I got to check out were the Razer Onza, Razer Chimera and the Razer/Sixense motion sensing and gesture recognition controller.

I need a new television. I don't have the money to buy what I really want — or rather, I don't want to spend the money at this time. Tired of playing my Xbox 360 on a mediocre TV with a mediocre size and an off-center picture, I decided to try the EyeClops Mini Projector. I knew it probably wouldn't have a high-quality picture, but from the available information, it seemed like a decent short-term solution.

I suppose it's fitting that the first thing I got to see at the video game expo would be peripherals. I mean, they are rather important. Nyko and Splitfish didn't disappoint.

We didn't get any playtime with the PlayStation 3 controller systems, but we did get to see them in action. The SplitFish controllers split the basic PS controller in two. To me, it seems like if you're a typical PC gamer and you have trouble with the PS3 controller, these products would be right for you.