Cyclops News

Product: Rebel T2i

Manufacturer:

Canon

Wired Rating: 7

At first glance Canon’s newest entry-level DSLR, the Rebel T2i, might trick you into thinking that it’s merely a repackaged version of its predecessor.

That’s a mistake.

This new Rebel definitely has a cause. It’s been hopped up under the hood with a re-designed 18-megapixel image sensor, a Digic 4 processor and a 3:2 aspect ratio LCD (it’s about friggin’ time).

It’s also got high-end, full HD movie-making capabilities in a variety of flavors and frame rates, making this camera a great way to flex your filmmaking muscles.

The T2i’s still-image performance gets a boost from the 63-zone metering system (almost twice as robust as the T1i) that yields quicker more accurate exposures and a faster 3.7 fps frame rate. The aforementioned Digic 4 image processor has noticeably improved white-balance fidelity, which is an absolute must when shooting video with the T2i.

Canon also added creative flexibility by bumping up the exposure compensation from +/- 2 stops all the way up to +/- 5. Like its competitors, Canon has bolstered its noise-reduction technologies and the T2i keeps things fairly tight up to ISO 1600 with acceptably sharp prints up to ISO 3200 (assuming you’re willing to do some post-production manipulation).

If you’re keen to explore moviemaking, then this Canon is a good place to start. The new image sensor and processor pave the way for full high-def 1080p recording with the option for manual controls (you can switch to Auto with the swipe of a finger, too) so you’re able to achieve a very film-like shallow depth of field at 24 fps.

Like its big brother, the 7D, the Rebel T2i has a dedicated video Start/Stop button on the back of the body, so when you’re ready to shoot moving pictures, the button you need is within thumb’s reach.

In spite of the vast motion picture possibilities of the T2i, let’s be clear from the get-go: These newly hybridized DSLRs aren’t your typical flip-screen, handheld, point-and-shoot videocams. The T2i and its ilk are feature-laden for sure, but are truly meant for a more considered approach. Oh, you can definitely run and gun with it, but the video and audio results may disappoint (even with an image stabilized lens like the 18mm-55mm f3.5-5.6 IS in this kit).

To give yourself a better shot at superior footage with smooth pans, really steady shots and clear sound, we’d recommend using a tripod with a fluid head and an external shotgun microphone. And if you get really serious there are scads of aftermarket rigs for better handheld operation.

But if a feature-rich DSLR with a low barrier of entry is what you’re on the hunt for, you could do a lot worse than the T2i.

WIRED Image-stabilized kit lens. Three-inch 3:2 aspect ratio LCD with a slightly greater viewing angle than the old version. Dedicated Live View/Movie Record button. Quick Control Screen. External microphone jack. Quicktime H.264 video format. SD memory-card slot handles speedy SDXC memory cards. AV output and HDMI connections. Video in 1080p at 30 and 24 fps; 720p at 60 fps, 640 x 480 at 60 fps and VGA crop.

TIRED Lack of quick control wheel (you have to get Canon’s 7D or a higher model to have one). Bothersome autofocus assist flash. Build quality not as robust as feature set.

Product: Office 2010 for Windows

Manufacturer:

Microsoft

Wired Rating: 7

Three years have passed since the last version of Office was released, so naturally it’s time for Microsoft to convince you that you need a new one.

Office 2010 arrives, heralding more than 100 new and improved features. The suite on the whole is compelling but, in typical Office fashion, has more software than any sane person could possibly need. It also boasts integration with Microsoft’s much-ballyhooed Web Apps, a potential Google Docs competitor that lets you create and edit documents using a free web-based interface.

The overall look and feel of Office 2010 is similar to Office 2007, so if you’ve become accustomed to the “ribbon” (Microsoft says its studies show it saves users lots of time and prevents mistakes from being made), you’ll have no trouble transitioning to Office 2010. In fact, the ribbon has now been extended to the entire Office lineup, and it can finally be customized, a long overdue feature.

Outlook is the most upgraded weapon in the Office arsenal. The biggest switch is the new Conversation View, and once you start using it you’ll wonder how you ever got on without it. Put simply, it lumps all replies to a message into a single item in the message list, eliminating the inbox full of “Re:” this and “Re:” that. If you need it, a twisty lets you see every message in the thread with a single click. Sick of it? Click the Ignore button and you’ll never see a reply to that thread again. It’s more intelligent and more capable than anything Gmail currently has.

The little things Microsoft has done to Outlook are just as welcome, like a much richer to-do bar (the rightmost pane), better search and Quick Steps, which are basically e-mail management macros built into the app. The social networking built into Outlook is, for now, not even half-baked — it’s maybe quarter-baked — but it’s a sign of interesting things to come once the proper Facebook and MySpace hooks are rolled out. On the other hand, Outlook’s integrated spam filter is still not quite fully cooked. It’s hard to believe that after all these years Microsoft still can’t nail a decent spam filter. Our advice? Microsoft should simply give up and retire it at this point.

This edition has substantial PowerPoint upgrades, most visibly with an integrated but rudimentary video-editing system right in the app. Dropping a movie into a slide show is now easy, and while you can’t do complicated edits like dubbing in multiple audio tracks or crossfading from one film to another, it’s probably good enough for the average PowerPoint user. Basic image editing — also inline with your document — is baked into the whole Office suite, too, and it’s powerful enough for the way most users will need to work with it.

Microsoft perhaps overreaches with its attempt to outdo third-party conferencing tools like WebEx. You can now take PowerPoint to the web with a feature that lets you turn presentations into web-viewable slide shows using any browser. It works as advertised, but only if you save your file to a Windows Live folder and the people you want to share with all have Windows Live logins — a real obstacle. Performance is lackluster as well.

Word and Excel aren’t fundamentally different from previous Office iterations, though changes to a few longstanding keyboard shortcuts may frustrate power users. The overall look is more polished though, and upgrades like the Backstage View, which gives you more visible prompts to remove personal information, revision marks and the like from documents you are distributing, are helpful.

If there’s one major problem with Office 2010, it’s printing. Microsoft has taken pains to improve print preview across the suite with more realistic WYSIWYG views, but this has come at the expense of speed. You can’t keep from previewing a document before printing, and rendering a graphics-heavy e-mail can take up to 15 seconds before you can even push the Print button. For busy admin types, this is a deal killer.

What’s worse is that in Outlook, printing is erratically implemented, so if you’re printing an e-mail you already have open in preview mode, sometimes Office will print a list view of the entire email folder by default. On the whole, printing in this version of Office is such a step back, I consider it fundamentally broken.

Microsoft’s attempt to integrate the web into Office 2010 is an effort so busted one wonders how it got this far. The idea with Web Apps is that anyone with a Windows Live account can view and edit documents saved to a SkyDrive or SharePoint account online, all within a web browser. Web Apps theoretically give you a stripped-down but functional (and cost-free) way to view and edit these files, even if you don’t have Office 2010 installed so you can collaborate from anywhere.

Unfortunately, Web Apps won’t be challenging Google Docs (or any other online document editor) anytime soon, as it’s uncommonly convoluted and buggy. Once you jump through all the hurdles to share a doc (even saving a file to SkyDrive is a pain), more often than not, it just won’t open for editing, or you’ll be prompted to re-save them in a different format. You can open Word docs and view them, but you can’t edit them — the mother of all WTFs. And the frequent prompts to install Microsoft Silverlight won’t be winning Web Apps many friends, either.

Ultimately, if your collaborator has any version of Office, just sending an attachment is infinitely more convenient and quicker. Sure, sometimes the system actually works, but there’s zero polish here: Even something as simple as using Outlook to send a file link to a recipient’s Hotmail account invariably results in a broken URL that has to be reconstructed by hand. This is all supposed to make sharing files easier, but Microsoft has somehow managed to make it far more complicated than you can imagine.

Should you buy Office 2010? It’s a compelling application suite with some nice new features, but if you’re using any version of Office produced this century, there’s nothing earth-shattering enough to justify its gargantuan price tag. And the serious flaws with spam filtering and Web Apps is more than disappointing.

Still, if you’re hungry for some of the software’s collaboration tools (and maybe your company is picking up the tab) you might want to consider an upgrade. Otherwise, we’d hold off for now.

WIRED Integrated video and photo features throughout the suite. High-end features (like voicemail transcription) available to Exchange users. Outlook upgrades make it one of the best offline e-mail managers on the market.

TIRED More bloated than the Goodyear blimp. Printing is slow and buggy. Useless spam filter even after a decade of development. Occasional system crashes. Still feels like spending hundreds of dollars for the privilege of sending e-mail and typing letters.

Product: HiFiMan HM-801 Audio Player

Manufacturer:

Head-Direct

Wired Rating: 8

It used to be there were only two ways to improve the sound quality on your portable music player: Ditch the shoddy included earbuds for real headphones, or hook in a headphone amplifier.

Now there’s a third option, in the form of the HiFiMan HM-801 Audio Player.

This is, without a doubt, the first audiophile-worthy portable digital audio player I’ve encountered in the past 13 years of covering portable audio technology. Sure, some players have had slightly better sound than the iPod, but none could really deliver sound the way sharp-eared audio purists desire. (We’re talking about people who own gold-tipped connection cables and headphones that cost more than your laptop.)

But the HiFiMan delivers audio that even the snootiest sound snob will find little to gripe with. It does this with a first-of-its-kind preamp (swappable if there’s another preamp your ears desire) and the support of not only standard formats (MP3, AAC, WMA, OGG), but multiple lossless formats (APE, WMA, FLAC). There’s even 24-bit resolution and a 96-kHz sampling rate for FLAC files.

That means HiFiMan not only plays lossless files that sound as good as CDs but also 24-bit files that sound better than CDs, with much wider frequency and dynamic ranges. That equates to reproducing very high pitches (even ones outside the human hearing range, which some say colors the sound we can hear), and music with more gradations in volume that allow dynamic nuances to shine through.

HiFiMan connects to your computer via USB (16-bit 48 kHz) or home stereo system with its digital coaxial input (16-bit 44.1 kHz or 24-bit 96 kHz). Bonus: It can double as an excellent home headphone amplifier through its Burr-Brown PCM1704U digital-to-analog converter.

Paired with high-quality headphones, the HiFiMan sounds better than an iPod Classic, reputedly the best-sounding model Apple makes, even when playing the same files. We perceived no hiss or distortion, backing up the strong audio specs (102-dB signal-to-noise ratio) and everything from deep bass frequencies to ultrahigh cymbals sounded clearer, punchier. Sonically, it’s drastically better than the iPod in every conceivable way.

We squeezed just over seven hours out of the HiFiMan playing a combination MP3s, lossless files and 24-bit FLAC files. If that’s not enough juice, you can pick up a spare battery for another $80. Also worth mentioning is the clean analog volume attenuator that allows smooth, precise control of sound.

Now the bad news: This thing costs $790. By audiophile standards that’s a pittance but for the uninitiated that’s plain crazy, especially for a rather homely device with a button-driven interface. Oh yeah, the device has no on-board memory — hard drives cause too much audio interference — so you’ll have to supply your own SD cards to store your tunes. Forget about popping this monster in your pants either; at 4.4 x 3.1 x 1 inches, it’s a bit too big for pockets. A velvet bag and a mini-briefcase come with it for transportation, but who wants to tote something around that qualifies as carry-on luggage?

But the most significant reason you might not want to drop nearly 800 bones on the HiFiMan is that your ears simply might not care enough. Sound quality is a game of decreasing returns, and some people don’t get the same charge out of ultraclean, expansive, dynamic, crisp, properly imaged sound that audiophiles do.

But if you’re willing to put up the cash and endure its design shortcomings, the HiFiMan’s rich quality of sound will enrich the quality of your life.

WIRED Audiophile-pleasing deep, rich, clean sound. Pulls double duty as portable and home-stereo headphone solution. Walkman looks shout “don’t steal me.” Modular components (amplifier, battery). Comes with screwdriver and schematics for alternate amp designs.

TIRED Barely portable — large awkward chassis hard to carry. Menu and button configuration clearly traveled via flux capacitor from 2001. Only a small selection of 24-bit music is available for sale online. No docking station. You’ll need high-quality headphones to enjoy the player’s sounds.

Product: Kin One and Kin Two

Manufacturer:

Microsoft

Wired Rating: 0

Verizon’s newest phones, the Microsoft-designed and Sharp-manufactured Kin One and Kin Two, put social media front and center.

More capable than cheap, feature-sparse dumbphones, but quite a few IQ points shy of being true smartphones, the Kins are the latest entrants in a new space where traditional phone features are almost an afterthought, and it’s all about the Twitter and Facebook updates.

Palm’s Web OS, Motorola’s Blur interface, and other Android-based phone operating systems have been doing this kind of social media integration for more than a year. Kin just takes that idea and improves on it.

On the home screen (what Microsoft calls the Loop), a pleasingly formatted stack of randomly sized squares shows the latest updates from your networks. Your friends’ avatars are shown large, filling the background of each text update, making the Loop into a photo album as well as news feed. It’s hard to look at it without smiling.

Flick the touchscreen to the left to reveal your favorite contacts, swipe the other way to access a vertical stack of applications (text messaging, phone calls, web browsing, music and more.) A camera button activates a still/video camera function, and a Back button on the phone’s face takes you back to whatever screen you were looking at before. And that’s about it: The phone’s interface is amazingly uncluttered, friendly looking and minimalist.

The system still has some glitches to work out. As a Twitter client, it’s only half baked, since you can’t view @ replies, search or post photos. Similarly, Facebook features are limited to showing or posting status updates, though you can post photos. The phone will easily connect with a Gmail account to display your e-mail, but won’t let you access your Gmail contacts. Hotmail or Windows Live user? You’re in luck, the Kin is well-integrated with those services.

YouTube videos won’t play at all on the Kin, there’s no map application, and even though the “Bing Near Me” search button helps find nearby restaurants and cafes, it relies on a browser interface, not a map: Clunky.

Overall, the Kin OS is promising, entertaining and — despite some obvious glitches — fairly well-suited to its target audience of social media addicts: in other words, tweens. How does the hardware stack up? Read on.

Kin One

The smaller of the two, the Kin One is a petite, rounded square of plastic with a tiny screen and a keyboard that slides out from underneath. It’s almost impossibly cute and surprisingly functional for a phone that could easily be mistaken for a compact.

The touchscreen is just 1.5 inches tall by 2 inches wide, but its resolution (240 x 320 pixels) is up to the task of displaying your slice of the digital world — at least, that part of it that is posted in 160 characters or less.

A 5-megapixel camera (with a tiny LED light for illumination) takes OK pictures, though it had some trouble focusing on closeup objects in our tests.

The keyboard, though puny, is surprisingly easy to use. One mystery: The bottom, keyboard part of the phone’s body protrudes a half-centimeter beyond the screen portion on the bottom and the top edges of the phone. Why the designers didn’t just make the screen a little larger and go for a perfectly flush look is a puzzler.

The company claims its batteries will last for more than eight days on standby, and in our tests, it was about exhausted after a full day of heavy use.

For $50 with a two-year contract, the Kin One has a temptingly small sticker price, but don’t be fooled: The contract demands a minimum of $70 per month for voice and data service, which means your total cost will be at least $3,410. That’s a steep price for keeping your kids up-to-date with the latest on Facebook and Twitter.

But if all you want is a tiny, compact social communications device, and you’ve got a deep pocketbook, the Kin One is an adorable choice. We’re looking forward to seeing more phones like it.

WIRED Super pocket-friendly size and weight (4.1 ounces). Cute as a button. Surprisingly usable keyboard. Built-in FM tuner. Extremely responsive touchscreen.

TIRED Screen too small for much reading or web browsing. Autofocus problems, especially on closeups. Video recording is only standard definition. Doesn’t integrate with Google contacts or calendar. Limited Twitter capabilities.

$50 (after $100 mail-in rebate, with 2-year contract)

Kin Two

The Kin Two, with its 3.5-inch, 480-by-320-pixel display, isn’t particularly innovative in its design or features. It does what Microsoft is known for best: Come into the game late and copy an idea well enough to make it cheaper and sometimes, just sometimes a little better.

When it comes to the hardware, the Kin Two proves you get what you pay for. The run-of-the-mill design feels cheap. The 4.8-ounce phone doesn’t have a solid body, the plastic casing is flimsy and the keys on the slide-out QWERTY keyboard aren’t soft or easy to peck on.

But what the phone lacks in looks, it does make up in technical artillery. The Nvidia Tegra processor is zippy, the touchscreen is smooth and the 8-megapixel camera, with an LED flash, delivers some good photos in low light. Unlike the Kin One, it can shoot HD video.

With a larger body comes more screen real estate and a larger keyboard, and that makes the Kin Two potentially more powerful than its little sister. The lack of an onscreen keyboard is a surprising omission, leaving you with no alternative but to flip the phone to the landscape mode if you want to type anything.

Overall, the Kin Two lacks the panache of the tiny, squarish Kin One, however, and invites comparison with smarter phones in the same form factor, like Motorola’s Devour, Backflip and Droid, and Samsung’s Behold II.

Like the Kin One, the Kin Two requires a two-year voice and data contract with a $70 per month minimum, bringing its total cost to $3,460. Unless you’re some sort of iced out playa ballin’ out of control, you’re better off buying your progeny a feature phone and making them use SMS like all the other kids.

WIRED Free and automatic browser-based phone backup. Easy sharing of photos, videos and web pages.

TIRED Lack of apps and games. No easy way to access maps. El cheap-o design. No calendar or alarm. No onscreen keyboard.

Product: Helmet Cam

Manufacturer:

GoPro

Wired Rating: 8

The problem with doing something epic stupid is that often it’s hard to document without destroying your camera.

For all you Jackass acolytes there’s the GoPro HD Hero, a small wearable camera with a rugged waterproof housing designed to be used in extreme (to the max!) situations. We wore it while mountain biking and swimming in San Francisco Bay, and found it comfortable, easy to use and damn near indestructible. What’s more, despite dunking it underwater, hurling it onto the concrete and dropping it from 25 feet, we couldn’t kill the little bastard.

Key to the Hero’s go-anywhere gusto is that you can afix it to almost any surface. Included are mounts suitable for flat, curved and oddly shaped surfaces (like a bike helmet). We also tried out a headstrap mount (sold separately). This is pretty much the dorkiest thing you can put on your body aside from a Boy Scout uniform, and we’re also pretty sure that it doubles as a chastity belt.

The camera’s interface is dead simple, if exceptionally bare bones, with a mere two buttons that navigate all settings, shoot and power up or down. It shoots both video and 5-megapixel stills, with five video modes ranging from WVGA to 1080p. Swapping between various modes on the fly is easy, but only after repeated button presses. Essentially, it’s a set-it-and-forget-it model. At 6 ounces, it’s more or less unnoticeable when mounted on your person — even atop your head but still simple to manipulate while hurtling down the side of a hill, even with gloves on.

As every barfly knows, being easy is no substitute for good looks. Thankfully, our 1080p footage appeared fantastic on a 39-inch HDTV. Colors are natural and vivid, while the camera’s picture quality when moving from low to bright light has the ease of an ACE cinematographer. Often, smallish helmet-mounted “action” camcorders can have a stuttered effect that looks almost like stop-motion video. Yet the Hero looked great in motion, shooting smooth, fluid video with no Fantastic Mr. Fox effect. (We did notice some artifacts and blurring at the edges when moving at high speed.) Photos also looked great, although the wide-angle fisheye effect has us taking it out of the protective case for some snaps.

If there’s a major con to the HD Hero, it’s that you never know what you actually shot until you get home. It lacks both a viewfinder and LCD screen, and we repeatedly angled it lower than intended and recorded footage of the ground below instead of horizon ahead. Even knowing if you are recording is tricky. The camcorder beeps and a light flashes when you take a photo or shoot video. But if you’re flying downhill on your mountain bike, or hurling across the water on a surfboard, those cues are useless. For on-the-go use, the camera sorely needs a constant recording indicator.

In an almost ironic positive note, the camera looks like a cheapo chunk of gray-market garbage; it’s not going to draw unwanted attention if you plan on taking it somewhere dangerous, like Somalia or San Francisco’s Tenderloin. In short, if the best camera is the one you always have with you, this may well take the title, as you’ll be prone to carry it anywhere without fear.

WIRED Ugly camera, pretty pictures. Shoots fantastic HD video at breakneck speed. Ships with enough mounts to start a very tiny Canadian police force. So small and lightweight we initially mistook it for a Sarah Palin speech. Includes both waterproof and standard housing. Exceptionally rugged — we tried to get all Jason Voorhees on its ass and the thing would not die.

TIRED No viewfinder or display for setting up or verifying shots. No shooting indicator light. Fisheye effect on photos gets old faster than leftover tuna salad.

Product: SweeperVac

Manufacturer:

Swiffer

Wired Rating: 6

The original Swiffer’s electrostatic-cloth-on-a-stick did a great job pulling up dust and small clumps of pet hair, but anything larger — crumbs, leaves, random detritus — just got pushed around until you came through with a broom or vacuum.

Thankfully, the SweeperVac has more sucking power than the collective attendees at the AVN awards. It combines a Swiffer with a cordless, rechargeable, Dustbuster-style hand vac mounted near the bottom of the pole, just ahead of the dust cloth. Don’t expect Dyson-caliber vacuum power here, but the combination works well enough to leave a kitchen or bathroom floor cleaner than any broom ever could — and with a lot less effort involved.

Keeping with Swiffer tradition, the double-jointed head corners nicely. And with a travel weight of just 3.6 pounds, the SV is light enough that you won’t tire after five minutes of, uh, sweepvac-ing. However, the hardware-fattened pole prevents the contraption from reaching more than a few inches under coffee tables, ottomans and other low-lying furniture — areas the original Sweeper could invade with ease.

What’s more, any cordless vacuum worth its salt should stand battle-ready in a charging dock. The SV stands on the floor, dockless, instead relying on an AC adapter you have to plug in and connect whenever you want to recharge. There’s a plastic loop on the SV’s handle for hanging on a hook or nail, but that’s hardly an elegant solution.

Still, Swiffer’s hybrid isn’t meant to take the place of your vacuum cleaner. It’s more of a fancy broom and dustpan, a room sprucer-upper you whip out when you remember company’s coming in five minutes. And for that, it’s nice to have around.

WIRED Quickly dusts and de-crumbifies kitchens, bathrooms and other hard-floor areas. Much easier to maneuver than an upright vac. Easy-to-empty collection bin. Slim and lightweight enough to hang behind a door or in a closet.

TIRED No charging dock. Smallish motor means weak suction power. Every time you use it, a disposable dirt pad makes its way into a landfill. Nonreplaceable battery, so when it stops holding a charge after a couple of years, you’re screwed.

Product: Mix Master Headphones

Manufacturer:

Skullcandy

Wired Rating: 6

Skullcandy’s newest set of headphones allow you to put your favorite NBA team on your head, provided your squad of choice is the Lakers, Knicks, Celtics, Heat, Cavaliers or Bulls.

The NBA Mix Master DJ Headphones come in six different styles sporting each team’s signature colors and the jersey number of its best player: The Lakers model is festooned with Kobe’s number 24, Cavs get Lebron’s 23, natch. Memory-foam pillows line both the headband and the earpads for a snug, comfortable fit, and separate jacks allow you to connect a straight or coiled cable to the left or right side.

The ‘phones use passive noise cancellation to effectively dampen unwanted racket, while a one-touch on-ear mute button silences your jams and lets you hear what’s happening in the outside world. Unfortunately, when music is cranked at high volume, we heard slight hissing and muffled tunes. Bass? Let’s just say we’ve read hallmark cards with more impact.

The sound emitted from these pretty kids isn’t revolutionary, but you buy these for style. And exclusivity — there are only 100 pairs for each team. When you’re done mixing the latest beats or streaming the NBA playoffs on your computer, the Mix Masters fold comfortably into a padded travel pouch. Try getting your fave NBA baller to do that.

WIRED Connect the cord to whichever ear you fancy. High-gloss finish is quite the head-turner.

TIRED Look way better than they sound — audio quality isn’t stellar. Snug fit can feel a bit too tight after long use. What no Pistons? No Jazz!?

Product: iPad 3G

Manufacturer:

Apple

Wired Rating: 7

Like the iPhone before it, the iPad has the potential to change your life. No exaggeration: Once you live with one for a few weeks, you’ll find it insinuating itself into your daily routine so much that you can’t imagine living without it. (If you’re a man, get used to wearing a murse.)

With more than a million of the devices sold to date, clearly something is clicking, and not just with 99-year-olds. But the 3G iPad, which went on sale Friday, is a weird mix of boon and bust. It’s a fantastic piece of hardware that changes the way you think about mobile computing … when it can actually pull in a signal.

During my first hours with the 3G iPad in San Francisco, where AT&T’s network is notoriously overloaded by iPhone-toting hipsters, I couldn’t get a connection — not even to set up an account so AT&T could take my money. After heading to a different neighborhood, I finally got a signal. Once online, speed tests on TestMyiPhone.com averaged 735 Kbps (download speed), which is respectable, but doesn’t reflect the frequent frustration of trying to find a usable signal.

The iPad is unlocked, but it’s only compatible with Micro SIM cards. Since AT&T is currently the sole U.S. carrier using Micro SIMs, that means we’re still stuck with AT&T, and that’s a huge minus.

You’re also stuck with the App Store. With more than 185,000 apps (5,000 of which are iPad-specific) there are a lot of choices for adding capabilities to your iPad, but you are limited to what Apple approves. Whether that drives you up the wall or gives you a feeling of comfort and safety depends on your attitude and on what you’re looking for. A compact replacement for your computer? This is not the device for you. A lap-sized television with 185,000 interactive channels? You will enjoy the iPad very, very much.

When it does work, this thing is an entertainment smorgasbord. Take, for example, my Sunday afternoon of media hedonism. I toted the 3G iPad to a hookah bar, plopped down on a couch with a pal, and started flipping through iPad comics, landing planes in Flight Control and watching Futurama between puffs of fruity smoke.

Add to that an impressively immersive web-browsing experience, excellent e-mail and calendar apps, and apps for playing music and looking at your photos, and it’s clear that the iPad is doing a lot of things right. (See Wired writer Steven Levy’s first look at the iPad for more on the iPad’s hardware and basic apps.)

The 3G iPad is really part of a brand-new gadget category: devices that can bring you any kind of content, anywhere, at any time. Are you a student searching for research papers? Bam! Download a PDF and read it while you’re eating at the cafeteria. PTA meeting putting you in a coma? Boom! Download an episode of Fringe. (Just don’t forget the earbuds.) Niche areas have even more potential. Doctors could look at up-to-the-second patient info, architects might see 3-D models in the field, and the military could potentially use it to help eliminate friendly fire.

Do you need the 3G version? If you’re a commuter or hope to use the iPad in a variety of locations, it’s definitely worth the extra $130. If you’re mostly going to be using it at home or at the office, get the Wi-Fi-only version. In either case, we recommend springing for the 32-GB version, as media-rich apps gobble up storage space quicker than you’d expect.

The hardware is on the right track. Now all we need is a mobile network that can really do this device justice.

WIRED Impressive power management: Battery chugged along for more than 8 hours on a 3G connection before going kaput. iPad Maps + GPS is absolutely stellar. Unlocked, it will work with any Micro SIM card (if you can find one). Finally an excuse to wear a man purse!

TIRED Limited to AT&T’s spotty 3G network in the U.S. Typing is a chore on the on-screen keyboard. Restrictive App Store policies may limit your access to porn and political cartoons (though there’s always Safari).

Product: EPH-50 Headphones

Manufacturer:

Yamaha

Wired Rating: 7

For avid earbud users (and abusers) the entire concept of “noise-canceling” is a feature that just never seems to work correctly.

No matter how snug the bud, there’s just no way to eliminate the clamor of the outside world (especially for those of us who work in places as rowdy as Wired). Yamaha’s EPH-50 headphones may not change any minds about this, but their slick — albeit slightly goofy — design offers hope.

The EPH-50s are fairly standard in-ear headphones, but the guts, unlike many spherical or barrel-shaped designs, are spread out flat, like a saucer, so they mostly cover the concha (the inner bowl that leads into the external auditory meatus).

The disc shape provides a suction-tight seal but also just a bit of the over-the-ear cupping action found in full headphones. So if you’re in the office or on the street, outside noise is minimal. It’s not totally noise-canceling, but it does keep most of the racket out.

How do they sound? Pretty good, actually. We tossed Motown, Dave Brubeck, Jay-Z and even a few Glee covers (don’t judge!), and the EPH-50s delivered solid sonic quality.

Then we hit them with the big guns: a mixtape of “I Want You” by Theophilus London. London can work enough styles — soul, hip-hop, Calypso, electro, a smattering of rock — into one track to test nearly every range in one madcap three-minute outburst. The EPH-50s passed this test, just not with flying colors.

Admittedly, these are not the best buds we’ve ever heard, but the dynamic drivers pack decent bang for their 100 bucks; deep bass, clear vocals and some competent separation. The highs were a little airy but not unbearable.

What is unbearable, however, is after a few hours the disc design puts some decent strain on the inner ear.

They’re not perfect, but for a compact design that delivers big-can sound, the EPH-50 buds deliver. Just be careful not to wear them for too long.

WIRED Solid sound reproduction. Nifty design blocks outside noise while keeping the headphones small. “Smart” cable holder makes the cord easy to wrap. Relatively cheap given performance.

TIRED Lightweight cable feels flimsy. Tinny highs. Can hurt the ears after long periods of use.

Product: 3G MicroCell by Cisco

Manufacturer:

AT&T

Wired Rating: 7

As Ah-nuld would say, “Stop whining!”

AT&T, long the punch line of numerous jokes about poor cell service, is offering a $150 band-aid for wireless customers to mend their shoddy 3G reception. That help comes in the form of a plastic, orange-and-white hub called the 3G MicroCell.

Manufactured by Cisco, the MicroCell creates a tiny 3G data and voice bubble in your home. It sets up in a snap: Plug it in to your existing broadband network by Ethernet, log in to your AT&T wireless account, and follow the web instructions to activate the device. You can authorize up to 10 AT&T phone numbers (3G only, not EDGE) to work with the product.

After you set it up, try to macramé yourself a set of shorts or some other time-consuming task. The MicroCell takes roughly one hour to fully come online.

So what’s the anecdotal verdict? I tested the MicroCell in my San Francisco apartment located in the notoriously reception-deficient Mission district. Prior to installing the MicroCell, I had to stand by the front window just to make a phone call and was only able to chat for a few minutes before losing the connection.

The MicroCell remedied that problem: I can now traipse around my apartment placing or receiving calls and enjoy lengthy conversations without drops. Voice quality has also improved — no longer are conversations distorted by a cruddy connection.

The MicroCell also amplifies your data connection, but consider that benefit moot, because you need to have a broadband connection to use the product. That means you’ll be doing your data-heavy tasks (web browsing, downloading phone apps and games, etc.) over Wi-Fi from your base station instead, since that’s faster anyway.

The only reason you’d want an amplified 3G connection is if, say, you send a ton of MMS messages, because AT&T won’t let you do that over Wi-Fi. And even then, I can tell you the time it takes to send an MMS with the help of a MicroCell is hardly impressive. It still takes roughly 45 seconds for me to send an MMS of a photo snapped with my iPhone 3GS. (I would give you a comparison number with the MicroCell turned off, but I can’t, because I can’t send an MMS at all when the device is not turned on in my home.)

If you skew towards the loquacious end of the spectrum, there’s the option of paying a companion rate of $20 a month for unlimited phone calls, which gives you $100 off the MicroCell. This arrangement also enables folk on your family plan to make unlimited calls without sucking minutes from your monthly wireless voice pool.

With all that said, the part that will bug people the most is the price tag: AT&T service should work in your home without a $150 accessory, right? Fortunately this is a one-time price — no contract is required to use the MicroCell.

Money issues aside, let’s face it: Having a reliable cell phone connection is a big deal. Dropping calls or flat-out missing them can really make life suck. If you can’t stand waiting for AT&T to improve its 3G service, or for Verizon to deliver an iPhone, then it’s worth paying the price for the MicroCell.

That, or you could try giving hell to a customer-service rep until AT&T sends you one for free.

WIRED Urge to kill AT&T fading: Major signal boost in cell dead spots. Simple “set it and forget it” setup. Does not require contract commitment. No monthly fees. Design is so not garish.

TIRED Urge to kill AT&T rising: Costs about the same as an iPhone. Compatible only with 3G phones provided by AT&T (EDGE customers have issues too, y’know). Seriously, AT&T should offer this gratis.