Features aside, the ID49C07u is loaded with style. This sexy budget laptop is thin (at 1 inch thick), light (at 5,1 pounds), and gorgeous. The cover has a silver matte finish with a brushed metal Gateway logo on the right-hand side, and the interior (keyboard and palm rest) features the same silver matte finish. The bezel around the screen and the bottom of the computer are sparkly matte black.

A few helpful dedicated buttons occupy the space above the keyboard. On the far left are two silver buttons: a programmable launch button and a Wi-Fi on/off switch. Toward the right are a number of dedicated touch buttons for playing/pausing, stopping, fast-forwarding, rewinding, and ejecting media.

Despite being a low-cost machine, the ID49C07u comes with an adequate number of ports: four USB, one HDMI-out, one VGA-out, and one ethernet 10/100/1000 (gigabit). There are also headphone and microphone jacks, plus a multipurpose memory card reader located in the front of the computer. Regrettably, three of the four USB ports are squashed up next to each other on the right side of the computer, which limits their usefulness.

The 14-inch ultrabright LED-backlit screen has a native resolution of 1366 by 768 pixels. Pictures look crisp, clear, and colorful, and viewing angles are decent-a couple of people sitting side by side can easily see the screen. At the brightest setting, the colors start to look a bit faded (think pastel), but on the positive side, that does make the screen fairly easy to view in bright sunlight.

They keyboard exhibits a superb sense of style, but at some expense to usability. In place of standard flat keys or Chiclet-type keys, this keyboard adopts what Gateway calls a «fine tip» design: The matte silver keys are big, flat, and nicely spaced, and they seem to float above the chassis. The effect is aesthetically appealing, and it definitely makes the ID49C07u look more expensive than it is.However, the keys are also a bit slippery to the touch; and because the keys «float,” the keyboard is a perfect landscape for dust, crumbs, and everything else that gets lost between the keys.

Though the keyboard was a little too springy for my taste, it supported lengthy typing sessions reasonably well. It’s also big enough to fit a few dedicated buttons on the right-hand side, including volume controls (up, down, and mute), and a «social networking» key; pressing the social networking key brings up a social network app for logging in to Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter-perfect for the always-connected student.

The trackpad is a smooth, solid piece of plastic with two simple lines that indicate where the buttons are. The entire pad is clickable (similar to MacBook trackpads), and when you move your finger into the «button zone» (below the lines), the entire pad lights up with a faint bluish glow. Unfortunately, it’s one of the most unusable trackpads I’ve ever come across. The smooth plastic, though soft and slick, isn’t at all conducive to making gestures (and you can basically forget about multitouch). It barely registers gestures unless your entire finger is flat on the pad. And even though the entire pad is clickable, the clicks won’t register unless your finger is in the button zone (and the pad is lighting up). Luckily, the «tap to click» feature works fairly well.

Video playback isn’t bad-a high-definition video on Hulu streamed seamlessly as long as I didn’t run any other programs. But the i3 processor started to show its seams when I began multitasking-when I had more than three programs open, the playback exhibited noticeable stuttering.

The speakers, located above the keyboard, are a bit of a disappointment. The system boasts Dolby Home Theater technology, and the audio quality was good-but very quiet.

The ID49C07u’s software is pretty standard-a 60-day trial of Microsoft Office, a 30-day trial of Symantec Norton Antivirus, CyberLink PowerDVD 9, and a few Gateway applications (Gateway Updater, Glowing Touchpad, and Gateway Recovery Management). I do wish that Best Buy would stop packaging its software installer in every single computer it sells.

What the Gateway ID49C07u lacks in performance it definitely makes up for with style. This is the best-looking budget laptop I’ve seen, though some of its most prominent flaws are directly traceable to aesthetic choices.

Certainly the base specs look attractive: a Core i7 820QM quad-core CPU delivers robust processor performance, with the native clock speed of 1,72GHz pushing up to 3,06GHz in single-core Turbo-boost mode. The graphics chip is nVidia’s last-generation GeForce 285 GTX mobile unit, but it’s still a capable mobile gaming GPU. The inclusion of the nVidia GPU facilitates the use of that company’s 3D Vision stereoscopic 3D technology, which is discussed in more detail below.

The display is a 15,6-inch glossy screen offering a somewhat anemic 1366-by-768 pixels, which seems a little on the low side for a 15-incher. The lower resolution helps 3D Vision performance, since the frame rate needs to effectively double in stereoscopic mode. The key enabler here is the supported refresh rate that maxes out at 120Hz-much higher than in most laptop displays. Rounding out the specs are 4GB of system memory, a 500GB, 7200-rpm hard drive, and a Blu-ray ROM / DVD recordable drive. That positions the W860CU for the coming generation of stereoscopic 3D movies.

The downside of the display, however, is its relatively poor viewing angles. This was particularly noticeable when using 3D Vision. Since the use of shutter glasses effectively cuts the brightness in half, even minor shifts in the viewing angles would result in severe visual dimming of the image. When playing Blu-ray movies (normal, «flat» movies), color and brightness shifts were also visible with relatively minor changes in horizontal viewing angles. Tiny changes in vertical viewing angles would make the movie unwatchable.

The overall sound quality is fairly neutral, but lacking in bass-a perennial problem with laptop audio. However, the real problem is that volume levels are quite low. Using headphones for audio created a much more robust audio experience.

The keyboard and trackpad are pretty typical of today’s laptops. The keyboard offers a separate numeric keypad, but the keys are intermingled somewhat, creating some confusion when trying to touch-type. For example, the right arrow key looks like its part of the numeric keypad. The PgDn/PgUp/Home key cluster is activated by using the Fn key, which is a minor annoyance.

Gaming performance in standard (nonstereoscopic) mode is quite robust. That’s helped by the maximum 1366-by-768 resolution. STALKER: Call of Pripyat posted a frame rate of 32 frames per second, and Far Cry 2 cranked along at 52,7 FPS. Even the demanding Just Cause 2 Concrete Jungle test managed 37,6 FPS-with 4X antialiasing enabled.

Gaming using the 3D Vision glasses was, as expected, a mixed experience. When it works-and when the game is designed for it-the effect is extremely immersive. Batman: Arkham Asylum looked fabulous in stereoscopic 3D, and frame rates were more than adequate. Borderlands also looked pretty good, as did Just Cause 2. On the other hand, Mass Effect was a mess, despite nVidia’s rating of «very good.» Polygon flashing proved distracting, and the 3D effect was minimal. The stereoscopic effect didn’t kick in at all with Bioshock 2. 3D Vision remains intriguing, given the possibilities as newer games come out, and the impressive look and feel 3D Vision imparts to Arkham Asylum. But be aware that your experience may vary substantially from one game to the next.

While no 3D movies were shipped with the unit, AVADirect does bundle Power DVD Blu-ray edition, which will support the upcoming generation of stereoscopic 3D movies as they emerge on the scene.

All this gaming goodness comes at a price. As configured, the Clevo W860CU costs over $2200. Add a weight of over 9,25 pounds with the power brick and 8,1 pounds without, and you have a pretty bulky and pricey package for a 15,6-incher with only 1366-by-768 resolution. You’ll have to decide if the 3D Vision stereoscopic effect is worth the extra bulk and lower number of pixels.

Standard 802,11b/g wireless (plus USB) gives a progressive lift to an otherwise typically configured low-end laser printer. The P1102w has a 150-sheet main input area, a foldout front panel (rather than a full-fledged tray) with sliding width guides. The machine also has a manual-feed slot for thicker media. The top-loading output tray holds 125 sheets. Although the construction of these parts is impressively sturdy, their markings-stamped into the black plastic with no contrasting coloring-are nearly impossible to decipher. Manual duplexing is available on both a PC and a Mac, with helpful on-screen prompts.

The control panel’s two buttons and three LEDs all have icons, but no word labels. You have to check their meaning in the HTML-based documentation-which, to its credit, has excellent, animated translations of the LED sequences.

Laser printers this cheap used to have horrible speed, but the LaserJet Pro P1102w breaks the stereotype. In our tests it averaged a competent 14,6 pages per minute on a PC and 14,5 ppm on a Mac when printing mostly plain text with some simple monochrome graphics. Graphics speeds were decent, but the output quality was rough-looking.

High toner costs will quickly overtake the printer’s low purchase price. A 700-page, starter-size cartridge ships with the unit. A replacement, 1600-page cartridge costs $68, or 4,3 cents per page-as expensive as the the ink costs for an average inkjet printer, but without the fun of color output.

HP’s LaserJet Pro P1102w is faster than your average low-end laser, and it has wireless to boot. Unfortunately its toner is very expensive, making it appropriate only for low-volume users.

Occupying the typical «Extreme Edition» real estate of $999, it remained out of the grasp of any but the most enthused enthusiasts, meaning its capabilities wouldn’t be realized by most for a while yet. It wasn’t long until AMD offered its own six-core CPU with a price better aimed at mainstream buyers, but its performance couldn’t compare to that of the Core i7—980X. How long until we saw a six-core Intel chip that more people could afford? The answer has now-sort of-come with the Core i7—970.

In terms of specs, it’s a near-exact mirror of the Core i7—980X. Both have been built using the same 32nm manufacturing process, packing about 1,17 billion transistors on a 240mm2 die. With six cores ready for 12 threads, a 12MB L3 cache, and a 130-watt TDP, the Core i7—970’s slight speed differences (3,20-GHz core clock versus the Core i7—980X’s 3,33 GHz; 3,46-GHz Turbo Boost speed compared to 3,6 GHz) don’t look particularly significant on paper. The biggest difference between the processors is the unlocked multiplier the Core i7—980X has and the Core i7—970 doesn’t.

As the Core i7—970 is priced at $885 (list), it might not seem like you’re getting a scintillating bargain with the newer chip. So the question becomes: Can you live without the unlocked multiplier? If you can, the Core i7—970 would seem to be a worthwhile way to save a little money and still get most of the performance benefits of the Extreme Edition chip. But do you? That’s what we wanted to find out. So we popped a Core i7—970 in one of our test beds to see whether the reality matched the theory.

The 13,3- inch laptop accommodates three USB plugs (one a USB/eSATA combo), headphone/microphone jacks, an HDMI plug, a VGA plug, an ethernet port, a memory stick port, an optical drive, a 128GB solid-state drive, a Core i7 620M running at 2,67GHz, and 4GB of RAM-all tucked into a 12,44-by-8,94-by-0,66-inch frame weighing 3,2 pounds (the rear of the unit fattens out to a width of just over 1 inch). That’s power to spare for most on-the-go users, as reflected in an excellent WorldBench 6 score of 128. Factor in a battery life of almost 6 hours, and you have the makings of a pretty awesome ultraportable laptop.

The screen is a reasonably good LED-backlit matte LCD, filling out a resolution of 1366 by 768 easily enough. Colors were good, but the R700 struggles to fill large black areas in video. The Intel HD integrated graphics solution is more than adequate for playing modest video; it even playing through the HDMI port without difficulty. Horizontal viewing angles are excellent, but vertical viewing angles most certainly aren’t. The audio can’t fill a room, the speakers get a bit shrill at high volume, and there’s no bass to speak of-so rely on the headphone jack instead.

The laptop’s black plastic interior complements its black metal lid. The «Toshiba» emblazoned on the lid itself, and the two hinges provide silver accents. Almost everything feels very sturdy, and the keys have remarkably little flex. The display lid, however, is a bit too thin and flexible.

The R700’s gigantic touchpad invites occasional accidental contact, but none of the touchpad responses I triggered slowed my work on the machine significantly. If it does become an annoyance, you can tap a handy little button between the keyboard and the touchpad to deactivate the touchpad altogether (or to toggle it back on).

Unfortunately, this laptop has three major drawbacks. Foremost among these is the keyboard, whose Chiclet-style keys are incredibly far apart and mushy to the touch. Second, the powerful technology packed in the small space generated quite a bit of heat along the left edge and bottom of the machine. And third, the fan used to dissipate the heat was noisy. For me, these shortcomings made using the R700 less comfortable, but they weren’t deal breakers.

The R700 is a fantastic machine for a specific niche: laptop users who want to combine lots of power with extremely light weight. If you want to change the specific components, Toshiba makes it very easy to customize your machine when you order it (I would drop the solid-state drive in favor of a bit more storage on a traditional hard-disk drive, for example).

I tested the 2,53GHz Intel Core i5—540M version, equipped with 4GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, and an extra battery mounted underneath. (HP charges $1699 for the laptop and $179 for the additional battery; price as of 8/5/2010.) HP boasts that the machine includes desktop-class chips, and it shows in the performance and battery life; the laptop feels speedy, but battery life is merely adequate.

The machine scored a strong 104 in our WorldBench 6 test suite, putting it near the front of the pack in the ultraportable category, and applications all felt responsive during general use. The EliteBook provides ample power for Office software, image editors, and nearly anything a mobile pro could install.

Integrated Intel GMA HD video processing lags in the most demanding visual tasks, such as high-end GPU-accelerated 3D applications and games. Audiences for either category should look elsewhere, since the EliteBook 2740p targets another niche.

Instead of 3D mastery, the EliteBook impresses with its touchscreen. In the laptop or tablet configuration, you can poke at the screen with a finger or the stylus. The typical features of Wacom screen technology are here, including 255 levels of pressure sensitivity and a stylus with an eraser end for quick changes. The tool enables precise sketches in addition to nuanced photo edits. The stylus slips inside the case when unused, storing it well. The EliteBook automatically senses when the stylus tip is close to the screen to disable fingertip input, but I occasionally still managed to click with my hands when trying to sketch. (You can manually disable nonstylus touch input in the Control Panel.)

Touching with fingertips feels less precise by comparison, but it’s still accurate enough to navigate through applications. Once I got used to the screen, I often just poked at icons instead of reaching for the trackpad. The screen supports touch from two fingers at the same time, letting you rotate or resize photos in supported software. Unfortunately, few real-world tools yet take advantage of multitouch, but with this laptop, you’ll be ready for their arrival.

The 1280-by-800-pixel screen presents a good range of color and contrast, although this is one of the laptop’s weaker elements. Colors lack the full richness found in competitors, and the screen begins to wash out in a bright room. In direct sunlight, the image crumbles, although HP says an optional outdoor-optimized display is available for those who need to work outside.

Basic input devices work well. Flat keys bounce back tightly, and the trackpad always feels responsive. HP also includes an eraser-style pointing stick, similar to what you’ll find on ThinkPads. I prefer the concave shape on those competitors, but HP’s take on the pointer still quickly whisks the cursor across the screen. Two sets of buttons-one for each pointing device-feel a little too soft, but at least they’re individual buttons instead of a seesaw lever for each click.

HP includes few extra buttons, but that’s better than a laptop with useless clutter. Touch-sensitive buttons control volume from the corner. Two side-mounted physical buttons activate your browser or e-mail application. A slider switch toggles on or off the 802,11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1. A few extra buttons reveal themselves in tablet mode to reorient the screen and activate Escape and other common commands. They’re all well-placed and useful.

The EliteBook 2740p includes almost every significant port: USB 2,0 (three), VGA, FireWire, a headphone/mic jack, gigabit ethernet, and analog modem. You can expand with ExpressCard/34, and an SD slot reads flash cards. A Webcam and mic are ready for videoconferencing and other media capture.

In addition, the laptop’s security features can lock down your data. A fingerprint scanner and SmartCard slot can authenticate users. Bundled software can encrypt the drive or permanently destroy old data. An option for the LoJack service can help recover a lost laptop or destroy its data. These touches should fit business users well.

Several aspects of the EliteBook 2740p underperform. Speaker audio sounds loud enough for a small group to hear, but it whistles out music with shrill tones. Battery life is passable at 3 hours, 29 minutes in our test, but that’s with the additional battery pack. If you’re going to the trouble of mounting another battery, you’d expect exceptional results. HP includes a series of firmware tools that can include a Web browser or access to your Outlook data before you boot into Windows. These would be great additions if Windows could boot in the background, but since you still have to run the full startup process to do anything else, they’re rarely useful.

The EliteBook 2740p feels solid as a tablet or laptop. An HP representative said the company put a lot of effort into designing it to be rugged, claiming it can withstand 300 pounds of pressure on the enclosure. Hopefully it’ll hold up, since HP ranks dead last in our most recent survey evaluating how companies handle problematic portables.

While it takes an extra battery-and added weight-for the HP EliteBook 2740p to feel complete, this small laptop can handle mobile work anywhere. It’s quick, and the convertible touchscreen makes it especially versatile. That touchscreen and the unit’s all-around performance make up for the shortcomings in battery life and screen colors.

Often, though, users end up demanding things which are difficult for these units to implement. A case in point is Netflix streaming on the WDTV Live, which ended up being implemented in WDTV Live Plus. Torrenting (and other similar PC capabilities) end up making an appearance in the homebrew firmware versions of these products. One of the easiest ways to avoid such disappointments is to invest in a HTPC. These are more future proof than the small media streaming boxes and Blu Ray players for which one has to depend on core firmware updates from the manufacturer.

Over the last 2 or 3 years, with the advent of small form factor (SFF) PCs, and promising chipsets such as Nvidia ION, one sensed the looming convergence of the media streamer and HTPC market. While being much more flexible compared to media streaming boxes, they suffered on the power envelop front. Also, the DRM requirements of Blu-Ray ensured that such PCs could never hope to achieve as much ease of usage and bitstreaming support as the Blu-Ray players unless one invested in costly soundcards. In the last 6 — 8 months, ATI introduced the 5xxx series and Intel introduced the Clarkdale and Arrandale platforms with an IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor), both of which were capable of HD audio bitstreaming. Enthusiasts could easily purchase such products and build HTPCs which could surpass the capabilities of any Blu-Ray player or media streamer.

The HTPC market, unfortunately, can never take off unless pre-built units make an appearance. We have seen the big players such as Dell and Acer create products such as the ZinoHD and Aspire Revo respectively. However, the platforms utilized processors such as the Neo and the Atom, which were mainly geared towards the ultraportable and netbook market. Consumers expecting desktop performance from such PCs were left disappointed. The market needed a fresh approach, and AsRock has come out with the first pre-built SFF PC based on the Arrandale platform for this.

ASRock has gained a reputation amongst us of being innovative in a crowded market, and having come out with pioneering products. Their first play in the SFF HTPC market was the ASRock IO№ 300-HT. Though it was found to be technically good, it ended up competing against products such as the Aspire Revo from Acer (with a substantially higher marketing impetus). Now, they have stolen a march over the competition by introducing the Core 100 HT-BD. Realizing that the Atom in the nettop was the major cause of concern amongst HTPC customers, they seem to have done their homework by introducing their next play in the market with the Arrandale platform.

The Arrandale platform’s performance has been analyzed ad nauseam on various sites, and we will not go that route in this review. In the last few months, we have seen the introduction of many H55 / H57 based mini-ITX motherboards supporting these platforms. Last month, we reviewed the Gigabyte H55 mini-ITX board. We found it almost perfect for a HTPC. It is quite likely that there is a large number of customers in the market interested in a pre-built HTPC based on this platform.

ASRock is the first company to come out with a ready to order PC in the mini-ITX form factor based on the Arrandale platform and they have put together a nice video of the purported capabilities of their product. Let us first get the marketing talk [ YouTube video ] out of the way (in case you are interested), before proceeding to analyze ASRock’s claims.

The comments for the Gigabyte H55 mini-ITX review requested HTPC specific testing. Starting with this review, we are taking those comments into consideration and this unit will be analyzed completely from a HTPC perspective. If you are interested in a specific aspect, use the index below to navigate to the section you want. Otherwise, read on to find out what Anandtech discovered while trying to use the Core 100 HT-BD as a HTPC.

The features that make the Gateway ID Series Notebook maintain a huge difference with the other notebook PCs found all around is its much thinner, sleeker and smarter look that has for the first time been introduced in the market. Irrespective of its thin look, you can expect to get the very best picture quality and other facilities like great music and easy connectivity. The Gateway ID Series Notebook currently is made available with screen sizes of 14″ and 15,6″ at a cost of just $679.

Let’s be a bit specific about the features and the look of this new entry. At the first impression only you will be taken aback by the unmatchable look of this notebook that is wearing an aluminum alloy cover coated with a dazzling icy silver color. Well, the use of the silver color has left it look stunning and the aluminum cover is perfect for safeguarding the notebook. The look of the notebook gets doubled further the moment it gets unfolded. Its metallic keys and the flat and smooth keypad with its blue touchpad are stunning as well as highly hi-tech in look. If spoken about its features then first thing first, the 64-bit Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium operating system loaded in it is the best thing about it.

Gateway ID

The buyers will be provided with the comfort and the benefit of choosing between an Intel Core i3 Processor3 with hyperthreading technology and an Intel Core i5 Processor with turbo boost technology. As the functions and types of both these processors differ from each other, it depends on the user which one he finds suitable and to be loaded in his notebook. The most important factor that decides the usability of a notebook is its battery capacity.

The lithium-ion battery integrated in the Gateway ID Series Notebook is, thankfully, capable of providing continuous support up to 6 long hours. That ensures one thing pretty clearly that the users will not have to keep looking for charging points. So, along with its light weight the battery support too will provide him with enough scope to keep roaming and stay connected with the world and with the technology, to be very appropriate.

Few other features of the Gateway ID Series Notebook that cannot be ignored at all are its HD LED-backlit Ultrabright LCD, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M discrete graphics with the very amazing and revolutionary Optimus technology (found in selected models), DDR3 memory on all models of ID series, Dolby Home Theater v3 audio enhancement with High Frequency Enhancer and Digital Live etc features. There are lot’s more than these, guys, and I guess that it is pretty enough for the Gateway ID Series Notebook to start with and be successful in its venture.

I chose the Inspiron 15 for a few reasons: one, it’s one of Dell’s more affordable models, two, it’s got enough power to run your applications and three, it’s one of Dell’s longest running and best selling series of laptops, so many people have heard the name Inspiron. While you might think the third one is trivial, for a lot of people, precedent still plays a large role in their purchasing decision and I want to make sure that those who are looking at the Inspiron for this reason know what they are looking at.

First off, in the power department, the laptop ships with a Celeron 900 processor, which features 1Mb cache, 2,28Ghz processor and an 800Mhz front side bus. For a laptop, that’s a pretty well equipped machine. It’s enough juice to run both your office apps as well as multimedia applications, such as iTunes and Windows Media Player. The unit ships with 3Gb RAM installed, which again is enough to handle office as well as multimedia applications and content.

For storage, the Inspiron 15 comes standard with 250Gb hard drive. While that’s becoming a smaller number, relative to the size of the drives found in many higher end and desktop machines, it’s still a lot of space for movies and music and the like. The computer also ships with a CD/DVD burner, which support DVD + and -R as well as dual layer discs.

Standard on the Inspiron 15 is an on-board Intel graphics chip. This will handle most multimedia applications and desktop use, but may lag a bit for high end gaming.

There is a built in web-cam, as well as Skype pre-installed on the system, for those of you who like to do the whole online video chat thing. There’s also a built in wireless-G adapter, which will allow you to connect wirelessly anywhere there’s a wifi connection available.

All of the specs listed here are upgradable, but I just wanted to represent the basic system as it would ship from Dell. While a lot of people will choose to upgrade various parts of the system, many people also don’t want to bother with that & just want to know if what they get right out of the box will do what they need.

Bottom Line: the Dell Inspiron 15 is a good option for those who need a desktop relacement for the road. If you’ve got kids going to college in the fall, this is one that you could consider and know that they will be able to do all their homework, as well as  connect with friends on Facebook and everything else. If you’re a businessperson who’s looking for a device for the road, this should suit you just fine. You can run any office application on this system, as well as multimedia presentation and video conferencing, etc. For home users who are looking for a laptop instead of a desktop, again this will work for you. If you’re a one computer type of person, and have a slightly bigger budget, you may want to consider upgrades to the processor or possibly a slightly more powerful base model, but that’s only if you’re replacing your entire desktop setup with this machine. All in all, you get a good deal for a fair price with this Dell laptop.

At CES 2008, we got out first promises of wireless HD technology. At CES 2009 and again in 2010, more wireless HD prototypes were shown, but it was clear that the pieces were still in the concept phase and not likely to be hitting store shelves any time soon. Today, the technology itself still needs finessing; many require a line of sight between the transmitter and receiver and most use some sort of compression that adversely affects video quality. We were beginning to think that wireless HD would never come around.

Enter the Wireless HD Kit from IOGEAR. This piece not only promises a wireless range of up to 100 feet that requires no line of sight, but touts full 1080P/60 Hz video resolution. Armed with a wide range of inputs and capable of supporting multiple receivers, the Wireless HD Kit may just be the first truly useful wireless high definition system out there. We gave IOGEAR’s kit a spin, tested its various functions and pondered the possibilities.
Out of the Box

The IOGEAER Wireless HD Kit comes tightly packaged in a very small box. Inside, we found a very slim receiver and an identically sized transmitter, two power adapters, a business card sized remote control, two stands, an IR blaster, component to VGA cable and an instruction manual. Each of the receivers is gloss black and, when set in their stands, look just like a wireless internet router without any antennae. The display is blacked out with just a few backlit indicators that glow blue when the unit is powered up.
Features and Design

IOGEAR’s Wireless HD Kit is able to accept several different input types. The transmitter will accept two HDMI, one component video, one composite video, analog audio from either stereo RCA connectors or a 1/8» headphone jack. With so many options, you could conceivably connect a High Def DVR, Blu-Ray or DVD player, VCR and computer all at once.

The Wireless HD Kit transmitter will beam a signal up to four receivers within approximately 100 feet via 802,11 n wireless signal (similar to an internet router). Using the provided remote control, you can switch amongst different inputs to view any device that is connected to the transmitter. To control that device, an IR blaster is provided with each receiver that relays your device’s remote control signal to wherever the equipment is located.

The Wireless HD Kit is capable of handling up 1080p video at 60hz and up to 5,1 digital audio which, to the best of our knowledge, is the most advanced wireless audio/video technology available at the moment. To keep up to date, IOGEAR has installed a USB connection to enable firmware updates. They’ve also added a LAN connection that allows a transmitter and receiver to be connected via Ethernet cable. This would come in handy for those with installations that have equipment placed outside of the transmitter’s 100 ft. range.

Setting up the Wireless HD Kit was a relatively simple plug and play process. Unfortunately, the more devices you want to connect, the more plugging in you’ll need to do before you get to play. IOGEAR’s Wireless HD Kit does not perform any video up-scaling or conversion which means whatever goes in to the transmitter must also come out of the receiver. This process effectively doubles your cable requirements. Going in with an HDMI cable on the transmitter end requires you to come out with an HDMI cable on the receiver end and so forth. Using a home theater receiver to handle all of the video switching will simplify the installation considerably but may not be part of every end-user’s plan. If a home theater receiver is not part of your installation plan, we recommend cushioning your budget to include funds for extra cables.

For the purposes of our testing, we connected a Sony Blu-Ray player via HDMI, a Dish Network DVR, PC computer via VGA and 1/8» audio and a VCR using the A/V connections. We also connected the provided IR relay so that we could control our components from our monitor’s location which was about 75 feet away and on a separate floor from the source equipment.

All we had to do to get the Wireless HD Kit up and running was turn it on. We selected HDMI from the receiver location and powered up our Blu-Ray player. Next, we loaded up Avatar and began our video testing.

Avatar is a remarkably high contrast film with deep color saturation and smooth, jitter free movement. Through the Wireless HD kit, we felt that the image looked very good, but couldn’t help notice that there was some loss of its usual pristine video quality. While not obviously compressed or pixilated, the image seemed to have lost some of its richness, brightness and smooth motion. Since our testing display was only 37», we have some concern that using a larger display may amplify these shortcomings. That said, the image was clearly from a high definition source and noticeably superior to an up-converted DVD version of the same film.

Using our connected HD-DVR, we tested both high definition and standard definition content. Here, we found that the image quality was on par with direct connections. We found the same to be true for our PC and VCR sources as well. At the end of the day, it seemed only the highest definition sources suffered from the wireless transmission and only slightly at that.

In the end, we felt that IOGEAR’S Wireless HD Kit did an excellent job of performing its primary task of getting high definition video and audio from point A to point B wirelessly. By using the 802,11 n wireless range, it managed to transmit a continuously clean signal without any interruption over a distance of 75 feet through all sorts of barriers, both structural and electronic. However, the Kit is not without a few hassles and hang-ups.

We found that switching inputs on both the wireless receiver and our monitor was a bit time consuming. Also, the IR blaster performance was hit-and-miss. We spent a lot of time repeating our remote commands through our testing period. Finally, without the use of a home theater receiver to simplify video signals, there ends up being a lot of cable connections which takes away from the notion of a «clean installation» and adds further expense to an already pricey piece of new technology.
Conclusion

It’s great to see that true high definition wireless technology is finally available and we applaud IOGEAR for bringing it to us into a consumer friendly piece. We feel that the IOGEAR Wireless HD Kit will appeal most to early adopters who are starting a new installation and encourage the use of a home theater receiver for larger systems to simplify installation. We can’t help but wonder, though, how far away this technology is from being incorporated directly into HDTV sets. When it is, it will be significantly more convenient and cost effective.
Highs:

* Best Wireless HD image we’ve seen to date
* Excellent wireless range (up to 100 feet)- no line of sight required
* Built-in IR blaster

Lows:

* Doubles cable requirements
* Slight degradation of HD video quality
* Digital audio limited to HDMI