Ray Willington
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
The 2-in-1 and convertible PC space has changed significantly over the past couple of years. What was once a cluttered mess of kludges is now a well-defined market segment packed with refinement, power, and plenty of options. You could partially credit Microsoft's Surface line for making 2-in-1s an object of desire...
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At a glance, you may assume the phone we're testing here is one you've seen before -- a Nokia Lumia 1020 clone perhaps? Despite having a similar circular camera fixture on the handset's back side, suggesting a strong focus on photography, this is actually a newly released phone produced by ASUS. The ASUS ZenFone Zoom...
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If three's company, we'd say Motorola has gone and made a full-on family out of its Moto 360 smartwatch. Hot on the heels of its second-generation Moto 360 comes the Moto 360 Sport, an Android Wear timepiece designed to compete not with TAG or Sony or Samsung, but with FitBit, Polar, Garmin, and TomTom. The ruggedized or sports smartwatch...
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The original Google Nexus 5 shipped right around this time two full years ago. Much has evolved in the smartphone space in the 24 months since then, but little has changed in terms of branding with this latest LG-built Nexus device. The 5.2-inch Nexus 5X we will be showing you here is positioned as the mainstream Nexus phone in the Android...
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The nascent smartwatch market has delivered a number of near-winners thus far. The Apple Watch and Microsoft Band, for example, are better-than-average fitness trackers and smart timepieces. The 2nd generation Moto 360 is stunning from an aesthetics standpoint. The Huawei Watch hits the mark for those looking for a good-looking, functional,...
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There's a reason the Lenovo Stack has a ThinkPad logo emblazoned on each component. Over the years, the name ThinkPad has become synonymous with mobile professionals. For the most part, ThinkPad has been reserved for tablets and laptops, but with the Lenovo Stack the company is introducing the brand to an entirely new category: accessories....
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Today we're going take a look at Google's latest Nexus-branded phablet, the Nexus 6P. Arriving just under a year after the Motorola-built, 5.96-inch Nexus 6, the Nexus 6P is actually a hair smaller, thinner and indeed, slightly more manageable. The 6P also marks Huawei's first foray into Google's Nexus family of...
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What a difference a year can make. Now that Intel's Skylake processors are widely available, desktop, tablets, and hybrid convertibles are all being refreshed with the latest hardware. Lenovo, for example, recently introduced its Yoga 900. Though the nomenclature has changed a bit, this machine is effectively a revised Yoga 3 Pro. The...
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It's hard to believe this year is nearly over. It feels as if our holiday gift guides are being assembled at an ever more rapid pace. Perhaps that has to do with the non-stop innovation in the tech sector, and our insatiable desire to absorb as much technical data as possible. Each year, the leaps in processing power...
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One of the sharpest, classiest, most alluring Android Wear smartwatch yet has arrived, and it's manufactured by a company that many American consumers may not be familiar with. The Huawei Watch is just about as good as it gets for a smartwatch currently. The reason? It's a watch first, and a smartwatch second. For those clamoring for a timepiece...
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Technology moves quickly, but when it comes to smartwatches, things seem to be moving more rapidly than usual. We published our Moto 360 review early last year and here we are merely half a year later testing the second generation of that device. In many ways, the original Moto 360 felt like the hero device for Android Wear. Google still...
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Apple and Samsung have already launched their latest flagship devices for 2015, and now, Motorola is taking its turn. For the third year in a row, a new Moto X has arrived that's built upon the successes of the original. There's no mistaking the design -- visual cues that created the silhouette of the original still...
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If your kiddos are griping about how soon they start back to school (or, if you are heading that way yourself, begrudgingly), it's probably high time you took inventory. Is that aging netbook really going to get you through another semester? Is that Gingerbread handset up to the task of piloting you through yet another straight-A year? Take...
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The tablet world is shifting quickly. While arguments for and against the need for a "third device" have been raging since the early days of the iPad, we're seeing tablets emerge that are far more potent and capable than ever before. In fact, it's tough to lump products like Dell's Venue 10 7000 in with bargain-bin slates that are clearly...
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When you think Amazon, you probably imagine books and freaky fast shipping. You probably don't think about drones and robots, both of which have crept into the company's fabric over the past year or so. In addition to preparing a Prime Air service which would (in theory) drop packages to your front door, the company...
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Whenever an organization becomes too large, too complex, and too intertwined in too many facets of business, governments begin to take notice. You need look no further than the breakup of the Bell System last century to see what's possible when a single entity begins to control too much of a given field. Now, regulators in the European Union
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Every hardware maker has constraints -- be it battery life, heat, size, or available materials. On the design front, one challenge that has thus far been impossible to overcome is the FCC stamp that has to be imprinted on the exterior of any device certified for use amongst the United States' airwaves. Now, that's...
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We praised a few elements of Amazon's Fire Phone in our review earlier in the year, but one thing kept us from falling head over heels: the steep price of entry. With mid-range specifications and no access to Google Play, the Fire Phone is a unique creature that serves a smaller market. Some of the innovations on it...
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Each day, we're bombared with new transistors, faster memory, and GPUs that can crank out a few additional frames per second. And while all of these things are certainly nifty, they aren't exactly having a revolutionary impact on the whole of humanity. That's where Samsung's newest innovation comes in: it's more than...
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It feels like only yesterday that we were whipping up last year’s holiday gift guide, but somehow a full year has passed and we’re staring yet another winter in the face. Don’t fret, though — just because you haven’t prepared for this season doesn’t mean that you’re hung out to dry. As the technology behind smartphones, tablets, and laptops...
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It feels as if we've been waiting for decades for battery technology to take its next quantum leap in terms of capacity and longevity. Sure, laptops these days last a little longer than they did ten years ago, but much of that is due to processors and the like consuming far less power now compared to yesteryear. But...
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We're inching closer to the end of an era. Now that Microsoft has acquired Nokia's mobile phone unit, we'll soon see Microsoft-branded handsets rolling out in place of Nokia's own hardware. The company has made a heroic attempt to fight the tide of Apple's growing popularity coupled with the surging share of Android, but currently, Windows...
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