Year End 2012 - Reviews & Rankings (Part 4)

The 7-inch Kindle Fire HD corrects many of the shortcomings of Amazon’s first Kindle. The Fire HD also introduces several tech enhancements over competing tablets, and it excels on many metrics. At $199 for the 16GB version and $249 for the 32GB version, it delivers a strong, value-priced experience—optimized for the Amazon ecosystem.

Amazone Kindle Fire HD

Android 4.0 serves as the core of the Kindle Fire HD’s software, but Amazon supports only a subset of the greater Android app universe. In addition, the tablet has limited file-handling abilities, and it's saddled with ads.

Not quite full-featured, the device has a display that's 28 percent smaller than the Apple iPad’s, albeit at a much lower price than the iPad’s.

Overall, Amazon has boosted the functionality and practicality of the Kindle Fire HD compared with the company's first tablet. I can receive an attachment, open it, edit it in an app that supports the file type, save it, and send it out again.

The new software hasFacebook and Twitter integration.

But Amazon continues to omit some basic built-in apps, such as a to-do list.

What Amazon does well is to integrate the shopping experience—and cloud-based content—with your local content. For some, the Kindle Fire HD will be a reasonable way to test the tablet waters, while getting a color e-reader to boot; $199 to $249; Amazon; qo.pcworld.com/ kindlefireHD

EDITOR’S CHOICE: Performance Desktop PCs

Model	Rating	Performance	Features and Specifications
Maingear Shift Super Stock $7967	Superior	WorldBench 7 Score: 205 WorldBench 7 rating: Superior Overall design: Superior Graphics: Superior	4.8GHz Intel Core i7-3960X 16GBDDR3 Three Crossfire Radeon HD 7970 3TB HDD plus two 120GB SSD (Raid 0)
Digital Storm ODE Level 4 $3499	Superior	WorldBench 6 score: 213 WorldBench 6 rating: Superior Overall design: Superior Graphics: Superior	4.6GHz Intel Core Ì7-3930K 16GBDDR3 Two Crossfire AMD Radeon HD 7970 1TB HDD (7200 rpm) plus 120GB SSD .
Origin Genesis X79 $4599	Superior	WorldBench 7 score: 196 WorldBench 7 rating: Superior Overall design: Superior Graphics: Superior	4.9GHz Intel Core ¡7-3930K 16GBDDR3 Three SLI Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 2TB HDD plus four 120GB SSDs
iBuyPower Erebus GT $2499	Superior	WorldBench 6 score: 211 WorldBench 6 rating: Superior Overall design: Superior Graphics: Very Good	4.6GHz Intel Core ¡7-2700K 16GBDDR3 AMD Radeon HD 7970 1TB HDD plus 120GB SSD
Falcon Northwest Tiki $2799	Very Good	WorldBench 7 score: 177 WorldBench 7 rating: Very Good Overall design: Very Good Graphics: Very Good	4.3GHz Intel Core ¡7-3770K 8GBDDR3 Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 2TB HDD plus 256GB SSD
Origin Chronos I $1399	Verygood	WorldBench 7 score: 204 WorldBench 7 rating: Superior Overall design: Fair Graphics: Good	4.7GHz Intel Core i5-2550K 8GBDDR3 Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti 750GB HDD plus 90GB SSD
V3 Convoy $2499	Verygood	WorldBench 7 score: 193 WorldBench 7 rating: Very Good Overall design: Very Good Graphics: Very Good	3.5GHz Intel Core i7-3770K 8GBDDR3 Two SLI Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 1TB HDD
Digital Storm Aventum $7813	Verygood	WorldBench 7 score: 187 WorldBench 7 rating: Very Good Overall design: Good Graphics: Very Good	Dual 2.0GHz Intel Xeon E5-2620 64GBDDR3 Three SLI Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 2TB HDD plus 240GB SSD
Dell XPS 8500 $750	Verygood	WorldBench 7 score: 182 WorldBench 7 rating: Very Good Overall design: Fair Graphics: Very Good	3.4GHz Intel Core ¡7-3770 16GBDDR3 ATI Radeon HD 7870 3TB HDD (7200 rpm) plus 256GB SSD
V3 Salvo 3D $1199	Verygood	WorldBench 6 score: 169 WorldBench 6 rating: Good Overall design: Very Good Graphics: Good	4.7GHz Intel Core ¡5-2500K 8GBDDR3 Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1TB HDD plus 32GB SSD

 

iPhone 5: Another Evolutionary Step Forward

Despite being taller (4.87 inches), thinner (0.3 inch), lighter (3.95 ounces), and much faster than the iPhone 4S, the new iPhone 5 retains many of its predece-sor's features, including a flat front and back, a raised metal ring around its sides, and signature rounded edges.

the new iPhone 5 retains many of its predece-sor's features, including a flat front and back, a raised metal ring around its sides, and signature rounded edges.

The most notable change is the replacement of the iPhone 4S's all-glass back with aluminum material plus small glass panels top and bottom. Two color options are available: white-and-silver and a gorgeous black-and-slate combo.

The iPhone 5's Retina display remains 640 pixels, as on the iPhone 4S, but it's also 176 pixels taller than the earlier models' screen. The result is an aspect ratio of 16:9 (as on an HDTV) rather than 3:2 (as on earlier iPhones).

Size aside, the iPhone 5's display shows more-saturated colors and blacker blacks.

Lightning Strikes

The iPhone 5 marks a change from the 30-pin dock connector used by every previous iPhone to Apple's new Lightning connector. For people who have invested in multiple 30-pin-based iPhone accessories, the change is bound to be frustrating. To its credit, the new connector is much smaller than the old one, it's smarter than USB, and there is no wrong way to insert the cable into the device.

The iPhone 5 marks a change from the 30-pin dock connector used by every previous iPhone to Apple's new Lightning connector.

Apple has also moved the iPhone 5's headphone jack from the top of the device, where it had resided for the past five years, to the bottom.

The iPhone 5's upgraded dual-core A6 processor makes it mechanically faster. In fact, in almost every test we performed, the iPhone 5 ran laps around all previous iPhones and iPads. Graphics performance was just as impressive, including a twofold improvement in frame rates over the iPhone 4S. And on the Web-VizBench HTML 5 test, the iPhone 5 was three times as fast as the 4S. In addition, the phone can now connect to

LTE (Long-Term Evolution) cellular networks, which offer vastly faster cellular data speeds than the old GSM (AT&T) and CDMA (Verizon, Sprint) networks.

Apple claims that the battery life of iPhone 5 is comparable to that ofthe iPhone 4S—and that was roughly what I found in my hands-on testing. Our lab tests of the phone playing a movie in Airplane Mode suggest that its battery life under those conditions is slightly less than the previous model's.

The iPhone 5 comes with an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, as did the iPhone 4S, but Apple claims that the iPhone 5’s camera offers faster photo capture, better low-light performance, and superior noise reduction. In my tests, the camera was noticeably faster, even with notoriously poky HDR captures. iPhone 5 images appeared to be better in low light and were less noisy.

The iPhone 5's front-facing camera, meanwhile, is now capable of capturing 720p video, making it noticeably better than the iPhone 4S's front-facing camera for FaceTime video calls and self-portraits.