Review: BlueLounge Refresh

The Refresh is a charging station manufactured by BlueLounge. It is advertised as a place to recharge multiple electronics while keeping them organized. Better yet, it seems to do just that. Let's take a look.

The Refresh is a great charging station. The product looks and feels high quality. It is super aesthetically pleasing, and trust me, you will receive several compliments on it- especially if you use it at your workplace. The viewing angle differentiates it from other charging stations, and also adds a very nice feature as you can see if a new text came in or other notifications right from where you are sitting- no leaning involved. All of your products will charge at normal charging time. You will only occupy one outlet on your wall, whether you are in Europe or the U.S. And better yet, there is only one cable.

However, the product does have its faults. The LED indicator is placed inside the product, so you can't tell whether the device is on or off while using the product itself. Also, plugging devices in at first was really awkward. You get used to it over time, however, especially with third party cables, your devices will not lay neatly on the device. Perhaps the biggest downfall is the price. The Refresh weighs in at a hefty $90, which may be a little bit too much to pay for this device, as it does not bring anything new to the table.

If you have the money to spend $90 on the Refresh, go ahead and do it. However, I would wait until you can find it for about $60-70 to make your purchase. You can buy yours here.

YouTube

Audio Test: Zoom H1 vs Blue Snowflake vs Canon ELPH 300HS

With my recent purchase of the Zoom H1, I was personally curious as to how it stacked up compared to my old microphone, the Blue Snowflake. While doing the audio test, I figured it would be helpful to you 300HS owners to compare that internal microphone as well. What do you think?



Obviously, the Zoom H1 wins this microphone showdown with the Blue Snowflake coming in at second place. The Canon Powershot ELPH 300HS dose have surprisingly good audio quality for the price of the camera, however. With a little audio editing in iMovie, GarageBand or Final Cut, you could get some surprising results from that tiny little camera!

Review of Chromatics by Phantom Skinz (Carbon Fibre Silver)

Today I'm going to be brining you a review of the Chromatics Skin for the iPhone 4 by Phantom Skinz. This case will run you around $29.95 from their website. I have been testing out this Skin for the past month now and I have to say I personally am very pleased with it. It provides great protection to the front, back and sides of the iPhone 4.

Build Quality:

The Chromatics Skin that I was reviewing was a Silver Carbon Fibre Skin, this skin was very hard and didn't scratch easily. It provided good solid protection against objects such as keys in your pocket or if you had a drill out. Tho I don't know why you would. The front screen was protected with a screen protector, it was very rubbery and absorbed scratches. Personally I found this to be annoying when compared to the Zagg Invisible Shields nano repair technology. There was also an aerial cover included but however it was designed for the verizon version of the iPhone 4. 

Pro/Cons:

Overall I would have to say this case is worth the price of $29.95 there is a great choice of colours and different types of styles to choose from. The one con I have to point out is that this case will not provide any protection if your device is dropped from a great height. The skin is designed to provide protection to scratches and low danger objects.

I would give this skin an overal 4 out of 5, its sleek, stylish and sexy!

If you feel like I haven't explained in enough detail or have any questions please feel free to comment bellow or contact me on Twitter

"Super 8" Movie Review

As a fan of Cloverfield and monster movies in general, I've been waiting on Super 8 since its announcement a few years ago. After seeing more trailers closer to release I was a bit weary of actually seeing the movie, for the simple fact that it seemed to stray from the original perceived path that I thought it was taking.

With that said, I decided that I would still see Super 8 through to the end and saw the movie on premier night.

I will say though that Super 8 is a very hard movie to review without giving anything away... it can be spoiler heavy if one actually goes into much detail. I shall just provide a review to the best of my ability without spoiling anything, so bear with me if it's not the best in the world.

The movie starts off good as you learn what is going on with the characters and delve into their individual personalities. The movie transitions from the opening to the kids shooting a zombie film, which leads to a train crash. I won't spoil any of the details, but this is the train crash seen in the trailer. The effects through this scene and the whole movie are excellent. However, the overuse of lens flare may be to some people's disliking.

From here on, the movie progresses as everyone is trying to figure out just what exactly is going on in the town. The characters are very good and the kids pull off their roles fantastically. You can really let the characters grow on you as you watch the movie, and the movie is not only serious in tone, but also very comedic at times.

There isn't a lot of action for most of the movie, mostly just suspense scenes, but by the end of the film there is plenty of action. Like Cloverfield or any other monster movie the monster isnt fully revealed until about an hour and a half into the movie. Overall the monster design doesn't disappoint; it's pretty awesome.

The overall feel of the movie definitely has the Spielberg and Abrams aura to it, so fans of their specific movies should feel right at home.In a time where movies like this are scarce, Super 8 is a breath of fresh air. I can't really say much else without spoiling the movie, so I will leave you with: "Watch Super 8, it's awesome!"

Review of the MacBook Air

Today, I'm going to do a review of the MacBook Air. 

Firstly, I want to mention that the MacBook Air is great for travel.  It's extremely thin, light-weight and can fit into most laptop bags and backpacks.  You could probably even fit it into a binder and no one would know you had it with you.

The MacBook Air is one of the thinnest laptops in the world and yet it also packs a punch of processing power.  It includes a 1.4 GHZ Intel Core 2 Duo, 120GB SSD, and a Nvidia GeForce 320M.

The surprising thing with this laptop is how much it can do with specs like it has.  It's very good for everything from web browsing to basic movie editing in iMovie.  It can usually multitask very well and is comparable to my "27 i7 iMac in a lot of cases.  I've also used it to make screencasts before for my YouTube channel and it works very well while doing that.  It also think it isn't too bad for importing or exporting video in iMovie but not nearly as fast as my iMac and don't recommend it for advanced editing. 

I also like the battery life.  The battery life isn't that great when the WiFi is turned on but when you turn off the Bluetooth and the WiFi it can last for usually about 2-3 hours on a full charge.

My Rating: 8/10

It's a great laptop but I wish it could have a better GPU.  Other than that, it's a great laptop!

What do you think?  Post it in the comments!

-Carmen (or SuperPC)