Tim Hanlon

We saw more than a few "me too" LCD TVs at CES 2009, so we have to give it to Toshiba for the laundry list of features in their flagship Regza SV670 series, including a few that no-one else has bothered to think of including in a TV - like Dolby Volume, which promises to sort the age-old problem of volume inconsistencies between advertising and programming, or between channels. Read More

Sony has set out to prove that form and function aren't mutually exclusive with their answer to the netbook, the VAIO P series. Starting with a tiny form factor and a 1.33GHz Intel Atom CPU, and adding a 128GB SSD, built-in 3G connectivity, 802.11n wireless, and a GPS that doesn't require an active Internet connection (among other things) this is one seriously portable, connected device. Just don't expect an Eee PC price point... Read More

US Music Corp., parent company of several music brands including Washburn Guitars, have partnered with Disney to create the Disney Star suite of applications - which unlike console-based music games, will teach children to play a real guitar or piano using familiar songs from Disney franchises like Hannah Montana and High School Musical. Read More

While Sony's XEL-1 OLED TV represents a leap forward in technology, the 11-inch size leaves a lot to be desired for applications like the living room. It won't be long though, as Sony showed off their prototypes for larger OLED TVs including 21-inch and 27-inch models at CES 2009. Don't miss the gallery. Read More

Hard drives have been the bottleneck in modern PC performance for some time now, and while SSD technology has led to new levels of performance, the price point has left a lot to be desired. Enter SanDisk, with a new range of SSDs based on multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory. SanDisk claims their G3 SSDs are twice as fast as prior SSDs and over five times as fast as the fastest 7200RPM HDD, with sequential performance of 200MB/s read and 140MB/s write. The price? Just over US$2 a gigabyte. Read More

Mio needed a little help promoting their Knight Rider GPS at CES 2009, and we can't complain about their choice of KITT - it's certainly holding up a lot better than David Hasslehoff. Whether you're a fan of the TV show or not, you'd be hard pressed to convince any of the team at Gizmag that this isn't a gorgeous machine. Having said that, two things disappointed us - the fact that no-one was keeping it clean, and the fact that we weren't allowed to jump in the driver's seat! Don't miss the gallery. Read More

While it's awfully easy to sit in front of Guitar Hero or Rock Band for hours on end, having the discipline to practise a real instrument for the long hours required to reach proficiency (and mastery) is much harder. Roland's Drum Tutorial DT-HD1 is the first of many products we've seen at CES 2009 that will help change this. Read More

While we covered the Beats by Dr. Dre headphones back in July 2008, it took a trip to the Monster Audio booth at CES 2009 for Gizmag's Tim Hanlon to get his ears on a set. So how do they compare with the benchmarks set by the German engineering coming out of companies like beyerdynamic and Sennheiser? To put it bluntly, he was blown away. Read More

With the democratization of digital music recording and production in full flight thanks to applications like GarageBand, Shure have released three new USB-based products to cater for the ever increasing market of users who need to record audio to their computers, but don't have access to professional pre-amplifiers - the PG27USB and PG42USB USB condenser microphones, and the X2u XLR-to-USB adapter which turns any existing XLR microphone into a plug-and-play USB microphone. Read More