Sony A6500 Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

When Sony debuted the A6300 prosumer mirrorless camera in March, it delivered a much-needed boost to autofocus performance with the company’s Fast Hybrid AF system. But the lack of built-in image stabilization — which most other mirrorless cameras have — earned the company a big, fat demerit. And despite its excellent video cred with 4K and support for professional profiles, it didn’t have the now-essential touchscreen for smooth and easy autofocus.

The A6500 rectifies those mistakes, plus incorporates a new processor, which Sony says provides a much more responsive shooting and playback experience, and a bigger memory buffer to increase the number of shots during continuous shooting.

But the awful battery life? That’s gotten worse, dropping to a rated 310 shots via viewfinder shooting and 350 with the LCD. In the A6300 those are 350 and 400, respectively. Sigh.

You’ll be able to get it in the US starting in November for $1,400 (body) or in Europe in December for 1,700 euros, or 2,800 euros for a kit with the 16-70mm power zoom lens. (The price in euros directly converts to about £1,500 and £2,470. I don’t have information about Australian price or availability — it is on Sony Australia’s site, though. The US price converts directly to about AU$1,850.)

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The autofocus system itself hasn’t changed, nor has the sensor or image processor or many of the specifications: 11 frame per second burst with autofocus and autoexposure, same sensitivity ranges and same 4K video capabilities. The body is almost unchanged, with the exception of a third programmable function button, and you can now configure a wireless connection via QR code.

But Sony boosts the existing components with more memory and a secondary processor to increase the speed with which the image data moves through the camera and between the memory card and the camera. That provides faster image review — yay! — and the ability to shoot 233 best-quality JPEGs or 107 raw images. (Though the A6300’s 44 and 21 shots, respectively, are just fine.) Attracting action photographers seems to be the big trend in these prosumer mirrorless models, such as the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II announced at Photokina.

As for the image stabilization, the A6500 incorporates five-axis sensor shift, which will work intelligently with optically stabilized lenses for optimal compensation. At its best (which depends on the lens), the system is rated for 5 stops of compensation — just like many other mirrorless five-axis systems.

The touchscreen capability seems to be limited solely to autofocus, and Sony adds the touchpad capability first offered by Olympus — when looking through the viewfinder, you can use the LCD to control the focus point. The touchscreen seems intended primarily for rack focusing (sliding focus from one point to another in video), and the camera now includes the ability to set the autofocus drive speed and sensitivity.

My take

While the battery life still gives one pause, and it’s not fully weather-sealed like some competitors, the A6500 otherwise has all the right updates.

The Fujifilm X-T2 is more expensive, especially since it requires an extra-cost battery grip to achive the same 11 frames per second burst, but it seems better for complex flash photography (a much higher sync speed at 1/250 sec compared with the A6500’s 1/160 sec), has a sensor without a blurring antialiasing filter, weather resistance and possibly a comparable autofocus system. The E-M1 M2 doesn’t have a price or availability date, but it sounds like it has a comparable autofocus system and an 18 fps continuous shooting speed and weather sealing as well. But it uses a smaller Four Thirds sensor.

Oculus Touch Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

The Oculus Rift debuted back in March without a crucial piece of the puzzle: dedicated motion controllers to let you reach out and grab. Those controllers, called Oculus Touch, were always meant to complete the equation. And now they’ll finally be available December 6 for $199. They’ll be available for preorders October 10.

The Touch comes with a second Oculus camera sensor bar, which is necessary to set up to use the controls. The package also comes with two games: VR Sports and The Unspoken.

Oculus Touch can work in “room scale” VR, which means a walk-around holodeck-like environment like the HTC Vive, but that will involve buying a third camera sensor for $79. Be ready to add one of those to your package if you care for VR walkabouts. Or, if you want to turn around and grab things behind you.

Oculus Touch makes virtual reality better

The Oculus Rift didn’t let you reach out and grab things in VR. These controllers change that.

by Sean Hollister

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What Touch does

The two Touch controllers track motion in space, acting like virtual appendages in VR apps and games. Much like the HTC Vive’s controllers or the PlayStation VR Move wands, they let your hands do things. But they also can work like a standard game controller, too.

They need to be facing one of the sensors to work, so you can’t grab block them with your body, but as long as you’ve got an Oculus sensor on each side they work remarkably well.

Touch feels almost like a standard game controller split in two and turned into gloves. Each part has an analog stick and buttons. But the controllers can also sense finger proximity, letting a user raise and lower fingers and register them in VR. For instance, yes, you can point your finger, or give a thumbs-up.

Oculus has many apps that take advantage of Touch controllers, from virtual western shooters to painting and sculpting software.

The controllers have haptics for vibrating feedback, too.

The Touch can sense finger proximity.

Oculus

Touch requires more room sensors

The Oculus Rift came with a single little sensor-camera that perched on a desk or table to track head movement. But Touch needs another sensor to distinguish your hands from your head. And you’ll need a third sensor if you want to interact with things behind you, or walk around more than a couple of steps in VR. The third sensor is sold separately, for an additional $79.

The HTC Vive does it with only two, and they only need to be plugged into a power outlet. Each Oculus sensor needs to be plugged into a USB port on a PC.

A perfect in-between?

So obviously, these Touch controllers make a lot more sense than a gamepad. Even simply being able to see your hands is a big step forward in immersion, one that makes the virtual worlds feel a lot more real. It wouldn’t be a stretch to think that a lot of future Oculus games will support, maybe even require these controllers. (It doesn’t hurt that the rival PlayStation VR and HTC Vive have motion controllers that let you grab things, too.)

But in the short term, what can you actually expect to reach out and grab in VR? Plenty, it turns out. Check out our impressions of the best Oculus Touch apps and games.

Sony RX100 V Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Lori Grunin/CNET

Like the A6500 announced at the same time, the update to the Sony RX100 IV gets new internals for faster shooting, but the difference between the RX100 IV and RX100 V will be far more noticeable — because the performance bar set by the RX100 IV isn’t very high.

The RX100 V will be available this month for $1,000 — I’d watch for price drops on previous models, because the RX100 IV is currently the same price. It’s slated to ship in Europe in November for 1,200 euros, which directly converts to about £885. While it’s on the Sony Australia site, I can’t find price or availability details; the US price directly converts to about AU$1,320.

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The RX100M5 has the same body, internals and features as its predecessor: same 20.1-megapixel resolution and image processor, same popup viewfinder, same extensive set of 4K video capabilities and high frame rate (HFR) shooting modes.

But the new version of the 1-inch sensor includes phase-detection autofocus pixels, Sony’s Fast Hybrid autofocus system, in addition to the old, slow 25-area contrast autofocus. That should make a huge improvement in action shooting — locking focus and tracking subjects — as we’ve seen from other Sony cameras that have moved to the system. It’s supplemented by new processing hardware and a larger memory buffer, which Sony claims allows it to achieve 24 frames per second for continuous shooting, with autoexposure and autofocus, for 150 shots. That’s pretty impressive. And possibly overkill for most people.

The new silicon also enables Sony to double the maximum length of a high-frame-rate recording to about 7 seconds, for 1080/240p video. There are also some tweaks to settings for existing features.

Along with the camera, Sony announced an underwater housing for the entire RX100 line rated for 40 meters (130 feet). It’s expected to ship in the US in November for $350. (Directly converted, about £200 or AU$330.)

My take

Improved focusing? Count me in. Same goes for the longer HFR recording. How well the autofocus system really keeps up with the 24 fps burst remains to be seen: that includes focusing on what you want rather than what it can, as frequently happens. But if it can keep up at half that speed, it’ll serve most people well. And it will certainly help Sony stand out from the crowd of enthusiast compacts, at least for a while.

Smart Armor Smart Cube Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Startup Smart Armor Tech is bringing the connected lock indoors. Instead of a standard deadbolt, the company has announced what it calls the Smart Cube — a two-piece device that can lock indoor enclosures. Think of it like a retrofit home safe.

You won’t use the Smart Cube on your front door like other smart locks, but the device grants the ability to secure a drawer in your dorm room, a cabinet of cleaning products where your young child likes to explore, or your liquor cabinet. It’s a flexible product, and Indiegogo users — who have contributed over $100,000 to the project so far — seem excited about its potential. But I’m skeptical that those possibilities really merit the expected price tag: $100.

Smart Armor

The Smart Cube basically looks like a bar with threading like a screw. This bar, which is only a few inches long, slides into a second piece — a polycarbonate sheath. Users secure the sheath inside the cabinet or drawer, and attach the bar to the door. When it closes, the Smart Cube locks, securing the enclosure. To open it, you just tap a button in the Smart Armor app.

The mechanism is perhaps a little too simple. If you’re really worried about keeping something out of reach, you probably want to buy a real safe. But its app connection does bring something unique to the table: you will receive alerts if a cabinet is opened or tampered with. This lets the device double as a door/window sensor and lock. The problem is, because it relies on Bluetooth technology, you won’t be able to actually control the Cube while you’re out of range. This limits the benefits of Smart Cube’s connected-ness.

The basic idea for the device isn’t bad, but between a slightly steep price and its Bluetooth limitations, the Smart Cube will have to do a lot to win me over. The Smart Cube is available for preorder on Indiegogo now, with devices planned to ship in early 2017.

Polar M200 Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Tuukka Koski/Polar

Polar on Thursday announced the Polar M200, an entry-level GPS running watch and smart fitness tracker with a built-in optical heart-rate sensor. In addition to tracking pace and distance when running, the $150 (£150, about AU$200) watch doubles as an all-day fitness tracker and can measure steps, distance, calories burned and sleep at night.

It also supports notifications from an iPhone or Android smartphone. The M200 will vibrate to alert you to incoming calls, text messages, calendar events and social media notifications. It also includes inactivity alerts to keep you moving throughout the day.

The watch syncs with the Polar Flow app on Android and iOS. Here you can view detailed information on workouts and all day activities. The app also includes a running program that will build you a “personalized and adaptive training plan” for events ranging from a 5K all the way to a marathon.

The M200 is waterproof down to 30 meters (about 98 feet), and can be worn in the shower and while swimming. Polar has said the battery will last up to 6 hours with an active GPS signal and heart-rate tracking, which is a bit disappointing. The comparable Garmin Forerunner 35 is able to squeeze out an impressive 13 hours of battery life under the same circumstances. Polar also didn’t specify how long the watch would last as a normal fitness tracker.

The Polar M200 will be available later this year for $150, £150, and about AU$200.

Parrot Mambo MiniDrone Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

The Parrot Mambo is a tiny drone that fits in the palm of your hand.

Aloysius Low/CNET

Parrot’s minidrones aren’t really designed for shooting awesome aerial videos. Smaller drones like the palm-sized Mambo are there to let you experience the joy of piloting a drone without forking out too much cash.

Retailing for $120 (which converts to about £95 or AU$160), the Mambo costs a lot less than the higher-end Bebop 2 ($549). It’s quite a fun toy to play with, but it does have its limitations. For one thing, you only get 8 minutes of flight time, which passes quicker than you think.

I found the drone pretty easy to control once I got the hang of it. It took me about one minute to figure it out, despite having never flown a drone before. You can fly it either with your phone or the Parrot Flypad controller. If you’ve flown other Parrot drones, you’ll recognize the control scheme as well and won’t need to learn how to fly all over again.

The Mambo has a flight time of 8 minutes if loaded with accessories such as the cannon accessory, and 9 minutes without.

Aloysius Low/CNET

You can outfit your Mambo with a peashooter cannon or a grabber that can lift up to 4g (0.14 oz). Getting hit by the peashooter won’t hurt, but it’s hard to find the tiny pellets after you’ve fired them. The grabber doesn’t lift much, but Parrot has a video showing the Mambo lifting a sugar cube to drop into tea, so if you practice hard enough, you might impress a visitor from the UK when they drop by your place.

The Parrot Mambo makes for a fun introduction to drone flying, but don’t expect to do much more with this. The short battery life also means you may want to invest in a spare battery to swap in when the Mambo’s juice runs out.

Key specs:

• Quadcopter-style drone
• 550mAh battery for around 8 minutes of flight
• Comes with a peashooter cannon and a grabber accessory
• Uses Bluetooth to stay connected with your phone
• Requires iOS 7 or Android 4.3 an above

Parrot Swing MiniDrone Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

The Swing is able to hover like a quadcoter, or switch to plane mode where it flies horizontally.

Aloysius Low/CNET

If piloting a quad-copter drone isn’t your cup of tea, why not try one that flies more like a plane instead? That’s the idea behind Parrot’s Swing minidrone, which features a unique X-shaped design that feels like something from Star Wars.

Lacking the sleek fuselage of an X-Wing fighter, the Swing is all about the wings. There’s not much to look at, to be honest, but there’s more than meets the eye when the Swing takes to the air. It costs $140, which converts to around £110 or AU$185.

The Parrot Flypad controller lets you use the controller to switch between quad-copter and plane modes, and you can choose between three different speeds. I was easily able to get the Swing to take off and weave around for a good 8 minutes or so, but I felt I hadn’t really learnt how to control it in the short time I spent with the Swing.

Plane mode is a lot trickier to learn, given that the drone will constantly be moving. And be warned: Making a mistake will send it crashing into something. But if you’re worried about crashing, you can quickly hit the stop key. That switches the drone back into hover-quadcopter mode.

The Flypad controller allows you to control the Swing at a distance of up to 60m.

Aloysius Low/CNET

If you’re wondering whether you should get one, consider this: The Swing isn’t the easiest drone to learn but it offers plenty of fun, especially when you’re zooming around in plane mode. Unfortunately, that’s all you’ll be doing. The drone doesn’t offer a camera for video recording or any other features. It also uses Bluetooth, which means range is limited to around 20m, but you can increase this to 60m using the Flypad controller. Battery life, as mentioned, isn’t very good either, but you can swap in a fresh new battery as needed.

Key specs:

• Can switch between quadcopter or plane mode
• Can go up to 30 kph, or around 18.6 mph
• Compatible with iOS 7 or Android 4.4
• Up to 8.5 minutes of flight time

Asus ZenBook 3 review – CNET

The Good Powerful Core i7 processor in a slim, portable package with an excellent touchpad. A helpful USB-C mini-dock is included.

The Bad The 12.5-inch display is locked at 1,920×1,080 resolution, and it isn’t a touchscreen. Lots of extra bloatware. Battery life isn’t as good as the MacBook. Other similarly configured systems cost less.

The Bottom Line The Asus ZenBook 3 mimics many of the best features of Apple’s 12-inch MacBook, but in a Windows version with a more powerful processor.

Visit manufacturer site for details.

When is a MacBook not a MacBook? There’s a long history of PC makers selling computers that have a striking resemblance to one of Apple’s laptops. Sometimes this is in the form of a subtle homage, other times, it’s a literal attack of the clones. We’d even previously taken to calling one of Dell’s older designs the “DellBook Air.”

After Apple released the very minimalist 12-inch MacBook laptop in 2015, we saw a handful of similar designs, with Core M processors and ultra-shallow keyboards, and the Samsung Ativ Book 9 came closest to mirroring it.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Now there’s a new contender for most MacBook-like, called the Asus ZenBook 3. It’s a close-to-total clone, at least on the outside. But under the aluminum chassis, this ambitious, slim laptop trades midtier Intel Core M processors for a low-voltage Core i7 CPU.

But, the ZenBook 3 also shares the MacBook’s weaknesses, specifically a very shallow keyboard that’s not conducive to long-form typing, and an extremely limited set of connection options, which consists of a single USB-C port and a headphone jack (no one is taking the headphone jacks out of laptops, yet).

This might seem like too small a laptop, with too many compromises, to be an effective tool for either work or leisure, but the design grows on you. In the case of the 12-inch MacBook, I decided after a year of on-and-off use that it was actually one of my favorite laptops to use, because of its extreme portability and overall ease of use.

The ZenBook 3 next to the Apple MacBook.

Sarah Tew/CNET

The same could be said of the ZenBook 3, but with a few important caveats. This Windows version of essentially the same design is missing a few advantages that the Apple version has. The touchpad, while good by ultraportable Windows laptop standards, can’t come close to the responsiveness and multitouch gesture integration of any MacBook. That’s the home-field advantage Apple has in closely designing both the computer hardware and computer operating system, including the just-released MacOS Sierra.

The second advantage Apple has is a singular focus on battery life, and the current version of the 12-inch MacBook (that system’s second iteration) runs about 3.5 hours longer per charge than the ZenBook 3. That’s an important consideration when toting around a superslim laptop that might very well travel with you all day long for start-and-stop sessions at meetings, in coffee shops or on airplanes.

This configuration of the ZenBook 3 has a low-voltage Intel Core i7-7500 processor, along with 16GB of RAM and a sizable 512GB of PCIe SSD storage. That configuration, when it’s available later this fall, should cost $1,600 in the US. International Asus configurations often differ slightly, but that works out to £1,229 or AU$2,085. A better bang for your buck may be the $1,100 configuration (£845, AU$1,433), with a Core i5 CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD.

ZenBook 3

The one spec that you can’t change, and one of the ZenBook 3’s main letdowns, is the standard 1,920×1,080 screen resolution, which is the only option available on this 12.5-inch non-touch display. Premium laptops, even with smaller sub-13-inch screens often hit 2,560×1,440 or higher.

There’s a good case to be made for the very similarly configured Razer Blade Stealth, another slim laptop with a 12.5-inch screen. The newly refreshed Blade Stealth (full review coming soon) has the same Core i7-7500 CPU, and can be configured with similar RAM and hard drive specs. But, its display is a 2,560×1,440 touch screen, and our test configuration (Core i7/16GB RAM/256GB SSD) is $1,250 in the US. My biggest knock against that system is the dated-looking extrawide bezel surrounding the screen.

The very similar Razer Blade Stealth, which has a higher screen resolution, but a wide bezel around the display.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Of course, you could also just get a 12-inch MacBook, starting at $1,300 (£1,050 and AU$1,800). It’s a fun, fast-feeling little computer, with a higher-res screen and new MacOS features such as Siri and a universal clipboard that shares content between the laptop and an iPhone. But, its Core m-series CPU isn’t as powerful, and it tops out at 8GB of RAM, rather than the 16GB found here.

LG BP350 review – CNET

The Good The LG BP350 is a budget Blu-ray player with image quality that’s basically the same as more costly models. It offers the most popular streaming services including Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Video.

The Bad The player is very slow at loading discs and streaming services. Lacks a number of connection options offered by competitors including Ethernet and coaxial digital audio.

The Bottom Line The inexpensive LG BP350 is capable of fine image quality, but its sluggish load times keep it from earning our recommendation.

Blu-ray players are so inexpensive now, and their image quality so similar, that you might be tempted to just buy the cheapest one and call it a day. But there are still advantages to shopping around and maybe paying a couple of bucks extra.

The LG BP350 is a 2015 model that is still available in the US for $79, the UK for £66 and Australia for AU$159. It’s one of the cheapest Blu-ray disc-spinners around, and it comes with hefty compromises. It’s one of the slowest players we’ve tested at loading both discs and streaming videos, and it’s missing all but the most basic connections. If you only want to play Blu-rays and very occasionally watch Netflix, this will do the job. But we think it’s worth paying a bit more for something like the $80 Sony BDP-S3700 or the $100 Samsung BD-J9500.

Design and features

Ty Pendlebury/CNET

With its cross-hatched finish the BP350 looks more like a lemon zester than a Blu-ray player. A power button, a tiny eject button and a USB port adorn the front panel, while ’round the back there’s just a power input and an HDMI port. That’s a sparse rear even compared to other players at the price — usually you can expect at least an Ethernet port and a coaxial digital port as well. At least it has Wi-Fi.

There’s a small selection of the most-popular streaming services onboard, namely Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu, Spotify and Pandora. While that selection is dwarfed by the dozens on offer from Sony players, at least they’re all preloaded on the LG, so you don’t need to trawl through lists to find new services.