Motorola Moto G4 review – CNET

The Good The Moto G4’s big, bold screen and junk-free software make it a pleasure to use throughout the day. Its ability to survive a dunking will appeal to the clumsy among us.

The Bad Processor performance is great for everyday tasks, but gamers will want to shop elsewhere.

The Bottom Line With its big, bold screen, water-resistant design and rock-bottom price, the Moto G4 is a dazzling deal.

Visit manufacturer site for details.

The Moto G has always been among the top dogs when it comes to “cheap but good” phones and the new G4 — and slightly fancier G4 Plus — have kept up that tradition.

Competition in the budget arena has never been more fierce, but the newest fourth-generation Moto G continues to hold its own thanks to a host of hardware upgrades, including a larger and brighter 5.5-inch, full HD display and faster octa-core processor, without shedding last year’s water-resistant construction and expandable storage (you can add up to 128GB by adding ultra cheap microSD cards).

And then there’s that price. In the US, you’ll pay $199 for the unlocked phone, which will work with all major US carriers when it hits on July 12. (You’ll find more details here. You can also buy the phone at a deep discount from Amazon, if you accept ads.) In the UK, the standard 16GB Moto G4 starts at a similarly affordable £169.

Motorola — which is now owned by Lenovo, by the way — hasn’t said how much the phones will go for in Australia, but the Moto G4’s UK price converts to about AU$300.

So what’s the catch? Not much, really. Spending a bit more for the aforementioned Moto G4 Plus gets you a fingerprint sensor (for easy unlocking), a slightly better camera and — at the top end — double the RAM and even more built-in storage. But neither phone has NFC or contactless payment options, so the Plus upgrades don’t feel worth the extra money in our book.

Editors’ note, 4 p.m. PT: This review has been corrected to reflect that the G4 Plus does not offer NFC or Android Pay, and that we recommend the cheaper Moto G4 reviewed here as the better overall buy and Editors’ Choice.

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Moto G4 vs. G4 Plus: What’s the difference?

The G4 Plus gets its name from its 16-megapixel camera (up from 13 on the regular G4) and a fingerprint scanner on the front. It also offers more RAM (4GB vs. 2GB) on its top-end 64GB configuration. Otherwise the phones are the same, from processor to screen.

Obviously, the Plus costs a bit more — and configurations vary by region. Americans will pay $50 more for the 16GB Plus ($250), while those in the UK will pay an additional £30 (£199). An extra $100 or £95 gets you a 64GB G4 Plus, which — as noted above — also doubles the RAM. (The UK also gets a 32GB Plus that doesn’t appear to be available in the US.)

That said, none of those upgrades are particularly compelling in my book. I kept confusing the Plus’s fingerprint sensor for a home button (it’s not), and its lack of NFC means there’s no contactless payment option. The extra megapixels in the camera, meanwhile, didn’t offer a big difference in everyday shots, unless you were zooming in. For those reasons, the cheaper G4 is the better option for nearly everyone.

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Andrew Hoyle/CNET

Slender and water-resistant

The Moto G4 and the G4 Plus are almost identical. They both have 5.5-inch screens, which is half an inch larger than the previous model and a full inch larger than the original Moto G from 2013. Both displays have full HD (1,920×1,080-pixel) resolutions, which are bright, bold and well suited to your tweeting and snapchatting.

Even better, the handsets are water-resistant, so they won’t shut down the first time you spill your drink on them. The back panel is removable, providing access to the microSD slot to expand the storage. You can’t swap the battery out, but its 3,000 mAh capacity is sufficient for a full day of use, so you may not need to carry spares around.

On our looping video battery rundown test, it took 13 hours 20 minutes to drain the battery entirely, which is a respectable performance. By comparison, the LG G5 took 12 hours 30 minutes, while the OnePlus 3 took 14 hours 17 minutes.

As with the rest of the Moto family, you can select from a wide range of back panels and metallic accents using the online Moto Maker tool. This is also where you can choose the amount of storage (16 or 32GB for the G4; 16 (US), 32 (UK) or 64GB for the G4 Plus, with 4GB of RAM for that most capacious option).

Nippy software, free of junk

The G4s run a near stock version of Google’s Android 6.1 Marshmallow software, making them easy for even Android novices to use right out of the box. (Motorola will eventually offer a Moto G4 Play version too, which will have totally stock Android.) Many budget phone makers — I’m looking at you, Huawei — load their phones up with so much junk from the start that they’re tough to navigate and find the essential features. Not so here. The interface is uncluttered, and aside from a single Motorola personalisation app, there’s no messy bloatware.

That lack of bloatware helps the phone feel nippy and responsive. There’s no annoying lag when you swipe around the home screens, the camera opens quickly and loading apps is very swift.

HTC Desire 530 Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Andrew Hoyle/CNET

HTC first showed off its Desire 530 back in February at Mobile World Congress. Now, the 5-inch smartphone is coming to the US.

Like most of the company’s phones, the Desire 530 looks slick. It sports a trim 8.3mm profile and has a thin bezel on either side of its screen. On the back you’ll find what HTC calls a “multi splash” design — it looks like spots of paint on a blank canvas (which is much nicer than it sounds).

Available on T-Mobile and Verizon, the Desire is a phone for the budget conscious, with an unlocked version coming to HTC’s website “later this month” for $179.

For that price, you’ll get the following specs:

• 5-inch, 1,280×720-pixel resolution display
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 210
• 1.5GB of RAM
• 2,200 mAh battery
• 16GB of internal storage, up to 256GB of expandable storage

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On the back you’ll find an 8-megapixel camera, while the snapper on the front weighs in at 5 megapixels. That front camera comes with “Auto Selfie” and “Voice Selfie” features, which let you take selfies without pressing a button.

The Desire 530 will be available in three colors — Blue Lagoon, Sprinkle White and Stratus White.

Fujifilm X-T2 Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Following the release of the X-Pro2 early this year, Fujifilm returns to revamp its X-T mirrorless series with its replacement for the X-T1, the X-T2. While it looks like a significant upgrade over the X-T1, it’s because that model is over two years old; the X-T2 incorporates a lot of the newer technologies that are in the X-Pro2.

Fujifilm plans to ship the camera in September — at least in the US — body-only for $1,600 or a kit with the XF18-55mm f2.8-4 lens for $1,900 (£1,400/£1,650 and AU$2,300 — I can’t find a kit price there).

Editors’ note, July 11, 2016: Updated with corrections based on a brief time with the camera as well as pricing for the UK and Australia.

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New highlights

• Sensor and autofocus. It uses the same 24.3-megapixel X-Trans III sensor and X-Processor Pro as the X-Pro2, but with an increased number of phase-detection autofocus points. Fujifilm claims much better speed and accuracy, plus adds more controls over continuous autofocus behavior. As a refresher, the X-Trans technology uses a 5G:2R:2B ratio (green, red, blue) color filter array rather than the 2G:1R:1B used by the standard Bayer array on a typical sensor. The extra green — the most sensitive sites on the sensor — provides sufficient data that there’s less false color produced by de-mosaicking (reconstructing colors from the array) and obviates the need for an optical low-pass filter to blur the edges between the pixels.
• 4K video support. One one hand, it’s great that Fujifilm has upped its video game to 4K. But in my experience the company has never done a great job with video; I hope we don’t just see the same artifacts writ high resolution. It can output clean HDMI at 4:2:2 (8-bit) depth.
• Design and features. The biggest change is the LCD; now it not only tilts up and down, but can flip out to the right, as well as tilt up or down while flipped out to the right. Really nice. It also increases to two SD card slots, which is essential for serious continuous shooting or 4K video recording. The viewfinder has similar specs to that of the X-T1, but with a higher maximum refresh rate of 100 frames per second. It does seem pretty responsive. Fujifilm adds the ability to use focal-plane sync to shoot with flash at any shutter speed. There are a couple of tweaks to the control layout, most notably the removal of the recording button from the top and the replacement of the focus assist button on the back with a joystick similar to the X-Pro2’s. While the X-T series has always had a more pronounced grip than the X-Pro models, there’s a new optional Vertical Power Booster Grip (VPB-XT2; $330, £300) that’s intended to deliver improved frame rates during continuous shooting and increase the maximum 4K recording time to 30 minutes, in addition to extra battery life.

Other updates and announcements

There’s also a new flash, the EF-X500 (GN 164 in feet and GN 50 in meters), which has a tilt and swivel head, and a video LED. It will ship in September as well for $450 (directly converted, £350, AU$600).

Additionally, the company announced it plans to release a firmware update for the X-Pro2 in October, updating the autofocus algorithm with many of the same performance enhancements as the X-T2, the focal-plane flash sync capability and improvements to the parallax correction in the viewfinder.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen an X-series lens roadmap; there are no real dates on the new one. Fujifilm plans an XF23mmF2 R WR for 2016, followed by the XF50mmF2 R WR and XF80mmF2.8 R LM OIS WR Macro in 2017. The latter has replaced the 120mm f2.8 macro lens that was promised on the last roadmap.

My take

I’m kind of baffled as to the differentiation. The X-T2, which is close to identically priced to the X-Pro2, incorporates the same sensor and a newer autofocus system than the X-Pro2, plus a tilting LCD and support for 4K video. It has similar performance specs as well. The two cameras basically have different designs and viewfinders — the X-T2 looks more streamlined with a bigger grip — but the X-T2 seems a significantly more advanced camera for the same money. Unless you really want the X-Pro2’s hybrid optical/electronic viewfinder.

Comparative specifications

JBL Clip 2 review – CNET

The Good The JBL Clip 2 Bluetooth speaker is a hockey-puck-size speaker with a built-in lithium ion rechargeable battery that offers decent sound for its size, improved battery life (eight hours), and is fully waterproof. It also has an integrated line-in cable that stows away in the bottom of the device, as well as speakerphone capabilities.

The Bad It doesn’t handle big bass well and distorts at higher volumes; should cost a little less.

The Bottom Line If it’s a tiny wireless speaker you’re after, the JBL Clip 2 is an appealing choice with some small but significant improvements over its predecessors.

JBL’s Clip speakers have been among our favorite micro Bluetooth speakers, and the new Clip 2, which comes in five color options and costs $60 (£50, AU$80), is also a winner.

The Clip 2 has couple of notable changes from its predecessor. For starters, it’s fully waterproof. It also comes equipped with a real metal carabiner instead the plastic “clip” mechanism found on the Clip and Clip+. And finally, battery life has been improved to eight hours from five.

Like those earlier models, this one has a nifty integrated audio cable for devices that don’t support Bluetooth, and there’s a built-in speakerphone that works reasonably well.

The fully waterproof speaker floats for a short period before sinking.

David Carnoy/CNET

As you can see from our video, the speaker initially floats when you put in water. But eventually it will sink. I gently put it in a pool and it played for about 10 seconds and then cut out as it dipped a little below the surface. It’s rated to be submerged in four feet of water for 30 minutes. But drop it in a deep lake or ocean and you’ll want to rescue it pretty quickly or you won’t see it again.

On the sound front, I didn’t notice a significant improvement, but the speaker still sounds relatively impressive for its tiny size. There’s some bass, just not a lot of it, and the speaker will distort at higher volumes with certain bass-heavy tracks, such as the American Authors’ “Best Day of My Life” (I tested this speaker with some of the same music as the Clip+). It’s strongest in the midrange, and it does best with acoustic music and speech.

Sennheiser PXC 550 Wireless Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Sennheiser is marketing the PXC 550 Wireless to “discerning business travelers.” Undiscerning ones need not apply.

Sennhesier

When it comes to headphones, one tends to associate Bose with the “business traveler” demographic. But Sennheiser’s making a pitch to that segment of the market with its new PXC 550 Wireless, a “premium” over-ear Bluetooth headphone that also features active noise-cancellation. It’s a direct competitor to Bose’s QuietComfort 35 and costs $399, £329 or AU$630.

Sennheiser is not only touting the PXC 550’s sound quality, but its customizable sound modes (via the company’s CapTune app for iOS and Android), touch controls, long battery life (30 hours) and strong headset performance for making phone calls.

The PCX 550 Wireless will ship by the end of July.

Sennheiser

I haven’t tried the headphone yet but look forward to getting my hands on one when it goes on sale later in July. In the meantime here’s a quick look at the PCX 550 Wireless’ key features, according to Sennheiser:

• Price: $399, £329, AU$630
• Fold flat, lightweight design (8.0 ounces or 227 grams)
• Bluetooth 4.2
• NoiseGard adaptive noise cancellation monitors ambient noise levels to provide the exact level of suppression needed
• Up to 30 hours of battery life with noise cancellation engaged
• Four presets for adjusting sound and one customizable Director mode that can be tailored using Sennheiser’s companion app, CapTune
• Earcup-mounted touch control panel and voice prompt system
• Music automatically pauses when headphones are removed
• NFC tap-to-pair technology for devices that support it
• “Unrivalled” speech clarity for business and personal calls ensured by a beamforming array with three microphones
• Travel carrying case included
• Ships late July 2016

Marantz SR5011 Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Marantz

As Marantz’s “cheapest” full-size SR receiver, the SR5011 fits most of the features you’d want into its distinctive tapering enclosure.

The $899 Marantz SR5011 is a 7 x 100-watt receiver which offers the latest sound and video technologies with the gentlemanly design ethic the company is known for. If you’re paying this amount of money you wouldn’t want to miss out on Dolby Atmos, and the SR5011 surely includes it as well as the tag-along DTS:X.

Of increasing interest to buyers of new televisions is the Marantz’s support for video technologies you’ll see more of in the coming years: HDR and 4K. The receiver offers HDMI 2.0a and HDCP 2.2 support on each of its eight HDMI inputs. It also offers dual HDMI outputs.

Marantz

The receiver includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth streaming with support for AirPlay, internet radio, Pandora, SiriusXM, and Spotify Connect. The model also offers playback of AIFF, FLAC and WAV lossless files at up to 24-bit/192-kHz, plus ALAC/Apple Lossless at up to 96kHz/24-bit, as well as SACD-quality DSD2.8MHz and ‘Double DSD’ 5.6MHz.

The receiver features compatibility with the new Marantz 2016 AVR Remote App which the company says has been built from the ground up. It’s available for iOS, Kindle Fire and Android.

The SR5011 will be available in the US for $899 in July while pricing and availability for Australia and the UK are yet to be announced. We’d plug the US price into the exchange rate website of your choice, but we all know how futile that is for now, given the volatility of both countries’ currency in the past few weeks.

Lenovo ThinkPad 13 review – CNET

The Good The thin-and-light Lenovo ThinkPad 13 offers a lot for a little, including a great keyboard, a matte 1080p screen, useful port assortment, a fair amount of upgrade options and a lightweight, but rugged build quality.

The Bad The touchpad can be a little jumpy and the trackpoint can be hard to find without looking. The keyboard isn’t backlit.

The Bottom Line A travel-friendly, tough business laptop, the Lenovo ThinkPad 13 delivers essentials for work or school.

Budget laptops get no glory and ones made for business, even less so. But, they’re the ones a lot of us buy for day-to-day tasks at the office, at home or at school, so when a good one comes around, you know it because it stands out from the crowd. The Lenovo ThinkPad 13 is just that: a budget-friendly standout.

Starting at around $600 (AU$900, £360), the ThinkPad 13 might not go above and beyond for performance with its entry-level components. It’s really the overall design — including an excellent ThinkPad keyboard — and features are better than you might expect, giving you something more than “good enough.”

The ThinkPad 13 is also available as a Chromebook starting at less than $400, but around $550 configured with the same Core i3 processor and full HD display as the Windows system reviewed here.

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Lenovo’s ThinkPad 13 might be inexpensive, but it’s built to pass 12 military specification tests for durability.

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Available in black or silver, the ThinkPad 13 isn’t super thin or light, but at 0.8-inch thick (19.8 mm) and 3.2 pounds (1.4 kg), it’s hardly a burden to travel with to and from the office or around campus. The top is covered with metal, but the rest is a durable plastic, and Lenovo says it’s built to pass 12 military specification tests including humidity, high and low temperatures, vibration and shock. This is ruggedness you don’t typically find in laptop at its price.

The full HD-resolution display (1,920×1,080 pixels) is also nice to have on a laptop at this size and price. However, if you opt for the black version, you get an HD 1,366×768-pixel resolution screen, the bonus being that it comes with a fingerprint reader absent from the silver version.

A big selling point for the ThinkPad 13 is it’s keyboard which is one of the best keyboards you’ll find on a budget business laptop. Or probably any budget laptop, really. If you spend much of your day typing, you want a keyboard that’s comfortable and responsive and this is it. Laptops this thin usually don’t offer much key travel and can feel mushy. But that’s not the case here, with every key giving you a firm response with each press. The only drawback is that it’s not backlit, but at least the keys are marked well.

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The ThinkPad’s keyboard is one of the best you can find on a budget laptop.

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The little red nub that is the ThinkPad TrackPoint works well for guiding your cursor around the screen, but is nearly flush with the keys. That makes it hard to find by touch alone, which had me looking down at my keyboard a bit more than I’d like. The TrackPoint does have its own left, center and right mouse buttons below the spacebar. The center button can be programmed for scrolling or as a middle click.

FirstBuild Prisma Cold Brew coffee maker First Take Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

If you love coffee in its many delicious forms, then you’ve probably had the pleasure of drinking cold brew. This concentrated java drink is known for its sweetness, lack of bitterness and rich flavor. Making cold-brew coffee though takes a lot of time, at least 12 hours using traditional methods. Not so if you use the $299 Prisma Cold Brew Coffee Maker which its designers promise can whip up a carafe of the stuff in just ten minutes flat.

The Prisma was dreamed up by the engineers at GE’s FirstBuild Microfactory, the same group who brought to life the unique Paragon Induction Cooktop and Opal Nugget Ice appliances. According to FirstBuild, the Prisma is another example of its unconventional design and smart applied science providing real-world solutions consumers clamor for.

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Fancy drip facade

At first glance, the Prisma looks very much like a standard home drip coffee brewer, admittedly an expensive one judging by the premium copper and glass materials in its chassis. Keep in mind, the Prisma units I looked at in person were a series of engineering prototypes, some functional and some not. That said, FirstBuild explained that what I saw is very close cosmetically to what customers will likely be able to purchase.

The Prisma almost looks like a fancy drip brewer.

Tyler Lizenby/CNET

The machine has a tall, hourglass shape with a flat top, and a wide upper body which tapers inward at its center then widens back out again toward the bottom. Up top under its flat lid is the main brewing chamber, which contains a metal retainer. At first I incorrectly thought the retainer was a regular filter basket — the sort you find in conventional drip coffee devices.

The bottomless retainer drum holds the paper filter in place.

Brian Bennett/CNET

In fact the retainer is really a bottomless drum perforated with large holes and is meant to stabilize paper filters (which you place under the retainer) within the brewing chamber. To make a batch of cold brew, put coffee grounds and water into the chamber, close the lid, then press a circular button on the Prisma’s base. Ringed by a color-shifting LED, the button will also glow in varying hues depending on the Prisma’s status (actively brewing, standby, etc.).

The button glows in different colors.

Tyler Lizenby/CNET

Cold-brewed via vacuum

There are many methods to make cold brew coffee but most involve immersing coarsely ground coffee beans in room temperature or chilled water. Compared with hot brewing, this style of steeping is low energy so is much slower. Instead of the four to six minutes a drip machine uses to makes pots of fresh joe, basic cold brew requires at least 12 hours to concoct. There are other techniques to speed up the process such as brewing your coffee in a pressurized vessel, for example a kitchen whipping siphon, which you place in the fridge.

The Prisma Cold Brew takes completely different approach. This appliance uses a vacuum pump inside its base to degasify water within the brewing chamber. FirstBuild engineers say the treatment greatly increases the solubility of coffee compounds in the Prisma’s water tank, or rather the efficiency of its water supply as a solvent. Apparently this is precisely how the contraption can produce cold-brewed coffee in a fraction of the time simple steeping requires. Another factor aiding the Prisma’s ability to extract coffee is that it’s made to brew finely ground beans. A smaller grind increases the surface area of the coffee grounds, which further ups its solubility in water.

Cold brew is collected in a snazzy glass carafe.

Tyler Lizenby/CNET

As for how the Prisma’s cold-brew quality stands up in real life, I’ll withhold judgment until I get my hands on the final version. I can say that what I tasted in person at the FirstBuild facility wasn’t bad, especially knowing it was made in an amazingly brief ten minutes. Still, the coffee used to prep these drinks was lighter roasts. I prefer to make my cold brew from darkly roasted beans, which tend to have more earthy, chocolate notes.

Home cold-brew addicts looking to score a Prisma Cold Brew Coffee Maker for themselves will have to be patient. While FirstBuild will launch a crowd-sourced funding campaign through Indiegogo in July 2016, the product isn’t expected to reach ordinary shoppers until the summer of 2017.

More facts about the Prisma Cold Brew coffee maker

• Makes five 5-ounce cups (750 ml) at a time
• Able to brew in a range of water-to-coffee ratios
• Will have Wi-Fi and its own mobile app
• Includes a premium glass carafe

iPad Mini 4 review – CNET

The Good Compact size, vivid display, works with split-screen apps in iOS 9. Basically, a shrunken-down iPad Air 2. Perfect hand feel for vacations.

The Bad Price is high for an 8-inch tablet. Slower graphics mean some apps and games don’t feel as zippy. Small screen makes for cramped typing and multitasking.

The Bottom Line Unless you’re absolutely in love with the iPad Mini 4’s smaller size, opt for the faster, larger, identically priced, and still pretty portable iPad Air 2.

The iPad Mini 4 is a tinier, slightly less powerful iPad Air 2. That’s basically all you need to know about this tablet, the 7.9-inch screen model which has been available since October 2015. I started sitting down the Mini 4 again, carrying it around every day in my bag, reading books — even using it to do work. This, after using Apple’s 9.7-inch iPad Pro as my general new go-to tablet. I even wrote this review on it. Which…wasn’t fun.

In a world of larger phones and more-capable hybrid laptops and tablets, the iPad Mini feels less relevant than it used to. And while it’s the best of Apple’s small iPads, with a still-really-nice design, it’s not the tablet I’d choose to carry around anymore. And Apple’s iPad pricing no longer favors it.

Since I first reviewed it last year, Apple has adjusted the pricing in its iPad line, pitting the iPad Air 2 as an identically priced alternative. And with that value change in mind, I wanted to ask the question: Is the Mini 4 a tablet you should still consider?

To that end, here’s what you should know.

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iPad Mini 4 next to the Air 2.

Sarah Tew/CNET

It’s the more powerful, better featured of Apple’s two Mini iPads. Compared to 2014’s iPad Mini 2, the Mini 4 has a better screen, better camera, faster processor and a Touch ID fingerprint sensor. (According to Apple, the 4’s CPU is 1.3 times faster, and its graphics performance is 1.6 times faster than those of the Mini 2.) It can also handle split-screen apps, which can come in handy for checking email or Twitter while working. It’s not my favorite iPad. But if you want something small, this is the best option.

It’s slower than the iPad Air 2. The iPad Mini 4 has nearly the same specs as the larger Air 2 — except for its graphics processor, which is more than one-third slower. You can feel it when playing some games (the frame rate is a little slower on some titles), and even when switching apps. Things that feel a little more buttery-smooth on the Air 2 don’t always feel as zippy here. And while it has 2GB of RAM, multitasking doesn’t feel as snappy or responsive as it should for a year-old tablet. It’s a good tablet. It’s not a great one.

The battery life’s not quite as good as the other Mini. Apple has two iPad Minis, but if you care about the longest battery life, get the Mini 2. Apple claims 10 hours across all its iPads, but the actual results on our video-playback tests in airplane mode show some differences. The Mini 4 lasted 9 hours 34 minutes. The Mini 2 lasted 11 hours, 20 minutes.