Acer Iconia Tab A200 review

It's a tired promise for too many gadgets: Ice Cream Sandwich, just like the Gingerbread man before it, is coming... soon. You have to hand it to Acer, then, for bypassing those vague release schedules and actually pushing out a software update to the A200 on schedule. And though its specs are fairly run-of-the-mill (a 10.1-inch, 1280 x 800 display and 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 SoC), it could nonetheless be a tempting deal -- after all, you don't see too many $330 10-inchers running Android 4.0.

The problem is, better things are around the corner, and the price wars rage on in the meantime. As it is, the A200 went relatively unnoticed at CES as Acer unveiled the Tegra 3-toting A700. The existence of that next-gen tab alone should raise a few red flags for consumers thinking of hopping aboard the Android tablet train. What's more, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has already promised sub-$300 Tegra 3 tablets are on the way (ASUS even confirmed one!). So is this just a case of bad timing for what is an otherwise respectable tablet? Should you hold onto those hard-earned greenbacks until the market becomes flush with affordable quad-core slates? Or will its immediate availability and reasonable price make for an irresistible purchase now? Join us after the break as we tackle those very questions and give this tablet the fair shake it deserves.

Acer Iconia Tab A200 review

Hardware

Admittedly, tablet design is an inflexible province: there's only so much manufacturers can do with rectangles, aside from folding them (see: Sony Tablet P) or molding them in the shape of magazines (Sony again, this time with the Tablet S). So that leaves us with build quality and thickness, with the A200 measuring 6.9 x 10.24 x 0.49 inches (175.3 x 260.1 x 12.5mm) and weighing in at a 1.59 pounds (721.2 grams). As you can tell from those measurements, Acer's clearly not positioning this slate as an iPad opponent -- it's just too girthy and heavy to compete aesthetically. Don't confuse that additional bulk as an indication of subpar construction, though. You can quite literally feel the attention to detail in its non-slip, textured metallic grey back and the subtle curves leading up to the bezel in portrait mode. Grip this thing in landscape and it's a quite less comfortable experience, one marred by industrial flat edges and two ill-placed speakers.

Acer's made ample use of the A200's available real estate, filling up most every side with dedicated functions. The majority of your I/O needs are met along the left landscape side, which is occupied by a 3.5mm headphone jack, micro- and standard USB ports, covered microSD slot and power button. Above this array lies a silvery volume rocker, punctuated by three raised dots for easy tactile recognition, and an orientation lock, while a jack for the DC charger rests by its lonesome on the opposite edge.

On the back, you'll find the company's logo embedded in the midst of that hard rubber casing and two speaker grills placed equidistant at the base. Below that non-removable enclosure resides a 3,260mAh Li-ion battery and a (now antiquated) dual-core 1GHz Tegra 2 CPU. If you're wondering about the tab's camera setup, be prepared for a shocker: it only features a 2-megapixel front-facer. You read that right: there's no rear shooter to speak of, and while that'd be a major con on a handset, tablets aren't really the go-to device for photography anyway, so this omission is easy to overlook.

Look at the A200 head-on and there's not much cluttering up its face. Logos denoting this as an Iconia Tab iteration and Acer product make subdued appearances, with the only other visible interruption coming in the form of that front-facing cam. As we mentioned previously, the A200 is mostly indistinguishable from other tablet entries. The real difference pertains to the software it runs: Android 4.0.3. Before you can even dive deep into that Googlefied OS, you'll immediately notice the lack of pixel density on its 1280 x 800 10.1-inch LCD display. Sure, it's enough to render video in 720p, but the loss in quality is noticeable, although definitely on par with other mid-range slates. Indeed, viewing angles appear to hold up, but that's just the problem -- we can't say for sure, owing to the extremely reflective glass covering the unit. Indoors, away from the glare of direct sun and overhead lighting and at full brightness, we still found ourselves jostling with the tablet to find an optimal position that would allow clear visibility. Truly, it's nigh impossible to do, as some glimmer of the surrounding environment will surely make an appearance on the screen. And believe us, we tried to make it work, but after 30 minutes of watching a film on Netflix, our hands were fatigued by the constant re-positioning.

Software

So, the A200's display is rather lackluster, but on the upside, you do get to play around with a skinned build of Ice Cream Sandwich -- and a light one, at that. Most of the tweaks that Acer's imposed here center around the lockscreen and homescreen menu bar. Whereas vanilla ICS allows you to unlock a phone or tablet by dragging an icon to the appropriate slot, the overlay on this tab highlights the available shortcuts -- all customizable, of course.

Move on to the five homescreens and you'll see two yellow, concentric rings in the middle of the lower navigation bar that, when tapped, bring up a larger circle with sliding volume controls and recently viewed web pages on its outermost portion, shortcuts on the area just within and a search icon smack dab in the center. And there, friends, is where the OEM's tinkering with Android thankfully ends; these are very subtle changes that manage not to weigh down the performance.

You've probably heard speak of NVIDIA's Tegra 3 -- that quad-core chip that's begun to take residence inside a handful of upcoming phones and tablets. The A200, as a middle of the road tablet entry, doesn't take advantage of that next-gen spec boost, opting instead for a dual-core 1GHz Tegra 2. So let's keep our focus on its market positioning and real-world performance, not the lack of a marketing bullet point. As a mid-range tablet, Acer's tab generally does an acceptable job of keeping the hiccups at bay. Navigation through the homescreens is quick, but you'll note a minute amount of occasional stutter. The same applies to the app drawer which, when triggered, fluctuates between an immediate response, followed by a slight delay. Unfortunately, that inconsistency is evident throughout, and has a special tendency to rear its ugly head when loading applications, frequently prompting force-closes across various apps.

When it comes to Android tablets, access to the stock Google apps and a sprinkling of bloatware is something of a given. In keeping with tradition, Acer's shoveled a considerable amount of applications onto this slate, though surprisingly, it's also thrown Amazon's Appstore into the mix. It's a puzzling and redundant inclusion, as it merely offers users an alternative route to the same fraternity of apps available on Google Play. In addition to that oddity, users will find Amazon MP3, Kindle, the Astro file manager, Acer's Clear.fi app for wireless media streaming, Docs to Go, Evernote, a Facebook shortcut, Netflix, Soundhound, TegraZone, Zinio, McAfee VirusScan, SocialJogger (Acer's homegrown social aggregation app) and AUPEO!, a Berlin-based music service. Acer's added the ability to disable a portion of these third-party apps and remove them from the app tray, but the option to outright uninstall is sorely missing; they'll still be running in the background.
Which brings us to the issue of storage. With 16GB allotted for the $350 model and 8GB for the slightly cheaper $330 version, users will realistically be dealing with an out-of-box deficit of 4GB devoted to bloat. While this isn't shouldn't be quite as offensive if you choose the more capacious 16GB version, its lower-capacity sibling will come with a meager 4GB of available storage. Thankfully, you can expand the available storage by up to 32GB via that microSD slot.

Performance and battery life

	Acer Iconia Tab A200	Motorola Xoom 2	Galaxy Tab 10.1	Transformer Prime
Quadrant	2,053	1,841	2,083	3,023
Linpack single-thread (MFLOPS)	37.2	45.51	16.9	43.35
Linpack multi-thread (MFLOPS)	60.4	68.87	36.7	67.05
NenaMark1	45.6 fps	20.1 fps	42.5 fps	60.1 fps
NenaMark2	20.4 fps	19.6 fps	18.6 fps	46.1 fps
Vellamo	1,290	1,060	886	953
Sunspider 0.9.1 (ms, lower numbers are better)	2,251	2,229	2,200	1,861

The A200's 1GHz SoC and the accompanying 1GB of RAM may seem like yesterday's top-notch tech innards simply because... they are. So to give you a good sense of its raw power we pitted it against a cross-section of Android tablets, ranging from the similarly specced Galaxy Tab 10.1 to the dual-core 1.2GHz ARM-powered Xoom 2 to the Tegra 3-equipped Transformer Prime. Unsurprisingly, Acer's tab can't hold a candle to ASUS' major leaguer; it's an unfair comparison, yielding consistent benchmark defeats. Stacked side-by-side against Moto and Sammy's tabs, however, and you get a clearer sense of how it fares.

Victories for the slate were uneven, overtaking (or in some cases barely beating) the 10.1 in both Linpack single- and multi-thread, as well as Vellamo -- you can chalk that appreciable boost up to ICS's improvements. Sunspider 9.1 testing placed the tab's ability to render web pages speedily on par with its two rivals, although it did lose out by a minor, albeit significantly slower increment. As this is a Tegra 2 tab and therefore the product of NVIDIA's obsession with gaming, NenaMark 1 and 2 scores were on equal footing with the 10.1, and outstripped the Xoom 2.

Tablet	Battery Life
Acer Iconia Tab A200	8:16
Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7	12:01
Apple iPad 2	10:26
ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime	10:17
Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1	9:55
Apple iPad	9:33
Pantech Element	9:00
Motorola Xoom 2	8:57
HP TouchPad	8:33
Lenovo IdeaPad K1	8:20
Motorola Xoom	8:20
T-Mobile G-Slate	8:18
Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus	8:09
Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet	8:00
Archos 101	7:20
Archos 80 G9	7:06
RIM BlackBerry PlayBook	7:01
Acer Iconia Tab A500	6:55
T-Mobile Springboard (Huawei MediaPad)	6:34
Toshiba Thrive	6:25
Samsung Galaxy Tab	6:09
Motorola Xyboard 8.2	5:25
Velocity Micro Cruz T408	5:10
Acer Iconia Tab A100	4:54

Having no cellular network connectivity undoubtedly equates to longer battery life, but being limited to a singular WiFi radio has a downside, too. Wireless reception on the A200 is exceptionally poor; it tended to drop down to just one bar of signal strength when we moved a room away from our high-speed home connection. If you have your sights set on this tab, expect to find yourself tethered close to that household, office or in-store router.

Issues of range notwithstanding, we found the 3,260mAh battery lasted us well over two weeks with extremely light usage, and a large bit of that longevity has to do with the slate's power management abilities. Let it fall asleep and you'll notice that, upon re-awakening, WiFi has been disabled. It's a handy feature, but we can see it annoying folks expecting a steady stream of audible notifications. Under the duress of our formal battery rundown test, in which we loop a video with WiFi on and the brightness fixed at 50 percent, the tablet lasted eight hours and 16 minutes -- on par with early 10-inchers like the G-Slate and the original Xoom.

Full desktop pages on the A200's browser take a fair bit of time to load -- we had to wait nearly 30-plus seconds for Engadget to completely render on a high-speed connection. Pinch-to-zoom, however, does not entail the same sort of heel-dragging; the tablet managed to track our finger movements quite accurately while retaining the clarity of text and images. From time to time, however, you'll notice those dreaded white spaces surrounding your enlarged copy.

Wrap-up

Nearly three quarters of the tablet market may have tunnel vision when it comes to a platform of choice -- that being Apple's iPad -- but for the Android faithful, there are options readily available -- a wide and confusing glut, at that. Into this melange comes Acer's Iconia Tab A200, a tablet whose sole distinction is its Android 4.0.3 OS. With a narrow range of configurations that are too closely priced for the slight storage upgrade offered and a processor that grows more dated and comparatively sluggish as the year progresses, it's difficult to hone in on a bright spot for the bulky slate.

Certainly, we've seen the pitfalls of its performance, shifting as it does between occasionally snappy transitions to minuscule, though noticeable choppiness. Then there's the bothersome illegibility of its über-reflective screen. It'd be easy to lay the blame for these software quirks on its dusting of a UX, but it's more likely that the company simply neglected to fully optimize its Tegra 2 core for this skinned OS. It's not as if sleeker, more responsive and critically praised slates aren't within reach. For an extra $49, you can purchase the Galaxy Tab 10.1 or recently discounted iPad 2, each with 16GB of storage. If you choose to go that route, then all you're really missing out on is Ice Cream Sandwich and even then Samsung's promised to deliver that update very soon. Add to this confluence of cons the potential for sub-$300 Tegra 3 tablets hitting shelves in the near future and you won't feel much inclination to whip out the credit card and commit to this capricious, and ultimately forgettable ICS slate. That forthcoming A700, on the other hand, might be worth the wait.

HP Envy 14 Spectre review

In a previous life, the HP Envy 14 was a laptop's laptop: a 5.69-pound slugger with an optical drive, discrete AMD graphics and a battery that couldn't last four hours in our battery rundown test. That notebook -- one of our favorites in the 2010-2011 year -- met its fate last fall when HP redesigned its high-end Envy line, but instead of going wherever it is gadgets go to die it was reincarnated as an Ultrabook. The new Envy 14, dubbed the Spectre, has shed almost two pounds, along with its discrete graphics and outmoded optical drive. It's also one of the first 14-inch Ultrabooks to hit the market, but even if it weren't so oddly sized we'd have no trouble remembering it: after all, how many laptops have a built-in NFC chip, or a glass palm rest?

There's no doubt about it: the Spectre is a premium machine, and it's not just that HP needed something high-end to take the place of the last-gen Envy 14. This also happens to be the company's first consumer-grade Ultrabook, and it arrives at a time when there are many to choose from. Enter HP's marketing department: the outfit's touting this thing as a "premium Ultrabook" -- the kind of machine you'd choose if you wanted a 1600 x 900 IPS-quality display or an unorthodox design. For that kind of beauty, though, you're looking at $1,400 and up -- a princely cost of entry when you consider lots of similarly specced models go for $1,100 or less. But perhaps that splurge comes with more than just a head-turning design? There's only one way to find out: follow past the break for our in-depth review.

HP Envy 14 Spectre review

Look and feel

It's obvious HP chose this machine as a guinea pig for some bolder design choices.

Though the Spectre clearly shares some genes with the new Envy 15 and 17, it's obvious HP chose this machine as a guinea pig for some bolder design choices. For starters, the PC is swaddled in Gorilla Glass. You heard right: glass. That includes that flat fingerprint magnet of a lid, along with a thick shield stretching across the palm rest, creating a plateau below the keyboard. Think of a table at a pizzeria, the kind where the management uses thick glass to protect that all-important checkered tablecloth from marinara spills. A corny analogy? Why yes, you're welcome. But really, hear us out: this is pretty much what HP was going for. In a recent conversation, product managers who shepherded the laptop through the development process told us they particularly wanted to reinforce the palm rest, that part of the laptop constantly getting scuffed up by watches, bracelets and those pesky high school class rings. Why glass, though? It's lightweight and tough, stays cool to the touch and plays nice with the NFC radio.

What HP's claiming, essentially, is that contrary to whatever you might have guessed, the glass actually makes the laptop less fragile, not more so. Whatever the ratio of materials (HP used magnesium, aluminum and plastic in the chassis), there isn't a hint of flex in the body. The glass-coated bits don't feel rugged, per se, but definitely resilient. Try rapping your fingers against the lid and palm rest if you see this thing on display at a store: that low-pitched click has a reassuring ring to it. But reassuring of what, exactly? The laptop's durability? The quality of your $1,400 investment? We'll let you be the judge.

As singular as the Spectre is, though, it isn't so experimental that it would look out of place in an Envy family photo. That glowing logo on the lid is still there, and that conspicuous Beats branding should seem familiar, right down to the analog volume dial. The metal chassis also looks more or less the same, even though the Spectre doesn't share the same unibody construction as its big brothers. You may also notice the Spectre's mag-alloy body has a slicker feel than the Envy 15. That's not a bad thing, especially since those smooth surfaces seem impervious to scratches. All told, the design is arresting and well-thought-out -- lovely, even. If you've been wondering why you should choose this over HP's budget Ultrabook, the Folio 13, you're looking at most of the reasons right here.

When the Spectre was first announced, most of the Ultrabooks we'd seen to date had 13-inch screens, and weighed almost a pound less. Indeed, compared to the ASUS Zenbook UX31, Toshiba Portege Z835 and HP's own Folio 13, it seems chubby at 3.97 pounds (1.8kg) / .79 inches (20.1mm) thick. Little did we know just how many plus-sized Ultrabooks were on the way. If Intel's estimate is right (and Intel should know a thing or two about Ultrabooks) half of the 75-plus models to be released this year will have 14- or 15-inch displays. Even in the first few months of the year, we've seen models with optical drives and discrete graphics -- PCs that feel more like good old-fashioned laptops than so-called Ultrabooks And wouldn't you know? In that sub-class of 14-inch Ultrabooks, the Spectre is on par with the 3.95-pound Samsung Series 5 and ThinkPad T430u, which weighs in at "under four pounds," according to Lenovo.

Unlike the Series 5, the Spectre doesn't make room for an optical drive. Instead, that right edge where you might expect to find it is home to a sparse collection of ports and buttons, including a power socket, volume dial, mute button and Beats Audio launch key. With no ports on the front or back sides either, that doesn't leave much room for all the other sockets HP managed to squeeze in. Indeed, you'll find those packed in along the left side, with a DisplayPort, HDMI socket, Ethernet jack, two USB 3.0 ports and a headphone jack sitting in a row. (There's also an SD / MMC reader tucked in there, toward the front edge.)

Although the machine feels thicker than other Ultrabooks, it's clear HP couldn't have made it any skinnier -- not if it wanted to keep that Ethernet jack, anyway. Look closely and you'll see there's no room to spare either above or below that jack, suggesting this port represented one of the bigger limiting factors in terms of thickness. We can't speak for any of you, but if it's a choice between an Ethernet jack and a slightly thinner chassis, we'll pick the wired connection every time.

NFC

The Spectre has an NFC radio built into the left side of the palm rest, but you wouldn't know it from reading HP's website: the laptop's product page makes no mention of this feature. Indeed, company officials have described this addition as "experimental," which is fair since you can't actually do much with it right now, save for transferring URLs from your phone to your desktop.

HP Touch to Share on the Envy 14 Spectre

To get started, you'll need an Android phone with NFC, along with the free Touch to Share app, which actually has its roots in webOS. (Note: when you're searching for this in the Play Store, remember that Syncables, not HP, is listed as the developer. It's also to best to search for "HP Touch to Share," since "touch to share" yields lots of irrelevant results.)

Once you download the app and make sure NFC and Android Beam are enabled, open the Touch to Share program installed on your PC. It's at this juncture that you'll go through with a one-time pairing process so that your PC recognizes your device. As you're doing this, make sure you place the phone length-wise across the palm rest, parallel to the keyboard. Thereafter, you can just run that mobile Touch to Share app in the background on your phone when you want to share pages. Eventually, we got this to work with our Verizon Wireless Galaxy Nexus, but the webpage transfers are still very unreliable in this early stage.

Etc.

Lest you think HP is simply trying to woo you with a striking design, the company's also using the rest of the in-the-box goodies to help justify that $1,400-plus price. For starters, we appreciate that the slim power brick fully detaches from its two accompanying cables -- a setup that makes the adapter that much easier to stow away. Additionally, HP threw in a neoprene sleeve that wraps snugly around the Spectre. Nothing fancy, but it's much appreciated nonetheless.

Keyboard

HP's attention to aesthetic detail doesn't pay off with a smooth trackpad experience.

With the Envy 15, HP didn't skimp on the cushy keys, and we're happy to report it's more of the same in this shrunken-down model. Here, too, the keys offer plenty of travel, though they occasionally fail to register individual letters, a nuisance that'll force you to go back and re-type them. On the other hand, they're well spaced and we ultimately managed to type the brunt of this review on it without too much fuss. In fact, as we spent more time with the Spectre we noticed fewer spelling mistakes, which suggests you just might have to conquer a learning curve before you find your typing mojo. In the grand scheme of things, with so many Ultrabooks rocking shallow keyboards, the Spectre offers one of the better typing experiences we've enjoyed on a laptop this size, though you'll still find equally tactile keys on the Folio 13, Dell XPS 13 and MacBook Air.

You'll notice there's a good deal of similarity between this keyboard and the Folio 13's, whose arrow keys leave more room for the left / right keys than the up / down ones. It's a bit of a letdown to see those arrows are still cramped, but then again, the Spectre's footprint isn't much wider than the 13-inch Folio's. For what it's worth, you shouldn't have too much a problem feeling around for them when you want to highlight text using the 'ol keyboard.

With a starting price of $1,400, it shouldn't be a shocker that the Spectre sports a backlit keyboard. As with the other Envy laptops, HP stuck an LED underneath each keycap -- a design choice intended to enhance the glow and also reduce light leakage from beneath the keys. Friends, the effect is lovely: the keys do indeed shine brighter than what you'll find on competing laptops, and the lack of a halo effect makes for a cleaner-looking panel. If you want to save battery life, you can press F5 to deactivate it, in which case everything but that function key will go dark. Speaking of the sort, that top row is home to most every control you can think of, save for volume (display brightness, etc.) and you don't need to press the "fn" button with your other hand to use them.

Trackpad

Based on conversations with company reps, it's obvious HP took great pains to design the trackpad. Unfortunately, their attention to aesthetic detail doesn't pay off with a smooth experience. Since the outfit already committed to decking out the palm rest in glass, it had to follow up with a glass touchpad. And though it went out of its way to use a different kind of glass on the Synaptics-powered pad, that surface still presents too much friction, even when it comes to rote gestures like dragging the cursor across the screen.

With two-finger scrolling as well, you'll have to apply a little extra pressure, and move your fingers up and down very deliberately. With pinch-to-zoom, though, we actually found the pad to be a little oversensitive, making it all too easy to zoom in when we didn't mean to. Other times, when we were actively trying to adjust the size of the text, we had a heck of a time scaling to size in modest increments. Worst of all, the button mechanism inside the clickpad feels stiff -- a complaint we had about the Folio 13 too.

As with the Folio 13, there's an icon in the upper left corner of the trackpad that you can double-tap to disable the pad altogether. Once you do that, you'll know the touchpad's turned off because an icon will flash onscreen and a small LED light next to the trackpad will glow orange until you enable the pad again.

Display

The audio is some of the best you'll enjoy on a laptop, particularly an Ultrabook, where robust sound typically fall by the wayside.

We've got a few rounds of good news to share here, so let's dive right in. First off, the Spectre is blessed with a 14-inch, edge-to-edge display whose 1600 x 900 pixel count bests the 1366 x 768 resolution you'll find on most other Ultrabooks. Though HP says this isn't an IPS display, technically speaking, it nonetheless offers wider viewing angles than a run-of-the-mill TN panel. Watch from the side or with the lid dipped forward, and those vibrant colors hold their own. Within reason, the screen won't get washed-out, and the contrast levels shouldn't get too severe. If anything, your biggest obstacle might be that super reflective finish.

So far, so unsurprising. We had similar things to say about the 1080p Radiance panel crowning the Envy 15. One thing soured that, though, and that was some imprecise color calibration -- a flaw that caused reds to appear orange, and purples to take on a bluish tint. Given that all these displays fall under the Radiance umbrella, we resigned ourselves to another heaping dose of red-orange. Interestingly, though, when we lined it up against the MacBook Pro (comparison shot above), the colors seemed more evenly rendered. Turns out, our eyes weren't deceiving us: HP's product managers confirmed the Spectre's display has a richer color gamut than the Envy 15's (it is, however, comparable to the Envy 17, they say). It's too bad, then, that HP couldn't have used a larger version of that screen in the Envy 15. As it is, disgruntled Envy 15 owners will have to settle for a forthcoming tuning utility and hope for the best.

Finally, the Spectre packs Intel Wireless Display, which allows you to mirror your desktop on and stream 1080p to a television or external monitor. Though Best Buy sometimes sells laptops bundled with a compatible adapter, you'll have to bring your own, to the tune of about $100. We've tested this before, so here's our one-sentence summary: the setup is consistently fast and easy, and the streaming is fluid.

Sound

Say what you will about Beats being a gimmick (heck, we've written thousands of words on the subject), but the audio here is some of the best you'll enjoy on a laptop, particularly an Ultrabook, where robust sound typically fall by the wayside. The speakers are loud, as you'd expect, but in particular, we found the audio doesn't get distorted, even when you crank the volume to the max. And though Beats has been tailored to make the best of thumping bass notes, it also handles other sounds, such as classical strings, quite nicely. All in all, a top-notch musical experience, right up there with the Bang & Olufsen speakers on the Zenbook UX31.

By default, you still need to push the dial up to lower the volume, but if this feels unintuitive just press the Beats key on the right side of the laptop, go into advanced settings in the onscreen Beats console and program the dial to work the opposite way. While you're there, you can adjust the master volume or tweak it for certain outlets, such as the speaker. You can also select from different Beats EQ profiles (music, movies or 3D content), or adjust the sound properties manually. Hey, you can even turn off Beats altogether, at which point that light-up "b" on the palm rest ceases to glow red.

Like the rest of the Envy family, the Spectre has HP Wireless Audio built in, which means you can wirelessly stream tracks to as many as four KleerNet-powered speakers. Alas, though, we didn't test this feature, as we happen not to have any Kleer equipment lying around.

Performance

	PCMark Vantage	3DMark06
HP Envy 14 Spectre (1.6GHz Core i5-2467M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)	9,335	3,468
Dell XPS 13 (1.6GHz Core i5-2467M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)	N/A	4,130
HP Folio 13 (1.6GHz Core i5-2467M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)	6,701	3,387
Toshiba Portege Z835 (1.4GHz Core i3-2367M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)	5,894	3,601
Lenovo IdeaPad U300s (1.8GHz Core i7-2677M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)	9,939	3,651
ASUS Zenbook UX31 (1.7GHz Core i5-2557M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)	10,508	4,209
Acer Aspire S3 (1.6GHz Core i5-2467M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)	5,367	3,221
13-inch, 2011 MacBook Air (1.7GHz Core i5-2557M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)	9,484	4,223
2011 Samsung Series 9 (1.7GHz Core i5-2537M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)	7,582	2,240
Note: the higher the score the better.

If benchmarks are any indication, the Spectre isn't the fastest Ultrabook on the planet, but it holds its own against some stiff competition. Its PCMark Vantage score of 9,335 puts it in the same neighborhood as a Core i7-powered IdeaPad U300s, along with the similarly specced MacBook Air. (Curiously, the Spectre scored 2,600 points higher than the Folio 13, which has the same CPU, graphics card and 4GB of RAM.) In the disk benchmark ATTO, meanwhile, the Samsung-made solid-state drive delivered top read speeds of 232 MB/s, with writes maxing out at 187 MB/s -- almost exactly what we got from the Samsung SSD inside the Folio 13. That's also in the same ballpark as the U300s, which notched 250 MB/s reads and 200 MB/s writes. Of course, none of these amateurs can match the ASUS Zenbook UX31, which managed read / write speeds of 550 / 500 MB/s, respectively.

The Spectre notched a score of 3,468 in the graphics benchmark 3DMark06. That's around 700 to 800 points less than what the Dell XPS 13, MacBook Air and UX31 scored, though at the end of the day, panning an Ultrabook for a lackluster 3DMark06 score is a bit fruitless. After all, they all have the same watered-down Intel HD 3000 graphics card. So just how serviceable is it? If you haven't graduated from crudely drawn games like The Sims, you should enjoy 65fps frame rates, though attempt Call of Duty 4 and you'll want to quit within the first minute, thanks to the sluggish 15fps gameplay (and that's at 1024 x 768 resolution, mind you!).

Booting into Windows takes 23 seconds, which is reasonable, though not quite as fast as the UX31 (16 seconds), IdeaPad U300s (18 seconds), Folio 13 (18 seconds) or the MacBook Air (15 seconds). The machine takes a sluggish nine seconds to resume, compared with two for the UX31. As you should be well convinced by now, a machine with these specs (namely, a 1.6GHz Core i5-2467M processor, 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD) is more than powerful enough to use as an everyday machine -- assuming your everyday tasks consist of email, web surfing, chat, word processing, video streaming, basic photo editing and some light gaming. Yours truly easily spent a leisurely evening writing this very review -- with a healthy dose of web browsing, YouTube and Grooveshark thrown in for variety's sake. If anything, that stiff, flaky clickpad is the most likely thing to slow you down.

Though the Spectre makes use of HP's CoolSense technology, we noticed the machine gets a bit warm on the bottom side, even if you're just goofing around in Chrome. Still, those slightly warmer temperatures never registered as uncomfortable.

Battery life

Laptop	Battery Life
HP Envy 14 Spectre	5:30
HP Folio 13	6:08
Toshiba Portege Z835	5:49
ASUS Zenbook UX31	5:41
13-inch, 2011 MacBook Air	5:32 (Mac OS X) / 4:12 (Windows)
Lenovo IdeaPad U300s	5:08
Dell XPS 13	4:58
Samsung Series 9	4:20
Acer Aspire S3	4:11

Though the Spectre's five-and-a-half-hour battery life is a big improvement over its predecessor's four-hour runtime, it's about 40 minutes short of what you'd get with the $800 Folio 13. Still, the Spectre's performance is average compared with other Ultrabooks. (Really, take a look at that table up there: the Spectre bests four laptops, and loses to just as many.) If you do as we did, and loop a movie off the local disk with WiFi on and the screen brightness fixed at 65 percent, the four-cell battery should last about at long as both the MacBook Air and UX31. We found, though, that if you select the default "HP Recommended" power settings and stick to web surfing, the runtime stretches to about six hours. That's just half an hour more, but if you're scrambling to wrap up that last paragraph at a trade show where there are no outlets in sight (what? who's projecting?), every minute counts.

Software

Like the Folio 13, the Spectre comes with full complimentary versions of Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 and Premiere Elements 10 -- two apps we actually don't mind PC makers tossing in without our permission. Other staples include Microsoft Office 2010 Starter Edition and a two-year subscription (not trial, but subscription) to Norton Internet Security. Now it's true, Norton's pop-ups sometimes got the better of us when we first booted into Windows, but we appreciate getting something for nothing, and we can also respect HP for refusing to saddle its high-end Envy laptops with trialware. Now, if only it would be so generous with its Pavilion customers...

Actually, before we get knee-deep in congratulations, we'll say this: HP clearly isn't counting its own pre-installed utilities as bloatware. As with other machines in HP's stable, you'll find apps like Power Manager. Some of these apps, like MovieStore, stay invisible as long as you want them to, though Support Assistant in particular has a nasty habit of interrupting you while you're trying to get work done.

Configuration options and warranty

The configuration we took for a spin is the entry-level $1,400 model, which comes with a 1.6GHz Core i5-2467M processor, 4GB of RAM, Intel HD 3000 graphics and a 128GB SSD. As with most other Ultrabooks, there's an optional i7 CPU (the 2677M, for $200) as well as a 256GB SSD ($300). You can't order more RAM through HP, however, and though some other 14-inch Ultrabooks will include discrete graphics, the Spectre is only available with that integrated Intel card. In case you're wondering, the battery, memory and SSD are not designed to be user-replaceable (you could replace the 1,000-cycle battery yourself using a screwdriver, but HP doesn't condone it).

It's worth noting, too, that this $1,400 starting price includes a standard two-year warranty -- a given across the Envy lineup, but a welcome surprise compared to most other PCs, which generally come with one year of protection. Particularly when you consider Dell charges $187 to extend a one-year warranty to two, the Spectre's price tag stings a little less. But only a little: even if this were a $1,200 machine with a one-year warranty, it would still be more expensive than similarly specced Ultrabooks (that IPS-quality display not withstanding).

The competition

Unless you're a diehard display aficionado, the Envy 14 is a bit overpriced for what it is.

Given that, this might be a good time to ask, if this is a premium laptop, what's justifying that premium price? It's certainly not the performance or battery life, which aren't any more impressive than what the competition's capable of. It's not any special attention to ergonomics, with the trackpad being as stiff and jumpy as it is. The $1,100 ASUS Zenbook UX31 performs better for $300 less and has a rigid, spun-metal design that gives the Spectre's glass-and-metal casing a run for its money. The same can be said of the $1,300 MacBook Air, which also adds a comfortable keyboard-and-mouse combo -- something the UX31 and other Windows-based Ultrabooks haven't gotten right yet.

The most likely reason you'd choose the Spectre is that display, which matches the 1600 x 900 resolution found in the UX31, but does it one better with richer colors, wider viewing angles and some seriously narrow bezels. Truly, there's nothing else like it -- at least not in the Ultrabook category. You'll be lucky if you get resolution higher than 1366 x 768, much less a panel that isn't a garden-variety TN screen.

The Spectre also wins points for its bold design, but is that reflecting pond of a lid worth $1,400? Do those glass bits and enhance the experience, or are they just gimmicks? Suffice to say, we remain skeptical on both counts.

Wrap-up

HP Envy 14 Spectre official

ASUS Zenbook UX31 review

Dell XPS 13 review

On its own, the Envy 14 Spectre is a nice laptop. And we mean that in the most superficial way: this is one of the loveliest, most memorable machines we've tested recently, and its 1600 x 900 display is unparalleled -- at least in the Ultrabook category, where it's slim pickings for high-quality screens.

The problem is the price. We're not saying that $1,400 cost of entry makes the laptop any less of a solid product, but we're coming up short on reasons why you would choose this over a $1,100 ASUS Zenbook UX31, or even a $1,300 MacBook Air. Those are two beautiful, finely crafted options right there, and let's not discount the $1,000 Dell XPS 13 and $1,200 Lenovo IdeaPad U300s. We love these for their looks too, even if they are safer than the Spectre's glass-and-metal show. And while the Spectre's 1600 x 900 screen is a delight, the UX31 offers the same resolution for hundreds of dollars less. Most importantly, perhaps, the Spectre doesn't perform any better than less expensive Ultrabooks packing similar (or identical) components. Worse, it's saddled with a stiff clickpad -- something that can't be remedied with a quick driver update.

Given those demerits, the Spectre's biggest distinguishing features are its stunning display, two-year warranty, complimentary software, Beats Audio, limited NFC capability (a gimmick) and its glass design (another gimmick, but a damn gorgeous one). Unless you're a diehard display aficionado, the Envy 14 is a bit overpriced for what it is, even if it is a pleasure to use.

HP

Samsung Rugby Smart review

Not every smartphone stakes its claim on speedy processors, huge gorgeous screens or slim and sexy physiques. Some take a relatively modest set of specs and add a little wrinkle to make them stand out from the crowd. The Samsung Rugby Smart is one such device. Though it adds Android to what we'll now refer to as the Rugby Dumb, we can already tell you this handset isn't for the spec snobs among you. But, if you're more concerned with durability and tank-like construction, you might want to stick around a while. This AT&T-branded phone is built to mil-spec 810F standards, meaning it's shockproof, dustproof and can be immersed in up to a meter of water for up to 30 minutes. If these are qualities you desire in a phone, meet us past the break to see how it stacks up against its competition.

Samsung Rugby Smart review

Hardware

The Samsung Rugby Smart is easily the sleekest of the supposedly military-grade smartphones we've laid hands on... at least since the Motorola Defy. That's not saying much, though. The field isn't particularly crowded, and compared to phones like the G'zOne Commando, even a brick would seem like an ergonomic miracle. At 12.19mm thick the Rugby is hardly svelte, but it's almost a full 3mm thinner than the Commando. (To give you some perspective, the Galaxy Nexus is another 3mm skinner still.) The most notable physical difference between the Commando and AT&T's durable new addition is the height. Despite having a slightly larger screen (3.7 inches versus 3.6), the Rugby Smart is actually 6.1mm shorter.

It's quite pedestrian in appearance and there's very little that hints at its abuse-absorbent design. The body is fashioned primarily out of plastic, with rubberized grips on the side and a sheet of tough, scratch-resistant glass up front covering a 480 x 800 Super AMOLED panel (yes, kiddies, that means this is PenTile). Sadly that display and protective cover conspire to keep sunlight visibility to a minimum. The screen simply doesn't get bright enough and the glass is extremely reflective.

The Rugby bucks the recent trend towards capacitive keys, and instead sports four physical buttons up front. They're lightly textured and depress with a rather satisfying click, though for all sound produced they have surprisingly little travel. The right edge of the phone is home to the power / lock key and over on the left is the volume rocker. A nifty trick: hold down volume-up to use the blindingly bright LED flash as a torch. In what has become a pretty standard layout, the micro-USB port lives on the bottom, with the headphone jack up top. Both are hidden behind plastic doors designed to keep out dust and dirt. You'll also find the pair of cameras in the usual places -- the primary 5-megapixel shooter 'round back and a 1.3-megapixel cam up front in the top left-hand corner.

Despite being largely plastic, the phone feels solid in the hand, if not exactly "premium." The rubberized grips lend some gravitas to its design and, at 4.4 ounces, it weighs slightly less than the glass-and-metal iPhone 4S. The rounded backplate and its raised diamond pattern don't feel quite as tactile as soft touch plastic, but the phone should rest comfortably in your hand nonetheless. The most distinguishing physical feature is the lock on the rear, which holds the battery cover in place. It doesn't seal the door any tighter to keep out water, but it does prevent it from flying off when dropped -- say, 10 feet onto a rock-strewn driveway (guilty).

Performance

Underneath that impeccably sealed hood is a rather paltry 512MB of RAM and a 1.4GHz, single-core Snapdragon S2. For casual use these components are passable, if noticeably slower than what you'll find in competing devices. While the performance isn't unbearable, per se, there does seem to be a bit of lag to almost every action -- enough to infuriate the more impatient among us. In benchmarks the phone consistently brings up the rear. Sure, its relatively high clock speed helps it keep pace in the single-thread Linpack (it even edges out the decidedly higher-end Droid RAZR), but its 4,319.45ms finish in SunSpider is one of the worse runs we've seen in recent memory, as was its 41.5fps average in the graphics test NenaMark.

Benchmark	Rugby Smart	Huawei Honor	Pantech Burst	AT&T Galaxy Note
Quadrant v2	1,386	N/A	3,189	2,667
NenaMark 1 (fps)	41.48	52.2	56	54.9
NenaMark 2 (fps)	22.8	30.3	53	36.3
Neocore	59.4	59.9	56.2	55.6
Linpack single-thread (MFLOPS)	50.09	52.83	50.1	42.98
SunSpider 0.9.1 (ms, lower scores are better)	4,319.45	2,428	2,692	3,059
Vellamo	758	N/A	1,151	554

When compared to the rest of the rugged smartphone field, however, those numbers are pretty darn good. The Commando, its primary competitor at this point in time, settles for a measly 800MHz single-core CPU. Perhaps an even bigger plus here is the inclusion of 4G (or faux-G, as it were). While the other military-grade Android phones we've seen have been stuck with aging EVDO radios, the Rugby Smart packs an HSPA+ antenna that pulled down an average of 7.1Mbps -- about five times what you can realistically expect from the Commando or Motorola Admiral, a rugged phone sold through Sprint. The Rugby Smart's upload speeds were equally impressive, hovering around 6.2Mbps near our New York City hideout.

The 1,650mAh battery was more than enough to get through a day of normal usage, and perhaps a bit more. Under the pressure of our constant manhandling early in the review process we had to pause and charge midday, but that would probably make us the exception rather than the rule. On our standard battery drain test it stunned by blowing past the 11-hour mark which, if we hadn't witnessed it ourselves and double checked the settings, we would never believe. It finally petered out after 11 hours and 38 minutes of looping a movie.

Software

We're sure the laggy performance of the sub-par hardware isn't helped any by the TouchWiz'd Gingerbread that limps along on the tiny screen. And, let's not kid ourselves, 3.7 inches is small by today's standards, and you'll realize it as you try to peck out messages with the cramped on-screen keyboard. Now, the fourth iteration of Sammy's Android skin is definitely a vast improvement over its predecessors and one of the less offensive customizations on the market, but that doesn't mean you've got to like it. Manufacturer-designed interfaces continue to be a contentious issue, especially around the Engadget compound. That being said, we'd rather deal with TouchWiz than Blur on the Admiral or whatever it is that Casio did to Android with the Commando.

Less contentious is bloatware -- and there's plenty of it here. Present and accounted for: AT&T Code Scanner, FamilyMap, Navigator, Live TV, myAT&T, Qik, QuickOffice, YellowPages, AllShare and, of course, Sammy's various "hubs." Some of the included software is uninstallable and, though there's thankfully no Let's Golf in sight, we'd still prefer to be able to remove any app we want.

The lone bright spot, as far as we're concerned, is Kies air which turns your cellphone into tiny server that you can connect to wirelessly and manage your mobile from the comfort of your desktop browser. It didn't always work as smoothly as we would have hoped, occasionally refusing to download files from the phone, but it's still a good deal slicker than plugging into a PC and opening your file manager. You can even connect a pair of Samsung handsets and share content between them with the app.

Camera

The 5-megapixel camera certainly isn't a revelation, but it's a capable enough performer. In fact, images and video aren't materially different from those we captured with the Galaxy Nexus. Now, we weren't exactly blown away by that device's shooter either, but that's because it's a flagship handset and our expectations were loftier. The Rugby, on the other hand, is a middle-of-the-road device. Pics taken under particularly bright sunlight look a tad hazy and darker images show significant noise, but at least the color reproduction and white balance are decent. Given ideal lighting, it even manages to capture some rather impressive macro shots.

Samsung Rugby Smart sample shots

Video quality, on the other hand, is a bit disappointing. That single-core processor means you're topping out at just 720p, and noise reduction is basically nonexistent. Again, the color here is clear and balanced, but there is a noticeable amount of artifacting and wobble visible in frames -- even when you're panning slowly. We've seen plenty of phones where the video can stand next to your average pocket camcorder and hold its own, but this just isn't one of them. It's fine for the occasional quick clip, but the movies produced are definitely more YouTube- than Vimeo-quality, if you catch our drift.

Ruggedness

The Rugby's durabilty is something of a mixed bag. The fortified glass was as scratch resistant as they come, but were concerned about its ability to absorb a strong impact without shattering. We haven't hit it with a hammer to find out just how easily it will break into a million pieces... yet. Still, we dropped the phone -- repeatedly -- on hardwood floors and rock-covered drive ways and the phone came away with little more than a few scuffs. Even when we took it up to 10 feet. We have no sandstorms in New York City, so testing its dust-proofing was a bit hard, but we were able to submerge it in water. Now, we didn't put it three feet under for half an hour, but it's probably better that way. While it survived a glass of water for 20 minutes and a running sink for about five, there were some issues after the dunkings -- something the Commando shook off with ease. In the immediate aftermath of a thorough soaking the menu button stopped responding and the touchscreen became much more finicky. It (mostly) recovered after we left it out to dry, but the menu key still occasionally gives us fits. Granted, such abuse would have killed a lesser device -- we've seen even a brief dampening destroy an iPhone -- but we did expect a bit more from Sammy's tough handset.

Wrap-up

Well, this is a pretty easy decision to make, really. Are you on AT&T? Do you cherish the ability to give your phone a beating over laying claim to top-shelf specs? Then pretty much your only option is the Rugby Smart. Even if you're free to pick whichever carrier you please, this is still probably the way to go if you're in the market for a ruggedized smartphone. Though the Commando does seem to stand up to abuse a bit better, its significantly chunkier design, even paltrier specs and egregiously customized take on Android make the Rugby Smart the clear champion. And, unless you absolutely need a QWERTY keyboard, we can't find a compelling reason to recommend the Admiral over this. That's not to say there aren't drawbacks, obviously. The performance is hardly brisk, and the modest screen might pose a challenge to the the large callused hands for which this was clearly intended. Still, if you're looking for a smartphone you'll feel comfortable taking out in a hurricane, this is it.