Latest Posts in From the Lab

Review: Dell ST2310 display

Dell’s ST2310 is a solid display that performs well. It’s not splashy or feature-rich, but it does deliver nice image quality.

In our lab’s image quality tests, the 23-inch ST2310 showed sharp text and good color accuracy. In a portrait, skin tones looked realistic and nuanced. The ST2310 also did well in our motion tests, showing no visible fluttering or jarring of the image.

The display offers a full complement of controls, all of which are easy to access via buttons that sit on the side of the right bezel. You can adjust brightness, color, and color temperature, and you can select any of six preset modes (standard, multimedia, game, warm, cool, and custom). In addition, the ST2310 includes two programmable presets that allow you to save changes—useful if, for example, you share the display with another user.

The ST2310 comes with DVI, HDMI, and VGA connections on the back, as well as audio-in and audio-out ports. The screen’s 1920-by-1080-pixel resolution is suitable for viewing high-definition video and games. Though the display tilts easily, it does not swivel.

Macworld’s buying advice

The ST2310 certainly is a no-frills model, but it does offer good image quality for a very reasonable price. The included HDMI port increases its usefulness for entertainment-minded buyers. Nevertheless, if you’re looking for a display that has lots of extras, you’ll have to find it elsewhere.

Review: Panasonic HDC-TM300 HD camcorder

Panasonic’s excellent HDC-TM300 delivers some of the best still and video images we’ve seen from a small standard-sized HD camcorder. The HDC-TM300, which stores video on both an internal flash drive and an SDHC card, provides robust and innovative features that justify the camera’s relatively high price.

Three 1/4.1-inch CMOS chips capture images that the camera encodes as 1080i (at 60 interlaced frames per second) or 1080p (at 24 progressive frames per second) AVCHD files with a maximum data rate of 17 mbps. The camera has 32GB of built-in flash memory, and it supports SDHC cards (you need to supply one yourself).

In our lab’s subjective evaluations, the HDC-TM300’s image quality slightly trailed that of the category-leading Canon Vixia HF S10 (). The narrow image-quality gap is impressive considering that Panasonic caps the HDC-TM300’s maximum data rate far below the AVCHD format’s (and the HF S10’s) 24-mbps limit.

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Review: Sanyo VPC-WH1 HD camcorder

There are only two reasons to buy Sanyo’s Xacti VPC-WH1 high-definition (HD) camcorder, but they’re good reasons: It’s inexpensive, and it’s waterproof. For some, those two factors will offset the camera’s mediocre image quality.

Compared with footage from the best 1080p HD camcorders, the VPC-WH1’s 720p HD video (at 30 frames per second) exhibits noticeably (but not disastrously) reduced resolution, sharpness, color accuracy, and motion. The VPC-WH1’s overall video image quality is middling. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the camera’s 1.1-megapixel still images, which suffer from low resolution, inaccurate exposure, and noticeable image distortion.

Results from lab’s jury evaluations confirmed the VPC-WH1’s video and still-image shortcomings in comparison with more-expensive, higher-resolution camcorders. Among our test group of six camcorder models, its video quality under both bright light and low light trailed the rest of pack, earning an overall video-quality score of Fair. Still images didn’t fare even as well as that, showing distortion and a lack of sharpness; for stills, as a result, the VPC-WH1 received an image-quality score of Poor.

That’s the kind of image quality you might expect from a camcorder with a single, tiny 1/6-inch CMOS sensor, though. And the sensor isn’t the only compromise in the VPC-WH1. The electronic image-stabilization system doesn’t remove user-induced shake as effectively as the optical or dual-stabilized systems in more-expensive camcorders do. The 2.5-inch LCD panel is also nowhere near as bright or sharp as the screens of better camcorders. Costlier camcorders provide more automatic and manual control, as well, and offer broader frame-rate and data-rate options.

On the upside, the camcorder is easy to use, the 30X-optical-zoom lens works well, video is recorded to inexpensive SDHC cards, and the battery runs significantly longer than those in many other small HD camcorders. In our lab’s battery evaluations, the VPC-WH1 lasted more than 3 hours on a single charge of its battery, more than twice as long as some competitors.

Although the VPC-WH1 does not record video to AVCHD format, the camera’s MPEG-4 video files use the same codecs (MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 for video, and AAC for audio) as standard AVCHD does. The bundled TotalMedia Extreme for Sanyo software is for Windows only. But you can easily import the VPC-WH1’s video into iMovie ‘09 and Final Cut Pro.

Sanyo says that beneath 10 feet of water, the VPC-WH1 will remain waterproof and functional for 1 hour. My informal tests in a pool, under sprinklers, and at an ocean beach confirmed Sanyo’s claims. Macworld editor Roman Loyola also tested the VPC-WH1’s underwater chops in a swimming pool, and found the camcorder’s shallow-water performance to be very good, with a couple of caveats: The LCD is hard to see underwater, and during playback the footage shot underwater doesn’t look much better than standard-definition video.

Macworld’s buying advice

While waterproof housings are available for other small camcorders, they typically cost at least as much as the Xacti VPC-WH1 does. The VPC-WH1 (available in blue or yellow) is a good choice for use in and around water, including under rain and snow, and for situations where you don’t want to risk recording with a more-expensive camera.

[Jim Feely is a freelance contributor.]

Speedmark 6: Macworld Lab's new benchmark suite

Back in August, Apple entered the era of Snow Leopard. Today, Macworld’s Speedmark test suite enters the Snow Leopard's den.

Speedmark is Macworld Lab’s standard test tool for benchmarking new and upgraded systems running Mac OS X. It uses real-world applications and everyday tasks. It is a general-purpose suite that includes tasks everyone from a high-end user to a new user performs every day.

Macworld Lab follows a detailed script to perform the 17 tasks. Each task is performed three times. We compare the results to a 2.13GHz MacBook with 2GB RAM (Mid 2009), which is assigned a score of 100. We then take the geometric mean of the normalized scores.

Apple’s latest Mac OS X operating system, 10.6, focuses more on refinements rather than features. But the new OS does boast some new technologies meant to help your Intel Mac take better advantage of its central and graphics processing units. Unfortunately, in order to make these refinements and improvements, Apple made the decision to pull the plug on Power-PC equipped Macs, offering no support for any pre-Intel hardware.

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iMac (Late 2009) benchmarks

Apple recently updated its popular iMac line of desktop computers to include larger screens, more standard memory and bigger hard drives. Three of the four new configurations—two 21.5-inch models and one 27-inch model—feature 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo processors and are available now. Macworld Lab has the 3.06GHz trio and we’ve put them to the test. (A fourth standard configuration, a 2.66GHz Intel Core i5-based 27-inch model, will be the first iMac to sport a quad-core processor. It should be available later this month.)

The new entry-level iMac has a 21.5-inch LED-backlit screen, a 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 duo processor, 4GB of 1066 DDR3 SDRAM, a 500GB hard drive, and Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics that shares up 256MB of main memory. This $1199 system replaces an early 2009 model with a 20-inch display, 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo processor, and 2GB of memory. That older model featured the same Nvidia graphics as well as the same price.

The next step up in the new product line is a $1499 model with the same 21.5-inch screen size, memory specifications and processor speeds as the new $1199 iMac, but includes a 1TB hard drive and ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics with 256MB of dedicated GDDR3 graphics memory. The $1499 model from earlier this year also shipped with 4GB of RAM, but had a larger 24-inch display, a smaller capacity 640GB hard drive, and used the same integrated Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics as the lower-end model. The third new iMac has the same memory, graphics and storage specs as the new $1499 model, but ships with an expansive 27-inch display and costs $1699. Many of this new 27-inch iMac’s specifications match the high-end iMac released early this year. That $2199 system had a smaller 24-inch display, but came with the same 4GB of RAM and 1TB hard drive as the newer model. The “Early 2009” model also featured discreet graphics, but shipped with NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 graphics with 512MB of dedicated GDDR3 memory.

What do these changes mean in terms of performance? While we can’t yet quote a Speedmark 6 score for these new systems, we did run a lengthy list of tasks on these new iMacs, as well as those they replace in the product line, and found little performance difference between the three new iMacs, with the exception of 3D game performance.

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Mac mini (Late 2009) benchmarks

Apple recently released an update to its Mac mini line of desktop computers. The changes include faster processors, more RAM, and Apple’s Snow Leopard operating system pre-installed. Macworld Lab has the two desktop Mac minis, and we put them through our benchmark tests. Our result show that the new Mac minis are impressively faster than the models they replace.

Here’s a quick rundown of the changes to the new lineup. There are now two Core 2 Duo processor speeds to choose from, 2.53GHz or 2.26GHz, up from the 2GHz processors previously offered. The new Mac mini models now offer twice the RAM, 2GB in the 2.26GHz $599 model and 4GB in the 2.53GHz $799 model, up from 1GB in the previous $599 model and 2GB in the previous $799 model. The hard drive capacities haven’t changed, with a 160GB hard drive in the $599 model and a 320GB hard drives in the $799 model. And of course, you still need to provide your own keyboard, mouse and display.

We are still ironing out the details of Speedmark 6, our overall performance benchmark, but we ran a series of 19 different tests on the new Mac minis as well as the systems they replace to let you know how the new and improved specifications affect performance.

With its considerably faster 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo processor and 4GB of RAM, it’s no surprise that the new $799 Mac mini was noticeably faster in our tests. When looking at the time it took to run through all 17 of our timed tests, the new $799 model was 10 percent faster than the $599 2.26GHz Mac mini. Once we configured the 2.26GHz Mac mini with 4GB of RAM instead of the stock 2GB, we saw that performance benefit of the 2.56GHz Mac mini shrink to about 7.4 percent. The 2.53GHz Mac mini was about 9 percent faster in our Photoshop CS4 tests suite than the standard configuration 2.26GHz Mac mini, though adding that additional 2GB of RAM to the $599 model closed the performance gap to around 6 percent. The $799 model was 11 percent faster in our Cinebench test and 28 percent faster in our iPhoto import test, though, again, a significant part of that performance difference was eliminated when we added the memory to the $599 system.

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MacBook (Late 2009) benchmarks

Last week, Apple released the first batch of new hardware since the company released Snow Leopard last August. Among these new Macs is a newly designed unibody MacBook. Macworld Lab has received these new Macs and has been hard at work, putting all of them to the test. And while we don’t have Speedmark 6 finalized just yet, we do have some MacBook benchmark results we’d like to share.

To refresh your memory, the new MacBook has the same $999 price tag as the MacBook it replaces, but the new MacBook features a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM and a 250GB SATA hard drive—up from a 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM and a 160GB SATA hard drive. Like its predecessor, the new 13.3-inch MacBook screen has a 1280 by 800 native resolution, but the new MacBook uses LED backlighting instead of CCFL backlighting used in previous MacBooks.

The new MacBook is still housed in a white polycarbonate shell, but now features the same unibody design as the rest of Apple’s portables, as well as a large-capacity, captive battery. Connection options have also changed, with the latest model sporting the newer Mini DisplayPort instead of Mini DVI found on the older MacBook. FireWire 400 has been removed from the new MacBook, but the number of USB 2.0 ports remains at two.

Benchmarks

To see how the under-the-hood changes to the MacBook would affect performance, we ran the system through a series of 19 different tests involving the Finder and 12 third-party applications. We then compared the results to a number of reference systems.

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Review: Canon Vixia HF S10 HD camcorder

Canon’s Vixia HF S10 generates some of the best high-definition video and still images we’ve seen from a HD camcorder. Add the impressively deep and professional manual controls, and you have an excellent camcorder for advanced videographers that will also appeal to many casual users.

The camera’s 1/2.6-inch CMOS imaging chip records 1080 horizontal lines of video; it records 1080i at 60 frames per second, 1080p at 30 frames per second, and 1080p at 24 frames per second. The camera includes 32GB of built-in flash memory and supports SDHC cards, and it encodes the video as AVCHD files with data rates up to 24 mbps, the format’s maximum capability. The HF S10 connects to your Mac via USB, and video can be imported into iMovie ‘09 and Final Cut Express easily.

In our lab’s subjective evaluations, viewers judged the HF S10’s HD video and 8.6-megapixel still images to be slightly better than other HD camcorders we’ve recently reviewed, earning an overall video-quality score of Good. Under both well-lit and dimly-lit conditions, the Vixia HF S10’s video exhibited crisp color rendering and sharpness; under low light, they showed just a touch of noise.

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Review: Sanyo Xacti VPC-FH1 HD camcorder

Sanyo’s Xacti VPC-FH1 is a high-definition (HD) camcorder that delivers good-looking video and stills. However, the tradeoff comes in its lack of bells and whistles. The VPC-FH1 omits several features that make those more-expensive cameras easier to use under many conditions, and pricier models also provide more image control.

The Xacti VPC-FH1 camcorder uses a single 1/2.5-inch CMOS sensor to capture 1920-by-1080 video at 60 progressive frames per second (60p), 60 interlaced frames per second (60i), or 30 progressive frames per second (30p). The camera can also record 720/30p video and 8-megapixel stills.

The Xacti VPC-FH1 also includes a slow-motion option that supports recording at up to 600 fps (though at increasingly reduced resolution), employs face recognition to improve focus and exposure, has a 10X optical zoom lens, and records to SDHC cards.

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Review: MCE 8X Blu-ray Disc External Recordable Drive

The MCE 8X Blu-ray Disc External Recordable Drive is a desktop optical drive that connects to your Mac via USB 2.0 or eSATA. It can burn Blu-ray discs as well as dual-layer DVDs and CD-Rs. When attached via USB, the MCE proved to be a fast and reliable burner, but it had some problems when using the eSATA connection.

The case is bulky and not very attractive, with a rough metallic body and gray-tinted plastic on the front and back. The case has a small fan which is pretty noisy, even when the drive is not operating.

The drive can burn 25GB Blu-ray (BD-R) discs and 50GB BD-R DL discs at speeds of up to 8X. Burning data BD-R/RW is supported by OS X’s Finder or through a third-party application like Roxio Toast. You can burn high definition Blu-ray discs to watch on your home theatre or component Blu-ray players using the latest version of Apple’s Compressor (; part of the Final Cut Studio), or with Roxio’s High-Def/Blu-ray Disc plug-in for Toast Titanium. And though some Windows software allows you to watch Blu-ray movies on your PC, these high definition discs are not viewable on your Mac. Aside from Blu-ray media, the drive can burn all flavors of DVD, +/-, RW, DL, as well as CDs and CD-R discs.

The drive was one of the fastest Blu-ray burners we’ve tested, though the speeds were similar whether I used USB 2.0 or eSATA. In fact, when copying data from DVD-R disc to the desktop, the drive took longer when connected via eSATA than when connected via USB 2.0. The drive wouldn’t work at all with Roxio’s Toast when connected via eSATA. I wish the drive didn’t include an eSATA port–it’s no faster than USB when burning optical discs and relatively few people have eSATA cards installed in their Mac. But the eSATA port is included, and because it was flaky, I have to ding it.

Macworld’s buying advice

The MCE 8x Blu-ray Disc External Recordable Drive is a relatively speedy optical drive. Its USB 2.0 connection worked flawlessly, creating no expensive coasters during our testing. Its eSATA performance was no faster than USB and the drive couldn’t burn discs with Toast when connected in that way. If you intend to use the drive with USB, it’s worth a look.

[James Galbraith is Macworld’s lab director.]