Corsair’s Voyager GT is the zenith of zippy thumb drives. Sure, there are larger keys—including the 16GB Voyager—but their speeds don’t compare to those of the blazing-fast Voyager GT 8GB. It’s fast and spacious enough to swallow nearly the entire contents of a dual-layer DVD; Corsair’s Flash Voyager GT is hands-down our pick for petite portable storage.
(Reviewed February 2007) $150, www.corsair.com
There’s plenty of buzz about Apple’s new iPod Touch, but that device didn’t ship in time for us to consider. No matter, we’ll happily give SanDisk’s Sansa Connect the win in this category. The Sansa Connect’s built-in Wi-Fi capabilities tie into Yahoo’s Launchcast Internet radio and Yahoo Music Unlimited services to provide a nearly unlimited source of music you can share with other subscribers.
(Reviewed July 2007) $150, www.sandisk.com
It’s hard not to love QNAP’s TS-109 Pro network attached storage (NAS) box. For starters, it sprinkles magic dust over your data transfers—it was the speediest of all the NAS devices we’ve ever tested in both our small- and large-file transfer tests. The TS-109 also comes with a plethora of outstanding features: It can stream music (iTunes supported!), download BitTorrent files, act as a server, back up your PCs, and even pull files from USB devices. Consider us smitten!
(Reviewed here) $330—drive not included, www.qnap.com
We’ve auditioned a number of innovative and great-sounding earbuds this year, including Etymotic’s wireless ety8 and M-Audio’s bass-boomin’ IE-20 XB, but nothing caressed our drums as tenderly as Shure’s SE530.
Three microdrivers in each earbud—one tweeter and two woofers—deliver the entire sonic spectrum with crystal clarity and plenty of oomph at the bottom end. They’re pricey, to be sure, but we think their excellent fit and audacious sound fully justify their cost.
(Reviewed August 2007, as model SE530PTH) $500, www.shure.com
2007 was a good year for speakers, with a number of great systems going through the Lab’s sonic chamber. TBI’s passive Majestic Diamond I and B&W’s incredible Zeppelin (reviewed on page 88) were both exceptional. But we’re giving the nod to the Audioengine 5 bookshelf system, which combines outstanding character with features that render it useful for nearly any application.
It makes a great near-field stereo monitoring system, yet it can fill a room with sound. There’s a built-in USB port on top for charging your portable media player, and an AC outlet in back that’s just the ticket for powering a streaming box.
(Reviewed May 2007) $350, www.audioengineusa.com
Comments are closed on this article
tampatip
May 03, 2008 at 11:08pm
I thought at one point in time, that you kept the Best of the Best column updated on a monthly basis, so as you made new reviews, you would update with it. What ever happened to that concept?
Lord Chrome
January 24, 2008 at 12:51am
I read your information on the Asus’s EN8800 GTX and I noticed you put it in your new bench mark system in SLI with a pair of GTX’s. But in your review of the best motherboard you chose the P5E3 Deluxe motherboard and decided not to go with SLI. Because the single card is so damn fast and the benchmarks with the QX9650 and QX850 were in the 200 to 350 FPS range. The benchmarks for the GTX GTS and GT cards in SLI are showing 99-111 for the GTS in SLI and 65-95 in SLI for the GTX range why is this? One problem I saw is some of the reviews done on the 8800 GTS and GT are with and with anti lasing or AA and shadows set at different levels and sometimes not at all. It would be nice to see a consistent review of the 8800 GT, GTS and GTX in the benchmark system and with the QX9650 and QX850 with the DRAM 3 and everything engaged to see which configuration is the best solution. I could also see if the price justification is worth it like you guys did with the 8800 GTX and the ultra which clearly show the increased price does not justify the small performance gain. But I’d really like to see the difference in the QX950 and QX850 if those numbers are that high why bother with SLI at all. It would seem like the single card with quad and DDR3 ram is three times faster? But I also heard that the eye can only see about 30 FPS any thoughts?
nedwards
January 15, 2008 at 11:12am
Hi Link,
This story was from the December 2007 issue, which means it was written in September or early October.
Neither the GT nor the new GTS were out then.
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