Gear Patrol | Spirit of Adventure, Passion for Gear

One for all, all-in-one

People at the helm of Apple, like Jony Ives and the late Steve Jobs, tend to get all of the credit for the company’s constant innovation. Startups like the Nest Learning Thermostat and Flipboard, which were both founded by Apple alums, proved though that Cupertino’s talent pool is incredibly deep and certainly capable of innovating [...]

Two of the best get better

Samsung’s flagship TVs are always contenders for top honors in terms of picture quality and features each year. While their remarkable OLED TV garnered the lion’s share of the spotlight at this year’s CES, the company’s latest premier LED and plasma are still nothing to scoff at. The UNES8000 3D (shown above) is the new [...]

Cut the cord, keep the convenience

The Simple.TV is aimed at frugal households looking to save on cable costs without missing their generic investigative dramas. After connecting to a coax cable or HD antenna, a USB hard drive, and a home network, the device allows users to watch live shows in 1080p on their main TV, as well as on a [...]

Black bar banisher

We fawned over Vizio’s entry into the 21:9 fray last year, only to be bitterly disappointed when the set never made it to retail shelves. This year Vizio promises to actually deliver the ultrawidescreen goods to living rooms around the country with their updated 2012 line of 2560 x 1080 passive 3D HD displays. Besides [...]

Higher Def

4k resolution is still a long way off from replacing lowly 1080p as the new standard for high-definition, but Sony’s latest BDP-S790 Blu-ray player doesn’t mind standing on the cutting edge. Among the slew of players announced, this lone model packs the ability to up convert 1080p content to 4k resolution — which is great [...]

The world's first Android 4.0 Smart TV

After fizzling out with its initial release, Google TV is expected to make a resurgence this year at CES thanks to updated software and the renewed support of TV manufacturers. Lenovo’s 55-inch, LED backlit, IdeaTV K91 does include a touch of Google on the software side, but it’s a customized version of Android 4.0 (a.k.a [...]

Boxed-Up Box Office

Newbies in the display game rarely succeed given the variety of entrenched brands already doing well in the space. BryteWerks hopes to become an exception with their soon to be released Model One Cube, which takes a slightly more literal approach to the concept of a home theater in a box. Inside the sleek black [...]

Less plugs, same play

Roku’s current streaming accessories were already carnie hand friendly, but their new streaming stick manages to pack the same functionality into an even smaller dongle. The goal of the product is to make any TV with an MHL-enabled HDMI port into a smart TV. For those a little rusty on their jargon, Mobile-High-Definition link (or [...]

Look into the future

There are cutting edge TVs, and then there’s Toshiba’s Regza 55X3 (known as the ZL2 in Europe) whose spec sheet reads like it was DeLorean-ed back from 2015. The 55-inch set is one of the first consumer TVs to sport a 4096 x 2160 pixel resolution (or Quad Full High Definition), which already gives it [...]

Home sweet home theater

As rabid movie, music fans and gamers, we’re always on the hunt for gear that can push our home entertainment experience to 11 (much to our better half’s chagrin). This roundup includes some of our favorite home theater products out today that we’d love to host in our living room. Continues after the jump.

Take it to...

Companies like Logitech have done a decent job of providing consumers with an easy to use solution for controlling most IR-based home theater components — but if you like to take things literally, they still don’t deserve the title of “universal” remote. Commanding Bluetooth based devices like the PS3 for instance requires buying a separate [...]

Epic Moments, Take Two

GoPro’s original line of cameras established the brand as the go-to outfitter for documenting the near-death experiences of the outdoor-inclined/insane. Their successor HD Hero 2 ($300) ups the ante by providing professional low light performance, double the image sharpness, and adding a new narrow (90 degree) and medium (127 degree) recording angle to the original’s [...]

Boxed and Loaded

The entry point for accessing any kind of streaming media service on your TV just got even lower. For $50, Roku’s new LT model can stream over 300 different content services in 720p to virtually any TV out there. All you really need to care about though is Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant, Pandora, EPIX, [...]

Über Compensating

Owning a 55-inch flat screen TV seems pretty damn sweet — that is until you mount it next to Sharp’s Nimitz-class LC-80LE632U. With an 80-inch diagonal, this full LED backlit HD 120Hz TV features more than double the screen area of the now belittled “big screen” we just mentioned, or four times the screen area [...]

One Lesson from the 70s Worth Reviving

The current 3D viewing experience in theaters is terrible for those who prefer wearing old fashioned glasses to see in 20 / 20. Mercifully, LG has finally come to the rescue of spec-sporters everywhere with the AG-F220 Cinema Clip On 3D Glasses ($20). The basic clip-on shades feature polarized lenses — used in most passive [...]