reviews TESTED. REVIEWED. VERDICTIZED
82 MAXIMUMPC | APRIL 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com
I
f you’re just dying to strap a display to your head, the Headplay Personal
Cinema is your best choice. It’s comfortable, even for people who wear
glasses, supports a wide range of input devices, and delivers relatively high
resolution, and the only virtual-reality feature it lacks is head tracking.
The Headplay’s liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) display, which sports
an 800x600 resolution, is a step above the Vuzix iWear VR920’s LCD, which
is limited to 640x480. And while the Headplay’s simple padded visor might
look cheap, it’s much more comfortable than the Vuzix’s eyeglass frames.
The inclusion of focus sliders enables even folks who need prescription
bifocals to use the Headplay without their cheaters. (There’s an interpupil-
lary adjustment, too.)
Flexibility is the Headplay’s other strong suit. Rather than plug straight
into your PC, the visor connects to a powered brick (battery power is also
an option) with a host of inputs, including VGA, S-video, mini USB 2.0, and
two USB 2.0 ports (acting as either host or client); there’s even a Compact
Flash slot. The earbuds aren’t integrated into the visor, which makes it easy
to replace them with your own.
The Headplay supports Nvidia’s stereoscopic drivers, but we consider
this to be a checklist item rather than a crucial feature: Nvidia is notorious
for leaving stereoscopic support out of its most recent drivers, and AMD
doesn’t support stereoscopic viewing at all.
The primary advantage that manufacturers such as Headplay and
Vuzix always boast of is that playing a game or watching a movie on their
headsets is equivalent to sitting in front of a 50- or 60-inch conventionaldisplay. While that may be true, it doesn’t change the fact that the displays
these headsets provide are extended definition at best, with a 4:3 aspect
ratio. For the price of the Headplay Personal Cinema, you could buy a
24-inch monitor capable of a 1920x1200 resolution and a 16:9 aspect ratio.
You won’t be able to watch porn in secret, but you will get a com-
pelling visual experience.
—MICHAEL BROWNHeadplay Personal Cinema
Welcome to noggin theater
7
HEADPLAY CINEMA
$500, http://www.headplay.comHeadplay Personal Cinema offers the best price/performance
ratio of any head-mounted display system we’ve tested.Y
ou’ll fi nd the THX logo stamped on a host of products, but Razer’s Mako 2.1
system is the fi rst consumer speaker system that THX—led by THX Chief
Scientist Laurie Fincham—has designed from the ground up.
And while Razer is known for its edgy industrial design, there’s more to
the mushroomesque profi le of this 2.1-channel speaker system than provoca-
tive looks. The shape of the satellite and subwoofer cabinets is a function of
two new THX technologies: THX Ground Plane and THX Slot Speaker.
Typical stereo speakers have a narrowly defi ned sweet spot caused by
the triangular projection of their sound waves: The path to your ears is narrow
at the cabinet and spreads wide as the waves move into the room. In THX’s
design, the tweeter and midrange drivers point straight down, and the sound
waves are channeled through a narrow slot at the bottom of the round cabinets.
According to THX, this design remedies a fundamental fl aw with the clas-
sic box-shaped speaker cabinet: With the traditional design, some sound waves
travel on a horizontal plane directly toward the ear, while others refl ect off
whatever surface the cabinet is resting on and interfere with the sound waves
traveling the more direct path. THX claims its technology overcomes that prob-
lem by bouncing all the sound waves off the desktop.
As much sense as that argument makes, we found the Mako satellites to
be only on par with other high-end speaker systems we’ve auditioned—Blue
Sky’s EXO 2.1 is one example—and all of those have featured box cabinets. But
THX does deliver on its promise to create what it calls an “omni-directional”sound stage: We could sit or stand anywhere in our home-offi ce test environ-
ment and still be in the stereo sweet spot.
This last characteristic is great for recreational music listening or movie
watching, but it’s much less important for gaming because you tend to be cen-
tered in the sweet spot anyway. The Mako’s subwoofer kicks all kinds of ass, but
the system as a whole can’t dislodge the sub-less Audioengine 5 from its
slot on our Best of the Best list.
— MICHAEL BROWNRazer Mako 2.1
Speaker System
Delightfully different
8
RAZER MAKO 2.1
$400, http://www.razerzone.comThe Mako 2.1 speaker system includes one of the best
subwoofers we’ve heard in this price range, serving up tight,
punchy bass from everything we threw at it.