The Monster Beats by Dr Studio  may not be all about style, but you wouldn’t know that just by looking at them. If you wear these headphones in public, you will turn heads. The thick and padded glossy black headband descends seemingly seamlessly into the circles that hold each earcup, which are oblong and padded in a leatherette material that is obscenely cushy. (They also swivel slightly in their supports in order to provide a comfortable fit.)

Closer inspection of the headband discloses a seam on each side where it expands, revealing the metal support band within. This same metal accents the inside of the headband and rings thinly around each earpiece, which also features deep red accents. The outside of the earcups also have a metallic disc containing a red “b” (the one on the right will mute your music when pressed). The overall effect is a sleek and stylish design that is not ostentatious. However, the padding on the band is a bit stiff and may take some breaking in to be truly comfy.

In addition to the Monster Beats by Dr Studio ,  includes a variety of accessories in the slick, red packaging. There are two ultrathick 3.5mm audio cables–one red for standard MP3 players and one black with a built-in mic and ControlTalk remote for iPhones and iPods–each measuring 4 feet long. You also get a dual-pronged airplane adapter and a quarter-inch adapter for use with your home audio system, as well as a hard-shell carrying case with a carabiner attached. In addition, the Beats Studio come with a cleaning cloth, and you’ll need it: these headphones are highly smudge-prone. Also necessary are the included AAA batteries; the headphones are noise-canceling (activated via a switch on the right earcup) and need power to work.

Of course, a pair of headphones may be the most gorgeous thing you’ve ever seen, but if they don’t hold water when it comes to audio quality, the shine is quickly diminished. Luckily, this is not an issue with the Beats Studio, which offered an exceptionally–one might say shockingly–crisp response. Maybe we’re pigeonholing here, but we expected Dr. Dre’s headphones to be excessively heavy on the low-end. That’s not to say there’s no bass–it does thump–but these ‘phones are nicely warm and balanced in the mids and truly impressive in their delivery of high-end detail. At no point did we suffer through the muddiness that can ail bass-heavy headphones.

The 9.7in screen has the same gorgeous edge-to-edge glass, now with even punchier colours, but web pages can still look a little rough on its 1024×768 display before you zoom in. Contrast has been boosted, and while ebook-worms will love it, it’s nowhere near as daylight-friendly as a Kindle.

Spring in its step
WIth more processor power to call upon, browsing is more brisk, with busy websites such as this loading around two second faster, while satellite-view maps resolve themselves around four seconds faster. Hopping from app to app is where you’ll see the biggest improvement, with shorter and smoother transitions. 3D games such as Dead Space HD get a slight boost in the framerate department too.

We’ve now got a pair of cameras, although this feels like a token gesture. Using the iPad 2 as a camera just doesn’t feel right, and the terrible 0.7MP still photos would shame a budget cameraphone – there’s not even an LED flash nor any processing options. The HD video makes a better case for itself, though results aren’t as rich or natural as those from the iPhone 4. The front-facing camera does enable FaceTime video calling, but only to other Apple-connected peeps.

Squashed
Of course, Apple had to make it thinner (them’s the rules), and in doing so has managed to eject 75g of mass from the original. It makes a bigger difference than you might expect. The slim new iPad2 sits much more comfortably into your hand and has less of a tendency to slip while gaming. The shinier metallic back can pick up scratches though, so you might find yourself fattening it up again with a protective skin.

Despite this mixed bag of updates, they are alterations and additions to what is already by far the most well rounded tablet experience there is. Yes, there’s still the absence of Adobe Flash support, but aside from that it handles multimedia effortlessly. As the leading tablet platform for mobile apps it gets all the best stuff first and in many cases exclusively. Others will (and already do) beat the iPad 2 in certain areas (such as removable storage, hi-def screen and tinkerability) but if we were pinned down and made to recommend a tablet, it would be the iPad 2 without a doubt.

From: www.stuff.tv

Is Apple cutting back in its manufacture of current iPhone models as it prepares to bring a new model into production? According to analyst Shaw Wu, that’s exactly what it’s doing.

Yes, the Wu is back with more opinions, reporting in a research note that production on current iPhones may have fallen by as much as 20 to 25 percent in the last quarter. As CNET points out, the last time this happened was in the run up to the iPhone 4S launch.

We’d expect the new iPhone (which may or may not be called the iPhone 5) to be launched some time in the third quarter of 2012, but Apple has yet to confirm anything – as is its way. In the meantime, expect more speculation and rumours…

From: www.stuff.tv