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Without a doubt, the latest and most popular trend in gaming accessories has to be the wireless headset. If comments on our most recent reviews are any indication, our readers are obsessed with finding the best-sounding headset for the lowest price. Of course that sort of compromise never comes easily, which ultimately leaves gamers with a conundrum. Do they spend over $200 on a surround-sound rig or settle for an analog design? For that matter, is there that much difference in sound quality?

We’ve been getting a considerable number of requests to review the Astro A40 Wireless System, and after three weeks with the device, we can safely say that it is easily one of the best-performing surround-sound headphones we’ve ever used. However, this type of quality and performance doesn’t come cheap–the A40 system will set you back $280, almost the price of buying another game console. And setup can get a little dicey, especially if you have more than one console you’d like to use.

Before we dive into the specifics of our review, let’s refresh ourselves on what the system includes and how it’s sold. The A40 Wireless System includes a pair of Astro A40 headphones and the MixAmp 5.8, which wirelessly transmits and receives the digital signal from your game console. These products can be purchased separately, but Astro sells them bundled as the A40 Wireless System. The system is available in black or white; the latter of the two will begin shipping at the end of January, according to Astro’s site.

If there’s a set of headphones you’re really attached to, the MixAmp 5.8 can work with them–just don’t expect the same ease of use when it comes to game chatting via Xbox Live or PlayStation Network.

Design
The first thing we noticed about the A40 headphones was how light they are. Historically we’re used to painfully heavy headsets that eventually take their toll on our heads, but the A40′s unique lightweight design prevented such an effect.

The headphones have a sort of mechanical look, with visible screws and wiring throughout. That said, they are surprisingly comfortable, padded, and fully adjustable. The headphones have a wire that extends from the left cup which terminates in a double-pronged audio and microphone plug. This can be attached to either the audio-only or audio and voice included cables.

An adjustable boom mic is also included, which can be attached to either the left or right ear cup. Astro includes a magnetic replacement shell for use with either cup, designed with a hole for the boom mic to extend out of.

The MixAmp 5.8 system includes a base transmitter and small oval-shaped receiver, the latter of which must be wired to the A40 headphones. There do seem to be a lot of wires here for a wireless system, but it’s the audio that travels wirelessly–and that’s about it.

The transmitter is a square box that sits next to your console, accepting a Toslink connection (for surround) or a standard headphone jack for analog audio. The base also allows for digital audio passthrough that can go back into a home theater system so that constant plugging and unplugging doesn’t need to occur. Two USB ports also flank the rear of the device, allowing for a connection to a PS3 for game chat. Up front is a simple power button and Dolby Digital on/off switch.

The receiver unit has a volume dial and game/voice chat mixer so you can achieve a desired balance of the two streams along with option of a bass booster.

Setup
Setting up the A40 Wireless System is mostly painless, although if you wish to use the system with more than one console you’re in for a headache if you don’t have a universal Toslink-out connection.

Unless your receiver provides you with such a luxury, the constant plugging and unplugging of an optical cable can get tiresome. We’ve looked at a few possible workarounds for such a situation and will update this review with solutions if they prove viable.

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As with many things in life, expectations play a big part in whether you’ll like the Olympus SP-600UZ. The two main attractions are its wide-angle lens with 15x zoom and its price; it can easily be found for less than $200. The rest of its features, which include one-press recording of 720p HD movies, 1GB of internal memory, and AA batteries, are good for the money, too. Based on looks, specs, and features, the SP-600UZ is a good deal.

However, those expecting excellence at this price will likely be disappointed by this camera’s shooting performance and photo quality. For the SP-600UZ, that mainly means it doesn’t do well in low-light conditions or indoors without a flash and is too slow for regularly shooting moving subjects like kids and pets. If you need a camera for those things, I wouldn’t buy this Olympus. Even if you’re considering it for shooting other subjects, you’ll probably want to read on just to be certain it’ll meet your needs.

A wide-angle lens with a 15x zoom is very seductive for many consumers. Just a few years ago it would have been impossible to find a camera with the SP-600UZ’s lens at this camera’s price and size. Yes, you can find smaller cameras now with that kind of shooting flexibility, but they’ll cost you more than $200. Despite its long lens, though, the SP-600UZ is an entry-level camera and its photo quality is typical for its class. By that I mean that it takes decent photos when it has a lot of light and you can keep the ISO setting at or below ISO 200. However, photos even at these settings look very soft and lack fine detail when viewed at anything but small sizes. Basically, if you shoot in full daylight and your shots generally go unedited and are destined for the Web, the SP-600UZ is OK. If you’re willing to do a little sharpening with editing software, you’ll get a bit more usability.

Sample photos:
Olympus SP-600UZ

Extending the lens, though, may require you to bump up the ISO to keep the shutter speed fast enough to help with motion blur and hand shake. (It has mechanical image stabilization, but it didn’t seem all that effective when we tried it.) The problem with raising the ISO is that it obliterates fine detail, leaving you with a soft, fuzzy image loaded with yellow blotching from noise. Add in color shifting from noise and noise suppression, and the results are, again, really only suitable for use at small sizes.

Color from the SP-600UZ is generally good, at least at the lower ISOs before noise causes the aforementioned problems. The white balance isn’t very good indoors; the auto leans toward warm, while the presets are cool. On the upside, the camera’s Perfect Shot Preview system lets you easily see how the white-balance settings will look before you shoot. You can then just pick the one that looks best to you. There is no manual white balance.

At the wide end of the lens there is asymmetrical barrel distortion on the left side. With the lens extended there is pincushioning, though it’s not as noticeable as the barrel distortion. The left side of the lens is also the least sharp, getting very soft and smeary, particularly in the corners. The center and right side of the lens are much better. Fringing in high-contrast areas of photos is at average amounts. You’ll only really see it if you’re viewing images at their full size.

Video quality is on par with a basic HD pocket video camera: good enough for Web use and undiscriminating TV viewing. Panning the camera will create judder that’s typical of the video from most compact cameras. The zoom lens does function while recording, but you have to shut off the mic before you start shooting. In other words, you get zoom but no audio, or you get audio but no zoom.

The SP-600UZ is targeted at those who rarely if ever stray from fully automatic shooting. Its i-Auto mode uses scene recognition to decide what settings to use for the best results. Generally, it works fine. There is a Program Auto if you want to wrestle some control away from the camera; there is no control of shutter speed or aperture, though. There are 14 scene modes, too, and all the usual suspects are here such as Portrait, Landscape, Night Scene, Sunset, and Fireworks. If your subject falls under one of those modes, I recommend using it.

The Panorama mode is a highlight. You press the shutter release with the camera aimed where you’d like to start your panorama shot and it puts a circle and a target on the screen. Put the circle in the center of the target by moving the camera to the right and it’ll take the next shot when it’s centered. Do that once more and it’ll take your three shots and stitch them together in-camera into a single 2-megapixel photo. If you want to shoot your panorama vertically or from right to left, the camera has manual panorama shooting options.

Olympus also includes a Beauty Mode for smoothing skin tone and texture in portraits and four Magic Filters–Pop Art, Drawing, Fish Eye, and Pin Hole–that let you get a little creative with your photos. You can’t apply these after you’ve shot, though you can apply one of four color filters in Playback.

For shooting close-ups, the camera has Macro and Super Macro options. The former can focus as close as 5.9 inches from a subject, and the latter lets you get up to 0.4 inch away. Usually megazooms produce their best fine detail in their macro modes. Not so much with the SP-600UZ; when viewed at 100 percent, the results are still soft and fuzzy, and sharpening only helps if you keep the photo small.

One of the biggest issues I have with the SP-600UZ is its shooting performance. More specifically it has a pretty nasty shutter lag, which is how long it takes a camera to capture an image after the shutter-release button is pressed. In bright conditions, the SP-600UZ’s shutter lag is 0.8 second. In dimmer lighting that time doubles. Shot-to-shot times aren’t great, either: 2.3 seconds without flash and 2.6 seconds with the flash. From off to first shot takes roughly the same time at about 2.5 seconds. Continuous shooting is the one high point, shooting at 1.1 frame per second at full resolution and 11.8fps at 3 megapixels. However, that speed is just on par with competing models.

Were it not for the nice features and design of the SP-600UZ, it probably wouldn’t be worth considering at all. The camera is comfortable to hold and use, due in part to a large hand grip with a rubberized surface. Larger hands may have difficulty pressing some buttons on the back, though, as they are small and very close together. The menu system is easy to follow and looks pretty, too, though it is sluggish at times.

The camera uses four AA-size batteries for power and can be used with rechargeables or alkaline cells. There’s also a DC-in jack on the camera’s left side for use with an optional power adapter. As for ports, the camera has a Micro-USB port for computer or AV out and a Micro-HDMI output. The SP-600UZ can store photos and video on SDHC cards or 829MB of available internal memory. The total amount is 1GB, but Olympus put a full, searchable user manual on the camera as well as software for organizing, editing, and sharing. It’s Windows-only, but the package is actually pretty good.

The Olympus SP-600UZ is a cheap but attractive megazoom camera with a decent feature set for automatic shooters. Its photo quality is only good in bright lighting conditions, preferably outdoors, and its shooting performance is best suited for stationary subjects and patient users.

Shooting speed (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Time to first shot  

Typical shot-to-shot time  

Shutter lag (dim)  

Shutter lag (typical)  

Find out more about how we test digital cameras.

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Weird news stories, bizarre news, strange but stories. You’ve come to the right place: Bizarre Florida, where weird is the norm. Exploding pythons. Armless, one-legged drivers. Yep. We certainly have unusual news stories. Offbeat news. Strange, interesting stories. Weird, unusual, true news stories. Get the picture? Have a story suggestion?

E-mail Bizarre Florida: bizarre@tampabay.com

   A top manager at a West Palm Beach TV station did a strip tease — complete with pole dance — at a popular Delray Beach restaurant, PalmBeachPost.com reports.

   Randi Goldklank, 42, an advertising executive at CBS affiliate WPEC-Channel 12, was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

  Goldklank was “touching herself, removing her top and dancing on a pole like a stripper,” causing the restaurant staff to asked her (and calling the cops when she wouldn’t). Yep, alcohol was involved.

   A couple in Jacksonville wanted to be in the Guinness record book, so they decided to build the world’s largest functioning yo-yo. They probably got the “largest” part right, since it was more than 3½ tons and 4 yards across, firstcoastnews.com reports.

   The “functioning” part (it had to be released from 75 feet up, and return at least 50 feet up three times to qualify) was a bit more challenging.

   On the first attempt, the yo-yo bounced back up about 3 feet, then the rope burned through and it crashed to the ground, splintering one edge. So much for what they said was 1½ years of 7-hour workdays.

Road trip news, rants, and ruminations by the Editors of RoadsideAmerica.com

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Tree Whiz – Idyllwild, California

January 30, 2011

It was a tall order when the Chamber of Commerce of the California mountain town of Idyllwild decided to commission a huge wooden monument from local chainsaw carver David Roy. Back in May of 2007, Roy won a competition to create the replacement for an earlier totem, which had fallen victim to the destructive tendencies of bugs and birds. The budget was $14,000 and Roy set to work with enthusiasm and optimism. Estimated time of arrival? Halloween, 2007.

On November 23, 2010—about three and half years later—the still unfinished (yet impressive) 20-foot-tall landmark was finally moved via flat-bed truck to its permanent home in the center of town. The proud pile-up of wild animals (including an eagle, bear, and mountain lion) still awaits more-than-a-few finishing touches, but for now it successfully serves  to attract scores of shutterbugs — which was the point, after all — and a commemorative postcard is in the works.

What took so long? Well, you can’t rush genius (especially when it’s holding a chainsaw). David Roy’s business website, Mantle Carvers, clearly contains the caveat “If you are not in a hurry…” and he means it. In the case of the Idyllwild project, Roy was particular in his choice of materials, finally settling on using three attached cedar trunks. Once he set to work a chippin’, his pace was…well…leisurely. For years the unfinished sculpture was parked in a vacant lot along Highway 243. It evolved at a snail’s pace, attracting curious onlookers as Chamber officials stewed.

The semi-completed monument, titled “Harmony” (unintentional irony noted) became a point of contention in town. Some exasperated residents even considered bringing back original monument maker LaBenne (currently living in Wisconsin) so that he could triumphantly return to town and quickly whip up an encore effort.

But tempers seem to have calmed since the wildlife-laden wonder took up residence on Village Center Drive. Roy promises to carve an additional eagle which will be mounted on a pole to create a lower altitude photo op (timeline to come). And on January 17th, the Chamber of Commerce gave him an honorary membership. If a hodgepodge of delicately detailed carved creatures can live in aesthetic harmony, perhaps the humans in town can now coexist in peace.

[Post by Anne D. Bernstein]

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