NEWGADGETS

Featuring an eye-catching metal design, the HP ENVY TouchSmart Ultrabook 4 offers a 14-inch diagonal multitouch HD display, is super slim (only 23mm) and weighs a mere 2.16kg. Up to eight hours of battery life and a booming subwoofer with Beats Audio allow customers to power through their day with no worries. The TouchSmart delivers powerful performance with the latest Intel processors and solid-state drive options with Intel Rapid Start, identity-protection, anti-theft, Smart Response and Smart Connect technologies.

FOR KARAOKE CRAZIES

The ASUS Xonar D-KARA karaoke audio card (PCI interface) presents professional effects and recording capabilities designed by Xonar and music-industry engineers. It supports simplified pre-set recording and extra-detailed input, with strong hardware that ensures optimised voice syncing and ultra-vivid 106dB SNR. If you enjoy singing in social settings, D-KARA allows you to record, edit and share your vocal performances with others, consolidating features in its user-friendly Xonar Audio Centre.

The first networking products to be brought out by Western Digital (WD) are the N900, N750 and N600 dual-band routers. They use WD's so-called FasTrack technology to prioritise bandwidth-hogging activities like movie streaming, video chats and online gaming. They also include options that allow parental control as well as the setting up of a guest network.

The high-end N900 Central doubles as network-attached storage, available in both 1TB and 2TB. It has seven sockets (all 1 gigabit) plus two USB ports. The N900 router is rated for top speeds of 900 Mbps and has two USB ports. The N750 and N600 each have four Ethernet and two USB ports, with the N750 maxing out at 750 Mbps. The entry-level N600 is a dual-band 802.11n, capable of up to 600Mbps combined bandwidth.