It looks unassuming, but the sound is big and brash. Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Audyssey Laboratories has been around for a decade, making audio hardware and signal-processing software for a wide range of consumer goods — phones, TVs, anything with speakers.

You’d be forgiven if you’ve never heard the name before, as the Los Angeles-based company mostly operates behind the scenes, developing audio tech for big-name partners like Marantz, Toshiba, IMAX, Sharp and Volvo.

But the company recently moved into the daylight by releasing several inexpensive home audio devices for consumers, each bearing the Audyssey name.

Its latest creation is the Audyssey Audio Dock Air. The “Air” in the name is a tip-off that it supports AirPlay, Apple’s platform for streaming audio over your home Wi-Fi connection. AirPlay speakers like this one can be controlled from any computer or iOS device on your network. Browsing your iTunes library and cueing up tracks is dead simple. And while AirPlay devices tend to be more costly than other wireless speakers that use Bluetooth or DLNA, the platform has produced some attractive wireless speaker options.

An austere, black, five-pound square, the Audio Dock Air doesn’t immediately betray itself as a speaker. It fits on shelves and dressers, and even tables if can hide the power supply brick. Speaker cloth on both sides hide an array of active speakers — two 3-inch woofers and two 0.75-inch tweeters — as well as dual 4-inch passive radiators. The speakers fire in both directions, so while the room will fill with sound, the stereo image isn’t as strong as a set of speakers that fire directly toward you. There’s an aux-in jack for Android phones (or whatever) and a headphone out. On top, there’s a big volume knob and a pair of LEDs that flash to alert you to changes in your network status.

The sound overall is pretty good, with clear details and surprisingly ample bass, even at lower volumes. It’s a speaker with personality — up-front and not at all subtle.

How you feel about this will depend entirely on where you rank yourself on the Linn-Genelec Scale of Audio Snobbery. If you’re at the high end — the type of person who owns seven pairs of headphones and can identify vintage McIntosh equipment at 20 paces, complete with model numbers and eBay resale value estimates — then this is not the speaker for you.

There’s quite a bit of digital signal processing going on. This is Audyssey’s bread and butter, and the company isn’t shy about showing it off. The resulting audio isn’t natural or transparent. At moderate volumes, it’s slightly compressed, and displays kind of brash, punchy character that may not suit your chosen playlist. Turn it up past about 60 percent and it gets even more compressed. It was too much for my tastes. It really does kick out some huge low end with very little distortion, thanks in part to the DSP and in part to the passive radiators.

If you’re on the other end of the scale, however — in the not-snobby, not-picky group, which is a full two-thirds of the population — then it’s a fine piece of equipment. It sounded great in the office, where I kept it turned down to background-music levels, but it was also loud and clear enough to fill the room during a small gathering of chatty beer-drinkers.

On the top are two LEDs and a volume knob — simple. Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

That bass really is something else, so while you’d be tempted to stick it on a shelf sitting parallel to a wall, it sounds much better if it sits perpendicular to the wall, speakers facing sideways, and at least a foot of clearance on all sides.

While the sound can’t compete with higher-end AirPlay devices like the B&W Zeppelin Air ($600), or the receiver units from Denon and Pioneer that let you hook up your own speakers, it’s an attractive mid-level option, especially if you can find it for sale under the $350 street price.

The weak point in the chain here isn’t the price or the sound, it’s AirPlay.

We’re well over a year into the AirPlay game now, and I’d expect Apple’s streaming ecosystem to have all the kinks ironed out. But getting the Audyssey set up on my network was an ordeal filled with frustrating, inexplicable errors. And once the speaker was connected, it wouldn’t stay connected for long. I experienced drop-outs at least once every couple of hours. Sometimes my iOS apps would freeze, causing either dead silence or, worse, a stuttering, sputtering audio stream that I was powerless to pause or shut off without walking over to the speaker and pulling the plug.

Setup appears to be mostly painless when you study the included Quick Start guide — Click the “Pair” button, connect any computer or phone to the Audyssey’s ad hoc Wi-Fi network and point your browser to its web-based configuration tool. Tell it how to join your network, give it a minute to connect, then crank up the Purple Rain.

In reality, I had to do this routine several times to get it to stick. I tried three different mobiles and two notebooks before finding success (on a Chromebook, no less). Including wait times, flashing LEDs, and device resets, it took around 45 minutes. And once set up, the Audyssey only made it halfway through the new Walkmen album before crashing and requiring a restart.

The next few days were filled with “is it or isn’t it?” hiccups and dropouts. Rely on this thing to rock a party? You may as well piss in the punchbowl.

I doubt this is purely a hardware issue (based on the flakiness of other AirPlay devices I’ve tested, this is par for the course), but for a device that promises a seamless, easy-to-use solution for multi-room wireless audio, the holes need to be plugged quickly. Network instability is something that can probably be fixed with firmware updates and AirPlay updates, but I’d recommend approaching with caution.

WIRED Great design — clean lines, quality materials, impressive finish. Sound is big. Punchy mids and bass for days. AirPlay offers wireless access to your iTunes library and various streaming apps from any iOS device on your Wi-Fi network. Looks hot on a shelf or a dresser.

TIRED Sound is processed and aggressive. Too big for a kitchen or smaller room. AirPlay weaknesses are still a bother — your mileage may vary based on network strength, interference, location, hardware type, eye color and birth sign.

Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Lenovo’s new ThinkPad X230 is a thin and light laptop with an Ivy Bridge processor.
Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

A little over a year ago, just before ultrabook mania got its start, we crowned Lenovo’s ThinkPad X220 a near-masterpiece of ultralight laptop design. The 12.1-inch, 3.3-pound laptop had power to spare, nearly five hours of battery life with the stock 6-cell unit, and a solid array of ports.

Now, Lenovo is back with an update, the ThinkPad X230, which aims to make you forget all about its big brother.

If you aren’t paying attention, you might not notice many of the upgrades. For starters, the 12.1-inch screen has grown to 12.5 inches, though resolution at 1366 x 768 pixels remains unchanged. The CPU is now an Ivy Bridge model (2.6GHz Core i5), and two of the three USB ports have been upgraded to USB 3.0.

Otherwise, you still get integrated graphics, 4GB of RAM, and even the same size hard drive (320GB). For some unknown reason, Lenovo has even left the enormous ExpressCard slot intact (remember those?), alongside an SD card slot, VGA, and a DisplayPort output. The unit weighs in just a shade over its predecessor, at 3.4 pounds. The price: 50 bones less than the X220, at $1250 (as configured).

At Lenovo, black is the new brushed aluminum. Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Performance figures are a bit muddy at this point. I haven’t seen enough Ivy Bridge machines to know how benchmarks will compare, but the X230 is at least a bit faster than the pokey IdeaPad Y480 I reviewed last month, despite having a lower-class Core i5 instead of an i7. The graphics benchmarks are hardly inspiring, but it’s impressive that many of the tests would run at all considering the unit has no discrete graphics card.

At barely 4 hours of video playback time, battery life has taken a hit from the nearly 5 hours the X220 offered, but the larger screen may be the culprit there. (Brightness is about identical this time out.)

And then there’s the keyboard. With its Ivy Bridge units, Lenovo is migrating all its laptops to island-style keyboards. And if you’re familiar with the IdeaPad keyboard, you know what to expect. Like many, I’m already nostalgic for the old design. Lenovo’s chicklets are better than most vendors’ renditions, but I continue to make more mistakes typing on them than on the rightfully lauded old keyboard. The backlash, I’m sure, is going to be palpable.

Like the X220, Lenovo also saddles the X230 with another iffy clickpad that is incredibly small and still a bit buggy (though nowhere near the nightmare of the X220′s). It doesn’t miss clicks like last year’s model, but it just doesn’t track perfectly. Fortunately, the pointing stick remains as an option for red nubbin devotees.

None of this niggling is likely to matter much, as the X230 now finds itself in a difficult position where an ultrabook like the MacBook Air is more powerful, lighter, and packs in a bigger screen — all for just $50 more. Even Lenovo has its own ultra-sexy, ultra-slim X1 Carbon getting ready to reinvent this category this summer. On its merits, the X230 is far from a bad machine. It is, however, a laptop that suddenly finds itself without much of a market anymore.

So, who’s ready to drop four figures on one?

WIRED Configuration covers all the bases, particularly for business users clinging to legacy peripherals. Street cred in the boardroom.

TIRED Suddenly thick and heavy in an ultrabook world. Disappointing battery life vs. its predecessor. Acceptable but uninspiring performance. Keyboard switcharoo will cause pitchforks to be branded.

Photo: Basem Wasef/Wired

Supercars should look like sex. This is what the voice inside my head has been insisting since I was 14 years old, when the very same (if slightly less mature) spirit guide led me to hang a Lamborghini Countach poster above my bed and doodle Ferrari Testarossas all over my Pee Chee folders.

But somehow, to my eye, the McLaren MP4-12C doesn’t quite strike a nerve the way old school überexotics once did. Eye-popping curves and salacious silhouettes are time-honored ingredients of the exotic car formula. Like Vegas strip clubs or the pool bar at the Delano in South Beach, the meek need not apply — and if they do, they better damn well have a good reason for loitering in that rarified company.

And so the McLaren MP4-12C, while comely and sleek, isn’t the most visually charismatic player in this pumped up, pornographically endowed slice of the automotive stratosphere. Waist-high and swoopy, the McLaren may not be a shrinking violet in the topiary of supercars, but neither is it as sensuously enticing as the Monica Belucci-in-a-negligee Ferrari 458 Italia, or as intimidating as the oh-shit-the-mothership-has-landed Lamborghini Aventador. Even its alphanumeric moniker has more in common with C-3PO than any vehicle ought to. Car geeks unite: Your steed is here, and only you will get the four-wheeled joke.

But the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Or the dihedral doors, which open up and out to allow easier entry into the cabin, one of countless McLaren details engineered with an uncanny instinct for design purity. Bisected by a narrow center partition, this cockpit exemplifies levels of functionality typically associated with military aircraft. The windshield is taller than it is wide, and the proportion is designed to help you spot apexes and place the front wheels — visually identifiable by the slight humps on the front end — exactly where they need to be. The multimedia screen is oriented vertically in order to help achieve the vehicle’s target dimensions, and the massive tachometer is the instrument equivalent of a Jumbotron. The center console dials, cryptically distinguished with single letter labels, click into place like the switchgear of an F22 Raptor — all the better to enhance your jet pilot fantasies while loping down your favorite boulevard.

Photo: Basem Wasef/Wired

And then there’s the techy viscera: the carbon fiber chassis, the extruded aluminum subframes, the hydraulic roll control that’s so effective at minimizing body movement, it does away with traditional stabilizer bars altogether. Despite its ground-up newness and its of-the-moment technological artistry, analysis of the 12C would be incomplete without a brief look back at history.

Take the legendary F1 for instance, the most recent road car since the 12C that’s a pure McLaren (and no, the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren doesn’t count.) With a screaming 6.1-liter V12 and a centrally positioned driver’s seat flanked by two co-thrones for your favorite grunties, the F1′s production run of roughly 100 cars made it one of the most deeply loved exotics of all time, reinforced by the fact that if and when they hit the market these days, they run well into the seven figures.

Can you feel us getting our geek on?

And I haven’t even touched on the fact that McLaren won one of every four Formula 1 races it’s entered since 1966; in contrast, during Toyota’s eight-season, multibillion-dollar F1 effort, the Japanese manufacturer couldn’t muster a single win. There’s verisimilitude in victory, friends.

But enough armchair quarterbacking. Let’s climb into the cockpit, flog this thing, and pass judgment based on seat-of-the-pants driving impressions, not theoretical musings.

The Nikon D4 has some fairly big shoes to fill. Its predecessor, the 12.1-megapixel Nikon D3S was a veritable low-light killer, capable of shooting crisp images even in poor lighting without a flash.

But the D3S had one major deficiency: While its 35-millimeter “full frame” CMOS sensor took great pictures in a range of conditions, the paltry 12.1MP of resolution meant you couldn’t significantly blow those images up or crop in too deeply without losing detail.

Nikon seeks to solve that issue with the new D4 by increasing the resolution to 16.2 megapixels while, at the same time, maintaining the camera’s killer instincts when shooting in low light. That’s not easy. Adding more pixels to the D4′s 36 x 23.9-millimeter imaging chip means those individual pixels have to be smaller, which gives them less surface area to absorb light. But after shooting with the D4 in a range of tough conditions, it’s clear this camera is a master of the dark arts.

A photographer friend and I took the D4 to one of the more challenging environments we know: the shadowy depths of New York City’s Grand Central Station, where we photographed two dancers in an improvised duet. Because we didn’t have a permit for the shoot — permit? We don’t need no stinkin’ permit! — and didn’t want to attract attention, we both shot quickly, on the fly and without a flash.

To increase the sensitivity of the imaging chip to pick up the weak available light in the station, I cranked the camera’s ISO up to 12,800 and was able to capture impressively clean images of the dancers with only a few traces of digital noise in the shadow areas. Meanwhile, the D4′s quick and accurate 51-point autofocus system was tack sharp, even when capturing dancers dipping and spinning across the train platform.

Along with its impressive low-light chops, the D4 exhibited blazing speed overall, firing off 10 frames per second (or 11fps when the focus and exposure were locked on the first frame). We were able snag several winning images before the police ejected our party from Grand Central. The camera is about as quick to start up and shut down as the previous model — which is a good thing, because the D3s was fast — and exhibited no discernible shutter lag.

As a video camera, the D4 also impressed. After the escapades in the train station, we shot a gorgeous 1080p HD movie of a bartender making us some well-earned margaritas. The D4 has a one-touch video button that eases the transition to moving images. Though my hands were a little shaky from the tequila, the D4′s video mode showed minimal “rolling shutter” — the Jell-O effect that occurs when you pan too aggressively while shooting HD video with a CMOS sensor. I was disappointed in the audio quality, though. Since the D4 only has a built-in monaural mic, if you want better sound, attach a stereo microphone to the camera’s stereo mic jack to record more fully.

WIRED Separate 91,000-pixel sensor is dedicated to light metering, autofocus and recognizing and adjusting to different shooting scenarios. More rounded and ergonomic design with lower pentaprism still lets you see 100 percent of what you’re shooting through the viewfinder. Back-illuminated buttons help you set the camera in dark conditions.

TIRED Second card slot is Sony’s new and expensive XQD format. Built-in mic only offers mono sound. Burst shooting is a frame slower per-second than the competing Canon 1D X.

• The Pocket Camera Moment
• Smartphones as Cameras
• Photo-Editing Apps

• Compact System Cameras
• Pro DSLRs
• Cool Camera Gear

The 22.3-megapixel Canon EOS 5D Mark III captured some of the cleanest images I’ve seen from a DSLR when shooting in low light at high ISOs. That’s no small feat. Cameras such as the 5D Mark III’s predecessor — the 5D Mark II — and the 16.2MP Nikon D4, are designed as low-light assassins, with large, full-frame sensors approximately the same size as a frame of 35-millimeter film.

That the Canon 5D Mark III does so well in so little light is all the more impressive because the pixels on its 36 x 24-millimeter CMOS sensor are smaller than those in the lower-resolution D4. Tinier pixels have less surface area for absorbing light and should, theoretically, stumble more easily in the dark. Not so with the 5D Mark III.

Even at ISO 25,600, which makes the camera’s chip so sensitive to light it can almost “see” in the dark, my still-life test shots with the Mark III had few crunchy, digital artifacts — aka “noise” — in the shadow areas. The results carried over to real-world usage in an outdoor portrait session I shot with the 5D III.

The camera’s ability to shoot crisp images in only available light — and intentionally murky light at that — allowed me to put away my external flash and keep my subject looking soft and natural. It’s not that you can’t create a similar effect with a flash if you know what you’re doing, it’s just that with the 5D Mark III, it’s often unnecessary.

On the downside, when I zoomed in, I saw slightly less detail than competing cameras such as the Nikon D4. The 5D Mark III’s Digic 5 processing engine seemed to smooth out the rough edges of my shots. This was disappointing considering the 5D III’s 22.3 megapixels of resolution should have allowed me to make nearly billboard-sized prints from my photos without sacrificing image quality.

In decent natural light or in controlled studio lighting though, the 5D III’s photos were fabulous, with my portrait session producing creamy skin tones and attractive colors. If you photograph weddings, parties, or people in general, this is the camera for you. The 5D III’s 6-frames-per-second continuous shooting and improved durability with weather resistance are a step up from the previous model. I photographed a model moving through quick poses outdoors under threatening skies without worry.

The 5D III’s HD video skills have improved, too, with more frame speeds and compression options that allowed me to experiment with different looks and files sizes. While the previous 5D model was a truly groundbreaking videography tool upon arrival, there’s not as much of a revolutionary shift evident here. But I loved the high-quality HD movies I shot, which were crisp and nearly artifact-free, thanks to the better processing from the 5D III’s Digic 5+ chip.

WIRED In-camera HDR (High Dynamic Range) feature combines three shots into one image with better exposure. “Silent” shooting mode helps capture stealthy candid portraits. Rank photos in-camera with one to five stars, then carry those ratings over to Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Bridge and Apple Aperture. Same 61-point (41-cross-type-point) autofocus system as top-of-the-line Canon 1D X.

TIRED Only slightly more resolution than four-year-old previous model. Starting price nearly $1,000 higher than predecessor. Built-in mic only offers mono sound.

Photos courtesy of Canon, Inc.

• The Pocket Camera Moment
• Smartphones as Cameras
• Photo-Editing Apps

• Compact System Cameras
• Pro DSLRs
• Cool Camera Gear

Turn your smartphone into an imaging powerhouse with the right software. We talked to Instagrammers Cole Rise and Doctor Popular about the tools that have helped them attract huge followings.

Cole Rise

Cole Rise created the above picture in PhotoForge2 by layering an image of a glass of water over a landscape photo, then using the vignette and curves tools for the final look.

Rise is a professional photographer whose moody shots will look familiar to any regular Instagram user — he created the Hudson, Sierra, Sutro, and Rise filters for the app, and he has more than 160,000 followers. Here he discusses some of the apps he uses to create his atmospheric iPhone photos.



PhotoForge2
I love this app. It’s got great curve controls for adjusting colors. You can also layer effects and add blurs — a lot of the stuff you’d do with Photoshop. So you can do most of your editing in-phone, no computer needed. Some Instagram filters started with stuff I was doing here. Pro Tip: I add a layer that’s just color and create a vignette on it, rather than directly on the image, so that your vignette is in color rather than just gray scale.



Average Camera Pro
I get images with this that I would have thought I could only get with my Canon 5D Mark II. The app lets you snap a ton of photos in a row, up to 128, then averages them together. If you’re shooting moving water, for example, it will get blurred while everything else stays steady. (You need to use a tripod.) Rivers end up looking like bands of fog. Pro Tip: You can use it to average out noise in low-light settings, like at sunset.



Photosynth
Spin in a circle and snap photos for a 360-degree panorama. But what’s smart about this app is how it uses the gyroscope and accelerometer. As you move, it looks at the previous image and tracks the scene, then snaps for you at just the right moment. Pro Tip: The stitching isn’t so accurate close up. If you experiment with this, you can create portraits that look like photo collages — turn flaws to your advantage.



LensFlare
The iPhone is already pretty good at creating lens flare, but you don’t know what you’re missing until you try this app. You can choose from dozens of lens and flare types and customize them with rotation and scaling to get the right effect. It’s great for landscapes. Pro Tip: Use it sparingly; it can look overdone and cheesy. The effect works best when you can’t tell it’s there. Drag the flare off the image so just a bit of it is showing.



Read on for some advice from the Doctor…

The Basics

What makes a DSLR “professional”?

There aren’t hard and fast rules, but several features set these cameras apart, like beefy alloy bodies, rubberized handgrips, and dependable shutters that can be fired hundreds of thousands of times without a hiccup. They also combine zippy, multipoint autofocus systems with the ability to fire upwards of 10 frames per second, meaning they can track and capture action in ways not possible with consumer models.

Read our reviews:

Canon EOS 5D Mark III

Nikon D4

Why is it always Canon versus Nikon?

There are other camera companies selling DSLRs—notably Sony, Pentax, and Olympus. But when it comes to professional, $2,000-plus cameras, Canon and Nikon control 97 percent of the market, due mostly to their early dominance in 35 mm, which locked most pros into their lenses. And it’s clear that they care only about each other: Though their previous-generation pro-level shooters were on the market for years, their four newest models, featured here, all have release dates within just months of one another.

How important are megapixels?

No number is more misunderstood or abused than pixel count. What matters more is pixel size, and that’s dependent on sensor size. In two cameras with the same megapixel count, the one with the bigger sensor should produce better photos. In models with equal sensor sizes, the one with fewer megapixels should perform better in low light or at high speeds, and the one with more will capture better detail—if the lighting is good.

Buying Advice

Think about how and where you’ll be shooting. The action and variable lighting of reporting and sports photography require the more expensive models with fast motors and fat pixels; the controlled environment of studio work is very friendly to higher-pixel-count models.

• The Pocket Camera Moment
• Smartphones as Cameras
• Photo-Editing Apps

• Compact System Cameras
• Pro DSLRs
• Cool Camera Gear