Kindle for Android

The product: 
Kindle's in-book experience is as straightforward as it gets. To turn the page, simply swipe or tap somewhere in the margin. A tap to the center of the page brings up a status bar with location information and reader controls. There's also a menu at the top of your screen, in case you want to change text size, brightness, margins, line spacing, or background color. For now, the Kindle app offers only black, white, and sepia (my favorite) background options, but hopefully Amazon will add other textures and colors in the future.

The free Kindle app for Android is an excellent e-reader app that seamlessly ties to your Amazon account. It does a good job of presenting e-books, can easily reach into Amazon's enormous

Google Search for Android

The product: 
One of the best things about Google Search is Google Now. Often misunderstood as a standalone Siri-style app, Google Now is actually a set of intelligent personal assistant features that are built right into the Google Search app. These features are only available to users with Android Jelly Bean and higher. Meanwhile, on iOS, Google Now is available to essentially all users (iOS 5 and higher).

Noontec Zoro HD headphones

The product: 
The shiny plastic headphone's build quality is nothing special. The Zoro HDs fold up into a fairly small bundle for compact storage, but the plastic hinges are the obvious weak point in the design. After folding and unfolding the headphones many times they still seem fine, but anyone who treats their headphones roughly may have problems with this or any $100 hinged headphone.

Dell XPS 18

The product: 
The XPS 18 looks like a smaller all-in-one desktop at first glance. Sitting on a hefty industrial-looking stand is a featureless black screen, with only a Dell logo in the upper left corner and a Windows 8 flag logo below the screen. From the side, it's as thin as or thinner than most non-tablet all-in-one systems, and feels designed to fade nicely into the background. An 18-inch screen is on the small side for an all-in-one, but conversely it's large for a

Asustor AS-604T NAS Server

The product: 
Asustor AS-604T NAS server comes with no storage included, but it's very fast to install your own hard drives, thanks to the front-facing drive bays. Each of these bays includes a tray that can be easily unlocked and pulled out. After that it's simple to assemble a standard 3.5-inch hard drive on it. There are more than enough screws included for all four hard drives, always a good thing. You don't need to fill all four drive bays to use the server, but it's recommended that you do so, and use drives of the highest capacity

Lenovo IdeaPad Z400 Touch

The product: 
In one sense, the IdeaPad Z400 has a clean, not unattractive design. A matte chocolate-brown lid and two-tone silver and black plastic inside give the impression of something higher-end. But it's the fit and finish here that runs cheap. Everything's plastic, not metal. Also, this laptop is seriously thick and heavy: over 1 inch thick and 5.3 pounds. The 15.6-inch-screen Asus