Pendulumic Stance S1+ Bluetooth headphones

The worlds of Bluetooth and good audio have traditionally not been the best of bedfellows, although that’s all changing. In the traditional stereo world, companies like Chord Electronics have performed wonders with Bluetooth enabled DACs and the rest. In the headphone world, though, Bluetooth has been considerably more widely adopted, but mostly in a low to mid end manner, hooking smartphone to headset for commuters and joggers who hate wires.

The Pendulumic Stance S1+ is different. It’s a legitimately high-end, studio-grade headphone that runs wirelessly through Bluetooth. It also has a wired mode, and can even be used to make calls. It runs along all the latest and greatest Bluetooth lines (Bluetooth 4.0, aptX, and A2DP), which means CD quality. It auto-pairs with devices, and has a 15m radius, even as a phone headset (with built-in microphone).

Astell&Kern AK380 high-res digital audio player

When Astell&Kern brought out its AK240 Portable High Fidelity Sound system (£2,199) about two years ago, many of us assumed the firm has pushed the sonic and price limits of the high-end portable player genre as far as they could go, but as it turns out we were wrong. Enter the firm’s spectacular new all singing, all dancing, and all-conquering flagship model, the AK380 (£2,999), which in some respects takes up where the AK240 leaves off.

LH Labs Geek Out V2 USB headphone amp/DAC

Many people think that the first big audio crowd-funding success story was Neil Young’s PONO launch, but that’s not the case. LH Labs Geek Out USB DAC brought in $303,000 and its Geek Pulse and Geek Wave brought in respectively an unprecedented $2.9million and $1.665million in their respective Kickstarter campaigns. Since then LH Labs has rolled out numerous Geek Out products for both portable and home use. Their latest product, the $299 Geek Out V2, was the company’s first pre-order campaign on Indiegogo, with $345,000 in advance orders. As opposed to crowd-funding, pre-order campaigns allow faster delivery times, at least in theory. Let’s look at LH’s Geek Out V2 to see if this new DAC delivers the same level of performance as previous award-winning Geek Out components.

Crucial MX200 250GB M.2 SSD

Our final drive in this group is the Crucial MX200 250GB M.2 SSD. Following the standard SSDs and mSATA drives of the MX200 range, the M.2 version doesn’t differ all that much in terms of the specifications, other than the physical dimensions and the final benchmarks.

This is a standard sized M.2 SATA-3 6Gbps device, measuring 22 x 80 x 2.2mm and weighing 7g. The power consumption is 0.2W when idle, 1W average, 3W maximum when reading and 4W maximum when writing. Crucial rates the lifespan of the MX200 at 1.5 million hours.

Patriot Ignite 480GB M.2 SSD

This drive from Patriot is a SATA-3 SSD, using a Phison PS3110-S10 controller, and it measures 22 x 80 x 3.8mm and weighs 9g. Power consumption is 0.25W when idle, 1.1W average, 2.1W maximum read and 5.7W maximum write. Patriot rates the lifespan of the Ignite at a good two million hours, though.

Transcend MTS400 M.2 SSD

The Transcend MTS400 is a remarkably compact SSD, which comes in four different capacities: 32GB, 64GB, 128GB and the 256GB one we’re reviewing in this instance. It weighs around 4g and measures just 22 x 42 x 3.5mm, roughly half the length of the previous ‘gumstick’ M.2 SSDs we’ve looked at. The power consumption is around 0.5W when idle, rising to 3.7W when reading and 4.4W when writing; life expectancy is rated at 1.5 million hours.

HyperX Predator 240GB PCIe M.2 SSD

This is the second Kingston model in the group and one from the company’s HyperX performance range of products.

As you can also no doubt tell, this is the first of the newer PCIe M.2 SSDs in the group. Naturally, as PCIe slots are faster than SATA, in theory we should see some pretty impressive numbers when it comes to the benchmark.

Kingston 240GB SSDNow M.2

Kingston has enjoyed a couple of years with M.2 now, with the launch of the SM2280 range. The 120GB version came first, followed some time later by the 240GB we have to review in this instance.

Not a huge amount has changed with regards to this model, but there’s still a lot to appreciate from this slightly older M.2 example.

Samsung 120GB 850 EVO M.2 SSD

Samsung has embraced the new M.2 form factor with a will, incorporating the company’s 32-layer TLC 3D V-NAND technology as well as other features such as TurboWrite Technology and RAPID Mode.

The technology used is certainly quite interesting, but to begin with this example from Samsung comes in three available capacities – 120GB, 250GB and 500GB – all of which use the Samsung MGX controller.