Computer Shopper January 2015

01 A basic PC costing around £350 will be able to run everyday office, multimedia and education software and will easily cope with the internet. It might even be able to run some modern games. Many PCs can be sold either with or without the monitor. If you don’t like the display that the manufacturer is offering, you can always use your current one, or buy one separately. 02 If you want to play games, you’ll have to upgrade the graphics card. Budget cards such as the AMD Radeon R7 260X will cope well with many 3D games, but to play the latest 3D games smoothly (and enjoy the best-quality graphics) it’s worth upgrading to a more powerful card such as an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970. 03 All modern PCs…

01 All tablets rely on an operating system (OS) to run apps. You have three main choices: Apple’s iOS, which runs on the iPad and iPad Mini; Android, which Google licenses to various manufacturers; and Microsoft’s Windows RT, which is a cut-down version of Windows 8. If you own an Apple or Google smartphone, you can download your apps, music and so on to a tablet that runs the same OS, so it makes sense to stick with a compatible device. 02 It’s important to pick a tablet that has a goodquality, high-resolution screen. Many budget tablets have 1,280x800-resolution displays, but better tablets have Full HD 1,920x1,080 panels, and we’re starting to see tablets that have even higher screen resolutions. Some are as high as 2,560x1,600. Entry-level tablets typically use…

01 A basic digital camera will suit someone who wants to take pictures to view on their computer and create 7x5in prints. It should cost around £80, but there may be hidden downsides such as slow performance and very basic user controls. 02 Spend a little more and you’ll get a higher resolution. A 16-megapixel sensor has the potential to produce sharp prints up to A3 size, but only if it and the lens are of a suitably high quality. Very high resolutions in compact cameras tend to boost noise more than detail levels, so many of the best models strike a sensible balance by using a 12-megapixel sensor. Backilluminated CMOS sensors tend to produce less noise than CCDs, but check our reviews to find out how a particular model…

01 Basic MP3 players with 1GB or 2GB capacities are available for less than £10. A good-quality 8GB player costs around £30 and can store thousands of MP3s encoded at 192Kbit/s. Most small MP3 players use solid-state flash memory for storage. This is immune to shocks, knocks and bumps, making such players ideal for use while jogging, for example. 02If you want to carry your entire music collection with you, look for a high-capacity player. The highest-capacity models can hold up to 160GB of media and typically use a compact hard disk. However, high-capacity MP3 players are available with flash memory storage of up to 64GB, while others accept microSDXC cards that can upgrade storage by as much as 128GB. Hard disk players are bulkier than flash-based devices and are…

01 A basic 1TB internal hard disk should cost around £40. It’ll be fast enough for general use and provide enough storage for most users. Make sure the hard disk you choose has the appropriate interface type for your PC. Some mechanical hard disks still come with SATA2 interfaces, but newer models and most solid-state drives (SSDs) have faster SATA3 interfaces. You’ll need a motherboard with a SATA3 port if you want to benefit from SATA3’s faster speeds – SATA3 disks will work with SATA2 ports but can only transfer files at SATA2 speeds. 02 SSDs can make the most of SATA3’s extra bandwidth for fast file transfers. They use flash memory similar to that found in USB flash drives, and although they tend to provide less capacity than mechanical…

01 If you want to shoot simple home movies, buy a basic flash memory camcorder. This should cost around £140 and will produce decent results in most lighting conditions. Check the battery life, which should preferably provide enough power for at least 90 minutes of recording. 02 Most camcorders are described as HD, but that’s no guarantee of good image quality. Ignore the number of pixels the sensor has and concentrate on the size of the sensor itself. The smallest sensors are usually 1⁄6in, and sizes increase in fractions to around ½in. A larger sensor gives you higer video quality and enables you to capture better footage in poor lighting conditions. An alternative technology often found in Panasonic camcorders uses three small sensors instead of one large one to produce…