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A GT500CR surveys its less-lucky friends at Plakos Scrap Processing in Brooklyn, NY. Photo by Anthony Barbato

I sat staring at Carroll Shelby’s signature on the passenger-side dashboard of my GT500CR tester.

It was just days before the legendary Texan left us for that big racetrack in the sky. Shelby rocked automotive culture more times than most folks move apartments in his 89 years on earth — from winning Sports Illustrated‘s “Driver of the Year” award in 1956 and 1957 to building the Ford-powered AC roadster that defeated the then six-time champion Ferrari team at the 24 Hours of Le Mans two years straight.

And there I was, getting ready to drive a replica of his souped-up 1967 Mustang many have come to affectionately know as “Eleanor.” Reflecting on my experience now, a week after his passing, I can’t help but feel as if I were fated to drive the car.

Shelby raced, designed and collaborated on countless track and street machines during his illustrious campaign, but among his more widely known works are the snarling GT350 and GT500 Mustang mash-ups manufactured between 1965 and 1970.

Eleanor was one of these beasts. But of course, I wasn’t driving the real thing. My tester was a “restomod,” a version of the original metal that’s been restored accurately, but also upgraded with modern components.

According to Jason Engel, founder of Classic Recreations, the Oklahoma-based company officially licensed to build the Shelby GT500CR, a restomod is often better than the real thing. Technology and auto design have advanced considerably since the muscle cars’ heyday of the late ’60s and early ’70s, and such a machine shows its age today.

“The steering, suspension, skinny tires, heavy motor and dated cooling system mean it’s great for car shows or a quick cruise around the neighborhood, but not much fun to drive on a regular basis,” Engel says.

Classic Recreations starts with a real ’67 steel Mustang body, stripping it down to its skivvies and stuffing it with all manner of modern upgrades.

Restomod shops keep the vintage look, but update the suspension, the steering and the brakes, and also add things like fuel injection and A/C. The finished product has all the charm and appeal of a vintage ride, but with the reliability and driving experience of a modern vehicle. There’s certainly no denying that the restomod GT500CR possesses the soul of original, but I still wouldn’t recommend one of these babies for daily grinds to work in rush-hour traffic.

“Restomod buyers want something representative of history that actually works,” says Tom DuPont, founder of DuPont Registry, a marketplace for fancy, expensive cars, ‘bots and other luxury lifestyle accoutrements. “You want to satisfy that nostalgic urge with a current version of the real thing. Think of it as a practical car you don’t mind leaving out in the rain at the country club.”

Classic Recreations is licensed by Shelby American to build ’66 and ’67 Shelby continuation vehicles. Each one is fitted with an official Shelby serial number that’s included in in the Shelby Registry. CR has been building these cars for only a few years — it picked up the business after the previous licensee, Texas-based Unique Performance, had its door busted in by the police during a fraud investigation for VIN irregularities in 2007.

CR starts with a real ’67 steel Mustang body (not a GT500 body), stripping it down to its skivvies and stuffing it with all manner of modern upgrades: coil-over-shock suspension in the front and rear, cross-drilled and zinc-washed brakes, a Mass Flo fuel-injected 7-liter engine with 545 hp and 5-speed Tremec transmission. Any sheet metal that’s been damaged or allowed to rust over the last 45 years is replaced, and the overall structure is reinforced to handle the extra power. (The engines in ’67 Mustangs varied dramatically, running either 6 or 8 cylinders and starting as low as 115hp.) Shelby-licensed body panels — listed in the brochure as “authentic Carroll Shelby Exterior Fiberglass enhancements” — and signature accessories and gauges complete the look. And, boy, does it look real.

In all, a dozen skilled craftsmen spend some 2,500 hours — about four months — building each one.

Safety cables keep the hood closed so it doesn't blow off at 110 mph. Photo by Anthony Barbato

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I’ve never seen a ninja on a bicycle.

Then again, if a ninja did ride a bicycle, would I see him? Stealth is kind of important for those guys.

So, if you asked me to find the best bike for a ninja to ride, I’d pick this one: BMC’s UC01 city bike.

This thing has stealth in spades. Its matte black paint job is dressed with black decals, and there are just enough red highlights to make it mysterious. But the real stealth feature is the silent Gates carbon belt drive that replaces the typical chain.

The real stealth feature is the silent Gates carbon belt drive that replaces the typical chain.

For non-ninjas, a quiet ride isn’t really a feature worth salivating over, even though the startling silence of the bike is enjoyable on the occasions when you find yourself away from the noisy traffic of the city. But where the carbon belt really shines is in its practicality. Developed for industrial use (think saws, drills, and other machines with fast-moving drivetrains) and increasingly found on motorcycles, carbon belt drives require almost no maintenance, repel water, dirt and mud, and supposedly last about twice as long as metal bike chains.

Gates’ CenterTrack system, which puts a small ridge down the centerline of the drivetrain, keeps the belt from wiggling from side to side as you pedal. And because the belt doesn’t require oil or lube, you don’t have to roll up your pant leg — a perk I appreciated more than I thought I would. BMC has kept the bike even more low-maintenance by wrapping the belt around an 11-speed Shimano Alfine internally geared hub. Those 11-speeds gave me a wide enough range for all but the steepest climbs here in San Francisco.

One drawback of an internally geared hub is weight, and the UC01 wasn’t immune. The triple-butted aluminum frame and carbon fork are lightweight, and the added heft of the hub is enough to make it noticeably tail-heavy. Between that and the straight bars, the bike is great for cruising along at speed, but doesn’t give a ton of power when accelerating away from a stoplight.

BMC has years of experience building traditional racing bikes — the Swiss company sponsored 2011 Tour de France winner Cadel Evans — but is making its first foray into belt-driven bikes with the UC01. The company has been bringing UC01s on tour for its racing team to use when they want to tool around in town before and after races. (They even produced a special model for Evans’ home use: the super-light MC01.)

To spec out the UC01, BMC mostly uses Shimano’s Alfine components — the company’s high-end “comfort” line — and they don’t disappoint. The hydraulic disc brakes gave great stopping power, but retained sensitivity even in the rain. The slick Shwalbe tires, also standard, are fast yet cushy, and the Fizik grips and saddle are both stylish and comfortable.

These are premium parts, and the bike’s price tag reflects that. The model I rode was the European version of the UC01, which sells for 1,900 euros, or about $2,420. (Later this year, American customers will see a model using the same frame but with slightly different specs priced at $2,000.) You really feel like you’re riding a luxury machine. It’s obvious BMC didn’t skimp anywhere except the pedals, though a lot of bikes don’t even come with pedals to begin with.

One oddity with my test bike was the 26-inch wheelset — the European version of the UC01 I rode comes with the smaller, mountain-bike-sized wheels. The bike is consequently a bit squirrelly until you get used to it. An optimist would call it “nimble,” and that it is, especially in traffic.

The aforementioned, less-expensive American version will sport a more road-friendly 700c wheelset as an option, and will come with an 8-speed hub. Also, the American version of the UC01 only comes with a silver paint job for now, though we’ll have the option of buying the same black-on-black version with the 11-speed hub next year.

So no stealth bikes for us just yet. But then, we can’t all be ninjas.

WIRED Smooth ride, smooth style. High-end parts. Belt drive is as slick and silent as can be. Braze-ons for rear rack mounting. Internal hub offers plenty of options, and you can shift gears even when you’re stopped.

TIRED Frame design is not conducive to acceleration. Aggressive posture may alienate some cyclists. Pricey. Wheelset, gearing and color choices are limited by geographical location.

Photos by Jon Snyder/Wired

Our new fave in the Android realm. Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

The HTC One X is one of the best smartphones on the market, and the best Android phone you can buy right now, period.

It’s fast, it’s gorgeous, it’s lightweight and it has a stellar battery that lasts all day. The camera is also outstanding. It’s the best I’ve seen on an Android phone, though it falls just short of the camera on the iPhone 4S.

It’s not just the hardware — the One X runs version 4.0 of Android, aka Ice Cream Sandwich, which is overlaid by HTC’s own Sense skin. It’s fast and easy to use. Combine that with the excellent hardware and you’ve got a handset worthy of being a flagship device for both HTC and AT&T (even though you might have to wait a bit to get one).

It’s fast, it’s gorgeous, it’s lightweight and it has a stellar battery that lasts all day. The camera is also outstanding.

In fact, the one thing I really don’t like about the One X is its exclusivity to AT&T, the only carrier that sells the phone in the U.S. It’s a shame this phone isn’t available on T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon.

Android handset makers don’t have the same leverage as Apple when it comes to dealing with telecommunications companies, so they continue to pump out a few slightly different versions of every phone, each one exclusive to a different carrier. It’s unnecessary and insane — HTC produced more than 50 different handsets last year alone.

The One X, being a stellar phone, serves as a testament that Android handset makers should go the iPhone route and make fewer phones of higher quality available through multiple carriers. The hardware companies would of course gain from this, but the payoff for the consumer would be huge as well.

To wit: Nearly every quibble I had with the T-Mobile-exclusive One S — a fine mid-range handset being sold at a flagship price — was fixed in the One X.

My biggest complaint with the One S was its display, and the feature I enjoyed most on the One X was — you guessed it — the display.

The One X has a 4.7-inch, 1280×720 IPS LCD touchscreen, covered in Corning’s durable, crystal-clear Gorilla Glass. The viewing angles on the screen are some of the best I’ve seen on a smartphone. Colors are bright and accurate, producing consistently true-to-life images across websites and apps. Pixel edges are indistinguishable with the display’s density of 316 pixels per inch.

Let me put it this way: The One X’s screen is on the same level as the iPhone’s Retina display. I love looking at it, and it blows away the PenTile displays found on the One S and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus (my former favorite Android handset).

Beneath the fantastic touchscreen, the One X is a beast, with a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage (the same set-up found in the One S). Performance is blazing-fast, and though the AT&T handset doesn’t pack the Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor found in Europe and Asia’s One X, it doesn’t feel any less capable. The U.S. model is just as good and just as impressive as what HTC is offering overseas.

The U.S. version of the One X, unlike its overseas counterpart, runs on AT&T’s 4G LTE network, which is only available in a small number of cities right now. In San Francisco, the One X downloaded and uploaded data quickly, whether connected to AT&T’s 4G LTE, 4G HSPA+ or 3G service.

But despite performing like a beast, the One X is also a beauty.

The 0.36-inch chassis is made of a single piece of polycarbonate, giving the handset a sophisticated look free of seams or gaps, as seen on past HTC hardware. Given its size, the phone is also surprisingly light, weighing in at 4.6 ounces.

The One X is a handsome, well-designed phone. Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

The basic eBeam Edge kit includes a marker-like stylus and small wall-mounted device to track its movements. Photo courtesy of eBeam/Luidia

Except for the spiciest bits of The Social Network and the Steve Jobs biography, pretty much everything that happens in a conference room is boring.

Meetings are boring, presentations are boring, and whiteboards are boring. But here’s a piece of technology that makes all three more exciting — which admittedly isn’t that difficult, but stay with me.

It’s called the eBeam Edge, made by Luidia. It’s a handwriting capture system that adds an interactive element to whatever you’re viewing on your wall, allowing you and your colleagues to annotate a projected image or document, or to sketch something on a whiteboard, and e-mail the results around like a memo.

The eBeam is just one entry in the “interactive whiteboard” category — devices that let you virtually draw on any vertical surface using a special pen and have it captured electronically by a combination of hardware and software. Some of these systems use touchscreens or pressure-sensitive displays, some use interactive projectors, and others use special whiteboards. Luidia’s device is simpler and less expensive than those, since it uses things you already have around the office: a regular projector hooked up to a Windows PC.

In the basic eBeam kit (priced between $900 and $1,050 around the web), you get a fat, marker-like stylus and a hardware sensor that connects to your PC via USB or Bluetooth. This sensor, which is about the size of a candy bar, attaches to the wall using a non-permanent adhesive (a couple of 3M Command strips). You just stick it next to whatever flat surface you want to use to make your presentation, then point the projector at that surface. To calibrate it, you tap the stylus on the nine points projected on the wall. The whole setup process takes less than five minutes.

Once everything’s running, you can draw images or write text with a surprising level of accuracy. The eBeam’s stylus, which has a AAA battery inside, is tracked by the flat capture strip you’ve fastened to the wall. The tracking is pretty good — there is some lag, but it’s not too annoying. It’s about the same amount of latency I’ve experienced using a stylus on a smartphone like the Galaxy Note, or a Wacom Bamboo stylus on an iPad. You just have to remember to write a little more slowly and deliberately than normal.

Since it works on any flat surface, you can project the eBeam environment onto a map, a large-scale design mockup, or a large printed image. Where it really shines is when you use it in conjunction with a whiteboard. As part of my test, Luidia also sent me its whiteboard Capture Pack ($250 extra), a set of sheaths for regular whiteboard markers that have the eBeam tracking mechanism (the same one found in the stylus) built in. This way, you can draw on the whiteboard and have your every stroke recorded and captured. The sheaths are colored to match the common colors of whiteboard markers, and the software records the appropriate color — two people can use two different markers and keep their notes separate.

Photo courtesy of eBeam/Luidia

The low point here is the software. Pressing one of the two buttons on the stylus brings up a radial menu (called the eBeam Tool Palette) that lets you choose between functions like freehand writing, highlighting, drawing arrows, erasing marks and flipping through the stack of open documents. Unfortunately, these menus are not that intuitive and take some getting used to, especially if you’re one of those people who lives and breathes PowerPoint. Also, and this is odd, the menus are not as responsive as the writing functions. I experienced too many misplaced taps of the stylus, and sometimes I had to tap twice or three times to get the software to react.

eBeam’s software suite does have plenty of options for building and delivering presentations — slideshow tools, master pages, navigation elements to move forward and backward through a deck — and it has some collaborative features like the ability to stack transparent layers on top of your presentation, or to share your whiteboard with other users over the internet. But coming into the eBeam environment cold, it wasn’t exactly clear to me how these features work (and yes, I’ve been at this a very long time). A few web searches and YouTube videos had me sorted out eventually, but it was more time than I expected to spend learning how to use a piece of presentation software.

Obfuscated user interfaces aside, Luidia’s system works well enough for me to recommend it. But it’s a very niche product with a steep price and negligible payoff. If you work in an environment where collaborative communion is the lifeblood of your organization — not just presentations, but constant prototyping, brainstorming, group critique and swapping of ideas — then the eBeam could wipe away your whiteboard woes. But for the average office, it’s a flashy, expensive solution to a problem that probably doesn’t exist.

WIRED Mark up any document or image electronically and save it for perpetuity. Works on any wall or any flat, wall-mounted object. Uses the projector and PC you already have. Stylus is easy to use, and drawing surface is easy to calibrate. Optional capture pack enhances the boring whiteboard with the addition of computer magic.

TIRED Software needs work. Any projector will do, but a projector is required. MSRP is $1,050, but it’s available for around $900 — still very expensive. Latency could be an issue for the over-caffeinated drones from sales and marketing.

The Olympus OM-D E-M5 micro four-thirds camera is available as a body only, or with a kit (shown) that includes a 12-50mm f3.5-6.3 lens and a flash. Photo by Jackson Lynch/Wired

The latest micro four-thirds camera from Olympus is clearly designed to appeal to all those hoary, wizened photographers who long for the good ol’ days.

Olympus’ new digital OM series is modeled after the company’s original, beloved OM film cameras from the 1970s. But the new OM-D line is not just some tossed-off homage — the first camera in the line, the E-M5, is a fantastic picture-making tool.

Olympus’ new digital OM series is modeled after the company’s original, beloved OM film cameras from the 1970s.

It makes excellent RAW and JPEG images, and it is certainly the most customizable compact today. And the thoroughly modern design — a magnesium-clad, weather-sealed body — is so masterfully executed that I bet a lot of the “if it’s not curvy, it’s crap” cognoscenti will be wooed by it.

At the heart of the E-M5 is a collection of core features that makes it quite possibly the best-performing micro four-thirds camera on the market today: a new 16-megapixel TruPic VI image sensor, a speedy processor, the five-axis mechanical image stabilization system, an articulated OLED touchscreen and a high-speed lens drive control.

Both RAW and JPEG images can fly into the E-M5 at a 9fps burst rate with awfully impressive results up to ISO 6,400. Olympus’ default algorithms tend to over-sharpen JPEGs (this can be dialed down in-camera), but they are still on par with the tops in the mirrorless realm. RAW images are equally pleasing, with lots of highlight and shadow latitude for creative control once they’re downloaded.

Using the E-M5′s controls and dialing in custom settings is deceptively easy. The two wheels at the top of the body are the hub of the control center, and they can be set to operate different functions in a host of combinations to suit your shooting preferences. The Movie Record, Fn1 and Fn2 buttons are also configurable to 50 different settings. Once you get it set up to your taste, you won’t be missing great shots while fumbling through menus.

Photo by Jackson Lynch/Wired

Can something as delicate and complicated as brewed coffee really succeed as a mass-produced canned beverage? Photo by Jon Snyder/Wired

On a hot day, a cup of ice-cold brew from the local coffee shop is a thing of eternal beauty.

But the typical artisanal iced coffee isn’t an option when you’re at the Safeway, hoarding snacks for a bargain matinee showing of Cabin in the Woods.

It’s 80 degrees out, and the heat is making you sleepy. As you gaze bleary-eyed at the “Cold Drinks” section, you spy a beautiful silver cylinder of something called illy Cappuccino. You pay your $3 for it, and, once nestled in the darkened theater, you pop the tab and tilt the can to your mouth just as the movie’s protagonists get to someone’s cousin’s cabin, which is obviously the most haunted place on Earth, when — Blegh! What is this I’m drinking?

If they’re going to call this terribly sweet substance with strong notes of Swiss Miss and metal a “cappuccino,” then they’d better call you Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because words are meaningless.

It’s safe to say that canned coffee is having a moment. There’s just one problem: It doesn’t taste very good.

While ruining a good thing for the sake of convenience seems uniquely American, canned coffee was actually invented by the Japanese. According to Hidetaka Hayashi, president of the Hayashi Coffee Institute in Tokyo, pre-made coffee in cans may have been introduced to Japan as early as 1958, although it wasn’t until 1973, when Pokka Lemon Corp debuted the hot/cold canned coffee vending machine, that the drinks really took off.

Canned or RTD (ready-to-drink) coffee is now a $16 billion business (.pdf), and the U.S. is the second largest consumer of the stuff thanks to offerings from Starbucks, Seattle’s Best, Trader Joe’s and even Wolfgang Puck.

It’s safe to say that canned coffee is having a moment. There’s just one problem: It doesn’t taste very good.

When I mentioned to a friend — an Italian who considers herself a coffee expert — that I was writing an article about the problems with canned coffee drinks, she looked at me like I’d said I was writing an article about how to make cats more like bananas. This dismissive (and dare I say, snotty) attitude was shared by all of the coffee connoisseurs to whom I so much as mentioned the words “canned coffee.” All except for one.

Peter Giuliano is the owner of North Carolina-based Counter Culture Coffee. He’s the guru of baristas everywhere and a cold-coffee expert. He is also a man intrigued by the possibilities of a good canned coffee. According to Giuliano — who even copped to wanting to create his own canned coffee — the main problem isn’t that pre-made coffee can’t be good. It’s that the way it’s currently made, with an emphasis on low cost, will never allow for a quality beverage.

“They’re not crafted. They’re manufactured,” he says. While this might be fine for something like Coca-Cola, it’s much harder to pull off with a highly unstable substance like coffee. There are thousands of chemical compounds in every cup, and according to Giuliano, more chemical reactions happen during the preparation of coffee than anything else we normally eat or drink.

So what makes the current crop of mass-market canned coffee so bad? In a word, heat. Because pre-made coffee must be able to sit unrefrigerated on a store shelf, it has to be sterilized, which in the case of canned coffee involves heating the ingredients to 250 degrees for about 15 minutes. Heating coffee for that long not only kills microorganisms, but also causes the naturally present acids to break down, making the coffee bitter.

Enter milk. As Giuliano tells me, the high concentration of milk and sugar in most canned coffees is likely an attempt by the manufacturers to counteract the bitterness. Unfortunately, the addition of milk brings on a whole other set of problems, namely that cooked milk acquires rancid notes like those found in condensed milk or tapioca. This cloyingly sweet smell is off-putting for many would-be canned coffee consumers.

The result of all this cooking is that canned coffee comes in two varieties: extra-sweet, with lots of milk and sugar, or stomach-achingly bitter, with minimal flavor additives. Often, the former will be marketed as “Latte,” “Mocha” or “Cappuccino,” but as far as I can tell, these titles are applied at random and can be ignored. Just know it has milk and sugar in it.

Make Your Own Cold Coffee

It’s the easiest fancy thing you’ll ever do.

1. Combine a half-pound of coarsely ground coffee with one liter of cold water.
2. Stir once.
3. Cover with plastic wrap and let steep for 12-24 hours.
4. Filter out grounds by pouring mixture through a fine mesh strainer lined with a coffee filter.
5. To serve, pour equal parts coffee concentrate and cold water into a glass filled with ice.

I chose four coffees for my taste tests. The choices were partly based on an attempt at diversity (milky, black, foreign, domestic) and partly based on availability, since, as it turns out, canned coffee is pretty difficult to find. If a store carries it at all, they typically only have one brand. I bounced all over Manhattan trying to locate an appropriate selection of beverages.

The first coffee I tried, and the only Japanese brand, was Boss Black, which I found in a Japanese convenience store near the East Village. It came in a cool black can emblazoned with the words “BOSS” and “BLACK” and a picture of a dude smoking a pipe.

But that was where its positive attributes ended. The coffee — if you want to call it that — was so stomach-achingly bitter that I, a person who always drinks black coffee and is typically not a sissy baby, couldn’t even finish the small can.

Next, I visited Trader Joe’s to get my hands on a can of the company’s “Latte.” The cutesy blue cylinder looked like something that might contain baby formula, and at just 75 cents per can, it was suspiciously cheap. So I wasn’t shocked when this “Latte” turned out to be aggressively sweet and milky, yet somehow watery at the same time and almost completely lacking in coffee flavor.

Surprisingly, the only palatable offering came not from venerable Italian coffee maker illy, whose issimo Cappuccino revolted me at the movie theater, but from Starbucks. The Doubleshot struck a good balance between coffee and milk and sugar, and had less of the metallic aftertaste that seems unavoidable in canned coffee. It was the only canned coffee I tasted that I would willingly drink again.

According to Peter Giuliano, canned coffee could be a whole lot better, and possibly even good, if companies used high quality beans and a pasteurization method like micro-filtration or flash pasteurization, neither of which require the coffee to be exposed to high heat for long periods of time.

In fact, good pre-made coffee already exists, albeit not in a mass market form. Brooklyn-based coffee roaster Kickstand makes a liquid coffee concentrate that can be shipped to consumers around the country. The coffee is made via cold extraction — the grounds sit in water for a minimum of 12 hours before being filtered. Because no heat is applied, this type of cold-brewed coffee is low in acidity and delicious without milk or sugar. Not adding milk has another benefit, which is that the coffee doesn’t have to be sterilized. Since cold-brewed coffee is essentially flavored water, the air-tight bottles stay fresh for around three months if kept in a cool environment.

Kickstand’s product is expensive, must be diluted before being consumed and can’t be bought at the store. So it isn’t exactly the answer to canned coffee’s problems. But it does demonstrate that, if made with quality in mind, pre-brewed cold coffee doesn’t have to suck.

The design of Altec Lansing's inAir 5000 speaker is rather cutting-edge. Photo by Jon Snyder/Wired

Freed of the 30-pin connectors, buttons and recessed charging ports required on traditional smartphone speaker docks, AirPlay device manufacturers are given the liberty to pursue more creative designs. We’ve seen some oddball shapes as the result.

This AirPlay speaker, the Altec Lansing inAir 5000, is one of the more striking specimens — it’s shaped like a giant axe head, with the “blade” pointing toward the sky.

The iOS-friendly music streamer doesn’t just look cool, it also happens to sound great as long as you keep it at moderate volumes. But it underperforms at higher volumes, and it suffers from the same network connectivity problems common in other AirPlay devices, making an otherwise solid product a bit of a disappointment.

The $500 inAir is some high-end hardware.

The $500 inAir is some high-end hardware: the plain mesh-over-grill exterior hides two 3-inch Kevlar drivers, two 1-inch tweeters, and a 4-inch subwoofer. Volume controls are tucked away on one side, with AUX and headphone jacks on the opposite side. Two ports — an Ethernet port for wired networking and a USB port for setup/iOS devices — are located on the back, along with power, reset, and Wi-Fi syncing buttons. Since the streamlined inAir doesn’t have any kind of display, your only status indicator is a multicolored LED that flashes from the bottom of the unit.

There’s a handsome remote included, too. But since your iOS device controls it just fine, the ridiculously stylish brushed-aluminum clicker is one of the best-looking accessories you’ll never need.

Connecting the inAir to a Wi-Fi network is easy if you have an iOS device. I plugged an iPod Touch into the USB port, downloaded Altec’s free app, and then hopped straight into the setup. This app-driven express lane saves a great deal of time and eliminates the tedium of setting up wireless networking. Old school browser-based setup is also an option too, but it’s really more of a backstop — more AirPlay manufacturers are turning to app-based setup, which is a good thing, as the early days of AirPlay were messy in that department.

I breezed through the essentials, (network passwords, device names) in just a few minutes, and then started streaming from iTunes immediately.

At its core, the inAir is an iOS companion device. Even though it pairs with a Windows PC running iTunes just fine, most of the wireless DJing perks are reserved for an iOS experience.

runMobileCompatibilityScript('myExperience1638806745001', 'anId'); brightcove.createExperiences();

The inAir is a small step forward in terms of AirPlay connectivity. My review unit only dropped its connection a couple times a day while testing in my RF quagmire of an apartment. (Believe it or not, this is actually an improvement, given the relatively poor AirPlay experiences we’ve been dealing with over the past year.) But after a week of use, I noticed the inAir’s status LED had started flashing purple — it had dropped the network connection entirely. A hard reset and a quick re-run through the setup app got things cooking again. It’s a small hassle, but given the stability I enjoy with other wireless speakers, even one weekly instance like this is more than I’d prefer.

It’s too difficult to say whether these hiccups are due to the inAir device or the AirPlay platform, but it definitely has a negative impact on the convenience of wireless streaming.

The inAir doesn’t absolve AirPlay of its ‘work in progress’ feel, but it does offer more in the way of stability than some of its first-gen competitors.

So how does it sound? At mid-to-moderate volume level, the 8.5-pound speaker can deliver neighbor-waking bass. Thanks to some baked-in signal processing, the inAir produces that booming bass with virtually no distortion. The catch is that the DSP wizardry gets a little heavy-handed once you really pump up the volume.

Although the inAir gives you even more distortion-free volume once you crank it from “moderate” to “loud,” it does so at the cost of a lot of dynamic range. Basshounds will feel cheated with this duality, and hardcore audiophiles will undoubtedly take issue when the pleasantly sharp-edged highs, fully present at moderate volumes, grow flat and dull at higher volumes.

Warm mids across the board help sweeten an otherwise uneven package, but the issue is less about power and more about sophistication. At even moderate volume the inAir is great for blasting a room with the sounds of Hollywood explosions, bassy Skrillex warbles, or electric organ solos from The Black Keys. Concertos and Buddy Rich drum solos just sound loud and lack presence.

Good-but-not-great audio and wireless chops aren’t that uncommon these days, so it’s hard to say whether the inAir is a progression in the overall speaker space. However, as an AirPlay device it’s undoubtedly a step in the right direction.

The inAir doesn’t absolve AirPlay of its “work in progress” feel, but it does offer more in the way of stability than some of its first-gen competitors. If you don’t mind the occasional mid-playlist hiccup, aren’t too picky about EQing and are itching to burn $500, the inAir is a good investment. If you crave absolute wireless stability or a truly transparent audio experience, skip it.

WIRED Room rockin’ volume and bass. Great mid-range performance. Digital signal processing quashes distortion. Fast and nimble wireless music streaming. AUX port offers non-iOS versatility in a pinch.

TIRED Good sound at a not-so-good price. Randomly dropped connections are instant party-killers. Aggressive signal processing at high volumes. No battery = stationary tunes. No iOS cable included.

The 2012 Porsche Cayman R is a proven attention-getter. Photo by Basem Wasef/Wired

In this unprecedented age of obscene horsepower and affordable performance, the Porsche Cayman R is the Jenyne Butterfly of the sports car world.

Who is Jenyne Butterfly? Look her up, preferably not at work.

Ms. Butterfly’s sinewy muscles are cut on gracile bone, and articulate her long limbs with purposeful flexibility. She’s graced with the sort of physique you’d associate with an Olympic swimmer or an extreme yogi. She also possesses a preternatural ability to fling herself across a pole with fluid undulations that appear to disobey the laws of physics.

At 2,855 pounds (or 2,910 pounds with a 7-speed dual-clutch transmission), the Cayman R is the lightest road car built by Porsche.

Extracting 330 horses from a mid-mounted 3.4-liter flat-six, Porche’s compact two-seater is outpowered by $24,000 Hyundais. It’s also in no danger of winning any luxury accolades, and its superstar big brother, the 911, is undeniably more glamorous. And yet, this low-slung pipsqueak is also a punchy performer, an aggro animal that’s been pruned like a bonsai, resembling a sort of scaled-down supercar.

At 2,855 pounds (or 2,910 pounds with a 7-speed dual-clutch transmission), the Cayman R is the lightest road car built by Porsche. Luxuries like door grabs and sound insulation are swapped for nylon straps and road noise, and aluminum door panels save 33 pounds of mass. Stiffer bucket seats lighten the load by 26 pounds, while 19-inch wheels do their part by ditching 11 pounds of unsprung mass.

So serious is this car’s commitment to the art of asphalt acrobatics that air conditioning is a no-cost option, even though A/C comes standard on lesser Caymans. The same mass-o-phobes who probably don’t mind their musky stench polluting the non-air-conditioned cabin are likely to order the optional lightweight lithium battery for a $1,700 premium — it sheds 22 pounds, and, with its shorter profile, ever-so-slightly lowers the vehicle’s center of gravity.

Photo by Basem Wasef/Wired

Those who are not fanatical about purebred sports cars won’t “get” the Cayman R. More than a few car geeks won’t, either. Many will likely cite that oft-recalled American metric, the Chevy Corvette, a potent but sometimes cloying jack-of-all-trades with a bigger, burlier personality. The Cayman R is, on the other hand, a heavy dose of mechanical minimalism wrapped in the deceptively familiar skin of status symbol sheetmetal — for better, or for worse.

Those who are not fanatical about purebred sports cars won’t “get” the Cayman R. More than a few car geeks won’t, either.

If you climb in expecting the stark, carbon and Alcantara-slathered racecar aesthetic of, say, a Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera, the Cayman R’s elephant hide surfaces disappoint. Its glossy plastic trim color-matched to the car’s exterior won’t do it any favors, either (though it does enliven the otherwise stark cabin.) Even twisting the ignition key with your left hand in that age old, Le Mans tradition won’t betray this car’s brilliant but obfuscated soul. Its exhaust note lacks the gut-punching immediacy of a solid American V8 or a silky smooth German inline-6, but throw the shifter into first and let out the heavyish clutch, and instant comprehension of this car’s pugilistic personality shoots directly to the seat of your pants. In a good way.

Resting .78 inches lower than more pedestrian Caymans, the R bucks with every surface irregularity, conveying the nooks and crannies of the road like your tongue on a toasted English muffin. The steering wheel pulls right or left like it’s directly linked to the tie-rod mounts by cables, and thanks to the aforementioned weight savings and mid-mounted engine, the car’s low polar moment of inertia facilitates slalom course slithers like an anxious eel.

Transitional handling (ie, what happens when steering input initiates weight transfer, triggering the kinetic chain of events that result in direction shifts) is so direct, the Cayman begs for swervy lane changes if only for the sheer adolescent thrill of it. Credit a taut chassis, stiffer bushings, and more aggressive suspension geometry for the dynamic gains. And if you complain about the washboard ride or vaguely unrefined engine intake sounds emanating from behind the firewall, you’re missing the point. Yep, this car is just like rock ‘n roll: if it’s too loud, you’re too old.

Photo by Basem Wasef/Wired

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With big cities around the U.S. and Canada celebrating Bike to Work Day, we want to remind you of the joys of pedal-based transport. Not only is it a path to a healthier lifestyle, but it's fun and economical. So with gas prices and temperatures on the rise, the timing couldn't be better to adopt a new motto: "Two wheels good, four wheels bad."

The problem is, neither you nor your coworkers consider spandex appropriate for the office, and you don't want to click-clack around Trader Joe's in your carbon fiber cycling shoes.

Luckily, there's a whole industry dedicated to making cycling apparel that doesn't look like cycling apparel. From clipless bike shoes that look like Chuck Taylors to weatherproof work pants that sport reflective strips when you roll up the pant leg, there are countless pieces of cycling gear that let you cruise around town without looking like you're gunning for the podium in Paris.

Mission Workshop Sanction Rucksack

Straying from the one-strap messenger-style bag, Mission Workshop's Sanction Rucksack ($180) opts for the two-strap stability of a backpack design. The roll-top bag sports three pockets on the exterior and a padded laptop compartment in the main cavity. There's also a big central pocket for stuffing a jacket or a pair of shoes. The Sanction has enough cavities to keep your stuff separated, but it could use some smaller compartments for pens, USB sticks and what-not.

On rides, the Sanction sat high on my back, and the sternum strap kept the pack from sliding around. Weatherproof material and urethane-coated zippers kept its contents bone-dry after riding through some aggressive spring showers. The roll-top flap let me cram extra gear into the bag when I maxed out its 16-liter capacity. And when I didn't need to employ the roll-top, I dug the Arkiv closure system – the clipless, slip-in fasteners were quick, secure, and silent (which is more than I can say about the Velcro sewn onto the underside of the flap, possibly the noisiest ever created). —Billy Brown

WIRED Waterproof fabric and coated zippers. Comfortable to wear – chest strap and back padding ease heavier loads. Roll-top lid expands the 16-liter storage capacity. Deep external pockets.

TIRED Minimal interior organization. Velcro is loud as hell (and scary to those seated around you on an airplane). Lack of breathability leads to sweaty-back syndrome.

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Photos by Jon Snyder and Ariel Zambelich/Wired

This microphone wraps around to your neck, where it picks up your voice even if you're speaking quietly or battling hurricane-force winds. Photo by Jon Snyder/Wired

Anyone with a smartphone is essentially a super-spy, carrying around miniature surveillance-and-communication technology that would have made Connery-era James Bond so enraged by envy he’d have sipped his martini slightly too quickly.

Nonetheless, it’s well known that all primates have an innate urge to acquire possessions that make them feel like they’re on a secret mission for a clandestine government agency. Even bonobos, I’m pretty sure.

The Black Ops 2 Professional Tactical Headset from iASUS is designed to work with your iPhone to make you the perfect merc, spy or paintball hero. The device wraps around your neck like a dog collar, only slightly more butch, and the two pickups nestle up against your vocal cords.

This is supposed to provide two benefits. First, loud sounds from rushing wind or nearby airstrikes don’t get picked up by the mic, so you get, in iASUS’s words, “direct voice communication free from environmental and wind noise.” Second, you can speak in a whisper and still be heard, which could be handy in conditions where you don’t want your cover blown and you’re also wearing a turtleneck.

Rushing wind that makes a normal headset completely useless is merely a low roar with the Black Ops throat mic.

Of course, most of us aren’t involved in infiltration, incursion or assassination on a regular basis. But the prospect of a noise-free, whisper-sensitive mic opens up a lot of options, from a phone chat in a cafe that doesn’t disturb your neighbors, to calling in sick to work from the baseball stadium.

Taking the mic out of the box, you’re likely to be a bit confused by a manual that’s clearly intended for the non-iPhone version of the headset. For instance, it refers to a push-to-talk connector, but what it supplies is just a standard iPhone remote button; if you’re using Skype or making a phone call, it’s actually a “push to hang up” button.

It looks badass, at least, with a couple of black discs on a black piece of rubber that attaches to some black elastic with a black magnetic clip in the back, along with a black in-ear headphone with a curly wire just like the Secret Service. If nothing else, you’re going to look the part.

So how well does this spy-tech setup work? I took it for a spin in a variety of environments, from a noisy Seattle cafe to a windy freeway with the windows open. I didn’t actually see any combat, but I gave it a good run.

Unfortunately, while the noise cancellation is an improvement over a pair of standard iPhone earbuds with mic, it’s a lot more marginal than the catalog copy would suggest. Background noise is just reduced somewhat — music and conversations around you are still going to be picked up — and most of what you gain in noise reduction you lose in clarity. Speaking in a normal tone of voice into the Black Ops rig, you sound a bit like you’re recording into a circa-1986 boom box while recovering from dental anesthesia, pretty much nixing any attempt at podcasting or breezy conversation.

Whispering is even more of a disappointment. Actual whispers are completely indecipherable, and even a hoarse, Batman-like stage whisper is extremely difficult to make out. The standard iPhone headset is realms better, background noise and all.

The headset does, however, shine when faced with wind noise. Rushing wind that makes a normal headset completely useless is merely a low roar with the Black Ops throat mic.

Here are some sound samples. First, here’s the iPhone’s standard, bundled heatset mic. I recorded with it in a quiet environment, a noisy cafe, a noisy cafe with speech kept to a stage whisper, and in high winds.

[dewplayer:http://www.wired.com/reviews/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Headset-set.mp3]

Now, here’s how the Black Ops 2 throat mic performed in the same four environments.

[dewplayer:http://www.wired.com/reviews/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Throatmic-set.mp3]

There appears to be a niche here for motorcycle enthusiasts and other people who want to make calls on their iPhone while in a heavy wind. It’s not clear who else that would include. Parachutists? Tornado chasers? The host of the “Roller Coasters Live” podcast?

To be fair, the device is built as a combat mic, not a cafe mic or a van mic. If you’re playing paintball, and for some reason you’re really attached to your iPhone, then a coarse bark might be at least a bit more stealthy than a normal speaking voice, and if your communication is limited to phrases like “flank left” and “enemy sighted,” the loss in call quality might be worth the convenience — and, let’s be honest, coolness factor — of a black mic strapped to your throat rather than a pair of white earbuds.

But that’s a mighty thin slice of pie, and doesn’t live up to the claims of the enthusiastic ad copy on iASUS’s website, or the website of reseller ThinkGeek. If you want a spy mic for more mundane purposes like 24/7 podcasting or having phone sex without waking your roommate, the Black Ops 2 Professional Tactical Headset is more F/X than effective.

WIRED Looks the part. Reduces wind noise considerably. Would probably work well on a motorcycle.

TIRED Picks up considerable background noise. Doesn’t pick up whispers decipherably. Voice distortion interferes with communication.

Livio's Bluetooth dongle plugs into your cigarette lighter, giving your older car the powers of the internets. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

The Bluetooth-enabled Livio Radio car kit attempts to be the Holy Grail of dashboard connectivity devices, marrying smartphones with older cars that lack the hardware to fully support them.

The main idea behind the device ($120 from Livio, cheaper elsewhere) is that you can wirelessly play music from your iPhone or Android phone via your car’s speakers using an FM radio connection, so whatever’s playing on your phone gets piped through the car’s radio.

The phone and the Livio dongle (which plugs into the cigarette lighter and is about the size of a small stack of credit cards) communicate using Bluetooth. It easily syncs with your car’s radio and your phone, and has a USB port on the side to keep your handset juiced up.

Like other devices in this category, it also works as a hands-free telephone. You can answer calls with the press of a button, but dialing out must be done on the phone. The caller’s voice comes through your car’s speakers and sounds nice and clear. Of course, anybody else in the car can hear the conversation — a plus or minus depending upon one’s viewpoint.

[Livio] recently opened up an API for the device, allowing developers to code their apps so they can be controlled via the buttons on the unit.

But Livio isn’t only intent on connecting your MP3s and your phone, it’s tackling apps, as well. The company recently opened up an API for the device, allowing developers to code their apps so they can be controlled via the buttons on the unit. Some of the partners already using the API are streaming services like Rdio, NPR, Live365 and AirKast, which is a streaming platform for small radio stations, so it’s useful for listening to sports broadcasts outside your local market. In addition to the apps the are enabled through the API, Livio makes its own phone app that can access some 45,000 internet stations, which is pretty cool.

In theory, the device is the perfect accessory for vehicles without built-in smartphone capabilities, such as my 2002 Volkswagen Eurovan camper. It does work as advertised, mostly without hassle. But in my months of testing it, I encountered a few annoyances that nearly prompted me to toss it out the window several times.

There were some things I liked. After years of suffering through touchscreen menus while driving, this device let me just cue up some Beatles without ever losing sight of the road. On family trips, my 11-year-old son, sitting in the back seat, could take control of the device with his iPhone and stream from his iTunes library or his Rdio app, keeping him busy and entertained. That was pretty awesome, except when I had to bark at him to turn off the latest profanity-ridden rap song.

But the biggest travesty of the Livio is how it nearly made my ears bleed on multiple occasions, not to mention those of my black Labrador and two juvenile-delinquent sons. If you turn the device off while leaving your radio on, you’ll be greeted with an ear-frying pop. If my dog could talk, she would have yelped “WTF!” every time.

When all goes well, the device just pushes your music through a vacant FM station on your radio. However, the same maddening popping sound (sometimes accompanied by static) happens whenever the vacant slice of spectrum you are dialed into starts to get edged out by radio stations as they come into range. If you’re driving long distances, or if the radio dial is already crowded in your city, this happens quite a bit. And if you’re an audiophile, you can forget about being pleased with the sound quality. The Livio leaves a tiny hissing sound in the background, however slight. But it was a nuisance enough that it turned my session with the Discovery box set of Pink Floyd remasters into a bummer.

But don’t get me wrong; all of the Bluetooth and app connectivity functions work very well, and the audio-quality problems I experienced are par for the course with most of these devices that rely on an FM transmitter. But I have yet to see something that clears these hurdles elegantly.

So despite the damage to my family’s eardrums, the Livio has promise.

WIRED Wireless music streaming through your car’s speakers. Some apps can be controlled using the buttons on the Livio, so you can stash your phone and reduce distractions. Setup is a breeze. It doubles as a USB charger.

TIRED Mind-blowing for the wrong reasons. Is an injustice to Pink Floyd. Pricey — the budget-minded are better off using a Bluetooth earpiece for telephone calls and wiring up a stereo input connection for music.

Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Asus' 27-inch dekstop PC is a solid all-in-one Windows machine. Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Driven mostly by Apple’s iMac, the all-in-one PC market has seen a boom lately. And why not? You can cram an entire computer behind a big, floating display and control it with a couple of wireless peripherals. The minimal, clutter-free design of an all-in-one PC works in every room of the house, and the big screen can comfortably double as an HDTV for watching videos. They tend to be more difficult to upgrade, but they’re very convenient.

This 27-inch all-in-one from Asus is no iMac, but it holds its ground as a great choice for a desktop workstation — it’s a powerful Windows 7 machine with a big, bright screen, an attractive design, and a wide array of features that give it a high level of versatility. The bundled keyboard and mouse are sub-standard, but there are enough positives here for me to recommend it.

The PC’s big, crisp display is one of its best features. The 16:9 widescreen HD panel sports a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels. It has LED backlighting and a 178-degree wide viewing angle, and colors appear bright and vivid. With its edge-to-edge glass display, surrounding black bezel, silver front-facing speaker bar and silver metal stand, the entire hardware package is attractive. You won’t see any buttons cluttering the front display — the menu icons are visible on the bezel, but the buttons are hidden underneath the panel. An understated camera eye peers from the center-top.

It’s not all about looks. Inside is a quad-core Intel Core i7 2600S processor, an Nvidia GT 540M graphics processor, 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive. A read/write Blu-ray drive is standard on this model. You also get plenty of ports on the Asus, which is another strong point. Our loaner came with two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, an eSATA/USB 2.0 combo port, VGA-out, HDMI-in, Ethernet, an SD card reader, and all the standard audio ports you’d expect.

If you’re cramped for space — like if you live in a San Francisco studio, for instance — then the Asus ET2700INKS could easily double as an HDTV. Using the HDMI-in port, you can connect the PC to a set-top box like the Roku or your DVR. You can even mount it on a wall, as the back of the computer has a VESA-compatible mounting bracket. This is a choice that more and more manufacturers are going with these days, and we like it — when the computer inside becomes obsolete in however many years, you can just repurpose the thing as an HDTV by mounting it on a wall or on a stand.

Asus is marketing the ET2700 as the “centerpiece of your family’s entertainment,” so I’d expected the computer’s internal speakers to produce some decent audio. With the help of an external subwoofer — a squat, black obelisk tethered to the back of the PC by a cord that’s about a foot too short — music came out sounding better than what most computer speakers produce. But the sound didn’t fill a large room. I turned the volume all the way up, and it still couldn’t compete with the droning traffic noise outside the Wired office.

The subwoofer. Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Like almost every all-in-one PC, the ASUS comes with a keyboard and mouse. But in this case, the computer would have been better off without them. The keyboard, in particular, was an ergonomic nightmare — just imagine a Mac keyboard made out of super-cheap plastic and with a mushy, pillowed typing experience. The included wireless mouse was too small for comfort, even for my dainty lady hands. If you plan on using the ET2700 as your daily computer, expect to drop some extra cash on a keyboard and mouse that are actually usable.

That issue gives me some pause, because with a $1,500 price tag, the Asus sits in the high end of all-in-one PCs. Still, it’s cheaper than a similarly spec’d iMac, plenty powerful, and stuffed with nice-to-haves. And especially if you’re looking for a computer to double as a home entertainment display, the Asus will more than suffice.

WIRED Bright, sharp display. Classy chassis with edge-to-edge glass panel and front-facing silver speaker bar. Packed with every port and feature you’d want in a PC. Blu-ray combo drive and HDMI-in makes it a great home entertainment device.

TIRED The included keyboard and mouse are maddening. Speakers are only so-so — if you’re using this as a TV replacement, you’ll want to upgrade the audio. Glass screen doesn’t handle glare well.

The new Impreza 5-door hatchback. Photo courtesy of Subaru of America, Inc.

Subaru has always been a bit of a niche player in the US market. Building no-nonsense cars with all-wheel drive gets you a loyal following of snowbound northerners, weekend rally drivers, triathletes and Yankee cranks. Outside of those demographics, Subaru is a non-entity: Only those with dissociative identity disorder have ever cross-shopped a Legacy and a Lexus, and the Arkansas Subaru Dealers’ Association could have their annual meeting in a single booth at Shoney’s.

Once you fall down the Subaru rabbit hole, however, the cars on offer are quite diverse. In election-year parlance, that’s called “microtargeting” — tailoring a particular combination of a candidate’s attributes to appeal to extremely specific audiences, which is why you’ll undoubtedly see the Romney campaign aim TV ads specifically at gun-owning dressage competitors who live in Ohio.

It’s also why Subaru’s all-new 2012 Impreza evolved separately from the performance-oriented WRX lineup, to appeal to a wider group of consumers. The cars got a new look inside and out, a stiffer chassis and lighter curb weight. A new 2.0-liter all-aluminum engine lost horsepower and displacement from the previous generation’s 2.5-liter mill, but Subaru claims the new, lighter engine is actually more sprightly than its predecessor. Most importantly, the Impreza can now be ordered with a new continuously variable transmission (CVT) that helps to boost fuel economy by a whopping 36 percent, up to 27 mpg city and 36 mpg highway.

Style-wise, the smallest Subie has come a long way from its bug-eyed youth.

To reflect that repositioning, the Impreza’s advertising campaign got a slight tweak, too. There are still the usual spots with bearded thirtysomethings, dogs and bicycles, but there are also ads targeted at those first-time new car buyers who might find the other small, affordable, high-mpg offerings a little too ubiquitous. In other words, the new Impreza is a hipster Corolla.

I got two weeks with two Imprezas — one an entry-level Premium hatchback, the other a fully-loaded Limited sedan, both equipped with CVTs — and came away from the experience with mixed impressions. Everything that makes a Subaru a Subaru — the all-wheel drive, the hose-it-off interior, the boxer engine — still shines, but some of the changes that cater to new fans may end up making some enemies.

Style-wise, the smallest Subie has come a long way from its bug-eyed youth, and flared fenders make the family resemblance to the larger Legacy more clear. Bonus: Windows you can actually see out of. In both sedan and hatch form, the Impreza has a tall greenhouse with plenty of glass, negating any need for blind spot sensors and back-up cameras. It’s an intentional improvement, and a welcome one among the embrasures that pass for auto glass these days. Just set your mirrors and go. On the hatch, you can even see your tail lamps in the rear-view mirror.

Inside, no-nonsense Luddites will find plenty to love. The center stack is made up of knobs and dials — just like Dad’s Heathkit! — and acres of hard, textured plastic. Cars equipped with navigation also use a touch screen to control the radio, but virtual “buttons” are big and easy to see. There’s plenty of legroom in the back, but the front seats lack support for long drives. Both our testers also featured noticeably loud blower motors, as if Fuji Heavy Industries had pulled parts from some Swedish junkyard.

The new Impreza 5-door hatchback. Photo courtesy of Subaru of America, Inc.

The Tern P7i is a folding bike made for city commutes. Photo by Jon Snyder/Wired

The only reason to consider a folding bike is if you really need a bike that folds.

For the general cycling public, they are impractical machines. The tiny wheels, odd weight distribution and freaky frame shape all make for an awkward ride filled with huffing and puffing. But for those forced to take a commuter train or subway, they’re a godsend. Fold up your ride, and you can bring it with you on crowded trains and busses. Stash it in the closet at work or in your studio apartment. You can even check a foldie as luggage, so when you land in Beijing or Istanbul, you can pedal yourself around and play hipster tourist.

If you’re looking to buy a folding bike, I’d encourage you to test ride a Tern Link, an entry from the relatively new Taiwanese manufacturer. At around $1,000, they’re well-priced, sitting just above the budget Dahon bikes and below the comparable Brompton models. Tern bikes in general are well-appointed, and feature some impressive construction that makes for a comfortable ride that rivals more expensive folders.

Tern’s Link platform isn’t as fancy or as swoopy as its performance-minded Verge frame. Instead, it’s set up for commuters — the P7i model we tested came with a very nice rear rack, a BioLogic Joule II dynohub that powers an integrated front light, and a fully-enclosed internally geared Shimano Nexus 7 hub. The 20-inch wheels are topped with fenders and have V-brakes. There’s even a bike pump built into the seat post.

With all that trim, the price sits at $1,200. The most basic Link configuration, the C7, is only $450, but the frame and components are not as nice. Most Link models run closer to $800.

The P7i has a one-size-fits-all 6061 aluminum frame with a rather utilitarian shape, cutting a straight line from the head tube back to the main hinge. One unique feature is the double truss construction of the main tube, which splits and wraps around the seat tube on its way back toward the rear hub. This increases the frame’s stiffness (always a problem on folders) and allows for a more efficient power transfer when pedaling.

The folding routine requires practice. You start at the handlebars, which are double-hinged to allow adjustment for bar height and rotation. To fold up the bike, you first undo the handlebar clasp and pulling the bars up, so they’re in a straight line with the stem. Then, undo the joint clasp at the base of the handlebar stem and fold the bars down next to the fork (all of the joints have sturdy safety releases that are easy to work). Drop the seat post down, fold the pedals up, then unclasp the over-center lock joint above the cranks. The bike swings at the two pivots to collapse into a sort of “N” shape below you. A magnetic clasp keeps everything from swinging apart.

Folded. Photo by Jon Snyder/Wired

Tern lists the maximum rider weight at 242 pounds, which is very close to my weight (I rarely miss a meal). So I was really pushing the envelope. Still, the bike was stable on all different terrains. I rode it mostly on the flats, commuting to work every day, but I also took it up and over a couple of San Francisco’s hills during my two-week-long testing period. Through some stroke of weird luck, I rode it in the rain almost the whole time.

The P7i was far less sketchy than other folding bikes I’ve ridden.

One note of praise: Tern has made a remarkably stiff frame. The P7i was far less sketchy than other folding bikes I’ve ridden. There was almost no unwanted flexing or creaking happening below me as I was pushing the bike over hills or cooking along at full speed.

Keeping it properly adjusted was an issue. When I first started riding it, things were slipping here and there — the pitch of the handlebars, the seatpost, the position of the rear wheel (maybe my weight is to blame). But the good news is that almost every joint on the Tern can be adjusted roadside using minimal tools. So, I was able to keep loose nuts in check using only a hex wrench multi-tool and a small box wrench.

One thing that did slip on me more often than I liked was the Shimano hub. I’ve experienced the same thing with these hubs before — I felt it slip when under load or while applying a lot of torque. I expected more stability out of it. One other quibble with the drivetrain: the gearing isn’t quite wide enough. I wanted more gear choices on climbs, and craved a higher top speed during cross-city commutes. A 9-speed or better would solve this, so it’s no fault of the manufacturer, just the wrong hub for me. You may feel differently.

And of course, this being a folding bike, I traveled with it. The folded P7i frame can be carried comfortably with one hand (it’s about 30 pounds) using either the seat or the rack as a handle. You can also wheel it along beside you by holding the seat. On the commuter train, it slots into the nooks reserved for luggage and it’s not too much of a hassle to navigate a station platform while carrying one. For longer hauls, the better choice is to pick up one of Tern’s bags or rolling travel cases. There’s a collapsable, wheeled trolley rack ($150) that fits all Link models, and two suitcase-style carriers ($250-300) that work as checked luggage. I should note that the bike is far too large to carry onto an airplane, so you’ll need a case if you’re flying with it.

Beware, though — it’s a bike-nerd magnet. While toting it around, I got a lot of questions and requests for demonstrations. All the talking and explaining was more tiring than carrying around a 30-pound bike.

WIRED Nice, stiff frame design makes for a stable, efficient ride. Attractive design. The D7i is well-equipped for a wet urban commute. Folds up relatively easily, and stays there. Price is right for what you get.

TIRED Shimano Nexus 7 hub isn’t a top-performer. Could be lighter. You’ll get really good at making adjustments. It’s still a folding bike.

The BaByliss Pro Volare clippers have a Ferrari-inspired motor (and paint job). Photo by Jon Snyder/Wired

“Aerodynamics,” Enzo Ferrari once said, “are for people who cannot build engines.”

Ferrari built his eponymous brand on the back of exceptional powerplants — a series of small-displacement engines, chiefly V-12s, designed by legendary names like Jano, Lampredi and Colombo. They were artful pieces, hand-crafted works that produced great power and unholy noise. They collected races and championships like a fameballer gathers marriage certificates.

We live in an age where a brand’s history and core values often have little to do with its licensing potential.

How does a $200, Chinese-built hair clipper with a “Ferrari-inspired engine” (to quote the press release) fit into that lineage? It doesn’t, of course. But this is irrelevant. We live in an age where a brand’s history and core values often have little to do with its licensing potential. Maybe the famously mercurial Enzo, dead since 1988, would have approved of a hair clipper licensed to wear his name. Maybe not. It’s probably best that we don’t know.

So here we have the BaByliss Pro Volare clipper. Your $200 gets you a three-speed cordless haircutting device with an easy-grip rubberized back, a one-hour quick-charge time, a moving steel blade coated in diamond-like carbon, and a fixed steel blade coated in titanium. It is red. Its “Ferrari-inspired” electric motor runs for a claimed 70 minutes with a full charge and comes with an assortment of useful accessories — a charging stand, oil, a cleaning brush, a selection of comb attachments. A dial at the top of the clipper lets you adjust cutting depth from 0.8 to 2.0 millimeters in increments of 0.3 millimeters. The blade has a one-year warranty. The clipper itself is good for two.

My test unit came in a gloss-black presentation box, one festooned with slogans like “success is built upon the performance of the engine and blade,” and “finest professional clipper made.” It also came covered in someone else’s hair, the leftover snips of a previous reviewer. This was harmless, albeit slightly creepy. As a result, I did not try it on my own hair, though I did use it to cut the locks off a Barbie doll bought specifically for the purpose. When I was done, Barbie’s head felt smooth as suede and she looked like a young Debbie Harry. I suppose that’s what you’d call a success.

This was admittedly not the most trying of tests. I briefly considered offering the BaByliss to my local salon for an extended evaluation, but then I remembered a conversation I once had with my barber regarding hair clippers. It went something like this:

Me: “Is that clipper a Wahl? I hear those are pretty decent.”

Him: “Eh, yeah, but a clipper is a clipper. As long as they don’t jam or fall apart that often, they’re all the same.”

Me: “Which ones don’t jam or fall apart?”

Him: “The expensive ones.”

Me: “Is the one you’re using expensive?”

Him: “Your head’s moving too much. Stop talking. How high do you want your sideburns?”

A quick Google search shows the BaByliss Pro Volare to be among the more expensive clippers on the market. Make of that what you will.

Babyliss Pro is a respected firm in the styling industry, and these clippers don’t tarnish the company’s name — they’re sharp, the blades cut cleanly and aren’t prone to jams, and the graduated clipping-height dial feels like it will last. It’s the other brand on the box that irks. What, exactly, are you paying for here? Despite a host of Ferrari logos on the BaByliss’s box, there’s no prancing-horse badge on the clipper’s exterior, and the electric motor at its heart doesn’t seem to be anything special. It sounds and feels just like every other clipper I’ve used.

There is one benefit, though: A Ferrari-branded hair clipper lets you indulge your inner monologue nerd, crossing hair terminology with car-review patter ad infinitum. To wit, the following popped into my head while trimming Barbie:

“Modern technology? I miss the days when cars and hair were dangerous, when clippers didn’t have electronic stability control and drew blood if you got sloppy around the ears. That separated the men from the boys! Oh, those hair-clipping men of old! Remember Mario Maruzzi, the Barbasol Beast of Burbank? From 1925 to 1973, he cut hair with his elbows, his hands lost in a tragic Brylcreem accident. Drove his Ferrari to work every day, never left a sideburn uneven. What a pro.”

On second thought, maybe it’s best to just find a good barber.

WIRED Designed to cut hair, and does just that. Blade trims evenly and doesn’t jam. In the words of an old hot-rodding maxim, red makes anything faster.

TIRED Seems less sturdy than the industry-standard Wahl clipper, though cutting performance is similar. Ferrari tie-in offers diddly, and it’s not like the prancing horse needs your money. Repeated use does not give you awesome Fernando Alonso hair.

Can you feel the road? Photo by Jon Snyder/Wired

The Big Jambox from Jawbone (the red one) is much larger – and louder – than the original Jambox. Photo by Jon Snyder/Wired

The Jambox is back. But now, little baby’s all grown up.

The Big Jambox from Jawbone (yes, the hands-free headset people) builds upon the success of the company’s original Jambox portable speaker, keeping the attractive no-frills design, but wrapping it around a larger box that’s louder and has more battery life.

The new model will be available this week at a price of $300. That’s pretty steep for a portable speaker, and a full $100 more than its smaller sibling. But the sound it puts out is much more satisfying, making it worth the extra Benjamin.

Like the original Jambox, the Big Jambox is a simple brick with small speakers inside. It pairs wirelessly with any Bluetooth device to play any audio source you want, it runs on a rechargeable battery, and has a built-in microphone so it can be used as a speakerphone. Unlike the original Jambox, which measures 6 inches wide, 2.2 inches tall and 1.6 inches deep and weighs 12 ounces, the Big Jambox is a beast. It’s 10 inches across, 3.5 inches tall and 3 inches deep, and it weighs 2.7 pounds.

Probably the greatest joy of the original Jambox is its go-anywhere portability — it’s literally small enough to slide into a jacket pocket, a purse or a fanny pack. With the Big Jambox, you lose that. It’s fine in a backpack or a tote bag, but a three-pound brick made of plastic, rubber and perforated steel simply isn’t as travel-friendly.

You can turn it down when it’s time to play nice, but crank it up and you get an impressively loud and clear speaker system with serious muscle.

In exchange for portability, you get much-improved sound. Jawbone loaned me a Big Jambox to test for a week, and I used it in a variety of settings, indoors and out. While the original Jambox does fine for adding a little ambient noise to a dinner party or supplying background music in an office, the Big Jambox commands attention. Sure, you can turn it down when it’s time to play nice, but crank it up and you get an impressively loud and clear speaker system with serious muscle. The highs are crisp and the mids are precise. While the lows could be meatier, the bass response was still better than I expected, given the size of the speakers — it has a stereo pair of 1.6-inch neodymium drivers and a pair of rectangular passive radiators (one in front, one in back) to cover the low end, all housed in a sealed cabinet.

It’s even more impressive when you take it outside. I plopped it on the back deck, and it had enough brawn to fill the whole back yard with great-sounding audio. Even when I turned it up as loud as it would go, the distortion was barely perceptible — the things around it started rattling from the vibrations before the speakers began to distort. It employs some compression where needed to keep the distortion at bay, but the audio processing didn’t leave any noticeable sonic fingerprints.

Bluetooth pairing is simple. Just press the “Pair” button on the side and pick the Big Jambox from the list of devices on your screen. I tried three iPhones, an Android tablet, a laptop and an iMac, and it’s obvious Jawbone has the Bluetooth connectivity dance steps down pat. The Big Jambox will remember 8 paired devices at any given time, and its claimed 33 feet of range worked as advertised, though it does require line-of-sight once you get further away than about 20 feet.

The lithium-ion battery lasted over 12 hours in our tests. That’s listening mostly at full volume and making a couple of hour-long phone calls. You can probably eke out another hour or two if you use it at lower volume levels, but either way, it easily lasts long enough for a day at the beach or a party that stretches to the wee hours. A tiny icon in your phone’s status bar shows the speaker’s remaining battery life on iOS devices (natively) and on Android (via Jawbone’s companion app). It takes about 2.5 hours to fully charge it using the included AC adapter. You can also trickle charge it using a USB cable, but you’ll have to leave it plugged in overnight to juice it up all the way.

The Big Jambox comes with Jawbone’s LiveAudio feature installed — basically, a software trick that gives the stereo image a big “3-D” feel via some artificial spatial widening. It sounds cool if you stay seated, centered and perfectly stationary about 3 or 4 feet from the speakers. Stand anywhere else (like across the room) and it sounds like crap. Also, LiveAudio drastically alters the dynamics of recorded music. I only enabled the feature while watching movies, as it generally made music sound worse.

The lithium-ion battery lasted over 12 hours in our tests.

Overall, however, Jawbone’s new speaker sounds great, and I’m a big fan of the design. But its ability to fill a larger room — rather than just add some ambience — is what makes the Big Jambox a success. I’d recommend it, even at the relatively high price of $300. There are similar speakers at $200 or less (Altec Lansing’s $200 inMotion Air IMW725, or Soundfreaq’s $100 Sound Kick) but they lack the power, the speakerphone features, and battery life of the Big Jambox. If you don’t want to make compromises in those areas, you have to spend money.

If you find the original Jambox endearing, but (like me) wish it went louder and offered more clarity, put the Big Jambox on your short list. But beware: it’s more of a hassle to schlep it to a picnic, so I’d only recommend it for people who always carry a backpack, or who mostly use their Bluetooth speakers around the house. If you split your time between a traditional home office and a sunny spot like your back deck or rooftop terrace, this thing is your new best friend.

WIRED Big, clear sound. Tight package. Controls for skipping tracks, changing the volume and answering calls are right on top. Over 12 hours of play time on a rechargeable battery. Solid Bluetooth performance. Under three pounds. Eight rubber feet keep it from shimmying around.

TIRED Price makes you think too hard. Size matters: requires an external method of conveyance, and it won’t squeeze into your travel carry-on. Bass is clear and not flabby, but it could pack more punch. Needs the wall wart to charge quickly. Spatial enhancement feature is meh.

The 2012 328i. Photo by Basem Wasef/Wired

“Something’s different,” my friend grumbles from behind the wheel of my 2012 BMW 3-series test car.

He should know. His garage houses a last-gen BMW 330i and the cultishly track-focused Honda S2000. My buddy is cursed with a freakish attention to detail and an enthusiast’s acuity for stuff like steering feel and pedal feedback. He doesn’t use words like “delicious” and “transparent” when describing said qualities — that’s a job for scribes like me — but it’s just as well.

My response is quick: “Electric steering,” the modern alternative to a good ol’ fashioned hydraulic arrangement. While more energy efficient, the new setup isn’t flawless. Electric steering can denature the impression of how front tires address pavement, convey the texture of the road below, and relay the rubber’s ever-changing compositional characteristics, which vary as temperatures rise, compounds soften, and adhesion limits decline under hard cornering loads. All that cerebral data filters into a seat-of-the-pants, tactile impression we call steering feel. It’s the sort of thing that gets the automotive press — and the lunatic enthusiast fringe — all riled up.

Despite mildly reworked body panels — a nip here, a tuck there for a cohesive, if inoffensive look — the updated 3 is also loaded with other less-controversial updates. It stretches 3.6 inches in length and creeps closer to 5-series territory, though BMW also managed to trim 88 pounds of mass, appeasing the ever vocal peanut gallery. The 335i‘s twin-scroll, twin-turbocharged inline-6 carries over from the previous car, pumping a nice round 300 hp and 300 pound-feet of torque. But the new 328i, with its new turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder that’s good for 240 hp and 260 pound-feet of torque, steals the show. The four-banger, first seen in the Z4 sDrive28i and spreading through the BMW portfolio like wildfire, saves 133 pounds of curb weight and ekes out 33 mpg on the highway.

The 328i comes across as the lighter, more tossable of the two, while the 335i’s power delivery is a tad more silky and seamless.

Both models receive a new 8-speed automatic transmission, as well as BMW’s so-called Eco Pro setup that encourages fuel-saving driving habits by displaying how many miles of range have been gained by your light-footed restraint. Stop/start functionality also aids the eco-conscious effort, and the system can be easily disabled by tapping a small key next to the engine start button. A six-speed manual gearbox can also be ordered on both iterations.

While autocrossers will gravitate to the three-pedal setup, aesthetes will likely fixate on which trim package to select: Sport, Modern or Luxury. Sport ($2,500) offers stiffer suspension, black exterior trim, two-spoke 18-inch wheels, more aggressively bolstered seats, and an avant-garde, red matte aluminum interior trim. Modern ($2,100) includes more conventional matte chrome exterior details, 18-inch turbine wheels, and Scandinavian-style interior textures like open-pore wood and plenty of pale finishes. Luxury ($2,100) is a bit more orthodox, with multi-spoke 18-inch wheels and chrome exterior bits, and glossy wood paired with contrast stitching and earth-tone leather hues.

And so, back to the pesky question of steering feel. Two days prior to the aforementioned third-party observation, I was flirting with the 3-series’ performance limits on the banking, climbing and spiraling surfaces of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in Monterey, California. I’d like to say I was wrestling with the ragged edge of car control, but really, there was hardly any melodrama to speak of behind the wheel of either vehicle.

Photo by Basem Wasef/Wired

Photos by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

As more athletes embrace the ethos of good-form running, the trend of barefoot-inspired footwear is spilling over into new areas. The craze that started on the beach soon moved to the streets and sidewalks, then the trails and mountains. Now, it’s landed on the sofa.

The NewSky is an everyday, around-the-house barefoot shoe from New Balance — a company that already makes a raft of barefoot shoes for running on the pavement and in the hills. The NewSky is designed to be worn as a minimalist recovery shoe, not a running shoe. You change into them when you get home from your run — presumably one you just completed while wearing some other minimalist model.

The shoe’s upper is fabricated using 95 percent post-consumer recycled PET bottles.

It’s minimalist in another sense, too, since it makes extensive use of post-consumer recycled materials. The shoe’s upper is fabricated using 95 percent post-consumer recycled PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) bottles, and the outsole is held in place with a layer of water-based glue. On average, each pair of NewSkys uses the equivalent of eight 20-ounce PET bottles.

The NewSky also uses the absolute minimum amount of material necessary to craft a piece of footwear, and ends up using 73 percent less material than the average New Balance running shoe. You can see this in how slender the NewSky is, and you can feel it when you pick it up. It’s extremely lightweight — the women’s size 7 weighs in at 4.1 ounces.

The design is stylish almost to the point of being elegant, at least for a sneaker. The PET fabric resembles dark grey felt. Unlike felt, it has a stiffness that wears well and shows great stain resistance. My tester shoes have remained new-looking for the past month, and I’ve worn them more frequently than any other shoe in my closet. The fabric seems to fold or crease rather than wrinkle. Laces are either black, or a contrasting color that provides a visual pop when matched with the color of the outsole and sole. While wearing these around, I’ve received compliments from people as varied as twenty-something hipsters to my 90-year-old grandfather.

The shoe earns as many points for comfort as it does for style. The foam sole has a 4mm drop from heel to toe, similar to the New Balance Minimus and many other barefoot-style running shoes. Prior to receiving this pair of NewSkys, not having seen the design in person but knowing it’s meant to be worn as a recovery shoe, I was expecting the sole to resemble the Nike Free. The sole is actually much different in that it is very minimal and just padded enough for wearing as an everyday shoe. The parts of the shoe that contact the ground are made of EVA nubs.

The end result is something that just feels really good. And not only are they supremely comfy to wear, they’re smart-looking and sustainable. An all-around winner.

WIRED Eco-minded construction uses recycled materials. 4mm drop makes them a perfect after-run shoe for barefoot enthusiasts. Extremely comfortable. Subtle, minimal styling. So much the bomb, I wrapped a pair up and gave them to my Pop as a gift. ‘Nuff said.

TIRED It’s hard to rag on these shoes, but the color selection could be better — the post-consumer PET construction limits choices to a few subdued grays.

Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Homescool's With Teeth jacket. Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Given the warm winter most of us have been suffering through on the west coast, it’s a miracle we got the chance to test any snowboard equipment at all this year.

But the powder finally arrived (however late), and even though it’s deep into April, we’ve got at least a month of rideable backcountry stuff here in California and desinations north. So I took to the trees to test a clothing system from Homeschool Snowboarding. The company will have some new clothing arriving for the 2013 season, but it’s keeping these pieces I rode — a jacket, a pair of pants, a fleece hoodie and a two-piece base layer — in the line for next year.

Homeschool is based in Oregon, which is known for its particularly wet mountain conditions — the slopes can get socked with fog and pelted with rain even in the depths of winter. You can buy its gear in places where the weather isn’t as harsh, but Homeschool sticks to its hometown roots by making clothes tuned for optimal breathability in any conditions.

Homeschool’s line of snowboarding-specific winter wear uses Cocona, a material that infuses cloth fibers with active carbon particles derived from recycled coconut shells. This is used in lieu of supposedly less-breathable fabrics like Gore-Tex. Homeschool’s Continuum Trifecta, a combination of Cocona-based outer shell, base layer, and mid layer, is designed to keep riders warm, dry, and comfortable on any mountain, regardless of how crappy the forecast is.

Base Layers: Airbreather Moto Top and Airbreather Pant

Designed to insulate, wick away sweat, and stay odor-free, the Airbreather top ($65) and pant ($60) base layers represent the first part of the Continuum Trifecta. As the against-the-skin layer, the four-way stretch material felt nice and soft, and it did breathe well. The waffle-pattern inner layer was effective at keeping me sweat-free where it made contact, but the Airbreather’s loose fit hampered the fabric’s ability to wick away sweat efficiently. The odor-resistance was underwhelming as well — the bases needed a wash after their second use.

WIRED Soft to the touch. Breathable. Colorful print is pretty sweet.

TIRED Too loose to effectively wick sweat. Odor resistance is not so… resistant.

Mid Layer: Shevil Full-zip Cocona Fleece

Level two of the Trifecta, the Shevil full-zip fleece hoody ($85) keeps flying the breathability flag; the Cocona polyester and stretch-poly mid layer is extremely comfortable and, yes, it breathes very well. The hood is big enough to fit over a helmet or make you look like a badass, and the cut is slim enough to let it fit underneath an outer shell with no problem. It’s fairly thin as far as insulating layers go, so if you’re riding in extremely cold conditions or you’ve just got thin blood, you may want to look for a thicker layer. The Shevil also represents a leap above the Airbreathers base layer clothes when it comes to odor-resistance — the fleece went through weeks of wear before it needed a wash. Hey, someone’s gotta test it.

WIRED Breathable. Very odor-resistant. Large hood is comfortable.

TIRED Too thin for frigid weather. Lacking a chest pocket, or zippered pockets.

Outerwear: With Teeth jacket and Revolve pant

HomeSchool’s most impressive offerings are its outerwear pieces. The With Teeth 2.5-layer jacket ($325) and the Revolve 2.5-layer pant ($275) are both made of Cocona Xcelerator material, which is breathable while staying fully waterproof. Both the jacket and pants have a much softer feel than you’d expect from a shell, and an inner mesh layer helps retain some warmth. Beneath a simple, low-profile outer design lies a wealth of details riders will appreciate: magnetic pocket closures, elastic cuff bands that are easy to use with gloves on, and a hood with a wind-blocking faceguard, which kept my lips from going numb on the mountain. The Xcelerator material was weatherproof, and combined with taped seams, powder skirt and Riri Aquazip zippers, the jacket and pants shed snow and the occasional rainfall with no problems. The big story, though, is how breathable this stuff is — this may be the most breathable set of snowboarding shells I’ve ever worn. Excess heat was never an issue, even on snowshoe hikes up in the backcountry. Whatever the material couldn’t breathe, the shells’ wide zip vents did. The Revolve and With Teeth felt phenomenal in conditions ranging from whiteout to bluebird.

WIRED Extremely breathable. Soft touch. Excellent styling with smart design features inside.

TIRED Waterproof zippers tend to stick before they’re broken in.

Homescool's Airbreather base layer system. Photos by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

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Photo: Greg Broom

The Basics

They sound better, right?

Right. Full-size headphones offer full-size audio quality. The larger drivers produce an expansive soundstage with richer bass. Unlike on-ear or in-ear models, these headphones are circumaural, meaning each cup surrounds the entire ear, blocking out ambient noise. They're more comfortable too. The big cups are usually padded with velvet or leather, making them better suited to marathon listening sessions.

Is that why they're used in pro studios?

Yes, but studio headphones differ slightly from consumer offerings. Some won't plug into your mobile or laptop audio jack without an adapter, and others require more signal strength than a smartphone or tablet can crank out. Also, many high-end headphones are tuned for specialized tasks like mixing and mastering, whereas consumer models feature a sound signature that's better for all-around use.

But aren't they too big for mobile use?

While some full-size headphones fold up or tuck into a case, they're certainly not as travel-friendly as a pair of earbuds. But if you value comfort and sound quality, the added bulk is worth it.

Buying Advice

Over-the-ear headphones have either open- or closed-back ear cups. Open allows sound waves to escape, for a more natural soundstage. But they also advertise your King Crimson fandom to the world. We recommend closed-back models; though more bassy, they're far better at containing sound. (If blocking external noise is your primary concern, a pair of in-ear headphones will always be better.) If you'll be using your headphones with mobile devices, buy a model with an impedance rating of between 16 and 64 ohms. Anything higher and your music may sound thin unless you use an amplifier to boost your signal strength.

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Photo: Greg Broom