Brad Moon

This stylish wearable with the retro analog look is a smartwatch in disguise that supports notifications and lets you issue voice commands to Siri or Google Now. You can also place and answer voice calls on a Martian, making it an excellent choice for those who want to keep their smartphone discretely out of sight. Look for Martian smartwatches to invade Best Buy any day now.

Samsung has been on a tablet roll lately. The company leads the Android tablet pack and with 20 percent of all tablets sold worldwide in 2013 and the crown as the biggest tablet maker is within reach. Earlier this year, I reviewed three of Samsung’s PRO model tablets. Those were awesome products for those in the market for a high end device, but Samsung is also paying attention to those who don’t necessarily need an ultra high resolution 359 ppi display or the latest screaming fast mobile processor. This time we take a preview look at the Galaxy Tab 4 range, a new trio of Android tablets from Samsung aimed squarely at the casual use crowd.

The cell phone has quickly become the focal point of our mobile communications. With the power of a computer in your hand, a display with a resolution on par with HDTV, LTE data speeds that rival your home broadband Internet connection, a high quality camera, gaming capabilities at the level of previous generation consoles, massive amounts of onboard storage, multiple connectivity options and cloud-based synchronization of your services, the smartphone can quickly become an irreplaceable part of your life.

Remember the Pebble smartwatch? The wearable with the innovative and power saving e-paper display, the CES 2013 star and Kickstarter record setter? The one that now has its own appstore and has become a market leader with over 300,000 sold? Well, the Pebble is still very cool, very cutting edge and very popular. But it’s being joined by a new edition, the Pebble Steel. If you wanted the original Pebble but thought it was maybe just a little too funky to fit in with your business look, you’ll love the Pebble Steel with its more refined stainless steel case and thin profile look. Watch for the all new Pebble Steel soon at Best Buy.  

Square is one of the hottest tech companies going. By providing a plug-and-play credit card reader that lets anyone accept credit cards for payment by using their smartphone or tablet, Square is bringing sophisticated payment options to the masses. Perfect for small businesses, vendors at special events and anyone whose customers want to pay using a credit card —Square lets you run your business from anywhere. Square processed over $20 billion in transactions in 2013, proving just how popular this innovative approach is. Now you can pick up a Square credit card reader or tablet stand at Best Buy, starting at under $10.  

As you no doubt know, when it comes to trying to pack the performance needed to undertake serious video gaming in a laptop, it comes down to a very tricky balance between speed and portability. Try to shove too much power in a gaming laptop and for all intents and purposes, it ceases to be a portable PC —heavy, bulky and with little battery life. Go too far in the other direction, though, and you end up with something that’s svelte but unable to play games on anything but the lowest settings. I just spent some quality time with a gaming laptop that manages to strike the perfect balance: the Eurocom M3. It’s a compact, lightweight laptop with the power to chew through pixels and polygons while keeping frame rates high. Eurocom says the M3 is the most powerful 13-inch notebook ever made and everything I’ve seen supports that claim.

Working from home is an increasingly popular trend. Doing so saves on office space, commute time and many of the expenses of having a team working in a centralized building. It can also be an attractive option for employees. I worked from home on a part-time basis for a decade and switched to full-time over five years ago —I can’t even picture going back to a traditional office. But if you’re going to make this work, you have to take it seriously (it’s not all coffee on the deck and hanging out with the dogs) and your PC is a central component. I’ve put together suggestions on how to set up your PC to work from home.

If there was any doubt that this would be the year that smartwatches and other wearable technology hits the mainstream, look no further than Best Buy, where you’ll find best-sellers like the Pebble smartwatch alongside the latest generation of Samsung’s wearable tech –the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo. Soon some new entries will be joining these: the Cookoo and Cogito. Choice is good and these new models offer a new take on the traditional smartwatch form factor as well as a more affordable option for those who want to take the plunge into wearable technology without a large investment. I just spent a week with a Cookoo smartwatch and you can read my review here.  

Like many Canadians, I’ve spent the past few weekends spring cleaning. Something about being largely stuck indoors through a particularly long and harsh winter (including nearly a week without wired Internet access when an ice storm took out cable service in my neighbourhood) makes the first warm day of April seem like it’s past time to get things done. We open the windows, break out the rakes and start cleaning, indoors and out. Cars are washed, windows wiped and carpets shampooed. Since I have the cleaning bug anyway, this is the perfect time to clean my PC –also, both “inside” and out. The result will be a computer that’s faster, cleaner, more energy efficient, less cluttered and a pleasure to use.

I was really looking forward to getting my hands on the new Linksys WRT 1900AC wireless router. It’s not just the buzz that’s built up since it wowed attendees at CES 2014 or the black and blue shout to the iconic Linksys WRT54G —the best-selling wireless router of all time. My own wireless network is at a crossroads. As high definition streaming video and a swarm of mobile devices combine with Wi-Fi dead zones to overpower what was once a pretty robust network, I was anxious to find out if the latest generation of Wi-Fi routers could provide the power to make things feel snappy once again. After swapping out my existing router for the Linksys WRT 1900AC review unit, I can say that thanks to the killer performance of this retro-styled rig, Wi-Fi Nirvana is once again within reach.