The ReTrak / PC World competition came to a close last week and I can announce that the winner was…

Joe Cushnan from Worksop

Congratulations to Joe.

The correct answer was 20 – there are 20 ReTrak products for sale on the PC World website¹.

1. at the time of the competition [↩]

This review is part of the 1 Pound Challenge – can you find a decent gadget in a pound shop?

One thing I have noticed during my pound shop visits is the vast number of USB hubs that are available – however, as I learnt with an earlier review these are so cheap because they’re USB 1. So, on a recent visit to Poundland I was surprised to find a hub labelled as USB 2. Naturally, I bought it.

The Signalex 4 Port USB Hub is a few inches long and is a made of a light grey plastic. The side with ports on is flat but the remainder is curved. It can therefore only sit on its side and isn’t brilliantly attractive. At one end is a green light which comes when it’s plugged in. It connects to your PC via a captive cable.

Unfortunately, and I don’t know if it was any issue with the one that I had, when a USB device is plugged into some of the ports (and only 2 are affected) the light goes out. Short circuit, maybe?

However, there was a much more serious problem with it. It’s not USB 2.

What made me think it was? The sticker in the top corner which shows the “Certified USB” logo and the number 2.0 just above it (click on the image to the right and you can see it). However, peel this label off and things become even more confusing. Underneath is the same logo and 2.0 number but the logo also contains the words “High Speed”.

Looking at the official USB site I can see that if the USB logo lacks the words “High Speed” then it’s USB 1. Only USB 2 is “High Speed”. So, they’ve attempted to cover this over by dropping the “High Speed” part of the logo. However, they’ve kept the rather tell-tale “2.0″ above it. It’s not official but definitely tells people that it’s 2.0.

As this is a blatant case of deception I informed Trading Standards (or rather Consumer Direct, which is who you contact now). Unfortunately they were only interested in getting me to write to the retailer to get my money back. At a pound I have no interest in going to this effort – what I do want is blatant mis-selling to be stopped. I did, however, contact Poundland to tell them of this and their response was…

I have informed our Quality Assurance team of the issue and they will check further stocks.

This, to me, suggests that they think I have a one-off. However, the sticker would indicate this isn’t the case and that they’ve attempted to cover up the issue across their stock. Interestingly, this product does not feature on their website.

I did tell them this and, weeks later, I’ve heard nothing further from them.

Summary of Signalex 4 Port USB Hub

Poor quality, a possible fault with the circuitry causing the LED to go out in some cases and the fact that they are selling this as USB 2 when it’s not means that I can’t recommend this in any way.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 9th December 2011.

The Samsung NP300E5A-A01DX (yes, got to love those long names) is a laptop model that appears to be pretty exclusive to DSG (Dixons, Currys and PC World) and a handful of other stores . Currently retailing at a penny under £400 at Dixons it sports 4GB memory, Intel Core i3-2330M processor, 500GB hard drive and all running Windows 7 64-bit.

It has a 15.6” screen but remains compact thanks to a thin frame around that screen. Never-the-less, they’ve still found room above to fit in a webcam and the keyboard has a full width keyboard, including keypad. The keyboard is of the “Scrabble tile” variety and is very good in use – the keys are nicely spaced with a good travel.

The trim of the laptop is generally black with a silver and black lid – the silver being ridged, probably to avoid scratch marks being too obvious. It makes it a little more stylish than a plain black lid, but there is quite a bit of give in what is, otherwise, a sturdy machine. Having said that, even though the lid bows in quite easily I struggled to get any pressure to have an effect on the screen itself. The screen is LED, running at a 1366 x 768 resolution. It won’t set the world on fire but it’s perfectly adequate, especially at the price.

There are no particular thrills when it comes to its capabilities – 3 x USB 2 ports and a DVD writer, rather than the USB 3 and Blu-Ray players that many are equipped with these days. However, it does sport both VGA and HDMI outputs, b/g/n wireless, Bluetooth 3, a 4-in-1 card reader and Gigabyte Ethernet, so not all is lost.

With the lid open, the interior sports more silver and, in particular, a large and rather splendid trackpad. It reminds me of the Apple trackpads in appearance, although there’s no glass here.

Samsung have, as usual, installed many of their own programs but also various trial software. The first thing I did was remove the trials. The Samsung software is, I have to say, generally useful though – this includes a program which optimises the boot time. However, the driver update program refused to work, even after I downloaded the latest version from the Samsung website.

The packaging is kept nice and minimal – you get the power supply, a quick start guide (the full manual in installed on the laptop itself) and (very usefully – and rare these days) a recovery DVD.

With “normal” internet and office use at default power values, the battery last around 5 hours 40 minutes.

You’ll notice I’ve not mentioned the sound capabilities – not because I haven’t checked, but I rarely find it useful to talk about. Who’s going to use the tiny speakers in a laptop for anything other than Windows sounds? If you’re playing music or a movie, I’d always suggest a separate pair of speakers or using headphones.

Summary of Samsung NP300E5A-A01DX

For a 15.6” with optical drive, it’s surprisingly lithe for this price. It’s also quite powerful, with a host of useful features. If you’ve not got a huge budget to spend, this is highly recommended – it would make a particularly good laptop for a teenage, for instance. A little more robustness in the case lid and the removal of some un-needed trial software and this would be perfect.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 1st December 2011.

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