You may have come across retractable cables before – often found on portable mice for laptops, they wind excess cable into real which is suspended half way along the cable length. What ReTrak have done is improved upon this, added other new technologies and then created a huge range of products. Basically, what you get are a range of electrical accessories that take up as little space as possible.

The latest ReTrak product that I’ve been looking at is their headphone splitter cable. This is a male audio plug which then separates into 2 female audio connectors. Essentially this allows 2 people to share one audio output.

As with the other products in the range the cable coils away onto a retractable reel – and, again, the quality is excellent with a smooth action both ways.

The cable is 1m in length and all the connectors are gold plated. It comes with a 3 year warranty, which is excellent if you’re worried about the retractable mechanism.

For testing I passed this to my 13 year old daughter – just the kind of person likely to want to share music through separate headphones. In fact, she’d bought a headphone splitter in the past.

She found the output extremely good (in fact she thought it sounded better than connecting directly into her iPod – not sure how that would work though!) and was impressed that each output was stereo – the splitter cable she bough before simply split each channel into a different headphone, meaning that each listener had monaural output. Her only negative was that she found that the 2 cables would sometimes get a little tangled when retracting.

The ReTrak Headphone Splitter Cable can be found at Amazon for £14.99.

Summary of ReTrak Headphone Splitter Cable

An excellent quality headphone splitter with the added bonus of the compactness that the retractable mechanism gives. Because the cable splits into 2 it can get a little tangled at times but the length warranty ensures you don’t need to worry.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 9th February 2012.

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This unbranded (other than the ITP Imports name in small print on the back – this appears to be a range exclusive to PoundWorld) retractable has been designed to connect your iPhone or iPod to your PC. It has a 75cm cable which winds onto a reel, in a similar way to the reTrak products. The difference here, initially, is the price – retract equivalents are ten times the price at least. In fact on inspection the reel mechanism seems very similar to the reTrak version so I had high hopes of a product well worth the pound.

The cable reeled in and out without a problem even after repeated use. The mechanism felt a bit rougher to me than the reTrak, but my daughter felt this was easier to use.

The plastic connectors on either end let it down though – they appear to made of very cheap white plastic which you feel wouldn’t last very long. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the biggest problem. After some initial problems getting the iPod connector to fit into my daughter’s iPod Touch we got it to connect to the computer. That was the first and last time it did – after that nothing happened. It would appear that it simple failed after one successful use.

This came from PoundWorld but an equivalent Signalex branded version can be bought at Poundland.

Summary of Retractable USB iphone & ipod Cable

For a pound the reeling mechanism works well but the connectors on the ends are so cheap that failure is always imminent. Save the pounds and get a quality version with a guarantee!

Reviewed by David Artiss on 23rd January 2012.

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Yes, the keyboard is very mucky!

I’m not sure what to make of this one. It works well and seems excellent value, but I’m not sure what do use it for.

This is the Signalex USB LED light. It costs £1 from Poundland. It plugs into a USB port and has a flexible arm (and of good quality too), about 20cm long, on which is a cylindrical tube, just over 16cm long, containing 5 bright white LEDs. Plug it in and it lights up.

But light up what?

The cylinder appears to be stuffed with a curl of silver card so the LEDs bleed through to the back, meaning that if the lights are turned away from you, you can still see them. Besides, any laptop screen will reflect the light back. The arm isn’t long enough to have the lights reflecting down on the keyboard without it getting in the way of viewing the screen.

So what do you use it for?

I’ve found one use – my keyboard at work has a USB port in the back and plugged in there I can get it to illuminate my keyboard. However, light at work isn’t a problem so I’m unlikely to use it. But, I guess, it’s a start.

Summary of Signalex Ultra Bright USB 5 LED Light

It works. Very well. The lights are bright and the whole thing is of a reasonable quality – certainly worth £1. But what do you use it for? If you can think of something, then it’s worth the money.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 1st January 2012.

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The microphone built into a laptop can often be a compromise – providing a basic facility, whilst keeping it as small as possible. And if you’ve got a desktop then you may not even have a microphone.

So, can one for just £1 do the job?

The Signalex Computer Microphone, available from Poundland, doesn’t get off to a good start – get it out of the green and white packaging and you have a drab looking black microphone made of very cheap plastic. In fact the plastic wasn’t quite cut properly on mine so there was a sharp “shard” sticking out of the very top. Although it boasts that it “pivots on base” this simply means that it tilts forward. Because the base isn’t very heavy you don’t have to tilt it very far before it starts to fall over.

At full height it stands at 21cm tall and has a 1.5m captive audio cable on it. Near the top of the microphone is an “on/off” slider which cuts the sound off when in the “off” position. This switch is of very low quality and, very stiff, I couldn’t tell which position it was in most of the time.

All of this sounds bad which, to be honest, it is. Until you use it.

Here are recordings I made with an in-build laptop microphone and then with the Signalex (click on either to play)…

Summary of Signalex Computer Microphone

Poor quality plastic, falls over easily just generally looks and feels awful. But it’s a vast improvement of built-in microphones and, hence, well worth a pound. Recommended!

Reviewed by David Artiss on 28th December 2011.

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You may have come across retractable cables before – often found on portable mice for laptops, they wind excess cable into real which is suspended half way along the cable length. What ReTrak have done is improved upon this, added other new technologies and then created a huge range of products. Basically, what you get are a range of electrical accessories that take up as little space as possible.

What I particularly like about ReTrak’s range of cables is that even when they produce a version with multiple connections, they still make individual cheaper versions too.

Take, HDMI cables. ReTrak have 4 in their range – 3 with specific connections and 1 with a “exchangeable tip” connection.

The 3 with specific cables all have a standard HDMI male connector on one side and then either another matching connector on the other (EUCABLEHDAA) or a micro (EUCABLEHDAD) or mini (EUCABLEHDAC) connector. The first is the “standard” connector that you’ll probably find on your PC, monitor or TV. The mini and micro connectors are often found on smaller devices, such as tablets or mobile phones – the micro is a lot smaller and lots very much like a micro USB port.

What all 3 cables have in common is their high quality retractability (however, due to the extra size of the reel needed to accomodate the wider HDMI cable, there’s now a button that automatically reels the cable back in), 1.5m cable length, version 1.4 compatibility, 10.2 GB bandwidth and 3-year warranty. Oh, and they all retail at £29.99.

I tried the standard connector to plug my ThinkPad Edge into my Samsung HD TV. It worked with any hitch and the image and sound was perfect.

Lastly, there’s the “multi pack” version which has interchangeable connectors. By default it has a standard HDMI connector on both ends, but also comes with a micro, mini and VGA connector which slots onto either end to convert the format. Indeed, the standard reel is the same one as in the EUCABLEHDAA pack. Each connector holds in place by two plastic “legs” which slot into ridges that run down the standard connectors edge. The cable is the same standard, bandwidth, etc, as before and still comes with a 3 year warranty. The RRP reflects that this is a 4-in-1 cable and retails at £39.99.

Gallery

Summary of ReTrak Retractable HDMI Cable

Without the re-tractability the standard cables can be had for a lot less. However, all 4 cables are excellent quality, as always for ReTrak, and if portability is what you need these are superb. The 4-way multi-pack version is particularly good value.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 24th December 2011.

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ReTrak, popular in the US, are now selling their range of products in the UK at retailers such as Dixons and Amazon.

You may have come across retractable cables before – often found on portable mice for laptops, they wind excess cable into real which is suspended half way along the cable length. What ReTrak have done is improved upon this, added other new technologies and then created a huge range of products. Basically, what you get are a range of electrical accessories that take up as little space as possible.

Their range includes computer, visual and audio cables along with power supplies, headphones, iPhone and eBook products, mice and even a retractable mouse mat with built-in USB hub!

So far I’ve had nothing but praise for ReTrak products and with their universal 70w notebook charger, that’s not about to change. Indeed, this is more than just a retractable version of a standard cable.

As with most laptop chargers, it comes in 2 bits – the transformer “brick” with  cable that plugs into your laptop and a seperate cable that goes from the transformer to the mains supply. This is usually done so that the latter can be swapped out for different countries.

As usual, ReTrak have put a retractable reel on both cables, the former of which (the one that goes into the laptop) has a slimmer cable due to the lower voltages involved. The whole thing reels out to about 9.5 feet (about 2.8 metres).

The transformer, designed to work on laptops requiring up to 70w,  is a pretty standard device and you can plug it into a range of laptops using some interchangable tips – there are 9 provided in total (more on this in a minute).

The really clever bit is the UK mains plug. ReTrak have created something they call the ThinPlug – a foldable version which makes it truly compact (see the pictures below). And it works brilliantly.

So, the cables reel in and the plug folds down – the chunkiest bit is the transformer – all this does mean it’s a lot easier to keep one in the tight confines of a laptop bag. To top it all off, they supply a handy cloth travel pouch to keep it all in.

Back to the charger tips… ReTrak claim that they will fit 7,000 models. Unfortunately, my ThinkPad Edge isn’t one of them. Or my wife’s Samsung. Or my daughter’s Samsung.  So, if you do buy one I’d recommend either checking out the connectivity first or buy it from somewhere that will happily let you send it back if it doesn’t work for you.

There’s only one other issue worthy of note.. the price. This will cost you about £70, whereas it’s not difficult to find an equivalent product (although not with the compactness) for under £20.

Summary of ReTrak Retractable Universal 70 Watt Notebook Charger

The price is a little steep but the engineering is fabulous – if space is at a premium you’re not going to do better. But check that it’s compatible with your laptop first.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 13th December 2011.

Gallery

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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.

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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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Meantime, I’ve contacted all 3 retailers – PoundWorld, Poundland and 99p Stores. Sadly, none of them have responded and don’t appear to be interested in assisting with this. That’s a shame as, so far, I’ve discovered some real gems. Having said that, I’ve also unearthed some dishonest advertising!

I’ll also be updating some of my past reviews of pound products to reflect changes and similar products I’ve seen elsewhere – look out for that!

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For the last of my current batch of 1 Pound Challenge products¹ I have the Livewire USB Hub (with 4 ports). Costing £1 from PoundWorld, this is a blue, translucent plastic hub which has a male USB connector on on end and then bulges out to house 4 females connections. Plug this into the side of a laptop or into a PC and it will convert a single port into 4.

As well as the hub itself you also get a 40cm USB extension cable, in case you cannot plug the hub directly into a port (surrounding connectors, for example, may not allow it).

The hub has 5 green LEDs in it – one for each of the USB connectors (i.e. 1 for the male socket and the remaining 4 for the female connectors at the other end).

So far, so good. Unfortunately, in use there are 4 big problem areas.

1. Build Quality

The plastic case around the male port has come unglued and doesn’t hold together well. As a result the whole circuit board, and the attached USB ports move around inside the case when in use. I’d have put this down as a one-off duff broken one if I hadn’t read reviews elsewhere of people having similar case issues.

Additionally, the USB extension cable has a rubber surround on each of the ends. This appears to be some poor quality rubber which already feels as if its degrading – it doesn’t bode well for any longer term usage.

2. It’s USB 1

Yes, that’s right, with USB 3 on the market and pretty much nothing these days is USB 1, they’ve somehow managed to sneak a USB 1 product out. That means anything connected to it will be slooowwww.

I don’t know if it’s only the device and not the cables that can be USB 1 or 2, but certainly using the cable I had no issues connecting up USB 2 devices.

3. Those LEDs!

The thing about USB hubs is that, unless they have their own power supply² you’re dividing up an already meagre power source – USB devices often struggle when plugging into hubs. That 5v supply is now down to, potentially, 1.25v per socket. However, with 4 LEDs lit that’s even less. The thing is, those LEDs are completely useless. All 5 come on when you plug it in and they don’t appear to do anything other than look pretty, yet, zapping what little power you did have.

4. Poor hardware support

I tried a couple of USB keys and really struggled to get any of them to be recognised – again reading other online reviews of this product backs this up as many other people have found them to be a hit-and-miss affair.

So all-in-all a pretty poor effort and a shame – for anyone wishing to enhance the number of USB connections they had this would have been ideal but all of those downsides above really mean that I can recommend this product.

The packaging shows the product is from ITP Imports, which shares an address with PoundWorld. ITP Imports have been in the news in the past for some suspect pregnancy testing kits and have to withdrawn dangerous items from sale (their “Deadly Dinosaurs” range turning out to be just that).

Summary of Livewire USB Hub

USB 1, seems to be dodgy at recognising hardware, poor build quality and zaps whatever power you may have wanted for your device on lighting unnecessary LEDs. Best left on the shelf.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 30th October 2011.

1. Yes, I need to find the time to head off to a major city and mooch around the pound shops for more products!
2. which is what I choose for all my own hubs

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