If you need a battery pack case for your iPhone 5, there are a handful of options that are Apple-approved -- meaning, their charging technology will continue to work throughout multiple software updates. We like the Lenmar Meridian the best because it can take a dead iPhone 5 to full charge with its class leading 2300MAh power rating, is easy to attach and remove, and is simple to operate.

Why A Battery Case?

Battery cases give you a thin, unobtrusive backup power source built right into the case. The design is easier to carry than external battery packs that require you to haul a charge cable around with you, but what you gain in portability over an external battery pack, you lose in charge capacity. For example, the Satechi Energy Station 10,000, which is our pick for best external battery, has almost seven times the charge capacity of the popular Mophie Juice Pack Helium. But if you consistently run your iPhone battery dry before the day is through and don’t want the hassle of plugging into an external battery pack, these cases are your only option.

Amazon is full of obscure brands with iPhone 5 battery cases, but we wouldn’t buy anything that’s not Apple-approved. Nick Guy, iPhone case guru at iLounge, and best iPhone/iPad case reviewer in the world, explained it to me: “I’m 99.9% certain none of [the no-name models] are licensed. I think in general it’s better to stick with something that won’t potentially stop working.” We wouldn’t gamble $70-plus on an unlicensed model and as such, we didn’t bother considering any that did not explicitly mention that they were “Made for iPhone”, “Apple Approved” or something similar.

I picked up a pair of Google’s Project Glass Explorer Edition augmented reality glasses yesterday. It’s the kind of thing I generally discourage people from doing, but when I had an opportunity to buy a pair early courtesy of the If I Had Glass program, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try them out and talk about them on the site. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning.

Once you are selected by Google to buy a pair of Project Glass Explorer Edition glasses (henceforth referred to as Project Glass, Glasses, or Google Glass), you had to A: have $1500 and B: be able to pick the glasses up at one of a handful of Google campuses. I rolled into the Mountain View Google campus at noon on Sunday with my wife and baby, and we walked up to the Glass building, where we were greeted by a friendly Google employee who introduced us to Evelyn. Evelyn’s job was to guide me through the setup process for the Glasses, which was supposed to take about 30 minutes. Google also offered a variety of beverages, including mimosas and fancy fresh juice. Swanky!

We sat down at a table in a converted part of a big workshop, which I later learned was one of the shops where Googlers can work on projects of their own choosing. Each of the Glass setup stations would be familiar to anyone who has ever had glasses fitted at an optician—there were a couple of chairs and a mirror angled up to give you a good look at yourself wearing the Glasses.

Fitting Project Glass is unlike fitting traditional glasses. You’re supposed to wear them higher on your face than I’m accustomed to—the top of the frame is supposed to be near your eyebrows. The frame’s arms are curved—instead of resting on your ears, they wrap around your skull. And the metal parts of the frame are made of thin titanium, which means you can (and will) bend the hell out of them. During the fitting, Evelyn encouraged me to bend all the metallic parts of the frame until the glasses were comfortable. After the frames were lined up properly, I had to adjust the screen slightly—it’s a on a swivel that lets you move it closer and further away from your eye.

Let's start with a simple question: how accurate is your gaming mouse? If your answer is in terms of DPI--maybe the number you've read off the side of the mouse' package--you're omitting a lot of attributes and variables that affect the accuracy and performance of a typical mouse. That's part of the reason it's difficult to objectively evaluate a gaming mouse. So much of user experience lies in subjective factors: the physical sculpting and weight of a mouse, your preference for button surface textures, etc. These are the things that you notice immediately and affect your day-to-day use, while sensor quality more often than not just has to pass a threshold of acceptable responsiveness and accuracy for non-professional gamers.

When I visited Logitech's Borel Innovation Center facility last week, I spoke with the company's engineers about the process of designing a gaming mouse and learned about the tracking variables that they care about when testing mouse accuracy.

Full disclosure: Logitech paid for my trip to their laboratories in Lausanne, Switzerland, but we were under no obligation to produce video or write about anything I saw there. The information I learned from Logitech's engineers is genuinely interesting to me from both a consumer and product reviewer's perspective, and the insights about mouse tracking variables are applicable any gaming mouse, whether it's made by Logitech or a competitor.

Apologies if the title of this week's column is a little crude--it's attributed to Ken Rockwell, a no-nonsense photographer who gives very useful practical advice about gear and techniques on his site. In this case, Rockwell was referring to a UV lens filter for DSLRs, which he says doesn't have any optical benefits for today's cameras. It's a topic we've broached before--whether or not a UV filter is necessary at all. Photographers are split into two camps in this debate.

The first camp believes that UV filters not only are optically useless, but unnecessarily degrade the quality of your images. Putting a piece of flat glass, no matter its build quality, on top of a $2000 lens is going to affect the quality of light hitting the sensor. UV filters were originally designed to block out wavelengths of light that can't be perceived by the human eye, but affect film. Ultraviolet light on film can leave a haze effect and reduce contrast, but this effect doesn't apply to modern digital cameras, which compensate for UV in the sensor and image processor. So for DSLRs, the purpose of UV filter is now primarily to protect the front element of the lens from any potential damage. In fact, when you buy a UV filter from a company like Tiffen, the image on the box shows a cracked lens--the manufacturer doesn't hide behind the fact that UV filters aren't really for UV protection.

But damage protection is exactly what the second camp feels is necessary about using a filter. That extra insurance against dropping a lens element-first into the ground warrants what they consider negligible image quality loss, which makes sense if the camera is being used for web photos or is equipment on loan, like shared office equipment. UV filter users believe that lens resale value is higher with a UV lens, too. It's the photography equivalent of putting a plastic screen cover on your new smartphone.

With my two lenses, I wanted to see for myself not only if having a lens filter/protector significantly affected photo quality, but also if there were any noticeable differences between a cheap UV filter and a more expensive one. I bought two filters to test: a dirt cheap $9 Tiffen UV filter, and an expensive $70 B+W UV filter with "multi-resistant coating". But as of today, I'm ditching the Tiffen filter and going to use the B+W filter on new lenses.

As someone who plays music from Apple devices, if I needed wireless speaker I’d get the Pioneer A4. Reviewers tested and loved its room-filling sound at $400. But in an effort to popularize Airplay vs Bluetooth, Pioneer is now selling the A4 for $200, which is an absolute steal for a speaker that takes full advantage of AirPlay’s high fidelity streaming.

Pioneer A4

The A4 isn’t the biggest AirPlay speaker, but it packs a full array of drivers and tweeters that were hand picked by renowned speaker designer, Andrew Jones. It’s also DLNA certified, which means you can stream media from non-Apple devices, and its HTC Connect system lets anything HTC link up to it. A few other AirPlay speakers have this feature, but when coupled with its incredible sound, the added compatibility makes the A4 a great product.

Why AirPlay?

AirPlay is Apple’s Wi-Fi-based wireless speaker technology. Typically, you pay a bit extra for this transmission medium that, because it transmits music in full fidelity, gives you much better sound and range than a Bluetooth speaker — Bluetooth compresses the signal in transmission, which hurts the sound quality. Using AirPlay also doesn’t require you keep your phone or laptop’s Bluetooth on. As long as you’re connected to the same Wi-Fi network as the speaker, you can stream audio. This means that on AirPlay, violins sing and bass sounds nuanced, not thumpy. This audio quality a strength unique to the format, so when shopping AirPlay, you want a speaker that can produce serious sound.

If you didn’t already know in detail what Airplay is, I’ll explain it here, but if that’s the case, you should probably consider something else. It’s a very specialized product category, but here are the its distinguishing characteristics.

Airplay is limited to Apple products: AirPlay is a wireless transmission protocol that’s Apple-specific, meaning that (mostly) only iOS devices or Apple computers can play audio on these speakers. Good AirPlay speakers, like our pick, actually have the ability to stream via DLNA, a format of streaming that most computers and gadgets can handle, but it’s a tricky setup.

Airplay is expensive: To do anything with AirPlay, you would normally expect to spend over $350 for a speaker (our pick was released at $400). At and above that price, speakers will usually have the hardware to play the music at the quality with which it’s being transmitted. With the exception of our pick, if you’re not Apple-centric or if your budget for a wireless speaker is $300 or less, we’d say head over to Bluetooth, which, despite advancements, still compresses the sound data, killing the music’s quality. Generally, a sub-$300 AirPlay speaker won’t have the chops to take full advantage AirPlay’s lossless streaming.

Airplay, like Bluetooth speakers, has an easy to use, nearly invisible interface: If you’re used to navigating Apple’s menus, AirPlay will be intuitive and simple because almost any iOS software that plays audio can be routed to the speaker. Again, AirPlay is Apple-specific, which means it works on Apple computers and iOS devices, but not on Android devices or PCs. Once you’ve set up the AirPlay speaker to your home Wi-Fi, iTunes and software like Spotify will show a small arrow that you can tap to play your music through the speaker. Since it’s playing over Wi-Fi, you can take your iPhone or laptop around the house without interrupting the connection, as long as you’re within the network’s range.

You’ve probably also heard that, instead of buying an AirPlay speaker, you can get an Airport Express and plug in your existing speaker via 3.5mm audio cable. The interface will be as simple as with AirPlay, but you’re back to dealing with cables and bulky appendages. Besides that, the placement of your speakers becomes limited to where you can place an Airport.

Besides those constraints, AirPlay’s format has its share of issues.

If you are looking to buy over-ear headphones for about $150, the Sony MDR-7506 are the pair I would buy. After researching literally every pair of over-ears in this range available (old and new), reading countless professional reviews, Amazon reviews, and conducting an actual listening panel consisting of audio professionals and lay-people, the Sony MDR-7506 are the clear winner. Not only did they finish first in our tests, they are also built to last, and are the least expensive (by a lot!).

Photo credit: Flickr user flavouz via Creative Commons.

Why $150? Why Over-ears?

This price range and headphone design is made for someone who is looking for a first purchase to immerse themselves in their listening experience. Over-ears should close out ambient sound, and a good pair at this price level should create a clear, balanced sound that accurately represents what the recording artist (be it music, movie, or game sound designer) intended. They should be built relatively solidly, and last for years. And at this price level, you can feel comfortable taking them for a walk, on the subway, or relax at home.

The other day, I was talking to a friend about old tech we still use, and I realized I’d be hard pressed to find anything I’m still using that’s older than my studio headphones. I bought a pair of Sennheiser HD580s about ten years ago. They still sound great, but they’ve outlasted most of the other electronics I’ve purchased since then simply because the designers knew how they’d fail.

Most other headphones and earbuds I’ve had failed in exactly the same way—a cable gets damaged and the connection either breaks entirely or (worse) is sporadically noisy. Sure, it’s relatively easy to fix a broken wire, but the cable is never quite the same after you’re done—it’s thicker and is less flexible than an undamaged wire.

The good news for me is that I’ve never had to fix the cable on my HD580s, because they’re user-replaceable. At $25, the replacement cable is a fairly expensive part, but it takes a few seconds to replace the wires. And yes, the default cables are probably less sturdy than they should have been, but I’m happy to spend $25 every few years to avoid having to replace the headphones entirely. Over the last ten years, I’ve replaced the cables on my HD580s two or three times. The HD580’s foam parts, which tend to wear down over time, are user-replaceable too. They lasted longer than the cables, but I’ve replaced both when they wore out. The end result is that the headphones are just as comfortable and sound just as good today as they did when they were new.

I’ve probably clocked a few thousand hours on my HD580s over the last decade (including a couple of 24-hour marathons), and during that time I’ve killed a half-dozen pairs of earbuds. Everything from $20 generics to $125 Shures suffered my wrath. The only difference is that on the HD580s, I was able to replace the broken component. Unfortunately, since I bought these headphones, Sennheiser seems to have backed away from user-replaceable parts, at least for headphones in the $100-150 price range. Sennheiser’s much-more-expensive studio headphones still have user replaceable parts, but the more affordable HD5xx series doesn’t. It seems like the rest of the industry has followed suit. While The Wirecutter’s favorite sub-$150 headphones feature user-replaceable cups, the cord is a permanent fixture. Most of the other headphones in their roundup featured permanent cords.

Because the designers who built the HD580s knew where they’d fail and where they’d wear out, they made those components easily replaceable. There's a fine balance between planning well for failure and a planned obsolescence that results in a forced upgrade cycle. However, if the end result is that I can easily fix things that break due to normal wear and tear without having to replace them, I'm happy to keep using my HD580s for the foreseeable future—until they either break beyond my ability to fix or I can no longer buy replacement parts for them.

Rather than risk losing your iPhone, we think a true waterproof camera or a GoPro or a waterproof camera is the best way to get photos in the water. But if you have to protect yours from impact, liquid and dust, the best tough waterproof iPhone case, overall, is the $80 Incipio Atlas.

We think the Incipio is the most well rounded phone case, more secure yet just as slim as last year’s favorite.

It has a depth rating of 6 feet, but was among the driest in our endurance pool tests when many others simply flooded. It even has a 1-year warranty against water damage to your phone.

But we also have a pick for a sport camera case to turn your smartphone into a quasi-GoPro action sports camera. And finally, I recommend a serious dive case for an iPhone that can go to over 100 feet of depth.

Why You Should Believe Us (and How We Tested)

My editor Brian Lam helped me test this case and the competition in Mexico and Indonesia, as well as the ocean and a pool in Hawaii. As an ocean exploration journalist and founder of the Wirecutter, I don’t think any technology writer is as equipped to test these cases as he is.

He lives in Honolulu and tested all of these cases by verifying their seals were dust free and by swimming a half mile in open water dragging them behind him and roughing them up up to 10 feet underwater during freedives. He also kept them in a pool overnight at six feet of depth, to challenge their seals over time–most cases are only rated for an hour at their given depth so this is a really great way to test minor design flaws that would expose them over time or keep them from going deeper than their rated spec in case you needed to drop down for a moment. He also tested the deep dive case on an expedition as a fellow with MacGillivray Freeman films in Indonesia, to 80 feet.

For non-water sports, ruggedness, shock absorbing designs and materials as well as build quality was factored in. For action sports camera cases, meant to take a smartphone and transform them into a GoPro kind of camera, things like accessories (mounting options) were also important.

Logitech’s series of Bluetooth Easy-Switch Keyboards are the best keyboards to use with most devices, due to the fact that they're a pleasure to type on, are widely loved by reviewers, boast extremely long battery lives, and come in Apple and Microsoft hardware-friendly configurations. They can be paired with up to three different devices at a time and switch back and forth between those paired devices at the push of a button.

Single Use Keyboards Are Lame

A lot of people bite the bullet and buy multiple keyboards to use with the various devices in their lives. They’ll have a keyboard to use with their computer (if they don’t own a laptop,) an external keyboard or a keyboard case to use with their tablet, and maybe one to use with their set top box or HTPC. That kind of thing gets expensive, and wastes money you could be putting towards something awesome.

The smart money’s on owning a keyboard that’s designed to work well with as many of the devices you own as possible.

There will be no Adobe CS7. Today, Adobe announced its new Creative Cloud apps and services, which will be the only way to get the newest versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, and Premiere Pro. After a decade of Creative Suite programs, Adobe is going subscription only with the CC family of apps and services. If Creative Cloud sounds familiar, that's because it's not new. Adobe introduced the service last year as a complimentary offering alongside Creative Suite--Creative Cloud consisted of both free and subscription-based versions of Adobe's core products. Starting today, though, Creative Cloud will be the only way to get the newest versions of those products. For Photoshop users, that means tapping into hyped features like Camera Shake Reduction and Smart Sharpening.

So how does it work? Pricing is obviously the first concern. Adobe announced that Creative Cloud will cost $50/month for access to all of its apps and services. Owners of CS3 or newer products will be offered an introductory price of $30/month for one year before having to pay the full $50/month. Pricing is slightly different for groups who need more cloud storage and students--education pricing is set at $20/month for all access. The subscription will allow you to run CC apps without an Internet connection, though Adobe will run checks to provide software updates. Offline use just means you won't get software updates or cloud service access. And if you really don't want to use Creative Cloud? CS6 licenses will still be available for sale, though Adobe will not continue to develop for it, aside from bug fixes and ensuring that it works on the next versions of Windows and Mac OS.

The more interesting announcement was that of Project Mighty and Napoleon, two pieces of prototype hardware that will eventually be real consumer products. Mighty is a pressure-sensitive stylus designed to work on the iPad in concert with Adobe iOS apps. Styli accessories for the iPad have traditionally not been great, due to the fact that the iPad uses a capacitive touchscreen and doesn't have native pressure detection. Mighty incorporates pressure sensitivity in its tip, relaying that information to the iPad (and Adobe's cloud servers) using Bluetooth. The video demonstration shows that it works, but still has a degree of latency and a soft touch that you wouldn't see on a Wacom (or even the Microsoft Surface Pro). Napoleon, on the other hand, is another bluetooth connected device that works as a ruler on the iPad. It projects digital guides onto the drawing app, allowing you to draft perfectly straight or curved lines using the Mighty.

Watch Adobe's promo video for Mighty and Napoleon below, which does a good job showing how these tools will work on the iPad.

One of the most common questions we get is “What do you use to podcast?” When we launched Tested, we had a fully-fledged podcasting setup courtesy of Giant Bomb. That setup was perfect for our needs then; we almost always recorded in a dedicated space, we had plenty of ports available for guests, and most importantly, it sounded great. It wasn’t particularly portable though. When we relaunched the site last year, I knew we needed a more portable podcasting rig—at first because we were recording the show at my dining room table, but later because we needed to record Still Untitled around Adam’s schedule. I also wanted a kit that I could set up and break down as quickly as possible. When we have a few minutes to record a podcast at M5.

My goal was to assemble an easily portable podcasting rig that would fit into one bag, give us the ability to record four XLR mics, and work with Garageband and Final Cut Pro. With that in mind, here’s the hardware we purchased to build out the podcast kit, and the reasoning behind each of those purchases. I’ll also give some lower-budget alternatives at the end of the article.

When shooting digital photographs, you can usually feel the difference between a cheap Class 4 SD card, with its minimum 4 MB/s write speeds, and a faster Class 10 or UHS (Ultra High Speed) card. SD speed classes can be really confusing--Class 10 cards are technically the fastest, with required 10 MB/s minimum read and write speeds, but there's a world of difference between a basic Class 10 card and a Class 10 UHS card, which can operate at quadruple the standard SD clock speed. Slap one of those cards, like the SanDisk Extreme Pro, into a camera, and you'll feel the difference--photos write to the card in a snap and reviewing a shot won't leave you staring at a blinking LED for three seconds.

The speed of the card makes a difference, but a fast card isn't guaranteed to reach its potential in every device you use it in. Devices like digital cameras talk to SD cards with host controllers, and those host controllers can vary in speed and compatibility. For example, older host controllers only support the SD and SDHC formats, not the more recent SDXC. Using a really fast SD card with a slow host controller is a bit like plugging a USB 3.0 flash drive into a USB 1.0 port. You're not going to come close to maxing out what the card is capable of.

Unfortunately, age isn't the only factor that accounts for SD controller performance. Last year, while researching SD cards for The Wirecutter, I talked to Nikon, SanDisk, and some photographers, including the experts at Imaging Resource. I also looked at Rob Galbraith's extensive database of SD and CompactFlash performance numbers. Next time you buy an SD card--or anything that uses one--keep in mind that hardware like the memory controller and CPU, even in a brand new camera, may dramatically undercut what the card should be able to deliver.