The verdict: It works flawlessly.

The performance: Like we said, the Eye-Fi works flawlessly. Setup takes roughly five minutes (you program the card through your computer and bundled card reader.) From there, you simply snap pics in the range of your router, and chances are, by the time you go back to your computer, the pictures will be viewable. If your router dies, you turn off your camera, or even if you take out the card and put it back in, the photos will upload when you get things sorted out again. It’s actually a normal 2GB memory card underneath all of the other functionality and can work as such.

The catch: We figured iIt must drain more battery —but apparently in-camera SD power standards dictate that this extra consumed power needs to be minimal, to the level of not noticeable to the end user. Unfortunately, the product doesn't support hotspots.

The price: $100

The verdict Part II: Sure, the Eye-Fi is basically a cradle replacement. But snapping photos and automatically uploading them in real time to share is truly fantastic, especially when the images can be better than one’s camera phone. And the entire product experience is built with Apple-like simplicity. If you can get over the price and are sick of cords, we strongly recommend the purchase. Available now. [eye-fi]

Hopefuly, it will be available everywhere soon. – Jesus Diaz

Product page [iRiver via Akihabara News]

The M6 SE will handle MPEG4, MPEG2, WMV9, H263/264, RM(VB) videos running at 720×480 while pushing 30 frames a second—all of which can be spewed to TV via video out. Viewing angles are improved to 80 degrees from each direction (a hike of about 20 degrees). Battery power was confirmed for 30 hours music, 5 hours QVG or 3 hours VGA.

We’re really liking the looks of this updated Meizu M6, but word is there could be delays from its late summer target to sometime in Q4. – Mark Wilson

Meizu Spills More… [meizume]

The kicker? You can get this one for five cents less—it's $39.95. Someday, all cars will have these ports as standard built-in equipment, plus a universal dock for your iPod. – Charlie White

Product Page [Herrington, via Coolest Gadgets]

Now it looks like we’ll be seeing the finished product this August, offered only in 8GB trim, for the reasonable price of $130. Hey, that’s $119 less than the 8GB nano. – Charlie White

Super Thin Meizu M6 in the Works [Meizu Me]

Mactab [Yanko Design]

Creative’s $39.99 1GB Zen Stone will be out this month, in six colors: black, white, red, blue, pink and green. Follow the jump for details, plus some very sweet photos you may not see anywhere else.

For $40 you get the 1GB player itself, about half the price of that other screen-less multicolored baby flash player you may have heard about. Creative says it will get 10 hours of playback from a fully charged internal battery. It’s a basic USB-drive drag-and-drop interface.

The clip will cost you $9.99 extra. “What clip?” you ask. You know what clip.

Other accessories, shown below, include a keychain ($12.99) and an armband ($15.99) In July, Creative will introduce TravelSound Zen Stone, the tiny docking speaker system shown below, for $39.99. Powered by two AAA batteries, it will run for 20 hours.

The Stone supports MP3, WMA and WAV files plus Audible formats 2 and 3. It supports for-purchase WMA DRM files, but doesn’t support portable subscription WMAs. On that subject, Creative told us:

Subscription support would have required much more processing power, which would have increased the cost and price of the player. We felt that the vast majority of folks would have 1GB of non-protected content and so it would be best to go with the great price of $39.99 instead of trying to support everything and offer a more expensive player.

If you store music in folders (by artist or genre), you can use the “skip folder” button to jump from folder to folder. On the side, there’s also a shuffle random button. The play/pause button is one of those cute little touches Creative often integrates into designs: because the button is shielded by a clear rubber droplet, it has a weird distortion/magnification effect.

The Stone is obviously a marketshare move against Apple (there, I said it) and SanDisk. But it's also a statement about the flash-memory business. Creative told me that because they are buyers of flash memory, they can get all Mortimer & Randolph Duke and stockpile it when the price is low, like so many pork bellies. The gist is that makers of flash, such as SanDisk and Samsung, suffer more at the mercy of the market. It's an interesting point, and at least a plausible explanation of the $39.99 Stone price point.

I think this is a good place for Creative, playing hardball at the "value" end of the flash-player business. Creative products have always been stylish, but this whole DRM thing has really thrown the company for a loop. In this segment, style counts almost as much as price—just think of the SanDisk revolution of 2006. Whether or not you can sync to iTunes doesn't matter nearly as much in this part of the playground.

A few weeks ago, I held one in my hand, and I liked the feel. The Stone is smooth and little, a skipping stone maybe, but certainly not something you could use to slay Goliath. More of a PEBL pebble, some have said. Still, I like the name. After all, it’s the condition most of my favorite musicians were in when they recorded their finest work. – Wilson Rothman

Creative Labs Corporate Information [Creative]

Their EVA8000 Digital Entertainer HD is a media streamer that can suck almost any audio or video format from your computer to your overpriced HDTV—upscaling and supporting resolutions up to 1080p. Is this the all-in-one digital connectivity mecca we've been searching for? And how does it stack up against the Apple TV?

CNET, LAPTOP, Living Digitally and PCMag have an opinion on the matter…

Design
“The metallic enclosure is slim and eye-catching, and the connections on the back of the unit are well marked, so you can easily understand where the cables go. (2)

…this flat rectangular device is ugly. It’s much bigger than the Apple TV (4)

The included remote is pretty good, with mostly excellent button differentiation, which makes it easy to quickly find the page up/down rocker or the play button. (1)

Connectivity & Playback
This is very important people – I didn’t have to install any software, drivers, or anything, and was able to get my music, photos, and videos all streaming in a matter of minutes. (3)

Support for just about every popular video format, including MP4 and Xvid, as well as most popular photo and music formats, means the EVA8000 will rarely balk at an unsupported media file… Most videos, music, and photos played perfectly fine over our home network (2)

The USB 2.0 ports can be used for more than just thumb drives–we had no difficulty in playing music off iPods, which often give other A/V players trouble. We even hooked up a 160GB USB hard disk, and it worked perfectly. (1)

We also looked at King Kong, which is an excellent-looking DVD, and the Digital Entertainer HD didn’t disappoint. Detail and colors looked excellent, and we completely forgot we were watching the DVD streamed, instead of on a decent upconverting DVD player (1)

Where the EVA8000 really stumbled, however, was with a 1080p movie file. We streamed a WMV-HD test file of Robotica in full 1080p resolution. It played perfectly on an Xbox 360 streamed over our 802.11n wireless network. Playback on the EVA8000, however, stuttered and made frequent audio dropouts. Other 1080p files had the same problems. (2)

…it’s also the only game in town with both full 1080p support (3)

I looked at quite a few photos, and I didn’t really feel they were being displayed at the maximum resolution possible. This could be a trick of the eyes, but I was expecting the pictures to look “HD-like” since they are all resolutions of 720p (3)

Somehow, the smart minds at Netgear found a way around Apple’s DRM (not videos, though). You can listen to any audio content that plays in iTunes and any content that plays in Windows Media Player. Even the iTunes album art is displayed. (4)

We did have success playing other video files from BitTorrent [giz ed note: online store], but it was a pretty arduous process–and one that wasn’t well-covered in the manual. (1)

User Interface
I liked the user interface (GUI) in that it’s simple and navigates quickly (much faster than, for example a MovieBeam or Comcast HD-DVR menu). If you’ve ever used a TiVo or Media Center PC, you shouldn’t have any problem getting it up and running. (3)

Given that there are hordes of graphic and computer designers out there, this amateurish menu system baffles and annoys me. (4)

The onscreen graphical interface lacks the slick panache of Apple TV, but it’s functional–and the navigation is lightning fast. (1)

Conclusions
…the product’s basic value proposition is definitely delivered in a good way (3)

Fix the bugs and allow users to stream without disabling their firewalls, Netgear, and you’ll have one fantastic product. (4)

Granted, we were pushing the device to its limits, but we do get the feeling you’ll experience more hiccups with the EVA8000 than with Apple TV. (1)

The lack of 802.11n support is what ultimately what makes this premium-priced streaming device less than spectacular. (2)”

I hate it when a product is released and all I can think is, “I can’t wait for version 2.0,” but that’s the case here…for me at least. – Mark Wilson

SPECS
Audio Formats MP3, WAV, WMA, AAC, FLAC
Photo Formats JPEG, BMP, PNG, TIFF
Video Formats MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, AVI, WMV, Xvid
Ports USB, HDMI, Component, Composite, Stereo RCA, Coaxial/Optical Digital Audio with S/PDIF, Ethernet
Wireless 802.11b/g
Size 17 x 10 x 2 inches
Weight 4.4 pounds