Product: ThinkPad T400s (Multitouch)

Manufacturer: Lenovo

Wired Rating: 4

Lenovo loves to push and prod at the boundaries of notebook technology. Sometimes these results are fascinating (as with the dual-screen ThinkPad W700ds). And sometimes they fall flat, as is the case with the ThinkPad T400s with multitouch hardware.

The T400s is the first ThinkPad — and one of the first laptops — with a multitouch display. Mind you, it’s not a tablet. It’s a regular laptop, with a screen that does not rotate and fold down flat like a typical convertible. Rather, if you want to do something with the touchscreen, you reach up over the keyboard and, well, you poke at the thing like Koko the gorilla.

In the wake of the iPhone, multitouch has become the tech world’s biggest buzzword, to the point where if a cellphone doesn’t have a multitouch display it is written off as suitable only for Luddite geezers. Now comes the inevitable extension of the technology, but does it make sense?

Consider the possibilities. Using the T400s touch features you can, for example, access your volume and display brightness settings by tapping on the screen instead of pushing the dedicated buttons on the keyboard. Or you can also draw up to four lines simultaneously in the Paint application by dragging your fingers across the screen. That’s about it, for now: Other uses may eventually exist, but they’ll require specialized software that’s been made or modified to work with a touchscreen.

Of course, no matter what you do with it, all of this means a seriously uncomfortable stretch to a vertical screen an arm’s length away — the very problem that killed touchscreen monitors back in the ’80s.

As a laptop, the T400s multitouch edition is rife with trade-offs. Compared to its non-touchscreen brother with the same model number and nearly identical components, the T400s with multitouch doesn’t measure up: It’s 36 percent slower; it’s half a pound heavier; its LCD is barely half as bright; it gets 45 minutes less battery life (a paltry 85 minutes total); and it costs about $500 more. There’s literally no category in which this version excels over the standard Lenovo laptop, except that you can scribble on it with your hand.

And that might be reason enough to buy it, but the more you use the T400s, the more you find yourself uninterested in its multitouch features and annoyed by the giant red half-circle (used to access those tappable machine settings) on the edge of the screen.

WIRED Lovely textured trackpad (ironically redundant given the multitouch screen). Still offers solid ThinkPad design and sturdiness. Turns Paint into Fingerpaint — fun!

TIRED Huge price markup for touch features. Massive performance, weight and battery hit. Stretching to use multitouch screen is uncomfortable for more than a few seconds, making extended touch usage nearly impossible and rarely accurate.

Product: 47LH50

Manufacturer: LG

Wired Rating: 7

Like many of its competitors, LG’s 47-incher runs Yahoo Widgets. So when you realize that the only good thing about True Blood is the opening credits, your internet mainstays are just a button-push away. You can further expand its video prowess by connecting an external drive loaded with virtually any DivX, MPEG or H.264 video.

WIRED Four HDMI inputs. Built-in sensor automatically adjusts LCD’s backlighting to suit the room. Tons of picture-tweaking options. Cable-management loop in back. Netflix!

TIRED Disappointing black levels. 120-Hz motion processing looks even more artificial than usual.

Product: HTC Hero

Manufacturer: Sprint

Wired Rating: 7

A lot has happened since the first Google phone arrived 12 months ago. So it makes sense for HTC to finally make a legitimate stab at upgrading the Android operating system, now that Palm has its web-errific Pre, the iPhone graduated to video (not to mention cut-and-paste!), and Motorola just unveiled the Cliq, the first non-HTC phone to run Android.

HTC’s third Android phone, the Hero, is available on Sprint in the United States. It’s almost identical to the Hero released in Europe last July. And compared to previous HTC handsets (cough, the G1) the phone boasts refinements that make it superior, at least on paper: HTC has ditched the freakishly curved bottom of the G1, enlarged the trackball, tossed in a 5-MP camera and, like the MyTouch, abandoned the physical QWERTY keyboard. On the software end, HTC has done some impressive stuff. The Sense UI, a custom interface that HTC created to make Android more usable, is attractive, fairly logical and flashy. (Literally: It now supports websites with Adobe Flash.) And HTC’s gone full-on multitouch, too, adopting the pinch-and-flick gestures iPhone-Pre users are accustomed to. It could use a little fine tuning though — when zooming in and out the motion is more herky-jerky than a Dodge Dart with a busted tranny.

The more time we spent with the Hero, it became obvious that the phone and OS have become mature counterparts. Dragging and dropping apps, shortcuts, and HTC/Android widgets was easy and fun. For instance, the Twitter widget streams your feed in a smaller, always-on window on one dedicated desktop. Translation: You have less, if no need to launch the full-screen app.

While the OS is a big step in the right direction, the hardware feels mediocre. Optics are rather disappointing, especially the video. The lack of even a slightly curved bottom left the plain-Jane Hero looking much less iconic than, say, the MyTouch. And that’s really it in a nutshell: The Hero is a usable phone with some panache, but it’s ultimately a solid Michael Keaton, not a game-changing Christian Bale.

WIRED Camera flaunts touch-only zoom with tap-to-focus. Responsive touch-qwerty more or less comparable to iPhone. Battery lasts for DAYS (36+ hours!). 3.5mm headphone jack. Flash-enabled. Dead-simple USB mounting: Plug in, drag down top menu, and voila, the phone is connected to your PC. Finally, HTC is adding gesture-based controls iPhone users are used to.

TIRED SD slot is only accessible by removing cover. This Hero has Flash, but how about a camera with a flash? Optional haptic feedback is about as subtle as a 6.5 earthquake. Lack of image stabilization produces videos reminiscent of Cloverfield. 340 x 280 video quality is low, and color is not up to snuff.

Product: UN46B8000

Manufacturer: Samsung

Wired Rating: 7

With its 1.2-inch silhouette, this set turns heads even when it’s switched off. But we were equally wowed by the LCD’s crisp, accurate colors and jaw-dropping motion resolution. With Yahoo’s widget engine running the web show, you have ready access to content from Flickr and YouTube.

WIRED A plethora of ports. Network streaming. LED backlighting makes the screen brighter than the bridge of the Enterprise.

TIRED It’s not “Wi-Fi ready” if it requires a separate adapter. No Netflix streaming, but Samsung has hinted that it’s on the way. Picture quality drops sharply with viewing angle. Crappy remote hampers navigation. Pricey.

Product: KDL-46Z5100

Manufacturer: Sony

Wired Rating: 8

Of the sets we tested, Sony’s Z-Series TV offered the richest jackpot of internet goodies, including Netflix, Yahoo Widgets, video podcasts, radio and a host of custom-formatted sites. It will also stream multimedia files over a local network. Throw in a sweet 46-inch LCD panel and you’ve got a truly convergent delight.

WIRED Spectacular contrast ratio. Buttery-smooth 240-Hz refresh rate banishes judder and blur. Excellent universal remote with dedicated buttons for web content.

TIRED Some noticeable artifacts when upconverting SD video. Streaming video limited to MPEG-2; no AAC support.