Microsoft Xbox One

                                     Microsoft Xbox One

                              Microsoft is thinking big with the Xbox One. Instead of building a game system that's essentially a beefed-up version of the Xbox 360, like Sony did with the PlayStation 4, it built a comprehensive media hub for all of your living room entertainment. This approach, combined with an initial promise that the system would require a constant Internet connection and that the included Kinect camera would always be on, worried a lot of gamers. Add a $499 (list) price tag, $100 more than the PlayStation 4 and $200 more than the Nintendo Wii U, and you have a game system with an uphill battle.Well, Microsoft's ambition has paid off. Not only is the Xbox One a powerful game system that rivals the PlayStation 4, it really is the comprehensive entertainment hub Microsoft envisioned. (And it turns out that it doesn't require an always-on Web connection and you can turn off the camera.)

                          Kinect voice controls, television integration, and multitasking features make the Xbox One an ideal combination of game system, media hub, universal remote, program guide, and Blu-ray player. The Xbox One's voice controls and TV integration are revolutionary and could pave the way for game systems to become true all-in-one entertainment centers. Sure, it's expensive and imperfect, but it does so much so well that its flaws and price can be forgiven, making it an Editors' Choice.

Design

                 The Xbox One doesn't take many design cues from the Xbox 360 or Xbox 360 Slim. Instead, it follows the philosophy of the original Xbox: giant black box. It's big, black, rectangular, and looks closer to an old-school VCR than a futuristic, stylish game system. It combines glossy and matte black finishes to lend some style, but no shine can get past its plain blockiness. The PlayStation 4 looks much nicer and slimmer, with its parallelogram shape and the ability to stand it on its side to show off the multicolored status light (with an optional stand). The Xbox One has to be laid down horizontally, and is simply black with a white light on it.

      Measuring 3 by 12.9 by 11.7 inches (HWD) and weighing about seven pounds, the Xbox One absolutely dwarfs the PlayStation 4 and Wii U.  The front is dominated by a matte black left half that holds the slot-loading Blu-ray drive and a glossy right half that features a glowing, flat, touch-sensitive Xbox button. The button turns the system on if you don't want to use the Kinect or a controller, and it's just as infuriatingly sensitive as the Xbox 360 Slim's power and eject buttons. Brushing anything against it, even lightly, can trigger the button. Fortunately, given the voice controls, you don't have to actually touch the Xbox One or go anywhere near it unless you're changing a disc or setting up a gamepad. A USB port sits on the left side of the system, next to a pairing button for registering controllers. The back panel holds an HDMI input and output, the Kinect port, an Ethernet port, an optical audio port, two USB ports, and the power port.


                         The new Kinect camera is just as blocky and almost as large, dwarfing the PlayStation Camera just as the Xbox One looms over the PlayStation 4's form. It's a chunky, rectangular brick that measures 2.4 by 9.7 by 3 inches (HWD), with a large, prominent lens, a glowing white Xbox logo, and three soft red LEDs to illuminate you with infrared light. The base can tilt up and down and has a tripod screw mount if you want to secure it. The bigger, blockier Kinect sports much more impressive insides, though; it features a 1080p-capable camera instead of the Xbox 360 Kinect's VGA resolution, and its microphone array on the bottom edge of the camera is clearly improved.

Controller

The Xbox One controller is comfortable, but it's not the impressive leap in design that the PlayStation 4's DualShock 4 gamepad is. It's a mostly matte black gamepad that looks and feels almost identical to the Xbox 360's gamepad. Instead of the Start and Back buttons, the gamepad has Menu and View buttons that serve the same functions. The triggers provide individual force feedback, rumbling in response to what you're playing apart from the gamepad itself. This feels particularly good for racing games like Forza Motorsport 5, because the right trigger's resistance and response to acceleration feels much more precise with force feedback.


The bumpers, on the other hand, feel too flush with the body of the gamepad, and sit high enough that they aren't particularly comfortable to hit. It's a small complaint, and the gamepad feels good overall. The Xbox One comes with one controller and two AA batteries; if you want to use a rechargeable, one-piece battery solution you can forget about, you need to buy a Charge and Play Kit separately for $25 (but you can just use rechargeable AA batteries, and the gamepad works with a direct wired connection thanks to its microUSB port).
Interface
If you're familiar with Windows 8 or Windows Phone 8, you'll recognize the Xbox One Dashboard. The interface is pure Metro, with large, easily identifiable panels displaying the current game or app running, your most recent apps, pinned items (which can include games, apps, media, or Web sites to the left), and the Xbox Live Store to the right. Even if you loathe the UI for computers or mobile devices, it really works well as an HDTV interface. The big panels are easy to read and navigate, and the gamepad's analog stick and direction pad are the ideal ways to select them.



The Xbox One supports "snapping" apps to any game or software you're running. By selecting Snap on the Dashboard and picking an app (or by saying "Xbox, snap," which I'll explain below), you can keep certain apps on the side of the screen. You can, say, keep Skype or Hulu Plus or any other snappable app running while you play a game. You can also snap two apps, keeping one on the side while the other takes up most of the screen, letting you watch video on Netflix while you have Internet Explorer running next to it.

NBA 2K14 (Xbox One)

NBA 2K14 (Xbox One)

BY JEFFREY L. WILSON
NBA 2K14 is the next-gen game that may entice people to purchase a Sony PlayStation 4 or Xbox One. Boasting gorgeous skin tones, realistic physics, and a ton of new animations that run at 60 frames per second and 1080p resolution, NBA 2K14 is a beaut. Thankfully, 2K Games' latest basketball title is more than surface; NBA 2K14 is a wonderful recreation of American pro hoops that should keep basketball fans shooting, rebounding, and boxing out until the final days of the season.

NBA 2K14 contains a ton of modes and features designed to replicate the player and general manager experience, but three of my favorites are "The Park," "NBA Today," and "Dynamic Living Rosters." "The Park" is a massive playground where gamers can take their created players to hoop or simply socialize with other NBA fans. "NBA Today" gives you a live look at team standings and stat leaders, and is a great way to stay on top of big matches without exiting the game. "Dynamic Living Rosters" (powered by Stats, Inc.) translates real-world hot and cold streaks to the game, so when Melo slumps, digital Melo will be off his game, too. It's an effective way to bridge the gap between the actual sport and its video game representation. That said, there are lots of menus to slice through—so much so that navigation can prove a bit confusing until you get a hang of it.
Lace Up the Sneaks
NBA 2K14's gameplay is deep—in fact, there are so many offensive and defensive moves that you may want to play with an open instruction booklet. You'll need it for the Pro Stick that gives you incredible control over ball handling and shooting. Using it in conjunction with other buttons lets you pull off dunks, crossovers, layups, hop steps, runners, pump fakes, and many other moves. There are defensive moves aplenty, too; flops, wrap fouls, rebounds, lunges, and numerous other moves are available. The wide range of options creates a game that looks like one pulled directly from broadcast TV. If you understand basketball's intricacies, such as mastering and defending the pick-and-roll, you'll do well. If you don't, the computer will pick you apart as the A.I. is quite smart. Note: The computer thieves nilly-willy passes.

NBA 2K14 features not just the 30 regular teams, but 14 Euroleague teams, too. Unfortunately, last year's Dream Teams are no more; I'd rather have the U.S. Olympic squads over the Euroleague any day. Still, NBA 2k14 includes dozens of classic teams like the Bird-era Celtics and Ewing-led Knicks.

NBA 2K14 utilizes Xbox One's Kinect peripheral to let gamers call plays by, well, calling plays. Speak a specific play (like "Clear Out" or "Pick and Roll") and your squad will follow our command. You can also use it to sub players. The Kinect sometimes didn't recognize my vocal input, but overall it did. I preferred to audibly coach than to initiate plays using the Xbox One controller.


The Highlight Reel
NBA 2K14's next-gen graphics deftly recreate the NBA experience. The athlete's character models are well-designed for the most part (they tug at shorts when tired, wipe sweat away), and the skin tones are the best ever in a sports game. That said, players on historical teams (such as the Jordan-era Chicago Bulls) weren't given the same exquisite facial mapping and look like mannequin version of old school players. Ron Harper's character, with its bugged eyes, is particularly foul.

That said, the ballers' movement—be it running, rebounding, or shooting—is outstanding. There are tons of animations and they're all smooth, keeping the controls sharp. Players attack the basket and ball in a variety of ways and perform signature moves that look absolutely gorgeous. Many PCMag staffers who walked by as I played legitimately thought I was watching a real game.

The excellent mult-person commentary gives NBA 2K14 its soul. The play-calling is spot on—it doesn't lag behind the action—and there's plenty of ancillary commentary that keeps the audio fresh. Naturally, there' is some repetition in the color commentary, but it doesn't ruin the experience.


Winning the Ring
NBA 2K14 is an excellent pro hoops title designed with hardcore basketball fans in mind. The returning NBA Live franchise—which has been on hiatus for a number of years—will have a tough time topping this all-around excellent title. If you're a series fan who plans to purchase a Xbox One, consider this game a day-one purchase.

Batman: Arkham Origins

Batman: Arkham Origins

BY MATTHEW MURRAY
Real art usually lies less in creating something than in making something difficult look effortless. Christopher Nolan demonstrated this with his record-shattering, kept-getting-better trilogy of Batman films, but Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment hasn't fared as well with its games based on the adventures of the Dark Knight. Batman: Arkham Asylum£15.99 at Amazon (2009) was an exciting trek through Gotham City's signature madhouse; 2011's Batman: Arkham City$26.00 at Amazon  expanded the playground to a chunk of the city, and despite reheated game-play elements rather than devising new ones and delivering an improbable story it still was quite a bit of fun. The latest chapter, Batman: Arkham Origins$34.50 at Amazon, the first developed by Warner Bros. itself rather than Rocksteady Games, doesn't get off so easily: This prequel is numbingly derivative (even compared with Arkham City), limited in scope, and strangely sloppy. It doesn't completely disappoint because its base conceit and engine are solid, but unlike its predecessors it never really takes wing.

Up at Bat
Propping up Arkham Origins somewhat is its refusal to be just another garden-variety origin story. Instead, it's set about two years after billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne began donning a black cowl to clean up the streets the Gotham City Police Department left to ruin—and, as we arrive on a blizzard-torn Christmas Eve, neither the bad guys nor the good guys (assuming there are any) are yet certain that Batman actually exists.

Taking Flight
From one standpoint, the quality of production has not diminished at all from the norm established by Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. The graphics retain their crisp, Gothic clarity, and to my eye the cinematic sequences that push along the story are the best to date: inventive and smooth, deftly combining the just-barely-caricaturish feel of video-game animation with the fluid drama of a movie without short-changing either.

Likewise, the game play that propelled the first two games to success is in full force here. Fighting remains a thrill, derived entirely from Batman's incomparable martial-arts training and rewarding you based on how well you chain both attacks and counters; you continue to feel a real surge of adrenaline when the number edges past five, eight, 15, 20, 30, and beyond. Tracking down and solving Enigma's challenges, as was true of the Riddler's in the previous two chapters, is a comforting cerebral change of pace from all the skull cracking. And there's still something awe-inspiring about grappling your way up to the top of a skyscraper, leaping off, and gliding for hundreds of meters above the Gotham streets—it captures both the wonder and isolation of being Batman as little else does.

Though much has been made of the recasting of the key voice actors, particularly Kevin Conroy as Batman and Mark Hamill as the Joker, I was never yanked out of the game by the new performers. Roger Craig Smith's throaty intensity, if perhaps less supple than Conroy's delivery, is certainly right for the hero, and Troy Baker's Joker was an eerily good approximation of Hamill's portrayal. What's more important: They seamlessly blend in with the holdovers (Martin Jarvis as Alfred, Kimberly Brooks as Barbara Gordon, Peter MacNicol as Mad Hatter, Nolan North as Penguin) and the new performers alike.

A new multiplayer mode lets you team up with Robin to quell Blackgate uprisings by Joker and Bane, and is a decent way of getting others involved in the action. And Challenge mode, in which you revisit maps unlocked during the story to fistfight or stealth your way through encounters that are then ranked against others who've tackled them, are a superlative example of a smart reusing of the other games' familiar idea.

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (Xbox One)

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (Xbox One)

BY JEFFREY L. WILSON, MATTHEW D. SARREL
The year is 1715, and lawless pirates dominate the Caribbean Sea. Neither land nor sea is safe from these rapscallions, and the biggest hellraiser of them all is a young captain named Edward Kenway, who explores the waters during piracy's golden age. Using an expanded version of the sailing mechanic from Assassin's Creed III, Black Flag$41.69 at Amazon sees Edward journeying from Jamaica to Cuba to Spanish Florida to the Bahamas on his ship, the Jackdaw.
Conway, as he searches for treasure, also finds his place within the ancient, series-defining Assassin/Templar conflict. Meanwhile, in the game's overarching meta-story, players take on the role of a video game programmer at the Templar front company Abstergo and search the cloud for the uploaded genetic information on the Kenway family line. It's a game within a game. Gameception, if you will. And it's quite fun.

Raising the Black Flag
Black Flag's game world isn't as sprawling as Grand Theft Auto V's$39.99 at Amazon Los Santos, but the environments are highly unstructured and designed for vertical rooftop play. While there are always mission objectives, you can explore wherever you want and do whatever you want—and then go fulfill the mission. And you'll want to explore this beautiful lush world to the fullest. The move to Xbox One$499.00 at Amazon means that Black Flag is a visual treat that runs at a crisp 900p (the PlayStation 4£349.00 at Very version, it should be noted, will get a 1080p patch that also features new anti-aliasing techniques). I sometimes found myself climbing to rooftops simply to admire the gorgeous environments.

The opening level is a tutorial where you follow a pretty straightforward list of objectives; in fact, it's the weakest part of the game. Once you get through it, however, the world opens up—not completely, but pretty close. You can preempt missions to go off on side quests, explore, investigate and loot underwater shipwrecks, or even go hunting and fishing. In fact, simply following all mission objectives sells the game short because there is so much other good stuff in there. I feel like I barely scratched the game's surface after several hours of stealthy play.

Black Flag kept my interest by varying the mission objectives. The stealth, follow, kill, and sea-based missions prevented repetition from settling in. Kudos to developer Ubisoft for mixing up the tasks in this massive title.

Some Rough Waters
My only major Black Flag criticism is that sometimes it felt as though I didn't have full control over my character. Edward would jump down from a wall or climb up a wall when all I wanted to do was walk by the wall. This can be frustrating in the heat of battle. The control issue is absent during combat, but when you make the split second decision to flee because of your deteriorating health, you may scream in frustration as Edward stops to hide against a wall in plain sight instead of scaling it and gets shot to death.

I also found it somewhat tricky to quickly pick up items. You have to be in the perfect position to retrieve enemy weapon drops.

Missing Content, Mobile Apps
Gamers who purchase Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag for PlayStation 3 or PlayStation 4 get additional exclusive missions featuring Aveline, Assassin's Creed III: Liberation's heroine. These three missions take place after the conclusion of Liberation, and are independent of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag's main campaign. If you want the "complete" Assassin's Creed IV experience, you should buy the PlayStation 4 version instead of the Xbox One version.

The Black Flag iPad and Android tablet companion apps demonstrate the potential of the entire companion app concept. It turned my iPad into almost a necessary accessory for the game. The map is far more detailed than the in-game map and let me to see my objectives and progress in real-time and set waypoints in-game. It was also very cool to find a treasure map in the game.

Sailing the High Seas
It's easy to dismiss Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag as just another entry in a string of "AssCreed" annual releases, but developer Ubisoft has worked diligently to expand and tweak Assassin's Creed III's features and gameplay into something that stealth-loving next-gen gamers should have in their libraries. If you've made the jump to Xbox One and desire a AAA adventure, consider Black Flag. It's a worthy pick up.

Battlefield 4 (PC)

                                 Battlefield 4 (PC)

BY MATTHEW D. SARREL
When it comes to evaluating any title in the Battlefield franchise, it's important to remember that the only reason anyone plays campaign mode is to unlock new weapons in multiplayer. Despite great voice acting by Michael K. Williams (Omar from The Wire), campaign mode is little more than a four to six hour tutorial teaching you how to play the game. It is frustratingly on-rails, and gameplay is literally "move here and shoot this." The story involves the Tombstone squad, a team of marines sent into mainland China to extract VIPs shortly after a bloody coup attempt. The story also involves a number of heavily scripted sequences that revolve around your character making poor decisions that you'd never make as squad leader. Short and frustrating do not make for a good story mode.

To be as clear as a squad leader can be, do not buy this game if you're looking for a solid FPS campaign mode.

Instead, multiplayer is where it's at in Battlefield 4.

There is also a deep powerful feeling that captures the awe of destruction so often found in combat. Battlefield 4 is a game where you'll occasionally want to stop and take a look at the world around you. Landscapes are gorgeous, combat is engrossing, and the scale of destruction is tremendous. Battles lines appear to stretch on for miles across both land and sea. And you can fight anywhere and any way you want. You can run across the battlefield, ducking in and out of cover, or you can board a helicopter, hop on the minigun, cut enemies to shreds, then hop off the gun and repair the helicopter while in flight

Commander mode returns in Battlefield 4 to allow you to command your squads and call in air strikes. You'll have to reach Rank 10 first in order to play as a commander and when you do you'll play on a top-down map that shows the position of all of your squads, all of the capture points, and all enemy troops that have been spotted. A typical sequence of Commander mode events sees you  ordering squads to march to a capture point, calling in a UAV to scan the area for enemy squads, marking them on the map, and then calling in a jammer UAV to help your squads avoid enemy scans. During combat you can call in a supply drop or a cruise missile or send in reinforcements. The only drawback to Commander mode is that squads controlled by humans don't have to actually follow your orders. This adds an element of chaos to game play that made me pretty frustrated. On the other hand, I was playing with a bunch of strangers whereas an organized clan would probably gain more value from a coordinated attack as the individuals would want to listen to their commander.

Another improvement to Battlefield 4 is the "Levolution" system which leverages the Frostbite 3 engine in order to create and destroy environmental elements during multiplayer sessions. On one map this involves an enormous skyscraper tumbling to earth.  On another a storm comes along and causes a ship to crash into an island. On another a gas main explodes and rips open the street. These don't have huge effects on game play but they are very cool to watch. My favorite is the big storm which is an almost awe inspiring thing to watch—the sky gets darker and darker, the wind whips up, and then the ship comes sliding through the map with the sound of screeching metal.

Reality Check

Battlefield 4 is not without its flaws. While most multiplayer maps achieve the right mix of open area, cover, and capture points, some (like Zavod 311) don't. It's incredibly frustrating (and not very fun) to repeatedly try to make it to a capture point only to get gunned down in essentially the same spot every time. In addition, Battlefield 4 for PC has been plagued with bugs since its release—there's even a class action lawsuit against EA as investors assert that the company lied about the status of the game's development in order to ship for holiday 2013 and inflate the stock price. Reports online indicate that DICE put every other project on hold to fix this bug ridden release. I have experienced very few crashes, maybe because I've applied every patch within minutes of release. I've read about crashes during campaign mode that will lose your progress and instability in online multiplayer that boots people off of servers in the middle of a game.

The question on every gamer's mind is "which FPS should I get right now, Call Of Duty: Ghosts or Battlefield 4. My take on it is that first you should decide if you want a campaign mode or not. For those who like playing solo, COD: Ghosts has a better campaign mode and a very good multiplayer mode.  If you prefer massive online multiplayer battles, BF4 is the way to go.

Sony PS Vita TV

                             Sony PS Vita TV

BY WILL GREENWALD
When Sony announced the PS Vita TV, it arguably got more attention than the PlayStation Vita£155.51 at Amazon Marketplace itself. Forget having a $200 handheld gaming system; a $99 (approximately, in yen) micro-console that can play Vita, PlayStation Portable, and PSOne Classic games on an HDTV? Brilliant! While the PlayStation 4$399.99 at Newegg.com competes with the Xbox One and the Vita withers against the Nintendo 3DS, the Vita TV can encroach on the small but growing microconsole space occupied by the Ouya, and with the Vita's media apps it could eat into the Roku and Apple TV markets to boot!

Sony still hasn't announced the PS Vita TV for North America yet. I don't know why. Most of my gamer friends, including Vita owners, have expressed more interest in the Vita TV than the PlayStation 4. It's small, inexpensive, and has a massive retro library thanks to the PSN store and the great ports on the Vita and PlayStation Portable. Add free games with a PlayStation Plus membership and you have a small, gamer-friendly console for a price that undercuts both the Nintendo Wii U$300.99 at Amazon and 3DS. We might see a North American Vita TV announcement at E3 this summer, but that's a big maybe. Until then, your only option is to import it.

                     

Menus and the Language Barrier
Sony pulled out all of the stops in making the PS Vita TV's interface HDTV-friendly and less reliant on the Vita's touch screen. It's the exact same interface as the Vita, complete with cartoonishly large bubbles and that irritating menu music. Fortunately, Sony begrudgingly added physical control support to the interface before the Vita TV came out; originally, you could only navigate the menus with the Vita's touch screen, which would have made the Vita TV impossible to use. There's no option to use an analog stick as an on-screen mouse cursor, which would be the natural way to get around a touch screen interface with no touch input. Instead, you just jump between different items on the screen using the physical controls and, with the Vita's highly icon and art-based interface, that can be awkward. It took me a few minutes to figure out I had to hold X to close a tab or program from the menu.

Nokia Lumia 1320 (Unlocked)

                    Nokia Lumia 1320 (Unlocked)

BY SASCHA SEGAN

The Nokia Lumia 1320 is a perfect example of the company's perpetual U.S. struggle. In a better world, this would be a free-with-contract or free-up-front phablet, brightly colored and cheery, with a nice big screen for media playback. It would be a low-cost competitor to Samsung's Galaxy Mega$89.00 at Amazon, which has a small, but healthy fan base.

But sadly, that isn't what we have here. As U.S. carriers seem to glory in thumbing their nose at Nokia, the 1320 is a $429 unlocked phablet available only through Amazon, fully compatible only with AT&T, without U.S. LTE bands and with a tight 8GB of built-in storage. That turns the 1320 from a great opportunity to a missed opportunity. The $199.99-with-contract Lumia 1520$199.99 at Best Buy is a better choice on AT&T. Our general Editors' Choice for phablets, meanwhile, is the Samsung Galaxy Note 3$285.00 at Dell Small Business, which has the advantage of being available on whatever network you choose.

OS, Performance and Multimedia

The Lumia 1320 runs a 1.7GHz, dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor, similar to the one in the Moto X$179.99 at Amazon, but clearly with an older GPU. Basic app performance is fine, but graphics performance leaves something to be desired, with results of 11 fps and 16 fps on our standard GFXBench 2.5 Egypt offscreen and onscreen graphics benchmarks.

LG G Flex on AT&T Super Mobile Check out

                                                       LG G Flex on AT&T

BY EUGENE KIM

LG's G Flex might be a part of a fad, or it could be a peek into the future of smartphone design. Either way, the supersized phablet's unique design is a welcome oddity in the homogenous world of touch-screen smartphones. At $299.99 (with two-year contract) on Sprint, the G Flex falls right in between the $350 Galaxy Note 3$285.00 at Dell Small Business and $250 HTC One Max$109.99 at Amazon. The Note 3 remains our Editors' Choice for its sharper 1080p display and stylus integration, but the G Flex comes within striking distance thanks to that immersive curved display and excellent multitasking capabilities.


Bloatware and Android
Of the 32GB of internal storage, 23.85GB is available to users out of the box. After seeing the mess AT&T made with its pre-loads, Sprint should be commended. Its Flex has a good deal of pre-loads, too, but every app except Sprint Zone is removable.

There are a few small differences to Android on the Sprint Flex. The settings menu has a traditional single scrolling page style, whereas the AT&T version groups different settings into tabbed pages. Sprint's version also has a widget loaded onto the home screen that walks you through some of the basic features of the Flex. It's also got pop-up tips like on the AT&T version, so the widget is pretty redundant, but easy to disable as well. The software keyboard choices are different on the Sprint version. Sprint bundles LG's default keyboard and the third-party keyboard Swype, which offers predictive text and swiping text entry. AT&T also has LG's default keyboard, but instead of Swype you get the Android AOSP keyboard. I prefer the latter, but they're fairly similar and it's easy enough to load your own favorite third-party keyboard.\

Conclusions
The curved screen and physical flexibility are the marquee features here, but I'm more impressed with the LG G Flex's power and multitasking chops. That, coupled with the engrossing display, make it a better choice than the HTC One Max or the more affordable Samsung Galaxy Mega$79.00 at Amazon, which Sprint is selling for $150. Neither of those can keep up with the Flex's speed and multitasking features. Still, our favorite phablet remains the Galaxy Note 3, which packs a sharper 1080p display, equally adept multitasking abilities, and superb stylus integration.