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No hero phone? No matter.

CNET Reviews Editor in Chief Lindsey Turrentine explains which products get her team excited even during a slow hardware release week. Hint: They have magnets, and one is a bag full of speakers.

Lindsey Turrentine EVP, Content and Audience
Lindsey Turrentine is executive vice president for content and audience. She has helped shape digital media since digital media was born.
Lindsey Turrentine
2 min read

What's a reviews editor to do when a week passes without a single major hardware announcement? With no frenzied launch events to stalk and no 24-hour-turnaround product reviews to write, your average tech journalist just pours a glass of bourbon, kicks back, and plays Max Payne 3 until his eyes bleed. But not us. We dug deeper. We found a really freaking cool laptop desk. Truly, we did -- it's downright chilly.

Top-rated reviews of the week (pictures)

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We're fans of this one, peeps
The NZXT Cryo E40 is a laptop desk for the type of gamer (or author, or coder) who might just lose some, erm, reproductive capacity after hours spent propped on the couch under a many-core notebook. The desk includes two external fans powered via USB from the laptop itself, each outfitted with magnets so that you can move them around and direct cooler air anywhere you need it. Ideally, your laptop wouldn't heat up quite so much, but until manufacturers figure out how to make tech run colder in a small package, this desk might be an interesting alternative. Plus, it looks like something out of Mad Max.

The Samsung Focus 2 Josh Miller/CBS Interactive

Samsung Focus 2: Nice price, still a bit blurry
No phones at all this week, you ask? OK, we did find one interesting handset. Jessica Dolcourt wrote the Internet's first review of the Samsung Focus 2, one of two Windows phones announced at CTIA a few weeks back. Not only did she land the scoop, but she nails the evaluation: This Windows phone isn't the world's best smartphone -- its battery runs down quickly and it's a little chubby overall -- but it costs a mere $50. For a 4G LTE-capable phone, that's a bargain. It's so inexpensive that I'm considering buying one just to give Windows Phone a try in my personal life.

Plenty more to see here
That's just a peek into what we reviewed this week, slow week as it was. Spend some time with the rest of our slideshow of top-rated gadgets for a look at other top-rated products. Some of them downright nutty, in a good way, like the House of Marley Bag of Rhythm portable speakers. They look as crazy as the name suggests. You must go look.