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Time for another rather random Gadget of the Week, fishing some likely contenders from the swelling ocean of gadget and technology blogs. Not a great haul this time, to be honest, but you would be glad to find them snuggled in your Christmas pillowcase...
As always, let's get a few eye-catching-but-rather-frivolous non-contenders out of the way...
For example, how about some fruit-styled earphones? Do you want to suggest a small banana is sticking out of your ear? (pictured, above right) Or how about a bolt?
Or how about some Adidas themed headphones. Now I'm as much a sucker for the three-stripes brand as anyone, but I'm not really tempted by these Sennheiser co-branded models, the HD 25 Originals. Slashgear writes:
More seriously, the Zoom Q3HD also caught my eye. It's "a small handheld camcorder with seriously high quality audio and video". Specifically, says Slashgear, it records at 30fps in 1080p resolution, along with HD audio with 24-bit/96kHz quality. Shipping now, it costs $229 in the States. It works with SD cards up to 32GB and is powered by two AA batteries.Sennheiser says that the headphones have a high maximum sound pressure level and a detachable one-sided cable. They ship with a carry bag and an adapter that allow use with 6.3mm audio ports. The headphones have a frequency response of 16-22000 Hz and a sound pressure level of 120 dB.
Or how about the Motorola Slingbox-like wireless STB streamer that is apparently heading towards CES 2011, and which allows video to be sent wirelessly to tablets and mobile phones?
But stepping up onto the GOTW podium to accept a bronze medal is the Toshiba NB500 netbook powered by dual-core Atoms. Slashgear writes:
Silver, but not Gold, goes to Eizo's DuraVision LCD a glasses-free 3D, 1080p display. Sounds good, but it loses points for style (pictured, left). Engadget writes:
Toshiba has outed a pair of new netbooks, the NB500 and the NB520, each toting Intel's latest dual-core Atom N550 1.5GHz processor. Each machine gets 1GB of RAM, a 250GB hard-drive - shock-protected on the NB520 - and WiFi, but the NB520 also throws in Harman/Kardon Speakers which, thanks to a "sleep audio" function, can be used with an external PMP source even when the netbook is turned off.
Silver, but not Gold, goes to Eizo's DuraVision LCD a glasses-free 3D, 1080p display. Sounds good, but it loses points for style (pictured, left). Engadget writes:Looking like something that escaped from the bridge of the U.S.S. Palomino is Eizo's DuraVision FDF2301-3D, a dark, menacing visage containing a 23-inch LCD. It sports a full HD resolution and can display content in 3D, but its real trick is that it can do so without glasses. Yes, deep within that dark and angular exterior is the necessary set of hardware to ensure that two eyes see two separate images, supposedly without any of the weirdness we've seen with other glasses-free displays.
So, Gadget of the Week - a controversial choice, maybe, for those who think the Kindle is already the last word in e-readers - is the Asus Eee Reader DR900 (pictured below).
This was first seen, apparently, at CeBIT 2010 at the beginning of the year, but is now heading for Europe this month. Notably, it features a 9-inch anti-reflective Electro Phoretic Display, a technology that purportedly emulates a "real world ink on paper feel".
Coated.com writes:
The DR900 has a 9-inch screen with 1024×768 resolution and it supports a number of the portable document formats including FB2, ePub, TXT, HTML, and PDF. It also supports the compression formats of CBZ and ZIP and the more popular image formats of BMP, GIF, PNG, JPEG. There is even MP3 audio support that can be heard using the integrated stereo speakers or via the 3.5mm headphone jacks.
The DR900 does have the usual features we see these days in portable devices like 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, optional 3G network support and 2GB internal memory with MicroSD card slot for expansion. The device will sell for about 320 Euro.
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