Review by Seth Porges
Dec. 12 -- Among the hundreds of gadgets I’ve tested this year, many could make great gifts. The best ones have a few things in common: They’ve held up well through repeated testing, their performance more than justifies their price, and, perhaps most importantly, they’re fun. These are five of my favorites.
1. Hewlett-Packard TouchSmart TX2 Tablet PC Starting at $1,140
Not all touchscreens are created equal -- there’s a reason your iPhone’s interface is more nimble and responsive than most other touchscreen devices. Whereas most gadgets use what’s called a resistive touchscreen, which detects pressure from a finger or stylus, the iPhone has a capacitive screen, which works by sensing your finger’s electrical field. The upshot: greater accuracy and smoother operation. (Because a capacitive touchscreen can detect an approaching finger before it makes contact, it can get a head start at loading tasks and make applications appear to run faster.)
Capacitive touchscreens have traditionally been far more expensive than their resistive counterparts, keeping them out of larger displays -- until now. Hewlett-Packard Co.’s TouchSmart TX2 Tablet PC is one of the first tablets to feature a capacitive touchscreen. While most tablet computers are primarily used by stylus-wielding doctors, this one’s finger- friendly screen makes it easy to glide between windows and files, and gives the tablet category something it’s been sorely missing: fun.
2. Air Hogs Zero Gravity Micro Wall Racer $30
This tiny remote-control car can climb walls, and even cling to ceilings (you know, for kids). The secret: a tiny fan that creates surface-grabbing suction. When it’s on, it sounds like a low-powered vacuum cleaner.
Navigating around picture frames and light fixtures is smile-inducing fun, and the car never scuffed up my white walls. While uneven surfaces almost always caused the car to fall to the ground, it weighs so little that it never damaged itself, or anything it happened to hit on the way down. Just make sure your picture frames are secure.
3. Roku Netflix Player $100
When Netflix’s movie-on-demand Web service started last year, it was little more than a curiosity, hampered by a limited library and the small size of most computer screens.
That changed this May, with the introduction of the Roku Netflix Player, a small television set-top box that allows users to stream movies to any TV, and with a surprisingly impressive video quality. No more lost shipping slips, no more waiting for the mailman to arrive, and no more having to plan movie nights several days in advance.
Today, it can be used to access more than 12,000 movies and TV shows. While a handful of other set-top boxes are now capable of streaming Netflix movies, the Roku box remains the cheapest and easiest way of bringing the instantly gratifying service to your TV.
4. Milwaukee M-Spector Digital Inspection Camera $260
When something goes wrong with a house’s plumbing or wiring, it’s usually very difficult for a homeowner to peer inside and diagnose the problem. Doing so typically requires cutting large holes -- the residential equivalent of invasive surgery. This camera allows users to peek into their walls without dismembering them. Just cut a tiny hole and snake the flexible 3-foot-long lens-attached cable into the crevice. The lens is lit with an LED light, and the picture pops up, live, on the 2.4-inch LCD screen.
While it’s ostensibly a home diagnostic tool, it’s also kind of amusing to play around with. I had fun poking it into unexpected places: Inside Halloween pumpkins, into mouths, around corners, and into the dark depths of my kitchen pantry.
5. Pure Digital Technologies Flip Mino HD $230
How does a company nobody had ever heard of two years ago come out of nowhere to produce the best-selling camcorder in America? If you’re Pure Digital Technologies Inc., makers of the phenomenally successful Flip line of video recorders, the answer is small. As in: small price tag, small size, and small learning curve.
Although the company’s breakthrough product, the Flip Ultra, came out in late 2007, 2008 turned out to be the year of the YouTube-friendly pocket-sized camcorder, with manufacturers such as Eastman Kodak Co. and Creative Technology Ltd. attempting to replicate Pure Digital’s success.
I’ve tested just about all of them, and the new Flip Mino HD is my favorite. It’s extremely portable (it weighs just 3 ounces), produces high-quality videos (in 720 pixel high definition), and is very easy to use. And its 4 gigabytes of memory, good for about 60 minutes of video, should satiate any budding YouTube star.
While the Mino HD is far from perfect (it lacks optical image stabilization, an optical zoom, and the ability to take still photos), when you consider that, just a few years ago, the only HD camcorders were massive shoulder rigs, it is extremely impressive. At this rate, don’t be surprised if 2009 turns out to be the year of the high-definition cameraphone.
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