Gadget of the year nominations

The fourth catagory in the ‘Best Of’ awards is for the gadget/hardware of the year.

Before I begin I have to admit that i’m rather biased in this area as I’ve recently brought myself a new Asus eeepc laptop. For those that are unaware it’s basically the smallest and cheapest laptop on the market weighing in just under a 1 Kg and only costing $500. I’m actually writing up this post on my eeepc at the moment and I’ll give a proper review of it in a later post but at the moment I would say that this is my gadget of the year.

Other contenders for this award would have to include everything in the new ipod range (bar the shitty shuffle). In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last year Apple announced their new lineup of ipod products in September. Obviously the biggest product was the iphone which is still set to come out in Australia but the rumours are that it will be released through Telstra. I have seen an imported one in action and must say they look pretty sweet and come close to toppling the Blackberry off it’s podium as being the #1 multimedia phone.

The other major addition in the Apple lineup was the multifunction iTouch, which offers a touch screen (duh) and a WiFi connection that allows you to surf the net and peruse the itunes store. Unfortunately the slow web browser and inclusion of only 16Gb of space probably limits this model from being the definitive ipod model. Apple also updated the classic range (80Gb or 160Gb) and the ipod Nano (4Gb, 8Gb) with new looks and the ability to play videos. As I stated in my review the 80Gb version is definitely a fine gadget if you don’t need WiFi.

This year other tech releases revolved around the world of HD movies. As the Blueray and HD war heated up a whole range of DVD players were release from Pioneer (blue), Toshiba (HD) and Sony (blue).Until a winner is decided its hard to tell which format to choose but thankfully Samsung and LG both offer players that allow playback of both HD and Blueray discs. While must people wont won’t fork out for these expensive players ($900 – ~$1600) the Playstation 3 is the cheapest option on the market with its built in Blueray reader.

A worldwide shortage of PS3 consoles caused an inlflux of ridiculous priced units on eBay (Avrg $1000) and pushed the Australian release date back to March. The initial steep price of $830 (20Gb) or $999 (60Gb) and the lackluster range of release titles ended up making it the lowest selling console in the 3rd quarter period with only ~27k units sold compared to ~40k for the xbox360 and ~6k for the wii . While the PS3′s price has since dropped to $700 it also discarded a couple of USB ports, its memory card reader, it’s ability to play PS2 games and they also stripped back the hard drive to 40Gb. While the PS3 obviously has a lot of ground to make up it will be interesting how it will preform in the coming year.

I also have to briefly mention another couple of gadgets that I know my friends have been getting good milage out. These include the professional snowball microphone which Count Knuckles has been using for the hundredpennies podcast and the Belkin N1 vision 4 port wireless router which gets points for its futuristic innovative display and ipod looking asthetics.

If there’s any other gadgets that have caught your attention send me a comment.

1. Asus: eeePC
2. Apple: iPhone
3. Apple: iTouch
4. Apple: iPod Nano
5. Apple: iPod Classic
6. Playstation 3
7. Samsung: BD-UP5000 HD/Blueray combo drive
8. Blue: Snowball USB microphone
9. Belkin: N1 vision 4 port wireless router