Gadget Gifts for the 2009 Holiday Season
From Law.Com / Alan Cohen12-14-2009
This holiday season may not bring us any revolutionary new gadget (no Apple tablet -- yet), but some existing products are getting significant updates or new accessories that boost their performance. Heck, even Microsoft now has a media player that you can call stylish while keeping a straight face. Here are some of the most noteworthy new offerings -- year-end purchases that, in most cases, won't eat up a year-end bonus.
Sony PSP Go (Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc., $250). When it was announced earlier this year, the PSP Go garnered the last thing a marketing department wants: head-scratching. And little wonder. Here was a redesign of a product that never really met expectations -- Sony's $170 PlayStation Portable -- yet was more expensive, with less functionality, than its predecessor. In the blogosphere, the technical term was: Huh?
To shrink the bulky PSP down to an iPhone-like size, Sony had to get rid of the unit's optical drive and choose a download-only delivery model for games, movies, and TV shows (to store them, Sony added 16 gigabytes of flash memory). That approach has been a gold mine for Apple, but Sony's problem was that millions of discs (called UMDs) were already out there, and they'd all be useless on the Go. Making matters worse, the company declined to let existing PSP owners download free copies of games they already owned. So if you had a disc of "Need for Speed" and wanted to play it on your new PSP Go, you had to buy a digital copy, at full price -- not a great way to reward customer loyalty.
Fortunately, Sony's engineers have done better than its marketers. The Go is a technical marvel. It's about a third smaller than the old PSP but seems far lighter, thinner, and sleeker (it weighs less than 6 ounces). And it really does fit in a pocket -- something the old PSP never did. While the screen is smaller now -- 3.8 inches versus the old PSP's 4.3 inches -- it is sharp, vivid, and still bigger (slightly) than an iPhone screen. Downloading content -- which includes a vast library of games and movies -- is easy. And Sony has introduced a handful of low-priced (under $10), bite-size games called Minis that mark a welcome first step into Apple's App territory (indeed, one of the first Minis to appear is a version of the iPhone staple: Fieldrunners).
Clearly, existing PSP owners should proceed with caution; but for everyone else, the Go is an excellent media player that's priced in the same ballpark as the Zune and iPod Touch, and can play far more complex games.
Kensington Travel Battery Pack and Charger for iPhone and iPod Touch (Kensington Computer Products Group, $70). As anyone who has ever used one can tell you, griping about the iPhone is mean-spirited and wrong. But the über-smartphone does have one flaw (please, no hate mail): battery life. Working overtime as phone, e-mail device, media player, and portable computer, the iPhone drains power fast -- most users find they can barely go a day without needing to recharge. So here's a shout-out to Kensington's new travel battery and charger. Unlike some emergency chargers, it plugs directly into the iPhone's dock connector, so there are no cables to mind (and we do mind them). It is compact and light -- smaller than a tin of Altoids -- and also doubles as a kickstand for watching video on a seat tray. In our crisis-mode use, the pack's lithium polymer battery provided enough juice to fully charge our iPhone once we hit the dreaded "10 percent battery" warning. And we were able to use the phone seamlessly while the main battery topped off. Kensington's unit works with the iPod Touch, as well as the Classic and Nano. Just remember to charge it, too, before heading out, or you'll need an emergency charger for your emergency charger, and that's not a good scene.
Sony Reader Pocket Edition PR-300 (Sony Electronics Inc., $200). We know: You were expecting us to recommend a Kindle. But while we are big fans of Amazon's electronic book reader -- purchasing titles directly from the device really is the way to go -- we've long thought that Sony produces the better hardware. Its screens are easier on the eyes, with better contrast; the build quality far superior (ever drop a Kindle? We have, and the results weren't pretty); the controls more comfortable to use. But Sony's e-readers long suffered from three problems: no wireless access to content, high prices for the hardware, and often bizarrely high prices for the books themselves (sometimes even higher than hardcovers you could buy in the store). With the Pocket Edition e-reader -- and some changes to its business model -- Sony has eliminated the latter two gripes. At $200, the Pocket Edition is less expensive than the recently reduced but still overpriced Kindle ($259). And best-sellers are now available for a reasonable $10.
The Pocket Edition's compact size -- with a footprint, roughly, of a paperback book, but far thinner -- won us over, too. Other e-readers are made more for a backpack than a coat pocket. Sure, we'd still love to see built-in wireless (a Sony model with this feature is in the works), but buying books via PC (or Mac) and then loading them onto the reader is more inconvenient than taxing.
Keep in mind that this is not the e-reader solution for everyone: You can't, for example, annotate books on the Pocket Edition. And while we think the five-inch screen offers plenty of reading real estate, some users will prefer the six inches that both Kindle and Sony's own higher-end device, the far-too-expensive $300 Reader Touch Edition, offer. There's no slot for a memory card on the Pocket Edition (as there is on the Touch Edition), so you're limited to the unit's built-in memory -- enough, says Sony, for some 350 e-books. Finally, if you travel overseas, the Kindles now shipping from Amazon have been enhanced to allow wireless book purchases in more than 100 countries.
The e-book market is seeing plenty of activity of late -- as we went to press, Barnes & Noble was readying its own $259 e-reader, complete with wireless book-buying -- but for basic meat-and-potatoes e-reading, the Pocket Edition is a solid, compact contender at a reasonable price.
Panasonic DMP-B15 Portable Blu-ray Player (Panasonic Corporation of North America, $800). While Blu-ray discs -- the high-resolution successor to the DVD -- have been on the market for more than three years, the first portable player is only making its debut now. For a lot of videophiles, the question isn't what took so long, but why bother at all. Blu-ray, they'll tell you, was designed for large screens, the televisions that take up half a wall -- not a 9-inch screen that sits on one's lap. True enough, but here's the thing: As more people buy Blu-ray discs, some are going to want a way to watch them away from home, particularly if they've got kids and long car rides.
Panasonic's solution isn't perfect. At $800, it is the most expensive portable movie player you're bound to come upon (although it's cheaper than buying a new laptop configured with a Blu-ray drive, and savvy shoppers will find it discounted). It's big, too -- larger than many netbook computers. And the controls -- particularly the volume buttons -- are small and awkward. But image quality is nothing short of amazing, even at 8.9 inches. It's been a long time since we've seen even a middling image on a portable disc player -- even the big guns like Panasonic and Sony have been churning out low-cost, low-end products as the market becomes commoditized. So to see a truly spectacular picture is something special. As more Blu-ray portables appear, prices should drop, but until now, Panasonic's player means that your Blu-rays won't gather dust while you're on your next trip.
Zune HD (Microsoft Corporation, 16 gigabytes: $219; 32 gigabytes: $289). Comparisons of the Zune with the iPod always reminded us of the movie "Twins" -- with Arnold Schwarzenegger as the iPod and Danny DeVito as the Zune. By almost every measure, the iPod seemed the more powerful, more capable, and more presentable contender (the boxy Zune was like the computer-age version of grandma's Dodge Dart). So here's the headline: Microsoft's latest iteration of its portable music-video-podcast (and now, a lot more) player has not only closed the gap in many respects, but overtaken the iPod in some. For one thing, the Zune HD looks great. It's small and sleek (about 80 percent the size of an iPod Touch), and has a terrifically bright display (albeit one that, at 3.3 inches, is a bit smaller than the Touch's). That comes in handy, given the movies you can buy or rent via the online Zune marketplace. We never thought we'd say this, but Microsoft has designed a user interface that's just as good as anything to come from Apple. You also get access to FM radio stations -- and HD radio in areas where it's available. And for $20 more than the eight-gigabyte iPod Touch, you can have double the storage space. Finally, you can sync your content with your PC (but not a Mac) wirelessly, a great feature.
While the Zune marketplace isn't quite as rich as the iTunes Store (particularly for video), and Zune apps (yup, just like iPhone apps) are, so far, few and rather feeble (thanks for the free chess, but we'll gladly pay for a better selection), we dig Zune Pass, a $15-per-month service that lets you download and listen to as much music as you like, as long as your subscription remains active (and you can keep ten tracks per month outright).
Zune HD sports wi-fi and a browser, too -- though if you're looking mainly for a pocket Internet device, the iPod Touch is still the better choice. Note, too, that while Zune can store high-definition (720-pixel) video, you'll need an optional -- and, at $90, overpriced -- dock to play it on your TV (the Zune itself cannot display HD content). But for music fans in particular, Zune has transformed itself like Cinderella off to the ball. And if Microsoft can beef up the apps and video downloads, the clock may never strike midnight.
iPod Nano (Apple, 8 gigabytes: $149; 16 gigabytes: $179). For a while now, the iPod Nano has been something of a tough sell: It lacks the big screen and wireless Web browsing that its big sibling, the iPod Touch, offers. Meanwhile, it stores far less content than the iPod Classic. So it was a pleasant surprise to see the pocket-friendly Nano (just 1.28 ounces) get the biggest makeover in this fall's iPod update. There's now a built-in video camera (nothing that will make you forget IMAX, but good enough for Facebook). An FM radio (finally) and pedometer (plug in your weight and it will track the calories you burn walking around all day) are nice touches, too. And while this is the first time Apple has not increased storage capacity in a Nano update, it did cut the price of the 16-gigabyte model from $199 to $179. We're glad that Apple bumped up the Nano's screen size, but at 2.2 inches, it's still too small for watching anything longer than a 15-minute "SpongeBob SquarePants" episode. Putting aside that and another quibble or two -- we'd rather activate the video camera from a button, not a menu -- the Nano is now an easier purchasing decision, particularly for music lovers who are watching both their wallets and their waistlines.Gadget Gifts for the 2009 Holiday Season
Alan Cohen
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