Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

While we are taking some time getting our full thoughts down, we wanted to show off the pics of the latest gadget to make its way into the Gadgetell headquarters. Its the Kicker iK500 iPod speaker system. While we have the iK500 which is made exclusively for the iPod, Kicker also has the zKick ZK500 for the Microsoft Zune.

Aside from the obvious difference that one is made for the Zune and the other for the iPod, they both offer the same features. The systems both ship with a remote control that offers a full range of options, and have two 5-inch woofers, two 3/4-inch tweeters, one 6-inch square reflex subwoofer that are powered by a 40-watt stereo amplifier. In addition they both have a 1/8-inch stereo aux-in jack and stereo RCA out. They both measure in at 8.5 x 19.2 x 8.4-inches and weigh 9.2-pounds.

The iK500 includes eight dock inserts that will allow for just about any iPod to fit snugly in place, and the ZK500 comes with three inserts to fit the various available Zune players. The iK500 and ZK500 both retail for $299.99 and are currently available. During our (so far brief) testing the system sounded great and worked well with a variety of iPods, to include the nano, Shuffle and even the iPhone, while in airplane mode. Be sure to check back for our full review and in the mean time enjoy the pics…

MORE »

We just got our hands on the 2100 Max GPS from Navigon, and while we are planning to bring you a full review, we wanted to take a few minutes and show off some pics. Just by looking at the 2100 Max, you can already see just how nice the unit looks, thanks in part to the shiny black exterior and the large 4.3-inch display. However, the 2100 Max offers so much more than just good looks, the unit is feature packed and comes with the very nice option to have your maps and points-of-interest upgraded every three-months with NAVIGON FreshMaps. Aside from the updates, the 2100 Max also offers reality view, turn-by-turn spoken directions, route planning, predictive text, speed assistant as well as branded-icons for your POI’s and much, much more that will will cover in the full review.

The Navigon 2100 Max is currently shipping and it retails for $299. Simply based on some quick first impressions, it seems to be well worth the money, be sure to check back for our full review to come, in the meantime enjoy the pics.

Keep reading for a few more pics…

MORE »

Back in February Sony announced two new Walkman MP3 players, the A820 and A829 (yes, horrendous names). These are 8 and 16 GB versions of Sony’s flash memory, iPod nano competitors. At first glance, the big shocker is the inclusion of Bluetooth audio on the A829—no more strangulation by your headphone—but the models have much more to offer than that.

MORE »

Check out the gallery: The Walkman returns to glory with the Sony NWZ-A829

The Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini is an incredibly lightweight and small, portable USB 2.0 External Hard Drive. What follows are pictures of the unboxing and my initial thoughts on this product.

The un-openable blister-pack notwithstanding, the Maxtor is cleanly packaged, and carries only the essentials inside: Drive, Manual, and Cord. As you can see by looking at the comparison pictures below, the first comparing it to the trackpad on my MacBook Pro, and the second comparing it to the Airport Extreme, which is the same size as the Mac Mini, this is an incredibly portable hard drive. I could easily see myself taking this on trips to keep my Time Machine backups going.

MORE »

While we still intend to give you a more in depth comparison of the Everex Cloudbook and Asus Eee PC in words, we thought we would take a little time to show off some side-by-side pictures of the slightly different form factors.

We did find one important item, which we share in the video below. The slow, slow boot time of the Everex Cloudbook. In full disclosure, the Eee (as mentioned in the video) was upgraded to 1GB of RAM while the Cloudbook has the stock 512MB. Aside from that both laptops are stock.

Once we have a little more hands-on with the Cloudbook we will give a follow-up (in words). In the meantime enjoy the video and pictures.

Keep reading for the video and side-by-side comparison pictures of the Everex Cloudbook and Asus Eee PC…

MORE »

Back at CES this week, iriver had quite a bit of new products to show - some were closer to production than others, but all looked slick.  One of their new products that we got some hands-on time with was the P10 media player/viewer.  The device has a 4.0-inch TFT LCD touch-screen display at 800x480, and pretty much supports anything you can think of: video, music, voice recording, T-DMB, Office viewer, PDF viewer, picture viewer, and an e-Dictionary.  To hold all of this media madness, the P10 boasts 33GB of memory crammed into a 1.3” internal hard drive.  The P10 comes with Flash Lite 2.1 pre-loaded, has a customizable GUI, and is a touch-screen, of course.  Read on for the supported file-formats…

MORE »

Check out the gallery: Hands On: iriver's new P10 media player

Over at the Pioneer Booth this year, we’ve been liking what we’ve seen.  For over a year now, the company has been touting their high-end KURO line of projects.  At this year’s CES, the company has show their latest concept Plasma’s, and hight-end home audio equipment - which takes the branding Pioneer ELITE.  Their big marketing pitch this year is that they’re “ending the conversation about contrast ratio, a debate that has been in existence since television was first introduced, and creating a flat panel display so thin it becomes a canvas for entertainment.” It’s a whole lot of marketing talk, but at the same time, their new Extreme Contrast Concept was quite impressive.  We’ve put together some photos of their CES 2008 booth, so check out the Photo Gallery below…

Check out the gallery: CES 2008 Booth Tour: Pioneer

Yes I know that day one of CES is over but who doesn’t love to reminisce. Here is a glimpse of what the CES floor looked like, less than 24 hours ago.

Check out the gallery: Peep Show: The night before CES 2008

Monster Cable’s press event at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show had a few surprises.  Most notably, Noel Lee, Head Monster of Monster Cable / Power announced a new partnership with Dr. Dre on a set up high-end studio headphones, dubbed Beats by Dr. Dre.  The company was clearly ecstatic to be working with Dre, and mentioned that he wouldn’t allow them to release them until they were absolutely perfect.  According to the PR mumbo-jumbo, the headphones are “crystal clear”, but we’ll just have to see for ourselves.  Dr. Dre walked out on stage with Interscope Chairman Jimmy Iovine for the release of the new branded headphones.  If you’re wondering how Dre feels about the announcement, I think this quote from him sums it up best:

“When I’m making a track I’m trying to capture the sound that makes me go ‘now THAT’s the ####! And I want that reaction from everybody who hears it,” said Dr. Dre. “I spend a lot of time in the studio listening to my music through headphones...with Beats, people are finally going to hear it the way they should: the way I do.”

Check out more photos by heading over to our gallery below…

Check out the gallery: Monster and Dr. Dre team up on new studio headphones, meet 'Beats by Dr. Dre'

As an unloyal Blackjack (BJ1) user, I was extremely eager to get my hands on the new version.  For my BJ1, countless supposed release dates for Windows Mobile 6 update had come and gone leaving the only hope of upgrade to getting a new phone.  Thankfully, Samsung dropped the Blackjack II (BJ2) phone late last month.

First Impression:

This new phone is way more upscale then the original.  The first thing I noticed was the band of chromed metal surround the phone like the frosting of an Oreo cookie.  My review unit came in the Wine color which is quite nice.  Not red, definitely not purple and comes no where near insulting my man hood.  The Blackjack 2 feels like a phone you spent lots of money on.

Where did that go?

Clever Samsung made some changes that are a bit odd: they’ve made the BJ2 wider than the original by a very small margin (it fits in my holder but only by forcing it), they shifted the keys around, and took away my beloved jog wheel. Creating yet another battery size (the original came with two sizes) just doesn’t make sense to me but then again, I don’t sell replacements as I am sure Samsung does.

The oddest change I’ve noted so far is the change in quick commands in lists.  Instead of hitting <menu> then “1” to delete an email, you hit “a”.  But it is not consistent, some menus use the Windows method of underscoring the letter in the command you desire; other times you get A, B, C.  The original had numbers to choose from which I found it easier to locate the “3” instead of where the “c” is.

Other annoyances include changing hotkeys and special secret functions like holding down “b” to turn on Bluetooth.  Many of those are things that just must be relearned, but I’ll grouse anyhow.  This would bug no one but a former BJ1 owner.  Still no WiFi…

Highlights so far:

As I said up on top, this phone just feels better in the hand.  The internal GPS and the newest version of TeleNav GPS has me all excited.  Windows Mobile 6 gets an, “I don’t know yet” mark from me as beside seeing the icons for Mobile Office, I don’t seem able to do much with them yet.  The small indicator light on the front of the unit in the upper left-hand side is a nice new addition, letting me know when new mail is in.  The bigger screen is very nice looking as is the textured back surface, like a cars dash, provides a nice grip on what can otherwise be a slippery surface.

I have high hopes for the Blackjack II and will have a full worked-over/beat-down review up soon.