Gadgets

Twelve South HoverBar

£70

A slick way of fixing your iPad next to your monitor so you can use both at once. The HoverBar is a flexible-armed stand for your iPad that connects to most Macs and Apple displays with an L-shaped stand. The silicone-lined clamp means there’s plenty of grip on your precious tablet, without any danger of marking it. And the arm’s strong enough to position the iPad on top or to the side. It’ll also clamp to non-Apple branded products too - such as suitably-shaped kitchen cabinets. The catch? It only handles iPad 2s so far - a new iPad update is promised soon.

www.amazon.co.uk

Berghaus BIOFLEX range

from £140

Berghaus has had its BIOFLEX idea going since 2005 - but this new v2.0 is a massive improvement. The idea - to allow much greater freedom of hips and back movement than traditional hiking backpacks - remains the same. But the new patent-pending “hub”, located at the junction between the pack body and hip belt, now lets the hips move in three dimensions - tilting and twisting with each step. Berghaus have, on the bigger packs, also adds aluminium links in its hipbelt that spread loads better all round the pelvis. The result is a pack easier to move around in that feels less tiring to wear.

www.berghaus.com

Sonos SUB

£599

Sonos’ multiroom wireless system was already smart - now it’s got a little smarter. Sonos makes wireless devices that you can either hook into an existing hi-fi or stand alone - combined with a central hub, these let you control audio around your whole house via smartphone. You can stream different MP3s to different rooms, or play the same song in all rooms, simultaneously. Now, the new SUB adds wireless woof to the system with a face-to-face speaker sub that can be positioned vertically or horizontally (to slide under a sofa or bed). The cost, though, does seem high.

www.sonos.com

Parrot Zik

£349

Designed by Philippe Starck, these could just feature the most high-tech touches of any pair of headphones yet. These wireless Bluetooth cans run digital signal processing through a smartphone app to let you fine-tune the “concert hall” effect, feature active noise cancelling technologies including a bone conduction sensor that separates your speech from external noise to phone call listeners and a touch panel on the right headset that answer or reject calls, adjust volume or change tracks. The headphones can even sense when they’re on your ears or round your neck, pausing your music for the latter.

www.parrot.com/uk

Nokia Lumia 900

£450 SIM-free

Nokia still has a long way to go to catch up with its key competitors - Apple and Samsung (running Google’s Android OS). But the Lumia range has not been a bad way to reboot the brand. The latest, the 900, is a step up in screen size at least compared to the 800 - from 3.7” to 4.3”. There’s also a much better battery and front-facing camera. But the phone features the same resolution screen as its predecessor, same 8MP rear camera and same single-core and processor speed internals. Compared to it, the Samsung Galaxy SIII has a higher resolution screen, quad-core processor and better video capture.

www.nokia.com

Pentax K-30

from £600 (body only)

All the features of a trad dSLR, bit with a bit more ruggedness - the K-30 features a weather-resistant, dustproof, cold-proof body. Those dSLR features: 16+MP effective sensor, Full HD 1080p movie recording, 100-25,600 ISO, six image per second burst shooting and much more including optical viewfinder, shake reduction and 1/6000 second shutter speed. Plus it’s compatible with existing K-mount lenses. On top of that, there’s performance proven down to -10 degrees C, it will keep firing in rain and its got a neat idea in that the rechargeable battery compartment also takes standard AAs.

www.pentax.co.uk

Related forum discussions

	To start a discussion topic about this article, please log in or register.