That Bloody Time of Year Again

The only reason Chrimbo is on the agenda at all in the last week of November is that I have seen the Holidays are Coming Coca Cola advert, heard Fairytale of New York on the radio and observed the world’s most hideous yuletide decorations which now elaborately entrinket the outer shell of the house across the road.

Yup, the supermarkets have their trees all ship shape and shining without thought or concern for the plight of the planet. Ladies and gentlemen, at a record earliest, Christmas was here.  

Now no one likes being preached to re their Christmas shopping and far be it for anyone to guide your patterns of purchase for the inevitable let-down that is Christmas but, like every other gadget website, we have our opinions on some of the better gifts for Christmas.

We’ve tried to cover a wide spectrum so here follows a list of some of the snazzier goods which e-shops and high street merchandisers are trying to punt this year.

Any other suggestions, please feel free to add them to the bottom of the page and we’ll try and link through to the best deal on said product.

Christmas Maybes 

Jedi Dressing Gown

The market year on year never fails to deliver for Star Wars fans and this year aside from a competition to win a Lucas-autographed fine art cell, it looks like the cream of the crap is a Jedi dressing gown.

I feel it would be the perfect punchline to ordering takeaway food in the middle of the afternoon: wearing a Jedi cloak and perhaps accessorising with a lightsaber. Imagine answering the door like that, it’s a YouTube moment if ever there was one.

Basque in the glorious disdain of the Dominos delivery driver. 

The Jedi dressing gown is 100 percent cotton velour so its decent quality but depending on your budget it could hump the bank balance at around £60.

It has all the expected features like big old hood and wide sleeves and has a Jedi logo on it because that’s what Obi Wan would want.

Babyliss for Men Easy Cut Hair Clippers

This caught my eye in an advert the other day so I thought I’d source a fairly cheap location for the BaByliss for Men Easy Cut Hair Clippers.

Supposedly the credit crunch forces a heap of changes to one’s pattern of life, certain things are very quick to fall by the wayside.

When frugality kicks in; gym membership, trips abroad, certain beauty treatments and one’s personal grooming see their dedicated price-tag, and position in the pecking order fall.

Although a trip to the barbers was never an astronomical venture for those who like to simply shave their locks off, it’s a near-tenner so this looks like a decent investment.

Pulling up the ratings page, it seems to have a bit of a mixed press but the idea seems sound. For those who have never tackled their own main with a set of clippers, you inevitably get difficult and uneven bits at the top and back and using a mirror just confuses simpletons like me so you have to bite the bullet and get a friend to do it.

The desire to shave something horrendous into your remaining scalp must be huge for your assistant; the urge to “accidentally” kick the guard off and number one your ass must be tangible.

The Babyliss Clipper set wouldn’t be a bad shout for the man in your life who shaves his head. Maybe a little impersonal as a Christmas present but the kind of thing you could get a brother in law with a penchant for a prickly epidermis.

Home Brew Beer Machine

Mum, please?

EarMuff Headphones

Maybe there are cooler and more stylish ways to listen to your music in the cold but do they come in an all-in-one fuzzy ears contraption? I just like the idea you could buy a slinky hat and not have to worry about venturing your blue fingers from your gloves to affix earphones to your ears under your hat.

It’s but a few pennies to spend for a neat bit of labour-saving and temperature maintenance.

The earmuff headphones plug into any ipod or MP3 player just like standard headphones and adjust to fit just about anyone.

Twilight Umbrella

The flashy blurbs beside these brollies are trying to sell you one of three items on the basis that no one wants a boring umbrella.

No, I’d rather a boring umbrella because I get paranoid enough that people are looking at my rubbish clothes when I walk down the street.

Nonetheless, if you want the recipient to raise their game in the rain and perhaps coax a smile out of the other miserable winter walkers on a busy shopping street during the January sales then this might not be a bad shout.

The original Twilight Umbrella is studded with tiny fibre optic lights and its partner, the Colour Phasing Umbrella has fibre optics where the colour oscillates; all designed to bring a smile to the face of passers-by.

The third Twilight Umbrella has colour phasing stars that light the outer and inner realm of the umbrella, turning your walk into a shrouded cocoon of phasing light letting you believe you’re in a noir dream and you saunter (less) miserably towards your destination.

Home Cinema Kit

If we’re to believe Pixmania, the humble DVD is looking like an endangered species for 2010 so presumably the industry will be trying to convert you onto the more expensive BluRay option.

That said, they are coming down in price quite nicely and the more widespread the market becomes; the more competition and the more we can look to lower prices.

As we’re constantly being informed, the living room is reasserting its place as the hub of in-home activity. So with that in mind I’ll wager that everyone with the means is going to want a home cinema kit at some point in the not-too-distant. 

There’s a host of good offers just now so feel free to peruse at your leisure.

Argos have some decent low prices but as you know you can pay what you like for a system, Richer Sounds have some seriously good offers and John Lewis are towards the top end of the market if you’re wanting to avoid the bespoke companies and shelling out a small fortune.

Verbatim AudioCube

Geeks we’re wholly impressed with the whole package of this little Bluetooth wonder.

Bluetooth speakers aren’t a new invention, but the size, weight and power of this thing has to be heard. I’d never have imagined a simple Bluetooth sound cube, that costs around the 40 pound mark and takes four AA batteries, could emit your music with such vigor. It’s devilishly cute, small enough for a jacket pocket and takes up so little space to be a necessity for any camping trip or summer night in the garden.

Full volume is loud enough to fill a good sized room and a perfect gift if you don’t want to have to purchase the branded speakers which belong to your particular model of mobile phone. The cube accepts any model with Bluetooth capability. Read the full review here:

There are other Bluetooth speaker sets such as this one from Veho but we were a little more than impressed by the AudioCube. 

The Sound Bomb Speaker is still rather swish and a lot cheaper though it doesn’t have Bluetooth capability.

Decent Christmas mobile phones

Data released this week has seen the iPhone overshadow half, yes half of the smartphone market the world over but experts have been advising we keep an eye on Androids as the next big thing.

It’s always welcome, and easy, when you opt to buy a partner or pal a mobile phone for their Christmas so why not take advantage of some grounded Android smartphone prices in a market of ridiculous iPrices before the Android OS becomes the predominant force in the smartphone arena and they hike up the price.

Alright you won’t be equipped with the current prestige of the iPhone but when we’re talking one-third cheaper for say a T-Mobile Pulse; that’s prices you can put in the bank.

A few reasonably priced, decent models of phone either as contract or PAYG are listed here and are but a shaved fraction of the price of the iPhone.

Try the T-Mobile Pulse

The Samsung i7500

or the Motorola Dext

For a decent discounted Android phone, we’re told they’re the next iPhone

But the pick of the Android phone bunch is the HTC Hero, please read our review of it and decide for yourself if you fancy giving it away to celebrate Santa Claus’s birthday.

Home Gadgets

Ion Tape Converter

There’s plenty of gadgety fun to be had for all the family and, resisting the desire to poke fun at anyone who still exists on tape, there’s a neat converter for the digitally challenged.

This Ion Tape Converter allows those who reserve a special place for the 90 minute analogue wonder that was cassette to tentatively shift from this format onto MP3 through a handy USB connection to one’s home PC.

I say tentatively because the device is simply a modified walkman so perfectly capable of playing your beloved old tapes, just this time it allows you to spread them across the MP3 platform if you’re thinking of upgrading, or burn the ripped tracks onto discs if you prefer the halfway-house option.

Star Theatre Planetarium

Gadgets are great things to add a bit of colour and to accessorise the rooms in your house. Depending on your budget and how much you like the person in question, there’s often a good present to be found.

Geeks were quite taken with this Firebox Planetarium which, for a considerable £120 one can experience the natural progression from those glow-in-the-dark stars we had on our bedroom ceilings.

The Star Theatre Planetarium uses the same lens as a full-blown commercial planetarium to show real constellations in high detail.

The projector uses ultra-bright white LED technology to beam 10,000 slowly moving stars over your walls and ceiling, so that you can pretend you’re sleeping by a romantic campfire a la Brokeback Mountain. The kit includes special discs to display both stars and delineated constellations and mimics celestial movement in both northern and southern hemispheres.

For extra gasp factor you can also set the Star Theatre to display shooting stars at random intervals, all viewable from the cosiness of your duvet.

For the full review click here

Melted Clock 

Every so often you’ll see a gadget that has little benefit to the user, and unequivocally there will be another, older, more rustic household gadget which will perform the task of said gadget in simpler form.

But a sheet with an alarm and clock; I like it, even if it has little practical use. I’ll bet you Sterling it’s an object that will feature heavily in a futuristic minimalist household environment.

They call it the Melted Clock: a touch sensitive alarm with speakers and controls all embedded in your sheet.

Three control icons are embroidered on the sheet and relevant to the operating elements on the outside edge of the bed sheet. Use the two in combo to set your radio frequency and alarm time. This less-than-handy contraption will set you back about £50.

The idea is that you wake up in the middle of the night, can’t be bothered looking at your clock, your phone or figuring ‘it’s dark I should be sleeping no matter what the time’ and feel the raised numbers for accurate time.

Parrot Digital Messaging Plate 

For a busy or shared household, this isn’t a bad idea; the ability to play a reminder message of under 20 seconds to your housemates via your light switch whenever it is flipped. It saves you spending time on the blackboard, etch-a-sketch or leaving post-its everywhere. A neat idea and well worth the money at $9.99 via Kotulas.

Anyone can record a message on the panel which leaves it open to the deviousness of your more cunning flatmates, it’s the kind of thing you’d buy a friend and hate yourself for doing so.

Another laser projector

If you want to turn your bedroom happy place into an enjoyable ClassA place then this Laserpod is the chemically intoxicated version, the magic upper to the calming downer of the Planetarium unit from Firebox.

A cluster of honed LEDs and a laser are embedded in the aluminium body of this light and petrude through a revolving fascia to split and fracture light shapes into a mesmerising lasertrip session projected onto your ceiling.

Great sweeps of stagnant and shooting stars mix in a magical sky where supernovas and stargate wormholes disable your senses as you regress into an over-awed shell of a human.

Billed as the 21st Century answer to the lava lamp, the Laserpod Supernova carries a hefty price tag of circa £130.

Party games

Christmas wouldn’t be the same without a couple of party games, and seeing that most of us 21st century boffins have moved from the Boggle board to the balance board, a wee Wii party title wouldn’t be a bad shout.

The latest in Wiiware are the Sports Resort title and Wii Fit Plus. I read somewhere that to walk off a full turkey dinner with all the trimmings takes the distance from London to Paris so the Wii Fit option, though a slice boring for yuletide, may put a cap on the festive pounds.

Sports Resort is good wholesome fun for the family and though it reminds you that you’re not outside sailing in the sun, is a great way to enjoy a few drinks with the family in the front room.

I don’t yet know if global warming, the ice-caps melting and the planet heating up means we’ll have colder, snow filled winters. It seems like anti-logic but maybe a foray into the land of Sonic and Mario as they visit  the Winter Olympics could be a welcome addition to the Christmas day gamesphere. Read our review here and take a look at the current list of top selling computer games here.

Board games

Not a gadget as such but where would we be in a world without board games? Bored.

Balderdash is celebrating its 20th anniversary and is the best board game to get stuck into if you haven’t already tried it.

Great for bonding, wiling away the hours and demonstrating to your mother you’re an accomplished liar.

For those of you who don’t know, the premise of the game is to tell porky pies in a bid to bluff your opponents. It’s a bit like Call My Bluff but without the public school-educated tossers round the table.

You get points for sucking in other players with your lies across a variety of subjects.

After doing just that to my big brother last Christmas, I looked at my mum’s face to discover just how much disappointment was possible in that moment. A nice christian lady watching her second-born suck her firstborn into his complex web of fibbery.

We hope thats covered a small corner, or at least given an idea of what to buy an awkward sort – as ever please note any deals and bargains in your comments.