It's that time of year when T3 release their 'Hot 100' which lets all those less tech-savvy than they are (in other words everyone) know what they need to spend their hard-earned/inherited/stolen pennies on.
Their tech experts have highlighted the top 5 here for us:
1. Motorola Atrix 4G
And so, after much heated debate, this year’s hottest gadget is a phone. No, a media server. Oh hang on, no, it’s a laptop. Winning nine awards on its unveiling at CES 2011, this sleek Android smartphone boasts the same dualcore Nvidia Tegra 2 processor as Moto’s Xoom, 1GB of RAM and a four-inch, 960x540 screen. Three USBs let you add a keyboard and mouse, while an HDMI output lets you use your TV as a screen, turning the Atrix into a media computer and mini set-top box. Add Motorola’s Lapdock and it becomes an 11.6-inch laptop with eight hours of battery life. We’re so excited about it all that we’ve run out of room to talk about the 1080p camera, the 4G-readiness, the 16GB of storage, the fingerprint scanner, the…
2. Apple iPad 2
Price: £429 | www.apple.com/uk
And in a lowly conference centre in Cupertino, the new iPad was born unto us. And yea, Apple’s saviour who is called Steve Jobs did see fit to bless it with a faster dualcore CPU and the miracle of “nine times faster graphics” – have faith, brothers – HD video recording and cameras both on the front and yea, unto the back. “And lo,” The Jobs proclaimed, “it shalt be 33 per cent thinner, up to 15 per cent lighter, have a slick new OS and shall retain the same ten-hour battery life and price as my last tablet testament.” Finally, warneth he of false gods and “copycat” devices and then did he rest, confident the number one spot in T3’s Hot 100 would be a nailed-on cert, verily. Oops!
3. RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook
uk.blackberry.com/playbook-tablet
RIM is taking on Apple and the Android brigade with its own OS and the off-putting tagline of “The world’s first professional-grade tablet”. RIM’s punting the Playbook to its traditional business market then, you might think, but twin HD cameras, access to 7 Digital’s excellent music store, superb video on the multi-touch, high-res, 1024x600 screen, a web browser with support for Flash 10.1 and “hard core gaming” are not the stuff of dry accountancy seminars. With a 1GHz dualcore processor and 1GB of RAM, N Wi-Fi and the promise of 4G access (where available, ie: not here) this thing should really fly…
4. Sony NGP
This is higher up the Hotness Index than arch-rival Nintendo’s 3DS because it bypasses gimmicks such as 3D and goes all out for heavyweight specs. The dual joypads finally allow proper control in games, while a touchscreen and gyroscope give game developers plenty of other options. The quadcore processor allows for, at the very least, PS2-quality games, while the five-inch, 960x544 widescreen should serve as a crystal-clear window onto virtual worlds. Of course it’s also higher up the Hot 100 because it won’t be out till Christmas. Remember the immutable law of the tech world: perceived hotness is in inverse proportion to the amount of time spent actually using stuff.
5. Samsung BD-D7500
Following in the footsteps of the DVD players they’ve superseded, Blu-ray decks have largely been unappetising slabs of black designed to squat under your telly like malevolent metal turds. Not so the wall-mountable, ineffably lovely, very boringly named BD-D7500. The slimmest 3D BD deck money can buy is just 28mm deep and can upscale 2D to 3D as well as upscaling non-HD materials to 1080p. It also allows you to wirelessly download thousands of movies if you’ve shelled out for a six-quid Lovefilm subscription, as well as DLNA for streaming your own music and movies. Don’t hate it for being beautiful.
You can read the full list here.
