Electronics Firms Offer High-Tech Gadgets Galore
By Martha McKay, The Record, Hackensack, N.J.
Feb. 4–Some of the world’s biggest electronics firms, many of which have their U.S. headquarters in North Jersey, will not fail to disappoint this year with their lineups of new products.
— Samsung Electronics America Inc., Ridgefield Park: Samsung’s rollout includes a 50-inch plasma TV that’s wireless. But some of the company’s niftiest gadgets come in smaller sizes.
Take the Samsung K5, which moves the MP3 player into a new realm. The player has a slide-out speaker that turns it into a tiny boom box with pretty big sound. It also comes with a touch screen that lets you operate the music player or turn an alarm clock off and on. It’s got a 1.71-inch OLED full color screen to display photos you store on board. And a 2GB or 4GB memory lets you pack it with up to 1,000 or 2,000 songs respectively, as well as JPEG photos that can be turned on for a mini-slide show. The K5 supports three types of song formats: MP3, WMA and DRM 10, along with standard audio formats.
Price: $230
Available: Now.
— Panasonic Consumer Electronics Co., Secaucus: Step aside WiFi, there’s another option for home networking fans. Late last year, Panasonic rolled out its HD-PLC device, otherwise known as “High-Definition Power Line Communication.” Instead of snaking wires or WiFi routers cluttering your home, Panasonic’s product turns your home’s electrical wiring into a high-speed Ethernet network. Every AC outlet in your home becomes a potential network entry point. The starter kit (BL-PA100KT) comes with a pair of adapters; one is the “master” and the other the “terminal.”
You can set up the network without a PC. Plug the master into a power outlet and your broadband router into the adapter. Then plug the terminal into any wall outlet in any room where you want to access the network. The system lets you easily change computer locations. Another big advantage is security — no unwanted visitors can sneak onto an unencrypted WiFi network. And the speeds are impressive — tests have shown 170 Mbps speeds, which are many times faster than WiFi.
Price: $200 for starter kit with two adapters; $130 for single additional adapter.
Capacity: Connect up to eight devices to a single adapter.
Available: Now.
— LG Electronics USA Inc., Englewood Cliffs: LG’s latest entry in the cellphone world — the VX9400 — is a head-turner. The phone’s a bar style with a 2.2-inch crystal clear LCD screen that slides up and turns, giving you essentially a small screen with a hand holder. The tiny tube is designed to run Verizon Wireless’s new VCast Mobile TV, which is a subscription service. Some caveats to be aware of include the reception question. The TV service is provided by Qualcomm subsidiary MediaFLO Inc. But the phones that debuted last month at the Consumer Electronics Show weren’t showing the exact TV signals that consumers will see, although the company says it was pretty close. It remains to be seen how the device will work in your house, or on the road with a live TV broadcast. (One note: The VCast TV will also be available on a Samsung phone known as the Mobi, model SCH-u620.)
Price: n/a
Available: First quarter 2007
Description: Bluetooth-capable, 1.3 megapixel camera/camcorder, 4.06 oz., usage time up to 3 hours, 35 minutes/standby time up to 12 1/2 days.
— Sony Electronics, Park Ridge: USB flash drives, the handy devices that store all kinds of data and plug into your PC, come in all sorts of weird and wacky styles these days. But leave it to Sony to come out with a line of drives that are appealing and well-designed. The Micro Vault Tiny, which is Sony’s smallest USB flash drive, comes in five colors, each corresponding with its storage capacity that ranges from 256 MB (orange) to 4GB (purple). They come in a small case that clips onto anything from a shirt pocket to a purse strap.
The drives measure one-half-inch wide by just over 1 inch long and come with Virtual Expander, a data compression program that increases capacity three times.
Price: $30-$200
Available: On sale now, 4GB model out this spring.
— Toshiba America Consumer Products, Wayne: Toshiba’s updated line of portable DVD players have bigger screens at a lower price. The company’s new lineup of players also have extended battery life. The largest model — SD-P2900 — has a 10.2-inch LCD screen measured diagonally. The model offers a high resolution display of 800 by 480 pixel and approximately 6 hours of battery life.
The SD-P1750 player features a 7-inch LCD screen with approximately 3 hours of battery life. All the models come with car adapters.
Models, price, availability:
SD-P1750, $129.99, February
SD-P1900, $179.99, January
SD-P2900, $299.99, March
—–
To see more of The Record, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.NorthJersey.com.
Copyright (c) 2007, The Record, Hackensack, N.J.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
SSNLF, MC, 6752, LGEAF, SNE, 6758, TOSBF, 6502,