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PopSci presents over 90 pages of the season’s hottest tech: Everything from phones, speakers and cameras to yes, even vacuums.
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Trap Mapper
Next time you pass a state trooper, mark the spot on this radar detector. A GPS chip inside alerts you when you near the area again. Flag chronic false-alert locales, and stray beeps disappear. Escort Passport 9500i $450; www.escortradar.com
We’re There
If you´ve been lusting for a handheld GPS device but are continually put off by the high price of the good ones or low quality of the affordable ones, your time has come. Next time you travel, make sure to pack along this card-deck-size system. Equipped with ultrabright touchscreens, these come with preloaded maps of everything from the contiguous U.S. to Europe (with customizable points of interest), give turn-by-turn voice-prompted instructions, and have a built-in travel kit with a picture viewer, calculator, currency converter, unit converter and world clock. nuvi 200-series From $400; available April; garmin.com
Up River
Few companies have the billions needed to match Apple’s marketing presence, and so it’s easy to forget that there are other music players out there. iRiver´s latest offering has the usual specs-two to eight gigs of flash-based memory, supports a range of file types, holds videos and games-but it also has an FM radio with recording capability, a power-sipping active-matrix OLED screen and a whopping 25 hours of battery life.Clix 2 From $200; available in April; iriver.com
MP3-Jay
Aspiring music producers and DJs now have a completely portable recording studio. This mixer lets you create four-track masterpieces, fades and all, and save the results straight to an iPod. Belkin TuneStudio $200â€$250; belkin.com
Tap Your Laps
On this stopwatch for swimmers, the entire face acts as a large button for easily counting laps while underwater. Tap it to record splits and average speeds for up to 99 laps, and scroll through the results later. Zoggs Lap-Pro $50; zoggs.com
Small Impact
Impact drivers produce more torque than regular power drills, so they turn large bolts more easily. This 2.2-pounder-the lightest ever made-is easier on the arm: With a lightweight, high-power battery, it´s half the size of similar tools. Bosch Litheon 10.8V Impactor $200; boschtools.com
Phoning It In
This latest entry in the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink phone category comes with a pop-out qwerty keyboard, giant color touchscreen, five-megapixel camera, full-featured Web browser, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and three-gigabyte data support that can download an MP3 in 4.4 seconds . . . phew. But perhaps best of all, its buttons vibrate on touch. The possibilities are endless.** F700 Available this summer; price not set; samsung.com **
Game On
Perhaps you’re too young to remember Commodore PCs, but if you’re a gamer, you’ll certainly be aware of the influence they had on subsequent machines. This new line of gaming PCs may be related to the vintage original in name only, but with Nvidia graphics cards, Intel Core duo or quad processors, and at least 657 megahertz of Corsair memory instead of 16 colors and 64 kilobytes of RAM, that’s probably a good thing. Still, if you’re feeling nostalgic for Impossible Mission, they equipped come preloaded with a C64 emulator and some 50 vintage games. Commodore Game PC From $1600; available Summer; commodoregaming.com
iTube
Sure, it’s possible to link your TV and computer without any peripheral system, but if you’re lazy or technophobic, or just trying to cut back the jungle of cords that has become your living room, you’ll appreciate Apple’s newest offering. The system wirelessly syncs with iTunes, pulling off new content continuously. Use it to watch all those old movies you have hanging around your hard drive because your computer screen is so lousy-or to lure your friends into yet another slideshow. Apple TV $300;apple.com
Open Sesame
You might be a master modder, but if you’ve ever tried to pry open a game console like we have, you know how messy it can be to deal with the numerous absurd plastic screws and welded pegs. This kit has tools to neatly open every console currently on the market, in addition to a number of cellphones, retired machines and handhelds. There are even duplicates of most bits, so there’s no more excuse for this. Access Pro Toolkit $15; zoozen.com
Art Wheel
To make the first tattooed bicycle tire, ink saturates a thin skin of rubber. High heat and pressure meld it permanently to the rest of the tire. At night, the ink is reflective. SweetskinZ Tire $40; sweetskinz.com
Good Listener
Three microphone capsules inside this palm-sized recorder pick up full surround sound, perfect for saving impromptu jam sessions or creating like-you-were-there podcasts. Zoom H2 Handy Recorder $200; samsontech.com
All Steamed Up
With a pressurized steam reservoir, an ergonomic trigger and a 1,750-watt output, this iron verges on power tool. Better yet, it presses and steams in a fraction of the time of an ordinary iron, leaving you more time with the actual power tools. **Pressure Iron and Steamer $200; rowenta.com **
Small Packages
Your car gets good mileage and you keep your thermostat low, but have you ever considered how much energy running your desktop for 10 hours a day expends? These desktops aren’t only some of the smallest PCs on the market, they’re also the most efficient, consuming about a fourth the energy of a typical desktop while still packing speedy Core 2 Duo processors and up to four gigs of ram. enano From $755; enanocomputers.com
Siren Song
Your phone opens and closes? How 20th century. The Ocean has two hidden, slide-out keyboards-one with a numeric keypad for dialing and texting, and one with a full qwerty keyboard presumably for posting to your blog about how friggin’ cool your phone is. The top is a 2.4-inch QVGA display for displaying photos, videos (the included camera can shoot two continuous hours of video) or full Web sites. It syncs with nearly every imaginable e-mail and messenger service, has built-in GPS integrated with Google Maps, and can even wirelessly pull information from enterprise e-mail servers. Work/play on. Ocean $300; available soon; helio.com
Blues Traveller
Pack this waterproof, dent-proof guitar in your carry-on-it´s less than two thirds the normal size and weighs about three pounds. The hollow carbon-fiber neck allows it to resonate much like a larger guitar. Blackbird Rider $1,600; blackbirdguitar.com
L’Eggo My Yego
Remember when plug-in air fresheners covered the whole outlet and were totally useless for anything but freshening the air? Thumb drives have been wallowing in their own bad time for a while now-plug one in, and say goodbye to a port (no small sacrifice now that everything seems to use USB)-but at last, one company is addressing the shortcoming. This drive is equipped with two hubs, so you can not only access its port when it’s plugged in, but you get a bonus hub as well. Added password protection means you can safely leave your devices charging even when the office snoop asks to use your computer for “just a sec.” Yego Price not set; ritek.com
Dock ‘N’ Roll
Set your iPod in one room and listen to it in another-or even outside. This dock sends your music wirelessly to up to four speakers, including one that’s weatherproof. Eos uses radio waves to carry CD-quality sound 150 feet. Eos Wireless From $130; eoswireless.com
Long Distance Service
Forgot an e-mail on your PC? Grab it from afar by logging to this home server, the first consumer model to open files and programs on networked computers. **HP MediaSmart Server Price not set; hp.com **
The Wrench that Says When
You´ll never strip a bolt if you heed this torque wrench´s warning lights. The wrench measures force 2,500 times a second and signals you to ease off before overcranking. GearWrench Electronic Torque Wrench $340; gearwrench.com
Spic ‘n’ Span
Barely larger than a microwave, this countertop dishwasher can wash four complete place settings with a fraction of the energy expended by regular-size washers. Even better, it wastes less water than washing by hand, granting you a legitimate excuse for your laziness. ** EdgeStar Countertop Dishwasher $190; edgestar.com**
Oh Gosh, Oh Geo
This GPS module syncs its clock with your digital camera’s and then matches its location data with each moment the shutter is clicked, using software to plot the coordinates on a Google map or upload them to Flickr. Small enough to slip into a pocket, the Trackr’s power consumption is low, so it won’t die at a crucial moment-like when you finally stumble onto that pirate treasure. **Photo Trackr $100; gisteq.com **
Power Pusher
Amid the ice storms and Nor’easters of late, it’s hard to believe that summer is practically around the corner–along with its blackouts and power outages. So if you’re a survivalist, or simply a savvy city dweller, a generator can prove a fairly useful investment. This one has exceptional energy efficiency, is superquiet, and is equipped with wheels for rolling in in a pinch the next time a computer bug knocks out a chunk of North America’s power grid. EU6500is $4000; honda.com
