Decide what to buy | the Reevoo.com blog, featuring news on TVs, cameras, laptops, mp3 players & other gadgets, shopping tips and deals, reviews and more

If you’re on the lookout for a new 32 inch TV, and your must-haves are style and low price, you might want to take a peak at Hannspree’s pop-art inspired Vibe:

With rounded corners and and a general impression of having been beemed down from the Starship Enterprise, it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but at least Hannspree are making the effort. Detachable speakers are a nice touch, allowing you to get true stereo sound on a budget.

And budget is indeed the name of the game - this Warhol-inspired piece is available for as little as £221 from online retailer Misco.

The catch is that there’s only one HDMI port - so if you’re a gamer, the Vibe probably isn’t for you, and the contrast is low - so if you’re a movie geek, it’s also probably not for you.

If on the other hand you’re just looking for something bigger and less ugly to watch the South Bank Show on, this interesting offering could be up your street.

Manufacturer’s page

It’s summer time! Well, it’s a little hotter than usual. Anyway, it’s definitely time for us to be reaching for our cameras and taking snaps of our holidays, family and friends. If your camera is about as useful as a chocolate teapot, chances are you’ll be looking around for a new one. We’ve taken all the stress out of the process by having a look at what consumers think about the cameras they’ve bought. After someone buys a camera through one of Reevoo’s partners, they get an email questionnaire to fill out about the product. They’re asked all about image quality, features, ease of use and so on.

We’ve taken these scores and comments and compiled a list of the top 10 compact digital cameras, as rated by consumers who have bought them.

So here are the results:
1.    Sony Cybershot DSC-W130
2.    Casio Exilim EX-Z1200
3.    Sony Cybershot DSC-T9
4.    Sony Cybershot DSC-T2
5.    Fujifilm Finepix F100
6.    Kodak Easyshare M1033
7.    Canon Digital IXUS 80IS
8.    Kodak Easyshare Z650
9.    Casio Exilim EX-S600
10.  Canon PowerShot A640

And here are the scores for all the categories:

Top of the bunch is the Sony Cybershot DSC-W130. It has great reviews and at £114, it seems to be the best all-rounder for the money. But if you want to pay a little extra, the Casio Exilim EX-Z1200 has top scores for both image and build quality and its 2.8 inch screen did prove very popular with owners.

The most expensive camera was the Kodak Easyshare Z650. Consumers loved that it looked like an SLR but they did say that the lens cap pops off all the time.

Every camera has good and bad points so have a look at the scores and then check out the reviews to see if you can find the best camera for you. You can find digital compact camera reviews, SLR reviews or simply just browse through all of the camera reviews over on Reevoo.

Here’s a gadget for those of you that need a little help in the kitchen department. This digital pasta timer spoon will make sure you produce a perfect plate of pasta, every time. You key in the type of pasta you’re cooking - from one of its 11 pre-programmed varieties - the weight of the pasta you’re cooking and even your preferred texture. An alarm will sound when your pasta is coked and then Bob’s your uncle - Perfect pasta! (well, in this case, Roberto’s your uncle, if we’re being authentically Italian ‘n all).

You can pick one up for £16.20 from Premier Cutlery, who ship globally.

If you think this is a cool gadget, you can vote for it in Coolest Gadgets’ weekly competition.

It’s Sony to the rescue this week. It seems Sony Ericsson need a little help in the shape of the Bravia brand. Much like branding previous handsets with the Walkman and Cybershot labels, Sony Ericsson hope that Bravia handsets will have the same success.

However, rumour has it that Sony chiefs fear they may have made a big mistake by letting the brand go so quickly - especially as the new Sony PSP phone is in the pipeline.

Whether it was a mistake or not, only time will tell but it’s a little too late for regrets. Bravia handsets have already been launched in Japan and will soon be available in India where the exponential growth in mobile usage will be favourable for the brand.

[techradar]

We’ve talked about eco kettles in the past so we thought it fair to offer up an alternative to the somewhat disappointing offering we’ve had already.  This Eco Kettle helps with the problem of not knowing how much water to put in your kettle every time you boil it. Most people end up boiling far too much and wasting a whole heap of electricity. In fact, the folks over at The Big Green Shop claim that on average, we boil twice the volume of water needed. This means twice as much energy and twice as much time. With a 3kW kettle that’s the same as wasting the energy of around 50 light bulbs!

So why is this kettle different? Well, it’s got two water chambers. A central reservoir can be filled up and then a button allows a certain amount of water to move into the second chamber, which will then get heated. You can decide how much water you send through from one cup to full capacity, so that you know exactly how much you’re boiling (rather than standing at the sink, trying to estimate, filling it too much, having to empty some out, emptying too much out, having to fill up again – I think you get the point). Apparently, the Energy Saving Trust did some consumer trials and found that the kettle used 31% less energy than standard kettles, on average. There’s a complicated sum that measures how much we could save a year here too. These kettles are £29.99. For those of you in the US, you can pick one up from the Enviro Centre. They’re a little more expensive but they ship globally.

But before you rush off and buy one, we checked out some of the reviews. There are people who are very happy with their purchase, however, a few others aren’t. Check out the eco kettle reviews for yourselves.

"Buying decent cables is addictive once you start you’ll want more, it
could be detrimental to your bank balance. The wife doesn’t get it and
wants me committed" Chord Crimson Subwoofer

"It worked well for nearly 5 weeks. It stopped working completely after 5 weeks" Hotpoint RLA84

"Gear system bad, Brakes worse. Seat hurts bum" Universal Boys 24" Dual Suspension Bike

"I think all toys with wheels should come fitted with a bell" Pink Nebulas Scooter

"It’s very much a lady’s camera (or thick-skinned man’s)" Fujifilm Finepix Z5

It seems us Brits are baffled by modern technology that was sent to help us. According to a poll of 2000 people (by the folks over at Reevoo), mobile phones, SatNavs and even TV remotes send us into panic and rage when we can’t figure out how to use them. In fact, a whopping 32% of people admitted to throwing a complicated gadget across the room when they couldn’t work out what to do with it.

Digital cameras were voted the most complicated with SatNavs and mobile phones close behind. Interestingly though, people are obviously happy to live in confusion with their SatNavs, as only 6% actually read the manuals!

More alarming is that the same numbers of us are as baffled by our laptops as our ovens (the nation’s health crisis suddenly makes sense now…). And people are more inclined to read their TV manual over their oven’s. Hmmmm.

And even when a device goes wrong, more than a quarter will try to fix it themselves, or even buy a new one, instead of turning to the instructions.

Here’s the full list of things we find complicated:

1.    Digital Camera - 26%
2.    GPS navigation    - 21%
3.    Mobile phone - 19%
4.    Washing machine - 18%
5.    Camcorder - 17%
6.    DVD player - 15%
7.    Games console - 13%
8.    TV remote control - 13%
9.    MP3 player - 13%
10.    Microwave - 12%
11.    Computer - 12%
12.    Digital photo frame - 12%
13.    Scanner - 11%
14.    Laptop - 10%
15.    Television - 10%
16.    Modem - 10%
17.    Oven - 9%
18.    Printer - 9%
19.    Answer machine - 9%
20.    Freeview box - 8%
21.    Broadband - 8%
22.    Sky - 8%
23.    Dishwasher - 7%
24.    Digital TV - 7%
25.    Hi Fi system - 7%
26.    Tumble dryer - 6%
27.    Iron - 6%
28.    Telephone - 6%
29.    Clock Radio - 5%
30.    Smoke alarm - 5%
31.    Electric timer - 5%
32.    Smoothie maker - 5%
33.    Alarm clock - 4%
34.    Blender - 4%

…and how many people bother to read the manuals for these items:

1.    I don’t read manuals - 46%
2.    Mobile phone - 19%
3.    Washing machine - 17%
4.    Television - 16%
5.    Digital Camera - 14%
6.    Microwave - 11%
7.    Oven - 10%
8.    DVD player - 10%
9.    MP3 player - 9%
10.    Laptop - 9%
11.    Computer - 8%
12.    Printer - 8%
13.    TV remote control - 8%
14.    Broadband - 8%
15.    Telephone - 7%
16.    Tumble dryer - 6%
17.    Iron - 6%
18.    GPS navigation - 6%
19.    Camcorder - 6%
20.    Dishwasher - 6%
21.    Hi Fi system - 6%
22.    Scanner - 5%
23.    Freeview box - 5%
24.    Answer machine - 5%
25.    Alarm clock - 5%
26.    Modem - 5%
27.    Smoke alarm - 5%
28.    Clock Radio - 5%
29.    Games console - 5%
30.    Sky - 4%
31.    Digital TV - 4%
32.    Digital photo frame - 3%
33.    Electric timer - 2%

Here’s a handy gadget for your holidays, or anytime really. It’s a watch that can also give you mini weather forecasts for the next 12 to 24 hours – you need never be caught out when deciding what to wear again.

The Meteo Weather Forecast Watch works by measuring barometric pressure trends and then converts all the complicated stuff into four easy-to-read icons – sunny, partly cloudy, cloudy and rainy.

There’s also a stopwatch, calendar and alarm functions. And if you get caught in the rain? No worries! It’s water resistant up to 30 meters – I think it would just about get you through even the most tropical storms.

You can pick one up for £39.99 at Oregon Scientific.

…on a Saturday. Bit of a manic day yesterday…

"They seem to fall off easily when bending over, therefore not suitable for recreations of Brokeback Mountain" Cowboy Glasses

"It was the funniest thing I have seen for so long when my friend put it on and had his curly bits sticking out either side of it!!"
Borat Mankini Swimsuit

"It’s the service that’s spectacular" Judge Glasses

"The product was set up in German. If only I knew what "change language" was in German I would have saved myself some grief!!!" TomTom One XL Great Britain

"only lasted a day; propeller chipped and propeller shaft bent.. which resulted in my picoo z remote control helicopter looking like it had a drunken pilot with an obsession with my dining room floor" Picoo Z Remote Control Helicopter

I was recently asked if I could recommend a 40-50" plasma TV. Pretty easy, you might think. But this person needed their new purchase to be a ‘multisystem TV’.

A multisystem TV is a fancy way of talking about a TV that can not only display the standard ‘PAL’ signals that we get in most of Europe, but can also decode the North American ‘NTSC’ format, and French and Asian ‘SECAM’ signals.

Not something most of us need to know, but hopefully for you globe-trotting types, the following might prove useful:

Most TVs these days can display both PAL and NTSC signals, as they share a lot of similarities. Decoding SECAM signals is a different story however - worth bearing in mind if you are planning to move to France!

The best multisystem TV I’ve come across to fit my friend’s requirements is this 42" LG plasma, which
is compatible with all three formats, and has a score of 9.1 out of 10
on Reevoo.

If you’re not sure which tuner combination you might need, this handy map from Wikipedia might be helpful.