Decide what to buy

If you?re bored of buying batteries for your all your children?s toys, here are some to give you, and the planet, a bit of a break.

First up is the wind-up radio that also works as a mobile phone charger, suitable for old and new Nokias as well as Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola handsets.

As well as relieving the planet from batteries, the radio also comes packed in bio-degradable packaging.

You can get your hands on a red football radio or a pink heart radio. Both are ?8.49.

Next is the Bat Torch. He requires no batteries and will never run out. All you need to do is squeeze him to operate the light.

He will also stand upright so that he can act as a nightlight. You can pick one up for ?4.99.

And here?s an interesting one. A women?s cooperative in the Philippines make these bags from recycled juice cartons. Seeing as the juice cartons use non-biodegradable foil on the inside, they would otherwise be sent to clog up landfill sites or be incinerated, so it?s a great way to reuse the cartons.

They make loads of different bags but as we’re all about little people today, these kids? backpacks are good and come in loads of different fruits and colours. They’re ?12.99.

You can find out more about the cooperative here.

If you’re looking for more normal toys, you can read toy reviews over on Reevoo to help you decide what to buy.

If you want to be cool, drive an Aston Martin, play Nintendo and wear Agent Provocateur…not necessarily all at the same time. These are some of the coolest brands around according to the annual Coolbrands survey.

Voted for by the Coolbrands council and 2,500 members of the public, Aston Martin receives the award for the coolest brand for third year running - certainly aided slightly by a certain Mr Bond who is rather partial to their vehicles.

Relative newcomer, the iPhone is in at second place, preceding the mother ship ? Apple, in third.

There?s no doubt that brands and celebrity go hand in hand. With Bond helping out in the car department and constantly-in-the-press Daisy Lowe being the face of Agent Provocateur, there?s a healthy little partnership of which somebody can be very proud.

But it?s not all down to the celebs.  With brands like Apple, Nintendo and Bang & Olufsen it shows that brands who constantly lead their field in design and innovation are worthy recipients of the accolade.

Congratulations should also go to the Tate Modern who have managed to get onto the list at number 10 - pretty impressive with all those super-brands on there.

You can check out the top 10 coolest brands below:

Top 10 Coolest Brands
1.    Aston Martin
2.    iPhone
3.    Apple
4.    Bang & Olufsen
5.    YouTube
6.    Google
7.    Nintendo
8.    Agent Provocateur
9.    Rolex
10.  Tate Modern

After the post last week on the price of brand, where we looked at how much you can expect to pay for a particular brand name, I thought it would be helpful to take a look at how the cost of new TVs varies with screen size.

If you’re just starting to look into buying a new TV, getting a feel for how much screen you can get for your money is an essential first step in working out how much you want or need from a new flatscreen.

The prices come from purchases of televisions in 2008 from Reevoo’s retail partners, so all the data represents real costs from real people. If lots of people are buying a particular expensive TV, even if there are lots of cheap TVs available, the average will reflect what people are actually purchasing, not what retailers and manufacturers are pushing.

So, without further ado, here are are the numbers.

15 inches: £152
19 inches: £238
20 inches: £293
26 inches: £375
32 inches: £465
37 inches: £615
40 inches: £739
42 inches: £754
46 inches: £1,197
50 inches: £947
52 inches: £1,531
58 inches: £2,414

Lots of interesting things to pick out here. The most obvious jump in price is between 42″ and 46″. 4 extra inches of diagonal screen size will cost you over £400! In fact, 46″ TVs, most of which are made by Sony and Samsung, appear to be a pretty bad deal, when you see that the average cost of a 50″ screen is actually lower.

At the smaller sizes, 19″ televisions seem to offer better value than 20″ screens, but really the biggest bang for your buck comes at the most popular screen sizes of 32-42″, where you’ll pay just over £1 for every square inch of screen.

More details on that, for those so inclined, in the graph:

It’s amazing you can pay almost twice the price for each square inch at the smaller and larger sizes than you can in the most popular models.

So, are you nuts to buy a 46″+ screen or a tiny 19″, or do those sizes have enough value to certain people that it’s worth paying a premium for them?

www.reevoo.com/pink

If you’re a girl who needs everything to be pink; if you’re a guy who’s struggling to find a gift for his girlfriend or if you’re a man who just likes a bit of pink, it turns out you’re not alone.

Research by consumer review website, Reevoo.com, looked at how popular pink products were across its own website and those of its partners. Websites such as Dixons, The Carphone Warehouse and Currys were analysed to find out how pink products shaped up compared to their duller counterparts.

In the last 3 months, the pink JVC Everio GZ-MG330 camcorder has been one of the most popular models on the market and one of the most popular pink products.  One in twenty camcorder visits has been to look at this pink camcorder.

To continue the success of pink products, the pink Motorola ROKR U9 has been a great example to all pink mobile phones. Out of all 22,000 products, from TVs to MP3 players and washing machines, it was the 21st most popular product.

And it wasn’t just mobile phones bringing down the big guys, the Medion Celeron Processor Pink Laptop beat the mighty 17 inch MacBook Pro in the popularity stakes.

A Decide What to Buy favourite, Hetty, also did well to be the 16th most popular vacuum cleaner. There are over 375 vacuums so Hetty did pretty well.

You can see the top 10 pink products below, how popular they are in their categories and how popular they are compared to all the other 22,000 products.

Click on table above to enlarge.

To celebrate all this pinkness, Reevoo has created a page full of the pinkest products around. Fom pink MP3 players and pink laptops to pink irons and pink beanbags, they’re all there. You can find them at www.reevoo.com/pink.

If you’re heart’s still in the eighties with jelly shoes and hypercolour t-shirts, then you might be a little disappointed by this announcement.

Classics like The Goonies, Gremlins and Beetlejuice are about to be Blu-rayed up and re-released. It all sounds great until you think about it. Some of the best bits about those films are the grey and fuzziness. So we’ll either be able to see just how badly they were filmed in the first place or it’ll ruin the fuzzy magic.

But I do like the fact that it’s made me want to dig out all my old video tapes and watch them again. Who knew that Mikey Walsh would turn out to be a tiny hairy man a few years later…

If you are actually really excited about seeing your old faves in high-definition, get yourself a Blu-ray player but read all the Blu-ray player reviews before you do.

This week’s gadget watch is a gadgets-for-guys special. Three great gadgets that any self-respecting man should have…

For anyone who’s ever had the misfortune of looking forward to a nice cold beer, only to find that it’s been swiped out of the fridge by a thieving housemate, this is definitely the gadget for you. The Beer Burglar Alarm will stop crooks in their tracks with either a stern voice alerting them to “Keepa da hands off ma beer” or an intolerable siren that will be sure to send them packing. Spend a fiver, save a beer…

Next up is the Pyramat S2500W Sound Rocker chair. It’s a gaming chair with a difference. For serious gaming sessions, its contours and poly-stretch fabric will ensure comfort throughout and you’ll also feel all of the action through it with its pulsing and vibrating speakers.

It connects up to MP3 players or any system with an audio output and acts as a super surround-sound device with its ARX high performance speakers. So you can enjoy games, music and even movies in this chair of entertainment. It will also fold up for easy storage. You can pick one up for around £100 and read reviews here.

And finally, the Sharp Shootin’ remote. If there’s ever a fight in your living room over watching match of the day or Sex and the City, this will solve the problem and ensure you never have to sit through a girlie programme again.

The Sharp Shootin’ remote will learn all of your TV remote’s actions and makes changing channels much more fun. It even has sound effects and comes with a Sheriff’s badge. For £7, you can’t go wrong.

If it wasn’t enough to launch the N96, Nokia have also come up with exclusive N96 TV. ‘Capsule 96′ will broadcast ‘mobisodes’ that are all 96 seconds in length - nice stunt, hey? These ‘mobisodes’ – sorry, it’s such a silly word that I had to use it twice – will feature topics such as fashion, comedy, gadgets and motoring with appearances from people like the designer Wayne Hemingway.

Capsule 96 is supposed to appeal to those with little time on their hands who want “infotainment” on the go. It all seems a little odd to me but hey, it could work…

"dust just takes over in about 2 seconds! I don’t care much, but my wife does…." Atacama Equinox HiFi Stand

"Control panel can be a little complicated - more than my other half could cope with (But may have just been an excuse not to do the laundry!)" Zanussi ZWD14581W

"My 18 month old son absolutely loves this lawnmower, if only it had a working blade, our lawn would be like a bowling green!" Chad Valley JCB Lawnmower

"Fantastic Bespoke Stylish Design, with an ultra funky name (Believe it or not the name inspired me to throw a big summer back garden BBQ Party 3 weekends ago now, called ‘Lloyd’s Mojito Party") Mojito Glasses

"Piano Black finish collects dust like Zsa Zsa Gabors wedding albums" LG 37LG3000

Thanks to those who have emailed us or posted asking why the iPhone wasn’t included. We took the top ten mobile phones for this report by pageviews (that is, the number of times the product has been viewed across Reevoo’s 55-odd UK retail partners). As it happens, the iPhone was 13th.

We do have the data though, and here it is, in its full expanded glory:

Best bits

Web browsing (23%)
Listening to music (13%)
Email (10%)
Looks good (9%)
Organiser (3%)

Worst bits

Battery life (17%)
Syncing with other devices (16%)
Software (5%)
Sound quality (5%)
Navigation/keypad (1%)

We’ve been looking at what people like and what they don’t when it comes to their mobiles. We asked 31,000 people to rate their phone’s features and it turns out there’s not much hope for big, ugly phones.

15% of people love the way their phone looks above any other feature. One of the sexiest phones seems to be the LG KU990 Viewty – 31% of purchasers rated its look above all its other offerings. And fat phones are a no-go - 14% boasted about how their phone’s compact size was a winner.

The third most popular feature was the camera. A whopping 43% of Sony Ericsson K850i owners cited its 5 megapixel camera as their favourite feature.

But not all phones got off so lightly. With all these fancy frills and features, that age-old problem of battery life seems to be getting worse. It was the most disliked aspect of phones with clunky navigation and awkward keypads coming in second place. One of the worst offenders was the feature-packed Nokia N95. 35% of people rated battery life as its worst characteristic. And it seems looks aren’t everything for the LG KU990 Viewty. It may have come top in the sexy stakes but 25% of respondents said its worse feature was its navigation and keypad.

Check out the graphs below for all the stats on what people liked best and worst about their phones:

And here’s a look at what people thought were the best and worst bits of the top phones:

Lots of interesting things to think about when it comes to buying a mobile phone. Limit the risk of getting a dud by reading what other people say in mobile phone reviews first.