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

Cars aren’t the greenest of things so we’re always glad when we find something that we can use to save energy in them. This week’s Green Piece is all about the Sunsei 150 solar car battery charger. It will trickle charge a 12v car battery but can also be used in tractors, small boats, motorbikes and other small vehicles.

It’s ideal if you’re trying to use your car less or take it off the road but you’re worried that the battery will go flat. It will also save electricity if you need to charge your battery via a mains charger. And, of course, it will help all of us who don’t have that handy bleeping noise that alerts us to the fact that we’ve left our lights on when we get out of the car.

All in all, a pretty handy green gadget. You just mount the panel on the inside of your car window, using the suction cups and connect it to the cigarette lighter or directly to the battery with the crocodile clips provided.

You can pick one up here for £29.99 if you’re in the UK or here for $48.88 for US readers.

If you’re always getting lost, you may also want to invest in a sat nav - just think how much petrol you waste and how much CO₂ you emit when you’re correcting ‘navigation malfunctions’!

There are lots of exciting things happening over on Reevoo at the moment. One of the most recent is something that I think lots of you will find really handy. It’s a way to see all of the products that you have been looking at on Reevoo so that when you need to find that MP3 player you were looking at last week, you can. We call it your “recently viewed”.

You can always get to your recently viewed with the link in the top right of the page, just under the search box.

Just click on the link and you’ll get a nice list of all your recently viewed products. Pretty handy, hey?

If you have any other things you would like to see us doing to help you decide what to buy, just let us know by leaving a comment or by emailing us at feedback@reevoo.com.

Updated 23rd july 2009

At first glance, TV model names are generally pretty complicated, unmemorable and unpronounceable combinations of letters and numbers. To the uninitiated this doesn’t help when you’re trying to find your way around the large television market.

However, closer inspection does often reveal some logic behind the names manufacturers give to their latest gift to the world. Today I’m going to walk through Samsung’s naming conventions.

The first two letters refer to the type of screen - LE for LCD as in this example, UE for LED, or PS for plasma.

The second part of Samsung names is fairly obvious - the two digit number indicates the screen size in inches.

The next letter tells you what ye\r the model was re;eased: B models were released in 2009, A models in 2008.

The first number that comes after this represents the product series.  Here is an outline of the difference between each series:

The next numbers tell you when the model was released.  To use a made-up example, the 600 would be released a few months before the 650, but the 651 mightonly be released a week after the 650.  There can be slight differences in the appearances of models with different numbers in these positions - look at the product features section (on the left hand side of the product page) to check.  These differences tend to be superficial and not affect the performance of the TV.

Sometimes you’ll see a letter at the end of the model number.  This may just refer to the retailer who is selling the TV, but sometimes it can indicate a very small difference in the appearance of the TV, for example, whether the stand is oval or rectangular.

It’s not a particularly great time to be moving house at the moment so for those of you who just want to spruce things up a bit, you can do so for less than you think.

The kitchen is where all the action happens, food action, that is. It’s also one of the most expensive rooms to totally redo because of all the appliances that have to go in it. But there are some great bargains to be had in the appliances department. We’ve been through all the reviews to pick out a load of cheap appliances that have great reviews from their owners.

We’ve even managed to find a fridge-freezer, washing machine, oven, hob, dishwasher and microwave all for under £800!

We’ve also included some smaller items like kettles and toasters. Check them out:

Best cheap appliances

Washing machine - Indesit WIB111 - £175

Oven - Indesit FI21KB - £135

Hob - New World NWGHU60Ss - £78

Fridge-freezer - Hotpoint RFA52 - £209

Microwave - Russell Hobbs SMS21 - £40

Dishwasher - Beko DWD4310 - £160

All the above for under £800!

Kettle - Kenwood Mona Kettle - £15

Toaster - Kenwood TTP103 - £18

Food processor - Kenwood Delia’s Cheat Gadget - £17

Some real bargains there. I can’t believe that food processor is only £17! It’s been reviewed by 333 people and has a score of 9.1/10 so it’s definitely a little gem. It was also recommended by TV chef extraordinaire, Delia Smith, so it must be good.

There are plenty more bargains to be had too but just make sure you read the reviews first to ensure the product is actually any good.

Pure Digital Technologies are the force behind Flip - pocket-sized, affordable camcorders. Flip fans will be pleased to know that they’ve gone one step further by producing a high definition model, the Flip MinoHD - the world’s smallest HD camcorder. It looks much like the Flip Mino but is a touch larger and is capable of capturing high-definition footage in 1280×720 pixel resolution, compared to the Mino’s 640×480 pixels.

It also boasts MPEG-4 encoding and 4GB of internal memory which will store an hour’s worth of video. And so that you can upload all your vids to your favourite sites, the FlipShare editing software will very handily compress them all for you too.

At only 3.3 ounces, it’s pretty light and small enough to fit in your pocket or handbag (H 3.94″ x W 1.97″ x D 0.63″). It has a 1.5″ screen, touch-sensitive capacitive buttons and an internal lithium-ion rechargeable battery.

It claims to last two hours between charges and takes approx three hours to charge via USB but this is reduced to two if you use its power adaptor.

You can even customise your MinoHD by designing its cover yourself of by choosing from one of the great designs on the Flip website.

This HD member of the Flip family will need to compete against the popular Kodak Zi6 which is currently on sale in the UK for around £120. The Flip MinoHD is not yet available in the UK but watch this space because it’s bound to make a big impact when it gets here. You can buy it in the US from here.

This week’s Green Piece is about washing machines. We all use them but could we be investing in greener options?

LG’s recent Steam Direct Drive washing machines claim to be the greenest. They use 35% less water than other machines and 21% less electricity. Thanks to these stats, they’ve earned a rare A++ energy efficiency rating.

The steam also reduces creases so you will have little or no ironing to do after your wash - another energy saver and particularly fab if you have no time and hate ironing!

These have been out for a while but we wanted to wait until we had LG Steam reviews so that we could tell you what others thought of them. And, much to ours and the planet’s relief, they’re a big hit with their owners. Here are some reviews for the steam driven LG WM1437:

Jason, London:

“It’s looks are great, very easy to use, you can select standard programmes then ‘tune slightly’ e.g. spin speed, rinse cycle etc. It weighs the washing automatically first then calculates cycle times. It is very quiet and has a great estimate to complete timer. It also turns itself off when done to save power.”

Angela, Aberdeen:

“The load size at 8kg is brilliant and the steam option is very useful for engrained dirt. It is a very quiet machine and easy to use and it looks really good.”

“Looks good. washes and rinses extremely well. Very quiet. Environmentally sound.”

It all sounds great but what’s the catch? Well, as you may have guessed, all this washing brilliance comes at a cost. This model is currently around £500 but with your water, energy and ironing saving, it will work itself off pretty quickly.

If that all sounds a bit too much, there are plenty of other washing machines out there. Check out these A-rated washing machines so that you can still do your bit for the planet.

Robert from Cardiff recently got in touch with me to ask the following question:

Can you recommend a 32ins general allrounder? I need good picture quality and a screen that does not give a juddery football. I can spend up to £550.

Great question!

If you wanted to spend right up to your budget, £550 will get you a very nice 32″ TV. For example, this Panasonic TX32LZD80, rated 9.1 out of 10 on Reevoo.

However, you can get a very solid 32″ TV for considerably less, like this Samsung LE32A436T, also rated 9.1/10.

It does get a lower rating for image quality, but ought to be fine for watching sport.

What do you think is the best 32″ TV? Is it worth spending £550 or can you get a good telly for less?

If you’ve got any questions you want answered about anything to do with Home Entertainment, leave a comment below.

Have you ever felt so knackered after a night out or shopping trip that you felt your own legs didn’t have the energy to take you home? Did you wish that you could just magic yourself to your comfy sofa? Well, the boffins over at Honda have been dabbling in some robot magic and have produced these rather interesting looking robot legs.

They will reduce the load on your legs by supporting your weight as you walk. You just sit on the unicycle-type seat and the leg frames bend like knees. They run on two motors which are controlled by signals from the sensors inside the shoes. It all sounds great but I must say that when I first saw those pictures, I did wonder how the boys might fare…

The legs were initially intended for assembly line workers (to enable them to stay in crouched positions all day) and the elderly (the aging population in Japan - Honda’s mother ship - being another inspiration for the invention). But we could soon see these chained up outside pubs and shopping centres. However, a word of advice, since these legs haven’t been invented with GPS yet, you may also want to invest in a sat nav and make sure you always have a mobile phone at hand : )

We’ve been talking about saving money and budget buys recently so we had to share the ultimate triple-use product. Save even more money by buying one product that works as three - like this HDTV which houses a Blu-ray player and a PC!

Named Allio, it has just launched in the US and comes in 32 and 42 inch models. The PC doesn’t have a bad spec at all - Intel Core Duo E8400 processor, 1TB hard drive and 4GB of RAM. It also comes with Windows Vista Home Premium and there are plenty of USB ports and wired / wireless network options.

The HDTV isn’t terrible either. It’s a 1080p panel with 2,000:1 contrast ratio, 400 cd/m2 brightness and twin 12-watt speakers. You can even watch your Blu-ray content as Picture-in-Picture or split-screen.

It’s not available in the UK yet but we’ll keep you posted. In the US, the current prices are:

32″ - £950

42″ - £1800

Low-cost versions are also on the way - even better!

More info here

We recently had another request for a replacement manual, this time for a Daewoo DRVT-43 VCR/DVD Recorder.

We got in touch with Daewoo, who kindly sent along the manual for us to pass on. The manual is for both the Daewoo DRVT-40 and DRVT-43 models:

Daewoo DRVT-40 and DRVT-43 manual

Let me know in comments if you’re trying to track down a specific manual!