Decide what to buy: the Reevoo.com blog

For all you original iPhone owners who’ve been fed up with your battery life, this new product may ease the pain a little. The iPow, although it sounds like something out of a Batman comic, is actually an external battery case for the original iPhone (3G version on the way).

It can be charged up at the same time as your iPhone and will apparently double the battery life. It also provides a leather top which closes with a magnetic clasp and mini stereo speakers which are twice as loud as the ones on the iPhone.

It’s not the prettiest of things and in my opinion, makes the iPhone look a little clumpy. It’ll also add 98 grams to your handbag or pocket but if you’re after more juice, then I suppose it’s not so bad. You can pick one up at twistedcarbon for £49.99.

This week’s Gadget Watch is all about trees. Metal trees, that is. This fab looking sculpture will not only be an interesting addition to any room but it will also be your one stop shop (or tree), for charging MP3s, mobile phones, cameras and other small, battery operated devices.

How? Well, each of the leaves is actually a solar panel. These 54 solar panels or photovoltaic panels, to be exact, will store energy that can then be used to charge you favourite gadgets.

Pretty different, hey? Each piece is also movable so you can make it even more original by creating your own shapes.

A fun and great looking product that will save you money and give you that nice warm feeling to know that you’re helping to save the planet too.

It was designed by French genius, Vivien Muller and is not yet on the market but we’ll keep you posted.

There’s a wintery theme to this week’s Gadget Watch. As it’s been getting freezing of late, I’ve found something that might make the commute into work on those cold and frosty mornings a little easier - battery powered heated gloves. Just turn them on a few minutes before you leave the house so that they’re all nice and toasty when you put them on.

You lose a lot of heat through your head and your extremities like your hands and feet so these should warm you up a treat.

A few of the battery powered heated glove reviews have mentioned that they use up batteries pretty quick so may I suggest using the rechargeable kind? You can get your hands on a whole heap of batteries here.

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.

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.

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.

We love our gadgets but who knew that we were the second biggest gadget lovers in the world? Second only to the US, the UK spends the most on gadgets.

We spend a massive $44.3bn. That’s £24bn or €31bn, making us the biggest gadget buyers in Europe.

The survey was conducted by Euromonitor and covers gadget spending throughout 2007 but unfortunately doesn’t tell us what kind of gadgets each county invest in.

Here’s the top five gadget-buying countries from the survey:

1. US - £91.6bn / $162bn
2. UK - £24bn / $44.3bn
3. Germany - £17bn / $30bn
4. France - £15.3bn / $27.1bn
5. Russia - £13.9bn / $24.5bn

If you don’t feel you’ve lived up to this title, perhaps you should check out all of the other gadgets we’ve written about on Decide What to Buy or you can check out some gadget reviews.

Those shoppers over on Reevoo have been making us chuckle this week…

"
when freshly charged it is bursting with energy like a frisky mare" Picooz Insecta Night R/C Helicopter

"Spent the best part of a month staring at the screen blankly, being totally lost without the "Start Bar" before i finally cracked and spent 10 mins reading the built in help…And poke me sideways with a large mucky stick if its not all starting to make very pure and perfect sense. Apple I-MAC 24

"I have never been attracted to Yoga until I started Wii Fit…I like the personal trainers, (especially when a handsome young man tells me my "form is fantastic"!!!) Nintendo Wii Fit

"
Powerful Blow. Weak suck" Black & Decker GW370 Electric Blower Vac

"
dosn’t like to take ferries" Garmin Nuvi 250

If you’re mad about music and own a load of old-school LPs, you might like this week’s Gadget Watch. You can now easily convert your old vinyls into super new MP3s and take them everywhere with you on your iPod.

The LP Dock will let you transfer songs either through your PC via the USB cable or direct to your iPod. If you go through your PC, the Gracenote MusicID techonology that comes with this genius device will automatically retrieve all of the artist, album and song info for you. And no worries if your vinyls are a little scratched, this software will sort all that out for you too!

You can also use the LP Dock to play your LPs through your HiFi system. Pretty cool, hey?! You can pick one up for £129 or $259.95.

Did you ever think that the words housework and fun could coexist in the same sentence? No? Well this genius invention is about to rock your world…or just clean it. And you won’t have to lift a finger!! What is it? It’s a vacuum cleaning robot. The answer to all your hovering prayers. The iRobot Roomba, to use its technical name, can be programmed to vacuum even while you’re asleep. You can pre-set it to work seven different times a week to make sure that all of the hoovering is done at a convenient time for you. It will vacuum the whole floor, including under furniture and along walls and will automatically adjust from carpets to hard floors and back again.

Roomba can clean four rooms on one charge and when it feels it’s running low, it will automatically return itself back to its self-charging Home Base to dock and recharge.

Over on Reevoo, you can read the vacuum cleaner robot reviews. Lisa from Morden says “I programme it to start cleaning at 6am every morning and when i come downstairs my floors which are a combination of laminate floor with rugs and kitchen and bathroom lino are spotless, dust and hair and crumb free!!”.

iRobot Roombas retail at (now try saying that after a few!) £221 in the UK or $399 in the US. If this is all a bit too much excitment in one household appliance, you can find a load of other, rather more boring vacuum cleaners here.