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

Across the country, freshers are packing up textbooks, gap year souvenirs and enough clothes so they won’t have to do any laundry til Christmas.  If you - or your son or daughter - is in this situation, be sure to leave enough room in the car for the electronic kit that’s indispensible to student life.  You’ll need a laptop and a kettle, of course, but it’s the other stuff that will really make your time at Uni.
Here is our list of the top 5 gadgets you can’t do without:

iPod/MP3 Player Speakers

There isn’t enough room in most halls of residence for a big hi-fi system, but a set of iPod speakers will fit in perfectly.  An added advantage is that any visitors can plug in their mp3 player, and most ipod speakers are small enough to move around - perfect for parties.

There are options to suit any budget, but the pick of the crop are the Sony SRSGU10P, from £55, rated at 9.6/10 by people who actually own it, and the top-of-the-range Bose SoundDock, rated 9.2/10 and costing £128 upwards.

Digital Camera

Whether it’s for recording your best memories or working out what you did last night, a digital camera is essential.  Ideal student cameras are small enough to fit in a pocket, with a flash and good battery life.  Remember that megapixel count isn’t everything - see our Digital Cameras Buyers’ Guide for an in-depth guide to getting the best camera for you.

Nintendo Wii

It’s very important not to overwork yourself during your first few weeks at Uni - or for the rest of the time.  The energetic games are almost as good as going to the gym (especially if you get the Wii Fit as well) and will come in handy breaking the ice with your neighbours in halls.

Memory Stick

As surprising as it seems, students are required to do some work.  Make this part of student life as painfree as possible with a large-capacity USB stick - 2GB should be enough for all your notes and essays.  Not only can you keep all your work to hand, but this also acts as a back-up if anything ever happens to your computer.  Keep your work doubly-safe by backing it up online with a free service like Google Docs or Dropbox.

Insurance

Once you’ve bought the gadgets you want to take to uni, be sure that you’ll still be able to bring them home by buying some insurance.  Student accommodation is frequently a target for opportunistic burglars - and most students don’t have enough available money to replace a broken laptop or a lost mp3 player.  The National Union of Students recommends Endsleigh Insurance, whose special students contents insurance covers laptops, phones and other gadgets as well as everything from your bike to your winter coat.  It even covers your possessions on the journey to Uni and when you leave them in your student accommodation over the holidays.

The only problem with buying yourself a great new gadget, or fitting out your kitchen with up-to-the minute appliances is what to do with the things they replace. Disposing of old electricals can be a bit of a headache and they often end up gathering dust at the back of a cupboard or in the attic.

At the moment, over 75% of old electricals end up in landfills, polluting the soil. Every year Britain produces enough electrical waste to fill Wembley Stadium 6 times over. And this mountain of junk is growing - Britain produces 5% more electrical waste every year.

The irony is that over 85% of the materials that make up electrical goods are recyclable, and recycling them has never been easier. Here’s our quick guide to the right way to get rid of old TVs, kitchen appliances, gadgets and mobile phones.

What can I recycle?

If your product has a plug or a battery it can probably be recycled.  Double check by looking for the crossed-out wheely bin symbol somewhere on the product case or manual.

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Today we’re continuing our guide to understanding TV model names. At first glance, TV product names are generally pretty complicated, unmemorable and unpronouncable 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 Sony’s naming conventions.

Our example product is the Sony Bravia KDL-32V4000.

Sony gives the KDL letters to all its LCD TVs. Sony makes no plasma TVs, and makes one cutting-edge OLED TV, the XEL-1.

The first two numbers refer to the screen size in inches.

The next letters indicate the series. Sony has a large number of different series. I’ve collected all the current series below, along with descriptions about each series series from Sony and the range of screen sizes the series is available in.

The final numbers refer to smaller variations within a series - so do check the detailed specifications!

You can browse Sony TVs on Reevoo.

Hi, I came across your site and your video explained alot, I have two questions:
1) What are the best three, value for money (up to £600) easy setup, standard definition, HD ready 37″ LCD televisions?
2) Is 1080p and 33,000 - 1 ratio as important for a 37″ TV as it is for a larger screen TV?

John, 51, NHS worker from Whitley Bay

I’ll tackle your second question first. People debate how important 1080p is for medium size screens like 37″. It partly depends on how close you are sitting to the TV and how good your eyesight is. If you don’t think you’ll be watching a lot of HD content I’d suggest that it’s probably not worth the extra outlay.

Contrast ratio on the other hand is important for all screen sizes, but as I said in the video it’s not the be-all-and-end-all of screen quality, and it’s often an unreliable number, so I would suggest using the ‘image quality’ ratings.

To answer your first question, here’s a link to the top rated TVs in your price range.

I’d suggest taking a look at the Panasonic Th-37PX80B.

It has one of the highest ratings for screen quality in this group, and a couple of the reviews mention good SD quality. You might want to watch out for a relatively low sound quality rating with that model however.

For all round performance at a good price, this Samsung 4 Series also looks like a good choice. One reviewer mentions that the Freeview picture is good.

For a Full HD (1080p) option, take a look at the LG 37LG6000. Not as many reviews, but several of the TVs ranked above it get poor reviews for their SD quality, and this model has a very good picture quality rating so far.

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.

In light of the credit crunch, you would have thought that we’d all be being a little more careful over our spending but new research from Reevoo has found that we not only still spend a fortune on electrical devices but we are also still shopping for middle of the range brands, rather than cheaper ones. But it must be said that we are at least reading more reviews so that we can be sure we’re spending our money on worthy goods.

The poll of 3,000 households revealed that 77% of Brits are now opting to read customer reviews before selecting items such as televisions, washing machines and dishwashers. And 69% of people are taking more time over choosing electrical products.” – very wise.

The research also showed that over our working lives, we will spend a massive £48,940 on electrical devices alone. And what is the item we’ll have to replace the most? The humble kettle. We will buy one every three years, costing us £1000 over our lifetime.

But that’s small fry compared to the amount we’ll spend on PCs, TVs and ovens over the years. The table below shows how often we’ll replace items and how much they’re likely to cost us.

Spending patterns differ in different regions. Click on the map below to see how much you’re likely to spend in your area:

At the moment, projectors are a pretty niche product. There’s a certain appeal to being able turn your living room into a drive in movie theatre, and to pull a dramatic image out of the bag without having a huge TV dominating the room. But to date only big screen junkies seem to be considering them as an option - probably due to an expected £1000 price tag.

I wonder if that’s about to change with In Focus’s latest model, the InFocus X9, an HD-Ready projector that will be available for less than £500:

The new In Focus joins the Optoma EP738 as HD-ready projectors to consider in the sub £600 price range.

There’s no doubt that having a projector that can compete on price with anything larger than a 32″ TV (average cost £465) will be pretty significant, but there’s still a way for these projectors to go before they are competing with standard flatscreens in terms of specs: both have only a single, 1.3, HDMI port - a way below the current minimum of 2 2.0 HDMIs.

And then there’s the fuzzier question of whether people actually like using projectors to watch normal TV, not just films.

Interesting times.

I was having a look today at the top TVs on Reevoo for design - and it might be a slight suprise who takes the number 1 spot for the most beautiful TV…

We took a look at the top 100 TVs in 2008 as rated by genuine purchasers, and took a look in the monster Reevoo database to find out which set scored most highly for design. Although Samsung is the manufacturer with the overall top rating for design, they weren’t responsible for the best designed TV.

Nor were Sony, another classic make with a good eye for design.

In fact, coming top of the list with a massive 9.9 for design was the Toshiba 46XF355D.

This model will be well-known to many, as it features a distinctively thin bezel that seems to be responsible for most of the rave reviews:

I chose this product because of its sleek unobtrusive picture frame design. Most others have a huge amount of frame around the screen which spoils the whole look. It enhances the wall in new room we have just had built.

Apart from picture and sound performance which are top class, the bezel, which is claimed to be the thinest in the world, makes a tremendous difference to the size and appearance of the set e.g. my son has a Pioneer 40” which is actually wider than my 46” Toshiba.

this lcd tv does not look too big dispite the great 46″ screen , this is due to the fantastic slimline pictureframe which toshiba get top marks for !!!!!!

I think that send a pretty clear message to manufacturers looking to get amongst it in the design stakes: thin is in.

If you’re not convinced, you can read more reviews of the Toshiba 46XF355D over on Reevoo.

And it seems like the design eggheads agree with shoppers: the Toshiba was given an iF Product Design Award by German design gurus International Forum Design.

Do you agree? Would the 46XF335 be sitting pretty at the top of your design tree?

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 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%