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

The iPod in all its various forms is the indisputable king of the portable media player market: more than 200 million have been sold since they first launched in 2001, and it’s estimated that over 70% of the mp3 players sold in the USA are iPods.  (Source: The Guardian Technology blog 1 & 2)

But the tide might be beginning to turn: for the very first time Apple has seen a fall in iPod sales.  There are certainly plenty of competitors for the iPod’s crown, many of them offering features not available on Apple’s player.  Let’s take a look at the 5 coolest features on offer.

1. Radio
It may sound prosaic, but having a radio in your player opens up a whole new range of listening possibilities, whether it’s following the progress of the cricket or discovering new music from your favourite DJ.  FM radio MP3 players have long been common outside the Apple fold, but now you can also get mp3 players with DAB radio for a better quality radio signal.



2. Waterproof
Work-out music doesn’t have to be just for dry land.  Aquatic expert Speedo makes the sturdy 1GB Aquabeat player, while New Universe makes the Dolphin Touch, a tiny waterproof mp3 player with a touchscreen, 4GB storage and FM radio.

3. Sonic search
Sony’s iPod Shuffle competitor, the NWZ-W202, boasts ‘Zappin’ technology that allows you to to search through the songs on your device by listening to the first few seconds of the chorus.  If that isn’t enough to sway you, the design of the NWZ-W202 is pretty nifty too.  Sony have miniaturised the workings of the player enough so that the whole device is incorporated into the headphones.

4. Wind-up battery
Not just for the eco-conscious, the Revolution Eco media player means you’ll never be stuck with a dead battery and no music.  One minute of winding gives you enough power for 45 minutes of music - and the generator can also act as an emergency mobile charger. The Eco also plays videos and FM radio and can record radio for later listening.

5. Dancing light-show
Perhaps not the most useful feature, but certainly a lot of fun.  The Sony Rolly twists, moves and flashes different coloured lights in time to the beat of the music playing out of its in-built speakers.  If nothing else, it’s inspired a massive (and often very funny) YouTube following.

And if none of these features grab you, be assured that more conventional PMPs are catching Apple up in offering iPod-style features.  The Sonix 7 incorporates an ebook reader,  the Sony S series walkmen and E series walkmen let you watch downloaded iPlayer content, and the premium Archos media tablet range do pretty much everything the iPod Touch can.

And what does the future hold? The Sun has one suggestion: mp3 players embedded in breast implants.

Here at Reevoo we keep an eye on what’s happening in market so we can make sure we’re helping you make the right decisions when you’re buying something. Here’s what’s crossed my desk in the past month or so:

* 3D TV - Manufacturers and broadcasters seem to be serious about pursuing 3D TV technology in the next few years. Panasonic, Philips, and LG all have prototype consumer 3DTVs, while Sky have hinted at launching a sports-only 3DTV service in the next few months. Panasonic and Sky’s version would require special spectacles, but the Philips and LG versions are goggle free.

Here’s a sample of the Philips 3DTV - of course it won’t look 3D on your monitor!

* New iPod Shuffle - Apple suprised us on Wednesday with the launch of a new iPod Shuffle. The Shuffle claims to be the world’s smallest MP3 Player, and the first one that speaks. Critics have noted that it’s now even harder to replace Apple’s notoriously bad headphones, as Apple have moved all the controls to a bud on the headphones. The speech effect allows you to select a playlist after hearing it read out to you by a computerised voice. It is a potentially nice trick, but it remains to be seen if it can make up for the Shuffle’s lack of a screen. Apple iPod reviews.

* Green entertainment - MEPs are voting this month on whether to extend energy ratings like those found on white goods to all consumer electronics products in the EU. This would effectively ban some energy guzzling products, potentially including plasma televisions.

Have you heard of Blu-ray? My mum thinks it’s a fish. My friend thinks it’s something to do with Wi-fi. Only the more clued up readers will know that Blu-ray is basically a high definition DVD format - allowing you to watch films in higher quality, provided you’ve shelled out for a Blu-ray player.

In fact after slow sales over Christmas for Blu-ray, the HD disc format may be in trouble according to our research. We expected sales of Blu-ray players to increase rapidly after Blu-ray killed off HD DVD in February 2008 in the biggest format war since VHS killed Betamax.

But over Christmas demand for DVD players actually outstripped Blu-ray players by a factor of 10. That’s despite some Blu-Ray players selling for less than £100. It looks like shoppers are turning to more convenient digital downloads and digital hard drive recorders instead. Looking at the customer reviews confirms that Blu-ray is waning in popularity as shoppers jump from DVD to downloads.

Here at Reevoo we think this could be partly a convenience choice. The death of the VCR and the cassette meant we saw the end of the chore of rewinding tapes.  The convenience of downloads and wider availability of flexible digital content suggests impatience with the eject button which may be partly why Blu-Ray isn’t capturing the imagination.

When you look back to when DVD replaced VHS, it didn’t take us long to realise how much better DVD players were and DVD quickly took over: you could almost see the video shelving shrink before your eyes in Blockbuster and HMV.  In comparision Blu-ray’s growth has been really slow.

Some of the top brands seem to be admitting the Blu-ray isn’t winning shoppers hearts. In November 2008, Sony announced that worldwide Blu-Ray player sales would fall short of expectations for the year.  They cited the high price of discs as one factor that had curtailed early adoption of Blu-Ray. Unlike previous format changes (e.g. audio tape to compact disc, VHS videotape to DVD), there is no indication that manufacturers will stop producing DVDs. 

Here are our top 3 reasons from customer feedback that explain why Blu-ray isn’t taking off:

1. Improved DVD players
A basic DVD player now costs just £20 (equivalent to the cost of a new release Blu-Ray disc alone), and you can also get high-end DVD players capable of ‘upscaling’ a standard definition image to near-HD, so the gap between DVD and Blu-ray has shrunk a lot.
Customer reviews of DVD players:
“The DVD upscaling is OMG look at that! Smooth, super smooth.”
“Excellent SD picture [and] great upscaling of my old DVD player made it hard to justify a [Blu-Ray player] to the missus.”
“[I] watch DVDs through a up scaling DVD player and the picture is to die for”

2. Blu-ray pricing and inflated disc prices
Blu-ray prices remain high. Over 6 months, the average price of a Blu-ray player was £239, more than four times the average DVD player at £53, and has remained largely flat, while average DVD player prices have dropped by 20% from July to January.

Blu-ray disc prices are also high, costing £16-18 for a new release, compared to £10-12 for a new release on DVD and an extensive back catalogue priced very cheaply.
Many reviews of Blu-ray players also mention frustrations with slow loading times and an inability to play certain file formats.
Here are some of the comments we’ve recieved about Blu ray players:
“Slow to read the BluRay discs but is this a feature of BluRay?”
“Still a bit slow to load discs.”
“Slow to read disks.”
“Takes a long time to load (compared to DVD).”

3. Households are downloading
The final reason we’re not sure Blu-ray will ever fully replace DVD is that there are other popular technologies that are competing for space in your living room. For example, you can download films and TV through services like Apple’s iTunes store which offers HD content for rental or purchase at a lower price than Blu-ray discs. Additionally, there other services such as Sky+ and Sky Movies that let you watch HD films virtually on-demand.  We’ve seen that hard-drive based personal video recorders (PVRs) sold twice as many units as Blu-ray in the UK over Christmas.

Reviews collected by Reevoo.com show that many of us are happy to skip Blu-ray altogether when they upgrade, instead going straight to a combination of downloads and hard drives:
“[My PVR] gives a fantastic picture, when in the HD channels the picture is as good if not better than my Blu ray player.”
“Easy set up. Seems to work well. Great Picture in HD. Good value […] Not just Great Picture quality, but Dolby Digital surround sound as well.”
“Excellent, cheap upgrade to HD television, especially if you have a Sky dish already installed - just plug it in, in place of your Sky box and use. Upscales SD tv to 576p/720i/720p/1080i.”

It can be frustratingly confusing when shopping online as manufacturers like to use fancy words where it might be better to just say ‘portable’. The word ‘Qosmio’ sounds cool but it doesn’t tell you that Qosmio machines are the most powerful in Toshiba’s range of laptops.

So, here’s a breakdown of the Toshiba laptop ranges which should make it easier for you to identify the kind of laptop you’re looking for.

Equium
The Equium range offers laptops for everyday use around the house and out and about such as internet browsing and word processing.
Equium laptops are only available from PC World and Currys.
The U series come with small 13.3 inch screens and Vista Home Premium.
The A series come with a 15.4 inch screen but it is only the same resolution as the U series.
The P series machines have a larger chassis and screen at 17 inches and 1440×900.

View Toshiba Equium customer reviews on Reevoo.com

Portégé
The Portégé range is designed with portability in mind. The Portégés are lightweight, starting at only 1kg, and extremely thin. Some models come with solid state storage which means there are less moving parts and therefore less heat and less power being consumed. This helps to increase battery life, extending the machine’s portability even further. They are also the most stylish of the Toshiba laptops, and I dare say they were influenced by Apple’s Macbook Air. Because some Portégés come with Solid State hard drives, just like the Macbook Air, there’s less chance of damaging your data should you accidentally drop the machine.

View Toshiba Portégé customer reviews on Reevoo.com

Qosmio
These machines are for pure brute power gaming and media use. The top Qosmios come with 18.4 inch, HD ready screens, extremely fast quad core processors and dedicated nVidia graphics cards. Unsurprisingly they are considerably more expensive than other ranges. If you need an element of portability but can tolerate 4.4kg on your lap, then Qosmio is for you.

View Toshiba Qosmio customer reviews on Reevoo.com

Satellite
The Satellite series of laptops are mid-range machines, all equipped with either Intel or AMD Dual Core processors. For most every day, extended use, the Satellite range is perfectly suitable. The machines run Windows Vista Premium and come in a variety of sizes ranging from 13.3 inches to 17.1. As there are a wide variety of laptops in the Satellite range it is easy for you to pick which suits you best.

Optional features include:

A variety of graphics chip solutions – If you play any games consider the ATI Mobility Radeon 3650 equipped models.

Harman Kardon stereo speakers – Most people have MP3 players which means their laptops are used to store music. If this applies to you then Harman Kardon equipped speakers will give you the best sound quality.

Face Recognition – Some Satellite models come with a 0.3 or 1.3 megapixel built in webcam. Not only is this good for making Youtube videos or communicating online but you can also use them for security. If your face isn’t recognised you will get locked out of the system. Just be sure not to set it up just before shaving off a well established beard.

View Toshiba Satellite customer reviews on Reevoo.com

Mini Laptops
The Mini Laptop range are best described as ‘netbooks’. Tiny, with an 8.9 inch display, and only 1kg in weight, they’re built to travel with. They have a 3.5 hour battery life so are ideal if your needs are maximum portability internet access and document editing.
Everything in a Mini Laptop is designed around size so their processor, hard disk space and memory sizes are lower than in other Toshiba ranges. As with certain Portégé models, the Mini’s come equipped with solid state storage and are therefore reasonably durable.

Operating System - As with other manufacturers’ netbook laptops the Toshiba Mini series comes with either Windows XP or Linux. Windows XP is the version of Windows prior to Vista and most people should be familiar with it. Linux is a separate operating system and will not be compatible with your usual Windows software so make sure you take this into consideration when deciding what to buy.

View Toshiba Mini Laptop customer reviews on Reevoo.com

We like people’s comments and opinions at Reevoo and we have our own as well!
Why not add us on Twitter to see what we’re chatting about in the office today?

Our Tweeting will offer you insight into how we work and the technologies and trends we’re following most keenly. Of course if we spot a new bargain on Reevoo we’ll be shouting about it on Twitter for you all to hear!

To add us on Twitter just click the links on the right hand side of Decide What To Buy, under the Twitter logo.
I’ll (jonnyapps) be talking mainly about Digital Cameras and computing, Jo (the_chipstick) is full of exciting mobile phone tweets just waiting to burst out and Sam (Sambos) is the man to follow for interesting updates about anything that provides home entertainment in your living room.

If you’ve not used Twitter before you can sign up to it here.
Think of Twitter as being a lot like a text message or a Facebook status update. You can ‘tweet’ your thoughts and interesting links and talk about whatever you wish.

You can visit Twitter directly here: www.twitter.com
Mobile devices such as the iPhone and the Blackberry 8900 Curve can be used to tweet on the go.

After some great feedback on our Reevoo iPhone app from Graham Charlton at ecounsultancy we jumped at the chance to act on some suggested improvements.

After a few hours of work we’re pleased to say that the Reevoo iPhone app now allows you to compare prices between various retailers!

So now, when you’re out on that spending spree, not only will your shopping choice be empowered by thousands of customer reviews at the touch of a button, you will also be able to see which stores stock the product and at what price!

As well as being able to compare retailers we made even further improvements.
After you’ve read reviews and seen the various retailer prices you can now choose to surf to the retailer store directly on your iPhone.

You can also choose to email yourself, or anyone else, a link of the Reevoo product page you are viewing. This way, if you’re browsing on the bus or wandering through a store, and want to take a bit more time before committing to a purchase, you can send yourself a reminder.

Installing the iPhone App
To add the updated Reevoo iPhone app to your home screen just unlock your iPhone and:

1. Open Safari
2. Navigate to http://www.reevoo.com/iphone
3. Tap the + button in Safari and choose ‘Add to Home Screen’

What’s left to do?
You’re probably now wondering if it could get any better, and we’re confident that it can, with your help.
We love customer reviews, so why not tell us what you think of our iPhone app. Give us good points and bad and one suggestion for an improvement you’d most like to see implemented. We’ll collect your opinions and implement the best idea.
Leave your review in the comments section of this post or email any of the category managers with your ideas to feedback@reevoo.com

Apple has just released their most recent set of earnings figures, detailing how the MP3 player, phone and computer manufacturer performed over the Christmas season. The answer? Strikingly well. In the middle of a global financial meltdown, Apple managed to turn in record breaking revenues ($10bn) and profits ($1.6bn).

Reevoo’s own figures back up Apple’s success story. Reevoo measured traffic to all Apple products across 61 British retailers’ websites, and saw Apple’s share of the market increase dramatically during the Christmas peak, from 1.3% in September to 3.0% in December.

This has everyone wondering whether Apple can continue to thrive selling high-end electronics while lesser manufacturers fight to survive in a race to the bottom of falling margins and lower sales. Of course, what’s driven Apple’s success over the past few years has been its continuing innovation - think of the iPhone, the iMac or the iPod Nano. So some pundits are asking whether this pace of innovation can continue or whether Apple will soon be running out of ideas.

A closer look at Reevoo’s numbers suggests that it might not be wise to bank on Apple performing as well in future. For one thing, the company’s market share has been pretty flat throughout the year, slipping back through the summer after popularity increased in the spring with the release of new iMac models.

This time around, it looks like Apple has gained most of its increase from the one area where it is truely king: MP3 players.

No-one needs to be told that by far the most popular range of MP3 players is Apple’s distinctive iPods, but amazingly Apple has managed to increase iPod popularity from 60% of MP3 players through the year to 80% during November and December, leaving all other manufacturers to share just 20% of the market over the Christmas peak. Apple released a highly-praised refresh of its bestselling Nano during September and a smaller update of the iPod Touch. Shoppers responded with a thumbs up, giving the new Nano a rating of 9.1 out of 10. But popularity only really rocketed in November, perhaps highlighting their appeal as Christmas gifts.

In addition to their overwhelming popularity, Apple also manage to sell iPods at a premium - only Portable Media Player specialist Archos has a higher average cost per MP3 player sold.

Putting this together suggests that Apple has benefited from a strong run on its impressive MP3 players this Christmas, putting it in position to report those eye-popping revenue revenue figures.

So why the caution? There are two worries about iPods for 2009.

The first is that other manufacturers are improving their products. Samsung and Creative, in particular, saw much-increased ratings from shoppers over Christmas. So if you’re looking for a new MP3 player, it would be a good idea to keep your eye on what these two brands have to offer.

The second worry is that the number of people looking for a new MP3 player seems certain to decrease as smartphones improve and start to reproduce more and more features of MP3 players. With only 4.4m iPhones sold in the last quarter compared to 23m iPods, Apple will have to do a lot of work to make sure iPod fans stick with the brand.

Well, it’s 2009 and there are a load of exciting phones due to be released this year. We thought we’d concentrate on three that you can get your hands on pretty soon:

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (formerly known as the Tube), will be the first Nokia touchscreen and is due for release on Friday.

It has a 3.2″ screen, 3.2 megapixel camera , full HTML access to the web, 8.8 hour talk time, weighs in at 109g but is still a little chubby at 15.5mm thick. As you’d expect, it’s built for music and you get an 8GB SD card (expandable up to 16GB) for all your tracks, photos and videos. It’s capable of 35 hour music playback  and 5.2 hour video playback and the video playback has been praised by the guys over at TechRadar who say it’s a “a viable alternative to an iPod touch”.

And if you hate grubby fingerprints all over your screens, Nokia has provided a stylus and the more trendy plectrum for all your pointing pleasure.

Texting is even more fun with a normal keyboard, full QWERTY keyboard, mini QWERTY or handwriting recognition.

You can also pick your top four contacts to follow/stalk on your home screen by getting RSS feeds on their social network activity, all your conversations and photos.

Get down to the Nokia Store on Regent Street on Friday for some extra freebees, including Guitar Rock Tour and Benicassim tickets.

Sim-free handsets will be £249 but look for the deals on various networks. For more info, check out the Nokia website.

Palm Pre

You’ve probably heard that the folks over at Palm HQ have been busy bees trying to bring themselves back into the smartphone game. Their offering, the Palm Pre, is also coming soon.

It’s been dubbed as an iPhone-G1-INQ1 fusion which impresses with its 3.1″ touchscreen, 320×480 resolution HVGA display, 3MP camera, Wi-Fi, 3G, GPS and 8GB storage. But where it really blows the socks off established stars like the iPhone, is with its multiple application viewing. Each app just sits like a deck of cards on the screen so that you can scroll between them and not have to lose things you’re working on to view something else.

It’s curved glass screen adds style and other nice touches are the hidden, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 360 degree accelerometer and all your contact with your friends and family can be viewed, chat-style.

You can pretty much sync-up your life with this phone with everything from Google, Outlook and Facebook.

We also like the look of its stylish charging dock, the Palm Touchstone. Just place the Pre onto the Touchstone and magnets “quickly align your phone in the correct position for charging”.

The Pre will be out later this year but check out this video for more info on how it’ll work:

Nokia N97

We can also look forward to the Nokia N97. Complete with 3.5″ touchscreen, 5MP camera (with Carl Zeiss Tessar lens) and flash, a huge 32GB of storage with an extra 16GB via the Micro SD slot, GPS with built-in compass and Wi-Fi, will make it a pretty hard-hitting release.

And if you get fed up of having to keep charging up your phone, the N97 has 400 hours of standby time! Along with 37 hours of music and 4.5 hours of video playback.

Add to that a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, fully customisable home screen, Symbian S60 software, N-Gage games and all the syncing you expect from Nokia and you’ve got an impressive piece of kit.

According to Play.com, the N97 will be available at the end of March for £479.99.

Happy 2009!

Hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and New Year.

Let’s kick off 2009 with a time and space saving gadget. There have been lots of rumours about the Powermat but at this year’s CES (Consumer Electronics Association), we’ve finally heard that they will be in stores this year.

What are they? They’re mats that can be plugged in and will simultaneously charge a whole heap of gadgets, all at the same time, wirelessly.

That’s no more chargers cluttering up your house, no more tangled wires and no need to use multiple plugs when you need to charge up more than one thing at the same time.

The Powermat uses magnetic induction and, according to the website, “When a Powermat-enabled device is placed on the mat, a “handshake” process synchronizes the mat with the receiver and electric power is generated to meet the specific energy needs of the device.”They’ll then monitor the power in the device and disconnect power to each device once they’ve finished charging.

Powermats will also be able to be used in cars with their universal, window mount car charger for hand-held devices.

At the moment, you can use the Powermat with mobile phones, laptops, iPods, digital cameras, handheld games consoles and sat navs.

Pretty exciting stuff but we still have no word on prices. So we’ll wait and see about the price tags on these things before we go ahead and liberate our chargers.

For more info, check out the website.

From the best MP3 players of 2008 to the best laptops of 2008. We look at the most popular in the run-up to Christmas and the most highly rated to help you decide what to buy.

So let’s take a look at the lists:

TOP FIVE MOST POPULAR LAPTOPS OF 2008:

1.    Advent 4211

2.    Acer Aspire ONE A110A

3.    Toshiba L300-13S

4.    Toshiba U400-145 T2390

5.    Dell Inspiron 1525 T5750

TOP FIVE HIGHEST RATED LAPTOPS OF 2008:

1.    Samsung NP-NC10 KA

2.    Apple MacBook Pro MB166

3.    Apple MacBook MB402

4.    Asus Eee PC 1000H

5.    Apple MacBook MB403

There’s no surprise to see that MacBooks dominated the highest rated list. People are very impressed with their speed, design and reliability but they don’t escape negative comments completely - owners say that they’re pricey, could do with better battery life and that they scratch easily.

What may surprise some people is that the 10″ Samsung NP-NC10 KA pips the MacBooks to the post. It has a fantastic score for battery life and owners love its size and weight. It has a 160Gb hard drive, 1GB RAM, Bluetooth, integrated webcam, WiFi and it weighs only 1.3kg.

Check out some of the reviews:

“it has almost everything that a standard entry level laptop has, but it is smaller and lighter. it is a good looking notebook, the wi fi and bluetooth also go along way to make the laptop a true portable work tool”

“battery life really good, as is speed for size. Brilliant to carry around. keyboard good”

“it would been better if it came with 2gb of ram, now i need to upgrade the ram”

Also flying the flag for the small guys was the Advent 4211. It’s the laptop most people are checking out at the moment. Also coming in at 10″ and a little lighter at 1.12kg, it has an 80GB hard drive, 1GB RAM, Bluetooth, WiFi and integrated webcam.

There’s a lot of love for this laptop:

“This little PC is an absolutely top notch system.”

“It’s just fantastic. The best money I ever spent. You can use it anywhere. I wouldn’t be without it.”

“No CD/DVD drive is the only downfall but not really a problem as I bought an external CD/DVD drive and the problem is solved.”

There are loads more laptops to look through. Just read the reviews before you purchase anything to make sure you get the best one for you.