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

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.

We?ve been looking into design here at Reevoo. Good product design is becoming more and more important and clever and innovative designs are what consumers look for to save time and make their lives a little easier.

So we looked into which brands were coming up with the best designs. When a shopper buys something from one of Reevoo?s 55 retail partners, they are sent an email asking them to rate it. One of the categories they rate is the design of the product.

Looking at 22,000 products, with over 15 reviews, we took these design scores and ranked all of the products in terms of their score for design ? the product with the highest score at the top.

What we found was pretty impressive for one brand in particular. In the top 100 products for design, a whopping 51 of them are from Samsung! It?s a real result for the brand that has put a strong focus on design in recent years.

LG in second place and Sony and Apple in joint third made up the top 3.

If you?re a regular reader of Decide What to Buy, I?m sure you can guess at which product Numatic had in the top 100? Hetty! She?s had a stonking 2008, already topping the best vacuum cleaner list back in June and in March.

But we wanted to look deeper into the data so we split the products up into categories. We looked at Home Entertainment, Mobile Phones, White Goods, Computing and Home and DIY in more detail to see which brand?s products performed the best for design in each category.

And here are the results:

Home Entertainment:
1. Toshiba 46XF355D (television)
2. Samsung LE37A656 (television)
3. Toshiba 40XF355D (television)
4. Samsung LE37A436T (television)
5. Samsung YP-K3JAB 4GB (MP3 player)
6. Samsung YP-P2JCB 8GB (MP3 player)
7. LG 32LG5010 (television)
8. Sony Bravia KDL32W4000U (television)
9. Pioneer Kuro PDP5080XD (television)
10. Samsung PS50Q97HD (television)

Mobile Phones:
1. Samsung F480 Tocco
2. Apple iPhone 8/16GB
3. Nokia 8600
4. Motorola PEBL U6
5. Samsung P520 Armani
6. Motorola W375
7. Sony Ericsson W890i
8. Sony Ericsson T650i
9. Motorola ROKR U9
10. Nokia 7500

White Goods:
1. Bosch KTR18P20GB (fridge)
2. Miele GT 316 ES (freezer)
3. AEG-Electrolux Santo 75348KG (fridge-freezer)
4. Baumatic BF207SLM (fridge-freezer)
5. Kenwood GT/AL17 (microwave)
6. Samsung RSA1DHMH (fridge-freezer)
7. Daewoo ERF336MB (fridge-freezer)
8. Samsung RSH1DTMH (fridge-freezer)
9. Miele KFN 8762 SDed (fridge-freezer)
10. Samsung RSH1DBBP (fridge-freezer)

Computing:
1. Apple MacBook MB403
2. SONY Vaio VGN CR31Z
3. HP DV9646EM RECON
4. ACER M1100
5. Dell Inspiron 1525
6. HP DV9702EA
7. Compaq Presario V6642EM
8. HP V6630EM
9. HP DV9705
10. Toshiba Equium P200-1ED

Home & DIY:
1. Numatic Hetty (vacuum cleaner)
2. Neff B1442NO (oven)
3. Neff B1442S0 (oven)
4. Neff U1322N1GB (oven)
5. Electrolux Insight EKT6045X (oven)
6. Bosch HBN1315 (oven)
7. Prestige 47433 (steam cooker)
8. Bosch HBN131251 (oven)
9. Aeg B41014 (oven)
10. Neff B1422 (oven)

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

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?

Have you ever considered that all of the appliances in your home may have been designed by people who have never had to use them? For example, that your fridge was designed by someone who still kept things underground to keep them cold? It would certainly seem so, going by some of the reviews we’ve been reading.

As we’re on the subject of fridges, we’ll start there. The Bosch KGU30605 fridge has been designed by a genius who thought an egg tray with space for five eggs was revolutionary. The unfortunate sixth egg that almost certainly is included when you buy a standard pack of half a dozen eggs, will have to find its own home amongst the jungle of jars and leftovers.

How about the Elba C96DF 90 gas oven that gets nice and hot on the inside but feels the need to heat up its surrounding area by getting dangerously hot on the outside too? I guess we could all start frying our eggs on oven doors to save energy. Maybe that’s what the designer had in mind here.

We talked about the amount of energy you can save by not leaving your appliances on standby last week but what if your TV wouldn’t turn off at all? The LG 37LF66 can only be turned off by switching it off at the mains. And there’s even a washing machine that insists on washing cotton and synthetics at 60 degrees - all in all, just great for your energy bills.

If you feel your life isn’t inconvenient enough, why not purchase a couple of dishwashers? One won’t fit standard sized cups on the top shelf and one won’t fit standard sized plates on the bottom but by buying them both, you can be sure that your crockery will be squeaky clean…one way or another.

And for those of you looking for something to amuse the kids over the summer, you might want to check out the reviews for the Easy Store Large Slide. It seems to be multipurpose - a slide and a bug collector. It’s all kitted out in bright yellow so that hundreds of insects are attracted to it as soon as you set it up. I wouldn’t advise sliding on it but it could be great for a wildlife project.

These are just a few of the dodgy designs we found by reading through reviews. We’ve compiled a list of the top ten so that you can take a look. If you’ve got something that you think must have been designed by wild monkeys, let me know and we’ll add it to the list.

1. Bosch KGU30605 Fridge - the egg tray which only holds five eggs instead of the standard six.
2. Zanussi ZWF14581 Washing Machine - The default temperature when you choose cotton or synthetics is always 60 degrees. But almost all synthetics are labelled 40 degrees or less.
3. LG 37LF66 Television - that doesn’t turn off. You have to pull the plug out of the wall to turn the TV off.
4. Easy Store Large Slide - the bright yellow colour attracts thousands of bugs in summertime.
5. Kenwood DW12CFE Dishwasher - Normal sized plates stacked as design suggests in the bottom tray stop the spray arm spinning, and thus the top layer does not get washed. Trays are non removable so the dishwasher won’t run without the top tray in. Hard to fit standard sized dinner plates.
6. LM Tech Battery Powered Heated Gloves - the heating element doesn’t get warm, and doesn’t cover the fingers.
7. Carlton CTD1W Table Top Dishwasher - doesn’t fit standard mugs on the shelf
8. Elba C96DF 90 Gas Oven - the knobs heat up when the grill is turned on
9. Hotpoint RLA21 4.6 Cu.ft. Larder Fridge - there is no light inside so it is impossible to see all the food at the back.
10. UNI MEDIA 22/1 IDTVDVD 22” HD Ready digital television - It is impossible to adjust the picture when the picture adjustment box pops up in the middle of the screen and covers most of the picture.