PADDY COMYNrounds up this week's gadgets
Woodstation
Price: €104
Buy: firebox.com
What with all the weird weather we’ve been having – one day sun splitting the stones, the other requiring a ferry to get to work, it might be an idea to have your own meteorological department beside your bed – which is where the Woodstation comes in.
Utilising special sensors, this cool clock will track fluctuations of barometric pressure, indoor relative temperature and indoor relative hygrometry to provide the weather forecast 12-24 hours in advance. But don’t worry, you don’t need to have a degree to work it out as this easy-to-read clock displays the weather in one of five large coloured forecast icons: Sunny, partly cloudy, cloudy, rainy/ snowy, and stormy.
Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1
Price: €1,599
Buy: Camera Centre, Conns and Pixels
This camera has been getting incredible reviews. The principle is that you get all the functionality of an SLR camera – changeable lenses and all the manual controls – but much smaller, which makes it manageable for holidays and so on.
But the real party trick is its superb HD video functionality and, since it comes with a 14-140mm, lens you get a 10x zoom. This camera shoots high definition 1080/24p or 720/60p movies, but it’s a sharp digital camera too, with a 12.1 megapixel sensor.
Sony Ericsson Bluetooth headset HBH-DS205
Price: €73.99
Buy: expansys.ie
We really liked this headset. Loads of mobiles now play music and with Bluetooth all the more common. this allows you to stream music to your ears via a small device that clips onto your jacket or shirt. You can control the volume, see track names – depending on what you’re playing it from – and, should your phone ring, you can either answer or ignore it.
It works best with Sony Ericsson media phones, as you might imagine, but also worked with the iPhone – although we discovered that, while using it you couldn’t use the iPhone’s volume controls. Weird. If you have a Sony Ericsson mobile with Bluetooth capability, this is well worth getting.
Gear4 CDM-D150
Price: €140
Buy: www.gear4store.com
Gear4 is well known for making decent iPod-compatible stuff that doesn’t break the bank – and this micro system adds DAB radio to an iPod dock, radio and CD.
It also features a clock radio, so it would be ideal for a bedside locker. This product is not available until August but since it is priced so well it may be worth keeping in mind.