© Belkin

MP3 players may be tiny, but that’s the led to the problem of how you listen to them - through earphones or tinny little speakers.

Most new hifis have a socket to plug your MP3 player into, or an SD card reader, so if you keep up with gadgets you probably won’t need this. But if you’ve got an old bit of kit in your home or car, and a swanky MP3 player, this could be an amazing gadget for you.

The Belkin Tunecast is a fun little gadget that takes the output from your MP3 player and broadcasts it to your stereo, like your own private radio station. It’s simple to use - just set the frequency on the Belkin Tunecast, plug in your MP3 player and tune your car or home stereo into the same frequency. Then you will be able to listen to MP3s through your car stereo. Then just change the song on your MP3 player and the radio picks up the new song.

Of course if you live in a big city you’re going to struggle to find a frequency that doesn’t have some other radio station on it. If you tune it to the same frequency as radio 1 you’re going to get a bit of interference, so it’s worthwhile taking some time to find a blank frequency that’s got weaker signals on it

The latest model is the Belkin Tunecast 3, and I don’t think it looks as cool as the previous models - it’s chunky and grey and looks like it came from a Christmas cracker. You can pick one up for £22 in the run up to Christmas, and I’d say it’s a great little gadget.

Oh, and you can use it with an iPod, but if you read this shopping blog regularly you’ll know what I think of them! Now, where’s my folder full of Christmas MP3s?

Rob

Rated: from 2610 votes

© Gadget Pages

I’m a great believer in keeping kids busy rather than just having them sit in front of the computer. And let’s face it, kids get less and less chances to mix with other kids these days, so games they can play while talking to other people can only be a good thing.

So how about a little snooker or pool table for the kids? They come in all sizes, and the smaller ones usually come with fold-up legs so you can put them away under the stairs between tournaments.

Most kids fancy themselves as Ronnie O’Sullivan and here’s a good chance to see whether they’ve got the skill and let them have a great time with their friends.

Tables come with a set of snooker and pool balls so you can play both games. And there’s quite a selection of colours to choose from, starting at the traditional green baize through blue to deep red. Before choosing one, have a look at where your kids are going to use it - the spare bedroom or the garage perhaps - and be sure that there’s enough space for them to stand comfortably at the ends of the table and use the cue as well. Most people can fit a six-foot table in somewhere, and that’s quite a decent size to start with.

Rob

Rated: from 2323 votes

© Bath Pal

Let’s face it, kids just don’t like having a bath. Most put up with it, but I’ve got a mate whose toddler makes a scene every bath time and I can tell you that’s no fun for anybody.

Well here at Rob’s shopping blog we’ve got the answer for you. Bath Pals. Bath Pals are fabulous little creatures that float, take apart and even make noises to keep your little one entertained in the bath. In fact with Bath Pals, they’ll even look forward to bath time.

Bath Pals come in all shapes and sizes, from ducks through penguins to hippos, all of them brightly coloured and smiling. Whistling hippos is a very popular one, though whistling seems an odd thing for hippos to do, even purple ones!

And there’s even a “bath safe” duck that checks the water temperature and glows to warn you when the bath is too hot. Gift ideas are always welcome at any time of year, and here’s one that’s sure to be appreciated.

Rob

Rated: from 2245 votes

© Braun

I’ve had an electric toothbrush for so many years that I sometimes forget there are loads of people still scrubbing their teeth the old way.

An electric toothbrush needn’t cost the earth, and here’s what to bear in mind when choosing yours.

1 - It must be mains-rechargeable. Forget the straight battery-powered ones, as though they may be a bit cheaper, normal batteries don’t have the oomph to give your teeth a good clean, and replacing them costs a fortune.

2 - Choose one with a small head such as the Braun Oral B Professional range. The toothbrush head will spin thousands of times a second, and the smaller it is, the better it will clean those hard to get at spaces between the teeth.

3 - Don’t bother with “sonic” toothbrushes. Independent reports have shown that they don’t do a better job than the regular ones, and they always have large heads, making it harder to get to all your teeth.

If you choose one such as the Braun Oral B Professional, your teeth will feel dentist-cleaned every time and you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it.

Rob

Rated: from 2347 votes

© Honey Bee

They say all men are little boys at heart, and that applies particularly when it comes to gadgets and toys. I know I like nothing better than testing my skill with remote control cars, planes and robots, and with prices as low as £20, a remote control helicopter is a fantastic idea!

There’s actually a remote control helicopter game available for the Wii for about £20, and there seems to be a Wii station in most households now. But you can get a real life remote control helicopter for the same price, and I know which I’d prefer.

Piloting one of these little gadgets is quite tricky if you want to stop it spinning out of control to the ground, but once you get the hang of it you’ll soon be skimming over the kitchen table and scaring the life out of the dog.

Of course, one of these would make a great  gift for a boy as well and any lad would prefer mastering the helicopter to playing computer games any day. Or if you’ve two “boys” in the house, get them one each.

Rob

Rated: from 2397 votes

© LG

Well steam seems to be the talking point of the moment in kitchen appliances. You’ll have seen my recent shopping blog about steam ovens, well how about a steam washing machine? Steam washing machines have been around for a couple of years now, but never really taken off.

Steam washing machines are a lot greener than normal ones, using about two thirds of the energy with blasts of steam replacing much of the water. And they spend the second half of the cycle taking the wrinkles out of your clothes, with the aim of avoiding ironing.

Treatment with steam is said to be much kinder to your clothes too, so there’s less wear and tear, less colour running and a better cleaner wash all round.

LG were the first to bring out the steam washing machine, but other manufacturers have since joined in and prices are starting to fall. Whirlpool for example do a steam washing machine for around £400, which is competitive with quite few normal models. So it’s now getting much more affordable to go green with your washing.

A steam washing machine isn’t something I’ve tried, but I certainly like the idea, and I’d love to hear just how good it is in practice from any shopping blog readers who have one. Well, how good is it?

Rob

Rated: from 2727 votes

© Creative

If you’re not yet converted to Creative Zen MP3 players, then check out the product reviews. And for cool and style, you’d be hard pressed to beat the Creative Zen Touch with its neat little touch sensitive pad on the front and a huge 20 Gigabytes of music storage.

On top of that the battery lasts longer than most of the rivals, with 24 hours continuous music playing being achievable. Sound quality is superb as you’d expect, and the size and weight are on a par with the equivalent iPod so you can just slip it in your pocket or handbag and have your music with you whenever the mood takes you.

As far as I’m concerned you can never have too many MP3 players - I had five when I last counted - so you can have one to hand wherever you are.

Rob

Rated: from 2489 votes

© Bosch

I’m not sure about steam ovens. The theory is that by introducing water into the oven space during cooking, they prevent food form drying out and form crisper crusts on bread and pastry. Some have refillable water containers, while others are plumbed into the mains like ice-makers on the large American freezers. But I do just wonder if it’s worth all the trouble. And won’t all that steam condense inside the workings of the oven and cause rust?

To my way of thinking, if something is likely to dry out in the oven, then cover it with aluminium foil. And my bread and pastries always have great crusts (yes folks, as well as writing your shopping blog and being a gadgets aficionado, I’m a great cook!) But one thing I’ve never tried is a steam oven. And none of my mates has one either, so I can’t get feedback there.

I’d love to hear from any shopping blog readers who’ve got steam ovens on their “must have” lists. If steam ovens really are the things to have in the kitchen, then I’d hate to miss out!

Rated: from 2317 votes

© Creative Labs

Say “media player” to most people and they reply - “Oh, you mean an iPod”. Yes, such has been Apple’s marketing skill, that iPod has come to mean MP3 player or media player in the same way that Hoover has come to mean vacuum cleaner. And it really is a great pity as to my mind there are much better products on the market.

The thing about iPods is that everybody else seems to have one and their software does it all for you - including taking your money on the iTunes site and limiting where and when you can play your video and music. But if it’s playback quality and value for money you’re looking for, then you’d do as well looking elsewhere before parting with your cash.

Creative are one of the market leaders in non-iPod media players under the Creative Zen brand name. Music players are simply Creative Zen, whereas music and video players come into the Creative Zen Vision family.

Zen mozaic © Creative Labs

If you want to plug your player into your PC and simply drag and drop your music and videos, then look at the Zen family.

Creative Zen players play your music in all the major formats, including top quality lossless FLAC where your music sounds exactly the same as on the CD. Other “lossy” formats like MP3 take up less space, but the better your player the worse they sound. You don’t get FLAC with iPods or iTunes where you have to make do with lower quality.

Choose the largest storage you can afford, as 20GB or even 30GB disk storage is now quite common in even small players. They advertise “holds 15000 songs” but that’s only in poor quality with small file sizes. Decent recordings and video take up a lot more room, so the bigger the better.

And finally, go and listen to it before you buy. Take a few tracks you know well on a memory stick and have the shop load them on to the player for you to listen to. And listen through your own headphones, as the ones supplied are never very good.

Rob

Rated: from 2493 votes

This shopping blog has been talking a lot about mobile phones recently, but there were some nice, high profile phones coming out for the Christmas period. One of the latest is the Prada 2 - but how does it fare against the more established iPhone 3G?

I think it’s fair to say that the iPhone raised the bar for how mobile phones look and their usability, but they’ve also got poor specifications for the gadget fan - an ok camera, a bit clumsy to use, and they keep freezing - what’s that all about? It’s just like macs - great to look at but not as usable as a PC

One of the selling points was the touch screen - great for browsing through your phonebook or photos, but not so good when you’re typing with the ends of your fingers like a manic squirrel. And you get greasy finger marks all over the screen too (but maybe I’ve just got particularly greasy fingers!)

The Prada 2, a rehash of the popular Prada (nice original name there - why not Revenge of the Prada instead - that’d get me interested). It’s a good high end mobile though, and looks a lot like the iPhone. It’s almost identical to the original Prada phone too- a big screen and black casing, but this bad boy is a bit thicker because it’s got a slide-out keyboard hidden away.

I don’t know how useful the keyboard is going to be - if you’re just texting you’ll be using the onscreen keyboard, so it’s only for longer emails, and it’s still pretty small - remember, this is coming from someone who finds laptop keyboards too small!

The Prada 2 has got all the things you expect from a luxury mobile - full browsing, Wi-Fi, a 5MP camera, video calling, you know the drill by now. Do you want some numbers? Here goes, and look away if you’re not a numbers geek…..

Quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900). WCDMA 900/2100, 7.2 Mbps HSDPA connectivity - they’re good numbers but even I admit they’re a bit dull for a shopping blog. The more meaningful features include a 3″ TFT touch screen with 400×240 pixels, USB 2.0, Bluetooth FM-Radio and TV-out. It runs LG’s own operating system too, rather than Windows mobile or Android from Google.

The Prada 2 is out now and it costs quite a whack, but it’s on a level with its main competitors like the Blackberry Storm and iPhone3G. I think it’s a closely fought battle between the iPhone and Prada 2, so why do I say there’s no contest?

Well because I hate iPhones, so the Prada 2 wins. No one said it was going to be fair.

Rob

Rated: from 2465 votes