Awesome Tech

A karaoke machine that can make even people who can’t sing sound good, thanks to its various vocal effects. It can be used with any music player with a 3.5mm input, and its speaker can be used with other sound systems.

One of the more clever iPad stand designs we’ve seen, The Coburns are made from two precision-cut wood blocks which allow you to set your tablet to numerous angles, then snap together with embedded magnets for easy carrying.

Remember Corning and Microsoft’s visions of the future? Well, they’re coming true. A company called Posh View is working on the iMirror, which is basically a large touchscreen device and mirror. Another demo here.

Microsoft finally reveals why the Kinect has to be bundled with the Xbox One. This demo shows off the next-gen duo’s impressive multitasking and accurate voice command feature, capable of mapping your voice to your own Xbox profile.

The Doxie Flip is a portable flatbed scanner. You can remove its lid, flip it over and place it over the document you want to scan. You can preview scans on its display and store docs to an SD card, so there’s no need to connect it to a PC.

The gigantic iPhone/iPod dock just got bigger and louder. The Wall of Sound 2.0 is a 1,600W speaker that weighs 392lbs. To protect your ears, it will automatically stop playing if you set it to a high volume for more than five minutes.

IK Multimedia’s iLoud Bluetooth speaker was designed for professional musicians and audiophiles. It has four amplifiers with a total of 40W output, two 3” woofers, two 3/4” tweeters,  3.5mm input and guitar/mic input. More here.

You can connect up to five of your USB 2.0 devices and defeat disorganization before it sinks you with this battleship-inspired USB hub from Kikkerland. If a ship in port is safe, what are five ports in ship?

At 0.8″ thick and weighing 6lb., it’s Maingear’s thinnest and lightest gaming laptop. It has a 17″ 1080p screen, 2.4GHz Core i7 CPU, 16GB DDR3 RAM, GeForce GTX 765M GPU, backlit SteelSeries keyboard and 256GB-512GB SSD.

As part of its 150th anniversary, Oregon’s Pendleton Woolen Mills teamed up with Urbanears to release a special edition of the latter’s Plattan headphones, covering it with Native American-inspired patterned wool.

The Nikon Df is a DSLR with a beautiful retro SLR case and mechanical controls. It has a 16.2mp full-frame, a 3.2″ LCD screen and microUSB, HDMI and accessory ports. It’s compatible with AF-S, AF-D and AF lenses.

This intriguing device uses small rods to imitate the size, shape and motion of objects placed under its sensor, all in real time. It was built by Professor Hiroshi Ishii and his students at the Tangible Media Group of the MIT Media Lab.

The Philips Wake-up Light is designed to wake you up gently. Its yellow light and alarm sound gradually increase starting from 30 min. before your preset time. You can customize the intensity of the light or use it as a bedside lamp.

Aside from being an alarm clock, this quirky device can show you how much money, friends and time you have left. It will be updated to display other news and facts in the future. If you haven’t thrown it away by that time.

Google cuts out the middleman and the mid-range smartphone tier with the new Nexus 5. It has a 5″ 1080p screen, LTE, a quad-core 2.26GHz Snapdragon 800 CPU, 2GB RAM, 8mp camera and runs on the new Android 4.4 KitKat.

A budget tablet for casual users. The Lenovo Yoga Tablet has a cylindrical edge that serves as a kickstand and ergonomic grip. The Android 4.2 tablet also boasts an 18-hour battery life and can even charge other devices.

Now that we’ve been using iOS 7 for a while, we’re used to it. But its new icons have been criticized for being too primitive. Now we know why. Though if you can create Pac-Man in Excel, we guess anything’s possible. (Thanks Flex!)

The new Livescribe 3 smartpen pairs to your mobile device via Bluetooth. Together with the Livescribe app and notebook, it will digitize what you write in real time. The app converts your handwriting to text, calendar events and more.

The M3-8 is a professional-quality powered 3-way monitor with a size, price, design and sound that even audiophiles will love. Each has an 8″ subwoofer, a 1″ tweeter and a 5″ midrange driver and 220W total power.

The JBL Pulse is a portable Bluetooth and NFC speaker. It has 64 LEDs that light up in sync with the music in a variety of patterns. You can also download additional patterns from JBL. It has two 40mm drivers and two 6W amps.

When Dave Hakkens presented his idea for a modular smartphone, naysayers said it couldn’t be done. Well, it turns out Motorola – i.e. the Google-owned company that invented the cellphone – is working on a very similar device.

The second coming of the netbook. Thanks to Intel’s new Bay Trail CPU, the Transformer Book T100 Windows 8.1 hybrid provides both the tablet and desktop experience (even light gaming!) at a shockingly affordable price.

Pop Chart Lab tracks the history of music players with The Advance of Audio Apparatuses. The 24″ x 36″ print contains 219 notable devices across 173 years, cataloging the transition from apparatus to app. Zoom in here.