Awesome Gadgets

Only audiophiles need apply for HiFiMAN’s HM-801; it’s a souped-up MP3 player with a modular amp bay and a Burr-Brown DAC, good for driving gobs of power to your headphones.

Renowned for their real DJ accessories, Numark’s Scratch Deck targets gamers with both PS3 and Xbox 360 flavors; it sports a touch sensitive turntable and 5 Akai-style drum pads.

Olympus puts its marketing where its mouth is by putting their Olympus Stylus TOUGH cameras to the ultimate test: a room full of daycare kids who are free to paint, dunk and drop ’em.

After months of speculation, Microsoft’s Zune HD is now official; specs are scarce until its reveal at E3, but we do know it’ll feature a 3.3″ 480×272 OLED touchscreen, HD radio and HD output.

It’s by no means a powerhouse, but it’s tough to beat the Lenovo IdeaCentre 300’s $450 price; essentially an all-in-one netbook, you’ll get a 20″ display, Atom 230 CPU, and 2GB RAM.

We’ve seen some pricey cases, but this 18-carat iPhone case by GnG takes the cake; it features 140g of gold in its 1mm thin shell, carbon fiber for stability and over 600 diamonds.

You won’t be rolling up people, cars and cities, but this shiny Katamari Controller by Kellbot is pretty sweet nonetheless; it uses hacked PS2 controllers, Arduino, and an optical mouse.

Lenovo’s first use of NVIDIA’s Ion platform in a netbook, the IdeaPad S12 packs a 12.1″ LED backlit screen, full-size keyboard, 1080p playback, HDMI-out and a weight under 3 lbs.

Engadget has dug up a treasure trove of new phones for AT&T, most due to release 2H 2009; among them: the Palm Eos, the Nokia Mako, the HTC Lancaster and the Blackberry Onyx.

Finally, a twitter tool with real “utility”: Adafruit Industries’ Tweet-a-Watt tweets your power usage using a Kill-A-Watt monitor and a wireless transmitter; build your own or buy a kit.

It’s limited to Republic of Gamers (ROG) motherboards, but this overclocking station by Asus installs into two 5.25″ bays and sports a 3″ TFT-LCD for monitoring voltages and fan speeds.

We hope you can read fast, because this Ghostmatrix printer uses an array of UV LEDs to scan across phosphorescent paper; the result is a stream of letters that slowly fade.

The Rotundus GroundBot may be a security robot, but its ability to go offroad in snow, mud, sand and even water ensures that future human rebels will have nowhere to hide.

Acer’s budget-friendly Aspire easyStore server not only comes with an Atom CPU, 2GB RAM, 1TB HDD and one-touch USB copy, but three hot-swappable bays, good for up to 7TB.

3D camcorders exist but are ungainly and targeted towards pros; Nikola Knezevic’s concept would be a boon to consumers with a highly portable design and Blu-ray disc recording.

It isn’t the only mp3 player and flash drive we’ve seen (recall the 1G iPod Shuffle), but this USB MP3 player and microSD reader is dirt cheap and will support up to 32GB cards.

Pentax’s K-7 is the latest movie-capable DSLR to join the fray with 720p@30fps; it also features a rugged magnesium alloy body, 14.6MP sensor, 3″ Live View LCD and HDR mode.

As if dug up by a future archaeologist, Christopher Locke’s Modern Fossils casts game controllers, floppies and other gadgets in concrete; he even gives them a species name in Latin.

Microsoft’s work-anywhere BlueTrack tech gets budget friendly with their Mouse 5000 and Mobile Mouse 6000; both are ambidextrous mice while the latter sports a 0.8cm nano receiver.

These USB Transformers take Cybertron to your cubicle and include flash drives and mouses; our favorite is Jazz, who transforms into a laptop-shaped USB hub. Thanks, Perry!

Move over, MiFi: iRobot’s Ember is a paperback-sized robot that sets up ad-hoc hotspots in warzones, can navigate around obstacles and is able to right itself when flipped over.

Iomega’s portable eGo hard drives get a refresh with a new 1/2″ thick aluminum case, 7oz weight and up to 500GB of space; a special BlackBelt model can survive falls of up to 7 feet.

Sony’s trio of new Alpha DSLRs emphasize ease of use; the A230 weighs just 1lb, while the A330 and A380 feature a 2.7″ tiltable LCD screen and Live View; all three have HDMI-out.