What’s not to love about the latest technology and the hottest trendy products? Our Cutting Edge section keeps you on the vanguard of electronic wizardry with our featured gallery of gadgets that are newly launched or coming soon to a store or website near you.
EXTRA HEAT
Columbia’s new line of Omni-Heat Electric apparel offers heat on demand. These rechargeable battery-powered jackets, boots, and gloves provide instant heat at the press of a button with three different modes. The most intense heat level keeps you extra toasty for four hours, the medium heat setting lasts six hours, and the lowest heat setting lasts eight hours. Omni-Heat Electric jackets for men include the Electro Amp Jacket (pictured) and range in price from $750 to $1,200 while the Snow Hottie Jacket ($750) is available for women.
For more information on the rest of the apparel line visit http://tinyurl.com/7hyp2zq.
NOT JUST FOR BOOKS
Barnes and Noble’s Nook Tablet ($249) still offers plenty of books—over 2.5 million titles—but now you can also enjoy TV shows and movies with Netflix and Hulu Plus. This is the fastest and most powerful Nook with a dual-core processor that lets you download books in less than 10 seconds and seamlessly switch between books, movies, and games. The 7-inch touchscreen with VividView is great for perusing your favorite magazines as well as PagePerfect Nook books such as cookbooks, art books, and photography books that are crafted to retain the beauty of their print versions.
HD PHONE CALLS
Enjoy video chats on the big screen and in high-definition with the Biscotti TV Phone ($199). Just plug the small device into a HDTV, connect to a Wi-Fi network, and make unlimited free calls to anyone else who has a Biscotti TV Phone or uses a computer, smartphone, or tablet that supports Google voice and video. The HD camera and microphone captures the whole room, so an entire group of people can join into the conversation without the need to huddle uncomfortably close together. Biscotti can also be set to automatically answer calls from select contacts whether the TV is on or off.
PRIME PAIRING
The ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime ($500 for 32GB and $600 for 64GB) promises all of the qualities you would want from your tablet: portability, productivity, performance, and power. This is the first tablet to be powered by NVIDIA’s next-generation quad-core Tegra mobile processor, which means even quicker response times and a better multitasking performance. The Transformer Prime is also thin (.33-inches), light (1.29lbs), and easily switches between tablet and PC modes when connected to the docking station. Even though the tablet launches with Android 3.2 Honeycomb, an upgrade to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is expected sometime in the near future.
UP YOUR HEALTH
Up by Jawbone ($100) combines a wristband with an iPhone app to challenge you to live a healthier lifestyle by tracking your physical activity, sleep, and eating habits and offering a variety of goals/challenges. Up tracks your steps, distance, calories burned, and even your active vs. inactive time (and vibrates if you have been inactive for too long). It records sleep patterns such as hours slept, deep vs. light sleep, and overall sleep quality. Eating habits can be logged into a food journal using your iPhone camera to capture the meal and then responding to a prompt that asks how each meal makes you feel. Up is also a social experience that allows you to support or compete with other users.
