The Student News Site of Gannon University since 1947

THE GANNON KNIGHT

The Student News Site of Gannon University since 1947

THE GANNON KNIGHT

The Student News Site of Gannon University since 1947

THE GANNON KNIGHT

Five hottest gadgets for Christmas

It’s that time of year again. Holiday cheer is in the air. Like every Christmas, though, finding the right gift can be hard to come by.

In recent years it seems that hot new electronic gadgets get carted away from stocked shelves faster than simple gifts like socks or a gift cards.

Last year, the No. 1 gadget was the iPad, despite its price. The year before that it was the Wii, which was reasonably light on the average shopper’s wallet or purse.

It seems as though 2011 will return to 2009’s low-price gadget extravaganza.

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Here are the top-five gadgets (not in any particular order) that are making the most noise this holiday season:

1. Kindle Fire, $199

Amazon’s debut device in the tablet market may be Apple’s biggest competitor yet. With the Kindle Fire, users can read magazines and books, watch movies and play music. Perhaps what is unique to the Kindle Fire is that users are able to store all documents on the Amazon Cloud for free.

2. Apple iPad 2, $499 – $829

Although not as attractive from a price perspective as the Kindle Fire, Apple’s second-generation iPad still packs a lot of punch and is a nice improvement from its predecessor that revolutionized the tablet industry. One of the main improvements to the iPad 2 is its powerful dual-core A5 chip, a feature that has speed written all over it.

3. NOOK Tablet, $249

Barnes & Noble also enters the tablet market. Although the NOOK Color had similarities to a tablet, the company’s newest device features an all-new dual–core processor with 1GB of RAM. The NOOK Tablet offers many features that have made tablets so popular: thousands of movies, music and apps available a touch away.

4. Roku 2 XS, $99

It’s not just tablets that are making noise this holiday season. Roku’s multimedia device is proving to be a hot commodity as well. With the Roku 2 XS, users can enjoy hundreds of apps on their television such as Hulu Plus and Netflix in HD quality. With this particular device, Roku has also added support for playing games such as “Angry Birds” with a motion-controlled remote.

5. iPhone 4S, $199-$399

It may look like the iPhone 4, but inside it’s a much more powerful version of its predecessor. Apple’s newest smartphone has many similarities with the iPad 2, such as the dual-core A5 chip. It also improves on the iPhone 4’s camera by bumping the quality up to eight megapixels. Additionally, the 4S includes voice-dictation assistant app called Siri, which allows users to find answers to certain things by using their voice.

Keep in mind that these are just a taste of what the electronics industry has to offer for the holiday season. But one thing is for sure: there are plenty of options for gift ideas to choose from.

JACOB TARR

[email protected]

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