Paddy Comyn reviews the latest gadgets
Parrot Minikit Slim
Buy: Most phone stores
Price: €79.95
This device allows you to communicate (hands free) through your mobile phone in your car or at your desk. It is small, light, has its own speaker built-in and clips seamlessly onto the sun visor in your car.
Being Bluetooth enabled, it pairs with your mobile and its voice recognition technology allows it to automatically call any person in your phone directory at your instruction. For example, you say "call home" and it will dial the "home" number in your mobile phonebook for you.
USB Twin Tape Deck
Buy: Maplin Stores
Price: €104.99
Do you remember cassette tapes? Do you still have a few of the old mix tapes lying around in drawers and nowhere to play them? Well this piece of kit should solve it. This converts anything that is on a cassette to MP3 or CD.
Self-Heating Electric Waistcoat
Buy: Maplin Stores
Price: €32.99
It is absolutely freezing at the moment, so here is a decent idea to keep away the cold. It is a self-heating waistcoat that heats up to 40 degrees in 5 minutes. It requires six AA batteries and can be worn under or over clothes.
Sony Ericsson Xperia X1
Buy: All mobile operators
Price: €467 (estimated price; £399 online)
This is Sony Ericsson's rival to the iPhone and it looks like an impressive piece of kit. It has the same sort of finger-sliding interface as the iPhone but it comes with a slide-out Qwerty keyboard, handy for anyone who needs to send e-mails. A whole host of features include a 3.2MP camera, bluetooth, WiFi, FM radio, 3D games, video streaming and video viewing.
Sony Ericsson HCB-150
Buy: www.expansys.ie
Price: €128.99 + €13.50 shipping
Bluetooth handsfree kits are improving all the time and this one from Sony Ericsson is pretty cool. It fits to the sun visor of the car and you can pair up to five phones to it. The text-to-speech function lets you verbally know who is calling, which is a good safety feature and handy if you want to screen your calls.