Review: Jet-setting travel gadgets

No matter how you travel, it's a lot more pleasant when you're packing gadgets.

Before heading overseas, spare some thought for the gadgets you're about to pack as choosing wisely can make a massive difference to your entire trip. From keeping entertained to staying in touch, or even finding your way around, travel gadgets can be incredibly useful.

This said, rising aviation costs are seeing airlines charge the equivalent of Ghana's GDP for overweight luggage. The upshot of this is that packing an entire cabin bag of gizmos simply isn't an option so each gadget should ideally need to pass some tough criteria in order to qualify for a spot in your baggage.

Each gadget should not only be as light as possible but should also fulfil a real need, or even better still, multiple needs simultaneously.

Belkin F5L010au Travel Power Adaptor RRP$164.00
Belkin's travel adaptor may not be the sexiest travel gizmo, but it's easily the most useful. Packing a multitude of connectivity options, it'll work with nearly any laptop or gadget, and because it also incorporates built-in surge protection, valuable electronics won't get fried by dodgy third world electricity supplies.

Add in a USB port and it'll also recharge my cellphone, digital camera and iPod. With the bundled car cigarette light adaptor and in-flight power connectors, you're good to go no matter where you travel.

BlackBox M14 Noise Cancelling Earphones RRP$379.00
Flying long haul economy really sucks. Not only are you forced to get intimate with a complete stranger as you're contorted into economy seating, there's also dodgy airline food and mind-numbingly bad in-flight movies to contend with. The straw that breaks the proverbial geek's back is noise. If you're not sure what I'm on about, try this: Get a vacuum cleaner and stick it under your sofa. Now sitting on the couch, switching it on and watching TV, eating dinner or even holding a conversation. Multiply this by 8-12 hours, and you'll understand what I mean.

Thankfully noise cancelling headphones (which sample ambient noise using built-in microphones and use clever digital signal processing to eliminate annoying jet engine noise) let you hear music, movies or even take a nap in near-silence.

Locally designed, the Blackbox M14 noise cancelling headphones are amongst the best money can buy and make a huge difference, reducing the maddening roar of jet engines to a barely audible whisper. Powered with easily replaceable AAA batteries (which lasted forever), they come with airline compatible plug adaptors and a nifty travel case, making them dead easy to pack.

TomTom Go 930 GPS RRP$899.00

Getting from A to B in a strange country needn't be such a stressful experience. Renting a car in countries like Italy (whose roading was designed by Monty Python) or the US (where highway on-ramps need user manuals) without a GPS is just asking for navigation related in-car marital stress.

Not all GPS units are created equal and TomTom's Go 930 has a bunch of genuinely nifty, novel and even amusing features that really set it apart from the crowd. Best of all however is the 45 maps (covering Austrasia, Europe and the US) pre-installed, so no matter where you're travelling, chances are that it'll work without you having to purchase additional maps.

Add to this an FM transmitter (which can transmit music off an SD card to your car stereo), Bluetooth (for safe and legal hands free cellphone use) and you're off to a good start. Most amusingly, the 930 can also be loaded with celebrity voices in addition to the default voices to make turn by turn navigation way more entertaining.

My demo unit was pre-loaded with Mr T, John Cleese and Homer Simpson. Being told "I pity the crazy fool that doesn't turn left" certainly kept one focused although missing an off-ramp to have Homer Simpson exclaim "Doh!" was also a giggle.

Most useful however was the 930's ability to automatically re-route on-the-fly when we committed one of our frequent navigational faux pas. Travelling with a GPS like the TomTom Go 930 is simply a no brainer.

32Gb iPod Touch RRP$519.00

With all the hype surrounding the iPhone 3GS, it's easy to forget its more svelte cousin, the iPod Touch. This is a real shame as it's easily one of THE best travel gadgets ever invented.

Not only can it contain a huge amount of music (in my case both in-flight chill out sounds and a vast road-trip playlist), but its built-in Wi-Fi, web browser and email client allowed me to surf the net and stay in touch when near a wireless hot-spot.

In addition to its in-flight musical sanity keeping duties, I'd also gone on a pre-flight shopping spree at the iTunes app store to purchase a pile of nifty iPod apps. Wolfenstein 3D not only gave me a retro blast from the past, but it also made a whole hour of flight time disappear. Sim City had me designing my own iPod-tropolis, consigning a whopping four hours of flight time into oblivion. Best of all however, all of this functionality fitted in my shirt pocket.

Belkin TuneCast FM Transmitter RRP$69.95

Packing Belkin's TuneCast Auto wasn't a toughie. Not only does it take up hardly any space, but it proved incredibly useful. Being able to plug it into nearly any iPod to transmit sounds over FM onto our rental car's stereo was handy, but where it really shone was with its built in cigarette lighter adaptor which kept my iPod alive throughout the entire duration of our road trip.

Belkin's Tunecast also has a ClearScan button which automatically finds the clearest spot of FM frequency, which makes using it a relatively re-tuning free experience.

Belkin Retractable iPod Auxiliary Audio RRP$22.00

Unfortunately in some parts of the world the entire FM spectrum is so cluttered that in-car iPod audio was only obtainable by plugging my iPod directly into the auxiliary input of our rental car's stereo. This was where the Belkin's retractable auxiliary cable came in. Both ends have a 2.5mm stereo jack (one for the iPod earphone socket, the other for the car stereo auxiliary input). Packing the auxiliary cable was a complete no-brainer as at the size of an old-school 50 cent piece, it's tiny and as both cables also retract its dead easy to pack.

Belkin Headphone Splitter RRP$19.96

Taking even less luggage space than the retractable cable was Belkin's Headphone splitter cable. Trust me on this one - if you're travelling with an iPod-free significant other, it's perhaps the best $20 investment you can make.

Essentially a "Y" shaped audio splitter cable, it lets you share iPod audio to keep you (and your significant other) sane when in-flight movie options and reading choices are all but exhausted. Simply plug one end into your iPod, two headphones into the other end and you've got stereo audio for two.

Fuji 3D W1 camera RRP$1,981.00

Until now, taking 3D photos used to be for photography nerds with clunky stereo cameras and dorky 3D glasses. Fujifilm however has achieved the seemingly impossible and come up with a usable 3D pocket point and shoot 3D camera. Using two image sensors, Fuji's 3D W1 translates the photographed scene into genuine (dorky glasses free) 3D on the camera's rear 2.8-inch LCD display.

Fuji has also thoughtfully bundled an 8.4-inch 3D digital picture frame for more practical 3D photo viewing at home, and as more permanent solution, can also print 3D photographs that come out surprisingly good.

The 3D W1 mightn't be as compact as a plain old point-and-shoot digital camera, and its user interface took some getting used to, but it was pocketable, and being able to take 3D photos added a whole new dimension to taking holiday snaps.

PSP Go RRP$499

Sony's latest portable gaming goodie won a place in my luggage (and my heart) for two key reasons. Firstly, it's way smaller and lighter than its chubby predecessors (you won't for instance hear the sound of tearing fabric when you slide it into your pocket) and secondly, being away from my PS3 for more than 24 hours results in me breaking out in hives.

The PSP Go's pint sized form factor doesn't detract from gaming as its brilliant 3.8-inch TFT LCD screen slides up to reveal all the usual in-game PSP controls. Preloading a bunch of games on the built in 16GB of flash memory (which is expandable with a Memory Stick Micro) I stored Patapon, Resistance Retribution, Ridge Racer 2, plus a demo of Gods of War.

When used with the BlackBox noise cancelling headphones and Belkin's in-flight power adaptor, long haul travel felt short, and being able to get a dose of Vitamin PlayStation whilst holidaying also kept me hives free. Wicked.