Gadgets We Love

The last thing we need is a gadget recession. Spending on consumer electronics is still on the rise, a rare budget item bucking the overall Scrooge trend. But your help is needed: Buy something from our curated collection--some are cheap!--and save our economy now.

Samsung S2 Pebble

Ron Reeves for Forbes

$40

Dubbed Pebble for its smooth, round shape, the MP3 player lends itself to impromptu games of catch and prompts contemplative gazing while nestled in the palm. It plays music brilliantly, too. The Pebble's size (1.6 inches in diameter), price and basic specs (one-gigabyte flash memory drive, no screen) put it in the same class as Apple's iPod Shuffle. Samsung added some creative details like a button that switches play modes and a built-in LED light that communicates battery life. A lariat links the player to its headphones. Setup is simple. You don't even need to install the software that comes on the setup CD, but more patient owners can use it to organize playlists. In a city of iPods, the Pebble stands out.

Nokia MD-6 travel speakers

Ron Reeves for Forbes

$80

Compact and battery-powered with only one wire sticking out, Nokia's travel speakers sound great for their size. The cigarette-lighter shape of the md-6 has a nifty flip-top lid to it off with ease. Most people will use these speakers with an iPod, but Nokia's new music plan may change that. Called Comes With Music, the plan gives you a year of unlimited tunes when you buy a version of its 5310 or n95 phones. Best part: You get to keep any track you download. The U.S. service launches in 2009.

Digidesign Mbox 2 Micro

Ron Reeves for Forbes

$249

Mbox 2 Micro is a portable and affordable sound production studio. Digidesign makes the Pro Tools software that most music, television and film producers use to mix and polish their scores. But to use Pro Tools you need to buy and lug around extra computer hardware to get the music out of the PC.

This little thumb drive comes with the full version of Pro Tools and gives you portable access to edit mp3 and wav sound files. It's $150 less than the lowest-price Pro Tools gear. Easily create podcasts and hide the blemishes of your guitar performances. The trickiest part of the Mbox 2 Micro: finding it. It's typically hidden in the bowels of guitar shops and music stores.

Rovio

Ron Reeves for Forbes

$300

Spy on your home from anywhere in the world. From toymaker Wowwee, Rovio is billed as the world's first Web-enabled surveillance robot. The three-wheeler can be controlled manually over wi-fi or programmed to follow a route and stream video through your browser. It can take pictures of intruders and deliver a Voice-over-Internet scolding to a cat scratching the sofa. Rovio has its bugs-- it took hours to set it up on wi-fi, and it was a struggle to figure out its audio functions--but it's a charming first step toward a brave new world of ubiquitous scurrying machines.

Smith Variant Brim Audio Helmet

Ron Reeves for Forbes

$320

A ski helmet with Bluetooth, the Smith Variant Brim Audio helmet's buried techno-secret is a set of built-in headphones and microphone that grab tunes from your iPod, and lets you chat on the lift as flawlessly as if you were back in the office. This easily beats ripping off gloves and fumbling for an in-pocket cell with frigid fingers, knowing one bad flip could send the phone to the snow below.

Apple TV

Ron Reeves for Forbes

$329

When there's nothing to watch on cable, turn on iTunes or the Internet. The thin, white Apple TV hooks up to your home network and shows on the TV screen anything bought on iTunes, plus any videos and photos you already have. Its link to YouTube means you can even keep up with the election and its parodies. When you need to download shows and movies, they go to an iPod Touch, the non-phone version of the iPhone. The Touch, when loaded with Apple's free Remote application from the iTunes App store, makes for a better remote than the one that came with the Apple TV.

RIM 8220 Pearl

Ron Reeves for Forbes

$349 ($149 with contract)

The whizzy Canadians at Research In Motion made their first BlackBerry flip phone, and everyone wonders why. Clamshell-style phones don't sell in most of the world. Nokia didn't make one until 2004. But RIM is set on going mass-market. Millions of Americans love clicking shut to end a call. The 8220 Pearl is for people ready to switch to a full-blown smart phone from their Samsung, Motorola and LG clamshells that don't do e-mail or Web browsing as well as this Pearl.

It has wi-fi, but not 3G or GPS, and you'll need to acquire a taste for the two-letter-per-key SureType keyboard (which is thankfully roomier). The Crackberry elite are hotter for RIM's other two new phones, the touchscreen Storm and the media-rich Bold, but the clamshell crowd now has a Pearl to clack.

Pleo

Ron Reeves for Forbes

$349

This robot is cheaper than a puppy, doesn't need walking and may be just as lovable. The height and weight of a 1-week-old camarasaurus, the best-known North American sauropod from the late Jurassic period, Pleo is one of the most lifelike masses of plastic and silicon you'll ever encounter. Packed with sensors, cameras and microphones, Pleo expresses pleasure, aggression, distress and fear, and her personality depends on how well and how much you play with her.

You can also download more personalities: the aggressive Pleosaurus rex, the love-struck Pleo (purring and kiss-blowing) and the holiday Pleo (she sings festive tunes).

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