IFA Berlin Wrap up – A few pictorial highlights

Not everything at IFA is cutting edge – TEAC were showing a new Cassette Tape to Tape machine…

…but some is like this interesting twist on a Windows 8 Hybrid from Acer

..and this NFC enabled speaker dock from iLuv with built in Qi charging (sounds perfect for my Lumia 920)

 Didn’t know we had a stand…

Logitech’s new range included this wireless keypad with gesture capable touch pad perfect for Windows 8 use

The touch sensitivity on Wacom’s new Cintiq tablets seems much improved. They are also doing a really impressive pen enabled Windows 8 tablet version for the mobile artist. We are hoping to review these shortly.

Back to that Acer I tempted you with above it is the Aspire R7 and is pretty neat

For me one of the most stunning things at the show was LGs curved OLED screen. The pictures don’t really do it justice but hopefully they do show just how deep the blacks go.

Toshiba had a really good 8 inch Windows 8 tablet which being Atom powered was full Windows 8 not RT. Well actually 8.1 and really showed 8.1’s support for small screens.

Returning to iLuv if you have a lot of iPads you want to charge and Sync at the same time (with the same content) then their MultiCharger-X is a really neat concept.

I also like their Alarm Clock speaker dock. The novelty here is that the thing that looks like a mouse at the front is actually a vibration device designed to go under your pillow and to act as an alarm.

It was also good to see a bit of originality going into their portable Bluetooth speaker design,

Talking of portable speakers this wireless unit from the SoundCast for the garden sounded great and is waterproof. Perfect for normal British summers.

As ever there were a few novelty items. Note the speakers in the feet.

TDL’s Ruth took a real liking to the Jot Touch 4 stylus. A Bluetooth enabled device with accompanying software for the iPad. Described as a Smart Stylus this accompanies their other existing Capacitive touch units but has the advantage of allowing iPad users to rest their palms on the device whilst using the Stylus without causing false recognition. Although there was only a limited amount of software on display it worked really well.

The MyKronoz range of swiss made Smart watches and bracelets were impressive. I actually preferred these to Samsung’s much touted smart watch as they worked over Bluetooth with virtually any platform (including Windows Phone)

Ruth was also enamoured with Toshibas new don’t call it a netbook NB10.

Diving back to LG’s curved OLED TV – did I mention just how good the blacks were, The image below shows how a black background just seemed to merge into the really narrow black bezel.

Toshiba had a display the Centre for Computing History would be proud of….

As ever there were a number of companies looking to find importers into Europe for their products. Some had some really good ideas like this multi port USB3 dock(no its not a light sabre or sonic screwdriver) that is designed to sit under the back of your laptop and prop it up.

Did we mention how good Windows 8.1 looks on Toshibas new tablet…

This speaker chair was pretty cool in its own right but the lossless near latency free wireless technology being used to send it the sound was really impressive – we hope to have more on that soon.

A few other highlights I wasn’t able to get pictures of….

Cyberlink announced their new PowerDirector suite. We covered the previous version of this Video Editing, Colour Editing, Audio Editing and Photo Editing software last year. This new version brings exceptional Multi Source editing where you can synch up recording taking from more than one angle of an event and then chose in real-time the shots and angles you want to use. This on its own is worth the entry price but the addition of Motion Tracking colour replacement adds exceptional professional level effects into a consumer product. This tool allows you to say highlight someone’s hat and change it’s colour to red from say blue and then have that change remain regardless where the hat moves to in frame. Really good stuff.

Silicon Dust were also there to highlight there partnership with Simple TV. A couple of interesting snippets from this. They will be releasing Simple TV branded HD Homerun boxes. Simple TV can stream to Chromecast and also Google Glass (which was kind of fun) but most importantly there is a DVB-T2 version of the HD Homerun coming soon. Finally we will be able to use this great hardware to stream Freeview HD in the UK around the house.

I  also did manage to get my hands on the Samsung Gear Smartwatch under tight supervision. It was better than I thought it would be. Firstly it is slim enough to look like a regular watch. Indeed with an analogue closk face it looks like a fairly high-end watch. The screen is really vibrant and even though it does turn itself off to save battery the fact that it can be turned on by just moving your wrist in the motion you would use to look at it makes that ok.

Battery life isn’t going to be brilliant – one of the consequences of that bright screen. The built in camera works well and the ability to find your phone from the watch (and vice versa) are nice touches.

My main issue is how tied to the Galaxy S Smartphone this device is – it would be really nice to use it with other Android phones. However if you are already Galaxy smartphone user then you should give it a look.