Friday Feature: This Season’s Trending Tech Gadgets
There are so many great new products coming out of the tech world right now — smart and connected gadgets, compact and rugged audio systems, home entertainment solutions. And with how affordable and accessible many of these new items are, it’s a very cool time to be tuned into tech.
We’re constantly adding electronics, gadgets and accessories to our awards collection, so we wanted to call out to just a few categories of this season’s trending tech gadgets that we’re excited to have available or have coming soon … and perhaps these could be a sneak-peek at what will be trending this upcoming holiday season?
Rugged Wireless Speakers
Wow, are there so many outdoor-ready speakers to choose from today. Whether you’re planning a motorcycle road trip, a whitewater rafting excursion, a mountain bike trek through the trails, or just a good ol’ fashioned backyard party, it seems there’s a rugged speaker out there for you. Bluetooth® capable? Obviously. Water resistant? Sure. But now there are dustproof, sandproof, even drop proof options to choose from. JBL®’s Clip 2 Portable Bluetooth® Speaker is a great little speaker — you can daisy chain multiples together for big sound, and the attached carabiner lets you take this small but mighty speaker almost anywhere.
Drones
The drone phenomenon came about pretty quickly it seemed, and then took off with popularity in no time. In just one year, from April of 2015 to April of 2016, the number of drones sold in the U.S. increased a whopping 224 percent! What the 2016 holiday season has in store for drone sales remains to be seen, but it looks like the trend is alive and strong. The GPX® Drone with Wi-Fi Camera is a fun drone that does flips and tricks and lets you stream the live video action directly to your smartphone or VR goggles.
Streaming TV Consoles
TV streaming devices like Roku®, Amazon Fire or Apple TV® are incredibly popular right now. They’re cheap to buy, save money on cable bills, and are really so easy to use. CNET recently updated their list of best media streamers for 2016, and Roku shows up several times on the list. This is no shocker — Roku has options as cheap as 30 dollars to a little over 100 dollars, and they are all well worth the money for the amount of content you get. We’re excited to have recently added Roku’s new Premiere and Express to our awards collection.
Fitness Trackers
The wearables market has come a long way over the last few years, and fitness trackers are getting sleeker, smarter and more affordable every season. The website Wareable recently published an article on the best trackers of 2016, and brands like Fitbit® and Garmin® are not surprisingly part of the roundup. Fitbit’s new Charge 2™ now has a heart rate monitor built into it so you can ditch the chest strap, and advanced trackers like Garmin®’s vívoactive® can monitor your stats for activities like biking, swimming and even golfing. This is a really great time for fitness buffs and enthusiasts to be shopping around.