15th Jan 10
Top 10 Winter Warmer Gadgets
by David Davies
With winter in full swing and pre-Christmas working hours often lasting long into the night, it’s time to grab yourself some high technology to keep you warm as the nights close in. Here are ten gadgets to see you through the frosts and blizzards. Some are brilliant, some are weird, some are downright useless, in a good way.
10. Thanko USB Warming Wrist Straps
Do you ever stop and think: ‘wow, my wrists are really cold right now’? Thanko do too! The USB Warming Wrist Straps connect to the USB port on your computer and provide all-day relief from the incandescent pain that is the cold wrist. No need to worry about scalding your wrists either – the gadget comes with a handy thermometer to ensure you get the feel just right, every time.
If you think USB warming straps are only for the weak, look at this.
The USB slipper plugs into your computer. It’s a novelty-sized slipper able to accommodate both feet at once. Features include: ‘cutie monkey design; warm your feet’, according to the website Gadget4all.com. That just about covers it.
USB is the peripheral port of choice for all your body heating requirements. With the wrist straps and a giant slipper occupying two ports already, fill another two with these amazing USB Heating Gloves. They are, to use the technical term, ‘glittens’, allowing you to morph from overgrown child to petty thief in the space of one cleverly designed mitten attachment. Unfortunately, the gloves do require two ports, meaning that a face-off between these babies and the USB Warming Wrist Straps is a distinct possibility.
The iLogic Sound Hat takes a novel approach to the audio head cover. Most headphone hats contain some kind of headphone jack or complex pocket through which to thread your existing pair. The iLogic gets round these fiddly solutions by having the speakers built into the beanie itself, meaning popping your headphones in and out is as easy as popping your hat off.
Instead of thinking, ‘This is cold’ you can now think, ‘Perfect Sound Hat weather’.
6. Aevex® PrimoVolta/PrimaVolta
Compared to the USB Heating Gloves, these bad boys are industrial-strength hand warmers. Without ever going into enough detail to reveal the secrets of the technology, Aevex®’s website assures the potential buyer: ‘Heated zones strategically placed around your hand provide warmth that is regulated by your temperature and the conditions around you. And with rechargeable energy storage zones, theyre convenient and earth friendly.’ Yes, quite. Whatever the truth is, these gloves look like serious instruments of warmth, and they don’t require a single USB port.
An ideal accompaniment to the badass Aevex® gloves, The Heated Vest is made by the super-serious sounding Hammacher Schlemmer. Apart from having a name reminiscent of a German porn star, Hammacher have built this vest to last, using carbon fiber technologies to heat the entire vest for up to four hours on rechargeable batteries. Toasty.
4. Etre Touchy
Sometimes the very best gadgets are the simplest. These gloves are just that: gloves. Their genius lies in the ultra-simple design suited to the control of iPhones, iPod touches and other capacitive devices. Capacitive touch screens work through direct contact with the skin, meaning that gloves and the like will prevent you from controlling your touch screen device. While there are more expensive, convoluted solutions on the market, the Etre Touchy provides a cheap, elegant solution: the thumb and index fingertips are missing.
You can now look someone in the eye and say, ‘This is real Beard Head weather’ with total conviction.
3. Slanket
Again, like the Etre Touchy the brilliance is in the simplicity. The Slanket is a blanket with arms. That’s it. Before you scoff, think of how many times you’ve been stretched across the couch or in bed in the dead of winter under a blanket, attempting to eat a bowl of popcorn while watching a movie, or indulging in some chocolate, only to lose your arms under a morass of fabric? Okay, maybe not that often, but if a gadget is something designed to make things more fun, then the Slanket fits the bill. Plus, if you get the chocolate colour, you look like a Jedi.
2. Beard Heads
Hands down the coolest (and warmest) headwear on the planet, the Beard Head really has to be seen to be understood (http://www.lazyboneuk.com/product_images/uploaded_images/beardheadb.gif). For those with internet connections from the stone age, the Beard Head, at its most basic, attempts to replicate the look and feel of a beard in Balaclava form, covering the most cold-sensitive areas of the face while still allowing room for a full range of facial expressions. At the same time, the Beard Head is so much more than this. It’s a statement. It says ‘look at me, I’m here in the cold, and I’m willing to do anything, anything, to stay warm, even if I end up looking like the scary shovel-wielding old man from Home Alone who turns out to be a nice old man in the end’. Get your beard on.
1. Thanko USB Heater Cooler Keyboard
In at number one it’s those crazy cats from Thanko, a Shindogu for the internet generation. The Thanko USB Heater Cooler Keyboard dispenses warm or cold air across the wrist rest of the device, keeping your sweaty palms dry or your brittle, frozen fingers warm, depending on the season. This truly is the gift that keeps on giving. The only catch? It takes up two USB ports.
Keeping yourself warm through winter might not be as difficult as you first thought. Kitting yourself out with the above list of gadgetry will ensure you a warm and cosy winter. Just make sure you have six USB ports spare.
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