Music on the move
www.yamaha.com, £60.00
This impressively robust portable speaker – great looking in its octagonal design – means you no longer have to worry about damaging your portable speakers so easily. The PDX-11 is designed to take a bit of wear and tear, yet its overall sound quality has not suffered as a result of its build strength. It packs a four inch subwoofer for great-sounding bass and mid-range, as well as a dedicated tweeter for higher frequencies into its coloured enclosure. It has been specfically designed for apple users, with a convenient iPod dock located on top. This is a lightweight, sturdy and good looking speaker, which allows you to play music on the move without the need to worry, while providing a great level of sound quality.

The power of sound
www.audio-technica.com, £1,550.00
In celebration of the company’s golden anniversary, Audio Technica is releasing these 50th-anniversary headphones, and what an impressive bit of kit they are. They feature Asada Hokkaido cherry wood in their design that produces a lovely finish, but more importantly, the technology is far superior than in previous limited edition models, utilising a 53mm driver with OFC7N voice coil, driver units that are built with stronger magnetics, while that beautiful wooden housing doubles up as an effective vibration suppressor. Lambskin earpads, hand crafted in Spain, complete a super-comfortable package.

Speaking and listening
www.bluemic.com, £42.99
Communication via laptop has improved considerably over the years, but internal microphones are often short of the same level of quality. Low quality can be due to their being housed in the laptop itself, where it is difficult to get full clarity, particularly over output from the speakers. Blue Microphones’ ‘Snowflake’ clips onto your laptop or tablet easily and captures sound quality at a much higher level – perfect for recording podcasts, narrating videos or speaking on Skype. It’s a simple USB device, highly portable, which provides a simple but effective solution for people experiencing microphone difficulties.

It’s a tablet’s world
www.asus.com, £320.00 (approx)
Asus has teamed up with graphics card specialists Nvidia to produce the Asus EeePad Transformer Prime, the world’s first quad-core Tegra 3 tablet. The result is a rather impressive piece of hardware, with a crisp display and strong design features. The graphics and sound capabilities are far beyond what most would expect from a tablet, which has encouraged some to call this type of new, powerful tablet “the future of computing”. But let’s not get carried away: there are still teething issues, such as a lack of decent apps and inferior software. That said, this is a glimpse of what future tablet computing could look like.

The little things
www.bergcloud.com, price TBA
What this tiny portable printer lacks in practical functionality, it more than makes up for in adorability. With a web connection, the Little Printer can be set up to ‘subscribe’ to various publications, which it will then print out into a “timely, beautiful mini-newspaper.” The printer’s functionality can be programmed remotely via a smart phone and the relevant app, making customisation all too easy. Fancy having your daily Sudoku printed out for you ready for the trip to work, or the latest headlines from your favourite daily newspaper ready to read when you wake up? The Little Printer can do all of these things in print quality which is surprisingly good for such a small device.

Sleek and powerful
www.sony.co.uk, £1,999.00
This ultraportable laptop from Sony is the latest in its ‘Z’ series, combining power with cutting-edge design. As has been the case with each installment, 2011’s Z is slimmer, lighter and stronger. Prices will fluctuate depending on what you plan to use the laptop for – those looking for the latest i7 processors can add a significant amount onto the price above. Why the hefty price tag? Well, you pay for the extremely tight design and overall quality of components, from the powerful innards to the track pad and keyboard, which are great to use. The question is whether the quality of the machine justifies the heavy leap up in price.

Picture perfect
www.polaroid.com, £230.00
If you want the best from Polaroid’s traditional format but don’t want to compromise on a modern level of technology, why not try Polaroid’s Z340 digital camera, which looks like a classic Polaroid camera but has all of the benefits of the 21st century. It features a 14 megapixel sensor, 2.7 inch LCD display, and is able to produce 25 3×4 inch colour prints per charge in no time at all. Its Zink’s ‘Zero Ink’ technology means the irritations of throwing away and replacing ink cartridges is a thing of the past. The camera ships with 10 sheets of printing paper, as well as a rechargeable lithium-ion battery.

Caffeine injection
www.krups.com, £500.00
Coffee fanatics relish the chance to have gourmet coffee at home whenever they want it, and while the Krups Espresseria Fully Automatic Espresso Machine is an expensive bit of apparatus, it also does its job brilliantly. Apart from its sleek and shiny appearance, the machine features a 15-bar pump and Thermoblock System with an integrated percolation chamber; that is, hot coffee from the very first cup. It also houses an aqua filter system cartridge to protect the taste of your coffee and prolong the life of the machine. This even features electronic controls and a corresponding LCD display so you can tailor its functions.