When Should You Buy Your Next Gadget?



As Laptop Mag’s Avram Piltch explains, if you want to reach a state of true techstasy, you may need to repress your desire to buy a new gadget today and wait for the next version to come out.

To be fair, playing the waiting game to buy great new gear is an endless cycle, so don’t feel that you need to wait at all. It’s just nice to know what’s around the corner to make your own judgement.

The iPhone

While four or five months may seem like a long time to wait, most iPhone owners are on two-year phone contracts that usually won’t allow them to upgrade until after 20 months. Do you really want to spend 2013 being known as the loser who has to “take a grenade” with Siri’s older, slower moving sister while your friends cosy up to the new model? [clear]

Windows tablets

Coming later this year, Windows 8 offers a very touch-friendly Metro UI and a host of touch-friendly apps on top of it. Even better, Windows 8 will run on ARM-based tablets, allowing for thinner, lighter and longer-lasting designs. A slew of new convertible notebooks that run Windows 8 is coming too. I can’t wait for the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga, which bends its hinge back 180 degrees to become a slate. Even Kanye West would sit in his seat long enough to wait for Windows 8.[clear]

Ultrabooks

The Ultrabooks we’re excited about: The ASUS ZenBook Prime will offer a generous 1920×1080 screen that will let you watch HD movies at their native resolution, while viewing more of your favourite web pages and documents without scrolling. Meanwhile, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon could be the ultimate productivity Ultrabook when it launches in coming weeks. It will pack a gorgeous 14-inch, 1600×900 matte display into a 19mm thick chassis that weighs just 1.36kg. Plus, you’ll get the industry’s best keyboard.[clear]

MacBook Pros

Unless a pack of rabid Windows fanboys breaks into your house and smashes your current MacBook Pro with a Metro-UI styled hammer, you can hold on for another few weeks. The retina display, which should show more content on the screen at once, is reason enough to wait. [clear]

Android tablets

Smart TVs

When it comes to launching new Smart TVs, Apple won’t be alone. LG recently showed off its G2 Smart TV, which uses the Google TV 2.0 interface, supports voice commands and comes with a gesture-controlled “Magic” remote. Lenovo just began shipping its Android 4.0-powered K55 Smart TV in China, and it may come here at some point as well. The Samsung and Sony’s of the world are also about to launch a whole new 2012 range of TVs onto the Australian market.[clear]

Windows phones

With Windows Phone 8 due out later this year, Microsoft could finally start to close the feature gap with Apple and Google. According to some reports, the new mobile operating system will support higher-resolution screens, dual-core CPUs, NFC payments and apps that can control other apps — a necessity for true multitasking.

Microsoft has issued some conflicting statements about whether current Windows Phones would get an OS upgrade, so I wouldn’t count on the Lumia you buy today running Windows 8 tomorrow. Beautiful phones, though.

Ereaders

However, backlit e-ink is just the tip of this innovative iceberg. Expect Amazon to launch the second-generation Kindle Fire 2 later this year, complete with higher-res screen options and possibly larger form factors like 8.9 inches. Flush with investment money from Microsoft and not content to stand still, Barnes & Noble is sure to release a new Nook Tablet sometime later this year as well. We’d expect the next Nook to also have a higher resolution than 1024×600.

There’s also a persistent rumour that Amazon will release Kindles using colour e-ink later this year. We just reviewed the colour e-ink-powered Ectaco Jetbook Color, so the technology is already out there. How bad would you feel if you bought an old-school greyscale Kindle today, only to see one with a backlight or a colour screen come out within a few months?

BlackBerrys

What we’re looking forward to: RIM seems to understand the problem too as it plans to release an entirely new line of phones running its new BlackBerry 10 OS later this year. The new touch-friendly BlackBerry London phone, complete with a bigger screen and faster processor than we’ve seen on a BlackBerry before, should arrive by Christmas. If you must have a BlackBerry, this is the one to wait for.

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Top image: Shutterstock/WilleeCole

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