Top OLED gadgets for the 2008 holiday season

So the 2008 holiday season is almost here - and obviously you'd like a new gadget with an OLED display. So what are your options?


OLED TV, photo frame and keyboard


The top choice will have to be Sony's XEL-1, the world's first OLED-TV. The 11" XEL-1 (960x540) is only 3mm thin. The contrast and colors are great. The only problem? it costs around 2,500$...


Our second choice is an OLED keyboard. Here you can customize the keys to your liking, this is very useful. Art.Lebedev's Optimus keyboard (where all the keys are OLEDs) costs 1,500$. There are cheaper options - like the 3-keyed Optimus-Mini, or UnitedKeys' new 260$ board (only has 9 OLED keys, though).


During 2008 the first OLED photo frames arrived. The top of the bunch is Kodak's 999$ wireless frame, which has a beautiful 7.6" panel. Digital Foci also sells smaller frames (up to 2.8") - which are much more reasonable priced.


OLED MP3 players, mobile phones or digital cameras?


Audio/Video players have sported OLED displays for years now. There are a few new players that have large AMOLED displays. We like Cowon's S9 Curve - with its 3.3" touchscreen AMOLED. The iRiver SPINN was recently released as well - this one has a 3.2" display (also touchscreen, by the way). If you want smaller players, there are literally dozens of models with OLEDs.


Samsung S9402 DuoSMobile phones are the second largest OLED market. If you live in the US, the best option is Nokia's N85 with a 2.6" display. In korea and Japan there are many more phones from LG, KDDI, Samsung and others that has beautiful large OLEDs, most of them announced in the past few months.


Interestingly, if you want a digital camera with an OLED, you don't have many choices - even though It has been years since Kodak introduced the world's first camera with an OLED. There's Samsung NV24HD pocket camera, and some very high-end cameras with OLEDs, and that's that. Perhaps the fact that OLED displays currently are not too great in sunlight makes camera makers a bit hasitant to use them.


An OLED Lamp?


Finally, if you really want to impress your friends, you can get one of Ingo Maurer's OLED lamps. They will only make 25 of them, and we heard the price is 25,000euro...


Which OLED gadget would you like?


So, what will it be? We'd love to get your comments - tell us what is your favorite OLED gadget, and which one you'll be most happy to have these holidays.



Posted: Dec 14,2008 by Ron Mertens

Comments

I think the only ones I'd really use are the Nokia phone and an MP3 player (like Cowon S9 - that looks like a really cool one).

The other gadgets - the TV, photo frames and keyboard (and the lamp! 25000 euro!) are just too expansive. Maybe if I won the lottery ;-)

Shlomo