Gadgets: 2012 Consumer Electronics Show picks

After spending more than six days listening to every pitch, playing with products and eating to no end (complimentary, of course) my highlight for the week was getting my face shaved right there on the trade show floor.

Complete with a barber's chair and hot towels, Schick showed off the battery powered Hydro 5 razor.

It's built with three vibration settings (low, medium and high), which gave me a smooth shave in front of dozens of bystanders.

While all three settings were fine, medium felt the best except for the hot towels before and after.

Details: schickhydro.com $10

V-MODA CROSSFADE HEADHPONES

V-Moda showed off a new customized feature of the Crossfade LP2 ($199) over-the-ear noise isolating headphones.

Up to now, custom features of the headphones included 13 different color options for the outside shield of each ear cup, in addition to selecting your base and ear pad color.

Now the company has a unique feature to customize the shields.

When ordering the LP2's, after you choose your shield color you have the choice of sending V-Moda a jpg, logo and a small amount of text to have it permanently lasered into the shields.

I watch in amazement as they demonstrated the feature by engraving the logo of my favorite team with a laser into the shields.

Simply put, the quality of the customized shields are right there with the outstanding comfort and sound you get out of every V-Moda product.

The engraving is also available for the smaller Crossfade M-80's and other models that are expected to be announced in the future.

Details: v-moda.com $199

Here are some tidbits on other items I thought were either cool or useful:

KENSINGTON WORDLOCK

Kensington has added a great feature to help you remember your password and this one is truly a word. Instead of dialing a combination set to numbers, WordLock Portable Combination Laptop Lock lets you choose your combination in a word created from four spinning rows of letters.

The push-button design installs in seconds with T-Bar securing to the security port on your laptop and has a self-coiling cable that stretches to 6-feet to attach to a desk or fixed structure but shrinks to 3-inches for easy packing.

Details: kensington.com

ILUV KINDLE DOCK

iLuv showed off a new line of docking systems for the Kindle system. If Amazon really sold as many as they claimed this past holiday season, then iLuv has hit a homerun with these.

Details: iLuv.com

SANDISK DATA STORAGE

During meeting with Sandisk at CES they mentioned we are going to produce 2.7 Zettabytes of data in 2012. If that doesn't make sense to you it's equal to 2.7 trillion GB.

What this means to you: you are not alone and you better figure out how you're going to archive your data, because you will have a hard drive crash at some point.

Details: SanDisk.com

GREENSMART BAGS

A company called GreenSmart is making eco-friendly computer bags and backpacks out of 100 percent recycled water bottles. A clever marketing tool has a label on each bag indicating how many bottles were used for each bag, which range from 11 to 40 depending on the product.

Details: Greensmart.biz

TEKCHICK DESIGNS

Speaking of recycling, a 13-year-old girl from Missouri has started a company called TekChick Designs. She takes old computer parts and turns them into jewelry including earrings made with keys from keyboards and she will soon be making necklaces.

Details: tekchickdesigns.com

IHOME AIRPLAY

Airplay is a feature within iOS 5 that many users either don't know what it is or how to use it on iPads or iPhones. In 2012 iHome is going to increase their line of speakers with incredible sound to make it easy to use, so be on the lookout - especially for the iW3.

Details: iHomeaudio.com

POWERBAG

The Powerbag is a collection of backpacks and messenger bags have a smart battery and pre-routed charging cables built into the bag itself for the easiest on the go charging system you will see.

Details: mypowerbag.com

© 2012, Gregg Ellman.
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