Electronics in general seem to have had a good year. LCD and plasma screen televisions have dropped significantly in price, while the chances that a new option will be included, such as a TV being HDTV ready, have risen. New gaming systems have finally made it onto store shelves, albeit late in the year, and other electronics that not long into the past would have been unheard of, are not only becoming more commonplace, but many of them actually do what they are advertised to do. This unlike some new and improved electronics in past years (just think back about a dozen years or so when the words multimedia and computer were first used together in a sentence, and you will know what I mean). With all of this in mind, I have put together a list of what I consider the top ten electronic buys of the past year.
1 – LCD Televisions
If you have been waiting for prices to drop, they have, and now is a good as time as any to buy. Pay attention to the features of each you are considering, making sure you are not saving dollars in exchange for lack of features. Many of the newer models are full of perks and still low priced. Do be sure to pay attention to the specifics of the included warranty.
2 – Digital Cameras
With larger optic zooms, bigger displays, more pixels for even larger and clearer prints than ever before, 2006 was a very good year for buying a new digital camera.
3 – Game Systems and the Games they Employ
With the advent of the new Playstation and Nintendo game systems, this meant a drop in prices for both previous consoles and in many of the games, which they run. Playstation 2 games that in previous years cost fifty dollars are routinely forty dollars or less. I have even come across several that were in the ten to twenty dollar range, making them a significant best electronic buy of the year.
When the first home theater systems hit store shelves years ago, the price range was always in the high hundreds into the thousands of dollar range. In 2006, picking up a home theater system for less than one hundred dollars was not only possible, the systems even sounded good. While they might not compare to their higher priced counterparts, they nonetheless are a good buy.
5 – MP3 Players
MP3 players were another electronic item that saw a boom in storage size and a drop in price on average over the past year. While not long ago, finding any MP3 player less than one hundred dollars, and that with minimal storage was common, you can now find large storage for well less than one hundred dollars.
6 – GPS Units
From handheld models to use when hiking, biking, hunting, etc., to those you mount on your dashboard, GPS units have dropped considerably in price and seen an increase in features once only found on the most expensive models, such as color screens, and upgradeable maps.
When I think back to my first computer I bought approximately fourteen years ago, I recall that it came with four (not a typo) megs of ram and a twenty GB hard drive, and cost over two thousand dollars. In 2006, a computer that costs less than five hundred dollars commonly comes with such features as a gigabyte of ram, a massive hard drive, and even a flat screen monitor, making it a perfect year to upgrade that old dinosaur you have sitting on your desk.
8 – Laptop Computers
With features that include the ability to watch a DVD without having to fire up the hard drive, larger screen sizes to make viewing that same DVD and your other software better, all with a lower price tag, laptops also find their own place on this list of best electronic buys of 2006.
9 – Cell Phones
While customers were once locked into buying only phones, that their service carrier they dealt with had to offer, 2006 finally saw a surge in unlocked cell phones more readily available to the public. Add to that, a surge in tower locations, and reception in many out of the way locales has also improved.
10 – Electronic Accessories
A perfect example of a top electronic accessory of 2006 is the LeapFrog FLY Pentop Computer manufactured for the kid in your life. It looks like a chunky pen but actually harnesses a built in processor, (computing chip) inside, along with an optical scanner. A child can take notes in class (on special paper) and the computer inside of the pen works to read what was just wrote, to later help the child learn the lesson at hand.
