With all the new waterproof portable products hitting the market in 2010 -- from cameras to MP3s to televisions -- you can have your electronic gadgets at your disposal regardless of how wet you plan to get. Some are specially adapted for underwater use, and others have waterproof cases so you can enjoy your media in the shower, swimming pool or while camping. For sports enthusiasts, there are new innovative designs that are lightweight, sweat resistant and hassle free.
Cameras
Kodaks' Playsport can be immersed in water to a depth of three meters --or about 10 feet -- and will accommodate HD video and can record up to 10 hours of video on an SDHC card that holds up to 32GB.
Olympus micro TOUGH-8010 and micro TOUGH-6020 offers a 2.7" LCD display with a 5 x optical zoom that can handle being completely submerged at temperatures down to -10 deg C -- 14 deg F -- and handle 220 pounds of pressure.
Thanko has developed a USB underwater video camera that fits on a headband and records straight video -- no audio -- at 320 x 240 pixels and has a 3-hour battery. Thanko also has a lightweight waterproof camera that can be submerged in water up to 20 meters -- 65 feet -- and delivers a QVGA resolution at 25fps for underwater photography.
Entertainment
Sony's Walkman W NWD-W253 waterproof headphones snuggle in your ear so there are no cables and
can handle sweaty sports activities. It includes 4GB of on-board Flash storage with a 12-hour battery life.
The waterproof Finis SwiMP3 is designed especially for swimming and other water sports and uses ear plugs to block your ears so you can wear the unit on your cheekbones, mastoid or other bony areas to get great volume down to 10 feet -- 3 meters -- and comes with a rechargeable battery that plays up to 8 hours.
FINIS also offers XtreaMP3, a waterproof digital audio player with ear-buds and a shock resistant, skip-free neoprene arm strap that holds up to 1G and can go to a depth of 4.57 meters, or 15 feet.
Panasonic has two waterproof digital portable TVs, the SV-ME650 and SV-ME550, with a 5" LCD display with a resolution of 480 x 272 and can record video programs onto SDHC and SDXC memory cards that support MP3, AAC and WMA file formats, but is only available in Japan.
Computers
The heavy-duty Clevo waterproof industrial notebook computer features a shock-mounted hard drive with an 8.9 inch Intel Atom processor and has a 1,024 x 600 resolution touchscreen display with 50 nits of brightness, a GPS module and supports Wi-Fi internet connectivity.
Steampunk's waterproof USB flash drive features a unique organic design made of a variety of materials that include glass, brass, copper and even has a genuine quartz crystal and a view of the inner workings through a little glass window in the casing.
Gadgets
The DoCoMo SH-08A Solar Hybrid phone is water resistant, but not quite rugged enough to be considered waterproof, but can be submerged up to 30 minutes in one meter -- 3.28 feet -- of water and it includes an 8 megapixel camera.
Although the 2010 QuickTrak Pro GPS Real Time GPS tracker and data logger is not itself water resistant, it comes with a weatherproof magnetic carrying box and features one button SMS phone features that stores 3 preset phone numbers and has a 30 day extended life battery pack.
With the Wireless Waterproof Shower Speaker Dock Transmitter, you can listen to music in the shower that is stored on your iPod touch, iPhone, ipod Nano, ipod Classic, iPod shuffle or Sandisk player as well as any other MP3 players and radios.
And finally, to power all your new cool waterproof gadgets, check out the SolarRoll waterproof solar charger, a flexible 58-inch long roll-up solar panel that can be used to recharge anything from cell phones to cameras to GPS devices.
