---

At 10am sharp on a surprisingly sunny Birmingham day, the doors opened to another year of gadgetry goodness at this year’s Gadget Show Live. With our press passes in hand, cameras at the ready and a keen sense of wonderment, we began our journey across four gigantic exhibition halls. This year there were nearly 300 top tech companies looking to wow us with their latest and greatest. So we thought the easiest way to show off some of the many things we saw was through a fancy photo gallery.

Any information we have about the photo is also attached on the photo.

Photos of the Event

Now of course there were just too many companies to showcase so we’ve picked out some of our favourites of the bunch and listed them out for you here.

Samsung Galaxy S II

Our first hands on impressions of the new Samsung Galaxy II were very positive. The form factor is pretty much the same except the body feels lighter in the hand without sacrificing any of the build quality and it feels longer yet thinner. The Super AMOLED screen on the S II was also thinner and  stronger and the PR rep also mentioned that because of the thinner screen and the way information was channeled along the dual core processor, that the S II would last a day and a half on normal usage. This is a significant improvement on the popular first generation’s largest fault which barely lasted a day on normal usage. The screen looked gorgeous in it’s new larger 4.27″ display and the body was thinner still at it’s 8.49mm design. A fantastic upgrade on the whole by Samsung.

Acer Iconia Dual Screen Laptop

One of my personal standouts of the show was trying out the Acer Iconia laptop. The laptop uses two capacitive touchscreens to emulate both the display and the keyboard. It’s a stunning looking concept and definitely an eye catcher at the show. The typing was better than I thought it would be and was surprisingly receptive to touch. On our first go with typing out a few sentences, we only managed a few typos however you will need to keep your wrists up as the one obvious drawback to a touchscreen keyboard is the inability to put your hands down. Still, it’s a fantastic design for a laptop.

Opus

Something I’d never seen before were the Opus media stands. Large and proud, these designer stands boasted an array of high quality speakers as well as a sleek looking control panel on the front. It does come with a bit of a price tag however you’re paying for the superb styling and high quality audio.

Nike+ SportWatch GPS

At the TomTom stand, the rather fantastic looking Nike+ SportWatch was on display. Made by Nike and carrying an inbuilt GPS, The Nike+ SportWatch is designed for the active tech user in mind. Equipped with trackers and the latest in GPS tech, the Nike+ watch is designed to keep track of your runs and your progress as you gruel the miles away.

SCAN Computing

If only for the show off nature of these computers, many of the SCAN computers boasted some very impressive specs along with some fairly high asking prices. Not to mention the sparkly case designs. That said, they had some very good demo’s of their newest range of products showing off 3D gaming.

Vuzix

Boasting up to a 75″ screen inside your glasses is the Vuzix range of eyewear. You hook up the glasses to a laptop, mobile phone or tablet and it’ll stream the content srtaight to two screens inside the glasses. It certainly worked well and was most impressive on it’s higher end models.

Nvidia 3D Experience

Our first trip of the day was actually to be ushered into the Nvidia 3D viewing experience where we were shown Nvidia’s latest and and greatest in 3D technology. The range of trailers and games they demo’ed looked really good but what really stood out was the hi-res photography which just seemed to stand out from the screen more than the moving visuals. A very impressive display by Nvidia as 3D was clearly their focus in this year’s convention.

Alienware

Alienware took up a large portion of the gaming section and rightly so. They brought their best gear and it certainly impressed. The M17x on display certainly looked the part and well, we could pretty much wish away that unwanted lag on any of their machines.

NeuroSky

The night before the press day, The Gadget Show aired on TV in which they broke the world record for using the largest mind controlled crane in the world. Well, we got a chance to try out that very same system first hand. Our impressions? It works. By measuring activity in the brain, it determines how much your focus and relaxation was and while it took some getting used to, it was certainly an impressive demo. At the stand we tried out a series of archery tests as well as an interesting “interactive” short film whereby the amount of concentration or relaxation you managed to put into the game would determine if you died or survived.

Dyson

Bladeless fans. Need I say more?

 

Summary

The Gadget Show Live 2011 was a huge success this year with an abundance of press and trade show people attending. Although the show has only just begun for the rest of the general public, I’m sure it’ll continue to deliver all visitors to the show. The main event of the show was unsurprisingly 3D technology. Just about every manufacturer there had just about something 3D to show off whether it be a large 3D TV, 3D computing or 3D gaming.

We tried out the new Duke Nukem, so yes it does work although funnily enough we ran into a glitch when we played it. The new Mortal Kombat, Gears of War 3 and Killzone 3 on the PS Move were also at the show and we’ll be doing follow up features with our impressions of those games.

Driving simulators made a big impact at the show this year too with the number of driving simulators both big and small probably reaching into double figures at the show. It wasn’t all virtual however as electric powered bikes were at the show as well as the infamous segways which although big in the US has still to penetrate the UK market.

We’d like to thank Vicki and Penny from Fugu PR for arranging entry and stay tuned to TUS for more GSL 2011 posts.