The Best Gadgets of the Year: 2009 Edition

The presents are unwrapped, the tree is being put away, and you’re (hopefully) enjoying your new tech gifts. In just one week, we’ll be starting a new year, and a new decade. Over the next couple of days, we’ll be unraveling the best gadgets of the year and the best gadgets of the last ten years. A lot has changed over the past year, seeing trends in real-time collaboration with Twitter and Google Wave, wide adoption of Google Android, and the third iteration of the iPhone. Find out what was on our list after the break, and add your top gadgets of the year in the comments!

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Netbooks
While netbooks were just being released in 2008, they became very popular this year. The ability to have a small 9- to 10-inch notebook, with the power to surf the web, send email messages, and use cloud applications was welcomed by the consumer as an addition to their full-size laptop. The latest netbooks have the power to play 720p video smoothly (i.e. the HP Mini 311) and can even hook up to a HDTV via a HDMI cable. While premium models can be found for $500 or less, you can still get a decent model for $350 to $400 depending on where you look. It also happens to be one of the cheapest ways for someone to get a notebook computer, and is perfect for those who only need to access the web.

Amazon Kindle 2 & Kindle DX
While many thought the original Amazon Kindle was perfect, others thought it needed a better keyboard and support for PDF files. Amazon released the Kindle 2 in February of this year, and released the DX model in May. Both models were considered a leap in the e-reader industry, and have been highly successful. Prices for Kindle books have continued to drop, and I can predict that it will only be even more popular in 2010. Read our review of the Kindle 2.

iPhone 3GS
The critics were early to think that the iPhone wouldn’t be a huge success when it was introduced in 2007, with the lack of third-party applications and a 3G connection. Little did they know that it would become the most popular smartphone. Pairing the iPhone with the App Store, which now has over 100,000 applications, was a smart move by Apple. Even with the plagues of App Store approval for developers, there are some great applications to be found. However, its newest competitor, the Motorola Droid, is coming up strong.

Motorola Droid
The Motorola Droid had probably the only successful launch of an Android smartphone, with a direct marketing campaign against the iPhone. It’s one of the best Android smartphones we’ve seen thus far, but the Android Market, its third-party application store, still needs work and that “killer app” to push it one step further over the iPhone. Read our review of the Droid.

Dell Adamo XPS
At the beginning of last year, Apple introduced the “world’s thinnest notebook”, the MacBook Air. The folks at Dell released the Adamo, but it wasn’t as profitable as they had hoped. While it hasn’t shipped yet, the new Adamo XPS is a stunning product. The coolest feature, by far, is the touch-sensitive latch. Run your finger over the lid and it unlocks, magically almost. The Adamo XPS also has a unique angled design, which puts the keyboard at an 15- to 20-degree ergonomic angle.

Windows 7
After the bad press that Windows Vista got three years ago, this year marked the release of Windows 7, Microsoft’s latest operating system. It is more reliable and stable than earlier versions (XP and Vista), offers a refined user interface with new Aero features such as Peek and Snap, and has eliminated a lot of the issues users experienced with Vista.

Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Camera & Pocket Video Cameras
Solid-state flash video cameras have become increasingly popular this year, starting with the Flip Video Mino HD and now the Kodak Zi8. These cameras are especially popular for their ease-of-use in uploading videos to YouTube. The Zi8 captures 1080p video in a package less than an inch thick. And because it has a microphone input jack, it’s also super simple to get pristine audio with the use of professional microphones.