Santa doesn’t usually bring a ton of gifts to my family and friends (birthdays are bigger deals to us than Christmas), and yet this year those around me got a number of shinny new tech toys under their trees:
- Two iPad 2s - One was a bonus gift for purchasing a new car, while the other was purchased as a gift for new grandparents.
- One Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 for a new grad.
- One Dynex 40-inch class 1080p LCD HDTV to replace an aging CRT.
- Two Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphones with Ice Cream Sandwich because Apple 4Ses are so October 2011.
- One Olympus E-PL2 Interchangeable Lens Camera - An upgrade from the smartphone to a real camera, without the markup of the recently released E-PL3.
- One PlayStation 3 thanks to a great Black Friday deal.
- One 14-inch Gateway laptop with Intel Pentium-CPU to replace an ancient desktop with a 10 GB hard drive. You heard me.
- One limited edition Nintendo 3DS with gold ‘Zelda’ markings, and two copies of Pokemon Rumble Blast for its multi-player mode.
Though the sample size is too small to be statistically significant, my anecdotal evidence does mesh with industry trends: tablets, HDTVs, gaming consoles, prosumer cameras, Ice Cream Sandwich-running smartphones and laptops are what consumers are buying these days. What about you? What new gadgets did Santa bring you this year? Make us all jealous in the comments below!
