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Product: Pedestal Fan

Manufacturer: Dyson

Wired Rating: 8

Let’s just get this out of the way upfront: This thing looks an upgraded version of the Guardian in the classic Star Trek episode “The City on the Edge of Forever.” And I’m pretty sure sticking your hand through it could have more or less the same outcome.

But if you can’t resist the temptation to put your hand (or head) though the gaping hole from whence forced air magically appears from the Pedestal, at least you won’t get carved up by those pesky blades that have been the essence of every other electric fan since the device was invented in the 1800s.

The Dyson Pedestal (and the Tower, which we haven’t evaluated yet) are the newest iterations of the Dyson Air Multiplier series introduced last year as desktop devices. And they’re just in time too. We got one in to test-drive during what’s proving to be one of the hottest summers on record (in New York, at least).

Dyson claims its “Air Multiplier” technology, which doesn’t use conventional blades, “generate smooth, uninterrupted airflow with no unpleasant buffeting.” I must say, it is a pleasant experience sitting in front of the Pedestal but I can’t say the $50 floor fan I bought last week is unpleasant. And if that one buffets I have either not noticed or don’t care or am not a sufficiently sophisticated air current aficionado.

Admittedly there is a fair amount of science involved here — suffice it to say this is as inventive as the Dyson vacuum cleaner, which (you will pardon the expression) redefined suck by showing how much other vacuums sucked. (Full disclosure: I’ve owned a Dyson DC25 Animal for many years. The Dyson Pedestal is a review copy).

Just as the Dyson vacuum got rid of the bag and thus the baggage of vacuuming, the beauty of this beast is the singular lack of rotating blades — indeed, there are no (visible) moving parts unless you turn on the 90-degree oscillation.

But there are reasons to own one. Knocking it over won’t cause the fan to become uncalibrated. No flimsy wire cover will pop off, presenting a theoretical danger to small children, pets and inebriated guests (or hosts). It’s dead simple to assemble and very easy to clean. No troublesome knob to keep it from oscillating. There’s even a fingertip control for adjusting the angle — no heavyset screw.

But a possession like this is more about the aesthetic or even minor ease-of-use advantages, and there’s no reason to apologize for sometimes placing a high value on style. The truth is that some people need a fan but wouldn’t be caught dead leaving one out for “company” to see. This fan will get a prominent place in a living room and a lot of use.

No, the Dyson Pedestal will not be hastily stuffed into a closet when one is entertaining. In fact, I can imagine some Mr. Smooth showing it off to his date like the iPad he casually left on the coffee table and the Montblanc Meisterstück 149 piston fountain pen he never fails to carry (or use).

Just make sure that when you are putting the moves on, you avoid the phrase, “Hey, stick your hand in here!”

WIRED Really pretty and blasts air like you really would not believe. Assembles in seconds with no tools. Adjusts for height and angle. Three-button remote is stylish and thin — it runs on a watch battery — and even stands on end.

TIRED $450. For a fan. Mr. Dyson, you are brilliant, iconic, elusive and mysterious. But do you also have to be Steve Jobs? Noted: Your top-of-the-line wind machine is cheaper than an entry-level iPad, but not by much.

Product: HZ35W

Manufacturer: Samsung

Wired Rating: 5

Take a compass on a trip and you’ll spend a lot of time wandering around trying to find out which way is north. Take a camera with a built-in GPS receiver and you’ll get tons of tasty geotagged photos that can be automatically dropped onto interactive digital maps in programs such as Apple’s iPhoto or Aperture.

The problem is, not all GPS cameras are created equal. While testing several models on a five-borough photo tour in New York City, we got some interesting results, to say the least.

Is Nathan’s Hot Dogs in Kyrgyzstan? The GPS-enabled 12-megapixel Samsung HZ35W certainly seemed to think so, placing Coney Island’s culinary landmark in the mountains of Central Asia when we pulled our images into Apple Aperture 3’s “Places” mapping feature. When the same thing happened with a replacement camera, we switched to Apple’s iPhoto, which also has Places, and the geotagged photos were dropped properly into a map of New York City. Go figure.

Despite the glitch, the slightly chunky Samsung camera had the most extensive GPS features of the models we tested including Map View mode which displays your location and where your photos were taken on a map on the camera’s 3-inch LCD. The mapping feature on our camera confusingly defaulted to Washington, D.C., though, showing us walking down F Street instead of 181st in Washington Heights. (Once the camera locked in on the GPS signal, the map switched to the current location.)

Images captured by the HZ35W were only so-so with oversaturated color and blurry edge detail. We loved the 15x optical zoom though, which went as wide as 24mm for capturing landscapes and bridges.

WIRED GPS turns on easily with a switch on top of the camera. Displays current city, state and country on LCD in shooting mode. Map View will tell you where all the local Starbucks, McDonald’s and Bank of America ATMs are.

TIRED GPS antenna is placed where you put your forefinger on the camera, potentially blocking the signal. Must download maps from Samsung website and store on memory card in camera to use Map View mode. Slowest GPS camera we tested.

Product: Swiss Army Dive Master 500 Chrono

Manufacturer: Victorinox

Wired Rating: 8

Who needs concrete shoes to sink a body to the bottom of the ocean when there’s the Victorinox Swiss Army’s Dive Master 500?

This quarter-pounder (actually 4.7 ounces) of eye-grabbing design and Swiss engineering takes its name from its 1650-foot water resistance. Yes, you read that right; the Dive Master 500 sucker is capable of descending over a quarter mile below the surface where it will still function. To put it in perspective, you could break the world record for deepest scuba dive (1,083-feet) and still drop the distance of almost two football fields before the watch (or you) malfunctioned.

The Dive Master’s heft and diving prowess are only part a Davey Jones’ Locker full of geeky features. There are central 60-second and 60-minute counters, a 12-hour counter and a data calendar. A bi-directional rotating bezel helps calculate how long you stay underwater or, for us, how much money was left on the parking meter in front of the Y.

Some might complain that the orange-on-orange might be look like a neo-Pantone^TM nightmare, but it actually serves a purpose. When you’re six feet underwater or several hundred), things get dim, but a bright watch (complete with luminescent hands and hour markers) is easy to read in murky situations.

We dig the Dive Master 500, but it’s not really for day-to-day wear. This is a watch for people who spend a good portion of their lives under the sea and hooked to scuba gear. Still it’s an elegant timepiece that can survive a drop to some seriously deep depths, even if you don’t.

WIRED Endlessly elegant Swiss precision. Can handle aquatic pressure over a quarter mile down. Multiple functions. Insanely cool, if not ostentatious, design.

TIRED Is that a boat anchor on your arm, or are you just happy to see me?

Product: Clevo W880CU

Manufacturer: AVA Direct

Wired Rating: 6

Seeing — and lifting — the AVA Direct Clevo W880CU brings back fond memories of days gone by. Those were the days when laptop makers didn’t give a flip about how big and bulky their laptops were, as long as they managed to wedge every last state-of-the-art component into the system. Battery life didn’t matter and neither did looks. Also irrelevant was price: Gaming nuts would pay upwards of five grand for these machines.

In recent years, the market has changed, as vendors have managed to get high-end components into slimmer, sexier chassis and keep prices headed downward, too. Today, you can get a top-performing laptop without the bulk and without much effort.

And so the Clevo W880CU arrives, a machine trapped in the past, despite modern amenities bolted onto it, including a USB 3.0 port, 1080p display and a pre-release version of Nvidea’s new GeForce GTX 480M graphics card. Under the hood, just about everything else is up to snuff, too: 1.73-GHz Core i7 processor, 4 GB of RAM and a 500-GB hard drive. About the only piece lacking, on paper at least, are a Blu-ray drive (the 1080p screen isn’t nearly as dazzling with old DVDs), and a brightness upgrade on said LCD — it’s the dimmest screen we’ve seen in more than a year.

Performance-wise, the W880CU is top-notch. Both general apps and gaming benchmarks set records, if by very small margins — both about 5 percent higher than our former record-holder, the BFG Deimos X-10 we tested back in October. However, it’s worth noting that the Deimos cost $1,500 more than the W880CU, weighed 13 pounds, and had to use two GTX graphics cards to achieve its numbers; the Clevo only needs one to muscle its pixels around.

While the W880CU is awfully fast, you’re unlikely to fall in love with its usability or looks. The trapezoidal case design is hopelessly dated and difficult to work with, the numeric keypad bafflingly puts the right arrow key where the “0” key should be, and numerous ports (including the power adapter) are hidden behind a giant, hinged flap on the back of the laptop. Seriously, a flap?

In our testing, the W880CU also suffered from instability that, while not quite massive, was serious enough to force us through several reboots during testing. Merely playing a DVD managed to crash the computer in colorful fashion, and the whole machine vibrates dangerously when a disc is spinning. A collection of sporadic, random error messages didn’t instill additional confidence, either.

Driver upgrades and patience may help matters, but that’s asking a lot from someone who has shelled out $3,000 for ultimate performance.

WIRED Dazzling speed when the system isn’t crashing on you. Don’t laugh, but it’s reasonably portable (8.6 pounds) and affordable (under $3K ) for this category.

TIRED Somewhat unstable. Record-setting (on the short side) 40-minute battery life. Janky design: No, really, a flap?

Product: Cyber-Shot DSC-HX5V

Manufacturer: Sony

Wired Rating: 8

The days of forgetting where you took a photo are over. The Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-HX5V, and several other cameras we tested recently, has built-in GPS receivers to geo-tag your shots so you can show jealous friends your globetrotting exploits and never lose track of what side of an international border you were on.

Though it works exceptionally well, the Sony HX5V doesn’t exactly flaunt its GPS chops. In fact, if it weren’t for the picture of a satellite on the side of the camera, you might not even know this slick little pocket shooter had a GPS receiver inside its black metallic body. The camera’s GPS feature itself is similarly stealth: You have to dig through menus just to turn it on and it can take up to a minute to lock in on a signal. This is kind of annoying.

Once we switched on sat-tracking, though, the 10.2-megapixel HX5V geotagged our shots with sniper-like accuracy during a five-borough photo tour in New York City. Reception is charted in bars on the camera’s large 3-inch LCD screen so it’s easy to tell how strong the GPS signal is. Unfortunately, New York’s skyscrapers (and even the comparatively squat Madison Square Garden) knocked out the reception, so our photos of the Empire State Building were left untagged. (Not a biggie though. Most people know it’s in NYC.)

Along with GPS, the HX5V has a few more tech tricks up its sleeve. When we got lost in Brooklyn during our photo tour, the camera’s digital compass on the LCD led us north toward our final stop in Queens. Image quality was also near the best of four other GPS-enabled cameras we tried, thanks to several helpful features like the multishot high dynamic range (HDR) mode, which combined highlight and shadow detail of two late-afternoon shots of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge into one evenly balanced photo.

WIRED GPS automatically sets the camera’s clock depending on the time zone you’re traveling in. Intelligent Sweep Panorama captures wide or tall subject matter — think Grand Canyon or the Sears Tower — just by pressing the shutter and sweeping the camera in front of you. Records full 1080p HD video in popular AVCHD format with stereo sound.

TIRED GPS signal quickly surrendered to buildings or even overhanging trees. Doesn’t display nearby place names or points of interest during playback. Confusing menu system makes adjusting GPS setting a chore.