Coolest Gadgets You Never Heard Of: Part II

Almost everywhere you turn in the convention halls and hotel ballrooms in Las Vegas, someone is hawking the greatest gizmo since the Runco Egg Scrambler. Here with a second half dozen of the wild and wacky from the show floor at this year's CES.

By: Stewart Wolpin

January 7, 2011

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Source: Stewart Wolpin

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TDK Brings Back the Boombox

Remember the boombox? Those big ugly loud things carried on the shoulders of ne'er do wells and other soon-to-be-deaf folks, including the guy on the San Francisco bus that Mr. Spock Vulcan nerve pinched in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home?

Remember TDK, a company once know for its excellent blank cassette recording tape? Remember cassette recording tape? Well, TDK has tapped into all this 1980's nostalgia by recreating the maybe not-so nostalgic boombox with the ridiculously unimaginative moniker 3 Speaker Boombox Audio System. Really. That's its name. Wasn't minimalism more a 1990's thing?

The 3SBAS looks and sounds slicker than its name and its 80's predecessors since it plays 21st century digital music via the decidedly modern iPod or iPhone, along with old-fashioned AM/FM (what – no internet radio?). This box does boom as boxes of old thanks to a 6-inch subwoofer and two 6-inch coaxial drivers.

This boombox runs only on AC, which is a good thing. It weighs around 30 pounds, nothing you want to have sitting on your shoulder. And it's $500, not necessarily a bad thing since that price likely is a bit too expensive for ne'er do wells.

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