Make the most of the great outdoors—and indoors—with summer-friendly gadgets.
By Crispin Boyer
Snap folding longboard
Snap Skateboard • $139
You can look at this collapsible longboard in one of two ways: It’s either a fun summer toy or a form of emergency transportation. Nearly 40 inches long when unfurled, the Snap longboard folds to a compact 19 by 9.5 by 6 inches—tidy enough to stuff in your backpack or in the trunk next to the car jack. Despite its portability, the board doesn’t feel flimsy when you ride it. Specially designed hinges stay rigid even over bumpy terrain, while the soft 83-millimeter wheels dampen road vibration. The board’s low-profile design makes the most of each kick, so you can commute to work with the cool kids without getting too sweaty.
Fitbit Flex
Fitbit • $100
The summer season of potential shirtlessness is upon us, meaning it’s time to shed that beer-battered insulation you’ve been hauling around since Thanksgiving. This wearable workout tool is great for anyone who needs a little nagging to get off the couch. The waterproof (for the shower) wristband keeps tabs on your steps taken, distance traveled, calories burned, and even the quality of your sleep. Link it wirelessly to your iPhone, PC, Mac, or Android device for an overall picture of your daily activity and to set fitness objectives. An LED progress indicator on the wristband glows as you approach your daily fitness goals. Once it’s lit, you can plop back on the couch happy in the knowledge that you’ve moved enough for the day.
USB Cassette Mixtape
Milktape • $15
This USB drive is disguised as a relic from an era when dating required real-world wooing rather than a simple “Hey, you up?” sext and badly lit photos of genitalia: a cassette tape (for you millennials, that’s a type of twentieth-century analog media used primarily to store music). With its paltry 128 megabytes of memory, the Mixtape doesn’t measure up as a storage device, but that’s not the point here. It’s just enough memory to hold 15 songs, so you’ll need to put serious thought into which tunes you drag and drop from your PC or Mac music library for each potential summer squeeze. The Mixtape comes with a blank cover case and two stickers, letting you label your playlist (and, yes, draw genitalia if you must).
Xperia Tablet Z
Sony • $500 to $600
To distinguish its latest tablet in a sea of similar Android devices, Sony thought small. The Xperia Tablet Z is the thinnest, lightest tablet you can buy—just a smidge less than 7 millimeters thick and only 1.09 pounds (a waif compared to the iPad 2, at 1.33 pounds and 8.8 millimeters thick). But the Tablet Z is no lightweight when it comes to features. A quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset makes for largely lag-free performance, and the 10.1-inch touch screen is capable of 1,920 by 1,200 resolution that pops with color, thanks to Sony’s mobile Bravia technology. Although the tablet’s plastic case comes across as slightly cheap, it does offer one nice perk: The Tablet Z is waterproof to three feet, making it perfect for beachside browsing.
PowerFlask
Digital Treasures • $90
Carry this in your back pocket and passersby will think you’re just another raging alcoholic who can’t leave home without your medicine, but what you’re really jonesing for is juice. This leather-bound liquor-canteen look-alike houses a 13,000-ampere-hour rechargeable lithium-ion battery, capable of powering three devices (say, two tablets and a phone) simultaneously. It comes with two 30-pin iPad/iPhone connectors and USB and micro-USB cables for Android devices. Two LEDs on the top serve as a flashlight, making this the only flask that will do more than help you cope in an emergency.
Horizon Table PC
Lenovo • $1,700
With its 27-inch multi-touch screen and 1.1-inch-thick shell, the Horizon Table PC might seem like the world’s largest tablet (and, at nearly 18 pounds, the most unwieldy). But although this funky machine’s two-hour battery technically makes it portable, the Horizon was never intended for lugging onto a plane or cramming into your backpack. It’s actually a Windows 8 –powered desktop PC (complete with wireless keyboard and mouse) with the flexibility to lie flat for coffee-table computing. Once it’s on its back, the multiuser interface kicks in automatically, allowing a group of people to gather around and share applications family-style. The Horizon ships with a collection of multimedia apps and games—including Monopoly and casino games—that takes advantage of the multiple-player option.
BoomBOTTLE
Scosche • $149
Unless you’re training for the Tour de France or transiting Burning Man at high noon, you probably don’t need a plastic canteen of H20 in your bicycle’s bottle holder. Speaker-maker Scosche has developed a worthwhile substitute—a bottle-shaped Bluetooth speaker. The shock- and water-resistant boomBOTTLE packs an omnidirectional speaker cone that blares your tunes in all directions with enough power to drown out oncoming traffic—so be careful if you’re riding on the road. The rechargeable battery lasts ten hours, and a built-in speakerphone even lets you take calls mid-pedal.