note I am not compensated for any of the products I reviewed or endorse, and any products that I receive at no cost for review are either returned or purchased at the normal retail price

Looking for a great gift idea (for that special someone — or maybe just yourself)? Delve into TheZLetter’s latest products review for some exciting gift ideas — and remember for this Holiday, you’ve been good too!

Read on for reviews on…..

– Philips Hue Lighting Systems
– OptiGrill for that perfect indoor grilling experience
– Echo or HAL comes home (I’m afraid I can’t do that….)
– Neato BotVac (model 70e)

Philips Hue (5 stars)

Let’s start with the basics — Lights. Who could have thought that the light bulb could be exciting or even be anything new. Starting out on the Apple site but now available to all of us, Philips brings us their most advanced lighting concept to date. Hue.

Who are you Hue?

Combining two elements that no one would ever think there’s a reason to combine; WiFi and LED light bulbs, Philips Hue lights replace normal ~100 watt screw type bulbs with a lighting experience. By their nature, LED lights are much more energy efficient than old Edison Bulbs. In fact, 80 to 100 watts of lighting can be had for about 12 to 20 watts of electricity — or to put that in perspective, 5 LED lights put out the same amount of light but only at the cost of about 1 old fashioned bulb! And note, most LED lighting gives off little waste heat so it’s a double plus in the hot summer months.

So what’s with the WiFi?

Philips brings something new to the technology isle by letting normal folk have sophisticated lighting without the hassles of most of the older systems. No codes to program. No switches to install. No worry about interference from the washing machine (seriously!). Philips has created a system that is easy and pretty much just works, especially for any home that already has WiFi.

When you get your first Philips kit it comes with 3 bulbs and a hub. By using your Android, Apple or Windows computer and the Philips app (you easily “find” the bulb and create a Philips account).

Then the magic happens.

Anyone can turn on a bulb and let the blaring white shine through out the house, but what happens if you want a more soothing sunset hue, or a downright adventurous sea blue hue — see where I’m going? By adding more bulbs to your hue hub you can create scenes and color setups to go with any mood or look. At first a green living room may seem abnormal, but after you get over that it’s kind of cool.

For those that have Logitech Home Theatre controllers such as HarmonyOne there’s an added advantage that not only can all of your components be set to “Movie Night” at a click of a button, but now your lighting can too.

What’s more cool is that you can control your lights not just through your computer, but through your phone — or now that there are (kinetically powered) wall switches you can control them without your phone. Just come in, push the pre-programmed scene switch and you have a green house. Or red. Or blue. Or just plain old white.

To add on to the excitement, Hue works with IFTTT which is a web site (If this this then that) that allows you to setup easy rules for the non programmer. So you can have the bulb by the front door go red if the weather’s going to be rainy, or the bulb at your reading table blink if someone tags you in a facebook post — or how about saving energy by all lights off at 10:30? Or vacation settings with lights on and off at preset times or based on sunrise and sunset. All is simple to do with Hue.

While a little pricey (we’re talking $65 bulbs here) Hue is not your grandfather’s light bulb.

Would Buy: Strong Yes
Pros: Redecorate your room with light, relatively easy to set up, unlike previous wireless lighting systems very dependable
Cons: Cost, software built around hue can make it a little difficult to get that exact color you want (too many choices), strangely no true dark green, until recently no “wall switches” the rest of the occupants can control the lights — the one switch that’s available works quite well but is, like Hue, different

OptiGrill (4 stars)

A surprise quiet entrant to the world of small appliances for this Holiday Season is the OptiGrill from T-fal. T-fal is pretty known for the quality of their kitchen products, but after George Foreman what kind of excitement can you garner from an electric grill?

Well, a lot apparently. Constructed of quality materials, the grill is both well designed, easy to use AND really easy to clean. Both grilling plates remove at the push of the button for dishwasher cleaning, and a plastic grease collector readily snaps into place and back out for cleaning (again, in the dishwasher if you wish).

So that just makes it an indoor grill.

What really makes this special is this is the grill with smarts. Turn it on, select what you’re grilling (meat, burger, poultry, fish, etc.) and this grill can tell you when your food is done the way you want it done. Want a juicy rare steak with those nice grill marks? Done. Want it more medium well? Well, that’s done too!

See the OptiGrill actually optically watches your food and tells you when it’s at the temperature and cooking level that you want. So no more dry as a bone steals over overcooked burgers. This is done JUST right, every time.

At $200 for a grill this baby is a little pricey, but with beef going up it will probably save you in the end and definitely satisfy that inner foodie.

Would Buy Again: Yes
Pros: Grill comes apart phenomenally easy for dishwasher cleaning, stainless steel look fits into any kitchen, easy to use
Cons: Controls may be counter-intuitive (you need to remember that Blue is Cold, Red is Hot; got that — but Red is NOT rare, Red means maximum done-ness or well done), didn’t seem to do want to do fish in the automatic mode despite the manual saying otherwise

Amazon Echo (echo echo echo) (4.5 Stars)

New on the scene — if you can get one — is the Amazon Echo. As much as the Amazon FirePhone was a fail; Echo seems to be a hit. Unfortunately once burned Amazon’s inventory and ordering of these is behind. Good news is the normal $199 item is available to Prime members (limited quantity) for $99.

That being said, even at $199 the Echo is an amazing beast. Whether you’re a news junkie, music fan, wikipedia page turned or just want an expensive alarm clock, Echo is downright amazing.

Echo “listens” for an activation word (right now that’s either Alexia or Amazon) and then obeys your command. Simple voice recognition that works… simply great. Want to listen to jazz? Say “Alexia, play jazz”. Want the weather “Alexia what’s the weather” or “Alexia what’s the 7 day forecast”. Want to listen to local stations? Alexia does that too. And finally, want to know the meaning of Life? Echo will quick as a rabbit tell you it’s “42” and then add “but it’s a bit more complicated than that”.

Echo; definitely the life of the party and the first techy toy that my non techy friends have fallen in love with.

Would Buy Again: Yes
Pros: Ties to your Amazon Prime music collection and free Amazon prime music, utilizes TuneIn to obtain access to most if not all radio stations, can read you the news briefs (and does just about as good as the blond on the evening news), alarm clock and weather station as well as infinite wikipedia all in hand

Cons: Has trouble hearing you over the alarm clock (e.g. “Alexia, snooze…Alexia!!! Snooze!!!”) — on the other hand you do wake up! Sounds gets muddled when up high, and Echo definitely has trouble hearing you to tell her to turn it down when your pumping maximum jams. Limited other movie service tie ins at this point.

Neato BotVac 3 stars

Wandering like a drunk man around my living room, Neato’s 3rd major product release has many features that well compensate for it’s small demeanor. Supposedly the strongest vacuum in it’s class (and it sounds like it, you’d think a jet plane was taking off) and utilizing laser vision to actually map the room and thereby intelligently clean it (versus the Roomba method of bouncing across the room for a set time and overlapping enough to guarantee a good cleaning), I found the Neato BotVac picked up an amazing amount of dirt off of a supposedly clean floor.

Having two small dogs, its always a contest of between the clean and the hairy; with frankly the hairy usually winning. Other than that quiet few minutes after a fresh vacuum your pet filled home never truly seems clean.

In comes the BotVac 70e, one of about 4 new models from Neato all having minor embellishments to improve the cleaning experience I found the 70e comparable to other similar systems from different manufacturers.

While my first BotVac was D.O.A. (defective bumper) the replacement purred right into service after the mandatory overnight charging (bubble burst: all of the vacuums use NiCad batteries and require at least a 12 hour charge before you can play, no cheating or you’ll shorten your batteries run-time life).

After programming the time and finding a place for the station (Neato recommends a space with 3 feet of clearance on either side so the Botvac can “see” where home is for when it’s done), charging and then coming home to a green light I excitedly pressed GO.

The robot moved gently forward, something akin to an airplane at takeoff started revving up (boy has this got something under the hood) and the Bot began to move forward. At first it seemed to pause to do a mini scan and then it lurched to the left and started walking the perimeter of the room where, of course, most of the obstacles are. Unlike other vacuums that got hung up on the large and steep bases off of floor lamps, BotVac navigated this without getting stuck (not with any level of grace mind you, with it’s butt half way up in the air).

Surprisingly while there are front bumpers to prevent it from crashing into anything too hard, there don’t appear to be corresponding rear bumpers. Every now and then BotVac would half wedge itself in between some furnishings and then by appearances ram it’s way out backwards. It didn’t appear to cause any damage, but it sure made everyone wince who was watching. After disappearing under the sofa — a no man’s land if there ever was one — and some mysterious ticking, scrapping and bumping noises BotVac eventually came shooting out the other side, apparently as happy to see the light of day as I was to avoid moving the couch to find the dang thing.

After about 35 minutes of going back and forth over the wood floor and area rug of the living room BotVac decided it was done, quieted down it’s airflow intimidator engines and then quietly headed towards it’s charging doc. When it reached it, it did a turn around and gently backed it’s rear against the docking station and after a few adjustments to get just right, Tweedledeed a little tune of happiness that it was done.

BotVac can be set on a schedule to clean your home (when you’re away, you wouldn’t want this thing bumping around at night unless you have great soundproofing). Only appears to mildly alarm the dogs, individual dog mileage will probably vary. Does a very superb job of vacuuming. Navigation doesn’t appear to be on the leading edge where NASA is going to be scouting for this puppy anytime however. Most returns to base end up with the unit somewhat helplessly unsure how to actually dock. Typical geek!

Would Buy Again: Probably Not
Pros: Great for keep a certain level of constant cleanliness, nice big collection bin doesn’t need to be cleaned every day, does a very good job with mixed surfaces, short enough to get under most furniture

Cons: Still not real mapping navigation, it’s a bit better than Roomba but so is my drunk uncle and a vacuum, expensive for what you get, like all of these units they seem to have a short life span as compared to normal vacuum cleaners