Hasta La Gadget!

It’s been wall-to-wall good stuff in the Gadget Lab this week. Here are the highlights from the past seven days.

If you were expecting Apple to announce a gold version of either the iPad Air or iPad Mini a few weeks ago during their latest press conference, you were probably extremely disappointed to see you won’t be able to “get your gold on” as there was no gold color option for either tablet. Lucky for you, Gold Geenie has once again come to the aid to those who would like their tech gadgets covered in gold as they have announced they will begin offering a 24CT gold iPad Air and iPad Mini. Unlucky for you, Gold Geenie’s products are REALLY expensive. (more…)

24CT Gold iPad Air, iPad Mini Will Only Cost You Over $1800 To Own original content from Ubergizmo.

Any purchase of a modern day smartphone or tablet would be incomplete if it does not come with the relevant kind of accessories to go along with it. The recently announced iPad Air would be a good example, and this might be the very reason that the folks over at Kensington has decided to do something about the situation. As a result, they have come up with a quartet of new iPad keyboard cases for the iPad Air, where each one of them will offer a superior keyboard experience that is touted to match a desktop keyboard when it comes to for comfort, accuracy, responsiveness, and convenience, while you are on the go, of course. The four keyboard cases would be the Kensington KeyFolio Pro, the Kensington KeyFolio Executive, the Kensington KeyCover Hard Case, and the Kensington KeyFolio Exact.

Regardless of which model you choose, they will all arrive with half a dozen rows of island keys, where each of them will feature a dedicated space to increase the level of typing accuracy. Not only that, all KeyFolios will come with its own unique set of thoughtful touches. For instace, some of the keyboards will arrive with a trio of magnetic positioning wells for viewing-angle adjustments, while others will feature a stylish zipper closure option. There will also be a full suite of iOS shortcut keys, where among them include cut/paste, Siri and a couple of usable shift keys, making it perfect to avoid unnecessary finger acrobatics, especially when it comes to left-handers.

Of course, it goes without saying that once you have one of these Kensington KeyFolio iPad keyboard cases, your iPad Air would gain additional protection against unwanted scratches and nicks without having to add any unnecessary bulk. The battery life itself is quite phenomenal – we are talking about 960 hours of working time and 180 days of standby time, nowhow about that? Not only that, each new Kensington KeyFolio purchase would arrive with up to 65GB of free Google Drive storage for one year that is worth $42. The Kensington KeyFolio Pro, Kensington KeyFolio Executive, Kensington KeyCover Hard Case, and Kensington KeyFolio Exact will retail for $99.99, $119.99, $79.99, and $129.99, respectively.

Press Release
[ Kensington hopes to increase iPad Air productivity with new KeyFolio keyboard cases copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

The iPad Air costs $499 for the basic 16GB model with WiFi-only, which we guess is pretty much the standard price that Apple has been charging for its iPads over the past few years, but the question is how much does it cost Apple to actually make a single iPad Air? Obviously it does not cost as much as it sells and according to a report released by IHS Suppli, they have estimated (based on a visual teardown of the tablet) that the iPad Air costs anywhere between $274 to $361, depending on which mode you go for.

More interesting is the fact that the iPad Air’s base model actually costs $42 less than the entry-level third-generation iPad from last year! This is in spite of the fact that the iPad Air uses newer components to not only make the tablet lighter, but thinner at the same time. The costs only take into account the costs of the components themselves, and does not factor in additional costs associated with the tablet, such as R&D, marketing, manufacturing, software, patent licenses, and more. What do you guys think? How is it that Apple has managed to get the newer iPad Air to cost less than its predecessor?

iPad Air Estimated To Cost $42 Less To Make Than Third-Gen iPad original content from Ubergizmo.

It’s hard to imagine that it’s been only three years since the original iPad came out, since tablets were a part of our daily world. Sure there were tablet computers before, but there weren’t tablets the way we know and use them today. And while the iPad changed personal computing forever, it has remained mostly unchanged—especially on the outside. That is, until now.

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