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Bowers & Wilkins headphones hit the streets

Concert for one

Unfatiguing natural sound gets you closer to the music. Noise isolating design for use on the move. Metal an sealed-leather construction maximizes comfort, for life-long listening. Made for iPod®, weith cables supplied for speech and device control.

Bowers & Wilkins is proud to announce its first ever headphone. Designed for use on the move, the P5 Mobile Hi-Fi Headphone allows people to have Bowers & Wilkins sound quality wherever they are.

Some 45 years of audio experience has gone into the P5; close to five-decades of research into what true sound is. The ultimate aim of all Bowers & Wilkins products is to bring the listener as close as possible to the sound intended by the recording engineers. That is as true of the world-renowned 800 Series speakers used in the likes of Abbey Road Studio, as it is for the best sounding premium iPod® speaker available, Zeppelin. And now it's true for Mobile Hi-Fi Headphones.

Recognizing that many mobile headphones can be tiring when listened to over extended periods, Bowers & Wilkins' engineers at the world-famous Stenying Research Establishment have worked tirelessly to produce a headphone with a natural, unfatiguing performance. The use of specially developed ultra-linear neodymium magnets and highly optimized Mylar diaphragms provide the best possible sound quality. As always, countless hours of critical listening and tuning have played a major part in the P5's natural and engaging performance.

This pristine sound performance is married to design and construction techniques aimed at isolating as much noise as possible, for consumers that do not require full electronic noise cancellation. This isolation is achieved through a combination of the closed-back design featuring a rigid metal faceplate, and the sealed-leather ear pads. These materials not only remove a lot of external noise, providing an enveloping listening experience without completely removing the user's sense of place, they also offer an extremely comfortable user experience. The leather-clad headband has been designed for extreme comfort where it interfaces with the side of the head, while the softest available sheep's leather from New Zealand has been used for the ear pads. Recognizing the dominance of Apple's iPod and iPhone® in the portable media market, the P5 comes supplied with a Made For iPod approved cable, which allows for speech and device control. It also comes supplied with a high-quality, standard audio cable with gold-plated plugs. Switching between the two is facilitated by the magnetically attached ear pads, which simply pop off allowing access to the cable.

Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin and Zeppelin Mini provide the best possible sound from an iPod at home, and now the P5 lets you take that great performance with you wherever you go. Bowers & Wilkins P5 is available from January 2010 To find your nearest Bowers & Wilkins stockist visit www.bowers-wilkins.com.

We haven't heard much from the Kleer / DigiFi combo since they finally brought their first Opera wireless earbuds to the US at the beginning of the year, but they're now back with not one but two new sets of 'phones, including the follow-up Digital Opera S2 and the Made for iPod Digital Opera S5. As you might suspect, both models are mostly identical, and pack the same 32 foot range and ten hours of playtime as before, along with the usual promise of uncompressed, CD quality audio. The S5 model, however, adds an iPod-compatible transmitter and some control buttons right on the headphones themselves, while the S2 opts for a basic 3.5mm-based transmitter to accomodate your non-Apple gadgets. No word on pricing just yet, but both should be available on June 20th.

We already caught sight of Sony's ZS-S4iP iPod dock / boombox when it turned up in Australia, but it looks like there's a few more Made for iPod devices where that one came from, with Sony now also debuting three more docks of various sorts. That includes the clock radio-style ICF-CD3iPSIL model pictured above, the HD Radio-packing XDR-S10HDiP (after the break), and the plain-old SRS-GU10IP (also after the break), which provides one big speaker and nothing else. From the looks of it, the XDR-S10HDiP and SRS-GU10UP are both available right now direct from Sony and will set you back $180 and $150, respectively, while the ICF-CD3iPSIL will only be available at the end of the month, though you can get a pre-order in now for $100.

It may not be ensconced in Swarovski crystals like some of its other fridges, but Gorenje seems to think it has a winner on its hands with its new Made for iPod fridge, which it says will conquer contemporary kitchens just as "iPod has conquered the world." Apparently designed specifically for what Gorenje describes as the "the cult iPod touch," the fridge of course boasts the usual iPod dock, as well as pair of built-in speakers of unspecified kitchen-shaking ability. Gorenje also takes things one step further with its iGorenje web portal, which is, you guessed it, optimized for the iPhone or iPod touch. It'll not only give you the usual recipes and other information, but control over other household appliances that are connected via WiFi, although Gorenje is quick to point out that's still only in a test version. No word on a price or release date just, but given Gorenje's penchant for pricey appliances, you can be sure it won't come cheap.

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It looks like the folks at Zap just couldn't let the CES news cycle slip by without getting a word in, as they've just taken the opportunity to announce that they'll be showing off their new "made for iPod" electric cars at that other big show happening this month. That designation, of course, means the car will be equipped with an Apple-approved dock that'll let you both play music through the car's speakers and recharge it using Zap's so-called "Recharge-It-All" system. What's more, it seems that those docks won't be limited to just one car, with Zap saying that first iPod-ready cars will be available later this year, and that it expects to include the docks in every Zap car from then on.