Chumby

MORE: Watch our video review of the Chumby

The Chumby is a slightly odd device that resembles a child’s soft toy with a screen on the front. It connects to your home wireless network and the touch-sensitive screen displays all sorts of information from the internet.

It can show weather information (locally and for other places), traffic news and train information, and more. Each ‘feed’ of information is displayed as a ‘widget’, and each widget does something different – there’s one for the weather, one for music playback and so on.

The widgets are added to the device online. Users need to sign up for a free account at the Chumby website and can then link their devices to the online account. Once that’s done and the Chumby itself is connected to the internet, you can add widgets to your device and they will appear on it. Other widgets include ones that play film trailers, show video from public webcams and show news from the BBC, CNN and more.

The device itself was easy to use. The touch-screen was small but responsive and there is only one other control, recessed into the soft top of the unit, which accesses the Chumby’s menu. From here you can control the volume and display options and choose whether it sticks to one widget or cycles through lots of them.

It had problems connecting to our wireless network, but we tried it on others and it worked fine. After that it connected seamlessly every time, although once it was switched off it took several minutes to restart.

The Chumby is a clever device that works well and looks good. It is small and convenient and comes in a range of colours. That said, though, we are not sure we would want to pay £140 for access to information we can already access online with a laptop or even on a phone.

The Chumby is much more convenient and it doesn’t use much power, but the asking price of the device will put off casual users.

MORE: Watch our video review of the Chumby by clicking here