Gizmondo

Although officially available to buy since March, the Gizmondo portable games console has been ridiculously hard to get hold of until now.

This appears, in part, to be down to a late, but significant, alteration to the specification - a 3D Nvidia chip instead of the 2D graphics originally planned.

Consequently, the Gizmondo has arrived with few decent titles to support it. Nevertheless, it has an exciting release schedule with titles on the way from Ubisoft, EA Games and Microsoft.

The latter is particularly interesting, with the gossip mill already churning out rumours of a Halo 2 conversion and even a possible Xbox Portable makeover.

As it stands, the Gizmondo already has plenty to offer. The console is designed as a multi-function system and has support for movies (mpeg4) and music (mp3 and wav) playback along with web browsing, text and multimedia messaging. Games and other media are fed to the device via its SD card slot.

More unusual is the inclusion of a built-in VGA camera and GPS. These can be used for taking snaps and finding your way around, but they also have the potential to be incorporated into gameplay.

Colors, for example, is a turf war game that plays a little like Grand Theft Auto, but employs GPS to allow players to take control of real places in the virtual world.

All this is wrapped up in a neat little matte-black package with a bright backlit 2.8in TFT screen, while the Windows CE-based operating system is straightforward to use and easy to navigate.

If you buy the Smart Ads-enabled version, which subsidises the price of the unit by accepting 'targeted' advertising in a reasonably unobtrusive manner, you can knock £100 off the asking price.