carandbike awards 2021: Gadget Of The Year

Gadgets have dominated our lives for the last decade. With the advent of the smartphone and increasingly automotive companies are taking notice of consumer electronics and using similar technologies to augment the in-car experience. While this was passe' for high-end premium vehicles, brands like Kia, Hyundai and Nissan have upped the ante for even more affordable vehicles. Alongside these leviathans, consumer electronics giants and start-ups have come up with unique technologies which are just making life more fun and simpler. These are the nominees for the gadget of the year at the 2021 carandbike awards.

Kogo Bot

The Kogo bot is a gadget for road tripping enthusiasts connecting them with a community providing accurate mapping and tracking using an embedded SIM powered GPS tracker

Kogo has dreamed up a tracker which is GPS enabled with an embedded SIM -- which has been pitched as the ultimate companion for bikers and hikers. This is a tiny gadget that is built like a tank and is latched on to your bike or car. Now the magic happens up in the cloud using the Kogo app which is a quasi Instagram-like social network for the Kogo community, connecting each other. Using the GPS on the tracker and the data that you have fed into the app, it can also create AI-powered stories on the fly chronicling your trip, sharing your ride path with other travellers in the community quite seamlessly. On top of this using the power of AI helps automated content discovery and allows you to book trips as well. It does this while also giving you a superb battery life of around 10 days using its 6,000mAh pack and also providing an offline mode when you're in a low network area.

Mi Portable Electric Air Compressor

The Mi electric air compressor is a portable gadget that allows you to inflate tyres

The Mi Portable Electric Air Compressor is quite self-explanatory. It is a portable air compressor that will help inflate your tyres - it can be a bicycle, a motorbike or scooter or your car. It doesn't matter. In one go, it will inflate 3 tyres, but if you're talking about a vehicle that has larger than 16-inch wheels than things may get quite tricky. Xiaomi has done quite a decent job with the build quality of the product and it is very easy to use. This is one of the handiest gadgets you can have for your transportation apparatus.

Nissan Magnite Wireless Android Auto / CarPlay

The Magnite is one of the first cars to offer Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto

It is a little known fact that wireless CarPlay and Android Auto are only available on high-end BMW's. Yes, cars that cost upwards of 40 lakhs, so when this feature comes to a car less than a third of its cost you stand up and take notice. The Magnite doesn't reinvent the wheel here because from a technology point of view, adding wireless CarPlay and Android Auto isn't rocket science, but the fact remains no one did it. So the next time you happen to drive a Magnite and you've forgotten your pesky lightning or USB Type C cable you can enjoy the brilliance of CarPlay and Android Auto, while doing so, it also makes the presence of wireless charging a wee bit logical.

Kia Sonet Air Purifier With Virus Protection

The cabin of the Kia Sonet GT Line comes with an air purification system with virus protection

The Kia Sonet burst on to the scene last year arm to the teeth with gadgetry. Now, the one thing that really stood out was this Air Purifier with virus protection. Gimmicky as it may sound in the middle of a pandemic, there was no denying the fact it was effective. Now what kind of virus protection it provides, well only God knows, and we certainly didn't risky ourselves with COVID19 to test the efficacy of the air purifier, but we can tell you during the vast winter smog of Delhi, it was one of the most effective in-car air purification systems we experienced.

Hyundai i20 Wireless charging

The cabin is feature-rich on the new Hyundai i20 and comes with wireless charging

Wireless charging is becoming quite popular on many vehicles these days, but many people forget that it is not the most efficient way of charging your gadgets. In fact, it tends to heat up your phone and the efficiency of the charging system is more important. Now on the new Hyundai i20, you get a wireless charging system that has a cooling pad and the pad itself is quite a capacious one that can hold even a massive phone like the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. The cooling pad comes in handy for Indian conditions - especially summers when the phones get very hot thanks to the processor coupled with the heat. Heat is not good for your phone, and wireless inductive charging adds to the problems - well the cooling pad on the i20 offsets the issue.