vacuum

Even in the dead of winter, some of us at Crave suffer the worst of allergies--and, when spring rolls around, we'd be better off in a bubble. That's why we're always on the lookout for anti-allergy technologies, even when we're in the car.

Naturally, Samsung's "Silencio" uber-vacuum cleaner got our attention, as Appliancist says it has a "suction power rating" of 360 air watts that exceeds its conventional counterparts. (We also like its name, as well as the blue LED lights.)

The bagless Silencio automatically adjusts the settings of its two-chamber … Read more

A friend turned me onto this amazing video of a man hand crafting vacuum tubes. He makes every part, the metal structures, blows the glass envelope, the base, pins, everything. It's a hugely labor intensive process. I just love that there are people out there doing this sort of thing, almost the same way it was done 100 years ago.

Sure, we have germ-killing handheld devices in various sizes. There's just one problem, as every germaphobe knows: They require you to get uncomfortably close to the potential contaminants at hand.

That's why we're so delighted to see products like this germ-eliminating vacuum cleaner, which uses a HEPA filter that catches the usual 99.97 percent of cooties as promised by most other gadgets of this kind. (We live in fear of encountering whatever's in that remaining 0.03 percent.)

Best of all, this upright machine with its telescoping wand and crevice nozzle allows us to do … Read more

I met Richard D at the Home Entertainment Show in NYC in May and we immediately connected. The guy's a really intense audiophile, equally passionate about sound and music. He's a Final Cut video editor and producer by trade, so sure, he's a total tech geek. Just like me.

Last week I dropped by his Manhattan apartment to check out his hi-fi, and I have to say, it's pretty unusual. I didn't recognize any of his components, except the Atma-Sphere vacuum tube power amplifiers. The tubes illuminated the room with a lovely warm orange glow, so I felt right at home.

The monitor speakers' sides are covered with an exotic knitted weave, and Richard explained his speaker cabinets are made out of the sort of "ballistic ceramic" material used to make body armor. His speakers are, in fact, two-of-a-kind prototypes that were never put into production, probably because they would have been too expensive to manufacture in significant numbers. Oh, and there was a cool looking Raven turntable on a shelf under the amplifiers.

Richard has around 4,000 LPs, and when he played a Louis Armstrong recording from the '50s or '60s the system sounded amazingly good. Pops' vocal and trumpet were three dimensionally present and the sound was extremely precise. I loved the way the speakers communicated Armstrong's energy and rhythm--he sounded absolutely "live." And the band's acoustic stand up bass' percussive pluck and "woody" resonance were exceptionally realistic. The sound was oh-so high-fidelity, it was truly great.

Richard's drawn to gear that pushes the technology envelope, like his Liquid Ceramic Composite Conductor Audio Cables that are as thick as garden hoses. This level of exotica is really expensive, so Richard buys most of his gear second hand from Audiogon, a great source for used audio. Even so the system is worth about as much as "a nice car." He also prefers to buy from folks who allow him to try the gear at home, so he knows if he's really going to like it.… Read more

Talk about niches. You may not have known, for example, that there are outfits that specialize in vacuum tube amps. In the case of a company called ZVEX, the focus is small ones. Really small ones.

But there are those that go in the other direction as well. Fatman, for instance, has produced what a three-part vacuum tube system called the "iTube Mothership" that delivers 200 watts of mega-sound, according to Luxurylaunches. Unfortunately, that's not the only thing that's big--so is the price, at nearly $10,000. Still, we're relieved to see that Fatman may … Read more

It swallowed a pit from a plum.

And over the course of three test drives through our house, the Roomba 560, the new top-of-the-line Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner cleaner from Burlington, Mass.-based iRobot, also gobbled up three rubber bands, two stray edamame, seven coins, a couple of beads and a grapefruit-size wad of pet hair.

And that was just what I found in the dust bin. An additional chamber that captures fine particles and sits next to the air filter captured a disc of dust that would cover a butter dish. The house was dirtied on purpose for this … Read more

LG isn't fooling anyone. In developing its first vacuum cleaner, the electronics maker predictably touted all kinds of techie features, such as "a RotaBlade that is in the rocket shaped drum, which is attached to an additional motor moving side-to-side compacting household dust into solid cubes," according to Pocket-lint.

But we know the real strategy: It wanted the "Compressor Vacuum Cleaner" to look like a Transformer. And it's done a splendid job, by the way--at first glance, we were sure it was a new version of "Optimus Prime" or some other mechanical … Read more

If the "Scooba" went on a massive steroid binge, it might turn out as something like this. iRobot has taken its famed vacuuming skills under water, totally submerging a new line for the swimming pool.

The "Verro" pool-cleaning bots come in two models that patrol the floor and climb walls to the waterline in 60 to 90 minutes It also uses artificial intelligence to avoid crashing into sunken tiki gods or pirate ships.

The Verros don't come cheap, at $800 and $1,200, but that may be a small price to pay to get rid … Read more

"Roombas" and "Scoobas" are fine for what they do, but--how shall we say this--they're kind of dumb. The "Microrobot UBOT," on the other hand, is kind of like a Roomba with a college degree.

Rather than randomly vacuum or scrub as it bumps its way about the house, the UBOT senses its target floor, sweeping and mopping at the same time in a single pass while avoiding duplicate cleaning. But just like some overeducated humans we know, it can correctly perform its duties only with the help of others--in this case, bar codes … Read more