NBC Weekend Today: Spring Travel

Nothing like this week’s arctic blast of snow, wind and rain to heighten anticipation for a spring travel trip to a warm climate. Before you pack your bags you may need some new ones. BestStuff's Corey Greenberg is on the NBC Weekend Today Show March 10th showing some of the hottest products for the spring travel season.



Kelty Kids Rolling Backpacks
Kelty, famous for its quality outdoor adventure products, has a new line of luggage optimized for your child’s height. These sturdy backpacks easily convert to wheeled pull behind bags for long strolls through airport walkways and parking lots. The Kelty Sidecar is the perfect height for kids ages 3-6. It features an organizer pocket and water bottle storage. Kelty's Caboose (for ages 5-9) adds an extendable handle, outside storage pocket and mesh water bottle storage. They sell for $55 and $65 respectively.




Tumi Wheel-A-Way Tri Fold Garment Bag
This season’s hot new Tumi bag is its Wheel-A-Way Tri Fold Garment Bag. Tumi has found a way to add a suit or dress garment bag to a wheeled pull–behind. This new bag has a folding suit compartment plus two internal hangers. Best of all, it fits in most overhead storage bins.




Goof Proof Pocket 35MM Camera: Olympus Stylus Epic Zoom 115 Deluxe
The fully automatic, all-weather pocket zoom camera has a new “goof proof” mode called The Visual Confirmation Finder. If activated, it momentarily darkens the lens when the shutter button is pressed, so you see exactly what’s in the picture. This feature takes the worry out of wondering whether you captured the photo you wanted when you wanted it. Other features include all-weather reliability for protection against rain, snow or sea spray, easy-to-use fully automatic operation (auto focus, auto exposure, auto film loading and rewinding). $240.




Mini Pocket MP3/Camera/Camcorder: The Kodak MC3
Hip, new multifunction device from Kodak combines a MP3 music player, digital camera and mini moviemaker in one pocket sized form factor. While its camera images are only email quality, and the music and mini movies are limited to the size of the memory card, what makes it unique is the ease of which you can take a picture, switch to a movie mode or even dial up some tunes. There’s no need to switch cards; the internal circuitry does it for you. All you have to do is turn the dial to the mode you prefer. When you get back home, just pop the MC3 in its USB cradle and it will upload all your Spring break images and movies for easy email to friends and family. The MC3 is a bit pricey at $240, but for the young and young at heart, it’s worth it. Best of all, it comes with a 16MB card which is a step above most.




Traveling Tunes: RioVolt Portable Music Player
Lighten your load this travel season and carry just one CD with 20-hours of music to get you through your journey. By making recordable CDs in one of the newer digital formats off your computer (i.e. MP3 or WMA), the smaller files they posess create CDs that hold up to 20-hours of music per disc. The only problem is finding a portable CD player that accepts all the new digital formats. Enter the RioVolt. It accepts everything (but PBJ sandwiches) including standard CDs, CD Recordable (CDR) and CD rewritable Discs (CDRW). Its headphones come with an 8-fuction remote control. $170.




Ultimate Noise Cancellation Headphones
The latest in noise canceling headphones for airline travel. Etymotic is a high-end hearing aid manufacturer that dabbles in extremely high-end headphones for pro recording and hifi. The ER-4P headphones are tiny like earbuds, but they go inside the ear canal and seal out all outside noise. They sound amazing and you hear the tiniest details in the music. They're not cheap at $330, but they are some of the best headphones I've heard, and definitely the best travel headphones ever.

Read Corey's review of Etymotic headphones




New Hybrid Camera/Camcorder: Panasonic PV-DV601
There’s a new generation of hybrid camcorders/digital cameras that combine the best of movie making and digital still imaging in one unit. Panasonic’s digital camcorder uses the new mini DV tape for movies and has a special slot for a SD Secure disc memory card that holds high resolution digital still images. Other features include a 20x Zoom/300x Digital Zoom for close-ups and Color Viewfinder that helps save battery power when used during recording and playback. It comes with a 8MB SD card and sells for $1,000.




New Combo Cell Phone/Palm Pilot: The Verizon Wireless-Kyocera QCP-6035
Billed as "a powerful yet lightweight wireless handset that unites voice communications, text messaging, e-mail and multiple methods of Web access with the power of a Palm OS-based organizer." We simply call it the best combo cell phone organizer to date. Instead of a big bulky device, this phone hides the palm screen behind the keypad allowing the phone to look and feel like a phone, not a paperback book. Other features include wireless Internet capabilities with three methods of access, namely HTML (with SSL), WAP, and Web Clipping. It also supports 2-way short messaging services (SMS). The Smart phone can be used as a wireless modem with your laptop as well. $500.

Read Corey's Review of the QCP-6035