Which Tech Gadgets Can Survive the Outdoors?

FOR MARIA YUNCOSA, this is what vacation is all about: On a balmy 78-degree morning, the Wilmington, Del., nursing student is wading ankle-deep into the water at the edge of Miami's South Beach. When a gaggle of seagulls begin to squawk, she tunes them out — by tuning in to the portable music player clipped to her T-shirt. Still standing in the Atlantic, she holds a digital camera in one hand while using the other to flip open a cell phone and send a picture of herself at the beach along with a text message to her dad: "I know you're jealous!"

As Americans make their annual summer migration to the seashores, lakes and national parks this year, they're tossing a few new friends into their beach totes and backpacks: the latest generation of high-tech gadgets. To be sure, we've all taken our cell phone and iPod on vacation (not to mention, unfortunately, our BlackBerry), but today's 2.0 family is loaded up like never before. The humble pile of paperbacks, for example, is being replaced by electronic readers that can store more than 200 titles — and let you purchase and download the latest Stephen King thriller wirelessly. Who needs unwieldy and hard-to-follow trail maps when the flannel-and-gorp set can download full-color video trail guides directly onto their handhelds? Technology has even infiltrated backwoods camp spots. Listen carefully: That sound you hear when you're trying to get to sleep isn't the chirping of crickets; it's the clicking of buttons on handheld videogames.

Indeed, gadgets are becoming as common out of doors as sunscreen and bug spray. Since 1995 the average American household has nearly doubled its collection of electronics, to no fewer than 25 products, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, with more of these devices becoming pocket-sized and portable. No one broadly tracks how many of them we cart around on holiday, but a June 2007 survey from Kampgrounds of America, which operates more than 450 campgrounds around the country, found that nearly a quarter of campers head into the woods with an MP3 player or videogame system, 65 percent tote a portable TV, and — no surprise — more than 90 percent bring cell phones and digital cameras. Says Andrea Stokes, VP of travel and leisure at research firm Synovate, "Most people can't imagine a vacation without them."

But even if the age of high-tech vacationing has arrived, gizmo makers still seem to be working out the kinks. Something as simple as sun glare can make that videogame player almost useless, and nobody is happy with the battery life of most devices. Sand, sun and rain present a new set of challenges for pricey electronic book readers and laptops never really designed for alfresco use. And here's an outrageous number: One recent survey projects that gadget users can spend up to 91 hours a year trying to deal with their technology problems. But fear not. On our editor's dime we've been going on holiday ourselves, toting a beach-bagful of beeping and glowing devices to find out just how well they fare in the great outdoors. Below, our roundup.

But this is not exactly a device for butterfingers. (Are you listening, kids?) One good drop can crack a screen or render the laser that reads the disk toast. Of course, the most common complaint from users regards battery life — or lack thereof. Most players last only two to three hours. (Memo to manufacturers: That's not quite enough to finish the third Lord of the Rings.) Industry executives say they are "working on it" and the problem is that bigger batteries make the units bulkier and more expensive than most consumers want. For now the only answer is to pay up for a player like Toshiba's SD-P2900 ($300), which claims to supply six full hours of juice.

Those industry initiatives helped drive sales of portable game systems up 25 percent last year, to $2 billion, after remaining flat in 2006, according to NPD Group. But even with more ways to play, we couldn't avoid the dreaded sun-glare screen blackout. "As with any portable device that has a view screen, playing in direct sunlight might not provide an optimal experience," says a Nintendo spokesperson. So far the only fix (aside from yoga-like contortion) is decidedly low-tech: Vendors like BoxWave sell sheets of film ($10-$15) that promise to "maximize outdoor screen readability."

But travelers still bemoan all the nicks and scratches their players endure on the road — which not only ruin the gadget's high-tech gloss but can hinder screen readability as well. And when we took the players on vacation to Miami and subjected them to a litany of outdoor indignities — sun glare, pool splash, steady rain and waist-high drops — we had decidedly mixed results. Both the iPod and Creative Zen survived our water tests. But sun glare completely blacked out the Zen's screen, and dropping the iPod on a rocky beach permanently dented — and disabled — its power-cord slot. (For full results of our gadgets-on-vacation tests, see page 67). And, says Sara Bradford, consultant with research firm Frost & Sullivan, woe to those who leave an MP3 player in a hot car. Overheating has led to problems like shortened battery life and, we found, blurry and delayed screens.

Still, we did find ways to guard all those gigabytes. A $50 OtterBox Armor case, for one, helped our iPod survive both a drop and a dunking. Indeed, accessories are doing quite well in this category, even while sales of MP3 players fell for the first time, in 2007. According to a 2008 report from the Consumer Electronics Association, a third of Americans own carrying cases for their portable music players. The remaining two-thirds? Many try what we saw one beachgoer do in the rain: pull a T-shirt over her head and hope for the best.

They're not alone. With laptops making up a majority of computer sales last year, and most hotels now offering wireless Internet access in public areas, more patrons are popping up poolside at resorts like Miami's Delano Hotel ready to sunbathe, surf the Web and settle in to a movie. Sure, there's the potential for an unsightly laptop tan and the by now all-too-familiar glare-induced screen blackout. But the real hazard is one of security, warns Karen Hanley, a senior director of the Wi-Fi Alliance, particularly as wireless Internet access expands from resorts and airports to beaches, campgrounds, golf courses and even interstate rest stops. (JiWire.com lists more than 63,000 public hot spots nationwide.) Whether people connect to free public Wi-Fi or set their laptops to automatically scan for any available signal, unwanted viruses can readily infiltrate their computer's operating system. And riskier activities, like banking online or entering a credit card number to make a dinner reservation online, can make you a "sitting duck" for identity theft, says David Perry, global education director at Trend Micro, an Internet security company. Connecting to a password-protected network is a much safer bet.

Of course, there's a more surefire solution. Guests at the Arawak Beach Inn in Anguilla can experience a one-week "isolation vacation," where they must surrender all their gadgets on arrival and stay in rooms conspicuously free of phones, TV and Internet access. The cost for a rabid techie to go cold turkey for a week? $1,459.