300 hands-on reviews by December 24

I hate to do this but we’re squarely in pre-holiday season and, for better or worse, you’re going to start shopping soon. Because we’re nice guys, we’re going to review 300 items from 2008 and report back on which gadgets, gear, and geegaws are worth your time and attention this year.

To that end, we will start reviewing items – toys, laptops, speakers, home AV, EVERYTHING – this week and categorizing them according to type and ranking them in separate database. We’ll also be bringing in some of the gems we reviewed during 2008 to ensure we bring some of our favorites back to the top. Please bear with us and we hope that this little service will be helpful on Black Friday when you’re trying to figure out which Wall-E remote control toy to buy for my Uncle Chester.

What do we need from you? Recommendations. What would you like to see? What gadgets have you loved this year? Which gadgets flopped? Best of all, we may need some citizen reviewers in the next few months. Stay tuned.