Gadgets to Go: The Latest in Tech Travel Toys

Faster, smaller, smarter: The latest mobile gadgets promise to entertain, enlighten, or connect today's tech-savvy traveler. Due to arrive by midyear, these portable powerhouses include a phone fit for video sent via a high-speed network; a pair of USB flash drives with smarts; a durable yet small headset; and a monitor in an eyepiece.

Headset With Staying Power: Nokia wants to steer heavy-duty talkers to its new BH-900 Bluetooth headset. Due in spring for about $100, the BH-900 is rated for an impressive 8 hours of talk time and up to 180 hours of standby time; in addition, the device supports noise cancellation and echo reduction.

Informative Flash Drive: Lexar's JumpDrive Mercury is a USB flash memory device for people who like to know just how much available storage they're packing in their pockets. Expected in April in 1GB and 2GB versions (about $100 and $170, respectively), the drive presents a built-in gauge that indicates how much space is still free.

See It All, Anywhere: If the image on a video iPod seems small to you, eMagin's Eyebud 800 can blow it up--right in your face. Just plug the headset into any video-capable iPod or other personal video player and position its eyepiece close to your right or left eye for an experience eMagin likens to watching a 105-inch screen from a distance of 12 feet. For those who might find the outside world distracting, the Eyebud 800 comes with a rakish eyepatch for the other eye. We photographed a preproduction unit; look for the shipping product this summer with a price tag of about $599.

Fast Phone: Samsung's zx20, due this spring, may look like just another clamshell phone, but it's expected to be the first commercially available handset to support Cingular's HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) BroadbandConnect service. The 3G speed (about 400 to 700 kilobits per second, according to Cingular) should come in handy when you try the phone's video- and music-on-demand capabilities. Pricing will be determined by carriers.

What's On: Royal's EZVue Vista USB flash drive shows the names of stored files or directories on a scrollable two-line display. Versions will range in capacity from 128MB to 1GB, priced from $50 to $150.