Chumby has been available in the US for a couple of years but the customisable Wi-Fi-enable widget machine has finally made it to Blighty. Is the cute little computer substitute the ultimate way to grab cool content simply? Or is it just an expensive toy for chumps? Read our Chumby review to find out.
Chumby: it’s a cute name and a cute product. The small bean bag like device with a touchscreen nestled in its soft-shell hooks up to your WiFi network and lets you easily grab widgets that will feast on web content. Everything from Twitter and Facebook apps to a vast range of clocks, games and odd gadgets (our favourite is a Chuck Norris widget) can be downloaded straight to the Chumby’s dashboard.
The brilliant thing about Chumby is its ability to be so many different things. Chumby’s remarkably loud speaker will play music admirably and means you can use widgets to set it up as an alarm clock, it’ll grab music from USB sticks and iPods and it’ll keep you updated on your social networks.
Chumby is very simple to set up with a charming animated process taking you through the steps. The one downside is that it’s quite fiddly to type in your Wi-Fi password on Chumby’s small onscreen touchscreen. However once that’s done, it’s a doddle to use, even if the touchscreen needs more persistent prodding than those on devices like the Palm Pre or the iPhone.
For folk who want to hack and mod their devices, Chumby’s great because it’s open source and easy to transfer to different shells than the soft bean bag one that it ships with. But for the price, you could purchase a netbook or an iPod Touch (which has a far larger range of apps available for it).
The biggest argument against the Chumby is that it’s an old device now. The Chumby One has hit the US with a slicker shell and more advanced features than the original Chumby. We’re taken by Chumby’s ease of use and nicely implemented user interface but it’s a shame we’ve had to wait so long for it to arrive.
We got our Chumby from the fine folk at Firebox.
