Sound judgment in holiday shopping

There’s always some cool things to add to holiday shopping lists. But as we get down to the shopping deadline, this can include basics for grab-and-go shoppers.

Home essentials that any family, friend or neighbor can use, or even a really cool music system.

Crosley’s new retro cassette player/recorder is simply awesome for its looks and functionality, and it includes some nice modern features. I still have boxes of perfectly playable cassette tapes. They bring back some great playlists. Pressing actual buttons for start, stop, pause, play, forward and back might be new to some and refreshing to others. Either way, the portable tape deck is for any generation to play cassette tapes or choose an AM or FM radio station with the side knob and extendable antenna. The CT100 tape deck also has a USB port and SD card slot for playing digital music. There’s also a headphone jack and built-in microphone. http://crosleyradio.com, $59.95

That’s written on the box for the iHome iAV2 speaker system built for the Amazon Echo Dot voice assistant hardware, so I can’t take credit for it. What I can say is that this is a useful bedside or office desktop system. Along with dimmable time display, 360-degree sound and a USB port for smartphone charging, the attractive feature is the top sided dock for your Echo Dot (2nd generation). Just drop it there and you can give Alexa commands to play music, playlists, hear the weather when you awake, turn on lights or set an alarm. The features for the cloudbased voice assistant are always growing and having a partner like the AC powered iHome iAV2 makes it even better. While in the dock, the Echo keeps itself charged. www.iHomeAudio.com, $69.99