Like most things in this world, creating a â??bestâ?? list is difficult at best, since it is totally subjective: it depends on how the list creator perceives each gadget according to his experience of others. So every list creator has his own preferences which are naturally open to contention when made into a list.

Nonetheless, lists have to be made, if only to show oneâ??s preferences and expectations in the forthcoming issues, which benefits not only the consumers but more importantly, the manufacturers, who can thus fashion their new gadgets according to what end-users want. As most lists differ, here is one list of the best gadgets for 2012.

Hewlett-Packardâ??s Envy Spectre14.  Released only after the CEBIT fair this year, this ultrabook is the latest in the genre of superthin (7mm), high-capacity (128GB SSD), lightweight (1.8kg), crisper display (1600×900 pixels resolution) new-generation laptops.

Sonyâ??s PlayStation Vita. This handheld gadget, the latest (8th generation)  in PlayStation series of game consoles by Sony, succeeds the PS Portable and was released mid-December last year in Japan and Asia but was made available in the Americas and Europe only February this year. It has 5-inch OLED touchscreen with 16 million colors, front and rear cameras, built-in speakers and microphone, GPS and wi-fi location support among its many features. Its processor is an ARM Cortex  4-core A9.

Lytro Light Field Camera.  Admittedly, this is an introductory version, but of a different concept than an ordinary camera. The Lytro LFC captures the total visual depth of a scene, so that you can move your focus from one end to the other when the picture after taking it. Unlike a conventional that produces a static picture, the LFC lets you record the whole scene.

Control is literally on the tips of your fingers, which are swiped much like when using a tablet touchscreen to move focus, access the settings, toggle between Everyday/Creative modes and more. The body is a rectangular longish box, again a departure from the conventional camera body design.

4G. Essentially the evolutionary superseding forward step from 3G or third generation technology, 4G (wireless) offers still faster data transmission (up to 1gbps) that will make the storage of data in a mobile device obsolete, cloud computing  a truly viable option and messaging literally instantaneous. 4G is expected to boost business, social media and video blogs to heretofore unimaginable heights.

Amazon Kindle Fire. The latest challenge to Appleâ??s iPad 2, the US$199 tablet has a 7-inch Gorilla Glass touchscreen with 1024×600 IPS display. The gadget runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread, has 512 MB RAM, a 1GHz processor, 8GB storage capacity and uses Amazonâ??s proprietary Silk browser which can rival Firefox and Safari.

For many, the Kindle Fire is a refreshing alternative to iPad, Flyer, Galaxy, Tablet S and others, mostly in terms of price which is well worth it, even if the tablet is comparatively lacking in features.

Five best gadgets for 2012. But the year is ending, so what can we expect in 2013, gadget-wise? Based on these, probably some more wondrous inventions that will make these same gadgets obsolete. Let us see then.

This was a guest post from Ying from RNA Automation, a company specialising in producing vision inspection systems.