When gift giving, remember some gadgets actually fill ... A real need

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Sometimes you can sense that tech products are striving to solve problems that are manufactured by their manufacturers.

Smartwatches, for instance, have long been a nifty idea – but they’ve offered few tangible benefits for anyone but health and fitness enthusiasts.

That’s why it’s notable when a particular gadget finally breaks through. The latest Apple Watch, for instance, has heart-monitoring features that will appeal to those who aren’t active.

Likewise, an Amazon digital video recorder makes cable cord-cutting far more practical.

Others remain hanging in not-quite-there limbo. A miniature smartphone from the revived brand Palm has the germ of a good idea, though it can still leave you feeling perplexed.

If you’re still considering tech gifts in your last-minute holiday shopping, bear these items in mind. And when looking at other products, ask yourself if they’re really ready for prime time or destined to gather dust somewhere.

APPLE’S SMARTWATCH

The newest features in the Series 4 Apple Watch are actually anything but flashy. But they could save lives.

With a built-in EKG feature, you can share detailed heart readings with your doctor without visiting a clinic. Doctors get a PDF file showing the peaks and valleys of your heart rhythm, just as they would with an EKG on paper.

The new watch can also tell if you take a hard fall – and it will call 911 if you can’t get up.

The Series 4 watch starts at $399 and requires an iPhone.

AMAZON’S DVR

DVRs have lost their allure in the streaming age, when entire TV seasons drop at once on Netflix.

Still, some broadcast shows aren’t available for streaming at all, or without a significant delay.

If you’ve dropped cable TV service, you can still watch those shows for free with an old-fashioned TV antenna .

Enter Amazon’s Fire TV Recast DVR. It will record over-the-air programs and let you watch on your TV, Amazon’s Echo Show or an app on the go.

You need to buy an antenna, which could be the rabbit-ear kind or an indoor one you stick on your window. Thanks to Wi-Fi, the Recast can be near that window rather than a TV.

While the Recast can technically work with just a phone app or the Echo Show, you need a separate Fire TV streaming device ($40 and up) for full functionality.

The Recast itself is $230 for 75 hours of storage and two simultaneous recordings, $280 for double the storage and simultaneous recordings.

PALM’S CONNECTED COMPANION

Before smartphones, there was Palm and its hand-held digital assistants, which offered emails, calendars, notepads and many of the functions seen in apps today. Under new owners, Palm is back with a mini smartphone designed, it says, to let you leave your bigger phone at home and enjoy the moment – without cutting yourself off completely.

The new phone, simply called Palm, is about the size of a credit card, but nearly as thick as a regular phone. It’s meant as a stopgap for when your main iPhone or Android phone isn’t with you, so battery and speeds are just good enough.

The Palm is premised on the idea that you can leave your main phone behind.

Verizon, the exclusive seller of this phone in the U.S., syncs phone numbers, so calls and texts to your main phone automatically reaches this mini phone.

The $350 phone is available only if you have another phone on Verizon, and Verizon charges another $10 a month for service. If you’re already paying as much as $1,100 for a top-end phone, you might not want to spend another $590 over two years just to leave it behind.