• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, November 17, 2011

What’s the hot gadget this holiday season? Well, it’s something like a four-way tie, according to the latest survey by consumer electronics site Retrevo.com. The Amazon and Kindle Fire lead the way, with each device cited by 10% of those surveyed as the tech toy they want most this year. But close behind was a smartphone (9%) and HDTV (8%), followed by a laptop and digital camera (6% each), and Amazon Kindle reader (4%).

Asked which items they’re looking for a deal on, on Black Friday, 32% said a tablet, 25%, an HDTV, 24% a laptop, and 19% a smartphone. More than a third (34%) said the plan to shop both online and in a store on Black Friday, up from 24% last year. But 11% plan to shop only online on Black Friday this year, down from 15% in 2010.

The findings in Retrevo’s Pulse report were based on a survey of more than a 1,000 online users distributed across gender, age, income and location in the U.S.