Gadgets

Gadgets

The most carried EDC is also, statistically, the most neglected one. Pocket knives get used daily and sharpened almost never, because the sharpening step requires a separate tool that most people don't carry. Bench stones are too large. Pocket rods are awkward. Folding sharpeners add bulk and usually deliver mediocre results on any blade worth maintaining. The gap between "I should sharpen this" and "I have what I need to sharpen this, right now" stays wide for most knife carriers, and a dull edge is the tax they pay for it.

The "More for Less: 2026 Wireless Affordability Tracker," found that when adjusted for inflation postpaid unlimited plans are 10% less than last year and almost 35% less than five years ago. The proliferation of plans - the tracker says that it found more than a thousand - has driven prepaid options down more than 50% during the past five years.

The home has become increasingly cluttered with gadgets that need charging, pairing, and their own dedicated spaces. Even something as simple as playing music from a smartphone often involves a Bluetooth speaker sitting on a shelf, waiting for its battery to drain. There's been a quiet counter-movement in product design, where objects do their jobs without power and sit in a room the way a vase or a mug would.

Gaming setups have grown considerably more complex, and the demands on screen real estate have grown right along with them. A serious session today might involve a game running on the main display, a chat window competing for space, system performance stats tucked into a corner, and a streaming interface sharing the same screen. Managing all of it in one place means cluttered desktops and tab-switching at exactly the wrong moments.

The system runs in two modes. Standard Mode is exactly what it sounds like: fresh water, normal shower, nothing unusual happening. Cycle Mode is where the engineering earns its keep. Once activated, the system fills the subfloor reservoir, then begins running that water through a closed filtration loop while continuously mixing in fresh input. The result hits the showerhead at full pressure, which matters enormously because the biggest psychological hurdle any recirculating system faces is the moment the flow drops and you suddenly become very aware that something unconventional is happening beneath your feet.

Right now, you can pick the rechargeable smart lamp up at Amazon for $63.99 ($16 off), which makes it less than half the price of Philips' portable smart lamp. The cordless lamp features a built-in 4,800mAh battery, which can last up to 30 hours with colored lighting enabled, though that drops to around five hours when using brighter white lighting. That's not quite as long as the Philips Hue Go, which Philips says can last up to 48 hours on a charge, but on the flip side the Govee is brighter, delivering up to 500 lumens of brightness.

OpenADR and Matter are teaming up to make it easier for smart home appliances to talk to the energy grid. This is a big deal, as Matter is the most popular smart home connectivity standard and OpenADR is a connectivity standard used by the actual energy grid. In other words, this should allow smart home devices to automatically communicate with the grid without any effort on your part.

Amazon plans to end technical support for older Kindle devices starting on May 20, but that doesn't mean users must get rid of them. Kindles and Fire tablets released before 2013 will no longer receive software support from Amazon, leaving many users looking for alternative ways to continue using them as e-readers.

The ongoing DRAM shortage has created a perfect storm for the proliferation of the appliances, which not only allow for memory to be pooled, but also data stored in that memory to be shared by multiple machines simultaneously. In effect, memory becomes a fungible resource. More importantly, your next round of servers will probably support the tech, if they don't already.

The Spotify Car Thing joined that lineage in December 2024 when Spotify killed server-side authentication and turned every unit into an expensive knob with a screen attached. Nocturne picked up where Spotify dropped off. The project launched in October 2024, anticipating the shutdown, and has shipped four major versions since. V4.0.0, currently in beta with a public release imminent, finally delivers true Bluetooth connectivity without phone tethering, a companion app, and a feature set that makes the original Spotify firmware look like a rough draft.

Even if one pair does sound better than another, it's difficult to convey that in marketing. Descriptions of drivers only get you so far, and hearing is believing in the wireless headphone world. The fact is, when it comes to over-ear audio, the bar is loftylike Olympic high-jump levels of altitudeand unfortunately, I'm not sure recent competitors like JBL's $250 Live 780NC have the hops to make the cut.

Ploopy, the Canadian open-source hardware company known for its lineup of trackballs and trackpads, has changed that with the Bean. It's a standalone external pointing stick that connects over USB-C and sits flat on a desk. Think of it as a TrackPoint you don't have to buy a ThinkPad to access, with a few deliberate improvements added to address the weaknesses that nub has always had.

Asus's latest gaming monitor is a little smaller than usual. The ROG Strix XG129C, announced on Friday, is a 12.3-inch touchscreen IPS display that's intended to be a sidekick for a larger main monitor, similar to the 14.1-inch secondary display in the 2020 Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 15. It's a slightly smaller competitor to Corsair's Xeneon Edge, which has a 14.5-inch display, but the same 720p resolution.

He took us back to an early moment in his career, when he worked for an outfit that configured Windows 98 PCs as "data collectors" for its clients. As part of his job, Gerald built PCs and provided field support. In this story, he built a new data collector, checked that it worked with the usual round of tests, and left it for someone else to install because he had another job to do elsewhere for a different client.

With a simple black design, four remappable function buttons, a headphone jack, stereo speakers, and a 4.3-inch IPS display, this handheld offers everything you need to relive the classics. You'll even find a USB-A port to connect a keyboard, and the custom UI lets you quickly save and load your progress.

Up front, the Nord CE6 features a 6.78-inch AMOLED display with a 144Hz refresh rate and 1.5K resolution. The panel supports up to 1,800 nits of brightness in high-brightness mode (HBM).

The tablet is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 7050 SoC, paired with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of expandable storage. As the name implies, the Iconia iM11 5G has 5G support, alongside 4G, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, and GPS. It also has a fingerprint scanner embedded into the power button.

The Motorola Razr Fold already has a page on Motorola India, which shows two memory options, 12/256GB and 16/512GB, plus three colors to choose from. The first two are Pantone colors, Blackened Blue and Lily White, while the third is the FIFA World Cup 2026 Edition (black base color).

The oversized trackpad works great with the included Acer Active Stylus, but is too large to be useful when typing. And the ultra-slim design comes with a steep sacrifice to keyboard comfort. These drawbacks don't make the Swift 16 AI unusable, but they do make a great case for buying the smaller, 14-inch Swift AI laptop instead.

The set includes the Series X with a 1TB SSD, Forza Horizon 6 on disc, and the wild limited edition wireless controller inspired by the game - a $180 value. Sure, you could just get a Game Pass Ultimate subscription to play Horizon 6 on its May 19th launch day, but then you'd miss out on the free controller.

The NoxTi is a 45mm titanium cylinder that glows in the dark for 25 years without a battery, a charge, or any maintenance beyond replacing the tritium vial when it eventually dims two decades from now.

Both trusts exist for one purpose: own physical gold and track the spot price. IAU's prospectus describes the trust as seeking to reflect the performance of the price of gold, before expenses and liabilities, and GLD's mandate is functionally identical. IAU's holdings are reported as 100.02% gold bullion, with the small overshoot reflecting cash and accruals. GLD is structured the same way.