My Favorite Tech of the Year (2024)
it's almost the end of the year so that means it's time to wrap up my favorite tech products throughout the year I'll put links to everything I mentioned in the description below this video is sponsored by surf shark let's get into it all right let's start by talking about a smart home accessory product that I've just absolutely fallen in love with and that is the aara presence sensor this uses millimeter wave technology to sense people in the room now there is a lot you can do with this thing uh you can set up different zones to trigger different kind of automations you can set up fall detection sleep tracking I use none of that I use these to detect when people walk in and out of the room and I found they work a lot faster and a lot more reliably than homekit cameras I also have a homekit camera here in the studio as well it gets a ton more false positives plus it seems to be a lot slower on the uh Hey somebody is in the room so trigger this automation with this aara sensor right here I have it set up in homekit so that when it detects somebody walks into this room it turns on all the lights and when it no longer detects anyone's in the room it turns off the lights it's incredibly fast in fact it's a lot faster than like saying the Siri trigger phrase and asking to turn on the lights now the thing I did do that I messed up on is you should really put it up as high as possible so that way it's aiming down and sensing people but this works just fine as soon as I come around the corner in my studio it detects me and it turns on the lights now I didn't do a whole lot to overhaul my desk setup this year I'm pretty much happy with the way my desk is set up but the one thing I did swap out on my desk is I went from the OWC Thunderbolt dock to the cow digit ts4 dock now there was nothing particularly wrong with the OWC one except I I just had one issue that really bugged me about it is the cable that connected from The Hub to your computer came out the front so with my desk setup it would come out the front and loop around and it would get in the way of my keyboard and my typing and it just got to the point where it just drove me nuts so I got this guy right here the Cal digigit ts4 doc now this has all the ports I need multiple Thunderbolt ports USBC and usba a ports both the regular usba and USBC ports are 10 gbits per second this also has a 2.5 gbit per second ethernet port on it which is perfect the reason why that's really important to me is it means I can move files from and to my Naz as quickly as possible I'm not being bottlenecked by a 1 gbit per second Port it also has an SD card slot on the front which works great with my camera and my audio interface plus there's ports on the front for quickly charging a device or plugging in something like an external hard drive in fact one of the USBC ports on the front goes up to 20 watts of charging there are a few other ports like 3.5 mm headphone jack ports and mics and stuff like that I don't use those as much but it's nice that they're there the next item is hands down the most ridiculous on the list the Nintendo alarmo now this is intended to be an alarm clock that sits on your nightstand it has a motion sensor built into it so it tracks when you're actually getting up and getting out of bed and if you're staying in bed the alarm gets more intense but as you get up it kind of gets a little bit more lighter and airier and fluffier um I use none of that because it's using motion sensors I can't separate out more than one person so it doesn't really work if you're uh have a partner or something like that but how I've been using this is a big clock on my desk and I love it for that because I work from the iPad when I plug it into an external monitor the clock on both the iPads display and the external monitor is incredibly small and I just like having a big clock sit on my desk plus it displays the date which is really helpful now there are fun Whimsical animations that play throughout the day and when you walk away or come in uh you might see a character walk in or walk out uh I really like the Zelda breath of the Wild Ones those are really good uh there's also some Super Mario Odyssey ones the other two are ring fit and Splatoon not sure why out of like the four animation categories there are ring fit is the other one and there is an option in settings to download more alarms right now it doesn't do anything but to me that signals hey there's probably going to be more themes and alarms that that come in the future ultimately this is just a fun piece of Nintendo gear I could absolutely get away with the same effect of having a big clock and date on my desk with a cheap $20 alarm clock from Amazon uh but I like Nintendo stuff it's fun it's whimsical is it worth a hundred bucks that you're getting from Nintendo uh depends on how much you like Nintendo this video is sponsored by surf shark surf shark is a VPN service that not only protects you but your data with surf shark your data is completely encrypted from The Source your computer to its destination this is so that your privacy is protected whether you're working off of a private wireless network like in a coffee shop or a private Network in like a hotel with surf shark your data is completely encrypted and your privacy is secure now this isn't uh well I have nothing to hide so I have nothing to lose kind of thing data is the new gold and just even with a little bit of information some scary people can do some scary stuff you could also use surf shark to see any sort of price discrimination based on region and then take advantage of another Region's price one thing I really appreciate about Sur shark is they don't keep logs VPN services that keep logs it's completely defeating the purpose they they shouldn't even be allowed to call themselves a VPN service with surf shark you can also change your location so if I'm traveling abroad I can remote back into the United States and finish that show on Hulu or vice versa I can check out what's happening on UK Netflix as well I really like surf shark in fact it's a service I've been paying for myself for a few years now so be sure to go to Surf shark.com for an extra 4 months of surf shark at an unbeatable price and for a limited time offer my thanks to Surf shark for sponsoring this video one of the newer devices for me on this list is the Kobo Clara black and white this is an eink ebook reader I've been getting back into reading a lot more lately while I love a good hard cover book they aren't is light and is easy to travel with the Cobo Clara black and white is a 6-in tablet this uses an eink display so it gets incredible battery life it also works great outdoors and in direct sunlight because of this display it's also incredibly light and really comfortable to hold it's made from recycled plastic so it's light and you don't notice the extra weight if you put it in a travel bag or something like that making it the perfect traveling device it has 16 GB of internal storage according to Cobo this is about 12,000 bucks my only wish is that it had physical page turn buttons now this is about the same price as the basic Kindle at $129 but you don't have to pay extra to remove lock screen ads unlike Kindles the Cobo just shows the book you are currently reading on the lock screen when it's asleep this works with the Cobo store where you can purchase not just ebooks but also audiobooks as well but if you have a local library you can use the one drive support to hook up to services like Libby overall I'm thrilled with this device I'm enjoying reading more and using an ebook reader is a really convenient way to do it I've been trying to get out of the house more uh everyone talks about wanting to work from home and and don't get me wrong I love being able to work from home it's great but when you work and live at the same place and it the walls kind of start to close in on you so I've been trying to get out of the house more go to coffee shops or whatever H and I didn't want to take my really big peak design everyday backpack with me just to go to a coffee shop and write so I got this guy this is a Tom talk everyday carry bag uh it's just like a normal sling bag I really like Tom talk stuff I've talked about a few different items from them here on this channel before and they sit in this like really great middle ground for me they're not a high-end expensive Bag Company they're not spending $400 or $200 on something like this but it's also not the cheap $20 Amazon bag that's going to fall apart after the third use uh I believe this guy was 60 bucks which to me kind of sat in a great sweet middle spot of like yes I will use this uh but I'm not spending too much money on this I could have spent a lot more on a on a sling bag like this now this is perfect for me it's designed to work with 13 to 14in laptops so it works with the 13-in iPad Pro perfectly I'm able to put a bunch of other things that I could just need when I'm out around um stuff like you know external battery this is a 12,000 milliamp hour battery uh 100 watt USBC like multi-port USBC and a usba um charger um couple of USBC cables uh even an extra iPad iPad Mini uh I use an iPad Mini a lot as kind of like a second display when I'm working for my iPad Pro so I have this iPad Mini stand that I have two of them actually one in this bag and one in my backpack and I put the iPad Mini on it while I'm working on my iPad Pro and this kind of acts as a secondary display it could be timelines it could be notes it could be all sorts of different things task manager whatever it just kind of works as a second display then I also keep airpods Pro here as well uh I've talked uh in my everyday carry video uh airpods 4 withc are kind of my favorite headphones right now when I'm home but if I'm going to a coffee shop or someplace outdoors I want that extra kick of noise cancelling that the airpods pro have um and I've been using these forever so I've just been keeping these in my bag lately the bag itself has three different sections it has a small front compartment that is great for like quick access for cables or airpods or wallet or something like that uh this middle pocket is where you put your laptop you know something like the iPad Mini batteries whatever Chargers things like that and then it has a back pocket too I don't really use this back pocket for anything but it's kind of that pocket of like hey if you're traveling this is where you put your passport because it's like right up next to you on the bottom has a water bottle strap as well um don't really use this as much because if I'm going someplace like a coffee shop or you know Panera Bread or something like that I'll just get something there this is a really great like just the essentials work bag this isn't something I'm going to take with me while I'm traveling but if I'm just going out for the day or for a couple of hours I don't want to take my big backpack this is a perfect bag to carry with me all right next up I want to talk about my new favorite USBC cables yes I am dead serious just about everything in my life is on USBC now these are the USBC cables I am using for everything now these support up to 2 40 WS of charging they are braided cables so they're really nice plus they have a builtin tie to wrap them up this one's not wrapped up that great cuz I was using it for something else now most Apple devices won't charge up to 240 Watts uh but I have a couple other products I'm going to talk about in a second that do take advantage of the fast charging but what I like about these is I never have to worry about like oh is this the right cable for charging or anything like that this just takes care of everything all my needs plus they come in up to 10t lengths which that's what this one is uh in the bag that I just talked about I just carry six foot ones uh because I don't want to just use up that extra space but uh 10t ones are really nice uh across the house uh when I'm in a hotel and here in the studio because I set up a charging station right over there to charge all my devices and 10 foot ones will reach all the way to this desk with no problem cables don't get pulled tight or anything like that the issue with these is they are USB 2.0 transfer speeds so you don't want to use these for a data connection ultimately what I would love to do is get to the point where I could just replace all of my USBC cables with Thunderbolt 5 cables or USB 4.0 cables but those are really
expensive right now plus they don't come in like 10t length so they're limited to kind of depending on where you're buying them from and how sketchy you want to go either three foot or 6t and that's just not enough for me it's even hard to find USB 3.1 Gen 2 cables that support both fast charging and fast data transfers um you really have to either go the Thunderbolt 5 route or the USB 4 route uh in order to get that so in the meantime I have been using all of these cables for charging and some Thunderbolt 4 cables for all my data transfer stuff that way you know nice thing about Thunderbolt cables is they're labeled so it's very clear like hey this is a thunderbolt cable use this for data transfer use these for charging um but I really want to get to a point where I can just like standardize the cable I have and just have like a couple in my backpack a couple in my go bag a couple here in my studio and a couple in my office and you know just I know the cable I'm grabbing will either do fast charging and fast data but in the meantime these are handling all my charging needs and I'm really happy with them all right so hands down my favorite piece of tech this year is the Lenovo Legion go this is a Windows handheld gaming computer that's right my favorite piece of tech this year is a Windows computer who would have seen that coming I can play quite a few Xbox games on here because this is a Windows gaming PC this runs the Xbox app I can open it up I can play games that I bought from my library that support the play anywhere I can play some Game Pass games that have PC versions you can buy PC games right from the Xbox store you can do all that um in some cases it depends on the game and this is where it gets a little weird some save sync so for example I'm playing Starfield right now I'm trying to go through the DLC uh my saved sync between my Xbox series X and the legion go so I can just pick it up and I can play it on whichever one I want uh but I'm also revisiting Skyrim and Skyrim for example uh has the PC version on here uh which the save does not sync back to the Xbox version so it's kind of a little weird like that now this does work with other windows gaming stores like the Epic store and of course steam uh so you don't have to just be limited to the Xbox stuff if you have Steam games and stuff like that you can play them on here as well now there are some pros and cons to this the screen is huge and looks amazing it supports up to 144 Herz refresh rate but I actually go into the settings and turn that down to 60 HZ to save some power and Battery this is some of the best performance you will get out of any gaming handheld right now uh there's tons of controls over power and Cooling and like I said you can change the refresh rate you can change the resolution which will help with power and making the battery last longer or you can crank it all up and you know just eat through that battery if you want it also has a built-in trackpad right on the uh the controller right here so you can control Windows there is a scroll wheel on the bottom right here uh so you can get through all the windows stuff you have to use the Windows onscreen keyboard for a lot of stuff which kind of sucks uh and the ergonomics are not great it can feel heavy especially if you're like laying down I notice that especially if I'm sitting up it's it's a little more fine but if I'm laying down it can start to feel heavy and whoever designed these controllers should never be allowed to design controllers again because this Arc right here kind of digs into to your pal I've just kind of gotten used to it it's fine it's not great uh but I do hope if they ever do a legion goto they kind of come up with a better controller design and the last thing is the built-in speakers for this thing kind of suck uh it does have traditional line out so you can plug in headphones and of course it's a Windows computer so you can pair Bluetooth headphones with it as well but something I absolutely love about it is it has two USBC ports and it's USB 4.0 so you can plug uh USB up top and USB at the bottom and has 40 gbits per second connection so if you want to plug in something like an external uh GPU and then plug in power you can do that as well like this thing is an absolute Beast you can do so much accessory wise with it but like I said I've been playing starfields DLC I've been going back and revisiting Skyrim which is kind of just one of my all-time favorite games uh I have Dishonored loaded up of Empires like there's all sorts of different games that you could play with it I was playing the Mass Effect Trilogy the legendary edition the remaster one that came out a couple of years ago there's just so much you can do with this ultimately you will get a better experience with like an Xbox series X or a PS5 you or especially like a PS5 Pro or something like that but if portability is the thing that matters to you most right now being able to play Anywhere something like the legion go is killer I've mentioned a couple of sets of headphones already that I really enjoy this year airpods 4 with A&C they're probably my favorite headphones to wear for a long period of time especially when I'm at home they're very comfortable but these right here the nothing buds a have become like my favorite for all my non-apple devices now these are the company nothings they're lowend earbuds but if you look at their spec page and compare their high-end ones to these there's really not a ton of difference except the price these are a lot cheaper these right here the nothing buts a they support features like noise cancelling transparency and adaptive mode they have really good battery life I I honestly rarely charge these up uh they support up to two connections at once custom EQ and base modes but most importantly they're comfortable to wear and they have the silicone tips just like airpods Pro do uh but they're comfortable to wear for a few hours you know kind of like airpods Pro where I can wear them for a few hours and then after a while I need to take them out let my ears rest a bit and then put them back in but on top of all of that they look really good so right here I have the yellow ones and these mix yellow with some transparent Tech and oh do I love some transparent teac late '90s early 2000s knew what was going on transparent plastic should be at everything I use these when I am playing on my Legion go and on the pelaton rowing machine which is probably another one of my all-time favorite products of the year I didn't put it on my list cuz it's not like a new product this year or anything like that but it's new to me and I absolutely love it it's actually like the first kind of workout that's actually stuck with me uh I've tried treadmills bikes weights none of that's worked for me uh but these pair really well with the pelaton machines so I can listen to the class listen to the music works really well now I've been doing some more short form stuff lately I just ran a few tests and tried a few different kind of things out and uh I I kind of enjoyed doing this it was really different from these long form videos where I'm sitting at a desk talking I and I kind of enjoyed that so I'm going to be doing some more of that stuff especially in the new year and kind of coming later this year as well but what I didn't want to do with the short form stuff is take away from the main videos of the Channel I didn't want to take away much time so I am treating these as kind of this runand gun style I'm shooting everything on my iPhone and I'm just shooting it as quickly as possible I'm not setting up a ton of extra lights not setting up a set or anything like that I'm just you know most of these short form videos are about how I work or apps I'm using so it's literally just me in the moment so I kind of got some gear to help out with that the first thing is the iPhone 16 Pro added some killer video features with this release uh one of them being 120 frames per second uh support and what I use use that for is uh filming High frame rate video and then when I throw it into Final Cut I slow it down to 24 frames per second so it gives me this really smooth video the issue is is the iPhone's really light and when you're filming in portrait mode my hands are shaky my hands are just naturally shaky so like none of the footage was very smooth so I got this cage here and this is from small Rick and this is a MAG safe cage so the iPhone just snaps right in I don't have to screw anything in and I can just hold on to the sides and I can just do a nice smooth shot on the top of one of the Bluetooth handles there is a record button now this connects to your iPhone and allows you to start recording just by a press of a button now this works not just with the built-in camera app but third party apps like keynote as well it also has a cold Cheo Mount so I got this other device right here where I can put a hard drive in the mount so that way I can record prores 100 20 frames per second footage right to that external drive and then that way when I'm ready to edit I don't have to try and airdrop something over or wait for something to syn I can just take that hard drive plug it into my iPad and start editing away I'm also using this moment mag safe tripod mount and I love this thing it's the same kind of setup as the cage where the iPhone Just Clips right in using mag safe and mag safe is really strong your phone's not going anywhere and what I love about mag safe is because it's just one Anchor Point if like the tilt of the camera is off I'm using like the level tools built into the app I can actually just tilt the iPhone I don't have to worry about loosening something on the tripod I can level it off just using like the Tilt feature of you know mag safe essentially and then the last item I got was this DJI wireless mic system now for the most part I will always use this shotgun mic right here that I am using for this video cuz I just like the way it sounds but what's nice about this DJI wireless mic system is I'm not worrying about XLR cables power to the audio interface SD cards or anything like that I can literally take a mic clip it to my shirt take the receiver plug it right into the iPhone and just hit record and it records right onto the footage or I could just have it record right into the mic system now for the most part these Wireless LV mic systems sound decent uh but I do use an app called hush on the Mac Mini that I've been using for comfort zone uh I use it for that to kind of clean up and process the audio it does a really good job of taking out background noises and especially like if you have air conditioners or fans or something like that or like an echo it does a really good job of cutting that out so that's it that's my favorite tech of the year I want to hear from you all what is your favorite piece of tech this year let me know in the comments below my thanks to Surf shark for sponsoring this video if you like the video hit the Thumbs Up Button subscribe if you haven't already and have a great day
2024-11-28 11:48
