1 day Ago By Gear Team
Garmin Instinct 3 New Garmin Instinct ! New Garmin Instinct! The wearable is the newest model in one of Garmin’s most popular sports watch lines. It's also my favorite Garmin, and my favorite outdoor sports watch , and Garmin hasn’t updated it in several years. Garmin’s Instinct line is for everyone who likes being outside but finds the price tag on the premium Fenix line to be prohibitive.
This year, the Instinct 3 takes a few cues from its more expensive sibling, with a new AMOLED version and a built-in flashlight. The solar version similarly extends battery life to several weeks, and there’s also a cheaper Instinct E version with the old MIP display. Don’t worry, though.
The newest Instinct still looks like an Instinct, with that chunky '80s retro-styling that we all know and love (and now in a brighter limited-edition color). It now also has a metal-reinforced bezel, a scratch-resistant display, and is built to the MIL-STD 810 specification, meaning that’s undergone heavy thermal and shock resistance tests. I somehow managed to visibly scratch the Epix’s titanium bezel while rock climbing outside; I’m looking forward to reaching into lots of tiny rock holes full of creepy spiders with this one.
—Adrienne So Switchbot Multitasking Household Robot K20+ Pro The robot vacuums are getting crazy . Not only can they pick up socks, climb stairs, and chase off intruders when your dishwasher tells them there’s a bad guy in the house, Switchbot’s latest modular robot can ..
. well, what can’t it do? The K20+ Pro is a tiny robot vacuum that you can drive like a remote control car. Instead of just cleaning your house, you can endlessly adapt the little robot by adding different kits on its unique mobile platform, which Switchbot calls FusionPlatform.
Do you miss your dog when you’re at work? How about tacking a pet camera on top so you can follow him or her around and freak it out? You can put your tablet on a stand so you can watch your yoga videos. Or—just give me a second—a tray table, on top of an air purifier, so you can bring your friends beers while they play video games, and then filter the air when they just start farting all the beers back out. You can also combine it with the Omni Clean kit, which includes a lightweight cordless vacuum with the air purifier.
A robot vacuum that just cleans? Bo-ring. —Adrienne So Halliday Glasses Smart glasses are all the rage right now, and companies selling them have to work harder to stand out. A startup called Halliday has an upcoming pair of tech-bedazzled lenses that it hopes will appeal to the smart glass curious.
Holliday’s innovation is a hidden display embedded into the frame of the glasses. It projects a digital screen onto the wearer’s eyeballs which appears as a little box in the upper right corner of their vision. The screen can display text messages, map directions, and media controls.
You can also use voice commands to interact with a built-in AI agent. Halliday characterizes its AI system as “proactive AI” which means that if you give it permission to listen to and watch everything you do, it can try to summarize information and use your daily routine to learn what you might want to do before you do it. Halliday’s glasses smarts go beyond the frames.
There is also a smart ring that controls features on the glasses, which Halliday says is a way to avoid gesture controls that have you waving your hands in front of your face. The glasses have 12 hours of battery life, which means they’ll maybe last you most of the day. Starting cost is $489, but there’s a limited launch day sale that takes the price down to $369 for those who preorder.
—Boone Ashworth Backup by BioLite Does your home experience rolling blackouts? You probably need a home energy backup system. But maybe you don’t want to pay for a contractor, or don’t want to store a huge, unwieldy gas generator in your garage. BioLite’s Backup is basically a big, slim power bank that you hang up behind your refrigerator with a couple of drywall anchors.
Plug it into a standard outlet, then plug key appliances (we suggest your fridge) into Backup. Power flows through the Backup when it’s on, but when the electricity goes out, the Backup automatically kicks on. It also sends you push notifications through the mobile app.
It comes in two different configurations, a 1.5-KWh system that’s good for 15 to 30 hours of power, or a 3.0-KWh system that can last for 30 to 60 hours of power (depending on the size and power demands of your specific appliances, that is).
You can also expand your system by up to 10.5 KWh or install accessories like solar panels, mounting brackets, or extension cables. You can reserve your backup today.
Pricing starts at $2,000 and it will ship in May 2025. If you get the bigger system, you also qualify for the 30 percent tax credit . —Adrienne So Withings Omnia The digital health company Withings is showcasing the Omnia this year.
It’s not really a product meant for consumer purchase, but instead its what the company calls a conceptual piece. You step onto the wooden platform and the attached body-length reflective screen shows all the data that Withings has been collecting about you across all of the devices in its ecosystem, like your body composition, your ECG, and your resting heart rate. It’s all displayed on an attractive mirror interface (when we saw it, someone was using the mirror to apply lipstick).
An AI voice assistant will help you make actionable plans around your health. Even if it’s not meant for purchase, it does speak to a specific aspect of the consumer health experience right now—it’s so hard to see a doctor in the United States, that having a big-ass comprehensive computer doctor scale mirror that already knows everything about you right there in your bathroom seems like a reasonable solution. Get cracking on this, Withings! I want to install it next to the shower! —Adrienne So E-Skimo At this point, the tech world has done a pretty good job of electrifying most modes of transport.
First there were electric cars and electric bikes, then came electric scooters, electric skateboards ...
even electric roller skates. But electric skis? That’s a new one to us. The E-Skimo system by E-Outdoor uses an advanced powertrain in the form of a rubber tread that runs underneath the skis, along with a lightweight battery and handheld controller, to help give you a boost on mountain ascents or cross-country skiing.
The company claims this helps you navigate slopes 80 percent faster than skiing on your own, while also reducing physical exertion by 30 percent. Once you’re at the top and ready to go, you can remove the kit in around 60 seconds, throw it in your bag, and you’re back to freeriding. E-Skimo is currently looking to partner with well-known ski brands to bring the tech to market, so stay tuned for more once they do.
—Verity Burns Soundcore AeroClip If you haven’t been following the trend, open earbuds these days are like skis in Colorado: Everybody’s got a pair. The latest from Soundcore are the AeroClip, a more flexible and fancier pair than earlier models like the C30i, albeit at a higher price. Their bowed design sits neatly in their compact case, and the fit is light and so far relatively comfortable in the short time I’ve had with them.
The trick there is a thin titanium wire covered in a matte, plasticky coating called TPU. The audio is clear and pleasant at first blush, and the touch controls seem pretty responsive. At $130, they’re not quite budget fare, but it’s a far cry from my favorite pair of earbuds that keep your canals open and free, Bose’s Ultra Open Earbuds .
The AeroClip will be available for preorder January 8th at $130, with shipping expected March 13. —Ryan Waniata Current Backyard Model P Smart Pizza Oven In my years of testing pizza ovens, one of the most surprising things I’ve discovered is that a lot of people are just scared . If you’ve never used a pizza oven before, they are intimidating.
Things get goopy and droopy. Things burn (like your fingers). That’s why Current Backyard’s smart pizza oven comes with smart controls via an app, which has a Pizza Build Calculator that customizes the cook time and temperature depending on the dough’s thickness, the amount of sauce, toppings, and other factors.
It has five separate cooking modes, including one for frozen pizza, and a proprietary algorithm that cycles heat through the separate elements in the oven to make sure that the middle cooks properly. It’s safe for use indoors and outdoors so you don’t have to shiver in the rain during wintery pizza nights. It reaches a top max temperature of 850 degrees Fahrenheit, which is hotter than any other electric pizza oven that I’ve ever seen.
I do not recommend turning it up that high if you’ve never made a pizza before, not unless you like having a little sheet of cheese-smelling charcoal for dinner. —Adrienne So iFixit Soldering Iron and Pro Tech Go Toolkit If you're into fixin' your own stuff, then you're no doubt familiar with iFixit's various tools and guides. The company blew minds and broke hearts last year when it announced its FixHub Power Series Portable Soldering Station , the first soldering iron developed for the actual 21st century, with USB-C power, a fully repairable design, and a web interface to control it.
There are some new updates to the platform, and the final units ship in April if you preorder now. The full kit is $250. There’s also a new tool kit.
I love the Pro Tech tool kit, the most comprehensive toolkit for repairing small electronics that iFixit makes, featuring a 64-bit driver kit and a wide array of tweezers, openers, and prying tools. But the Pro Tech kit is kinda bulky; even rolled up it takes up more room in my bag than my lunch. The good folks at iFixit know this too, so they've downsized their Pro Tech kit into a tighter selection and a more portable size.
To make the new Pro Tech Go toolkit , iFixit did some customer research to find out which tools are the most used, and then only included those. It has a 32-bit driver kit with only the most commonly used bits, plus two tweezers, two spudgers, and some opening tools. It's cheaper too, only $50.
Nice edit! —Michael Calore Pinwheel Watch There is a growing awareness that, as great as technology can be, too much too soon for our kids might not be the best idea. Pinwheel has been one of the leading names in smartphones for children and teens for the past few years, allowing parents to stay in touch with their little darlings wherever they are, but without opening them up to the scary world of social media and the world wide web. Now, the company is launching its first smartwatch with all the same intentions.
Aimed at children between 7 and 14 years old, the Pinwheel Watch is intended to be a complete smartphone replacement, with the ability to text and make calls, as well as play games and take photos—just without access to the internet and unvetted apps like Instagram or TikTok. The company’s PinwheelGPT is also on board here, a kid-friendly AI agent that can provide AI-generated responses to age-appropriate questions. For complete peace of mind, it will steer clear of anything controversial, pointing the child in the direction of an adult for further discussion instead.
Any questions asked by the child can be viewed in the parent dashboard, along with GPS location tracking, contact controls and the ability to switch between modes whether the child is at home or at school. It’ll go on sale in the next few weeks for $159, with a $15 per month subscription fee for access to the parental dashboard and cellular service. —Verity Burns.
