Cool Tech you Won t Regret November

This is perfect for the casual gamer and this is something that belongs in every household and this will make every tech enthusiast excited. It's been over a year since I decided to optimize my life with tech and it hasn't ended there. I've been testing new tech every single month to see if there's anything worth keeping and in this episode I've hand-picked seven items that are unique, practical, and perfect as a gift for your special someone, family, or friends. And thanks to TP-Link for sponsoring a portion of this video but other than that all the products I would give to others myself. The first one is a product that's simple yet when you give it to the right person they'll know that you really thought of their hobbies and their lifestyle in mind when you bought them a gift. And this is the 8BitDo Ultimate 2C Wireless Controller and it's great for the casual gamer. It's reliable and it looks awesome. This is green but there's other colors too like purple or beige. Unlike other controllers this one can connect to basically anything with a 2.4 gigahertz dongle. That means no more slow bluetooth connections. Instead you get low latency gaming with a 1000 hertz polling rate. You do have the option to use bluetooth or wired mode and if you find yourself playing games that require more precise control these hall effect joysticks and triggers means that the farther you move the joystick from the default position the more it triggers the action. Perfect for racing games or real casual shooters. Don't use these in competitive gaming you'll get wiped. Unlike actually playing on a console where there's some aim assist connecting a controller to a pc and playing pc games just means you'll be at a huge disadvantage. Across monitor flicks are near impossible to get right since the controller just goes way too far. Even at low sensitivities it's still pretty hard. It is fun to mess around with though and I feel cool. Story games and chill games like Stardew Valley are a blast. Plus you don't have to charge them often either since they last about 19 hours with the 2.4g dongle and you just charge it with the usb-c cable. That's like three days of gaming if you game a decent amount each day. So I've been enjoying docking my steam deck and playing from the couch far away or just using the controllers to beat some records in Trackmania and they're affordable at $30 each. That means you can buy two and engage in some co-op couch play with your giftee. If you have someone you know who has a steam deck or plays a lot of games on their pc they would really appreciate the option of picking up a controller, sitting down and relaxing while still being able to play their favorite games. Personally I think this is a great way to get the younger kids get off their smartphones and actually go play some games with puzzles. Remember when games used to be challenging? Alright I'm gonna get off my old person high horse here and move on. This next product is one I've been using constantly to clean my car and random corners of the office. It's easy to pick up use and then put away quickly and this is the HOTO 4-in-1 air duster and vacuum. I know what you're thinking 4-in-1 but you just said duster and vacuum. So this thing can also pump up things like swim tubes and vacuum seal storage bags but those are super niche things. But it's convenient when you don't have to blow something up yourself or get an upright vacuum to do it. So this is it. It's got a tube-like structure, a couple buttons on the front and a storage capsule with a filter inside and some accessories. This one is perfect for your car or any tight crevices like the corner where dust bunnies and other things like to accumulate. There's also some other ones. This one is good for pet hair on rugs or carpet. Tufts of cat hair just float in the wind and attach to the carpet or they're just sitting in the corner. Then there's two attachments for inflation. A small one for little tubes and a big one that can be used for more precise vacuuming or for inflating things like camping beds. And this, honestly I have no idea what this one is for. So when you're sucking stuff up and you realize you don't have enough power, you can push this button for boost mode. Then cleaning this thing up is really simple. You slide this thing up, you push this button and it pops open. Then you dump it out. It's so great. You don't have to touch any of the nastiness inside it. And for something so small, the battery life is surprisingly good. At a runtime of 30 minutes on the lowest setting and 10 minutes on the highest setting. The only downside is the accessories sit in this awkward cloth bag, which is fine, but I definitely would have preferred a more premium case. Having all the things thrown into the bag just doesn't feel right. You're touching all these things in the bag and you're feeling them up and you don't even get what you wanted in the first place. Maybe a clamshell case would be ultra nice. That way you can see what you're getting and it's more secure. And at a price point of $80 most of the time and $100 MSRP, I do expect a more premium way to hold your accessories. Have you ever had that one spot in your home where the internet just won't work? Well we actually ran into that problem in our office. One of the rooms was just too far from our router and YouTube, I mean Org stuff, just wouldn't load. That's why I decided to upgrade to the TP-Link Deco BE5000 Wi-Fi 7 mesh system. Wi-Fi 7 is everywhere now, even on the latest iPhone 17. This three-part system is built to cover your whole home with next generation Wi-Fi 7, which means faster speeds, smoother connections, and you won't need to run to another room just to get a signal. This is the ultimate Wi-Fi 7 system for everyone to experience the latest tech at an affordable price. Wi-Fi 7 brings big upgrades like 4k QAM and multi-link operation. I was casually downloading huge files at 500 megabyte speeds. With three mesh nodes, I have a cozy warm blanket of internet throughout the whole office. Also, my device will automatically go from one node to another because of the seamless handoff feature. I can walk around streaming videos or phase timing my family without losing connection. Each unit also has two 2.5 gigabit ports. This is perfect for attaching a home server or your own NAS. If you have kids in the house, you can also get TP-Link's HomeShield, which has built-in parental controls and network protection. HomeShield blocks malicious sites, lets you set screen time limits for your kids, and monitor their usage online. So if you're ready to get rid of Wi-Fi dead zones and future-proof your network with Wi-Fi 7, check out the TP-Link Deco BE5000 mesh system. I'll have a link in the description so you can grab one for your home office. Next is something so small and so unpredictable and it's so useful that you're give everyone this. It's something everyone has, but this one is just super high quality. And that's a USB-C cable that can do it all. Now that every device is moving towards USB-C as a common denominator, phones, earbuds, laptops, vacuum cleaners, cameras, it makes sense to have a nice cable that can transfer all the data quickly and charge pretty much anything fast. It does make sense to pair this with a very capable charging brick, but we're talking cables here. This is the Ugreen 80 gigabit per second, 240 watt USB-C cable. And yes, it is as good as you think it is, but it's only three feet. So that's a bummer. It can transfer stuff from one device to another super fast and it can charge anything from your MacBook, random e-readers, I don't know, toothbrushes. These cost $17 a piece and having one with me all the time has been a real game changer. You got clips to upload, just transfer to your laptop from your camera or charge your laptop. It can do that too. Basically, you only need to carry one cable, but a nice one. USB-C is a lot more complicated than we think, so having a foolproof solution like this is such a lifesaver. Next is a product that lets you create music without actually understanding anything about music theory. Heck, you don't even need to know what a chord is comprised of. This guy is the Hi-Chord Pocket Synthesizer. It's made of full aluminum, which just screams quality and it lets you create wherever you are. Even I can make a tune that sounds all right and I'm musically challenged. I have taken music lessons for everything and I can't even recognize Twinkle Twinkle Little Star when it's played. So here's how it works. You turn it on and then you select what sound you want and there's a lot of stuff you can tinker with like you want it to strum or play the chord. One thing I like to do is just select a random sound and then just start playing and it's just so fun to mess with. I don't like that sound. There's a creator I watch and I guess listen to called Hijaj and he makes a song with this every single day and I love it. This that's why I wanted it in the first place. So go and watch his stuff. So it can loop, it can play drum beats, it can do all the effects. This joystick transforms chords to diminish, suspended, major, minor. If you're not a music person, I don't think any of that matters. But it's got an OLED display. I know, weird. People are putting OLED on everything nowadays. And to record your music, you can output from here to your computer or you can output from here to your computer too. So now to address the elephant in the room, the price. Because while this little guy can do a lot, it's expensive. But any musician will jump at their hands in excitement to get one. A writer on our team can play like seven instruments and he was like let me use that thing. And in his words, it's super cool and expensive. It's $320 USD, which I admit is a lot. But if you think about it, it's cheaper than a nice guitar, a nice piano, a nice violin. And this is a nice pocket synth. You can layer on three different soundtracks. It's awesome. Great gift for music people. Next, it's a product that would just make the perfect gift for just about anyone who's not a lonely cat. I think even a cat might want one. It's a thoughtful and family-friendly gift that helps you remember your good memories and events through photos. And it's this, a digital frame from a company called Aura. They have different colors, sizes, orientations. But I went for the Mason 9-inch. This is a vertical picture frame. You can do it horizontally too, but it's got a dark gray frame. Pretty much matches anything. And to add photos, you just download an app and send photos to it whenever you want. Apparently, they just added an e-ink frame. I guess I know what I'm getting someone for Christmas this year. Jake's been obsessed with e-ink devices and that one might fit the bill. Anyways, the Mason. I actually got this for him three years ago and it connects to power via a USB-C cable. While this connects to this side, the other side is a USB-C cable and it will change photos. You set the settings. You can do every 30 seconds. You can do every 10 minutes. You can invite people to add photos wherever they are. There's a built-in speaker on the back, so if you want live photos or videos, you can do that. But I find that distracting. The colors are beautiful, even though it's not OLED. An OLED digital picture frame would run you many, many hundreds of dollars. A huge downside, which might not actually be one, is that it needs Wi-Fi to work. Without Wi-Fi, it's just stuck on the screen because it doesn't store the photos in itself. It uses a cloud storage and it says you can store unlimited photos and videos, which I find hard to believe. There's got to be a limit before it breaks, especially if there's no subscription fee to use the cloud storage. But this is a product that I can stand by. I've had it for almost three years and there's been zero issues. Plus, every time a photo pops up from the past, we just oogle at it and say, remember when Allie was such a chubby little baby? She's so big now. I can't tell you how many times we say that exact phrase when we look at these pictures. I mean, look at that. So the Mason is $199. It has a 1600 by 1200 display, which is more than 1080p. So if you're ever stuck without any ideas for gifts, this is super thoughtful and will make them smile for years to come. And you can pre-load photos on it, so like right when they get it, it's already got stuff on it. So this next product is for anyone who's looking to get fitter or have a healthier lifestyle in general. There's so many products out there that are just trying to get your attention and promise you shortcuts and quick results. But this one is the opposite of that. It helps you nail down the basics like sleep and increasing activity. And this is the Polar Loop, a screenless fitness tracker that doesn't come with a monthly subscription. Now I have tested a lot of fitness trackers from rings to bands to watches and by far Garmin and Whoop are on top. So you're probably thinking, then why are you talking about this one? This one's bipolar. First, price is a large factor. For anyone that knows about the Whoop bands, the Polar Loop is a much much much more affordable alternative, but it isn't as good. So let me explain. Whoop bands are all the rage, except you have to pay a monthly subscription fee of about $16 per month for the cheaper version to $30 per month for the highest tier. But you're locked into a yearly contract. That's $200 to $360 per year. The longer you want to continue using your Whoop, the more you have to pay. And eventually you realize, I should have just bought an Apple Watch Ultra. Sure you get a lot more information compared to the Polar Loop and you get an AI coach. I never use that by the way. But for anybody who's not a professional athlete or wanting to train for a big event, the Polar Loop is most of what you need. Plus it looks better. It gives you data on your sleep, you get a sleep score, you get activity tracking like workouts, walks, runs. It also gives you insights on whether you're training the right amount or going too hard and potentially over training and getting injured or not training enough. Now you take all these insights and scores with a grain of salt because you do know your body best. These devices help guide you down the right direction. It was a week or so where I was waking up at 11 p.m every night and I was like, why is that? And that's because I was having a waterloo at 8 p.m. Not my wisest decision, but I like bubble water. But I wouldn't have known that if I wasn't tracking my sleep. So it's great because it doesn't try to overwhelm you with a ton of data points that you can just spend countless hours analyzing. Instead every morning you scroll through it once, you look at your things and you're like, oh okay. Then if you want to go in deeper, you can. There are downsides though. The first is that it needs about a week to develop a baseline. The second is that to really take advantage of a device like this, you need two straps. One to wear on your wrist and one to wash and have it dry. And each strap runs you $30 and you add that to the $200 price tag of the loop. And now you're looking at a single year of the Whoop Peak tier. It's simple. That's after the first year. It's a good economic decision. So next is something that's a bit more premium and it is for the more serious tech person. So you know when a college student graduate and their parents buy them a MacBook Air or a MacBook Pro or whatever. Well step aside Apple because this little guy is here. This is the Framework Desktop. Yes, you heard me. It's a desktop PC and it's tiny. It's no bigger than a shoebox or a ginormous textbook. But that doesn't mean that it's just a weak and tiny computer. Surprisingly, this thing is a powerhouse. This specific model is called the MaxPlus 395-128 gigabyte version. Ah, they really need to work on that naming convention, don't they? And let me preface this by saying this is not a gaming first computer. It can play real games at a decent FPS and resolution, but overall the intended use is not to play triple A games on Mac style graphics. But I am gonna be doing some gaming on this thing, so I'll get to that soon. So if not gaming, then what is it for? So you know when you have a billion tabs open because you're browsing deals on the internet or whatever, but then one of them decides to crash and you see that loading error on your screen and you're like, oh no, no, that's it. It's all gonna die right here. That doesn't happen with a framework desktop because of the number of cores it has. You can run multiple apps, have dozens of browser tabs open, and stream 4k all at the same time. But the biggest use case for this thing is, you guessed it, AI. Now initially, I actually thought that was weird. It took me a long time to figure out why someone would want these specific specs. So I did a bunch of research. It has 128 gigabytes of RAM, but it's soldered into the motherboard and it's shared between the CPU and the graphics card, which means there's very low latency. So it's similar to MacBook's new chips. But I thought framework was all about repairability and upgradability and soldered RAM doesn't really align with that. But apparently all paths lead to AI. This thing can handle huge AI models that you would have to pay for with a monthly subscription fee. But if you value privacy and don't want to pay large companies, you can get one of these and run OLAMA, then download large scale models like DeepSeek or LLAMA2 and just have fun with it. Which I did and they run really smoothly with barely any noise. I tried running some AI models back in the day on my 3070 and the fans were spinning like crazy. Back to gaming though, I've got Trackmania running at 150-200 FPS, Marvel Rivals looks smooth, and some other random story games. They all play really well. But the biggest benefit is this PC is quiet. Very quiet, which is nice. Most gaming PCs are loud, obnoxious, and you can't stand being in the same room as it for more than 30 minutes. But this thing is quiet, compact, and portable. Let's be honest though, if you want a better and cheaper gaming performance, you can find it elsewhere. If AI is something you want to play around with, then the framework desktop is pretty cool. And if you want a repairable and upgradable PC, it actually makes more sense to buy one yourself by picking out the parts and putting it together in a small form factor case. But if someone unboxes something like this, man, that's pretty epic. And they also sell a handle so you can carry it like a lunchbox. Did I just say epic? My age is just showing. So if you got something you know that's super into tech, but you don't want to use the same Apple laptop as everyone else, check out the framework desktop. And if you're looking for an interesting gift that will propel your person down the rabbit hole of 3D printing, check out this video. 3D printing is way easier than it's ever been before.