A couple of weeks ago I made a list of ten of my favorite gadgets in 2021. While I plan to make another ten as there were many that missed out on the list, I thought it would be interesting to go through my Amazon wishlist and share them.
Apple Air Pods
The top of my wish list, althogh not specifically by desire, just the first on the list are the Apple Air Pods Pro. I have a unique relationship with Apple. I am really not a fan and I try to limit how much money I give them, I would rather use an Android phone but for security reasons the iPhone is a much better choice. That being said, I've been wanting to get a pair of Air Pods for a while now but I just never bothered as I wouldn't use them a lot, there are times I'd rather not carry around my big PC headphones.
I would have bought these recently, but I know a new version is coming out in a few months so I will wait for the Air Pods Pro 2. The new Air Pods Generation 3 came out that are much improved but don't have silicon tips (so the seal isn't as good) and they don't have noise cancellation.
I don't have a lot of use for portable headphones so that's the main reason I don't have them now. When I travel for more than a day I usually bring along my PC Headphones, or at least my last set I keep in the closet as a backup.
Bloodborne Funko
I got this guy on my list as well, I collect Funko statues and probably have 50+ of them. I don't go crazy over them, but when I see one I like I will get it. I am a big fan of Bloodborne and all Dark Souls genre games, but I believe Bloodborne is my favorite. I plan on picking this one up but I prefer to spend $8-10 on a Funko and will wait for it to be more reasonably priced.
He does look cool though!
Last of Us II
While I originally got my PS4 for Bloodborne, The Last of Us is one of my favorite games. I don't play consoles much as I am a PC gamer, but I did really love my play through of The Last of Us, especially the last half of the game.
I've been waiting a while to pick up Last of Us II, but I would really prefer to play it on the PS5 and I currently haven't been able to get a hold of one. If Last of Us II comes down to $10, I'll grab it but for now it just sits in my wish list to remind me to grab it. It frequently comes down to $20 if you are looking for a really good game. I have heard many complaints about Last of Us II which are also part of the reasons I haven't just got it and played it yet. I doubt the second one would hold up to the magic of the first anyway.
SD Card
As you probably know, I am a big fan of the Raspberry Pi and have at least 10 of them lying around the house. Raspberry Pi's require an SD card to act as a hard drive and almost all of the available SD cards run really poorly in the Raspberry Pi due to the low power bus that handles storage poorly. The Raspberry Pi 4 has made significant improvements to storage performance but for the most part the I/O is very low and the Samsung EVO+ has the best performance by a landslide over other SD cards and helps reduce the impact of this slow random I/O.
I always keep this on my wishlist as they will often go down to like $7 which is a steal. I don't currently need any, but I like to use my wishlist to keep an eye on things. If you are using a Raspberry Pi, I highly recommend replacing your SD card with the Samsung EVO+ if you have any concern about random I/O performance.
Streamdeck XL
This has been on my wishlist ever since it was announced. I currently have the Streamdeck MK.1 which is a 15 button version of this and use it daily. I mostly use it to glance over to see the bitcoin price and as a set of media buttons since my keyboard does not have any. I also have a few apps I launch of it like Hive Vessel.
I'd love more buttons, but I currently don't make good use of the one I have and it would be a lot bigger. It is also pretty damn expensive for what it is, but that being said it really is a great device.
I am planning on making a module to monitor Hive and HBD price as well, I just haven't got around to finishing and publishing it.
I have been meaning to make some updated pages for Hive Minecraft as there are a lot of obscure keys with 354 mods including in the mod pack.
Ghost of Tsushima
I hear a lot of great things about this game and the screenshots I have seen are fantastic. This is a must play title for me, but again I want to play it on the PS5 and not on the PS4.
I am currently playing Sikero which is one of the first games made by the Dark Souls developers after they stopped producing Dark Souls titles. Holy crap this game is hard. It is clearly a souls game, but the core mechnics in combat are different and like Bloodborne heavily penalizes you if you are not aggressive.
From what I have seen, there are a lot of simularities between Ghost of Tsushima and Sikero, although I cannot speak for the combat of GoT. I have seen a few people on Hive have played it and are fans.
I am looking forward to this game, especially with HDR.
Bread Knife
This is probably a weird one, but we dropped ours a while ago and the handle is cracked and it is rather uncomfortable to hold. I'd like to keep the same style as the rest of our knives, but this one frequently goes in and out of stock and the price varies a lot. Our existing one works fine but I'd just like to replace it. The exact match is about 3x as expensive as we have the nicer version of these knives but I don't see the point of paying $150 for it over just getting this one for $44.
Mandalorian Playing Cards
I came across these not too long ago and almost picked them up for my son for Christmas but he never plays cards. I really liked how they looked and thought they would be fun to have around. The few times we play cards it is from our poker set and swap multiple decks so I am not sure how much use these would get.
They look pretty cool, and technically not on my Wish List as I just went ahead and ordered them.
Magnetic Mat
I came across this a while ago and I thought it was a pretty cool idea. I frequently am working with small parts and screws while working with Raspberry Pi and other electronics. This not only allows you to keep them from falling it allows you to put them in groups and even label them. Really handy if you take apart electronics and want to keep things in order until you get things back together.
This is also no longer in my Wish List as I went ahead and grabbed it. Would have come in handy for a project I am working on.
White Chocolate
I love White Chocolate, but 99% of what I have had is garbage. A lot of white chocolate tends to taste powdery and just gross. It's hard to find good white chocolate that is smooth, creamy, and doesn't have a weird taste to it.
Green & Black's is pretty good, not my favorite but it is my favorite that I can get easily. I am always on the look out for good white chocolate but most of the times I don't bother as it usually ends in disappointment. Like a lot of things these days, the price fluxiates regular on this but the "normal" price is around $28, anything higher is just gouging while it is low on stock. This stuff is pretty expensive at nearly $3/bar, but I have seen much higher for much less quality.
Wireless Charging Dock
I love wireless charging, and I was so happy when Apple finally allowed us to use it. I use a cheap Qi charging plate that I bought everyone in the house one of. I got my son an Apple watch for Christmas so I picked up this dock that allows you to charge your phone, watch, and air pods all at once. Since I only have an iPhone I haven't picked one of these up myself, but once the Air Pods Pro 2 come out, I will be picking this up. I have been considering an Apple Watch for a while now, but I am not a fan of watches and from what I can see, there are very few apps on the Apple watch I would care about, but I may end up getting one eventually.
What I really like about this dock is everything uses the same space as many docks are side by side and take up 2-3 times more space on your desk.
I do believe these docks are very hit or miss as none of them are released by big name companies but more fly by night Amazon knock off companies. We had some problems with my son's dock and it didn't work with the cable and charging block it came with, it would work with the cable or the block if you swapped out one but not together. I ended up just using the charging 3A charging blocks I bought for our existing Qi chargers.
Reviews have also mentioned slow charging, which we did see initially but seemed to go away. There are a million of these type of chargers on Amazon but they are all no name companies, nothing I really trust to be well built.
All images except the cover image are from Amazon.
Posted with STEMGeeks
