Last year, I came across a product that looked appealing, and so I pre-ordered it: the Svelt laptop stand. It wasn’t a Kickstarter, which I have been known to back a lot of (just ask my wife 😂), just a “please trust us with your money and pre-order it”.
When it arrived, the box was so heavy I thought they accidentally sent me more than one. This is a very well engineered product that is extremely sturdy, and made of high-quality materials, but I think that is part of the problem: the materials chosen optimize for firmness and not low carry weight.
This is an ongoing review that I will update as I get more experience with this product.
I was a huge fan of the Liberty Pro 2 earbuds from years ago, and only went looking for a different brand of headphone when they started using a long stem design, which I don’t like. I switched to Google Pixel Buds to go along with my Pixel Phones, but was excited to try the Liberty 5 Pro based on the technological advances Anker was advertising.
I’m still not sure if the LCD screen and touch controls are anything more than a gimmick, but so far I haven’t used them for much of anything because I prefer to use the app. I got the white version, and the front of the earbuds are an even shinier, darker silver than the photos represent. I would have preferred a lighter white-ish silver, but these don’t look bad. The case is fairly lightweight, which I appreciate, but the pearlescent white finish may look like garbage within a few months of use. We’ll see.
In 2019 I backed a crowdfunded product called the EcoFlow DELTA. While it was promoted as a “battery powered generator”, the name was misleading: fundamentally a generator creates one form of power by consuming another, and this was a battery that stored and outputted electrical power. It’s a battery. A really, really big battery: 31 pounds and 1260 Wh of power to be exact. It has six AC outlets supporting up to 1800 watts of output, 3300 watts of surge protection, pure sine wave output, four USB-A ports (12 or 18 watts per port), two USB-C ports (60 watts per port), and it charges via AC power, solar (up to 400 watts input), or 12V car adaptor.
I backed the project for $799 after we had an 18 hour power outage at my home and I found it frustrating how many things wouldn’t function. I was looking for a specific solution to allow us to continue using our on-demand hot water heater, which uses natural gas but requires electricity to operate. When the power goes out it’s relatively easy to create light and bundle up if you’re cold, but the immediate lack of hot water is an uncomfortable problem for a family with two kids. I had a quote on a natural gas-powered generator, but the $6000 price tag was too high for the rarity of the outages. I’d need to lose power several times a year for 20+ hours each time to justify that expense.
The EcoFlow DELTA arrived in January 2020, and it exceeded all my expectations. I took a bunch of photos because I thought I’d write up a long, thoughtful review of it…and didn’t. That review never quite got written, but I had all these pictures and a few thoughts I wanted to share, so here’s a photo essay of sorts for anyone interested in the DELTA.
* This was the most badass battery that EcoFlow made in 2019, but in mid-2021 they release the monstrous DELTA Pro, a 99 pound battery with 3600Wh of power! 🤯 But it’s also $3599, so…🙃
The 1260 watt-hour battery charges directly from AC wall power, and it charges fast: pulling over 700 watts from the wall power, it will go from 0% to 80% charge in under an hour (often all the way to 100% in 60 minutes). It arrived mostly charged. An audible fan kicks on when it’s charging to keep the heat down.Continue reading The EcoFlow DELTA 1300: The Most Badass Battery Ever*
The Epson-ET3760 is a decent printer, but it’s hobbled in a few ways that keep it from being an exceptional product. It was more a bit more expensive ($279 + tax on sale from Costco.com) than a comparable HP printer, but Epson makes less on the ink so it’s expected that you’ll pay more in hardware costs. It’s a “pay extra for the razor because you won’t need to buy as many blades” scenario. The bundle I bought from Costco included two extra black ink bottles, so I expect to not need ink for several years. Epson touts costs as low as 1 cent per ISO colour page.
The print quality is crisp – no complaints there. Compared to my HP though the colours are muted and don’t pop as much. Colour accuracy is significantly off as well. Red is more orange, blue is more grey, yellow is more orange. This means, unfortunately, that all that cheap ink you’re getting doesn’t measure up to what you get on an HP printer.
