14 Pieces of Tech Making 2025 Worth Existing In
Belkin Switching It Up
The Switch 2 has a battery life of between 2 and 6.5 hours depending on how intense the game you’re playing is. Super Mario Odyssey will drain it’s power in two and a half, as opposed to the five and a half it takes on the Switch OLED. Just a PSA, there’s a chance your battery indicator may be out of wack with the battery itself if you’ve got a low battery notification but can keep going for a few hours. Booting the system into recovery mode should recalibrate if a new system update doesn’t sort it.
Either way, if you’re on a long flight and don’t have anywhere to plug it in you might want to start considering how to give it a little extra range. Belkin has you sorted with it’s bulky but handy charging case. It’s nothing fancy, just a case that accommodates a removable 10K§ power bank with battery life indicator. This slots in under the Switch 2 itself, so it’s always snuggly accessible to the USB-C, but completely out of the way. The case also has notches in it to accommodate the Switch 2 kickstand, so you can play the Switch inside the case without removing anything. The charger can fully charge the Switch 2 1.5 times. A flap for 12 cartridges is also included for all those game key cards you accidentally bought. One last concession has been made for the case, a hidden Airtag compartment is included (no Airtag though, you’ll have to scrounge that yourself) so at the end of the day you can hop on your phone and find out where your uber driver lives with his new switch he found on his back seat.
Oh yeah it comes in three colours but let’s be real, you’re going to buy it in black.
Can’t Stop Projecting
If you had told me that this XGIMI MOGO 4 Series was a bluetooth speaker or perhaps an omni-mic I would have believed you, shrugged, and moved on. You, like me, may be surprised however to find out that this is in fact a mini projector. It pushes 550 lumens, with a 1920×1080 screen resolution and 110% BT.2020 color gamu, all major steps up from it’s predecessor the MOGO3. It’s also dead set on being an ambient part of your hosting experience, just swivel it face down and slot it back into it’s base to active an ambient light mode on it’s body that pulses with your music pumping out of the dual 6W Harman Kardon speakers. Its tripod stand is also one long battery, which adds an extra 2.5 hours of battery life to it’s existing 2.5 hours of wireless battery life. Just enough to get through one extended cut of Lord of the Rings. If you’re just entertaining with music then it’ll last 6 hours without the base. Finally if you aren’t planning on using the USB, Type C, or HDMI then it’s natively running Google TV so you can quickly connect to Netflix and Youtube.
Dual Screens Go Optional
Carrying on from the projector above we have yet another example this month of “what the hell am I looking it”.
Retroid, purveyor of cheap but usually great handheld emulation consoles has officially entered the race for Nintendo DS emulation solutions now that everybody is oversaturated with Gameboy and GBA solutions. Their solution is rather unique though, instead of cranking out a brand new console, which I bet is in the pipes anyway, they’re opting for a screen add-on hinged onto a clamp. If you already have a retroid that was released in the last few years then it should be compatible (RP Mini/RP Mini V2/RP4 Pro/RP5). If you haven’t it might work with any 6”-7” screen device that can handle display-port support over USB-C. Do your research!
It’s a 5.5” AMOLED that supports passthrough charging. The only real buttons on it are brightness controls.
This Is an Xbox
This year marked Xbox decoupling itself in earnest from trying to rule the empty DVD player space in everyone’s living rooms. Playstation can have it. Xbox has pivoted full time to being a cloud gaming delivery service.
Bloomberg Intelligence found in September 2024 that this sector could be worth $40 billion in ten years. Essentially for those out of the loop, Xbox wants to be the Netflix of gaming. With a monthly subscription I’m able to open a browser on any of my devices, even on my phone on public transport (as long as I have a solid connection) and immediately stream games. I played the entirety of Persona 3 Reload without ever installing it. To bolster it’s lead Microsoft is slowly eating up studios, it’s latest acquisition includes Activision Blizzard which means they have Warcraft, Overwatch, and the big kahuna Call of Duty under their umbrella.
Being able to get Cloud Gaming unlocked on the Switch and PS5 would be the ultimate coupe but not happening any time soon. But being able to play xbox games anywhere on anything means that a high quality handheld is the logical next step for the company in some way or another. There were rumours for a while that they were going to produce something inhouse. In the end they opted out of taking that risk, instead giving their branding over to Asus and their Rog Ally line of PC handhelds. These are one of the few systems that are able to stand up against the steamdeck, although they’re usually throttled by Microsoft’s software. The magic of Valve’s mobile SteamOS has proven time and again to be more efficient.
With all that preamble out of the way, meet the Rog Xbox Ally X (drop the X from the end of that title for the less grunty budget conscious version). This is a grunty PC handheld running windows 11 on a AMD Ryzen AI Z2 with 24GB LPDDR5X-8000 RAM. It has a 7” FHD screen and a 1TB SSD for getting a decent pile of games onto. It has an 80Wh battery which can burn away for 2.7 hours of hardcore gaming, or 14 hours of Netflix lazing. The button configuration, bumpers, and grips of the console have all been remodled to fit the hands of an Xbox fan easily. This breaks away from the boxier angular design of the original Rog Ally.
While it features a beefed up Xbox app you aren’t locked into the ecosystem, you can still easily access your steam library and do anything else you’d normally be able to do on a Windows 11 machine.
Leaving the build up to Asus was definitely the right move for Xbox. Availability is expected to begin at the end of 2025. Colour us excited.
Let Slip the Pizzas Of War
When you want to know when the next geopolitical shitshow is about to begin you need to keep an eye on two things. The @PenPizzaReport on twitter which tracks the google activity of pizza joints and the Freddie’s Beach Bar gay hangout located near the Pentagon. It was first noted back in the 1990s that the patronage at the bar severely dips while Pizza buying late at night greatly increases when the Pentagon is up to some funny business. A Domino’s franchisee Frank Meeks first noticed the boom in business during Operation Desert storm. Notable upticks occurred during the invasion of Grenada (1983), Panama (1989) and the night before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait when the CIA suddenly needed 21 pizzas in a single night. The most recent ping went off before the Israeli strikes against Iran, followed by their American counterparts shortly after. A Pentagon spokesperson has run counter intelligence, I mean, denial of this theory by stating that “There are many pizza options available inside the Pentagon, also sushi, sandwiches, donuts, coffee, etc.” and that the pizza reports do “not align with the events.”
But I wouldn’t trust a spooks word on anything, even about what sort of toppings they prefer. I bet they buy the premium options too on the taxpayer dollar.
Nothing To See Here
The new Nothing Headphone (1)’s have released and they’re pretty much everything we expect from the influential design house aesthetically, and internally they’re no slouch either. The design uses their iconic transparent design look showing off unnecessary design flares and electronics that would make them fit right in on a Star Wars Storm Trooper on their day off. For audio they partnered with KEF who has the know-how to provide naturalistic sound. This is done via custom-made 40mm speakers with a high-linearity suspension system with PU surround. The diaphragm and dome of the speaker are finished in nickel-plated coatings to deliver and maintain high-frequency sounds and rich powerful lows.
It has real-time adaptive ANC that adjusts every 600ms to incoming sound via dual feedforward and feedback microphones.
If you want you can use a spatialiser with head tracking to create an immersive soundstage. To explain what that means, imagine you’re watching a movie or playing a game, turning your head keeps the sounds in the position they would have sounded like if you had been pointing straight at the TV. Perfect for live recordings.
It has memory foam ear cushions and weighs 329-grams. The battery life gives you up to 80 hours of playback, and you should be able to wear it most of the time in a pretty solid amount of comfort.
Even More Nothing
Alongside the Headphone (1)’s Nothing also announced the Phone (3). It comes with a four 50MP camera system and you can pick it up in your choice of black or white with either 12gb ram and 256gb storage or the beefier 16gb with 512gb storage. The display is a 6.67” flexible AMOLED with a 1260 x 2800 (460 PPI) resolution and 120hz refresh rate. It runs the Nothing OS 3.5 powered by Android 15. Where it really breaks the mold apart from it’s iconic loud and proud design language is the matrix screen on the back. Where some phones opt for it’s edge lighting this thing has plugged an entire postage stamp pixel display on the back. They call it the Glyph Matrix and is used for everything from a visual numbered countdown for timed photography, to even an NFC displayer for other phones to connect through. A couch touch will let you cycle through the various utilities and games jammed into it. It can also be programmed with unique visuals for each kind of notification so even while your phone is face down you can tell the difference between a family ping on the messenger group chat and a tinder booty call. Or you know, it could just be a clock, whatever rocks your boat.
The BYOK is Writing Made Uh, Easier?
At some point along the way phones were made to be able to do everything. When you have a device that can do anything at all, and indeed bombard you with things to do all the time, it can be difficult to truly get any work done. It’s that rationale that has opened up a new market of low functionality devices that do just one thing very well. One such example is the BYOK, a phone sized screen that does nothing but word processing. It runs off an LCD panel with about 20 hours of battery life, It has a couple buttons on the back for navigating menus but it’s mostly intended for bluetooth pairing to a wired or wireless keyboard. It has it’s own writing tool that saves to the SD, or if you prefer it can connect to the cloud and keep files there. But only if you prefer, it’s conscious of it’s users probably proclivity for opting for going low tech. It has an amber backlight for low light situations and can connect to most stands and grips for ideal positioning.
Presales or on via kickstarter now with pricing starting at US$169.
From Dumb Bike To E-Bike
Thinking about switching to an E-bike because there’s one nasty hill on your way to work but can’t quite justify it? There’s a gadget for that. This is the Kamingo, an electric clipon motor you can quickly attach and disattach in “just 10 seconds”. That is of course preceding 3 minutes of initial setup but after that first time stripping your bike down of tech is no problem. The Kamingo has a 750W Peak power with a 90km range with everything from Cruise, assist and standby. It has regenerative breaking and can help move you up to 32km/h. Midride you can disable it from pressing against your tire so you can ride naturally, with no motor drag. A shift attached to your handlebars tells you everything you need to know, from your current speed and total existing range. Along with the water battle racked battery the entire unit weighs 2.3kg, so it doesn’t add too much more weight to your existing frame. It uses pressure adaptive tech so the motor can intelligently adjust pressure to either maintain grip, prevent slipping, or detect stone jams.
Charging can be done via magnetic fast charging which will have you back on the street in just 3 hours. The battery also includes USB-C if you want to mooch the battery for phone life or extra lights.
De Scribe Me
While everyone else are making AI dongles to chain around their necks Flowtica are developing an AI pen that acts as a natural literal note keeper. Called the Flowtica Scribe it’s accompanying mobile app can organise your notes and recordings, bullet point all your actionables, and even recognise participants in later meetings. In it’s charging case it has a 100 hours of use. You can be taking physical notes with it, and knowing you’re not going to be able to keep up, tap the button to quickly record what’s happening. It instantly processes this into a transcript for use later. And If you take a photo of your physical notes it can parse the two together contextually. All of this is fully searchable. In terms of a form factor I feel like this might be the most discrete, but also deliberate. It’s not omnipresent, it’s just there when you need it.
Just like Magic
As I wait for the next Genshin update to drop on my phone I’m reminded that it sure would be nice if I could get my graphic settings higher without cooking my hands. The Redmagic 10s Pro is here to deliver for gamers looking for performance and battery power other flagship devices don’t seem to be delivering.
It’s got 1tb of storage using UFS 4.1 for fast mobile read and write speeds and up to 24gb of LPDDR5T RAM. You can get it in smaller amounts but if you want the 2K super-resolution enhancements when connected to compatible external displays and 144hz frame boosting I say chuck as much grunt at it as possible. It has a decent 6.85-inch full-screen display with a 2688 × 1216 resolution.
The CPU is a Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset and the battery is a whopping 7,050 mAh. With 80W fast charging you can have this thing topped up in 40 minutes.
My favourite part has to be the flat shoulder triggers on the side with their 520Hz response rate. Your fingers are there anyway when you’re holding your phone in landscape mode so they may as well make themselves useful.
My Best Buds
I get the opportunity to try a lot of different earbuds out but above them all the Huawei Freebuds 4 reign supreme. They have great sound, a shape that feels both precipitous and comfortable in the ear, and they just work. They released four years ago and times are a changing. At some point the 5’s came and went and now we have the HuaweiFreeBuds 6 with Hi-Res wireless audio and a new ergonomic design. The High res audio is achieved by being the only open-fit huawei earbuds supporting 2.3 Mbps lossless transmission to deliver wireless music at 48 kHz / 24 bit.
Using them for calls they can cut through ambient noise of up to 95dB and winds as fast as 8 m/s to deliver your voice crisp and clear on the other end. Once again they come packed with ANC, reducing background noise. It works surprisingly well for an open-fit design. New control methods include head motion to accept and reject calls.
5 minutes of charging gives you a solid 2.5 hours of listening, and on a full charge you’re going to get 36 hours out of these bad boys.
If you aren’t on the Freebuds hypetrain yet, now but be a good time to climb aboard.
Is this Limitless?
In the previous spread we spent a lot of time guessing at what the OpenAI physical product will be. Chances are it might end up looking a lot like the Limitless Pendant. AI peripherals are going to be a regular feature here in the gadget section I fear as dozens of these things wash up on our shores waiting for one to stick. According to Limitless “(The) pendant is an elegant, lightweight wearable that remembers what you say throughout the day from in-person meetings, impromptu conversations and personal insights.”
It takes all that unstructured data and reorganises it for you to bullet point all the things you’d say you’d get done, or had been told. It could even act as a personal transcriber or reminder device. It’s essentially a memory aid for your life. Why remember anything when your device remembers it all for you. Embrace dystopia.
limitless.ai
The Hercules Of Sound
Hercules took home the “CES Innovation Awards® Best of Innovation” award this year for their Hercules DJControl Mix Ultra. This little controller is a compact 31.5 x 17.3 cm making it very totable. To boot it does away with all the cables, instead using bluetooth Low Energy tech to pair to your smartphone or tablet. It’s got 10 hours of performance in it meaning it should keep pumping long enough for any reasonable length party. It also comes with the app Algoriddim so you can quickly mix tracks through different music platforms. It’s a pretty powerful little tool.
The protective case, when flipped back when the mixer is in use doubles as a mount for your smartphone.
If you’re a beginner this is a pretty sweet little set, you get plenty of bang for your buck.
Here’s Another Xbox
Now that Xbox isn’t tied to just one thing their branding can willy nilly land on anything. Just a few pages ago we saw them partner ASUS on their handheld, a couple issues ago I’m sure we’ve covered their official 3rd party controllers with 8BitDo and now they’re also hooking up with Meta for the Meta Quest 3S Xbox Edition to celebrate Xbox Cloud gaming on the Quest. This is a limited edition series so according to Meta “Hurry, because once it’s gone, it’s gone.”
This is the first time the Meta Quest has ever released a limited edition version of the headset, although it did just release last year so we have plenty of time to see more of these. The Xbox Edition has their classic colour scheme so I hope you like plenty of Carbon Black and Velocity Green (I wonder if Resene has those in test pots). This is matched by a a carbon black Elite Strap and Touch Plus controllers. This edition also comes with an Xbox Controller packed in with the quest with the same limited edition colourway. To make life easier it also comes pre-paired to the headset to make getting started a smooth experience. Other perks is three months of included Xbox Game Pass Ultimate time. If you’re already a member, which you should be it’s good value dude, those three months will get added to your current sub. The bundling never ends with another perk of three months of Meta Horizon+, another subscription service I’d never heard of till today. This gives you access to a catalogue of revolving Quest games. Each month you can pick two games to keep in your library as long as you stay subscribed.
While gaming on the quest you can pick from four different display sizes up to a massive theater size screen (26 feet) for full immersion and neck workout activity. If you’re planning on doing Game Pass streaming make sure you have a solid 20 Mbps or higher connection. Coincidentally if you’re getting this sort of speed you can also connect to your PC and play all your Steam VR games, which is the way I recommend gaming with the Quest, you can get a lot more options when you’re playing via PC.
If you haven’t got a headset yet then this might just be the best way to enter the ecosystem considering all the perks. If you’ve already got one though you’d have to be an absolute diehard Xbox fanboy to pick one up. No shame in that if you are though!