We reviewed a massage gun; then, we reviewed a heated foam roller. Now, we’re reviewing a fusion of both, the SKG F5 Massage Gun with heat! It’s a massage gun with a heater on one end, so you can pummel your muscles into submission, then apologize to them with a little warmth!
If there’s one thing we learned a year into the pandemic, it’s that we always need new ways to stay entertained. If you’ve run out of things to stream, and your computer is screaming for mercy after being put through working all day and gaming all night, Dell and Alienware have the solution with new AMD Ryzen computers with NVIDIA graphics to handle all your gaming needs and wants!
If there’s one thing we learned after a year in a pandemic, it’s that keeping things clean is always a smart idea. Unfortunately, a lot of traditional cleaning products smell like you’re prepping the vat of chemicals to create the Joker, and parenting is hard enough without accidentally turning your child into the crown prince of crime. Lemi Shine aims to solve this by using citric acid in place of harsher chemicals — all of the clean, less risk of creating a Batman villain, still have a clean house!
Recovery is a key part of getting in shape. It’s when your body is resting that your muscles rebuild stronger than before. That’s why massaging and foam rolling are so important, but ever try to lug a foam roller on a trip? They’re a little bulky for travel. The Vertiball Precision Massager is a portable way to massage sore muscles without taking up space in your suitcase that you needed for clean shirts! Do you need one? Read on to learn more!
Smartglasses have been a bit of a solution in search of a problem. It seems somewhat obvious that there’s this untapped space on people’s faces that could be filled with technology, but it’s been hard to figure out what, if anything, is enhanced by people needing to utter the phrase “hold up, I gotta go charge my glasses.” Eyeglasses+headphones are a natural fit, but early attempts were bulky, ugly, and expensive. Fauna Audio Glasses are affordable, attractive, and don’t scream, “hello, I have giant speaker-glasses.” Are eyeglasses really improved by the addition of headphones? Read on to find out!
It sometimes feels like we’ve hit somewhat of an endgame with smartphones, as the form factor seems to have settled pretty solidly into “large glass slab with camera array on the back.” But the outside is only a small portion of the magic; the real excitement is in the chips doing all the work. Having a bunch of cameras sounds good, but the reality is they work because the chips inside are doing all the heavy lifting with none of the glory.
We don’t know what next year will bring when it comes to education and the pandemic. What we do know is that the trend of needing computers at just about every education level is definitely accelerating rapidly. Never one to miss a trend, Lenovo is prepared to dive into the education market with both Chrome OS and Windows laptops that can handle whatever the world is ready to throw at them (or, in the case of younger children, handle wherever it gets thrown). [Please don’t throw any computers.]
I work in a very male-dominated field. It’s also a very individual one, so there’s not a lot of chance for collaboration among my co-workers, except when the other women in my office and I get together to swap stories and discuss, basically, what it’s like being a woman where people don’t always expect to see us succeed. I felt a lot less alone and a lot more prepared to build more camaraderie among the women in my office after reading Cheryl Stookes’ The Token Woman: A Guide to Thriving as a Female Leader in Sales.
Ask any personal trainer, and they’ll tell you the best item you can have in your home for recovery is a foam roller. There might be (there will be) moments where you’re cursing the demons who forged such a torturous item, but foam rolling is a big part of keeping your body healthy and happy after a hard workout. They can be as simple as a cylinder of foam, or they can be studded with textures to dig into each knot. The new MedRock HotRock Foam Roller brings the heat to the foam rolling experience!
Anyone who exercises regularly knows that recovery is a key part of improving. You can’t push forever; sometimes, your body needs to heal. Massages are great, but between covid and the cost, most people aren’t opting for weekly in-person massages, and massage chairs are a luxury suited for the Brookstone in your local mall, not necessarily your living room. Enter the Fishda Double Heads Massage Gun, which offers a way to pummel your muscles into submission without also destroying your wallet or disrupting your home decor!
We love Neuro products here at Gear Diary. Their mint and cinnamon flavored gums, as well as their mint and cinnamon flavored mints, are delicious, and we could never have survived CES 2020 without several packs of Neuro Gum! Anytime I’ve sung their praises, I’ve had to steer potential buyers towards Amazon, CVS, or the Neuro website, but Neuro sent us some amazing news today — you’ll be able to get Neuro Mints and Gum at Whole Foods!
One of the toughest parts of parenting is determining when your child is ready for more connected technology and how you balance connection with safety. Making a kid-friendly phone safer by combining it with a watch isn’t a brand-new concept, but TickTalk thinks they’ve brought it to a new level with the TickTalk 4 launching Tuesday on Kickstarter. Is it a success? I tested it on my 7-year-old, so read on to learn how it went!
Do you have room in your wallet and your password manager for one more streaming service? Before you brace yourself for C-Span+, don’t worry, it’s more exciting than that — CBS All Access has morphed into the far more broad Paramount+, and its huge catalog of shows and movies is available now on Roku!
When we talk about MediaTek, it’s usually in the context of their hard work behind the scenes in bringing 5G to phones everywhere. But they do more than just 5G chips; they’re also bringing their ability to provide AI processing units to 4K smart TVs with their new MediaTek MT9638 smart TV chips!
Home security is something everyone worries about. It’s become much more accessible with internet-connected cameras, doorbells, and smart homes that don’t require paying for a monitoring service or having a professional installation. This is great, except it still leaves one big issue to consider: privacy. How secure is it to have cameras in your home? Are you sure they’re not recording when you don’t want them to? Arlo has an easy solution to all your worries with the new Arlo Essential Indoor Camera with Automated Privacy Shield!
I’ve got something of a mystery on my hands, and I’m hoping the readers of Gear Diary can solve it. I have a pair of TCL SOCL500TWS Wireless Earbuds, which are great, but they fell out of my regular headphone rotation about nine months ago. There’s no real reason for this, they didn’t do anything wrong; I’ve just been reaching for others for work and exercise. Apparently, they felt neglected because a very strange event happened today…
There are new Lenovo ThinkPads, just in time for you to get your tax refund and justify that urge for a new shiny upgrade! There’s a lot here, so brace your wallet and get ready. Even better, you can feel good about upgrading to a new computer since Lenovo has been aggressively targetting reducing their environmental footprint, lowering it by 92% relative to 10 years ago. On to the good stuff, the gear!
We’re big fans of Extract Labs here at Gear Diary. Their muscle cream saved the day at CES 2020, and we’ve had great experiences with their tinctures, gummies, and softgels. However, the one caveat whenever we sing their praises is that the kind of quality you get from Extract Labs is not cheap. Luckily, they’re having a huge sale this weekend, with an automatic 20% off discontinued flavors and 15% off the others if you use code FREE15.
I’m a huge advocate of AfterShokz, especially if you’re the type to listen to music while running, walking, hiking, etc. Having your ears open while still being able to enjoy music is a home run. AfterShokz thinks hearing your surroundings is important when you’re working too, and they’re applying their bone conduction headphones concept to a work-centric headset with the AfterShokz OpenComm. Does bone conduction spiff up well for the office? Read on to find out!
You probably know LG for their extremely impressive televisions, or their home appliances, or their phones. LG makes a huge lineup of impressive devices, and we’re getting more info on prices and availability for the LG gram laptops they announced at CES.
5G is, if not yet everywhere, in a lot more places than it used to be. While it seems to be the biggest in cities, the suburbs and the rest of the world will eventually get that sweet, sweet speedy internet on the go. You may not be paying attention to how you’re getting that 5G, but under the hood of all your devices are new chips and modems to handle all that internet, and they’re making sure you’re getting the most out of your connectivity with their new MediaTek M80 5G modem.