Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Why did I buy this?”.
Hello, everybody, my name is john. The apple iphone you may have heard me mention techno buffalo, so i got into tech youtube because i legitimately love technology. I was the kind of guy who still does but go walk around best buy like just to relax. After a really stressful day and after making thousands of videos, i’ve tested a lot of products, and i wanted to share just some of my general favorite tech that i use every day right now. There’S no sponsors here! These are just some of my favorite things that i use.
I tried to make it not the obvious ones, so it isn’t like an apple watch or a tablet here or a phone. This is just sort of maybe a little bit more obscure tech that has a spot in my life and maybe even deserves this spot in yours uh. You might have noticed this on my finger in pretty much every video for the past four months uh. This is the aura ring. It got my attention actually last nba season and the nba players were using it to help detect early signs of coveted temperature rises in the bubble.
But for me it’s been really helpful as a sleep tracker, so i’ve been pretty vocal online about suffering with insomnia and some anxiety. I think that is causing my insomnia, something i’ve been struggling with for the better part of eight or nine years. It gives me information that i never had before about my sleep, so i’m able to actually visualize how much deep sleep i’m getting if i’m awake when i fall asleep, then in the morning actually see a number of how much i slept, and it gives me a Sleep score and quantifies my readiness for the day.
It’S given me a lot more knowledge about my sleep, which is in turn, give me a bit more peace of mind to help me sleep uh. It is crazy, thin and small, in fact, that so much technology has crammed into a little ring. Uh is unbelievable. It does a lot more than just sleep, but sleep for me has been uh the most useful. I wear it all the time you can wear it to shower. You can wash your hands with it, whatever i pretty much just charge it for like 15 minutes a day, uh and that’s it sort of rounding out my sleep side of things. Uh i’ve been a big fan of the bose sleep buds. This is the sleep buds too.
The original had a bunch of problems it wouldn’t charge in their case, these fix those problems, what they are essentially white: noise machines that go into your ears and sit flush. Now there are some settings you can change to sort of, have them get notifications or alarm uh as well. But for me it is just straight white noise and a lot of people ask why i don’t use air pods or headphones. The reason is, i sleep on my side, so my head is down and these sit totally flush, they’re, not sticking out weirdly and it’s just white noise, i’m a really light sleeper.
This has helped me get better sleep. You can do a lot more inside of the bose app honestly. I have it to set to white noise. I just leave it there.
Um. These have been invaluable. When i used to traveling was a thing these always went with me when i’m sleeping now. These are always by my nightstand.
These are in my head, every single night, if you struggle with sleep or you’re, a light sleeper, definitely check out the bose sleep buds too. Alright, so playing chess is fun, but what about a chessboard that can actually play back? So this is square off. I’Ve had this one for about a year, so, first time it gets out of the way it’s it’s not like the cheapest thing in the world. It’S 429 ish bucks, depending on sales that are going on.
Uh, connects to your phone and on the very basic level you can play against ai. You can move your pieces, there’s magnets in the board and the pieces. They will move against you. You can pick your difficulty and that’s awesome enough. What makes this even cooler is that you can sync it up with chess.com, and you can play people all over the world and as they move like on their phone or computer, your pieces on the board will actually move in sync with what they’re doing it is Awesome it works. It looks like it’s from the future.
This is one of those things that is like not a necessary thing, but one that i am so happy that i’ve had, especially during the pandemic. It was like a staple in my house, so obviously during the pandemic, i’ve been doing a lot of streaming and i’ve been using my roku ultra to do all of it. We had a outfit some tvs here at the studio and i opted to go for the roku ultra instead of the apple tv, so prices are going to vary depending on sales, but usually this is like half the price of the apple tv as full support for Airplay 2, which is awesome, of course, has the apple tv apps.
You can play all of your apple tv stuff on there it’s got a remote that doesn’t suck and it works absolutely beautifully and there’s a ton of app support if you are in the apple ecosystem and you think you’re tied to the apple tv and, in my Opinion it’s horrible remote, you don’t have to be. The roku ultra is an absolutely amazing way to go. I love the way the remote feels in my hand.
So while i do love the remote for its ergonomics – and it just works really well, it doesn’t control multiple sources. It will do like your tv volume plus control the roku box. If you have like a sound bar or something, unfortunately, it can’t control both, but i have an option for you. This is the one for all shimmer remote.
I’Ve never heard of this brand. Before my parents have a tcl tv, that’s running the roku tv os and they have a sonos sound bar. I set them up with a harmony, remote and a touch screen. It worked perfectly for them now. My grandfather is staying with them and he has familiar tremors. His hand shakes a lot and he could not touch the screen on the harmony if they were facetiming me, three or four times a night to figure out what was going on, the hub was becoming disconnected.
It just didn’t work well for them. So i found this remote, which essentially looks like a roku remote, but it can control absolutely anything. So i paired it to their tcl tv and their sonos, but also it’ll work with apple tv. You won’t get the siri functionality or any of the voice stuff. You can control it beautifully. It works with pretty much anything. You can come up with. It’S really cheap too, for like 25 26 bucks, depending where you go. If you use a roku or you just hate the apple tv remote, this is an amazing way to go, and it’s made my grandfather incredibly happy and that’s why it’s got a spot on this list this next one we did a whole video on, but in my House i have tesla solar, plus two power wall battery packs and you can see in the video why i did it through a bunch of tax incentives a few years ago, but it has been absolutely amazing to have a few months ago, california had a bunch of Wildfires and high winds and my neighborhood was losing power. My house was one of the few on the neighborhood that still had electricity and sort of brought up again. Why i love having this? So not only did it take my electric bill down from what used to be four or 500 bucks a month down to essentially zero or negative dollars. Electric company tends to owe me money uh most months, let me drive my car for essentially free. I love going into the tesla app and seeing how much electricity i’m generating when it’s really sunny out. It’S just been a really fun addition to have uh to my house, and i know it’s obscure and expensive, but i’ve loved having it and if you’re, in a position where you know you want to have solar and you want battery backups. I think this is the absolute best way to go. So jet is a company, that’s been making tesla accessories for years. I drive a model 3. Now it has dash cam functionality built in which is awesome.
Ordinarily, i’ve plugged in ssds to usually samsung ssds, but jetta. Actually made their own ssd that fits perfectly into their hub, which i also use, and it’s been really nice to have something that fits that seamlessly. I also really like jetta as a company. They make really cool accessories and it’s a small business that i’d like to support. So i really just picked any one of jetta’s products in this case: uh it’s their ssd, so uh speaking of tesla, i actually have another channel called money rush. Where i talk about personal finance and we’ve got a video up there, explaining tesla stock and one coming soon talking about elon musk himself, i’m somebody who’s made a lot of mistakes in personal finance. I’Ve also had a few successes, and i want to help you guys make whatever money. You have work for you, whether it’s five ten a couple thousand dollars whatever it might be.
There are tips and tricks that i’ve learned that, hopefully you guys can use as well and if you want to check out moneyrush, we’ll link to it down below so this one’s a little obscure, but it’s the portkeys bm53, it’s a big name. Essentially, it’s an external monitor for cameras, our main a-cam, we’re filming this with blackmagic ursa mini g2, and this is a monitor that you can connect to it and it gets really bright. So it’s worked out awesomely for us outdoors.
The big problem we had at the camera was that we couldn’t really see anything when we were outdoors. The port keys monitor has fixed that, but my favorite thing about it is it has bluetooth built in so actually you can use the display itself to control actual camera settings if you find yourself shooting outside a lot, no matter what camera you’re using. This has been an absolutely amazing addition, uh to our rig, and now i don’t know how we even shot without it, especially when we’re outdoors all right.
So i said everything was going to be not obvious, this one’s a little bit obvious, but i’ve been using it a lot more than i ever have any other console and it’s my ps5, i think, being at home. A lot has sort of gotten me back into console gaming. My ps5 is on at least four or five times a week, which is more than i’ve ever used any other generation of console. I love it, i’m playing it. It’S been amazing, i’m not going to talk too much about it, but ps5. You still deserve a spot on this list, so this next one is completely unnecessary, but i love it.
We have it here in the studio uh, it is a simple human trash can um. That sounds silly. So not only can you wave your hand over it and it’ll open and close, which is great, but you can use voice commands to talk to your trash. Can you could say open bin he’ll, open and close bin it’ll close, like i said, completely unnecessary, they’re proprietary bags that have to go in it can be expensive to maintain, but i love it.
I think it makes sense to have it here in a studio full of high-tech stuff. It makes me happy to use it and, if you’re looking for something extra for your house, that’s maybe just a bit of tech where you wouldn’t expect it. A simple human trash. Can um it’s a pretty good way to go, so we shoot all of our footage here using black magic cameras, some version of them. This is their latest camera.
It’S the pocket. 6K pro we’ve had the previous version of the pocket, and it was awesome. This one fixes all the issues with that camera. So first you’ve got an articulating led. It doesn’t flip all the way back for like selfie stuff, but for shooting up high or down low. It has been absolutely awesome, better battery liability, it’s using sony batteries instead of canon, which i personally prefer built-in nd filters, though, is the big reason that we upgraded to this camera. It’S about 2500 bucks, so it’s expensive, but a really good deal.
If you want to shoot cinema, quality, stuff or studio, quality stuff, i do wish it had autofocus built in still doesn’t offer that maybe the next version, but for the package and the price. This has just been an absolutely amazing camera to have. I’Ve talked about these.
For years this is the ember mug, so my kids are fortunately in school. In the morning, my wife and i are running around like crazy and we generally have cold coffee, which stinks. So we have a bunch of these ember mugs. They are smart mugs that keep the coffee whatever beverage you want hot for a couple hours, which has been absolutely amazing to have. We have two of the mugs and one of the travel mugs just just been really good to have.
I can enjoy hot coffee again. I bought mine a while ago, and the only knock i had on it was that they were really small. It wasn’t really a full cup of coffee.
For me, they have a bigger size now. So, if you’re looking to buy one, i would get the bigger size. The travel mug has been great, the regular mugs have been awesome.
I have hot coffee which makes me happy in the morning if you’ve got a problem of always having cold beverages, that should be hot. Uh amber’s got your back, so it is weird to have to do software updates for your mug. This is again seems like a theme. We did a whole video on tempo and this was awesome to have, especially during like peak quarantine months, it’s a full gym.
In my house, it’s a smart display with your cameras that can sort of check your form. There are live classes on there, it’s got a full weight set built in. It’S got barbells and dumbbells on the back, and it’s been a really nice addition. Try to keep me a little bit of shape, or at least keep my shape less.
Like ovally, i really like the classes. It’S been awesome for backs and arms, and that stuff, my wife doesn’t like it too much – doesn’t have much in the way of sort of yoga class. So if that’s your thing, you may want to look elsewhere, but if you want sort of cardio and weight training, stuff tempo has been absolutely amazing awesome and i could not recommend it enough. So this next one is hyper’s magsafe battery.
The name is pretty obvious. What it does uh it’s a magsafe compatible battery it slaps on the back of any of your iphone 12s and it’ll charge it. So it’s not charging via magsafe tech, so you’re not going to get the faster speeds that theoretically, you could get with a non-existent apple. First party charger, but it is going to charge with qi 7.5 watts, which is pretty fast inside of the pack, is a 5 000 milliamp hour battery. So it could charge an iphone 12 like twice um. It’S got an led indicator on it: charges via usbc.
So you can use it like a regular external battery, uh, it’s kind of a chunky boy, but it works as advertised. If i pick one up it’s about 40 bucks, so i mentioned the ps5 being one of my favorite things uh. I love the controllers.
The batteries do not last very long, and so i wanted to get the official playstation 5 wireless controller dock thing that uses magnets. It looked awesome in the meantime. I just bought the nexi.
Go it’s half the price, the official sony one and surprise, surprise it charges two ps5 controllers: it uses the magnetic technology. Like the official sony. One doesn’t actually like stick with the magnets, you sort of have to place it down a little more carefully once you have it placed it charges them, and what else do you expect it works? Well, it works as advertised.
It actually has like a little more carrying put your dualsense controller on, but to always be ready to go and whatever save about 30 bucks. So i have three kids and a dog, and my house is generally a little bit on the dirty side. Uh, so robot vacuums have been awesome to have uh.
I know that irobot tends to get a lot of the glory. I’Ve been using some products from roborock. This is the s5. They have newer versions of this, but i’ve liked it is the lidar sensor.
On top it can map my house and it can go out and just clean and come right back, and i wish it could empty itself like some of the irobot ones, but the quality of the actual like suck itself uh is really good, and our house looks Visibly cleaner after this thing does its rounds. There are other models you can get that can do mopping for you too, this one we’ve just used as a vacuum and it’s been really good, really reliable. I think, most importantly, it’s not that expensive. So i mentioned having solar panels and tesla powerwalls. It’S been awesome. I actually wanted to get something from my parents who don’t have solar but frequently have brownouts or blackouts.
So this is the jackery solar generator 1000. That also comes with solar panels, and it should be pretty obvious what this thing does is a big old battery pack that can charge via solar panel. So if it’s sunny out you can get power, they have different size power stations um if you’re interested. So this one costs a thousand dollars, not cheap, and then the solar side of it is 300, so the whole thing about 1300 bucks, but for my parents to have peace of mind of my grandfather’s living with them, they could always have power uh. It was.
It was worth it for me, so it’s got a 1002 watt hour capacity and a thousand watt hour rated power and multiple like outlets to charge stuff. On i mean anything, you would need you’ve got actual outlets, you’ve got usbc, uh you’ve got pretty much anything. You could want to charge stuff off of.
You could easily run most accessories for a house for easily a day or so to very least a couple hours. So power came back on if you want some peace of mind for power, outages or you go camping. Quite a bit um check out jackery, so that’s my favorite tech, that’s less obvious stuff that i use every day, something that you guys using every day.
Let me know in the comments and perhaps if we get enough good stuff, i will try it i’ll, update this video in the next few months. .