The Breaker Times

Every month or so, we like to ask our staff about their favorite stuff — whether it’s board games, smart tech, or kitchen gadgets. And the results are usually very different, very interesting, and a lot of fun.

Since Amazon is pushing a lot of deals as part of its October Prime Day event, we looked through some of our recent “favorites” articles and found deals on a lot of the devices we like. So, we thought we’d list a few in case you have read about them in the past and thought, well, that sort of sounds good, but it’s a bit pricey. (Or — that’s pretty cheap, but maybe I’ll wait until the price goes down even more…)

What follows are some of our staff’s most-liked stuff for the home and office.

Kylie Robison, senior AI reporter

My tiny Moleskine notebook keeps track of my whole life — I go through about two a year. That’s where I keep my weekly and monthly calendars, along with any source / general meeting notes. I use micron pens because they’re simply the best, and I keep them in a Kirby pencil case that I’ve even shown off in Verge videos. I just recently redid my entire home office, and part of that was lots of decor, my favorite being an LED Majora’s Mask.

David Pierce, editor-at-large

I bought the Elgato Stream Deck Mini with big ideas about using it to control my computer, manage my meetings, and who knows what else. A year or so later, my Stream Deck is… a light switch. It’s the primary way I control the Philips Hue lights all over my house; I have shortcuts for turning all the lights on in the morning and off at night, and I have another one that sets everything to just the right brightness and color temperature for when I need to look good on the webcam. 

Yeah, using the Stream Deck as a lighting controller is a little like rigging a Rube Goldberg machine just to turn on the water. Just… hit the thing! But I’ve always hated how much the smart home life requires me to have, use, and fiddle with my phone. The Stream Deck just puts it all in front of me, one LED button at a time. And there’s something so satisfying about ending the workday by plunging my office into total darkness as I walk out like a victorious warrior.

Nathan Edwards, senior reviews editor

These are my current favorite switches. The Kailh Deep-Sea Silent Pro Islets are nearly identical to the fantastic switches in the HHKB Studio, just much less expensive. The Islets are silent linear switches, with an extra-long spring, so the actuation force curve is strongest right at the beginning, and then smooth the rest of the way, giving them an almost Topre-like tactile sensation. (Pitchforks down; I said almost.) They’re an instant upgrade for any hotswap keyboard that takes Cherry MX-compatible switches, and I’ve been using them as my daily drivers for about a year. There’s also a tactile version, which I don’t like as much. Sorry to the Kailh Whales.

Sean Hollister, senior editor

The single fastest and most reliable device in my entire smart home… is whichever dumb-as-a-brick appliance I plug into this tiny box. Seriously, I’m pretty sure the Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Plug Mini is the only smart home device that’s never let me down. Whether it’s a string of Christmas lights, a garage freezer, a hot water recirculation pump, a humidifier, a bedside lamp, or a fan — all genuine examples from my home — I always know Alexa or Google or Siri or Home Assistant will flick that virtual switch in an instant and / or follow my programmed schedule.

Plus, I get some energy savings, too! My Brother printer used to draw 4W all day every day; now, I only spend 0.5–0.8W for the Smart Plug Mini it’s plugged into. I just wish TP-Link stopped making so many new versions so I could tell you which one to buy. I do know I’d have bought these energy-monitoring ones if I’d had a little more foresight.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, reviewer

Finding a board game that will entertain a 13-year-old girl, a 16-year-old boy, my partner, and me is a challenge. We’ve cycled through all the classics as well as newer options — Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, Catan, and more. While these are all great, inevitably one of the group develops a passionate dislike for the game (usually after a few too many losses) and it drops off our rotation. However, Evolution: Oceans has been a constant crowd-pleaser for over six months now, and we all love it. 

Part of the Evolution series from NorthStar Game Studio, Oceans is a beautiful, complicated, compelling, and challenging strategy game. You create new species to fill your ocean and fight to develop them and keep them alive using adaptations and abilities such as schooling and speed, tentacles, and parasitic abilities. 

Cards give you your powers, and these are gorgeously illustrated, making this game a visual feast. It does have a fairly steep learning curve, but once you get going and the strategies unfold, the gameplay is smooth and relatively fast-paced. There is a fair amount of player-to-player interaction, so we’ve had a couple of temper tantrums, but nothing big enough to knock this one off our family’s top spot… at least not yet.

Victoria Song, senior reviewer

Fungus gnats love overwatered soil, so once you’ve gotten rid of them, you’ve got to be careful and diligent about your watering schedule. For that, I got myself a Gouevn soil moisture meter to teach myself how to properly water my plants. I’ve properly vanquished my fungus gnat issue, but with these two tools, I’m always prepared in case there’s ever another infestation.

Wes Davis, weekend editor

Most of the things I own are, frankly, just unreliable enough to be annoying. All except for one or two, and of those, the one I love most of all is the Meross Smart Wi-Fi Garage Door Opener for HomeKit. And my love for it isn’t just about its rock-solid performance — it’s because, as far as I can tell, it’s compatible with almost any garage door opener on the market and across time itself. I don’t think that’s an exaggeration, either. The chunky mustard yellow all-metal box that cranks my garage door open — the Model 455 by Automatic Doorman — was made, by my loose estimation, sometime between the fall of Rome and 1975. 

But Meross’ adapter was $30 — and to my amazement, after a very simple installation, it worked and continues to do so almost every time I need it to. Best of all, I don’t have to carry the chunky remote with me on my bike when I leave because I can just talk into my Apple Watch when I return and coast right in.

Christopher Grant, group publisher, The Verge and Polygon

I was already out of love with my 2018 Nest Doorbell when Google raised the price of the video cloud storage subscription last year. That subscription, which was already unpalatable at $50 a year — it only captured “events” and not full 24/7 video and, even then, only stored those events for 30 days — was going to increase by a whopping 60 percent. Raising prices this high without anything to show for it except a clumsy explanation of “inflation and tax increases,” despite the well-understood maxim that storage costs go down over time, was just the push I needed, so after spending some time on the Home Assistant forums, I settled on the Reolink Video Doorbell PoE camera. 

On sale for less than the cost of a single year of Google’s new subscription, the Reolink impresses with much better video quality and PoE support, so there are no batteries or Wi-Fi issues to worry about (though a Wi-Fi version is available if that works better for you), as well as support for local storage via an SD card (imagine!) or network support via the ONVIF standard. It integrates directly into Home Assistant, no Reolink account necessary, and is generally just a much better product. I wish I made the switch years ago.

Barbara Krasnoff, reviews editor

When I realized that my mother’s memory was starting to get a little wonky and that she would need reminding about appointments, medication, and other things, the answer turned out to be Amazon’s Echo Show 8. I bought her one for the living room, and not only did it remind her to take her pills, but she could listen to music, see photos, and maybe even do an occasional face-to-face call. 

However, I soon realized that wasn’t enough. I needed to know that she could contact me in an emergency no matter where she was in her apartment. I got her an Amazon Echo Dot with Clock (which is now, unfortunately, defunct). My mother loved it — she could not only see what time it was but also ask what the weather was or play a favorite song, right from her bedroom. And I was happy because, between the Dot and the Show, she could yell “Call Barbara” anywhere in the apartment — including the bathroom — and it would hear her. It was a win-win.

Allison Johnson, reviewer

I’m at the phone stand. I’m at the wallet. I’m at the combination phone stand and wallet. 

An accessory that does two jobs instead of one is the best kind of phone accessory in my book, like Moft’s phone stand and wallet. It sticks to the back of your phone, either by MagSafe or adhesive, and fits three of your most precious ID or payment cards. It’s pretty low-profile when it’s closed, but you unfold it origami-style when you need a card or want to use it as a stand. Magnets inside keep it open or closed, and it’s sturdy enough to prop your phone up either horizontally or vertically. 

You can also open it partway and put your hand through the loop to use it as a phone grip. That’s like, two and a half jobs out of one accessory, plus it looks nice. Not a bad deal.

Victoria Song, senior reviewer

A lot of people will tell you that rice cookers are single-use appliances meant only for rice — they’re wrong. A rice cooker is best at cooking rice, but it can do a lot of the same things as an Instant Pot. For instance, you can use it to cook hardboiled eggs or oatmeal, steam vegetables, make porridge, make one-pot meals, and even bake a cake. 

I grew up with giant 10-cup rice cookers at home, but I didn’t appreciate how versatile this appliance was until I left the country for college. A tiny two-cup rice cooker kept me fed in my cramped 250-square-foot Tokyo apartment. It was programmable, so I could wash my rice, stick it in the cooker, and know that when I woke up late for class, I could still whip up some ochazuke or oatmeal for a quick, cheap, and nutritious breakfast. (It also took the hassle out of steel-cut oats.) Whenever I had a craving for sweets, it was so easy to take pancake mix and bake a Japanese-style cheesecake for one.

I’ve since graduated to a 5.5-cup Zojirushi Micom Rice Cooker, and it’s one of the handiest tools I have for meal prepping. When I was sick I made ample use of its porridge setting to make a congee-type dish with chicken and ginger — just like my mom used to make when I was a kid. The fact that it’ll keep something warm for days meant I could crawl out of bed, scoop out some porridge, and crawl back into bed with minimal effort. When I’m feeling lazy, I throw eggs in there, and bam — some extra hard-boiled protein. Mine also comes with a little basket, so it’s super easy to throw in veggies or steam frozen dumplings.

But what I like most is that rice cookers are more space-efficient than Instant Pots. In my kitchen, the one spot where I could fit an Instant Pot is instead occupied by a rice cooker, blender, and spoon rest. A multitasking kitchen gadget that doesn’t take over your entire counter? That’s a must if you live in a small space.

Barbara Krasnoff, reviews editor

We use a lot of garlic in my household, and traditional garlic presses never did it for us — they usually produced a messy, slushy paste. A friend of ours introduced us to the garlic rocker, which is not only fun to play with but produces beautifully minced pieces of garlic, perfect for sautéing and other uses. And it looks like a strange work of art, which means we can keep it on the counter just for show.

Updated October 8th: Added mechanical keyboard switches.