it’s easy to overlook the Mac Mini: Apple’s small, squarish PC isn’t particularly exciting. It’s not ultra-powerful like the Mac Studio, modular like the Mac Pro, or colorful like the 24-inch iMac. You can’t quite tote it around and work anywhere like you can with a MacBook. But it’s Apple’s most utilitarian machine, and that’s more evident with the 2023 refresh.
The new Mac Mini is similar to its predecessor from 2020 except it now employs Apple’s next-gen M2 and M2 Pro processors. That alone breathes new life into this compact system, as it’s a low-cost plug-and-play solution that’s still powerful enough for the likes of content creators. The base price is more affordable than ever, starting at $599, and the Mac Mini is the cheapest way to access the M2 Pro processor at $1,299. The only other M2 Pro-powered Macs are the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros, which start at $1,999 and $2,499, respectively. The closest desktop alternative is the base Mac Studio with an M1 Max chip for $1,999. But most people don’t need that much power.
It doesn’t have to be showy. Whichever processor you get, the Mini is a smart and hassle-free way to get all the power most people need without emptying your wallet—and you actually have a say on what kind of peripherals to get.
Build Your Own Adventure
Photograph: Apple
The Mac Mini still follows the BYODKM rule. The initialism, originally used by Steve Jobs when he announced the first Mac Mini in 2005, stands for “bring your own display, keyboard, and mouse,” because you get only the machine and a power cord in the box. You’ll definitely want to add a pair of speakers for when you’re not using headphones, because the built-in speakers aren’t pleasant.
This BYO design is great news if you already have those peripherals. Plug everything in and you’re good to go. Even if you’re starting from scratch and building your workspace, it doesn’t need to be too expensive. There are tons of cheap and excellent keyboards, mice, and monitors you can snag that won’t balloon the cost. The machine itself is tiny and unobtrusive, so it’s easy to plan accessories around its footprint. And at 2.6 pounds it’s lightweight and portable, which makes it great for hybrid workers splitting time between the home and the office.
If you prefer tons of screens around your workspace, then you may be disappointed to learn that the base Mac Mini still only supports two external displays, just like the M1-powered model. That’s enough for most people, but if you upgrade to the M2 Pro you can connect up to three displays to bask in all that blue light.
Bar none, there is no company that’s easier to make fun of than Texas-based Yeti. My house is full of hilariously overengineered, overpriced products. The problem starts when these products become the most useful items I own.
Just this morning, I used the Camino Carryall to drag my climbing gear to the gym. I had to take my daughter’s roller skating gear out of it, and before that 15 tiny soccer balls that I took to the park to play with kindergarteners. It’s five years old and looks as good as new. And the Yeti Lowlands? I carry that heavy-duty blanket to every festival and camping trip. I don’t have to stake the corners. It pads over every small rock and blade of prickly grass, and it has its own sling carrying case!
I even forced my husband to make a pilgrimage to the Yeti flagship store in Austin, Texas. On one level, I find it repulsive to make such an ostentatious production out of spending so much money on the company’s signature cooler. A cooler! It’s just something to put your Coke and bait in! Yet everything was so exquisite, so heavy, in just the right colors. As I wandered the aisles picking things up and putting them down again, I felt a deep, primal yearning for a Ford F150 and a fly-fishing vest.
Rinse and repeat when I first opened the box for the Yeti Yonder water bottle, which looked more like a sarcophagus hand-carved for the boy king Tutankhamen than a shipping container. The first thing I saw was the gigantic, full-color visage of climbing and skiing luminary Jimmy Chin, with his signature reckless grin, looming over two water bottles that were the color of sea glass before a storm. I picked one up and have simply never put it down. You guessed it. The 25-ounce Yonder is now my emotional support water bottle. I can and will have no other.
Field of Dreams
When I’m at home, I mostly drink from a Stanley tumbler. But when I’m out of the house, my previous favorite water bottle was a 26-ounce Yeti Rambler with a chug cap.
I have weirdly specific water bottle requirements. I used to have a Nalgene, but it wasn’t insulated, and hot Nalgene water tastes just like taking a long lick off the bottom of a sticky McDonald’s ball pit. I’m also a talky, distracted drinker who has a tendency to pour water straight down the front of my shirt at the gym. (“Put to mouth, then drink,” I repeat to myself, to no avail.) The chug cap is a good compromise between being able to swig water quickly and not drenching myself with a single careless movement.
The Rambler is also dishwasher-safe! While my children use straw-cap bottles for their ease and convenience, I loathe cleaning them. I need specialized brushes to scrub the mold out of all the tiny valves and tubes, and then air-dry them every night. I will undertake this task for my kids, but not for myself. The Rambler is also insulated, and I can fill the whole thing with ice and refill it several times during the day and the ice won’t melt.
Yes, the Rambler is a perfect water bottle, except for one factor—its weight. Even empty, it weighs about 1.4 pounds. That’s fine if you’re in a car, on a boat, or pulling it in a wagon, but carrying that much weight on your back for an extended period is grueling.
Back Saver
Photograph: Yeti
That’s where the Yonder comes in. When I flew to CES and had to face the prospect of carrying a backpack from 7 am to midnight almost every day, taking my Rambler was a grim prospect. No, there was only one refillable water bottle I considered; a lightweight bottle whose cap I could wash and dry easily in and next to a hotel sink.
If you want slightly more power, there is also the Fire HD 8 Plus ($150), which offers an extra gigabyte of RAM, wireless charging, and a 5-megapixel camera (to the base model’s 2-megapixel—neither are very good, so don’t let this be the selling point of the Plus). The extra RAM is very welcome, but the difference here is not as noticeable as it is with the 10-inch Fire HD Plus. If you want to get real work done, you can do it on the the 10-inch Fire HD, but neither model of the Fire HD 8 will work for you.
Fire HD 8 Kids
Photograph: Amazon
Fire HD 8 Gaming Bundle
Photograph: Amazon
Along with the Plus model, Amazon has quite a few other bundles, like the Fire HD 8 Kids models, which feature protective cases, some extra software, and content bundles along with parental controls. There’s also now a gaming bundle that comes with a Luna controller ($169), though given the limitations of Fire OS, I can’t imagine this appealing to many gamers.
Therein lies the main rub with Fire tablets—Amazon’s software.
What’s Wrong
Out of the box, Amazon’s Fire tablets offer an experience that reminds me of the hyper ad-saturated world of Idiocracy.
From the moment you try to unlock your Fire HD 8, you are confronted with an onslaught of ads and dark-patterned designs engineered to get you clicking on stuff, especially if you opt for the ad-supported models. Just don’t. Spend the extra $20 to free yourself from some of the ads. Don’t worry, you’ll still have Amazon content pushed on you every time you so much as look at your Fire HD 8. This is, as they say, the price of admission. You want a cheap tablet? You’re going to get a tablet that feels like it needs to get more money out of you at every turn.
Fire OS, Amazon’s fork of Android, has been updated to use Android 11, which is still two full versions behind stock Android. Other than the app-switching screen and few minor theme details, I couldn’t tell much of a difference. Fire OS still offers the same basic experience, which isn’t necessarily bad, but is limited by its app store.
Out of the box, Fire HD 8 tablets do not offer any Google apps or any access to the Google Play store. The selection in the Amazon app store is what you might call lacking. Want to watch YouTube? Chat on Slack? Nope, not happening. Even if you want to argue that this is a tablet mostly for consumption and doesn’t need much of what’s in the Google Play Store, YouTube is a glaring omission. My suggestion would be that if you have specific apps you want to use, browse Amazon’s app store before you buy to make sure what you want is available (if you have an Android device, you can download and browse Amazon’s app store here).
What about “sideloading” Google Play? We do have a guide on How to Install the Google Play Store on an Amazon Fire Tablet, but unfortunately that guide doesn’t work for this model. Or at least, it doesn’t work with the current version of Fire OS. Some Reddit users who have received a software update to Fire OS 8.3.1.3 claim that they have been able to install and use Google Play. My review unit is so far stuck at Fire OS 8.2.1.2, which, I can confirm, will install the Google Play Store itself, but does not allow you to log in and install any apps from it. I will update our guide with info on how to do it once I can confirm that it works. At some point, you likely will be able to install the Play Store, but you can’t right now.
Amazon’s 2022 Fire HD 8 remains good at what it is designed to do: stream Amazon content. If you’re a Prime subscriber and want a small, affordable device to use on the couch, in the kitchen, or even with a stand to impersonate an Echo Show, the Fire HD 8 isn’t bad. But if you can afford it, the 10-inch model offers a much better overall experience and remains our top pick. If you really want to score a deal, wait for the next Prime Day to roll around, when, typically, Amazon’s Fire tablets can be had for half-price.
A dedicated video editing keyboard might seem like overkill for most casual users, but don’t write it off until you’ve tried Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve Speed Editor. This little gadget packs so much efficiency, including the brand’s Studio software, in one small package that it might just be worth the money.
Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve is easily the best free video editor you can find. Seasoned editors might find the migration a little tough since the program has some workflow quirks that are just different enough to trip up muscle memory, but in my experience, converting my workflow was well worth the transition.
The Speed Editor, one of Blackmagic’s proprietary editing boards, is a dedicated device designed to integrate smoothly with Resolve. It has six sets of buttons mapped to functions inside the editor, plus a giant wheel to scrub through clips. If you’ve ever spent time in an editing bay, it will look familiar (if very small). For folks interested in shooting indie movies and beyond, a tool like this can help.
The $395 sticker price might seem shocking, but the company also throws in a copy of DaVinci Resolve Studio, which usually costs $295 on its own. While the free version is already more than enough for most people, Studio adds a wide library of visual effects tools, support for 10-bit video, and the DaVinci Neural Engine to make a number of effects tools faster.
A Portable Editing Bay
The most striking aspect of the Speed Editor aside from the attention-grabbing dial—more on that below—is how compact it is. It’s slightly smaller than an iPad (though obviously much thicker) but features six sets of keys that cover a surprising amount of the essentials that most video editors need, like basic cuts and multicamera controls.
On the rear, it has a single USB-C port for both connecting to an editing rig and charging. Yes, this editing board is wireless, but there’s neither a power switch nor any method of Bluetooth pairing without connecting it to your computer via USB-C first. This is particularly annoying if you edit on multiple devices. I use a Windows desktop and a MacBook Air, both of which have DaVinci Resolve installed. Technically, the board is compatible with both, but swapping them is enough of a pain that I’d advise against trying. The only way to do so seems to be to unpair the board entirely, but even that is flaky. It would have been nice to have a board that supports multiple systems the way most wireless keyboards do.
While this quirk is disappointing, the Speed Editor is a fantastic tool for portable editing otherwise. It is light enough to throw in a bag and sits comfortably next to a laptop on small coffee shop tables, and I was even able to use it while editing on an airplane. The flexibility to take studio editing bay-level tools with me anywhere is hard to understate.
The Dial
Portability aside, the dial is the star of the show here, and I cannot express how much better editing video is when you use it. The machined metal knob in the middle of the device rotates smoothly but still allows for very precise controls. You can flick it to send it spinning (not that you need to) and stop it on a dime. A single dimple lets you move the dial with as little as a single finger, and a rubberized rim makes sure you never lose your grip on it.
The dial has three modes: Shuttle, Jog, and Scroll, each enabled by buttons just above the wheel. Each of them has a red LED to indicate which mode you’re currently in. These might be familiar to veteran video editors with professional experience, but for everyone else, here’s how they work:
Shuttle: In this mode, the dial controls playback speed. This can range anywhere from 0.25x to 32x, depending on how far from the initial point you turn the dial. This works in both directions, so you can scrub through the timeline in reverse at up to 32x.
Once it is folded up, it’s not comfortable to carry; the wheels don’t stay closed together (unlike the Montague M-E1) and the grab handle is tiny, so my knuckles bang against the metal frame. Yowch. It’s great that I can fold this ebike up and store it in my living room, but I just wish it was easier to manage.
You can remove the battery from the Lectric XP Lite when it’s in its folded state, which is a nice perk if you don’t want to carry the bike inside. While you can charge the XP Lite without removing the battery, the charging port frustratingly sits on the inside of the frame when it’s folded, and it’s a tight fit to squeeze the charger into the port. You have to spread the ebike open a little to make some room, which seems like a silly design flaw.
The company still has a physical key you need to insert into the underside of the bike to turn the battery on, though you start the ebike with the power button on the handlebar. I don’t mind having a key—it makes me feel like I’m about to rev up a motorbike, like Captain America—it’s just so not cool hunting for the spot to insert the key, hunched down and looking up at the underside of the frame like some sort of street goblin.
Fat Tires
The riding experience isn’t complicated at all because the Lite is a single-speed ebike. You don’t have to worry about the derailleur locking up or having to switch gears, just choose the level of pedal assistance you want (one through five) and ride. There’s also a throttle in case you want to make things even easier.
There’s no suspension here, but I didn’t mind. The fat tires, which aren’t as fat as on the Lectric XP, are still thick enough to absorb those bumps and dents in the road, so I never felt uncomfortable, even on some truly awful roads here in Brooklyn. Just make sure to get some fenders if you plan on riding in wet conditions. (You shouldn’t ride it in the rain, but the components are IP65 water-resistant, so it can handle some splashes.)
Lectric uses a 300-W rear hub motor, and the same flaw I’ve seen on nearly all rear hub motors still exists: The motor keeps running for a few seconds even after you stop pedaling. It’s easy to get the hang of, but you just need to be aware of it so you can hit the brakes at the right time. Speaking of, I’ve had no trouble coming to a full stop on this thing. The brakes are pretty reliable.
That might be because it doesn’t go very fast. I cruised at 16 to 20 miles per hour on the original Lectric, but I usually went about 13 mph on the XP Lite at level three pedal assistance. You can probably get to 16 or 17 miles per hour at its fastest speed setting, but that will drain the battery really fast. At level three, which was zero effort on the original Lectric, the Lite will make you feel a tingling in your quads as you pedal and your heart rate will go up, especially uphill. It’s just not as powerful, so don’t expect a sweaty-less ride. Unless you just set it to level four or five, but then you’ll be quite conscious of the battery.
