From Square-Wheeled Bicycles to V8-Powered Drills, These Were April's Coolest and Weirdest Gadgets
April’s often a tough month to swallow, starting with that awful holiday, April Fools, and then countless teases of warmer Summer temperatures before thermometers plunge and remind us it’s still Spring. April’s only saving grace is all the fun gadgets that debuted this past month, including many you may have missed.
From 8K drones to form-fitting computer mice to SSD drives adorned with glowing lightsabers, check out all the coolest and weirdest gadgets that helped us get through April.
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A Fully-Functional Bicycle With Square Wheels
Humanity’s greatest invention—the wheel—gets a seemingly impossible upgrade by some clever YouTubers who managed to engineer a fully functional bicycle with square wheels instead of round ones.
DJI Inspire 3 8K Drone
Seven years after its 4K Inspire 2 drone targeted at serious filmmakers debuted, DJI has released a follow-up with the Inspire 3 that’s capable of capturing 8K footage at up to 75fps frame rates using a full-frame sensor camera that’s fully stabilized on an articulated gimbal. It’s a drool-worth filmmaking tool with a heart-stopping $16,499 price tag.
Reviewed: Apple’s Second-Generation HomePod
Apple may offer some of the best wireless earbuds and headphones on the market, but its smart speaker efforts have struggled, and not just because of problems with Siri. The second-generation HomePod works great if you’re all in on Apple, but it can be a pain to use with other devices, and its bass performance can sometimes be too emphatic.
Withings’ Weight-Hiding Body Smart Scale
Withings’ smart scales don’t just sync your weight with a smartphone app, they also capture a wide range of health metrics to help you optimize your diet and fitness routines. But if you’re trying to lose weight, and don’t want to see your day-to-day progress, the Withings Body Smart scale can actually be set to hide your weight on its screen. It’ll show you motivational messages instead.
Custom Fit Mice Based on a Photo of Your Hand
If you spend your days in Excel, any mouse will work, but if you’re a professional gamer, and the smallest twitch of the wrist can mean the difference between a victory or a loss, you’ll want to consider Formify’s mice which are custom-created and 3D-printed to perfectly fit each user’s hand.
An Infinitely Customizable Keyboard With OLED Keys
Reminiscent of the Optimus Maximus keyboard from decades ago, the PolyKybd, a mechanical keyboard with a split layout, uses individual OLED screens on every key, so customizing or re-arranging its layout doesn’t require you to physically move around keycaps, you just have to make some simple software adjustments.
Reviewed: Kobo Elipsa 2E
The original Kobo Elipsa was frustrating both as an e-note with disappointing writing performance and as a super-sized e-reader, with a lack of color temperature adjustments on the screen. The Kobo Elipsa 2E feels like a complete do-over, with both the company’s ComfortLight PRO technology screen technology and a redesigned stylus offering much better performance.
Cordless Drill Powered by a Mini V8 Engine
If the high-pitched whine of the electric motor powering your cordless drill isn’t as satisfying as you’d hope, you can always buy a fully-functional miniature recreation of a V8 gas-powered motor and build a custom drill that sounds like you’re wielding a chainsaw or a souped-up sports car.
Seagate Lightsaber-Themed FireCuda SSD Drives
If you insist that the inside of your gaming PC looks as good as it does on the outside, Seagate’s Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda PCIE Gen4 NVMe SSDs feature LED-enhanced heatsinks that, when combined with interchangeable faceplates, create a glowing lightsaber effect with three different swappable designs.
Reviewed: Razer Edge
As game streaming becomes more prevalent, we’re going to be seeing more and more handheld devices designed to play AAA games over the internet, instead of natively on the portable console. That’s not a bad thing, but the Razer Edge kind of is. Everything from the detachable controller to its awkward 20:9 screen ratio left us wondering if this device was having an identity crisis.
Reviewed: Hot Wheels: Rift Rally
Yes, Hot Wheels: Rift Rally comes from the same people who created Nintendo’s Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, but it’s no longer an experience that’s exclusive to the Nintendo Switch. It works with iOS devices and PlayStation consoles now, and provides a fun racing experience, particularly for those who love to unlock new tracks and vehicles.
Adobe’s ‘Firefly’ AI Image Generator Now Does Video
Adobe first introduced Firefly as an AI-powered tool for generating and editing images, but recently announced it would soon be implemented in the company’s video apps as well, letting users design eye-catching animated titles, create custom soundtracks and sound effects, and perfectly color-correct footage using simple text prompts.
A Museum Is Building a 20-Foot Tall Donkey Kong Game
As part of a $65 million expansion, the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, is building a show-stopping, 20-foot tall recreation of the original Donkey Kong arcade cabinet that will also be fully playable. That’s four times as large as what arcade fans played in the ‘80s, but unfortunately, high scores won’t be super-sized to match.
Reviewed: Nothing Ear (2) Wireless Earbuds
Nothing’s very first product got an update with the Nothing Ear (2) wireless earbuds that manage to justify a $50 price bump over the originals with better sound quality thanks to custom drivers, extended battery life, and improved active noise cancellation.
Spectra 6: An E Ink Screen That Looks as Good as LCDs
Electronic paper has long been relegated to being a display technology for black and white text documents, but E Ink has been making impressive strides with its color e-paper screens, and while the slow refresh rate of Spectra 6 will see its use limited to static signage, it can display up to 60,000 colors and looks impressively rich and saturated.
Asus ROG Ally Handheld Console
Valve’s Steam Deck has been a huge success, thanks in part to the company being able to subsidize its price because the handheld pushes users to the Steam store, where the company can make up the difference. The Asus Rog Ally wants to bring the Steam Deck some real competition with better specs and even the ability to connect it to an external graphics card for maximized performance, but until we know the price, we don’t know if it will be a genuine competitor.
Reviewed: Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola
The ThinkPad laptops were exactly what you’d expect from a company called International Business Machines—all work and no play—and while IBM doesn’t make laptops anymore, the ThinkPad branding lives on in the Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola: a $700 smartphone with a disappointing camera and a design only a corporate executive could love.
Homer Simpson’s Assassin Sneakers Made Real
An episode of The Simpsons from the early ‘90s featured a pair of fancy sneakers called Assassins that were a parody of the incredibly popular Air Jordans of the time. And because everything old is cool again, RETRO (Rocking Everything That’s Reminisced Of) has recreated the sneakers—as closely as they can while keeping lawyers happy—that you can buy for $180.
SpyraThree Water Gun
It’s not hyperbole to call the SpyraThree the world’s most advanced water gun. It can automatically refill itself in seconds, it fires small blasts of water at distances of up to 32 feet, while more powerful shots can go as far as 50 feet, and it has a new competition mode forcing players to occasionally have to go through a simulated reload.
OLED Touchscreens With Pop-up Buttons You Can Feel
Operating a touchscreen without looking at it is all but impossible because your fingers can’t physically feel an on-screen button. But that’s what researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s Future Interfaces Group have created with their Flat Panel Haptics: OLED screens upgraded with the ability to grow bumps allowing virtual buttons to be actually felt.
Adobe Adds Beard Darkening and Other AI-Powered Enhancements to Lightroom
April delivered a big win for dads who are stressed over graying facial hair. As part of a larger collection of AI-powered updates to Lightroom, Adobe introduced a tool that can automatically darken facial hair to make subjects appear slightly younger—although it does nothing to get rid of bad dad jokes.
Microsoft Windows Unofficially Optimized for Valve’s Steam Deck
If you’re willing to jump through a few hoops, you can already install Microsoft Windows on Valve’s Steam Deck, which instead runs SteamOS out of the box. But through a handful of leaks, it was revealed that some of Microsoft’s own developers had created a version of Windows optimized for the handheld gaming machine, including a custom UI with a quick launcher—but it may never see the light of day.
An NES Game With Online Multiplayer
The original NES console debuted decades before most people would have a chance to experience the internet as we know it. But Super Tilt Bro., a new game for the 8-bit NES, comes in a special cartridge upgraded with a wifi chip allowing the game to connect to your wireless network so you can challenge players anywhere around the world, and while using original, unmodified NES hardware.
Walking Around in VR Worlds While Looking Like You Desperately Need a Bathroom
One of the biggest challenges to making VR worlds feel believable is finding a way to interact with them, including walking around without walking into a wall IRL. Researchers at South Korea’s Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology created a foot-sensing mat that measures a user’s footprints and footsteps and determines where they’re trying to walk in a VR world while they’re actually walking in place.
Oyster Tempo Vacuum-Insulated Cooler
The Yeti might be the iPhone of coolers both in brand recognition and performance, but a Norwegian company called Oyster believes its created something even better with a vacuum-insulated double-walled design that maximizes capacity while minimizing the size of its Tempo cooler.
A Laptop With a Folding Wrist Rest
It may never actually see the light of day as a real product, but this concept for a laptop with a wrist wrest that folds away to create a smaller footprint may appeal to anyone who’s struggled to use a laptop on a cramped seat tray during a flight.
Moto G Power 5G Smartphone
The best reason to opt for an Android smartphone over an iPhone is you can find a model with only the features you specifically want, and not have to pay for features you’ll never need. The Moto G Power 5G comes with a beefy 5,000 mAh battery, a 6.5-inch Full HD+ display, and a headphone jack—a rarity today—but sacrifices such luxuries as NFC, used for touch payments, to hit a $300 price point.
A macOS Finder Folder Wallet
Looking for a way to carry your IDs, credit cards, and cash, but refuse to settle for a wallet that’s not an adorable homage to Apple’s macOS? Then check out Nikolas Bentel’s Untitled Folder Wallet, which looks like a real-life version of the blue folder icons featured in macOS.
DJI Mavic 3 Pro Triple-Camera Drone
In a move reminiscent of the battle to include as many blades as possible on razors, DJI’s recently announced Mavic 3 Pro manages to squeeze three cameras onto its stabilized gimbal so aerial videographers have a wider range of zoom levels and more creative freedom to get close to their subjects while keeping the drone—and its spinning propellers—at a safe distance.
Module 8 Vintage Look Tuner Lens Adapters
Analog is cool again, but if you’re a videographer looking to achieve a genuinely vintage look, you’ll need to spend a small fortune on decades-old lenses. Module 8's Tuner adapters promise to create that same vintage look, but on modern cameras and with modern lenses, without the need for trying to fake it in post-production.
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