The Vergecast - The Verge guide to holiday shopping

Episode Date: December 6, 2023

The Verge's David Pierce, Victoria Song, Dan Seifert, and Jennifer Pattison Tuohy answer questions from the Vergecast Hotline about what to buy for your loved ones this holiday season. Keep emailing us at [e-mail] or leave a voicemail at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of using gift cards to buy other gift cards. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am, seemingly as always these days, on a walk home from dropping my kid off at daycare. Do you remember how a few weeks ago I told you that I was trying to be a person who walks and go on idea walks and get the blood flowing and get out in the world? It turns out that was a super fun, good plan until it got to be cold. And now I have settled into the routine that I forget about every year, but always settle into. to again about this time, which is where I only go outside when absolutely 100% necessary. And right now, that is basically to walk the dog or take my kid to daycare. And so I'm outside right now, and this is the last time I will be outside, potentially until

this time tomorrow. It's a life, but this is what happens to me every year when it gets cold. So, you know, I'll see you in April or something. Anyway, we have an awesome show coming up for you today. We are going to spend the whole hour answering your questions, at least to the best of our ability about buying stuff. It's the season for buying stuff, right? It's deals, it's presents, it's weird gift exchanges with your coworkers. It's just a time of year you have to buy a lot of stuff. And also, you're trying to tell people what to buy you. So we figured we might

be able to help. And whether you have questions about which laptop to buy or which MacBook to buy or which smart home gear you should get into, or what odd gaming console you're excited about. We took all of your questions. Some of them super broad. Some of them, like, hilariously, impossibly specific. And we're going to answer as many of them as we can on the show today. We grabbed a couple of our best reviewers and smartest folks on the team, and we're going to go through as much of it as we can. Thank you to everybody who sent in questions. It's going to make this super fun. And I have no idea if we're actually going to help anybody, but boy, are we going to try. All right, all of that is coming up in just a second. But first, I got to get home. I got to, you know,

get warm. I got to take some cold meds. I don't know if you can hear. in my voice, but my kid got sick, and then my wife got sick, and now I'm sick, it's great times all around, then we're going to get to it. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data.

And Retool actually builds it on your company's data and your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to Retool.com slash Vergecast. We all need to retool how we build software. Welcome back. We have a panel of stuff buying experts, which I believe is all of our titles here. Jen Tui, welcome back to the Vergecast. It's been a while. Thank you, David.

It has been. It's lovely to be here. I'm sad we missed cooking our Thanksgiving turkey together this year. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to one-up that episode and never figured it out. And so we never did a Thanksgiving episode. It's still one of my favorites we've ever done. If you haven't heard it, go find it. Dan Seafords here.

Hi, Dan. Hello. And in the studio with Dan, V-Song, hello. Hey, what's it? We have a lot of things to get through. I've assembled all of you because you each have, I would say, both, like, good expertise, but also just like broad knowledge of cool stuff. And we need broad knowledge of cool stuff.

So let's just dive in. We got a bunch of stuff to get to you. I've set this up. We're going to do some like general questions at the beginning. And then we have a couple of categories in which we got a bunch of questions. We're going to go through those. And then we have my favorite question that we got through this whole process to do at the very end. So we're going to get into that. But let's start with a couple of just kind of grab baggy questions. The first one we got is I'm going to butcher everyone's name here. And I'm very sorry in advance. I believe it's from Colbine in the Vergecast email who says, are there any good options if I want to swim and listen to music? or dare I even say listen to podcasts. It seems to me that they all require me to have MP3 files, which I don't even know how to obtain in today's streaming world. Ideally, I'd like to keep my phone in the locker room and somehow stream music and podcast via the Apple Watch. Also, our bone conduction headphones, the way to go, or is the quality horrible?

Let's break that into two parts. V, I want you to go first because we brought this up. Chris Welch and I had a long chat about MP3 players a couple of weeks ago on this show that made a lot of people feel a lot of feelings. But I want to know first if you have a good answer to our friend's question. My main answer is that there are a lot of trade-offs and there is nothing yet out there that's going to kind of be everything that I think this person is looking for because Bluetooth and water, not really great friends. There's a reason why you're having a hard time finding things that aren't MP3 based. And it's because Bluetooth is not meant to send things through water. It's just not. I'm not a swimmer. I'm going to caveat that. I stick primarily to running because I should not be let on a bicycle. And I had to take swim gym in high school, and that should tell you

everything about my swimming skills. But that being said, I have a lot of friends who swim. And the Apple Watch, do you want the Apple Watch to actually track your swim? Because if you want it to track your swim and play content, you're out of luck. But if you just want it to be like a media player, there is something from H2O audio called The Inverval. And it's a wild device if you look at it. It's like, this little framework thingy and you like snap it onto your goggles and it's on the back of your head. So you just have the Apple Watch on the back of your head and it attaches to either bone conduction or in ear earbuds. And it's not streaming. You have to like download offline playlists. And technically it works. Though, you know, I will say I have doubts about whether this thing

will last long term just because you really want a waterproof wearable. Most of the advanced ones are not particularly strong at that. Like the Apple Watch is waterproof up to 5 ATM, which is what we consider swimproof. But that doesn't mean it doesn't mean that if you're diving to the depths of your pool a lot, there's still a risk there. There's an inherent risk. So that's one option. And the other one is stuff like the Zygo.

That one technically allows you to stream, but it's just because it has a radio frequency transmitter on it. So that it takes the Bluetooth playing from a source like your phone, which is you wanted to be in your locker room. So this might not actually work out for you. But it's taking it from a Bluetooth source. And then there's like a frequency transmitter that converts the Bluetooth into something else that does work in water. And that's a little pricier. So, you know. That's the hackiest thing.

ever heard in my life. Yeah. So these are the, you know, swimmers got it rough. Runners and cyclists, we can just use our regular Bluetooth headphones and, like, Bluetooth works fine in air. But water just adds a different layer of physics to the problem. So that there is a reason why most of the players you're finding are MP3 based. And also another reason why they are bone conduction based, too, because, you know, like the

earbuds, if the earbud falls out, are you going to be able to dive to the bottom of the pool to pick it up. So that's why like most swimming headphones you see they are going to be the type that goes around your, goes around your head or, you know, has a little like string attached to them. You're not going to really get any true earbuds for for underwater use. So, you know, things to think about. And to the second part of your question, are bone conduction headphones good? No. They're fine. They're fine. If you like bass, they're not great. And so like, like, As a runner, you know, there's a lot of reasons and, like, there's time in place for using bone conduction headphones as a runner. I really like them when I'm in an area and I'm worried that a truck is going to run me over if I've got, like, noise-canceling headphones on.

But I really like bass-heavy music for running just to, like, drown out my thoughts of, I want to quit, I want to quit, I want to quit. So if that's you, bone conduction isn't really going to be all that useful. And then podcasts is another problem because not every platform is going to support podcasts. So, like, if you want to listen to podcasts, but you're primarily on Apple Music, and that's how you're downloading your offline playlists, well, you're going to need the Spotify. If you want to listen to audiobooks, audio books, you're going to have to find something that supports audiobooks because those files are encoded in a specific way. So there's just no easy way to do it. You can do it. There are people who do it.

It's just you might have to learn how to get those MP3 files or find an option that lets you download offline playlist from your streaming service of choice. It's tough. I will say, I'm looking at the Zygote website right now, and it both looks like the hackiest thing in history and also like it might be kind of a magical thing. Like if it's as good as the reviews say, it seems like kind of the perfect answer. But I am curious about bone connection headphones, in part because I feel like, Dan, I swear like the third day of the verge, you and I. I had a conversation about like when are bone conduction headphones going to be the thing. They seem like a good idea. They see like, remember when like aftershocks was out here being like bone conduction headphones are the future.

They're still around. They are still around. And I feel like they are perfectly suited for when you just want to hear sounds. And that's all you don't care about audio quality. You're just like, and swimming is actually a good example of this. Like you don't really want to plug your ears, but you want to be able to like kind of hear music, which sounds like damning with faint praise, but I kind of mean it. I don't know. Where are we with bone conduction headphones? Is it as bad as V says? You know, I think there are people who

really swear by them and really like them, but I think that outside of swimming, the other use cases for bone conduction headphones are running and cycling where you need spatial awareness for safety reasons. And I honestly think that the advancements in ambient modes on true wireless earbuds have kind of made it so that you can wear standard earbuds and use the AirPods active noise, not the noise canceling mode, but the new one, which is slipping my mind right now, which kind of like automatically adjusts the cancellation to give you awareness of noises and the general ambient mode of AirPods is very good, where you can still hear your music with a good audio quality and still hear everything around you for safety reasons.

So I think for most people, unless you're really specific and you want bone conduction for very specific reasons, I don't know that I would recommend bone conduction for most people looking to use them. Outside of like swimming, which is like obviously you don't want, you can't put AirPods in a pool and you don't want them plug it up your ears anyways. Jen, what do you do in your exercise? Are you a headphones while exercising person? I bought the Beets ones that stick in your ear. Beets Fit Pro. The purple ones. Yes, the purple. Well, I did buy the purple ones. We both got the purple ones and then my daughter lost them. So now I have

boring gray ones, but I love those. I have the gray ones. I bought boring gray ones because I got renewed because I'm like, I'm not spending this much money again. But I'm not, V is the fitness girl here. I'm the walk slowly around the block girl.

Sam. All right. Let's get to the next question. Oh, which is actually another headphones question. This is a good one. This one came from the hotline and it's from Daniel. Hi, my name is Daniel. I've become a bit obsessed with trying to keep a clean, minimalist bag. I'm a remote worker, and I constantly have to take meetings from coffee shops. And I've been, like, mostly satisfied with my setup where I have a pair of quiet comfort 45s or Sony XM-5s that do a decent enough job of letting people hear me. But occasionally, they just stop working. Like, there's a critical threshold of noise in a coffee shop where the directional just don't do the job anymore. And so now my bag has like a backup solution because I couldn't

take the anxiety of not being able to do my job occasionally. And that it's clunky. Like I don't want to have two pairs of headphones in my bag. But I also want to have like good noise cancellation for when I'm listening to music and I want to have a good microphone for when I'm doing my job. And I want a little help answering the question of what is the best way to do this. Thank you for your time. Just use the wired Apple headphones. Yes, that's exactly what I was going to say. Because it's totally going to save space in your bag. And, you know, Becca's done, what, 5,000 videos at this point showing how good the quality is on them.

So, I mean, that's what I do. I just always have a wired pair in my bag. Actually, Becca made me buy a pair for work reasons. So I would just say those are super easy to stash and a lot cheaper than a lot of the other options out there. I agree. This was going to be my recommendation as well. the only caveat is they are not going to do any noise canceling for you. So basically, you just have to be willing to carry around both.

I love the inclination to have redundancy. I love redundancy. I'm the same person. But it does mean that you're likely going to have a set of over your headphones for your noise canceled focus time. And then when you need to hop on a call, you just switch to the wired ones. I think that's right. Every bone in my body wants to scold anyone who gets into a loud coffee shop and then tries to take calls. Like, it's just, it's the worst for everyone involved when people do that.

But it's the holidays. And so I'm not going to scold our friend Daniel for just trying to do his job while irritating every single other person in this coffee shop by shouting into his microphone. Well, you don't know what Daniel's home life is. Daniel's got to do what Daniel's got to do. I get it. I do think, like, we've spent a lot of time talking about and testing various microphones in various coffee shops on the show.

And what we have discovered is that you just can't beat the microphone on a big-ass boom arm that comes all the way down to your mouth and you're just either going to have to get Apple's wired headphones like we've been talking about or without the gamer headset. And there just is no good third option. There's a reason pilots' headsets look the way that they do. Yeah. When they're flying a helicopter.

I mean, if the Rayband meta smart glasses could actually pair with your laptop, I might have recommended that because the mic is right on your nose And like, you could watch our video review. Becca did a mic test. It is, like, on par slash almost slightly better than the wired Apple headphones, but they don't really pair easily with your laptop. So that was, like, one of the things that she pointed out as being kind of a miss there. And then just smart glasses in general, you know, that that is the thing that they're saying, right? You can use these for calls.

They're not good enough for a coffee shop. Like, just any time you have any kind of ambient noise, you have to crank the volume on them. so loud that it kind of defeats the purpose. And, you know, I've never heard anyone besides the Raybans tell me that I sounded good while wearing those. So, yeah, you know. Yeah, like, really, it is just the closer the microphone is to your mouth, the better it's going to sound is, like, basically all you need to know about all of the stuff. And the problem with the noise cancelling headphones generally is that your ears are not that close to your mouth. That's a fun fact about how the world works. And I think, like, if there is a thing and you all should

tell me if this exists that is like a normal pair of noise canceling headphones onto which you can attach like one of those boom arms that is a microphone. So those things do exist. I forget the name of it right now, but you did just remind me of there's a device that you can literally stick to the outside cup of any pair of headphones and then it has its own Bluetooth connection or dongle connection to your computer and it's basically a boom arm that goes across your mouth. It is one of the jankier setups. But basically, it's like if you've got a pair of headphones that you really love the sound or comfort or whatever features of and they just don't have a mic or don't have a great mic, it allows you to retrofit a mic to it. I think that you are still going to run into the same similar

problem. So even with a boom arm on that, you're dealing with Bluetooth connections. You're dealing with other, you know, factors. It's just another thing for your to manage and deal with instead of just plugging in the wired headphone, which is always going to be the most rock solid connection. Yeah. Yeah. That's fair. carry your Yeti to the coffee shop, your Yeti or your shore. Just carry that. That's totally, no, don't do that. That might be worse. No, I think truthfully, the, like, if you just want to carry one thing, I think, like, Jabra has pretty good headsets. They all have the boom arms, so you're going to look a little silly, but at least folds up and is a decent set of headphones. That's probably the best.

I think they're called, like, the Evolves or something, and they're actually pretty solid. They're expensive, but they are the best kind of headphone-looking headset. working thing. You look like you are in a call center, but that's why they work because that's what they're designed for. A hundred percent, because you are, in fact, in a call center. Yeah. Okay. That's enough headphone questions. Please leave me alone at the coffee shop and everything will be fine. We're going to take a quick break and then we're going to go back and we're going to answer some computer questions and then we're going to get into the really tough stuff, which is the smart home. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Every thriving, successful business has

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from people that essentially just want to know what computer they should buy. So let's help people buy computers. The first one we got is a voicemail from Benjamin. Let's hear it now. Hey, Vergecast, it's Benjamin.

I've got a classic form over function dilemma I'm hoping you can solve for me. I'm looking to buy my partner a new laptop for the holidays, but she has her eye on the 15-inch surface laptop five specifically because of the all-aluminum chassis. I don't feel good about getting her a laptop with last year's mid-range specs,

especially for such a premium price. Maybe I would feel different if the Surface laptop six had actually come out this year, but I'm looking for recommendations for Windows laptops with an all-metal chassis and modern specs that I can steer her towards instead. She'll mostly be doing light tasks like web browsing and streaming, but I wanted to have enough muscle to hold up for a long time. she's also in grad school so great battery life would be a bonus. Is AMD still the efficiency champ for laptops?

Any advice is appreciated before I'm sure I'll ultimately buy her the surface because, you know, happy wife, happy life. Thanks. Dan Sefert, help this person. What should Benjamin buy? It's not the surface laptop. I just want to put that out in front here. Well, hold on.

I'm going to give him two recommendations. He should ignore both of them and just buy the surface laptop. He specifically said this is the one his wife wants. That's a fair point. And so he should just buy the one she wants. That's what I was going to say. I know nothing about the laptops, but buy her what she wants. Yeah.

I mean, there's a lot of nice things about the surface laptop. It is aging. As he mentioned, it's not really super new. I think it came out in 2022. But it's got a great screen, great keyboard, and it's a surface design. So it's a really nice premium design, as I think are all the things that she likes. If we were to buy something else, I've got two recommendations. One of them is a little bit less expensive.

It is the Assuse Zenbook 14X. This is a 14.5 inch screen, so it's a little bit smaller than the surface laptop. But it's an OLED display. So really awesome screen. It's got the latest 13th gen Intel processor. It comes with 16 gigs RAM, half a terabyte of storage, and you can get it for like $750 bucks, maybe even less if you're shopping around. So it's a very up-to-date current model.

It's still metal. It's not quite up to the build quality of the search. laptop, but it's still, it's not a plastic piece of junk. It's still a high-quality laptop. The other option is a larger one, and since they mentioned that they want a 15-inch surface laptop and they like the aluminum chassis, I would suggest taking a look at the LGgram 16. The things to like about the LG gram 16 is you got that 16-inch screen. It's huge. It's a 16-10 aspect ratio, so you got a lot of room on there. It's a very thin and light design, which is the signature of the Graham series, and it has tremendous battery life.

Comes with the latest 13th gen processors, 16 gigs RAM, a terabyte SSD. Best by selling this for about $1,700. So it's on the more expensive cent end here, but the Surface laptop's not a cheap computer. So those would be my recommendations, but at the end of the day, go buy your wife a Surface laptop five. Yeah. I mean, you said it yourself, happy wife, happy life. Yeah.

I don't know about you guys, but when I first started dating my now wife, she, like the first Christmas we were together, she like literally. gave me a list of links and was like, buy me one of these for Christmas. And I took this as a test to be like, okay, what cool thing can I buy that isn't on the list, but shows that I read the, and I did that. And she was like, why didn't you just buy me a thing on the, she's like, I literally I sent you a link of the thing and the color that I want? And so I learned very quickly, she sends me a list of links. I click on one of them and I click by and I give it to her for Christmas. And she's very happy. And it has been a winning move ever since. And it makes

Christmas shopping the easiest thing in the world. And so I have learned the hard way that that when they tell you what they want, just, just roll with it. So I think that's good advice. Yeah, buy your spouse what they ask for. But also, if you want her to call in and us to talk her out of the Surface laptop five, because it is an old computer with old specs, I'm also happy to do that. All right, one more computer question. It's an email from Nathan that says,

Hi, friends, I have a 2020 Intel MacBook Pro right now, and it is the base level, which means it has some trouble when I use Excel and PowerPoint. I'm looking into starting graduate school in the fall and would like for a Mac to be my main driver, but I don't love the idea of spending a bunch of money on the souped up MacBook Pro. I also find myself needing software that is only available on Windows, which leads me to believe that maybe I should buy a powerful Tower PC to keep it home and buy a lower-end M2 MacBook Air and remote access the Windows computer when they need to do more processing.

Does that make any sense, or should I go for a more expensive MacBook Pro, and that be it? V, I want to know what you think having used the newest, fanciest best MacBooks. Ah, yes. I still can't believe that the MacBook Pro 16-inch that they sent me was $7,200. That configuration was just absolutely absurd. So, like, the one thing that I would have a question for Nathan is, like, what is his workload like? Just because, you know, he mentions using that he needs Excel and PowerPoint, but then also programs that are only available on Windows. So, like, if you have programs that are only available on Windows, maybe you do want the powerful power PC.

But having used the very, very souped up MacBook Pros and having an M2 MacBook Air as my personal computer right now, you know, the MacBook Air is good enough for most of your, like, daily, you know, productivity type software. So long as you don't do what I did and get an eight gigabits of memory, that was a dumb job. choice on my part. You need at least 16. So you have to factor that into the price. So yeah, like the one thing I'm hung up on is like meeting programs that are only available on Windows. So I believe there is a solution to this problem, which is the Windows app, which is now a thing that exists as of just a couple of weeks ago. And I confess I have not used this at all personally. But the idea is you can now download Windows as an app and run what amounts to a virtual computer on your Mac computer.

I do not believe that you should buy a computer and also another computer and then use the one computer to access the other computer. Like that way lies madness. Dan is the like boot camp exists. Parallels exists. There's like kind of strategies here. Like what do we do? Well, first off, I'll start with saying, I don't think you need a MacBook Pro.

I think a MacBook Air like V said is entirely capable of running the workloads of Excel and PowerPoint, particularly compared to. to an Intel MacBook Pro. Like the jump going from Intel to an M-Series processor is just enormous, and you're going to have power to spare so long as you equip it with at least 16 gigs of RAM, and I would recommend probably 512 to a terabyte of storage for this next half of the recommendation. And so I think Go MacBook Air is my first recommendation. The second thing is buy the MacBook and then explore these options for running your Windows apps on the MacBook.

whether that is the Windows app, whether that is parallels. Bootcamp might be a little weird. That actually requires you to use a Windows on Arm build, and it's a little wonky on the Arm Max. I think Parallels is a little bit more straightforward of a solution, but again, I personally have not directly used it. But you should try it out and see if it allows you to do the things that you need to do. And if it doesn't, then you might have to go your route of setting up a Tower PC.

I don't even think you really need to go a Tower PC. I think you could go a pretty simple PC. and that's always plugged in at home and you can just remote desktop into it and go from there. Nathan's not the only one with this problem. I know Nila has been on the show many times talking about how his lawyer wife has to deal with

very weird Windows-based programs and trying to use them on a Mac. It's a huge pain. He's not the only one with this problem and so that means there are people who are trying to solve it. And so that would be my recommendation. Go get a good MacBook Air. Equip it well enough.

You are still probably going to be spending close to $2,000 on this, but it's not $3,000. and see if you can get your Windows applications to run, and if not, then go to the next step. And if it's the kind of thing that it's like old, outdated software that just only runs on Windows, odds are that if you buy one of those little $200 mini-PCs things,

it'll work fine for the occasional times you need to use it. So that would be my recommendation is that if you do end up buying two computers. Unless Nathan is saying these, quote, needing software that's only available on Windows is AAA games. Oh, good. No. No. Then you do need that big power tower or you should just buy a gaming laptop. But I don't think that's what he was referring here. Just get a console. If you're going to, if you really want to be a Mac user and play AAA games, the console is just going to be so much easier for you.

Like, just, just do it. There's so many PC gamers furiously sending you emails right now, V. I just want you to know. Don't. Just don't. Just don't do it. Like, so like my spouse is a gamer or was a gamer and they had this problem too. and they have just like thrown up their hands in the air and gone like, F it of a PS5 and an Xbox, that's just just it. And, you know, for their purposes, like, are you really gaming on the goat that you want it to be on your PC?

Or do you want, in their case, a giant 65-inch LG OLED to sit like two feet in front of because they move up their chair to two feet in front of the, so that all the racing games can go directly into their eyeballs. I don't know. I just think, just do the console and use the Mac for work. That's if we are talking AAA games here. I'm just saying MacBook Air, mini PC, steam deck, and you were just living your best life. Like that's the way to do it.

Happy holidays to everybody. It's a huge victory. All right, let's move on. Jen, I have terrible news for you. It's time to talk about matter. I'm so sorry. We have to do this one more time before the year is over. We got a bunch of smart home questions.

I would say all of which I can distinguish. into this voicemail from Chris. Hi, this is Chris from Los Angeles. Got to ask going into buying season. What's up with matter? What home tech am I allowed to buy? What home tech should I absolutely not buy? Is it the year for matter?

Thanks, Chris. I also want to know the question because I'm buying a house. Yay, my first house. And I'm going to go straight into the smart home. So I need this for me too. Yeah, we got a lot of versions of this question because I think this is, the time of year to buy all this stuff, right? Like, they're fun stocking stuffers.

They're fun gifts to buy people. And every version of this question we got is essentially, am I a moron for buying smart home stuff right now? As we've talked about many times, we're in the middle of transitioning to Matter Matter is kind of here. It's also kind of not here. Jen, talk us through it. Give us a gift guide here.

What are we doing? Well, two points. The first would be friends, don't buy Friends Matter devices for Christmas. Okay. Just don't put that pain on them. And the second would be, V, can you wait a couple years to move in to your new house? No, my lease is up at the end of this month. So I know Nila's been going through this same issue with his house.

This is a tricky time. And I would like to say it's unique in the smart home to be in this awkward situation where you're between protocols and between devices and technologies. But no, this has been happening since I got into the smart home a decade ago. So the smart home is continually changing. It's never in a place where you're like, okay, it's here. This is right. This is the way to do it.

I'm happy. So really, it's kind of like any tech. You know, I do always encourage people to buy, you know, I think we do this a lot with our reviews. You know, the best you can afford that fits your need. And that's still where it sits with smart home, I think. Matter is going to help, but it is not helping yet. And right now, my number one recommendation about my Matter devices would be only by Matter devices that also work on other platforms, which is to sort of break that down a little bit. So Matter itself, obviously, not a platform, but it does support all the major platforms.

And that's its biggest selling point. And that's the one thing that I feel is good about Matter devices. If you want to buy a cheap smart switch now for your Apple Home setup, you can go and do that. You really didn't have the option before Matter. And that's an area where matter has succeeded. Yay. Where it has not succeeded is in being able to pair to multiple smart home systems. So I have spent the last month tearing my hair out, trying to pair my Phillips Hugh platform,

my Phillips Hugh bulbs in my house, which I have had for over a decade because that's one of those systems that's been around for a long time. And it's been something of a complicated process. And basically there are still problems with that. interoperability. So it's great if you want to buy a device and pair it to one smart home platform. But if you're one of the few, and I'm guessing there aren't a ton of people out here that want to use two, three or four smart home platforms. But I'm also guessing that if there are people that want to do that, they are listening to a third class. They are our people. Yes, welcome. And that's where things go sideways fast. So I paired my

huge bulbs, all 40 bulbs I have in my house. And slowly collected over the years. to Apple Home, worked great through Matter, paired them to Alexa, worked great, next day, left, they'd gone from Apple Home. They weren't there anymore. And they weren't working anymore. So they weren't responding, which anyone that uses Apple Home will be familiar with. And then vice versa, the same thing happened with Alexa. It stopped working. And so I have literally been tearing my hair out.

It's not being fun. So Matter right now is still in its early stages. I remember when we first went to the launch party, launch event for it, the head of the CSA, the organization. behind it said matter is a journey. It's going to take a long time. And if matter is a journey, I would say we're right about the stage where we've just stopped at the gas station to fuel up. So it's going to be a really long time until we get where we need to be in terms of that solid interoperability. So right now, number one takeaway, if you're going to buy a device and you want it to work with a specific smart home platform and it works with matter, that's great,

but also make sure you have a backup. So that it also works with Amazon Alexa over the cloud or Apple HomeKit as a home kit device because there are still a lot of interoperability problems. Unfortunately, it is not the salvation of the smart home that we were all hoping, but there's still potential. And the most important part about matter right now, I would say, is futureproofing. So having a device that works with Matter now is a good thing for the future of your smart home, but it's not going to solve your problems, most of your problems today, unfortunately. So one of the things they promised us, or quite loudly said at the beginning of all of this was all your smart home devices that you currently have will work in matter going forward.

So, yay, you don't have to go out and buy new stuff. That does not seem to be really happening. And, you know, Phillips Hugh, an example I just gave. I mean, it does work with matter, but not well. So I've just reverted to using it the way it always worked, which it worked brilliantly. It has for many years. And what's not broken in the smart home, you should not try and fix. because you always run into problems.

So backwards compatibility has been one of the sort of real letdowns here. We've really hoped that a lot of our current devices would get upgraded to support Matter and either over Wi-Fi or thread, which is one of the main protocols that Matter runs over. And it seems like from talking to companies out there that the kind of load that matter requires for their products is just, it's much heavier than they had expected. so they're not able to update these devices necessarily with firmware. And if they do, sometimes that actually takes away function, which is one of the issues that Eve had with some of its devices.

So it's smart plugs. They updated to matter. And there was a potential that it was going to take away the function for energy monitoring, which is one of their best features. So they managed to get around that. But, yeah, there's problems there. It's not as easy as people had hoped. So, V, I think you should probably wait.

Oh, no. One of the things that I believe strongly about gift giving is that you should never give someone a to-do list. And I think one of the things that happens when you give somebody like a smart home gift in a lot of cases is like I've now signed you up to make 10 phone calls and rewire your entire house. But so here's what I wonder. And I'm curious kind of for everybody's perspective on this because we're all sort of dealing with smart home stuff at various stages of installation. What is a good and not-to-do-listie smart home gift you can give someone at this point in time? A plug? A plug, yeah.

You know, individual components are actually tough to recommend because you don't know what platform, unless you know this recipient very well, you might not know what platform they are using or prefer. That's true. So if you are going to do individual components, something like Jen said that works on all of them is obviously the way to go. So smart plugs like for Miros, they work on all the major platforms, very reliable. We like them a lot. They're very inexpensive. Hugh bulbs are very reliable, work on all the platforms. Hugh lights I have found, by the way, are almost always a hit gift. Because they set up really fast and they're like, they're fun.

So like in three minutes you're just changing the lights in your house. Like, I have found, I don't know that anyone I've given them to as a gift has actually used them for very long. But they're a fun. But they haven't complained about them. So, yeah. So like there's things like that. I think that for a few years, everyone was given everyone smart speakers and smart displays. I think we're kind of past that point.

And not everyone wants a smart speaker. If they did want one, they probably have it already. And so that's a little tougher. I just think that like two, kind of like what Jen was saying, I think smart home products make a great gift for yourself and less of a great gift for someone else. Unless you know this person is already a smart home. person and they've given you the list of things they want and there's smart home things on there and you just go buy them on that. I think that like you are introducing a project to the uninitiated.

My only caveat there is if you are going to be the project maintainer, then maybe that's okay. An example, my in-laws, I gave them a Google Home Hub or Nest Hub, whatever it's called these days, the smart display a few years ago and I linked it up to. Google photos and now they automatically get photos of the grandchildren on their kitchen counter. I installed it, set it up on their Wi-Fi. They don't ever have to touch it. It just shows them pictures. And then I saw that my father-in-law said it to a five-second changeover between the images. So it was just speeding by images when I was over there. So I set it back to a minute.

Everyone's happy. But like you have to be prepared for that. Otherwise, you are kind of introducing a project to them. And maybe that's not the best gifting type of thing. Photo frames are a good one. My mother-in-law loves them. That's the nice thing about the smart displays is being able to set up that feature. And there are ones that aren't smart displays if people don't want the speakers and microphones as well, like Skylight and aura. But in terms of, yes, actual smart home devices, it's kind of like, I mean, would you buy someone a tap, a faucet for Christmas? It's like those types of, you know, I'd love a smart tap, a smart faucet myself. So it's my English.

my Englishism. It's just there's slightly odd things. Oh, here's a smart switch. Go wire it into your house. As much as you're going to get out of it, I think the one area that perhaps I would say, okay, this would be kind of cool, is when you know they have a problem

and there is a smart home device out there that will solve it. For example, like a smart garage door opener. Or, you know, if your granddad or your neighbor is always leaving their garage door opening, you're like, look, here's a smart garage door controller. look how you can do this. And every time you give someone a smart gift like that,

you should have a little coupon next to it that says, I will come and install it and set it up for you. That's good. Yeah, and then I will not maintain it over time. This comes with seven days of service, and then no more beyond that. That's all in your warranty last. V, are you thinking about smart home gifts?

What are you going to give or receive this year? No, so I think I'm going to follow everyone's advice and do all the research ahead of time, aka Jen, I'm sliding into your DM sometime soon, and then I'm going to make a list and then send that list to everyone and say, only buy things on this list for me. But yeah, I'm basically, I want a thermostat

as like number one on my list, just to, you know, lower my utility bills. And then, you know, further down the line, I'm going to get one of those toto toilets in the bidet. So it's further, further down the line. That's a good gift. That's like a slightly awkward thing to talk about potentially at the holidays. But if you're that kind of family, like get after it.

I bought one last year for the fans, like the family gift or for like my wife and I to use. And I love it. You know, you will change someone's life by interest using them to a toto. That is true. I don't know if that counts as smart home, but it's high tech. So I'll take it. This will do. All right.

We got to take one more break and then we have a few more questions. We'll get out here. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts, but time and resources are limited. Finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates takes up valuable time you could be giving to your customers. That's where LinkedIn Hiring Pro comes in. It's built to be your hiring partner, helping you find the right candidates faster.

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Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. All right. Jen, one more smart home question before we get out of this. Matter chaos. This is an email from Alec. And this is like not specifically a Christmas holiday question, but this is actually a thing I've heard a bunch of people buy for the holidays. So I'm going to, we're going to do it anyway.

The email says, last spring, Google announced that it will be getting rid of the NEST security products and support in April 2024 and that Ness customers can get a free set of ADT hardware to replace it. Problem is, the ADT hardware doesn't seem very good to me, and I'd rather have a better alternative that can work with my remaining NEST products, doorbell, smoke detector, etc., as well as Apple Home and Google Home. I'm left wondering what a good alternative is to Ness security that isn't ADT, lots of options, but no clear good direction. This definitely falls under the do not buy someone a whole security system for their house unless you know what they're doing. But if you want to give this to, you know, yourself or your partner or your family for the holidays, seems like a reasonably good gift. Can we help this person? This sort of sunsetting of nest thing has been going on for a while and does sort of seem like a lot of people might just be left in the lurch. Is there a good way out of this?

Yeah, it's a tricky one. It's such a shame. The nest secure system actually was a pretty neat system. I was very sad when it went away. What it did so well and which I do have some alternatives for, so hopefully we'll have a good solution here. But what it did so well was it took home security, which is full of tiny little white plastic things you have to stick around your house, and digest it all into one tiny little sensor and a nice little central hub. So it was a beautiful product in that respect. It was overpriced and it had a fair number of other floors.

But, you know, that core functionality was really good. And then also the NFC tag. So you didn't have to worry about running in and like pressing the keypad thing, which still gives me nervous sort of. hives when I have to do because I do it all the time when I'm testing these devices. Like, oh, no, the police is going to show up. But anyway, so it had some great solutions there. And this is what I like about the smart home when it takes a sort of legacy product and does, makes it smart, makes it, oh, wow, this is so much better than it was before.

And there are a couple of solutions out there that will fill that nest secure shaped hole. Unfortunately, not entirely precisely. There's a few sort of caveats and, you know, choices. to make. So you're not going to get some of the benefits that they're secure had. But what I love about these two is that they both offer that all in one sensor product. So the two options that I really like are Arlo Secure and then the ECAB security system. So they both have these all in one sensors. And Arlo Secure is probably going to be the best solution for our caller here because it's very well integrated with Google. It integrates into the Google Home system really well. the cameras and such, like the actual security system integration, it gets a little tricky when you integrate security systems into other systems because you want them to be secure.

So there's a lot of sort of caveats about giving other platforms access to your security system. But in terms of using your Google Home app and integrating with your cameras, AOLO secure is probably going to be your best solution. And it's really relatively inexpensive. It's like $200 to get started with the keypad and two sensors. And these sensors are awesome. They're all in one multi-sensors, and they do eight different things, which is kind of impressive. So they're contact sensors, motion sensors, ambient light sensors, temperature sensors.

They can also, the system itself can also listen for smoke and CO alarms. So you don't need, you know, all the other sensors that most security systems come with. And also, they're leak detectors. You can't use them as a leak detector and a contact sensor at the same time. But you can, you know, you can choose, pick and choose what you want them to do, which is really neat. And if you use AOL cameras, you actually can get video verification, which is a pretty key part of any kind of security system these days if you sign up for professional monitoring. And that was something that Ness Secure didn't offer. So that's where police will only come to your house if they can actually verify that something's wrong and not that you just forgot.

You forgot to know how to disarm the system pressing the buttons. So the ALO Secure is a good one. And then the ECB secure system, very similar. It also has these sensors that are contact and motion in one, but they don't do all the other stuff. But what they do, and this is something that V might be interested in, is they do sync with your thermostat. And so if you leave your door open,

you can set it to automatically turn your heating or AC off when the door's left open just so that you're not accidentally cooling the outside. outdoors or heating the outdoors. As my mom used to say, we're not heating the outside here. So that's a neat sort of extra feature, which I really like. And that's the kind of thing. You know, security systems are boring. They're kind of expensive. You're paying monthly for them most of the time, and especially if you have professional monitoring. So it's kind of cool when they can do something else useful and helpful. And all of these, both on Arlo Secure and EKB, you can use as motion sensors and contact sensors in your smart home. So when the door opens, the lights can turn on. You can set

motion automations and those types of home automation setups, which are really useful in your house, as well as also protecting you potentially if someone comes and tries to break in. So those are both good options. The other one would be a bode, which has, they're a bit more like traditional security system. They have all the different sensors, but they also work as a Z-wave hub. So if you want to connect to a broader smart home with Z-wave devices, and all three of these do work with Apple Home. They all work with Google to some extent, and they all work with Amazon Alexa Assistant too. So you have kind of broad support there on the platforms. They all also have cameras with them. So our caller does mention he already has some Google cameras, but if you wanted to

add more cameras, you can use cameras from all three of these systems in there. The ECOBE cameras and the other cameras are really quite good. The abode cameras I would maybe steer clear of. So There's some three good options and three good price points too. They all, I think the cheapest actually is the abode which starts $160. The ADT stuff, unfortunately, just really wasn't very impressive. I read a lot of people complaining about that when it came out. But we did actually report a couple months ago that it looks like ADT is working on another system where they're more tightly integrated with the nest devices and have some slightly nicer looking hardware.

So if you can wait, you might want to wait and see how that pans out. But otherwise, I would look into one of those three options that I mentioned. I think you'd probably find something there that you'd like. I feel like our takeaway so far is that holiday season 2027 is going to be like sick for the smart home. It's going to be so good. And until then, just, you know, close your eyes and point at something and we'll try. No, I think that's super helpful. I'm actually going to, I think, go probably buy one of those this holiday season.

Stuff's on good sale. I guess that's part of the reason everybody buys stuff is. just everything's on sale right now. All right, a few more questions. Then we're going to get out of here. We got a couple of questions about gaming, specifically handheld gaming. This first one is a voicemail from Sean.

Hey, this is Sean from Ohio. Christmas is coming up, and I have a seven-year-old son at home that is really in the video games. I've been noticing on TikTok a lot of these handheld, almost Game Boy-esque video game emulators. I'm wondering if those are any good,

if emulator handheld gaming is very good. I've heard of the Steam deck and we own a Switch, but I love to get him something that I can just load up a bunch of games. Also, I'm a Mac user, so I don't know if that prohibits me or kind of detracts from being able to do that. Anyways, looking for a game device to buy for my son. Love to know your thoughts. Thanks. There are two correct answers to this question, I would say.

One is a device called the Retroid Pocket, which is one of those things that comes from Amazon and ships with like a million built-in games that you can play. Some of them don't work very well. Some of them are like porny and weird on a lot of these emulator devices. But it's also there are some very good games. So that's a good like all in one emulator kind of system. How old is your son if they're porny?

Seven, you know, whatever. I'm not here to litigate. I'm not in charge. No, I think it's, it's, you can basically either do the like, a system like the analog pocket, which is an amazing piece of hardware, but requires you to kind of bring your own games, which is the more legally upstanding thing, as we've talked about in the show in the past, but also more expensive and more complicated. Or you can buy the things that you see all over Amazon from companies like Anbernik and

Retroid and others that are just the, we downloaded every ROM we could find on the internet, put it onto a device, and we'll ship it to you from Amazon. Those are very fun. They come with some weirdness. Some of the games don't work. Some might be games you don't like very much. They require some extra management, but they work. The retrooid pocket is very good.

It's the one people seem to like. So I would steer you that way if that's what you want. But if you want to be a gaming purist, the analog pocket is the one. Then we have a question that is another one we've gotten a bunch of, which is a voice on from Hillary. Hi, VirgTap. This is Hillary. My husband and I are expecting our second child in May.

and my husband wants to get a handheld gaming device to go with those long sleepless nights. I think it's a little bit silly too because he's not actually going to have time to play it. But pretending that he does, he's trying to choose between a Steam deck and a Nintendo Switch. Which would you recommend for using while caring for an infant? Thanks.

Neither of them are very good as nannies, I would say. So I think why I like this question is this is less what can I do for the child and more like how do I occupy myself while my child sleeps on top of it. Yeah. Having just had an infant, I had terrible luck with this. I found that any time I put a screen up sort of behind his head, he would wake up and it would go sideways. But I will say between these two, the switch is the choice for me at least. Yeah, same. The games work super well offline. The thing is really simple and straightforward. You can put it on a table and just use the joycons in your hands or you can hold it or you can plug it in. It'll end up being a thing your kids can use

when they get it like I just think it I lean way towards switch as the more sort of I have a kid on my lap and also want to play video games kind of device. I totally agree. And I think that the challenge with the steam deck while a phenomenal gaming device is that you will spend a lot of time tinkering with it. And if you do have limited amount of time to play, because you are also caring for a new infant, the switch is the one that you'll be able to just pick up, start playing, put it down when you need to. And like David said, it is convertible to tabletop or TV playing very easily and stuff like that. So I would recommend the switch as well.

The best device for one-handed entertainment while you're caring for a child, because generally you're only going to have one hand is a Kindle. Just press the button and you can turn the page. It's the only one that you don't need two hands for. Yeah, my gaming strategy was to get weirdly, into this game called Holddown on my phone, which is just a game where you shoot a ball at things and try to knock them down and get as far down as you possibly can. Have I ever spent six straight hours playing that game while a child slept on top of me? Yes, I absolutely have. So I truthfully,

I would say like an Apple arcade subscription is like the better infant care strategy than either of these devices. But yeah, I would lead in Nintendo Switch if that's where you're going. All right. One more question. And then we're getting out of here. This is a much broader question, so everybody has to answer what you can go any direction you want. It's an email from Charles. It says, I think niche small-batch hardware products make great gifts. Things like the Panic Playdate handheld console, the dirty wave M8 synth tracker, or the paper shoot camera. The problem I run into is finding these products in the first place. Usually the marketing relies on word-of-mouth referrals, so they're hard to find if you're not deep into the specific

community or hobby these products are made for. I'm curious to know what your favorite small-batch bespoke hardware is. I'm going to broaden this question very slightly, which is just to say We each have to recommend one thing that is like thoroughly non-obvious, something that you wouldn't find on like a gift guide that is like, here's the cool Bose headphones and AirPods and this iPhone and that laptop. I've got one. And I will caveat that this might appear on one of our gift guides because our gift guides are very good. And, you know, I consider this a niche small batch hardware. I'm not sure if Charles will agree, but I love the pine sill. It is a very cool little tool if you are into tinkering at all or if you want to explore it.

Like my personal experience, I've never soldered anything before. I bought a pine sill and now I'm soldering. That's like how it goes. And it was very easy to get into. It's very easy to use. It's very small and lightweight. It's inexpensive. It's a small company.

Open source hardware. That would be my recommendation. That's a good one. That counts. I'll give you that. V. What do you got? One of the things I tested this year that is completely stupid, but that I kind of

enjoyed the concept of was the now watch. Okay. You're not going to find this anywhere, but it is like a stress tracker device thing, but it has these little disks. There's no display. It's one of these no display type trackers. It just buzzes whenever you're stressed and it has these like gemstone faces that you take in and out with a little magnet and that thing was fun.

I would not recommend it to most people to be clear who actually care about their health tracking, but for people who are just like, I want something that's unique, I want something that's very stylish, I want something that's going to alert me when I'm really stressed out because I'm the type of person who cares and wants my tech to tell me to cool down. Then that one, it's weird and kind of fun. And then I thought of the other one that's really niche and something that I bought for myself this year is the MediCube booster H. and it's a little wand that you zap your face with

so that your skin care goes into your skin more deeply. It uses electro-poration. It's all over TikTok. But if you're not in the skincare community, you ain't going to know about this thing. So there you go. That's good. The MediCube booster H, it's on sale for like 50% these days.

So I would do it. Haley Bieber uses it. So there you go. All right, Jen. You got one? Well, I'm not sure it quite fits with the niche small batch hardware. but maybe it does. But home assistant.

The home assistant green, if you want to, you know, be budget, which is their new budget version of getting started with home assistant. But as we started the smart home discussion with all the problems with matter and how you should buy a device that also works with other platforms, home assistant would be your friend here because it can help you get any device into any platform and also will offer matter support going forward. It has Matter Support in beta right now, as everyone else does. Everyone's in beta right now.

So, yeah, it's every time I write a review on The Verge, one of the comments will be, but you can already do this with home assistants. It is a great, powerful tool. It's one of those devices that if you give to a friend, you are going to then become their backup IT person. But you will know the right friend to give this to. If you give it to the right friend, they will be very, very grateful. Yeah, the home assistant people are a little like the Linux people, but Home Assistant is much more of a product that regular people can actually figure out.

And it's gotten that way a lot over this last year or two. They've really put a lot into making this a lot, a much easier proposition than it once was. I agree. I have two. One is a gadget and one is not, but it's close enough. One is the one I've already mentioned, which is the analog pocket, which I think as like a little game boy thing for the modern age is just one of the best made pieces of hardware out there. It's the kind of thing that like if you're in the gaming world, you know this and you're like, David, the analog pocket doesn't count in this game.

But if you're not, you've probably never heard of it. It takes cartridges. It's a very fun thing. If you want to like play retro games in a new way, it rules. And they're also building a thing for the N64 that is not coming out this year, but it's probably coming out next year. And I'm confident I'm going to do whatever it takes to buy one whenever that happens. So if you want to just wrap up a piece of paper that says, I'll buy you the N64 thing, that works fine. The other one is I've gotten back into a kick with notebooks.

As Dan can attest, I spend all of my time switching between to-do list apps. And recently I have given up on to-do list apps, and I'm back to writing on paper like our ancestors did. And the team from Cortex, which makes very good podcasts over at Relay FM, they made a thing called the Sidekick Notepad that is this big, wide note. that is part, like, lists on the right and just sort of empty space to write on the left. And it sits on your desk and is a perfect, like, day planner thing. And I love it very much. It's a great wrist rest for your keyboard, too. It is specifically designed to be the width of your keyboard, which is very cool.

Yeah, and it sort of sits in front of it, and you can, like, write on it and then go back to typing. It's lovely, and I have enjoyed it very much. So that's my recommendation. All right. Thank you all. We should get out of here. I hope we have spent a lot of people's money. And if you want to buy us nice things to, to, to, to, you know, to, you know,

tell us send Jen all of your matter compatible gadgets and she will somehow figure out how to install them in her home. All right. Thank you guys. Appreciate it as always. Thanks. Bye. Bye.