Some of Our Favorite Tech From $20 to $2,000

If you are looking for some awesome tech, you have come to the right place! Today we are going to be talking about some of our favorite tech gadgets that we have enjoyed using in the past year with prices ranging from $20 all the way up to $2000. Oh, and we’re talking about any and all tech, not just Chromebooks.  The list includes some Chromebooks, smartphones, home products, and even a golf simulator. We’re going to highlight a few of our favorites in this video and post, but we’ve also put together a bigger list of products over at Chrome Shop if you’d like to see the whole thing.  Now, let’s talk about our favorite gear.

Chromebooks

Let’s get started with a couple Chrome OS devices first. First up, we have the Lenovo Chromebook Duet 5 that has been one of our favorite Chrome OS devices around the office lately. It is super thin and light, it has an amazing screen, and the snapdragon 7c Gen 2 processor is faster than expected, giving you plenty of performance for this type of more-casual consumption device.

We honestly think this Chromebook might have finally found the sweet spot between a Chrome OS tablet and desktop-style Chromebook. The 13.3-inch FHD OLED screen and the insane battery life make this thing a great device both for watching YouTube at home or knocking out some emails at the coffee shop. There’s a model at Best Buy that you can pick up for $499 that comes with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage, so if you’re looking for a larger Chrome OS tablet, the Lenovo Chromebook Duet 5 is definitely something that you might consider.

Next up, we have a device that is a little different. The HP Chromebase 22 is a next generation all-in-one Chrome OS device. It features a unique, rotating, FHD screen that can flip from portrait to landscape by just gently pulling down on the side of the display. It also has a sleek, cone-shaped base that houses all of your internals and some fantastic speakers, too.  It has the 10th-gen Intel processor and honestly just offers up a premium and powerful Chrome OS desktop experience that is unlike any other. 

Smartphones

If you’ve been following along here on the site or over on YouTube, you’ve probably seen some of our coverage of the new Google Pixel 6 and 6 Pro. We’ve waited a long time for a true flagship phone from Google and these phones deliver. With great screens, top-notch build quality and Google’s own Tensor SoC inside, these phones give Pixel fans two great options at very competitive price points. Whether you go with these smaller six or the larger six pro, you’re getting a great phone that delivers a true flagship experience from Google. 

But the latest, greatest flagship device isn’t for everyone.  If that’s you, the new Pixel 5a is still a solid phone at an incredible value. Google has been getting really good at making mid-range phones and the Pixel 5a is the latest example of that. You get a lot of phone for a very small price, while still getting the very-excellent Pixel camera. If you’re just on the lookout for a quality phone with the Pixel Android experience and a great camera, the Pixel 5a is hard to beat for the price. 

Home Entertainment and Security

First up, we have the Onn. Android TV streaming dongle from Walmart. This is an incredibly affordable alternative to the Chromecast with Google TV and still gives you everything you need to start streaming content right now. The interface is familiar to what you get with Google TV, you can play Stadia and GeForce NOW, and it supports 4K streaming.  Probably the most notable thing about this one is that you can get all of this along with a nice remote for $20 from Walmart right now. So if you want to save a little money, this is a great, affordable alternative to the Chromecast with Google TV. 

Next up, we have the new Nest camera and doorbell. The big win with both of these security cameras is that they are battery powered and don’t require any hard wiring or electrical setup. We seriously just charged up the camera, mounted it to a shelf in the office using the super-strong magnetic base, and that was it! We set up a home/away routines in the Google home app that uses our location to turn the camera on/off when we arrive/leave and it has worked perfectly. Gabriel has been using the doorbell at his house and loves it too. Again, the big win here is that you don’t have to hardwire anything on the front of your house. Just mount the base, charge up the camera, and you’re ready to go. 

Golf Simulator Setup

Finally, we have something a little different.  We really wanted to include this because it’s something that we’ve really enjoyed having around the office this past year: our golf simulator setup. So if you like golf and if you like tech gadgets, a golf simulator setup is the perfect blend of tech and golf. 

If you are in our Patreon community, you have likely seen a couple different versions of our golf simulator, but we’ve finally settled on what we feel is the final setup. At the core of it all, we have the SkyTrack launch monitor. At roughly $2000, it sits at the lower end of the spectrum for launch monitors that can be used for full-blown simulations, but it has been super-reliable and given us regular access to golf all year round. 

At one point, we were just hitting golf balls into a net and using a TV as the display, but we recently made a huge upgrade and added the Epson Home Cinema 880 projector to the mix along with a Spornia SPG-7 net. The net is perfect as it gives us solid protection from not-so-great shots, breaks down into a manageable carrying bag in just a couple minutes, and has an optional impact screen for projecting your simulator setup.  It’s the best net and impact screen combo that we have used by far, and we’d highly recommend going this route if you want to use a projector with your setup.

So there you have it: our favorite tech gadgets that have been enjoying here lately!  What we’ve covered here in this post is only a portion of our favorites, so be sure to hit the link below to see where you can snag all the things we mentioned here and also check out all the other fun tech stuff we’re into right now over at Chrome Shop.  From there, you can also see our picks for Best Chromebooks of 2021 as well, so there’s a lot of great stuff to see and look into, and we really hope this all might help you make a few purchased decisions as well.