Some Verge-favorite gadgets are cheaper during Prime Day 2025
Every month, we like to ask our staff about their favorite stuff — whether it’s tech, kitchen tools, or camping gear. What they answer gives us some interesting insights into what the folks here like to use when they’re at the job or enjoying some time off. Now that Amazon’s Prime Day sales have come again, we’ve looked through some of our recent “favorites” articles and found deals on a lot of the devices we like. So, we thought we’d list a few in case you have read about them in the past and thought, well, that sort of sounds good, but it’s a bit pricey. (Or — that’s pretty cheap, but maybe I’ll wait until the price goes down even more…) Here some of our staff’s most-liked gear that is now on sale during Prime Day. CamelBak Hydrobak hydration pack Where to Buy: $60 $39.26 at Amazon $65 at CamelBak If you’re itching to get out...
Every month, we like to ask our staff about their favorite stuff — whether it’s tech, kitchen tools, or camping gear. What they answer gives us some interesting insights into what the folks here like to use when they’re at the job or enjoying some time off.Now that Amazon’s Prime Day sales have come again, we’ve looked through some of our recent “favorites” articles and found deals on a lot of the devices we like. So, we thought we’d list a few in case you have read about them in the past and thought, well, that sort of sounds good, but it’s a bit pricey. (Or — that’s pretty cheap, but maybe I’ll wait until the price goes down even more…)Here some of our staff’s most-liked gear that is now on sale during Prime Day.
CamelBak Hydrobak hydration pack
Where to Buy:
$60 $39.26 at Amazon
$65 at CamelBak
If you’re itching to get out on a bike ride even when it’s 85-plus degrees, you don’t want to be stuck without an adequate supply of water. I only have room for one drink holder on my bike, so I’ve found that it’s just far more convenient to carry water on my back with the aptly named CamelBak Hydrobak hydration pack. It’s a lightweight backpack that holds up to 1.5 liters of water, which it says is enough for a two-hour bike ride.The backpack also comes with a handy straw that you just lift up and drink from, preventing you from having to stop and drink from your water bottle (unless you’re coordinated enough to take a sip while riding, which I am not). It also keeps your water relatively cool even when the sun is beating down your back.Aside from storing water, there’s a zipper pocket where you can store car keys, your ID, and other small items. It’s not just ideal for biking, either. Many people use the CamelBak Hydrobak on long hikes, runs, and even for music festivals. — Emma Roth, news writer
Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 4
Where to Buy:
$99.99 $69.99 at Amazon
$99.99 $69.99 at Best Buy
I try to bring a Bluetooth speaker everywhere with me when the weather’s good. A pool party, a park day, a golf outing, a hang on the back patio — it’s all better with music! There are obviously lots of good speakers out there, but for me the UE Wonderboom 4 is the perfect one. It’s only $100, it’s small but loud enough to work just about anywhere, its battery lasts all day and then some, it’s waterproof, and it floats. (All the colors look nice, by the way, but… get the blue one.) There are fancier speakers with more features, and the $200 Megaboom does sound a lot better, but I keep a Wonderboom in my trunk, and it has made me the party hero more times than I can count. — David Pierce, editor-at-large
Thermacell E55 Rechargeable Mosquito Repeller
Where to Buy:
$34.99 $17.68 at Amazon
$29.99 at Thermacell
My biggest deterrent to spending some time outside are bugs, mosquitos specifically. I wish they’d bug off. They have me looking like I’m doing interpretive dancing to avoid being poked. Thankfully, a gadget that I got last year has made it so that I don’t need to be (as) protective of my exposed skin.Thermacell makes rechargeable and refillable mosquito repellers. I got the E-Series model, which creates a safe zone where you likely won’t be bitten. It lasts a little over five hours per charge, meaning I get more than one use out of it before needing to charge it again. Just be sure not to use it in an environment where there isn’t proper ventilation; Thermacell notes that its ingredients shouldn’t be a concern for people or pets, but I don’t want too much insecticide around my loved ones — or my food. — Cameron Faulkner, commerce editor
Anker Nano Power Bank
Small, convenient 5,000mAh charger with foldable USB-C connector; marketed for later iPhones but usable for Android phones as well.
Where to Buy:
$29.99 $23.99 at Amazon
I have a tendency to hold on to my phones as long as they work reasonably well, and although I must admit I’ve been tempted by the Pixel 9A, I will probably still be using my Pixel 6 for a bit longer. The only issue that I’m starting to hit is battery life — after over three years of use, it’s not unexpected that I will sometimes hit the 20 percent mark toward the end of the day. So I recently realized that I’m going to have to start carrying around a portable charger. At first, I was going to go with the 20,000mAh Anker Zolo Power Bank, which had gotten a good number of recommendations. But it weighs over 11 ounces and when I dropped it into my bag, it felt like I had added a small brick. That’s why I traded it in for the less powerful but much lighter Anker Nano Power Bank, which plugs into my phone’s USB-C slot like a small add-on peripheral. The Nano weighs only 3.5 ounces and supplies 5,000mAh of battery power — enough to keep me going to the end of the day. And it comes in several pale colors (I chose Ice Lake Blue), which means I can see it more easily in the dark reaches of my bag. — Barbara Krasnoff, reviews editor
Hamilton Beach 3-in-one Egg Cooker
Cooks up to seven eggs three different ways; comes with an omelet bowl that also steams vegetables.
Where to Buy:
$20.99 at Hamilton Beach
$20.95 $19.99 at Amazon
My body composition has become about 70 percent egg in the blissful month since I bought this cooker. I never want to buy new countertop kitchen appliances, because almost every time I do, they end up dusty in the back of the cabinet, but I’m amazed by how useful this simple Hamilton Beach Egg Cooker is. I can prepare hard- or soft-boiled eggs to perfect consistency in minutes (with no cleanup!), and having it on hand has dramatically cut back on my bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich habit. So it’s good for my cholesterol and my bank account. — Kristen Radtke, creative director
Hydro Flask Standard Mouth Water Bottle (18 oz)
Stainless steel 18-ounce water bottle with double-wall vacuum insulation.
Where to Buy:
$29.95 $23.49 at Amazon
This is a sturdy stainless steel water bottle that keeps water cold as I sip it throughout my workday. What more could you ask for? I take it on trips, too, and while it’s got a few dents from some drops onto concrete, I don’t really care. If anything, the dents add some character and make it mine.— Jay Peters, news editor
Instant Pot Duo Crisp
An 8-quart 11-in-1 air fryer and electric pressure cooker that air fries, steams, slow cooks, sautés, dehydrates, and — in other words — gives you a world of cooking features on your counter.
Where to Buy:
$129.99 $89.99 at Amazon
For the past few years, the Instant Pot has been a staple in my kitchen. From making rice to slow-cooking stews and even frying up chicken, it can do just about anything. The best part is that the Instant Pot can cook most recipes in a fraction of the time it would take in the oven or on the stove. Rice, for example, takes just six minutes to cook (not counting the amount of time it takes to build pressure), and there’s no fussing with covering the pot or adjusting the heat. Sometimes, it’s just easier — and much less stressful — to let the Instant Pot take the wheel. — Emma Roth, news writer
Braun MultiQuick 5 Vario Hand Blender
Lightweight, 21-speed hand blender that’s easy to use and put away.
Where to Buy:
$69.95 $49.99 at Braun
How often do you blend things? Is it never? Maybe the reason is that taking out, a**embling, and cleaning up after a normal blender is just way too much work. Do you know how many sauces I’ve thickened since getting an immersion blender? This thing is small, quick to set up, and you can mostly clean it with just a blast under the faucet. You’re going to blend so many things. — Jacob Kastrenakes, executive editor
Gripstic bag sealer 12-pack
This reusable sealing rod locks air and moisture out to prevent your snacks from going stale, prevents freezer burn, and keeps food fresh longer.
Where to Buy:
$23.95 at Gripstic
$23.95 $18.99 at Amazon
It’s kind of weird how much I like our Gripstics. Bag of chips open? Quick, grab a Gripstic. Kids vibing between two different cereals this week? A well-placed Gripstic will ensure they don’t get all squishy. Tiny package of chocolate chips you used for a recipe that is now kind of open in your cupboard for who knows how long? Just fold the top over, slide a Gripstic on it — the small blue one, thank you — and stop worrying so much.I don’t know about you or your family’s shopping and eating habits, but try as we might to shop on the outside walls of the grocery store, we inevitably come home with many products packaged in single-use plastic bags. That in and of itself is a frustration, only compounded by those same products going bad if they’re not stored properly. The Gripstics are a simple solution to this universal problem, and one that I’m certain has paid for itself many times over. — Christopher Grant, group publisher
I fixed my home network lag without buying a new router or a mesh system
When people think of home network upgrades, mesh Wi-Fi or a fancy router is usually what they think about. After all, the marketing around mesh networks makes it seem that they're a silver bullet to every Wi-Fi problem. However, many mesh systems cause the exact problems that they promise to...
When people think of home network upgrades, mesh Wi-Fi or a fancy router is usually what they think about. After all, the marketing around mesh networks makes it seem that they're a silver bullet to every Wi-Fi problem. However, many mesh systems cause the exact problems that they promise to solve. Even Wi-Fi 7 routers boast blazing-fast speeds and better coverage than ever, but they a Wi-Fi 7 router won't fix what's truly wrong with your home network. Before you rush to buy a fancy Wi-Fi router or invest in an expensive mesh system, consider some other upgrades that deliver way better performance per dollar. Your home network might not even need a dedicated mesh network; it might just need a few optimizations to perform dramatically better.
John Doe New York
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Your cheap USB-C cables will fail with USB4
There's sometimes a negative connotation that anything cheap must be of bad quality, but that couldn't be further from the truth. More affordable mechanical keyboards can oftentimes be just as good as more expensive typing machines. The same goes for a bottle of red sauce or even a monitor, so...
There's sometimes a negative connotation that anything cheap must be of bad quality, but that couldn't be further from the truth. More affordable mechanical keyboards can oftentimes be just as good as more expensive typing machines. The same goes for a bottle of red sauce or even a monitor, so long as you know where to look. USB-C cables, on the other hand, can be downright terrible if a bad-quality cable is purchased.
Sophia Wilson Atlanta
Published by: aplhsindia.in
I ignored BIOS updates for three years until I realized they were fixing my entire platform
BIOS is something that users touch only while building a PC, enabling DOCP/XMP, or reinstalling Windows. Once that is done and the PC starts working again, the BIOS becomes invisible. I was in the same situation; I built my PC about three years ago and went back to the BIOS...
BIOS is something that users touch only while building a PC, enabling DOCP/XMP, or reinstalling Windows. Once that is done and the PC starts working again, the BIOS becomes invisible. I was in the same situation; I built my PC about three years ago and went back to the BIOS a few more times to reinstall Windows.
John Doe New York
Published by: aplhsindia.in
SpaceX just filed for what could be the biggest IPO ever
Elon Musk's final frontier is officially open for business now that SpaceX has formally filed its S-1 prospectus with the SEC. That kicks off what could be the largest initial public offering ever when it lists on the Nasdaq stock exchange with the ticker SPCX. SpaceX generated $18.67 billion in...
Elon Musk's final frontier is officially open for business now that SpaceX has formally filed its S-1 prospectus with the SEC. That kicks off what could be the largest initial public offering ever when it lists on the Nasdaq stock exchange with the ticker SPCX.SpaceX generated $18.67 billion in revenue in 2025, driven largely by its Starlink satellite internet service, which brought in more than $11 billion, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. The company lost over $4.9 billion last year, with capital expenditures soaring to $20.7 billion last year, a leap from $11.2 billion in 2024, as reported by The New York Times. xAI, which recent …Read the full story at The Verge.
Sophia Wilson Atlanta
Published by: aplhsindia.in
4 Android Auto tweaks that transformed my car’s infotainment system
Most of us treat Android Auto as a utility to set up once and never touch again, trusting Google's default settings, hoping the experience is safe and functional for the widest audience possible. For me, though, functional isn't as good as a personalized user experience, and even in its current...
Most of us treat Android Auto as a utility to set up once and never touch again, trusting Google's default settings, hoping the experience is safe and functional for the widest audience possible. For me, though, functional isn't as good as a personalized user experience, and even in its current state, missing all the good bits Google announced at the Android Show last week, AA packs plenty of scope for customization.
Rachel Terry United Kingdom
Published by: aplhsindia.in
I replaced GitHub Copilot with a self-hosted AI and I won’t go back
I'm a fairly novice coder, even though I've dabbled in one language or another over the last few decades. I'm also terrible at formatting, so I really appreciate autocomplete and formatting help from agentic coding tools. I've been using GitHub Copilot, partly because it's the default in VS Code, but...
I'm a fairly novice coder, even though I've dabbled in one language or another over the last few decades. I'm also terrible at formatting, so I really appreciate autocomplete and formatting help from agentic coding tools. I've been using GitHub Copilot, partly because it's the default in VS Code, but the recent tightening of usage limits has me looking elsewhere. It feels like a bait and switch by Microsoft, getting you hooked on high token usage, then closing the door, and I'm over it.
Emily Brown Houston
Published by: aplhsindia.in
I quit using Adobe Firefly for a free open-source alternative
The controversies around image and video generation are hard to ignore; whether training data was scraped without consent, or artists are getting compensated, or whether the outputs are doing something genuinely new or just laundering someone else's style. Adobe Firefly was the one that felt the least icky since it's...
The controversies around image and video generation are hard to ignore; whether training data was scraped without consent, or artists are getting compensated, or whether the outputs are doing something genuinely new or just laundering someone else's style. Adobe Firefly was the one that felt the least icky since it's trained on licensed Adobe Stock content and public domain stuff, but it's still paywalled past the free tier credits. On the other end of it, there's ChatGPT, which had its whole Studio Ghibli moment last year that I'd rather not get into here.
Daniel Martinez Dallas
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Your Kindle doesn’t need to be hacked to escape Amazon’s walled garden
When you buy a Kindle, you only focus on reading books on it, like most folks. Only after owning one do people look for tutorials and guides to remove the niggles. Several tutorials, forum threads, and video comments are packed with people seeking guidance on jailbreaking the Kindle.
When you buy a Kindle, you only focus on reading books on it, like most folks. Only after owning one do people look for tutorials and guides to remove the niggles. Several tutorials, forum threads, and video comments are packed with people seeking guidance on jailbreaking the Kindle.
Maddison Craig Ireland
Published by: aplhsindia.in
My UGREEN DXP4800 Pro NAS quietly replaced half my home lab, and I didn’t expect that
I bought the UGREEN DXP4800 Pro NAS expecting it to behave like a better storage box. That was the sensible role for it, at least on paper. It had room for drives, enough performance to handle my files, and a more appliance-like personality than the random assortment of mini PCs...
I bought the UGREEN DXP4800 Pro NAS expecting it to behave like a better storage box. That was the sensible role for it, at least on paper. It had room for drives, enough performance to handle my files, and a more appliance-like personality than the random assortment of mini PCs and Raspberry Pis that had accumulated around my home lab. What I didn’t expect was for it to start swallowing jobs I used to reserve for dedicated machines.
Ludmila Pejić Serbia
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Cron inside WSL beats Windows Task Scheduler for one reason: it actually works the way I think
You've probably already heard the standard pitch for WSL. Windows Subsystem for Linux gives users an environment to run Linux apps, commands, and graphical tools. That pitch is accurate, and the fact that you can access Linux without dual-booting or spinning up a separate VM is reason enough to install...
You've probably already heard the standard pitch for WSL. Windows Subsystem for Linux gives users an environment to run Linux apps, commands, and graphical tools. That pitch is accurate, and the fact that you can access Linux without dual-booting or spinning up a separate VM is reason enough to install WSL. But there's another handy way to use it that you may not expect. I like to take advantage of the Linux cron utility to automatically run scripts against my Windows filesystem, which is natively accessible under WSL.
Olivia Miller Seattle
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Your Pixel comes with these 4 fantastic apps, and they deserve a spot on your home screen
Phones these days come with a wide range of apps installed out of the box, ranging from the essentials to the bloatware we all want to remove. But somewhere in the middle are genuinely useful apps that you might not immediately realize you need until you start using them. These...
Phones these days come with a wide range of apps installed out of the box, ranging from the essentials to the bloatware we all want to remove. But somewhere in the middle are genuinely useful apps that you might not immediately realize you need until you start using them. These apps have rightfully earned a place on my home screen, and you should check them out, too.
Olivia Brown United Kingdom
Published by: aplhsindia.in
‘Solve all diseases,’ you say?
Let’s unpack what Demis Hassabis said at the end of yesterday’s Google I/O keynote. This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest gizmos and potions that swear they're going to change your life. This week's issue is a special...
Let’s unpack what Demis Hassabis said at the end of yesterday’s Google I/O keynote. This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest gizmos and potions that swear they're going to change your life. This week's issue is a special early edition tied to The Verge's Google I/O coverage. You can expect our next issue at its usual time next Friday. Opt in for Optimizer here.Toward the end of this year's Google I/O keynote, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis declared, with a completely deadpan face, that the company hopes to "reimagine the drug discovery process with the goal of one day solving all disease." This is the sort of statement that the phras …Read the full story at The Verge.
