Every year, TIME's editors and correspondents work together to compile a collection of the most interesting and groundbreaking new products and innovations for the Best Inventions list. As holiday season approaches, the TIME team has pulled out a selection of 10 best consumer electronics items from the list that would make a perfect gift for the techies in your life. In the decades since touchscreen keyboards became universal, plenty still mourn the sublime experience of typing on clacky BlackBerrys.
The weary have compatriots at Clicks, a company chockablock with BlackBerry alumni devoted to bringing back tactile mobile keyboards. Its new Power Keys accessory is a slide-out keyboard that snaps onto the magnetic back of most phones. Clicks co-founder Jeffrey Gadway says it obsessively adjusted the curvature of the keys, the separation between rows, and the actuation points that trigger each keystroke.
The goal was to “make something that will feel so good [to use], even if you don’t know why.” _—Martin Cizmar_ Today’s computers are approachable, but also distracting, argues Caligra co-founder and CEO Grant Bisset. That’s why his company developed Workbench, a minimalist operating system for anyone comfortable opening files with terminal rather than clicking around for paper-shaped icons. Free of aesthetic artifice, the software offers scant apps beyond a web browser by default.
You can add anything you want via a package manager like Homebrew, quickly move windows around with keyboard shortcuts, and open the Stash dashboard to take notes or check the time. —_Daniel Varghese_ **Buy Now:**The C100 terminal designed to run Workbench on Caligra The global market for extended reality devices is projected to sextuple to roughly$2.13 trillion by 2034. But stuffing the capabilities of a headset into normal glasses people can comfortably wear has long been a challenge. XREAL Aura’s Gemini-powered, tinted specs offer a 70-degree field of view, hand tracking, and spatial anchoring, while staying lightweight because computing power is in a tethered “puck” that clips over a pocket or on a lanyard.
Powered by Android, Aura lets users download millions of Google Play and XR apps and connects to a Bluetooth keyboard to watch movies or play video games right on their glasses._—Richard Eisenberg_ The diminutive Plaud Notepin S, which you can pin to your shirt or wear on a necklace, quietly records and transcribes at the press of a button. Its app summarizes the resulting text with the help of templates, ensuring its notes are useful whether you were in a doctor’s office or lecture hall. The company knew its original 30 templates had limitations.
This summer, Plaud established a Template Community allowing anyone to create and share templates that others with similar needs might appreciate. _—Rae Witte_ Gaming monitors have long forced players to choose between pin-sharp detail and the speed needed for competitive play. Odyssey G8 G80HS combines both, running games at 6K resolution and 165Hz, then switching at the press of a button to 3K at up to 330Hz. It’s billed as the world’s first 6K gaming monitor with native 165Hz performance and 330Hz Dual Mode. _—Chris Stokel-Walker_ What good is a mobile game controller if it gives you hand cramps?
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