The Tech That Helped Us Endure 2020
By: Dave Gershgorn
Tags: Gadgets, Tech, Holidays, Digital Life, Gift Guide

At OneZero, we’re looking back at the year and, since some of us are giant nerds, thinking about the tech that helped us through it.

The OneZero staff’s enthusiasm for technology varies greatly. Some of us will want a gadget so much that we preorder it while others are skeptical of wireless headphones. This gift guide serves as a recommendation of objects that brought us joy but also a crystallization of how our tech habits have changed this year. Gaming, scrolling devices, digital gifts, and work-from-home hacks are a bit more prevalent this year, and nobody is giving concert tickets or spa days.

So treat this like a time capsule wrapped in a gift guide. And maybe you can find something that brings someone else a little joy, too.

Many Nintendo Switch owners overlook how fantastically customizable their little handheld systems are. There’s a thriving market on Etsy for 3D-printed accessories that redefine how you hold the system or offer an easy and stylish way to organize your game cartridges. For my money, though, nothing rivals a Joy-Con makeover. Earlier this year, I paid Slick Switch Shells to replace my controllers’ default outer shells with a much more appealing see-through pink. Plus, the shop’s owner, Alberto, fixed their annoying “drift” glitch while he was at it. It makes my hardware feel more definitively mine. And while you may have a hard time sneaking your giftee’s Joy-Con away for a facelift, know that you can also buy new controllers with the unique see-through look from vendors on Etsy and elsewhere — or, if you’re patient and mechanically talented, you can get standalone shells and do the swap yourself. New Nintendo Switch Clear Joy-Con Controllers, $133; Joy-Con Shell Swap Service, $60; DIY Kits, $23.99 and up

For my husband’s quarantine birthday in May, I got him a subscription to MasterClass, the streaming platform that offers online classes on a range of subjects taught by famous experts. It’s been a fun, refreshing option when we’ve exhausted all the new shows on Netflix we want to watch. We’ve learned new cooking skills from James Beard Award-winning chef Thomas Keller, gotten pumped to do yard projects thanks to Ron Finley’s gardening pep talks, and have gained insight into Helen Mirren’s brilliance with her acting series. MasterClass annual membership, $180

Much to my own disappointment, I recently made the switch to AirPods, a device I’d avoided for as long as possible in some minor act of rebellion against Apple’s ever-growing ecosystem of proprietary gadgets. To me, AirPods symbolize the kind of needless iteration and waste that’s become synonymous with Apple’s brand. (Not only did the company force customers to adopt AirPods through a series of blunted design changes, but the product itself has also been engineered so as to persist on Earth long after we, the human consumer, are dead and gone.)

For years, I was passively committed to EarPods, even after they became vestigial, solely for the reason that they came with the iPhone for “free.” Sure, they snagged on doorknobs and unceremoniously ripped from my head, and yes, I had to acquire a dongle when Apple removed the headphone jack. But at least they weren’t AirPods, a thing I could never imagine spending $160 on. I still haven’t dropped a dime on them — my mom received a pair with her student discount and generously gifted them to me — but now, I can’t help but dwell on their true cost.

I don’t feel good about using them and won’t suggest anyone buy them. Will I throw them away? Probably not. So I suppose this serves as less of a recommendation and more of a confession. But since the holidays are about conspicuous consumption, I’m trying to get better at considering the consequences of my own material choices, and maybe, reader, you are too. AirPods, $159

There are a lot of video games that exist. Some of these games include: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: Force Recon, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered, and Reel Fishing III for the PlayStation. But out of all the video games, one stands alone in being good: the turn-based deckbuilding roguelike Slay the Spire. I basically just bought this game because a friend told me, “Dude, you’ll get so addicted to this game if you play it,” and I was like, “Sure, that sounds good.” And I did! And it was. Slay the Spire on Steam, $25

After a full workday spent staring at the computer screen in my home office, there is no piece of pleasure reading compelling enough to warrant sitting at my desk/prison for a minute longer. But I really do want to read the beautiful journalism that I consistently shuffle into my Instapaper queue, and I was surprised to find the solution to this quandary on yet another screen. After more than a decade as a tech or tech-adjacent journalist, I finally bought my first tablet this September. I haven’t set up Twitter, email, Slack, or any of the other apps that distract me during the day, and as a result, it feels more like a virtual book that I can curl up with anywhere than it does a doomscrolling device. It’s made reading the internet enjoyable again. iPad, $329

Eight months into quarantine, it became clear that unless we wanted to recreate The Shining, my family of five needed to get out of this house. In October, we rented an Airbnb in Joshua Tree just so we could Zoom from somewhere else that was driving distance away. At the time, I had to message the owners of houses we were interested in to find out if their Wi-Fi could handle five simultaneous Zooms, but since then, Airbnb has created tools that let you search just for houses with really great Wi-Fi. Instead of gifts for your family this year, I would absolutely recommend a change of scenery. And if you don’t feel safe traveling right now, then get an Airbnb gift card for a future time when you might even get to fly on a plane again. Airbnb gift card, $YouDecide

The most relentless reminder of how tiring 2020 has been is the daily confrontation with my face on video calls. After a few months of pandemic life, Nars concealer (powerful!) and Zoom’s touch-up feature (also powerful!) were no longer enough to convince myself that I was still me and not just a dry, ashen husk of former me. Eventually, I took the plunge and got a ring light: Not the super-bright, six-foot-tall kind that YouTubers use — you don’t want to show up to the team meeting looking like an influencer — but a modestly luminous, palm-sized one that clips onto my laptop screen and is just bright enough that it makes me look (and therefore feel) like I’ve had at least two coffees, a bit of sun, and a decent night’s sleep. I got the Whellen Selfie Ring Light, a lightweight 3.5-inch device that has both warm and cool settings, plugs into a USB port, and only costs about $17 — a small price to pay for those days you need a visual (and psychological) boost. Whellen Selfie Ring Light, $17

In a year that saw quarantine and stay-at-home orders proliferate then deflate then hang around confusingly in various states of limbo until nothing made sense anymore—and, lo, it still does not—the one constant for most of us was continuous online consumption of streams and commercial goods ordered via websites, most of them very large oligopolies. Hence Amazonification is ravaging independent shops, boutiques, and bookstores, and The Culture is consolidating under a handful of increasingly dominant streaming platforms.

To this, I say why not give the gift of access to independent content portals and the independent artists who put their content on them to survive? We will still be stuck inside ingesting endless reams of content well into 2021, after all. Give a subscription to a cool indy streaming outfit like Means TV, which sells gift cards, so your nephew might take a break from Netflix and HBO SuperMax. Use Bookshop to buy books if you do not have a local bookstore, seeing as how Amazon is an ethical monstrosity, and order direct from your local bookstore if you do. If they don’t have a website, call them up! I’ve been on the horn with my bookstores more than ever this year, and it’s been really nice, frankly, to chat with bookshop workers— got some great recs out of it all, too.

Buy the music lover in your life a gift card for Bandcamp — I finally went down the Bandcamp rabbit hole this year, and honestly, I love it. No, there are not as many artists you hear for free as on Spotify, but Bandcamp is by far the better recommendation engine — the user reviews will lead you to that new vital band or musician you had never heard of instead of the same five or six suggestions you always get from the big S, and also, artists will receive more than 0.0012 cents a stream. I could go on, but you get the point — Amazon and its ilk suck. Deliver fresh content. Bandcamp gift card, $10-$100

Some gadgets don’t do anything new, per se, but they instead amplify an experience you already enjoy. I bought the Ember Smart Mug as a birthday gift to myself and have used it every day since. The mug doesn’t just keep your coffee or tea hot but, instead, at the perfect temperature — which means every sip is as good as the last. Ember 10 oz. Smart Mug, $99

For the first six months of the pandemic, I worked from a small plastic chair in my bedroom. My laptop was often propped on my knees, though I also stacked yoga blocks on the radiator to create a sort of desk when I was feeling ambitious. The chair was near my closet, and on Zoom calls, my coworkers occasionally noticed a pair of pants floating over my head. Hunching over like a cooked shrimp for eight hours a day took its toll: My back hurt, obviously, and my legs started falling asleep every couple of hours too. My wrists burned. The floating pants became a running joke among co-workers. Still, I figured, this was all temporary — any minute, life would return to normal. I resisted committing to reality.

Then in September, with an endless Covid-19 season stretching ahead, something snapped. I put together a desk in an unused corner of the apartment. I bought a laptop stand, an external monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse. Working from a real desk with all of my equipment felt like a revelation: I was more engaged, more present — more at work; and when I stepped away from the desk, it felt like I was actually clocking out. There was, above all, a psychic release in acknowledging that life might not go back to normal and gearing up accordingly.

I suggest buying a used monitor rather than a new one: You can find a top-of-the-line monitor from a couple of years back for less than $200 on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace. I recommend a Rain Design mStand laptop stand ($40), a Logitech K380 keyboard ($40), and a Logitech MX Anywhere 2S mouse ($60). There are probably better versions of each of these gadgets out there — but it’s a start.

The gadget that brought me the most joy this year was the Nintendo Switch, but video games were covered thoroughly by Peter, if not Damon, so I will instead choose a gadget that helps me set the ambiance when I’m playing the Switch. In January, I was looking for an alternative to my harsh room lighting. After a while, I settled on a simple solution — a remote-controlled, color-changing light bulb that lets me dim the warm, orange light that’s the same as the room light’s tone. But when I get into my gaming mode (or really most evenings when I’m relaxing) I will either change it to another color (blue is my favorite) or turn on the fade setting that switches between colors. It really helps me go into another world and ignore this one for a bit while I’m trying to chill out.

I got my light bulb from Amazon for $9.99, which puts me on Santa’s (Brian’s) naughty list, but you can find the light bulbs at Target and Best Buy, which are also mega-corporations. I did see color-changing light bulbs at an independent hardware store the other day, though, so there’s hope for the resistance yet. General Electric 60W A19 With Remote Color Changing LED Light Bulb Clear, $12.99.

The first time I tried a standing desk, at my wife’s then-office at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2017, I wimped out almost immediately. I knew that sitting all day was killing my posture, but to paraphrase Xzibit, standing in place at a computer felt like doing work while I was doing work. Six months and one spinal arthritis diagnosis later, I decided to give it another go.

In the meantime, my wife had acquired at some discount an extremely Santa Barbara-y device made by a local startup called Fluidstance. It’s a type of balance board — not the absurdly precarious, rolling kind that I had used as a training device for surfing years earlier, but a more stable version that stays upright with just the slightest, continual, unconscious adjustments of your weight and stance.

I was skeptical that it would be of any use beyond making its user look like a bit of a tool. But from the moment I tried it, I was hooked. Suddenly, working at my makeshift standing desk (at the time, it was a regular desk with a cardboard box on top) became enjoyable, active, and, most importantly, tolerable for periods longer than 20 minutes. I can’t explain just why the tiny movements required to stay balanced on the Fluidstance make all the difference, but they do, at least for me. On top of that, I found that those movements absorb my nervous energy, helping me to focus in the way that chewing gum does for some people.

There are also some claims that balance boards are healthier than standing in place, and if so, that’s a nice bonus. But at this point, I’m sold on them regardless. I never relinquished the one my wife loaned me and ended up buying her another at full price. That price, by the way, is the biggest drawback: The Level, made from aluminum and maple wood, starts at $250, which is a lot to spend on a home-office accessory — unless you compare it to ergonomic office chairs, which can cost much more. A recycled-plastic-and-foam version brings the tag down to $180 while the moneybags among us could shell out as much as $440 for the IndieGogo-funded Original, made from bamboo and hand-cast aluminum. All of them claim to be sustainably sourced and made. I am happily standing on one right now. Fluidstance Level, $249