The Brooks Review

This week: iPads in portrait, Ulysses Sheet love, WiFi 6, month of writing, DuckDuckGo, and how I am tackling news heading into the end of the year.

Yesterday I published my article about switching to iPad Pro. This is the article I spent all of November working on each day, I quite like it.

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How do ‘we’ best integrate computers into our daily lives? Computers are complex and often overkill for most of what we do, and yet feel absolutely essential for modern life whether work or personal. So if you want to simplify, you have single purpose computing devices, like a calculator, good at a smaller subset of the tasks, but good at only those tasks. So where do you go if you find that level of simplifying to be absurd?

iPad Pro sits in what feels like no-mans land. It is not as good as a laptop in many ways, nor is it as good as a single purpose device at one specific task. But then there is the fact that (in 2015) I, along with many other people over the last few years, decided to walk away from traditional computers and embraced iPad Pro as a primary computer. I wasn’t sure how successful this would be, but I have never looked back. (Think of it like how you could go away for a weekend with just one pair of pants, but could you actually take that leap of faith and only pack one pair?)

The iPad Pro has not only been a success with replacing a laptop, but it’s proven a better tool than a laptop.

Continue reading: Why You Should Ditch Your Laptop For iPad Pro

For a while now, I have been putting together my own holiday gift guides. Each year I don’t hide the fact that this is a great way for this site to make a little extra money. This year is no different, but the list is much different this year.

Here’s 2018’s.

So, if you are wondering what may be good buys, wonder no more.

Continue reading: Holiday Affiliate Cash Guide

How is it almost the end of a year already… Anyways, this week: external displays with iPad Pros, naked iPad, standing desks at work, Keychron, daily writing, and watch talk.

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I have wanted a great Bluetooth mechanical keyboard for a very long time, and yet it has been very hard to find a good one. But Keychron, the K2 especially, has gotten a lot of good press, so I figured I would give it a go, and see if there is finally a good option out there.

Continue reading: The Keychron K2

This week: naked iPad Pro, new iPad stand, my alarms, waking up early, out of touch experts, and evil Silicon Valley.

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I’ve spent a long time now optimizing and finding the most ideal items for me to carry everyday. There’s a huge community around this topic, but no one seems to cover two things I faced:

1. My life is always changes, and thus so are my needs.
2. I didn’t want an abundance of crap in my house.

To that end I have tried to be overly realistic about what I actually need and to build out my kit around that. Here’s what I have settled on:

I’ll go through every item in there in a moment, and why, but first: the case is the Cache EDC Valet from Drop.com since you were probably wondering and I highly recommend it.

Continue reading: State of My Everyday Carry Collection

This week: four day work weeks; advice on interviewing, hiring, and job seeking; Instagram; AirPods Pro; Parenting; obligatory watch talk.

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I need to clear out a bunch of stuff from my home, and what better way than by giving it all away? There’s two lots I am going to be giving away, a non-member and member. Members are eligible for both, but must be an active member at time of drawing to be entered into the member drawing. All prizes are used, but working, they are items reviewed on this site. Shipping cost for all is covered for US addresses only. Drawing is Friday, November 15th, 2019 at 6am Central Time.

Continue reading: Fall Giveaway

This week: my plans for this writing month of November, billionaires subsidize us all, digital distractions, content blockers, VPNs, thinking, and of course a few notes about watches.

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If you frequent Drop.com, then Glycine is a brand which won’t need much introduction. They make aviator style watches in a wide variety — perhaps most famous for their watches which tracks 24 hours in one revolution of the hour hand. But the Combat 6 is a vintage inspired, modern made, standard watch — almost more dress watch than sport, but it can easily cross in to both realms.

I bought it for daily office wear, and while I like it, there are some downsides. But first…

Specs

This watch comes in two sizes 36 and 43mm, which I will talk more about later. I purchased the 43mm size. For that model you get an the GL224 25-jewel automatic movement with a 38-hour power reserve and hacking seconds. The crystal is thankfully sapphire with the entire package being waterproof to 50m. The watch also displays the date.

Perhaps the most impressive spec of this watch is the case thickness, at only 11.5mm this watch is very thin compared to many others in this category or that I own — certainly for a 43mm watch. That alone was the most appealing aspect for me (besides the looks) as the thinness makes the watch easy to slide under any shirt cuff.

Style

Clean, simple, and classic is how I would describe this. It’s not bland, but it will blend in well to any situation. There’s two things I really love about this watch from the style front:

1. The lume is both on the pips and the full indices bars.
2. The date wheel matches the dial, instead of being a contrasting background color.

Aside from those two items, this is a simple and well designed watch which should fit in everywhere you need it to. Not too flashy, but not sterile.

Wear and Comfort

I was worried about the size of the watch, at 43mm it is quite large, but the watch pulls that off well. This is helped greatly by the thinness of the watch, letting the big face easily slide under any shirt. The bracelet, as well, is slim keeping the profile down even further.

I easily wore this watch all day long. My only gripe would be the bracelet, as it lacks micro-adjustments for fine tuning the fit, and overall is an unimpressive bracelet. Put it on a leather strap, and you’ll likely have a far better experience. This is one instance where I regret not getting the watch on leather, luckily those are easily sourced via 3rd parties. I did put it on a black leather strap and found the watch still wear very well, while looking good.

Usability

I could actually call this section legibility, because with this watch that is the huge gain you get. It’s highly legible thanks to the contrast design between the hands and the face. That it is 43mm only helps with that.

I do have a few smaller issues:

1. The power reserve is too short, and really needs to be longer.
2. The crystal could really use some AR coating and anti-fingerprint coatings as it quickly smudges up. Keeping it clean is a pain. Actually I would say the fingerprints on this crystal wear a far bigger deal than reflections.

Overall, it tells time and does that well. The low water resistance could bother some, but for office use it is more than enough.

Overall

I picked the 43mm because I worried 36mm would be too small and not differentiate it enough from another 36mm watch I have. As it turns out, I probably would have liked the 36mm more and I would further advise getting the watch with the leather strap instead of the bracelet. I never advise that, but this bracelet is not worth it — you’ll be wanting a leather strap right off the bat.

As for the watch going forward? It’s in my sell pile, if I had a larger wrist I would keep it. If you want to buy mine, drop me a note. That and I bought it to wear almost daily, but another watch swooped in to take that crown.

Find it for the best price (new) here.

This week: warp speed in a big galaxy, sleeping office workers, my list of must see things in Japan, status and luxury goods, and my bad back.

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This week: luxury watch talk, military off-road vehicles make use of my travel kit, 11 Pro cameras, good shoe advice, iPad Pro keyboard Folio advice, cheap bourbon, and my personal blind spots. In other words, this might become a country song…

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Hi, and welcome to another week, and another round of things you scratch your head about, including but not limited to: being alone, making my life less easy, the weather, watches, and details on an upcoming giveaway.

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Recently, I picked up this watch to be my casual and weekend wear. I wanted something unique looking, with a tachymetre on it. Nezumi is a brand I have seen for a while and their designs are top notch, so I decided on the Loews model after a lot of back and forth.

Continue reading: Nezumi Loews