Author: Ben Brooks

My wife recently picked up a Q2, and within a few minutes of holding it, I was sure I needed a Q2. And then I saw the images it was producing, and I had to have one.

Side note: my wife’s much better review of her Q2 will hopefully come some time this year. The photos she is making with it are astounding.

But instead of a Q2, I snagged a barely used Q2 Monochrom and took it with me to the beautifully colorful Italian coast. This is one of the best cameras I’ve ever used, and absolutely the most fun I have had with a camera. And it can’t even take a color photograph.

(more…)

This is the fourth, and final, installment of my ‘State of XYZ Collection’ posts. In this one, we are covering my watches, and while not the quantity hasn’t changed much, there have been two big things to cover.

(more…)

It’s no secret that I think Reminders.app from Apple, and Notes from Apple are two of the most underrated productivity tools out there. I suspect people don’t use and talk about these more, because they lack the dopamine hit you get with purchasing a new thing to get better. It’s kind of like buying a gym membership to go walk on an indoor track, rather than walking around your neighborhood. Both accomplish the same thing, but with the gym you get to proof that you spent money to think about fitness, while making your fitness routine more cumbersome to actually do.

Anyways, Reminders fucking rocks.

(more…)

For the third installment of ‘State of XYZ Collection’, let’s dive into flashlights. This collection has been in a huge state of change over 2023, so I am constraining it to lights I carry in my pocket only. The big changes are centered around what I want out of a light, and trying for easier to carry lights. Here we go:

(more…)

I always write ‘The Best’ lists at the end of the year, but I often note that the best items are not necessarily my favorite items. Sometimes a thing is my favorite for sentimental reasons, or because my use case is a little more niche than the categories I’ve defined on the best list.

So, I thought it would be fun to take a look five of my current favorite items, and why they are my favorites.

(more…)

The second installment of my ‘State of XYZ Collection’ brings us to knives. Which is possibly the most boring of these, as I basically use/own very few knives. I went from having piles around the house, to five. And of those five, I use two most days. I’m not counting anything stashed away in emergency bags, but rather a knife I am likely to grab and use for a task. Here they are:

(more…)

This is one of those items, where I would have never purchased it if two things didn’t happen: the first is getting to see other items from ‘Observer Collection’ in person; the second was an upcoming trip where I knew I would need to handle more cash and coins. Coins are a huge pain for me day to day with the wallets I already own.

Because, when I am at home in Texas, I have my wallet setup down: drivers license, two cards, a $20 bill, and two $5 bills. Done. This all fits neatly in my tiny wallet, but for travel — even domestically or in state — this quickly blows apart.

Which is where Observer Collection’s Whisky comes into play. This is probably the best wallet for travel (or coin needs) I have ever used.

(more…)

I’ve been getting a lot of questions around what gear I actually have/use right now. I thought it would be neat to check in, so let’s start with bags. I am constraining this to only the bags I would put in my EDC rotation, and I am excluding anything I am still reviewing. Here’s the list, and a few comments on each:

(more…)

Traveling internationally as a family has a lot of small pitfalls. Being the organizational and bag nerd I am, I take on the responsibility of covering all the little bases. One of those bases involves cash, passports, and vaccination cards.

All three of those are something that you probably, likely, need when you travel internationally. And all three suck if you lose them or do not have ready access to them. So, I carry those items for the family when we travel, and I search for new things to carry them in.

(more…)

I recently wrote about the Laulima Malihini Slim I picked up and how amazing it is. The Ion Slim is from another line utilizing the same internals with a different body design. I picked this up in tumbled Aluminum, and it might be the best all-around light I have used.

I’ll tell you why.

(more…)

The first time I saw the Rolling Square InCharge cables, I thought they were neat, and perhaps I would buy one at some point — but I was quite happy with the cables I had. And then, I needed to pack for a long international trip, and I was trying to minimize my gear without losing utility. The value of these seemed readily apparent, so I went all in on them and packed three in differing lengths for the trip.

After traveling with these, I’ve found them to be imperfect but good enough to recommend.

Features & Stuffs

These are multi-purpose cables, which (in the latest variants) support up to 100w charging — they are plenty fast. On one end, you have a USB-A port, which pulls off, stays attached, and mostly swings out of the way to reveal a USB-C. On the other end is a Lightning plug, which pulls off in the same way as the USB-A to reveal yet another USB-C. In other words, the configurations you can have here are:

1. USB-A to Lightning
2. USB-C to Lightning
3. USB-A to USB-C
4. USB-C to USB-C
5. USB-A to Micro USB
6. USB-C to Micro USB

The lightning bit doubled as micro-USB in a very precarious way. The cables also worked just fine with my portable SSD, which is USB-C, though Rolling Square does note that the cables don’t support bidirectional data transfer between devices.

The cables are relatively thick, flat, and wide and have a bit of stiffness. They are covered with braided nylon, which feels very nice. They come in three lengths: absurdly short (a few inches), annoyingly short (1 foot), supremely long (6.6 feet), and stupendously long (10 feet). I have one of each of the first three sizes. None are the ‘correct’ size for what I would ideally want (1.5 feet is ideal).

In Use

The first thing to know about these is that they are well done. Every part feels nice. It doesn’t feel like corners have been cut anywhere. But they are bulky. The advantage here is that they take the place of many cables or could potentially be your only cable, not that they are smaller than a dedicated cable.

The big question is whether an InCharge could replace USB-C and Lightning cables when traveling. Yes and no. It can replace them, only if you do not need to use them both at once.

When I laid out my packing list for my trip, I also labeled what devices would need what charger. And I then marked which devices I would need to charge simultaneously. When using this cable type, you must think about how you will likely need to charge.

I sorted out the following:
– I would need to charge an iPad (USB-C) and iPhone (Lightning) each night.
– I would need to charge two white noise machines (micro-USB) during the day and have one cable in my bag.

Once I did that, I realized I needed a set of three cables. But then I needed something longer for the flight, in the case of the charging port not being nearby (as is often the case on the broke-ass planes they charge us thousands of dollars to suffer on). I got the 6.6ft cable — wishing they had a 3ft.

With all that done, I packed all three cables (usually, the two shorter ones are in my office bags). It seemed very clear I needed all three, and I was a tad nervous I was packing light (which means I was doing it right).

Here are my notes on these after using only them on a two-week trip:

• The design is top-notch and hard to argue with.
• The micro USB port bothers me. It doesn’t sit snuggly in the port, and I worry about it breaking the device port. It does work, to be clear, and I had no issues. But it feels precarious in a way that I don’t like.
• These cables don’t tangle, which is nice.
• They feel very bulky when plugged into the device, as they stick out quite far, and the adapter ends are heavy and thick and don’t fully fold out of the way. This was never an outright issue, but it’s likely to bother you if you use your device with the cable plugged in.
• Overall, these pack larger than an equivalent length single cable. So they are only worth it if you replace 2-3 cables with one.
• They can be finicky to plug into specific chargers/devices. And they are sometimes a bit fussy about putting the adapters back over the USB-C ports.
• They did work and didn’t fail me in any way.

I wish I had brought a long dedicated USB-C to Lightning cable in place of one of these, as that would have made things easier overall when I needed to stuff a cable in my day bag and go. While I did carry one of these with me, it was always a little too short for what I ideally wanted, though I did make it work each time.

I packed three of these cables in three lengths. I think it is worth looking at what I would have packed if I didn’t pack these cables.

• USB-C to Lightning 3ft.
• USB-C to USB-C 3ft.
• 2x Micro USB 3”.

That setup would have been lighter and less bulky to carry while performing the same. But it wouldn’t have worked as well. The reason is I ended up needing an extra USB-C one day. The 6ft cord several times for the length. And I loaned the longer cord to my wife as she needed a longer cord to charge her phone and read in bed.

In addition, I could charge three USB-C devices at once the day before travel so that two headphones and my iPad were ready. Something I would not have been able to do with dedicated cables as I would have been short on USB-C cables. That’s the key here: there’s no way to get this level of versatility with dedicated cables for this compact kit.

Overall

But, these are (likely) of declining utility if you are all USB-C on your devices, especially if Apple releases the next iPhone as USB-C. But if you still have a mix of charging ports or want an excellent backup for your family, these are an excellent option.

Where the value ups the ante a little more for me is on the USB-A/USB-C end of the cable. Being able to swap between either end type for different chargers is fantastic. For example, my international 100w Charger from Hyper has a built-in EU plug, two USB-C, and two USB-A charging ports. This meant I could use any/all of the ports when I wanted without needing dedicated USB-A and USB-C cables. That type of charger is great because I can help anyone charge anything, even if the cable is something I don’t have, but the InCharge cables also meant I wasn’t limited on my charging ports available.

And the international travel adapters I bought had a single USB-C port and four USB-A ports — meaning these three cables meant that I would never be without a charger, I could use. That’s a lot of peace of mind when you are traveling in a lot of unknown situations. Redundant? Yes. But I would have packed those items anyways, so the InCharge meant I could ensure I always had the total capacity to use the cables on hand.

I will keep using these cables, especially in my office bags. For travel, I don’t know what I’ll do next time. I never had issues during the trip, but I was never super happy when I needed to use these as they were bulky. Then again, I never had an issue, so that’s a win.

Hard to complain, especially given that these are under $40 each. Recommended, with caveats above.

Buy here.