The Toilet of Your Dreams!
In quarantine, with toilet paper shortages and mass gastrointestinal upset, the home toilet took center stage in our lives. If you decided yours has to go, then know this: BioBidet’s Prodigy Smart Toilet is the throne we all deserve, with a tankless design, auto-open lid, nightlight, and a seat that adjusts to fit a wide array of bodies. The dual flush system adapts to your habits and automatically activates the proper size flush. A stainless-steel bidet wand (with settings for posterior, feminine wash, and enema) and its warm air dryer help cut way down on toilet paper usage, just in case that shortage hits again. ($2,400, BioBidet.com)
A Watch for the Over-40s
My first must-have of 2021: The first medical-grade hybrid smartwatch, Withings’ ScanWatch, constantly scans your vitals to alert you to health issues. It monitors blood oxygen saturation, heart rate, breathing frequency, and movement during the night (which can help indicate sleep apnea). It has a medical-grade ECG, checks your heart rate, monitors your pulse, notices unusual heart patterns, and can detect afib. Oh, and it’s a GPS-enabled fitness tracker too. The battery lasts up to 30 days. But my favorite part is the Smart Wake-up. The watch can tell if you are in a light or deep sleep and can choose the best moment to wake you, based on your preferred time frame. ($280, Withings.com)
A Traveling Closet
As more and more hotels (AC, Moxy, Time New York, to name a few) make closets and dressers obsolete, travelers might need a suitcase that takes their place. Check-In Closet Suitcase, or the smaller Carry-On Closet Suitcase, has a removable, built-in shelving system to help you stay organized. Each suitcase’s interior lining is made from five pounds of recycled ocean-bound plastics and it has a USB charging port. To operate the shelving system, pack with the shelf fully extended. ($295 and up, Solgaard.co)
The World’s Best “Smart Hearing” Earbuds
After too many late-night parties at StudioOne in the ’80s, my gay BFF started losing his hearing. At 20, his options were ignore it or get a bulky beige hearing aid. I can’t imagine what a revolution Nuheara’s IQbuds² MAX would have been for him. The world’s most advanced smart hearing buds, the IQbuds² MAX features active noise cancellation with the ability to fine tune your own sound environment — from conversations to concerts. (The “world off” function is amazing.) Water resistant, these buds stream music, control TV volume, work with voice assistants, and can actually assess your hearing. IQbuds² are a game changer for the 466 million people with hearing loss, tinnitus, or autism — and anyone who wants to filter out ambient noise from the world around them. ($399, Nuheara.com)
Miracle in a Mini
Need professional lighting on an amateur budget? Turn your poorly lit photos and Zooms into visual masterpieces with MOON UltraLight, the incredibly portable, tiny, and affordable lighting device designed by cinematographer Edward Madongorere. You can take pics like a pro without expensive and cumbersome lighting setups (goodbye, ring lights!) since MOON UltraLight is about the size of a small grape, easily clips on to your phone, laptop, or other surface, and lets you customize brightness, tone, and hue. Rechargeable, unobtrusive, and reasonably priced, it’s no surprise that Time magazine recently selected the MOON UltraLight as one of its100 Best Inventions of 2020. ($60 and up, MoonUltra.com)
