Joby Blade

Disclaimer: I did get a discount on these from the distributor, but would have bought them at full price regardless.

 

I have an irrational love of torches (as opposed to a rational love of pocket knives, which I can squarely blame my grandfather for). Not extreme military-grade torches, but I'm quite careful about planning for power outages and for non-traditional weapons in a pinch. Within stumbling distance at home I have Mag-Lite 4 cell torches (with LED lights), and two sets of replacement batteries. In the cars, I have Mag-Lite 2 cell torches, also with two sets of replacement batteries. But these torches are quite heavy, and quite bulky.

 

Specifically the car-intended ones, while very bright, are near useless when needing to do something that requires two hands (e.g. changing a tyre, fitting mud flaps, etc) - which more often than not is what you need a torch for in a car. You end up balancing the torch, it falls, and much frustration while you try and figure out how to stand the damn thing. So score 1 for weaponry, 0 for practicality.

 

Enter left stage, the Joby Blade. Joby are the same crazy guys who brought us the funny looking tripods, and have recently augmented their range with a bunch of cool torches. This one specifically attaches the wrap-around legs, which are magnetized (very cool!), to a very powerful 60 lumen LED light (which has a "boost" mode up to 130 lumen) which is rechargeable via USB. Nifty! It seems durable and compact, and has already replaced one of the car torches. Score 5 for practicality (and unfortunately 0 for weaponry).

 

Recommended! Its distributed locally by Wintec Solutions, a bunch of guys who bring in some really neat brands and back it up with great service.

Powertraveller Discovery

Disclaimer: I did get a discount on these from the distributor, but would have bought them at full price regardless.

 

Carrying multiple portable, battery driven and USB-chargeable devices is painful. At any given time, I'm carrying 3 cell-phones, at least one tablet & a compact camera. Travelling with chargers for all these things is a nightmare. Thank goodness so many of them are standardizing on being chargeable via USB, and there is some movement on recent devices to standardize on the connector - micro-USB. Except of course for Apple. But even they have an adapter for their ridiculous connector.

 

But there is still a decent risk that you'll have forgotten to charge one of them. And thats where the Powertraveller Discovery comes in. Its a compact portable battery, that can recharge any of those devices I've mentioned above while on the move. It does what it advertises it does, and comes with a travel pouch/bag, which for me shows a massive amount of consideration around how you protect this thing when you throw it in your bag.

 

It comes with a set of connectors (micro-, mini-, Motorola, Samsung, Nokia), but I carry around micro-, mini- and Apple dock cables as a matter of course, so don't use the supplied ones.

 

Highly recommended! Its distributed locally by Wintec Solutions, a bunch of guys who bring in some really neat brands and back it up with great service.