The 12 Tech Days of Christmas (1-4)
Intro
The LegetteTech office gets its hands on a lot of consumer technology and gadgets throughout the year. Enough so that we have decided to make a list of our 12 favorite pieces of tech that we believe will bring some holiday joy to you and yours. We’ll be splitting our recommendations into three posts over this first week of December, so we hope you’ll join us for each installment.
Resident IT tech Lee starts us off with picks 1-4.
Table of Contents
Turntable
Turntables don’t belong in your parent’s or grandparent’s closet anymore. A new generation has discovered the heightened audio quality and listening experience that vinyl provides. Yes, paired with a good quality set of components and speakers, vinyl will duke it out with the best in digital music playback.
My personal turntable is a Yamaha TT-S303. As far as features, it’s a straightforward, fully manual turntable that provides great sound isolation and vibration dampening--meaning, you can stomp around the room and it won’t skip or cause issues. At $500 retail, it’s pricey, but well worth it to an enthusiast.
For those looking for an easier step into the realm of vinyl, either for yourself or as a gift, I suggest the Audio-Technica AT-LP60X. This is a turntable that I’ve owned previously. Retailing at $130, it’s a fantastically solid starter table that will hopefully help to sway whoever is using it down the path of greater sound quality… And if not, well, no one is breaking the bank.
Amazon Echo Show 5
Amazon has a vast selection of Alexa enabled smart devices in its inventory, from the baseball sized Echo Dot speaker, to the massive Echo Show 15 smart display. For someone like myself who prefers the intermediary, my favorite in this lineup is the Echo Show 5.
The Echo Show 5 combines the smaller form factor of the Echo Dot speaker with the usefulness of a screen. In my house we use our Alexa smart devices to control our lighting primarily, for which the Show 5 has been perfect. But we’ve also found that the screen has come in handy with our video doorbells in that it has allowed us to pull up the live video feed just by using the voice commands. For those who don’t want to say “Alexa, do this or that” for every single command, the touch screen functions have also been useful. Not to mention, the screen defaults to a clock when not in use, making it a perfect desk or bedside companion.
And last but not least, it’s relatively inexpensive at $85 for the newest release. One helpful note is that Amazon regularly puts all of its Alexa Echo devices on sale, so you may be able to save even more around the holidays.
3D Printer
This one is for hobbyists, tinkerers, and those who have a general interest in science and engineering.
A 3D printer is both a fun tool and a wonderful teacher. It allows the user to create almost anything they can imagine, but it also requires time to learn and develop multiple skills to make it work. Some of those skills include 3D modeling, measurements and conversions, understanding material properties, and more. While it may seem daunting at first, the creations that result from all the hard work are well worth it--toys, tools, artwork, props, or you name it.
The range of available 3D printers is broad and daunting, but not to worry, I have suggestions. Creality is the brand that I use, specifically an Ender 5 Pro model. The Creality line is broad enough to meet most people’s needs, and the biggest distinction between the available models is size and intensity of use. For light-duty, small prints, the Ender 3 or 3 Pro is recommended. For a mid-range printer, the Ender 5 or 5 Pro is recommended. The Ender 5 even has a “Plus” version for larger-scale prints. For heavy-duty use and large print volume by default, the CR-10 model and CR line in general is a great place to start. All of these models are relatively affordable too, ranging from $200 on the low-end, to $500 on the high-end.
One last note to make is that while I highly suggest the aforementioned models for a beginner, it’s still important for any prospective 3D printer buyer to do plenty of extra research before deciding on a printer.
Dell XPS 15 (2021)
Dell’s XPS line are some of my favorite Windows laptops. Featuring high-end specs and premium build quality, they are do-it-all machines that will last for years.
The XPS line comes in three primary models, the 13, 15, and 17. The number refers to the screen size in inches. My personal recommendation is the XPS 15. The slightly larger screen size paired with ultra HD resolution allows for more usable working space on-screen. This means that multitasking is a lot easier. The larger frame size also means that the standard specs are well above average, starting with an i5 Intel processor and 8GB of RAM. Speaking of specs, what I appreciate most about the XPS line in general is the breadth of configurations available. The XPS 15 can be configured as a reliable light usage machine for email and web browsing, all the way up to a beastly workhorse for rendering, programming, gaming, or video/image editing. The only downside to all of these options is that the price can vary immensely depending on the configuration.
So let’s talk about what I suggest for configuration and price. In this current realm of computer requirements, I prefer the following as a minimum:
i7 Intel processor
NVIDIA RTX 3050 GPU (required with the i7 processor)
16GB RAM
1TB SSD
4K display
With this suggested minimum, the price comes out to around $2100 before tax. While that may seem like a lot of money up front, remember that this is a premium laptop that will last for years to come.