Product Review | Summer 2020
Fellow Stagg EKG Electric Kettle
$149
Fellow Industries
★★★
Fellow Industries Inc. is a San Francisco based company that designs and sells coffee making accessories. Best known for their award winning EKG Electric Kettle, Fellow offers a wide selection of well designed solutions that can be incorporated into your home brew ritual. I was looking for a kettle to use in preparing drip coffee. I decided to check out Fellow’s flagship electric kettle. The sleek, modern, electric kettle boasts a minimal design with a single large round button as the main controller. Opposite of the control is a similarly sized information display. Beautiful form is nothing without function. The EKG Electric Kettle features a list of useful functions for brewing the perfect cup of coffee. Temperature can be set to the degree for optimal extraction and can be held at the set temperature for up to thirty minutes. The gooseneck spout allows for slow, even pours, a necessity for making drip coffee. Holding down the single control for a few seconds starts a timer, useful for preventing over extraction. Although priced a bit higher than other kettles, the control the Fellow Stagg EKG Electric Kettle has given me over the brewing process has made using it every morning a joy, with the added bonus of looking great on the kitchen counter.
Chemex
$45
Chemex Corporation
★★★
The Chemex coffeemaker has been around for a long time. Invented in 1941, the timeless and elegant design has remained unchanged for over 70 years, with good reason. The coffeemaker is constructed from a single piece of borosilicate glass, tied around with a wooden handle and leather strap. It pairs with Chemex’s patented bonded filters to brew coffee using a drip method, producing a clean, balanced tasting cup of coffee. An issue I had with coffeemakers such as the french press or various espresso machines was the cleanup. Ground coffee beans would often end up being rinsed into the sink causing clogs. Cleanup is easy with the Chemex. The extracted coffee grounds stay within the bonded filter, which can easily be lifted and thrown away. The brewing process using the Chemex can be easy, or as involved as you want it to be. With a strong community of users, many brewing recipes can be found online. My current favorite recipe:
Materials
53g fresh, coarse ground coffee beans
700g, 200°F filtered water
Procedure:
Clean Chemex filter with heated filtered water to remove paper taste
Add 53g fresh, coarse ground coffee beans into Chemex filter
Saturate coffee beans with 100g of 200°F filtered water. Allow saturated beans to bloom for 30 seconds
After 30 seconds, slowly pour in 200g of 200°F filtered water in a circular pattern.
Repeat 2x times to reach a total of 700g
Kinto Travel Tumbler
$35
Kinto
★★★
Kinto is a Japanese brand that sells simple, comfortable to use tableware, drinkware, and interior accessories. The Travel Tumbler functions as any other stainless steel bottle. It keeps cold drinks cold, and warm drinks warm. What sets the Kinto tumbler apart from other bottles such as Hydroflask is it’s minimal, thoughtful design that has solved some of the problems I’ve had with Hydroflasks. The first thing you notice is the clean, minimal design. Kinto’s logo is placed out of sight near the bottom of the bottle, a sign of a brand who is confident in their design and product. The tumbler has a two cap system. Small slits in the first cap allow liquid to pass in a controlled manner, preventing burns from warm drinks, and keeping ice from falling out of cold drinks. An issue I had with bottles such as Hydroflasks was the exposed mouth piece. The caps in previous bottles I’ve used usually sat above the mouthpiece leaving the surface open to the environment. The Travel Tumbler’s second cap neatly covers the mouthpiece, solving the problem.
Taylor Digital Food Scale
$19.99
Taylor/Target
★☆☆
The Taylor Digital Food Scale is a glass top scale capable of measuring up to 11lbs. The scale has a slim profile, small footprint, and touchscreen interface. Through the glass interface, you can toggle through different measuring units (grams, kilograms, or pounds), tare to zero, and power the scale on and off. The problem with most touch screen interfaces is the lack of feedback and affordance. Physical buttons have an advantage over touchscreen interfaces. When you click a physical button, the button depresses, and you often hear an audible ‘click’, signifying that you have clicked the button. With a touchscreen like the one found on the Taylor Digital Food Scale, when you touch either the UNIT or TARE text, you’re left guessing whether the sensor picked anything up. I found myself tapping the TARE text multiple times to get the scale to register my touch. To power off the scale, you need to tap and hold down the TARE | power button, something that required trial and error to figure out. To fix the touchscreen feedback issue, I propose to add either a haptic feedback similarly found in iPhones, or a single beep sound. I would also separate the TARE and power button, though I suspect adding these features would drive prices up. I would not recommend this scale.
Airpods Pro
$249
Apple
★★☆
When the first Airpod was released, it was met with an overwhelmingly negative response. The sound was average at best, but what made it susceptible to criticism was the design. The long stem looked awkward. Although the design was a topic of contention, what won people over was the user experience. Apple excels at making their products work like magic, and that is what they did with the Airpod’s pairing mechanism using the W1 chip. Just open the magnetically latched case and the headphone is paired. Over time, the general public got over the initial shock and now the Apple Airpods is the best selling wireless headphone in the world. For the second iteration, Apple released a Pro version of the Airpods, with a shortened stem and now with noise cancelling. I’m not an audiophile, but I can appreciate a good sounding headphone. The Airpods Pro delivers excellent sounding audio, with great mid-tones and a balanced bass that isn’t overpowering. The sound quality is a slight improvement over the first generation Airpods, but that may be due to the Airpod Pro’s silicone tips that create a seal in your ear. The seal also makes it possible for active noise cancellation. The active noise cancellation is decent, able to drown out low droning background noises, but the high pitches of voices and movement are still audible. Although the active noise cancellation leaves me wanting more, the convenience of the size and pairing, combined with useful features such as transparency mode, has made the Apple Airpod Pros my daily wireless in-ear headphone.
Eorefo Rope Camera Strap
$18.99
Eorefo / Amazon
★★☆
I was looking for an inexpensive alternative to Leica x COOPH’s Rope Strap. Although the award winning camera strap made of climbing rope and leather details would have looked excellent on my Leica M 240, I was not comfortable paying $95 for a piece of rope. After searching the internet for alternatives, I found Eorefo, an unknown brand that sells various types of camera straps at an affordable price point. I decided to try their rope strap in olive green. The strap is made of nylon climbing rope. Not as rugged or tough as the Leica x COOPH Rope Strap, and stretches a bit when pulled on. Leather details are replaced with a leatherette material, but functionally they are the same. Both protect the camera body from the attaching O-ring which I appreciate. Because of the rope is thin, this rope camera strap works best with lightweight mirrorless or full-frame cameras. I wouldn’t imagine it would be comfortable paired with a heavy DSLR. The quality does not feel premium, but given the inexpensive price point I am pleasantly surprised.
