Hello once again, and welcome back to Fast Company’s Plugged In.
I didn’t buy a new phone this year. Or a new laptop, tablet, or smartwatch. That hasn’t been a hardship. I’ve just been perfectly content with the gear I already own—both a satisfying feeling and a boon to my pocketbook.
Instead of being splashy budget busters, the new products that made me happiest in 2025 have been relatively inexpensive items that bring clever twists to seemingly mundane categories. This week, I’m going to tell you about three I’ve found especially rewarding. (I’m citing their list prices, but—this being Black Friday week—all are widely available at steep discounts as I write this.)
The mother of all power banks. Most of the innumerable external batteries I’ve owned have been thoroughly unmemorable. Not Anker’s $119 Laptop Power Bank, a recent gift from my wife, who bought it off TikTok.
As its name indicates, the Laptop Power Bank’s massive 25,000mAh capacity is enough to charge a computer. It can also handle a tablet, such as my iPad Pro. Or a smartphone. Or other gadgets such as a digital camera. Or how about all of them at the same time?
Even if you do charge four devices at once, you won’t need to lug four USB cables. Along with two ports—one USB-C, one full-size USB-A—the Anker has a built-in cable that retracts into its case, and another that doubles as a wrist strap. Most power banks use LEDs to give you, at best, a vague sense of how much juice is left; this one has a fancy color display with a gauge that indicates precisely how much power remains, a battery health indicator, and other useful stats.
Now the Laptop Power Bank is decidedly chonky—more of a briefcase or backpack accessory than something you’d slip in a pocket. If all you’re looking to do is occasionally top off your phone, it’s way more battery than you need. But by providing enough power to last through the busiest of workdays, it’s liberated me from hunting for wall outlets at conferences and running my fingers along the undersides of airplane seats in hopes of finding a power jack there. I get a little thrill every time I use it.
The best smartphone wallet I’ve owned. I used to carry a wallet so hopelessly overstuffed that George Costanza himself might have pointed and laughed. That was until I managed to downsize to one of those magnetic wallets that stick to the back of a phone. I carry my driver’s license, one credit card, an ATM card, the badge that gets me into my office building, and maybe a $20 bill or two, and that’s about it. It’s the one place in my life where I feel like a preternaturally organized person.
But I haven’t been wild about most of the phone wallets I’ve used. Some were too tight: Only two to three cards fit in, and they were almost impossible to extract. Others were too loose, so cards went flying whenever I dropped my phone. And they were all made of leather that tended to end up looking battered and disreputable.
Peak Design’s $50 Mobile Wallet is unlike any other phone wallet I’ve tried—and much, much better. Made of sturdy cloth, it handles as many cards as I ever carry, and protects them from accidental exits with a magnetic flap. Most ingeniously, tugging on the flap causes the cards to travel slightly out of the wallet, where it’s easy to pluck the one I want. It’s like having it delivered by a butler.
The Mobile Wallet pairs with Peak’s Everyday Case, which also sells for about $50 and is equally worth it. Wrapped in a similar fabric-y material, it’s easy to get on and off my iPhone and remains in mint condition after months of use. The case features Peak’s SlimLink, a mounting technology that secures the case to a variety of accessories—including a mount I installed on my e-bike to let my iPhone double as a GoPro-style action camera.
A book light I actually use. Early this year, I pledged to read more dead-tree books—especially the ones piled in a Jenga-like stack on my nightstand. I’m still behind, in part because I like to read in bed after my wife has dozed off. Ink and paper do not mix well with utter darkness.
This problem was theoretically solved decades ago by tiny clip-on book lights. But they’ve always struck me as plasticky, fragile, and inelegant. The fact that they use AAA batteries doesn’t make them any more appealing.
Not long ago, however, a new generation of snakelike, USB-C-rechargable book lights came to my attention. Instead of clipping one onto a tome, you drape it around your neck, then bend it to direct beams of light from both ends at the pages you’re reading. The one I bought, Kikkerland’s Hands-Free Book Light, lists for $35. Other options exist, including ones from a company called Glocusent.
If there’s a downside to wearing a book light twisted around your neck, it’s that it looks pretty goofy, as my wife has helpfully pointed out several times. But she’s the only person who’s seen me using mine. Did I mention that she’s usually asleep when I have it on?
You’ve been reading Plugged In, Fast Company’s weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to you—or if you’re reading it on fastcompany.com—you can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard.
[A note on last week’s newsletter, which discussed my experiences with Google’s Gemini 3 Pro LLM: A couple of the issues I cited involved the earlier Gemini 2.5 Flash model, which still powers the Gemini chatbot’s Fast mode. I’ve updated the version of the newsletter on FastCompany.com to clarify this.]
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