Drawing tablet. Surprisingly good for the price.
I did get a stand for it that pushed it over $200, but not strictly needed.
Ask HN: What sub $200 product improved your 2022
631–640 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: What sub $200 product improved your 2022
#632Instant Pot. Can be used as a rice cooker, slow cooker, pressure cooker (mostly known for this last use) Though probably not as good for rice specifically as an actual high-end rice cooker, it greatly increased the range of foods I eat. Makes it easy to make nice one pot meals overnight for multiple days, you can make really good broth soups from chickens etc quickly, or slowly if you prefer. If you like to try tough…
Pressure cooking has been a game changer for me!
The latest revisions of the instantpot do a good job of sous vide. I've tried a sous vide roast [0] so far, 24 hours later I had the best roast I've ever had. Incredible.
Re: Ask HN: What sub $200 product improved your 2022
#633Airpod Pro 2 They are basically bionic ears. Headphones, headset, earplugs, hearing protection, hearing aids, extendable ears, and more. Wish they could act as universal translators, but I suppose that's still yet to come.
Do they actually provide hearing protection? Hearing protection requires a pretty tight seal, which I wasn't aware of any headphones providing aside from in-ear monitors.
I used my original AirPods Pro as hearing protection on a table saw. It's not a terribly loud saw and I use thin kerf blades, but it's quite comfortable. At age 36 I can still heard 16-17kHz tones (typically you hear up to 15k by 40), so it seems to be working well enough.
For my giant router I use muffs. The AirPods act funny around stuff that loud, and it stops feeling comfortable.
Re: Ask HN: What sub $200 product improved your 2022
#634- all matching socks. No more time spent pairing. - clothes drying racks that hook onto radiators. Reduces drying time and clothes crumpling - wired mechanical keyboard. Wired is simpler than wireless. Quality ones have n-key support - bicycle fenders - digital wrist watch so that I check my phone less.
I made all the clothes hangers in my house match. A simple change, but it felt so much better and more organized.
I replaced all our hangers over years with wooden ones and not getting wire hangers tangled up or small plastic hangers messing up the shoulders on my t-shirts is well worth the expense. My girlfriend doesn't care, the barbarian, she will throw in a plastic or wire hanger from the drycleaners and I go full-on Joan Crawford https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOILKHmZBwc
Re: Ask HN: What sub $200 product improved your 2022
#635Heated Mattress Pad. It's like an electric blanket built into your bed, with dual temperature zones and an on/off timer.
As someone in a northern climate with a less-than-ideally insulated house its a life changer.
Re: Ask HN: What sub $200 product improved your 2022
#636I bought my first robot vacuum and it's pretty great (eufy 11S for $110).
It is as dumb as these things come. It has no navigation other than IR on the front to not bump into things. It doesn't connect to wifi. I'm not concerned about it sharing data because it has no way to do so.
I turn it on once or twice a week as I'm about to leave for work. When I come home my floors are in decent shape. It saves me about an hour a week on sweeping.
Minimum wage here is $12/hour so even if that's what I made, it would pay for itself in less than ten weeks.
Re: Ask HN: What sub $200 product improved your 2022
#637Having a UMIK-1 measurement microphone for use with REW (or similar) has been really great for my year. I'm building a recording studio at home, and having the quick ability to capture and measure data about my room over time has been fantastic. I've also used it to measure the volume of some things, and profile why a few of the rooms in my house were too echoey which led to remediation techniques.
https://www.minidsp.com/products/acoustic-measurement/umik-1
I also got a FLIR infrared camera, which was a little bit more than $200 - but there are cheaper models that would have done the trick just as well realistically. My home was built 140 years ago, and some ability to inspect heat-creating things through walls has been useful.
Another really useful one in this price range was a Logitech MX ERGO trackball. I like how it requires less space and solid surface than any mouse. I also like the angle it puts my hand at. Multiple device support is good.
Re: Ask HN: What sub $200 product improved your 2022
#638Samsung T5 SSD, a short USB c cable, and a sticker pocket to attach it to my 2016 MacBook. Why get gouged by apple on storage when you can just duct tape an SSD to your laptop?
can second, that thing is fast!
Do you know the difference between the T5 and the T7? From what I can tell, the T7 has faster transfer speeds, but is noticeably cheaper online. What's up with that?
Re: Ask HN: What sub $200 product improved your 2022
#639I didn't buy this, I inherited it from my dad, but now that I have one, if it broke I would immediately go replace it, and that's a nice DeWALT cordless drill combo, with two batteries and a charging station. In the past I have always had cheaper cordless drills, because spending $150+ on a cordless drill seemed kinda silly, but I use this thing all the time, everywhere, for all sorts of stuff.
Re: Ask HN: What sub $200 product improved your 2022
#640Airpod Pro 2 They are basically bionic ears. Headphones, headset, earplugs, hearing protection, hearing aids, extendable ears, and more. Wish they could act as universal translators, but I suppose that's still yet to come.
There was no problem with my Airpods pro gen 1, but I bought new gen 2 version just because I wanted to support Apple for making such a great product. I never leave the house without them. Got it on sale for thanksgiving holidays