For Better Coffee, Tidier Carry-Ons and Better Bluetooth Sound | Vol. 5

The LEGO Ideas Typewriter 21327 exists for a very modern sort of nostalgia: wanting the romance of a clattering old machine without also wanting correction fluid, jammed keys, or a landlord asking why the desk is shaking at midnight. We think that is a perfectly respectable impulse. It is also a fairly direct route to owning a tiny brick monument to procrastination.

This is an adult building set presented as a collectible retro typewriter display model. That combination matters. A building project has an ending; a display object has an afterlife. The typewriter theme gives the finished piece a clear job on a shelf, desk, or bookcase rather than leaving it to become another carefully assembled item whose future is a cupboard labelled “important”.

We selected it because the idea lands instantly. Everyone recognizes a typewriter, even people whose closest encounter with one was a period drama or a café trying very hard to justify its prices. LEGO’s version turns that familiar shape into a creative-hobbies project with a more grown-up destination than the usual toy-box exile.

The compromise is equally clear: this is a display model, not a functional writing tool. Buyers looking for practical office equipment should keep walking. Buyers who enjoy the strange satisfaction of building a retro object that makes a room look fractionally more literary have found a much more convincing excuse for a quiet evening indoors.

A kettle is usually the least glamorous member of the kitchen: it boils water, develops a suspicious limescale situation, and waits patiently for someone to need instant noodles. The Fellow Stagg EKG is for the person who has decided that coffee and tea deserve a more intentional vessel than the appliance inherited from a student flat.

This is an electric, stainless-steel gooseneck kettle listed for pour-over coffee and tea, with a 0.9-litre capacity. That makes its appeal pleasingly specific. It is not trying to become the centrepiece of a brunch buffet; it is designed around the smaller act of preparing a carefully chosen hot drink without turning the counter into an appliance graveyard.

We think it earns a place as the more design-conscious complement to a coffee setup that has already acquired scales, filters, and at least one jar whose purpose nobody can explain. The Smoke Green version with its maple wood handle makes the point especially clearly: this is kitchen kit for people who notice such things, then pretend they do not.

There is one important naming trap to avoid before your kettle research becomes an unpaid administrative job. The Stagg EKG Pro is documented with a colour LCD display, scheduling, Guide Mode, a brew stopwatch, altitude adjustment, adjustable hold periods, selectable temperature units, and Wi-Fi firmware updates. Those are Pro features in the supplied evidence, not claims we can make for this Stagg EKG listing.

The humble tote bag has spent years pretending that one giant open compartment is a lifestyle. Then comes the commute: laptop, charger, lunch, headphones, camera kit, keys, and the receipt from three weeks ago, all conducting a small archaeological dig at the bottom. We think the Peak Design Everyday Tote V2 15L is a sensible rebuke to that nonsense.

Its appeal is unusually clear from the feature list. This is a 15 L tote with wide top access, FlexFold dividers, a laptop sleeve, and both internal and external pockets. In other words, it retains the grab-and-go simplicity of a tote while admitting that some belongings should not be allowed to fraternize freely.

The weatherproof shell and shoulder or crossbody carry make it a credible daily bag rather than a decorative canvas accessory that panics at the first wet bus stop. We chose it as the organized middle ground for people who want a more relaxed silhouette than a conventional pack, but still need their daily equipment to have assigned seats.

There is one important adult caveat: 15 L is 15 L. This tote suits a controlled daily load, not the person carrying a second wardrobe, a lunch large enough for a hockey team, and three mysterious cables kept “just in case.”

Portable speakers have become oddly serious household objects: another black puck demanding a cable, an app, a software update, and possibly a graduate degree in tapping tiny buttons. The Marshall Emberton II takes a more appealingly direct route. It is a compact Bluetooth speaker with a multi-directional control knob, stereo output, and a stated battery life of more than 30 hours.

We think it earns a place for the person whose music routinely migrates from kitchen counter to balcony to borrowed cottage, but whose bag has already been colonized by chargers, snacks, and one suspiciously damp towel. At 0.7 kg and 160 mm wide, it is small enough to remain a portable speaker rather than a portable argument.

The black Emberton II is also unusually candid about what it is not. There is Bluetooth 5.1 with a stated 10 m (30 ft) range, but no cable input, Wi-Fi, microphone, or voice assistant. That restraint will either look admirably focused or mildly annoying, depending on how many legacy gadgets are still haunting your drawers.

Its IP67 rating is the practical bit worth reading rather than merely admiring on a spec sheet: Marshall states it is dust and water resistant and can be submerged in 1 m (3 ft) of water for up to 30 minutes. Add USB-C charging and optional equaliser presets in the Marshall Bluetooth app, and this is a well-judged companion for music that needs to leave the desk without acquiring a full support crew.

A desk speaker usually has two career options: play music or gather dust behind a monitor while pretending to be minimalist. The Divoom Ditoo has rejected both. This is a 505 g, retro-styled Bluetooth speaker with a programmable pixel-art display on its front, plus enough extra functions to make a plain black rectangle seem emotionally unavailable.

We picked it because it embraces the increasingly normal desire to make a workstation look less like an overdue spreadsheet and more like a tiny arcade that happens to answer emails. The Ditoo measures 90 × 113.8 × 121.2 mm, so it is compact enough for crowded desks, bedside tables, and flats where every surface is already negotiating its purpose.

Under the collectible-gadget behaviour is a 45 mm driver with a stated 10 W output rating, Bluetooth 5.0, TF-card playback, and radio support. The companion app for iOS and Android controls the front display, letting the screen do something more interesting than stare blankly at your keyboard during a 9 a.m. call.

There is also an alarm, a short voice-memo feature, and a mechanical-keyboard detail, because subtlety was apparently removed during product development. Our verdict is that the Divoom Ditoo makes the most sense as a cheerful desk object that happens to be a speaker, rather than a serious portable audio tool that moonlights as décor.