Why the Withings Body Scan Makes a Smarter Scale Upgrade | Vol. 7

A normal bathroom scale has one job: report a number, then quietly judge you from beneath the bath mat. The Withings Body Scan has loftier ambitions. It is presented as a connected WiFi scale and BIA personal scale that adds body-composition analysis to the morning ritual, because apparently stepping on a square of glass was not sufficiently administrative.

We think that ambition is exactly why it earns a prominent place here. The Body Scan gathers body fat, muscle mass and water percentage in a device that already has a socially accepted spot in the bathroom. No charging dock on the kitchen counter, no mystery puck rolling around a drawer, just a scale doing more of the job people increasingly ask scales to do.

The appeal is not that more data automatically makes anyone healthier. It is that the data is concentrated in one familiar place for someone who already wants to follow body composition rather than weight alone. That is a tidy answer to the modern urge to quantify oneself, a hobby that began with step counts and somehow reached the tile floor.

There is one important bit of paperwork hiding in the listing evidence. An ECG is named in the supplied en-GB title but not in the en-US one. Since that feature is not consistently shown for the available regional listings, we would not make it the reason to choose the Body Scan in Canada without checking the exact version.

There is a particular stage of adult home decorating where a bare living-room wall starts to feel less “minimal” and more “we moved in six months ago and then got distracted by laundry.” Nanoleaf Elements Wood Look Hexagons tackle that gap with illuminated geometric panels that borrow their visual cue from wood rather than a gaming rig.

This particular pack is not a fresh start. It contains three additional hexagons, plus mounting plates, mounting tape, and rigid linkers, while the controller and power supply are conspicuously absent. We appreciate the honesty of an expansion pack that does not pretend it is a complete system; we appreciate rather less the moment someone discovers that after clearing a wall and locating a level.

Each panel measures 20 cm high and 23 cm wide, so this is decor with actual dimensions to consider, not a tiny gadget one can hide behind a plant. The panels are made for indoor mounting with the included double-sided tape, or with screw mounts if you supply the screws and wall anchors. Rental-wall diplomacy may therefore require a little more thought than “hexagons look nice here.”

The useful bit is ecosystem compatibility: Apple Home, Alexa, Google Home, IFTTT, and SmartThings are all supported. We picked this as a practical way to extend an existing Elements arrangement for people who want their smart-home decor to look slightly less like it was designed during a fluorescent drink launch.

Portable espresso machines exist because instant coffee has finally pushed people to carry a small appliance into the woods, the car, and occasionally the office. We respect the escalation. The OutIn Nano is the sort of gadget that sounds excessive until a wet morning at a campsite, a long RV stop, or a desk beside a tired kettle makes proper coffee feel like basic infrastructure.

This is a 670 g electric espresso machine that takes ground coffee and NS capsules. That dual-format arrangement matters more than it sounds: a bag of grounds suits people who enjoy a coffee ritual, while capsules suit people packing at 6 a.m. with one eye open. OutIn specifies a 20-bar pump, water heating up to 92°C (198°F), and approximately 200 seconds to heat cold water.

The Nano's useful trick is self-heating, rather than assuming hot water will materialize wherever a person has pitched a tent or parked an RV. Its three 2,500 mAh rechargeable cells give it a stated capacity of up to five brews from 50 ml of room-temperature water, or more than 200 brews with hot water, based on OutIn internal laboratory testing. Conditions and use can vary, naturally; batteries have never met an outdoor plan they could not complicate.

We think the OutIn Nano earns its spot as a compact, specific answer to portable espresso rather than a fantasy of barista-level abundance in every postcode. It makes the most sense for someone who accepts a brief heating wait in exchange for coffee format flexibility and a machine that does not need to live permanently beside the toaster.

There is a particular kind of desk person who does not want a clock so much as a small, glowing control panel for modern life. LaMetric TIME is for them. It reports the time, naturally, but also arrives with weather, an alarm, a social-media counter, cinema-lightbox duties and a Bluetooth speaker tucked into the same pixelated package.

We chose it as a useful counterpoint to anonymous smart-home hardware: this thing is conspicuously a gadget. The 37x8 LED display is the point. Instead of pretending technology has vanished into the room, LaMetric TIME puts a tiny animated sign on the shelf and lets it announce itself.

That makes sense on a work desk, in a kitchen where the day’s weather needs broadcasting, or on a bedside table for someone whose idea of winding down does not involve a completely blank rectangle. The digital alarm-clock function gives it an everyday reason to exist; the additional display modes are the reason it may become an extremely specific conversation piece.

The catch is equally clear. A clock that can show social counts can also make a perfectly peaceful room feel faintly like a dashboard meeting. We think LaMetric TIME earns its place when its extra information and pixel-art character are genuinely wanted, rather than treated as a cure for the grave injustice of having one uncluttered surface.

Camping mugs tend to fall into two camps: the chipped enamel survivor that has seen things, and the anonymous steel cup that lives permanently at the back of a box with three tent pegs and a mysterious spoon. Snow Peak’s Titanium Double-Wall Mug is for the person who has decided that coffee outdoors deserves a little more ceremony than that.

This is a 300 mL titanium mug with double-wall insulated construction, listed as lightweight and made for camping. It is a deeply particular object, which is exactly why it caught our attention. Most camping gear attempts to solve an emergency; this one tackles the quieter crisis of drinking a decent-sized coffee while perched on a folding chair at an aggressively early hour.

The attraction is straightforward: a proper mug format in a material associated with pared-back camp kit, plus insulation without turning the whole situation into a travel tumbler with a lid, straw, and 14-page cleaning treaty. The Snow Peak name and titanium construction give it a pleasingly intentional edge, even if the underlying problem remains wonderfully minor.

Our reservation is equally straightforward. At 300 mL, it is built for one normal drink, not the vast mug needed after a night in a tent that treated every twig as a personal enemy. We think it earns a place as a charmingly extravagant camp essential for people who pack with purpose, not as a universal answer to every caffeine emergency.