Our favorite tech we bought in 2024

This year, my favorite tech purchase was the Sennheiser HD 600. A pair of wired headphones in 2024? How quaint, I know. But, honestly, I couldn’t be happier with them.

You see, I’d been eyeing the HD 600s ever since I got my first pair of open-ear headphones, the Sennheiser Drop HD 58X, in 2018. Those cans made me fall in love with wired audio all over again and inspired me to start buying music again in 2020. So it was inevitable that I eventually fell down the rabbit hole of audiophile gear, and no pair of headphones is almost as universally loved as the HD 600. Sennheiser has been producing them for nearly 30 years, and for many people, the HD 600s are still their favorite headphones — even after they’ve tried and bought plenty of other pairs.

It’s easy to see why. They’re comfortable and sound great, with incredible imaging and a neutral sound signature. Yeah, they’re lacking in bass output, but I find that makes them less fatiguing to my ears. Since buying the HD 600s on sale, it’s been such a joy to listen to my favorite songs all over again and hear them in a new light. — Igor Bonifacic, Senior Reporter

I detest cleaning my bathrooms — specifically my showers and tubs. It’s my least favorite chore for a few reasons. First, I don’t have particularly large bathrooms in my home, so to clean inside the shower effectively, I either have to contort myself into a pretzel-like position or get in the shower. Also, despite trying many different types of cleaners, none have gotten the job done to my liking when use with a sponge and some (a lot) of elbow grease. But all of that changed when I bought this Leebein electric spin scrubber only about a month ago.

I don’t know what took me so long to invest in one of these gadgets, but I’m so glad I finally did because my showers have never been cleaner. I went with the Leebein because it had a ton of good reviews on Amazon and it was pretty affordable at $40 during the Black Friday time period. I also appreciated that its description said it charges via USB-C (it in fact does) because there are some “regular” gadgets I have that are still suck in the stone age with microUSB. Leebein embraces modernity, at the very least.

After charging the wand up, I found it took no effort to swap out the brush heads with whichever of the eight included ones I wanted to use. The handle can be extended so I could — gasp — stand outside my shower and still clean the inside without completely destroying my lower back. The scrubber has two speed levels, and the higher one combined with a course brush was more powerful than my elbow grease could ever be.

Discoloration, soap scum and grime are no match for this pairing, and when I’m done, the whole thing is easily disassembled so it can store away either in the box it came in or in a bin in my laundry room. I haven’t taken the Leebein outside the bathroom yet, but I’m excited to try out some of the cloth brushes on my wood floors and give some of my sink drains a clean with the small, pointed brush. But even if the Leebein remained a bathroom-only tool, it would still be worth its weight in gold because it makes my least favorite chore much more bearable. — Valentina Palladino, Deputy Editor

I have always hated earbuds. They never stay in my dang ears, which is kind of a major problem, and means that I actively ignored about a decade’s worth of developments in this product category. But one fateful night this year, I tried out my husband’s AirPods and my world forever changed. I bought myself a set of AirPods Pro 2 and I am a complete convert.

Thanks to multiple sizes of ear tips, the unthinkable has finally happened and these stay put even as I move around my apartment doing chores or hit the gym. For the first few days, I had to keep double-checking that they were actually working because the audio sounded so natural. Zero tinniness and zero distortion, no matter what mode I’ve got them in. I haven’t fully abandoned my ginormous, over-ear cans, because there will always be a time and place for that type of total audio immersion. But the AirPods have fast risen to become my go-to headphones. I realize that I’m years late to the game on this one, but this definitely earns the tag of “better late than never.” — Anna Washenko, Contributing Reporter

I’ve been a longtime fan of 8BitDo’s throwback-themed wireless controllers. They work on mobile devices and computers through a basic Bluetooth connection and they feel just as sleek and familiar as those controllers we used as kids to play Sonic the Hedgehog 2 or home ports of NBA Jam. 8BitDo’s SN30 Pro Bluetooth gamepad continues the company’s already stellar reputation for making solid, accessible controllers that feel like they were plucked right out of my childhood.

This 8BitDo controller is very portable and I never leave the house without it. When I’m not using it to relax at the end of the day, it sits on the table next to my door along with my keys, wallet and prescription sunglasses so I don’t forget it. Whenever I find myself in one of life’s waiting rooms or just stuck in a place where boredom easily creeps up, the SN30 Pro comes in handy and works on just about every game with spatial movements.

Playing games on my iPhone 16 Pro is one of my favorite ways to veg out or pass the time but the touchscreen interface can get frustrating with certain games like Dead Cells and Shovel Knight DIG. The controls are generally fine, but my big fingers can prevent me from seeing oncoming enemies. The SN30 Pro keeps my fingers off the screen but without any latency. So if I lose, at least I know it’s completely my fault. — Danny Gallagher, Contributing Reporter

This year, I bought the budget turntable starter kit from Turntable Lab. For less than $300, they ship a box to your home with everything necessary to start playing records. I know — yet another person getting into vinyl in 2024. How original. My personal path back to analog came from trying (and failing) to share my deep-seated love of music with my seven-year-old kid. Barking at Alexa or Siri to play “Downtown Train” then getting frustrated when the wrong version played would always kill the magic.

As a Gen Xer, my introduction to music was tactile: mixtapes with hand-drawn covers, burned CDs from friends. When this huge(ish) box arrived and we pulled out two speakers with wires and a player with spinning parts, the kid was intrigued in a way that Spotify alone couldn’t replicate. Now, after a trip to the record store, we bring home an LP or two, look at the art (vinyl comes in cool colors now!), talk about the music and listen to entire albums. We get to know voices and styles instead of skimming through an algorithm that treats songs like loose change tossed in a bowl.

I’m grateful to Turntable Lab for taking the intimidation out of the buying process, doing the work for me so all I had to do was connect some wires. And for $300, the hardware is perfectly adequate; the Audio Technica turntable is low-frills but well-built, and the Edifier speakers sound far better than any smart-speaker sphere. It’s not earthshattering sound — but I’m not going for fidelity here, just the chance to share a personal passion with my kid. — Amy Skorheim, Reporter

I’ve always wanted a VR headset. During a family vacation to Walt Disney World in the 90s, I waited in line to take one of those big, bulky Virtuality 1000cs VR systems for a whirl in EPCOT’s Innoventions pavilion. The graphics were crummy and the action felt stiffer than the line for Space Mountain on a summer Saturday afternoon, but it also felt like a necessary step towards designing a more accessible, responsive and useful virtual reality system.

Now we live in such an age thanks to devices like the Meta Quest 3s. It’s only been a month since I splurged on the headset as a Christmas gift for myself after a successful year in my writing career. It’s become more than just a gaming system that lets me uppercut bad guys in Batman: Arkham Shadow or beat the skins to a Ramones song in Smash Drums. It serves so many purposes and has such a long battery life that the Meta Quest 3s has become an integral part of my daily life. I use Virtual Desktop for those long writing sessions when I really need to focus by setting up a virtual office in a “movie theater” or an enclosed “first class” airline seat. I get my daily cardio in by mixing up workouts with games like Beat Saber, The Thrill of the Fight and Vendetta Forever. I have an endless library of calming nature scenes and guided meditations to mellow out to at the end of a hard day. The best part is the internal battery and the extended headset battery pack I found on Amazon lets me use it throughout my day without having to stop and recharge it.

With the previous Meta Quest 2, it already felt like society had stepped into a “Jetsons-esque” age of technology. Now, the Meta Quest 3s truly puts me there with its reasonable price tag and extra long battery. Unlike George Jetson and his precariously placed treadmill, I never wanna get off this crazy thing. — D.G.

I bought my Yum Asia rice cooker earlier this year after accidentally ruining the non-stick on my old rice cooker (note to self: no matter how rushed you are, always remember to add water before cooking). It’s a huge improvement, from look to function. It’s a nice matte sleek gray color and, despite holding up to two and a half cups of uncooked rice, takes up a small surface area on my tiny countertop.

Unlike my old model, this rice cooker also has different settings depending on what type of rice you’re using (long grain, short grain, etc.) so I know it’s cooking the food just right. It also has a keep warm feature that will last for 24 hours, but I typically grab it after an hour at most. It comes with two different scoopers to easily get the rice out without scraping the bowl and a measuring cup for adding rice and water — though the bowl also has markings to let you know how high to fill the water. Overall, I love it and highly recommend it to anyone looking for a simple way to get great rice without having to monitor for overflow or scrap bits off a pot during clean up. — Sarah Fielding, Contributing Reporter