5 USB-C Gadgets You’ll Use Every Day – BGR

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There used to be a time when your home and personal gadgets needed to be charged or powered with different cables. Your phone had micro-USB, your laptop used a barrel plug, and your portable speaker required a mini-USB. These days, though, the USB-C port has taken over everything. If you look around your home, you’ll notice it’s in your bedroom gadgets, kitchen tools, and even bathroom essentials. Yes, your favorite everyday gadgets — your phone, laptop, wireless earbuds, and powerbank — aren’t the only ones integrated with USB-C. The reason why all of your devices now use USB-C is the port’s versatility. It can support a wide range of gadgets with its fast-charging and high-speed data transfer capability.

Tech manufacturers have been adopting this port in the last several years, and at this point, it’s now a universal standard. But exactly what other everyday gadgets use USB-C? Here are five that you might want to add to your tech setup, including an air quality monitor, a versatile USB hub, a smart water bottle, and more.

Not everybody likes the jarring sound of an alarm clock everyday, and if you’re one of those people, you might be glad to know that there’s actually an alternative way to wake up. A sunrise alarm clock, such as the $80 Lexon Mina Sunrise Alarm Clock, uses lighting and soft sounds to gradually ease you into an awake state in the morning. It’s essentially a lamp that simulates the colors of sunrise and sunset.

How it works is simple. Half an hour before the scheduled alarm time, the lamp lights up in dark blue and plays some soft natural sounds. It then changes colors until it becomes warm white just when you need to wake up. At night, you can also use the Lexon Sunrise Alarm Clock to help you drift to sleep. Just press and hold the mushroom head to turn on sunset mode, which will light up in orange and slowly transition into red within 30 minutes. If you’re not a fan of the light or sound alarms, you can change the alarm mode from light and sound to light only or sound only.

Apart from an alarm clock, the Lexon Sunrise Alarm Clock still works as a regular lamp. It even comes with nine different colors for setting the mood in the room. Conveniently, the lamp also doubles as a calendar and clock, thanks to its built-in display. While many sunrise alarms on the market connect via a barrel plug, the Lexon Sunrise Alarm Clock is wireless and charges via USB-C. Its battery can last as long as four months on sound mode only, a month on sunrise mode, and roughly 24 hours on lamp mode. When charging the lamp, it takes about five hours.

With how many gadgets you connect to your computer, you might have already run out of ports to plug them into. A USB-C hub like the Anker 8-in-1 USB-C Hub can easily fix this daily frustration and make your home setup more organized for everyday use. Just as its name suggests, this Anker USB-C hub comes complete with eight ports and will cost you $50. 

There’s an Ethernet port on one end, handy if your laptop doesn’t include one. It’s rated at a maximum internet speed of 1Gbps. If your computer’s USB-C port allows media output, you can use the USB-C hub to connect to a monitor too. Its built-in HDMI port supports 4K@60Hz for DP 1.4 laptops and 4K@30Hz for DP 1.2 units. For file transfer, you have two USB-A 3.1 Gen 2 ports, one USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 port, and two slots for an SD card and a microSD card. The USB ports are designed solely for transferring files and can handle 10Gbps transfer speeds. You’ll find another USB-C port in the Anker 8-in-1 USB-C Hub. It’s a USB-C PD charging port for pass-through charging, where you can plug in a charger rated at up to 100W. When you do so, the hub will then output 85W, which, in turn, can be used to charge the laptop connected to the hub.

The Anker 8-in-1 USB-C Hub is compatible with computers running Windows 10 and newer, macOS 12 and later, and Chrome OS. You can also pair it with your iPad as it supports iPadOS. While you’ll likely use this USB gadget for your workspace, it’s not that hard to travel with it as well. It’s only 0.6 inches thick and weighs less than 5 oz, so you should have no trouble packing it in your bag.

With how busy your days are, it’s easy to forget to drink enough water. If habit tracking apps and large water bottles still don’t solve this dilemma for you, maybe a different approach — like using the WaterH Boost Smart Water Bottle – might just do the trick. This $55 water bottle doesn’t just store water, but also sends you regular reminders to actually drink up. 

For the visual reminders, it features an LED display and light ring on the bottle cap. The display will show a person drinking a glass of water, while the light ring will flash blue. For the audio reminders, you’ll hear a pop-up on your Android or iOS phone and smartwatch, where the companion app is installed and paired via Bluetooth. More than reminding you to stay hydrated, the WaterH Boost also monitors your drinking habits. Every time you take a sip, it checks the water flow and the angle of the bottle to calculate how much you’ve actually consumed. This intake measurement is accurate within 15%. You can view this right in the app, along with other hydration data like when you last drank water and what your weekly, monthly, and even yearly water intake average is. 

In terms of insulation performance, the WaterH Boost is built with BPA-free and leakproof stainless steel with double-wall insulation. This can keep cold drinks almost the same temperature for 24 hours and hot drinks warm throughout the day. As for durability, the bottle is rated at IPX7, meaning it can be submerged in about three feet of water for half an hour without getting damaged. It isn’t dishwasher-safe, though. You can keep using the bottle for as long as 30 days without charging. When it’s time for a recharge, the light ring will glow red. Then, simply plug the bottle cap into a USB-C charger.

Cooking in the kitchen at night can be a nightmare, especially when you have to prep ingredients under the cabinets where there’s practically no light. Thankfully, under-cabinet lighting is a thing, and some of them come in a rechargeable form that charges via USB-C. One of the cool USB gadgets you didn’t know you needed in your kitchen is under-cabinet lighting like the Gritin 10.2-inch LED Light.

This $14, glare-free 180-lumen light features 84 LEDs and comes in three color temperatures — 3000K (yellowish orange), 4500K (light yellow), and 6000K (white light). Simply press the temperature button on the light to switch to a different color temperature. You can also brighten and dim the light as needed. If you press the dimmer button on the light, you can set it to one of five preset brightness levels. If you long-press the button, though, you’ll activate stepless dimming and have the light go from 10 to 100%.

Besides built-in controls, the Gritin Under-Cabinet Lighting comes with a built-in motion sensor too. Just approach it, and it will automatically light up by itself. As long as there’s movement detected within its range (up to 10 feet), it will stay on. It then automatically switches off after 20 seconds of no motion. With the light’s different modes, you can decide when its motion detection works. You can set it to Daytime Sensing Mode for 24/7 motion sensing and Night Sensing Mode for motion sensing only at night and dark rooms. If you don’t want the light to be motion-dependent, enable Always On Mode instead.

If there’s one thing that you should use on a daily basis, it should be an air quality monitor. Knowing how clean the air inside your home is an important part of staying healthy. One budget-friendly air quality sensor on the market today is the Govee Smart Air Quality Monitor, priced at $35. This device monitors the air 24/7 and measures three things: PM2.5 levels, temperature, and humidity. Its PM2.5 measurement is accurate within 15µg/m³, the temperature within 0.54°F, and the humidity within 3% RH. 

Once powered on, the air quality monitor takes readings every two seconds and shows them on the built-in display. The display also comes with an indicator light in the middle. This tells you whether or not the PM2.5 measurement is within acceptable limits. It turns green when the reading is below 35µg/m³, blue when it’s between 35 and 75µg/m³, yellow when it’s under 115µg/m³, and red when it’s over 115µg/m³. 

If you pair the Govee Smart Air Quality Monitor with the Govee Home app, you’ll also see the measurements on your phone. You can then set your preferred values for the PM2.5 level, temperature, and humidity. When a reading goes beyond those set values, the app sends you alerts. It can even automatically trigger supported Govee smart home devices like fans, air purifiers, humidifiers, and space heaters to help bring the levels back to normal. 

Conveniently, the Govee Smart Air Quality Monitor serves as a nifty bedside clock too. Just press and hold the top button to replace the PM2.5 reading with a digital clock. The device has no built-in batteries like a clock, though. Instead, it powers on via USB-C, so make sure it’s close to an outlet when you put it up.

One of the main criteria we considered when picking these product recommendations is everyday usefulness. Each one should fit into your daily routine seamlessly, as if it had been there all along. It should have regular use, not something that’s stored away from view and only pulled out when the need comes up. To make sure you also get your money’s worth, we went with products that users have rated at least 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon (we used Amazon since not every product site has a user review section). And for convenience, yes, these products are also readily available on Amazon.