By Brady Betzel

I’ve spent the last few months testing out new gear to cover you — from color calibration to humidifiers to hard drives and things to use in your everyday life. I love post gear, but pros need some downtime and to hear about tools for work and your real-life too.

Here are some fun things from all over the spectrum that’s sure to fit into your workflow.

Huanuo Monitor Arms
Are you tired of your desk being cluttered by huge monitor stands? Or do you just want to be able to freely adjust your monitors without moving mountains? Then monitor arms should be a couple of must-have items on your shortlist of life improvement tools for multimedia workers.

Huanuo makes affordable, high-quality monitor arms that will keep your monitors in place and easily movable without cluttering your desktop. Whether you use a stand-up desk or a standard desk, monitor arms work by using a C clamp- or grommet-style desktop mounts combined with VESA mounting holes on your monitors.

Huanuo sent me both the Huanuo FlowLift DS6 Dual Monitor Arm as well as the FlowLift SS6 Single Monitor Arm. Both do a very similar job, but with…wait for it…one or two monitors! Since I work primarily with two or more monitors, I installed the dual-monitor DS6 on my Autonomous standing desk using the C clamp mount. Each arm can support VESA-style monitors between 13 and 32 inches, with a 15.75-inch height range and full 360-degree rotation. The gas springs are tested for 20,000 cycles, which Huanuo claims is about five years of daily use. The DS6 uses aerospace-grade aluminum, while the SS6 uses automotive-grade aluminum components.

After a few months of working with the Huanuo FlowLift DS6 Dual Monitor Arm, I am comfortable in recommending it to other post and multimedia pros. It takes under five minutes to install, and the price is great for any budget. The DS6 retails for $69.99 but is currently on sale. The SS6 retails for $47.99 and is currently on sale on Amazon. Both come in either black or white.

Datacolor Spyder Pro: Display Calibration for Color Critical Work
As an online editor and colorist, I clutch my color calibration pearls closely. But at the same time, performing color-critical work with properly color-calibrated monitors is expensive. A lot of people, whether they admit it or not, simply don’t color-calibrate their monitors and instead cross their fingers. Sometimes they will look at their projects on a private YouTube channel across multiple devices to verify that it looks generally how they would like. But if you are serious about color correction, you must have color-calibrated monitors. If you are color correcting for the web in sRGB or Rec. 709 for SDR broadcast, then being able to rely on your output monitors for color accuracy is critical.

My wife does a lot of machine embroidery and direct-to-film T-shirt pressing for sports teams, parents and more. And just like in broadcast, potential clients will send low-resolution Google images or AI-generated images for reference. And regardless of what device the client views their image on, they want to see the real-life product match their perception. Do skin tones look correct? Are whites white? Are blacks black? There is no way to be 100% confident with color reproduction unless your monitors are color-calibrated. If you don’t want to spend a lot of money to find professional calibration with products like Calman’s line of colorimeters and software, then the next best thing is the Datacolor SpyderPro calibration device.

The SpyderPro is perfect for at-home professionals looking to keep their colors perceptually accurate. It comes with a USB-C (USB-A converter) light meter and provides calibration for monitors, laptops, Mini-LED, Apple XDR, MacBook/Pro, OLED, QD-OLED and ultra brightness technologies at a max luminance of 12,000 cd/m2. It supports unlimited displays per computer capability; 3D LUT calibration; and Rec. 709, Rec. 2020, DCI-P3 (D60 and D65), NTSC, PAL and SECAM color spaces. Datacolor’s Device Preview Plus/SoftProofing capability allows you to simulate what the image will look like on other devices. You can add content credentials into exported files to maintain that “hand-calibrated” classification, not AI. You also get ambient and room light adjustment capabilities, light meter integration, display matching and projector calibration. It works on Windows and macOS, supports multiple languages and fits in your pocket.

Dreame H40 Humidifier
When summer winds down in Southern California, the humidity begins to drop, but the temperatures don’t. And with fall comes the Santa Ana winds that wreak havoc on sinuses, drying us out like SpongeBob when he’s out of the water. The Dream H40 humidifier is essential to keeping the humidity comfortable during these dry seasons. Whether you have an office at home or you generally want to keep your house at a specific humidity level, a high-quality humidifier is vital.

If you’ve ever had a humidifier, you know how bad they usually are. They are either clumsy and annoying to fill with water, they work great for only one season or the filter sizes change and you are essentially out of luck and need to buy a new one. Worse yet, if you have one with a filter and don’t change it, then mold can grow and get injected into the air the next time you run it. Not good.

I’ve found a solution: the Dream H40 is a sleek, modern and easily workable humidifier with a washable antibacterial filter, a high-efficiency composite filter and an antiscale agent to keep your house humidified with clean air.

The Dreame H40 humidifier has a humidification capacity of 27 fluid ounces per hour, mist-free evaporation, 99.5% filter particle removal efficiency, 1.6-gallon water tank capacity, 24W power rating and three fan speed levels. At 11 inches by 11 inches by 20.2 inches, it’s not small, but it has a modern off-white color that can hide in any house.

The best part of the Dreame H40, beyond its ease of use, is the form factor. Usually humidifiers are an absolute pain to refill. Go to Target and grab a humidifier, and you will be spilling water all over the place trying to refill it from the bottom. The Dreame H40 has an easy-to-remove lid that reveals the easily fillable 1.6-gallon reservoir. That alone is worth the current $159.99 price tag. In addition, the 3D washable antibacterial filter that surrounds the water reservoir is easy to remove and clean, with included phosphate-based antiscale agents. The air intake is on the bottom and runs through a high-efficiency composite filter that helps remove air duct viruses and bacteria before getting to the humidifier stage — filtering out pet hair, dust and particulate matter. The H40 is almost silent when running in auto mode, and if that isn’t quiet enough, there is a sleep mode that is virtually silent. As a bonus, if you want to run the H40 as a pseudo-air purifier, then Air-dry Mode will dry out the filter while also keeping your air pure. The included remote has a 16.4-foot control range and stores nicely in the top of the humidifier itself so there is less chance of losing it. Need to keep that 3-year-old from turning on or adjusting the H40? Just enable the child lock.

Jabees Peace Duo Bone Conduction Under-Pillow Speaker
Sometimes I have a hard time turning my brain off after long days of staring at a computer or TV screen, or even when I’m in a hotel room on a trip with my family. I guess I have a high sensitivity to noises, but oddly enough, I feel comfortable with sound machines, fans, etc. The Jabees Peace Duo Bone Conduction Under-Pillow Speaker was a product I was pitched to review, and I laughed at the idea at first. Then I thought “Wait, this might be one of the best things I could try.” And so far, it has been a revelation.

The Jabees Peace Duo Bone Conduction Under-Pillow Speaker is a well-designed nighttime listening device with Bluetooth and SD card playback capabilities. It works by lying inside your pillowcase, underneath your pillow. Meta glasses use similar bone conduction sound technology to play audio; it sends the sounds straight to you without anyone nearby hearing it. You can customize the speaker using swappable magnetic faceplates.

Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC Pro Wireless Gaming Headset
Working as a car audio installer at Best Buy in Thousand Oaks, California, when I was 16 was the first step in my quest for high-fidelity audio quality. From my car to my computer, I was always tinkering with EQ settings to get just the right balance of hard-hitting double bass drums from Pantera or Lamb of God while driving in my Scion xB (probably embarrassingly so for my passengers).

Let’s be honest, an editor means you are an audio snob. So when “casually” listening to music or gaming, high-quality speakers and headphones are at the top of my list. Almost always, you get what you pay for. Four years ago, I wrote a review of the Audeze MM500 Studio Headphones. To this day, they are some of the best headphones I have ever used. But if you are an editor who likes to game, listen to music while you work and maybe answer a phone call or two, then the Auduze Maxwell 2 ANC Professional Wireless Gaming Headset is for you.

ANC means active noise cancelling. When I opened the Maxwell 2 ANCs and put them on, they were heavy, and the world went silent. I couldn’t hear my sons hitting each other, my wife’s multi-needle embroidery machines, the microwave or even my wife, who was talking directly in front of me. (That was a test. I would never ignore her.) Then I connected to my iPhone, and the audio fidelity was pristine by default. Once I downloaded the Audeze app, I dialed in the EQ a little and cranked up the tunes. After 30 minutes I began to love the heavy weight and the premium components, including a boom mic!

You can buy them for either PlayStation at $429 or Xbox for $449, but both work with Bluetooth and come with a USB-C wireless receiver to enable ultralow latency and up to 24-bit/96kHz high-resolution audio.

And stay tuned for a deeper review of the Maxwell 2 ANCs.

My Past Top Product Lists
Check out my top holiday picks from last year.

Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor and colorist in Hollywood researching AI and how it can be effectively used without eliminating creativity and human input. He has worked on shows like Life Below Zero. He has been a member of the Television Academy, Editor’s Guild, and Producer’s Guild. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com, and follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.