gear
Spoot: Spotted Early keeps gear in one place: 10 stories so far. The section currently leads with “Nitecore hides a razor blade inside a flashlight and calls it a multitool”, “Roxon shrinks its modular Flex down to pocket-friendly size”, and “This disposable camera clone develops your photos in a single day”. Nitecore hides a razor blade inside a flashlight and calls it a multitool. It is the unofficial week of slimmed-down flagship multitools. Spoot: Spotted Early New things, caught while they're still new and a little weird. Spoot finds fresh gadgets, clever inventions, crowdfunding campaigns,… The list below is every gear story on Spoot: Spotted Early, newest first.
Nitecore hides a razor blade inside a flashlight and calls it a multitool
Nitecore hides a razor blade inside a flashlight and calls it a multitool. That sentence alone should make you stop scrolling. The UTL19 is the first member of a new Utility Tool & Light series, and it's exactly what it sounds like: a slim, remote control-shaped torch that slides out a box-slicing blade when you need it. Five ounces of pocket power that says leave the folding knife at home. I love the audacity of this thing, it's not trying to replace your Leatherman, it's just asking if you really need both a light and a blade taking up space. Nitecore has been quietly filling out this flashlight family for three years, and now it's gone feral.
Roxon shrinks its modular Flex down to pocket-friendly size
It is the unofficial week of slimmed-down flagship multitools. One day after Nextool dropped its Goldilocks-sized F20, Roxon answered with the Flex Go, a pocket-friendly version of its modular Flex system. The idea is simple: if you can build your own multitool from individual implements, you don't need a massive frame stuffed with everything but the kitchen sink. This one is built for a pocket, not a belt or a toolbox. That feels like the right call. The modular approach already meant you carried only what you needed; now the chassis itself shrinks to match. For a deeper look at the other side of this very compact coin, check out our coverage of Nextool's new F20 and its three-handle design.
This disposable camera clone develops your photos in a single day
There's a specific anxiety that comes with handing over a disposable camera at the drugstore and waiting a week to see if you accidentally photographed your own thumb for 24 frames. Flashback's new model understands that dread. It clones the look and feel of those cheap, plastic film cameras but develops your photos in a single day. No waiting. No mystery. Just that same tactile, fuss-free experience of winding the wheel and hearing the click, now with the speed of a digital workflow. It's for people who want the nostalgia without the patience test. A warm, slightly feral little gadget that asks: do you miss the ritual, or just the results? If you liked the minimalist guts of Rega's stripped-down turntable, you'll appreciate what Flashback is doing here.
Amazon's Echo duo gets a smarter home and a bigger ear
Amazon's new Echo speakers have a bigger ear for your smart home, and that's exactly where the company's focus should be. The Echo duo arrives with enhanced smart home capabilities baked in, which means less fumbling with the Alexa app and more actually talking to your lights. It's not a reinvention of the speaker, it's a refinement that knows what you're actually using the thing for. The bigger ear isn't just for show; it's about hearing you over the blender, the vacuum, the chaos. That's the razor clam here: Amazon finally understands that a smart speaker's job isn't to sound great playing music, it's to listen better than you do.
The Arrowmax S1 picks the bit and torque so you don't have to
The Arrowmax S1 electric smart driver looks at the screw, identifies the bit you need, sets the torque, and then just waits for you to hold it steady. That's basically all the dumb human has to do, drop the bit in, hold the driver to the head, and let the powered head do the work. It's a step or two removed from a fully autonomous robo-driver where you sit back and watch. The HD camera system doing the bit-spotting is the razor clam here: everyone else is selling you more torque, and Arrowmax is selling you less thinking. I genuinely love the audacity of calling this "self-driving" for screws. It's on Kickstarter, so we'll see if it ships, but the idea itself is already a win.
Home Depot Has a Gerber Multi-Tool That Costs Less Than a Good Lunch
Home Depot has a Gerbi multi-tool that costs less than a good lunch. The Suspension NXT 15-in-1 Multi-Tool is deeply discounted right now, which is the kind of price that makes you stop scrolling and start wondering if you actually need a reason. You don't. It offers approachable utility for everyday use, the sort of tool that lives in a junk drawer or a glove box and quietly solves problems until you forget it wasn't always there. Fifteen functions for less than the price of a sandwich is not a compromise; it's a victory lap for practical thinking.
The iPad Mini Sheds Weight, Gains OLED and a Whole New Reason to Stare
The new iPad mini is thinner, lighter, faster, and has an OLED display that makes everything you do on it feel like you're holding the good light. Apple shed some serious weight from this thing, and the screen upgrade alone is a reason to stare at it for longer than you probably should. It's a small device that now asks bigger questions about how much you actually need a full-sized tablet. I'm genuinely curious whether this becomes the daily carry that quietly replaces everything else in your bag. For another kind of pocketable utility at a very different price point, our piece on the Gerber Suspension NXT multi-tool covers a tool that costs less than lunch.
New Balance's 990 gets its first real tweak since 2022
The 990's sole got a full rewrite, New Balance finally gave its most stubborn icon a real tweak, the first major overhaul since 2022. It's leaner now, streamlined where the old one was resolutely blocky, and the comfort has been chased deeper into the midsole where it belongs. You wonder how long it took someone to ask: what if the 990 breathed a little differently? The answer is a shoe that still looks like itself but feels like it actually updated its firmware. It's not a revolution. It's a sharpening. And if you're the type who circled back to see if the folding-phone thing had legs, you might also want to read why *Coolpad steals the foldable's screen without the folding trick*, same impulse, different shape.
This walkie-talkie uses LTE so you can yell at your friends from anywhere
The walkie-talkie is not dead. Long live the walkie-talkie that uses LTE to scream at your friends from across the state. This upcoming hybrid radio doesn't care about line-of-sight or that ridge you're about to hike over. It just needs a cellular signal, and suddenly your group chat is voice-activated and clipped to your backpack strap. That's the razor clam here: nearly unlimited range, which changes the game for anyone who has ever watched a buddy disappear around a bend and wondered if they fell into a ravine or just found a better trail. It's on Kickstarter, so the usual caveats apply, will it ship, will it work as promised, but the idea is genuinely good. If you like digging into clever outdoor tools, you might also enjoy how the Blackjaw rethinks the multitool entirely.
The Blackjaw is a multitool that skips the pliers and trusts its own kit
The Blackjaw skips the pliers. That's the first thing you notice, and honestly, it's the best thing about it. Tsuchioto Works has taken the classic Leatherman formula, peeled out the jaw, and trusted the rest of the kit to carry the load. It's a curated bundle of implements for daily life, DIY, and the outdoors, all packed into a tight body. We like the nerve of that. It's a gamble to drop the one tool everyone expects, but it feels like a dare worth taking. The spec sheet reads lean, and that's the point. It doesn't want to be a swiss army knife on stilts. It wants to be the thing you actually use. We're gently skeptical, sure, but we're also circling back for another look.