storage
3 stories filed under storage on Spoot: Spotted Early. The newest of them: “Dragon Tiny Homes puts the bedroom on the ground floor and two lofts above it in 24 feet”, “The S26 Ultra hides your screen for $950, and that's the whole pitch”, and “The last-gen Kindle Paperwhite is still the smart buy at 30 percent off”. The bedroom is the hardest room to squeeze into a tiny home, which is why Dragon Tiny Homes put it on the ground floor of the Avalon 24 and dared the rest of the floor plan to figure itself out. 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 storage story on Spoot: Spotted Early, newest first.
Dragon Tiny Homes puts the bedroom on the ground floor and two lofts above it in 24 feet
The bedroom is the hardest room to squeeze into a tiny home, which is why Dragon Tiny Homes put it on the ground floor of the Avalon 24 and dared the rest of the floor plan to figure itself out. And it did. In 24 feet, this thing stacks two lofts above that main-level sleeping area, which means you're not climbing a ladder every time you want to lie down. That's the kind of design move that makes you wonder why more builders don't do it. The Avalon 24 feels like it found the narrow, useful detail everyone else scrolls past, and built the whole house around it. If you liked how the Winslow burrowed deeper than a coastal cottage, this one digs into a different kind of cleverness.
The S26 Ultra hides your screen for $950, and that's the whole pitch
The S26 Ultra costs $950 to hide your screen, and honestly, that feels like the right price for the paranoia. Samsung's 6.9-inch flagship drops to $949.99 at Amazon, a solid $450 off its usual tag, and the headline trick is an adjustable privacy display that blanks out the whole screen, or just bits of it, for anyone peeking from a steep angle. The rest of the phone doesn't suffer for it. The camera hardware gets dual telephoto lenses and a 200-megapixel main sensor, which matters more in low light than any spec sheet suggests. It's still a big phone, though slimmer than the S25 Ultra. The S Pen is along for the ride. For a device this size, hiding your business from strangers feels less like a gimmick and more like a survival instinct.
The last-gen Kindle Paperwhite is still the smart buy at 30 percent off
Calling something "last-gen" usually means it's the awkward cousin at the family reunion. But the 2024 Kindle Paperwhite? It's the one you actually want to sit next to. The newer model opens books 30 percent faster and shaves off a millimeter, sure, but it also costs $50 more. Meanwhile, this one keeps the same glorious 300ppi screen, the auto-adjusting front light, and that IPX8 waterproofing that lets you read in the bath without fear. The Signature Edition, down to $169.99 from $249.99, adds wireless charging, 32GB of storage, and no lockscreen ads. The standard Paperwhite at $149.99 cuts too much. If you want the real deal without the premium tax, this is it. (And if you like smart buys that bite back, check out our piece on Gerber's dual-force pocket tool.)