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Anker PowerCore FusionOne of the best ways you can support TouchArcade is by doing your Amazon shopping through a TouchArcade affiliate link. We’ve set up the easy to remember toucharcade.com/amazon too if you want to type that in or bookmark it. We get a small percentage of anything you buy through any of these links, which otherwise would just go to financing Jeff Bezos’s experimental pizza bagel flavors or whatever else he’s up to now, and it goes a long way to supporting the site at no additional cost to you. These Amazon Items of the Day articles are all products we have used ourselves, and feel are things that the TouchArcade audience might be interested in!

One of my favorite things about being able to spend time with TouchArcade founder Arnold Kim at WWDC and other events is hearing just how opinionated one person can be on batteries. Arn won’t buy a battery if it isn’t also able to plug directly into the wall to charge itself, which I always though was an unnecessary complication as the space that’s taken up by the plug and charging components is space that isn’t being taken up by battery. Eventually I thought, “Eh, maybe Arn knows what he’s talking about,” and I bought an Anker PowerCore Fusion which is their hybrid battery plus wall charger… And as much as I hate to say it, Arn is right, this thing is stupidly useful.

Basically, it works just how you think it would: If you flip the power outlet blades down and plug the Anker PowerCore Fusion into a wall, it’ll start charging itself. When you plug USB devices into it and those devices need to charge, it prioritizes charging connected USB devices before the internal battery. Once things connected are charged, it shifts gears back to recharging itself. The Anker PowerCore Fusion is about the size of a regular MacBook charger, so it’s not a total brick in your bag either.

The interesting thing about this charger is over the spread of about six bucks you really have three pretty interesting options to consider. If you, like Arnold Kim, really like the no fuss of having a battery that can directly plug into a wall, the Anker PowerCore Fusion is for you. The one down side this particular charger has is that 5,000 mAh is a little on the low side when you compare it to the Anker PowerCore II 10000 which is just a battery, and about the same size, with twice the capacity. (I actually love this battery for its great size/weight/capacity balance.) Or, if you want to get really weird, you can check out the RAVPower 2-in-1 Wall Charger and Power Bank which has all the capacity of the previously mentioned Anker battery, but is quite a bit larger due to all the extra charging components onboard.

Of the three, what’s the best one to get? It all depends on your uses. That being said, I’ve found the Anker PowerCore Fusion to be ridiculously handy to bring on quick overnight trips where I really only need a way to charge my iPhone and Apple Watch, and maybe a bit of extra battery in case I get caught in a pinch.

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Thanks for checking out today’s Amazon Item of the Day, and as mentioned before, even if you’re not interested in this particular product, buying things from Amazon by first visiting toucharcade.com/amazon is immensely helpful in supporting the site at no additional cost to you. Additionally, if you’re ever thinking of signing up for any Amazon services, we’d really appreciate if if you’d do it through these links:

• Amazon Prime Free Trial – Free shipping, Amazon Prime video, Kindle books, Twitch goodies, and a bunch of other stuff bundled into one subscription.
• Amazon Prime Student 6-month Trial – A slightly different flavor of Amazon Prime, exclusive to students that costs half as much.
• AmazonFresh Free Trial – Amazon’s grocery delivery service.
• Amazon Home Services – Amazon vetted handymen, house cleaning, and similar.
• Amazon Music Unlimited Free Trial – Amazon’s answe to Spotify, Apple Music, and other similar services.
• Try Audible and Get Two Free Audiobooks – If you’re even remotely interested in audiobooks, Audible is the best.
• Join Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited – Basically the text equivalent of an Audible membership.
• Download the free Kindle app – The best ebook platform, largely because unlike iBooks, your library is totally cross platform.
• Shop Amazon Cell Phones – Wireless phones and service plans without the hassle of dealing with going to a store.

If you want to take things a step further, you can check out our Patreon, but either way we just appreciate you sticking with us and continuing to both visit and contribute to the TouchArcade community over the years! If you’ve got a product you’re interested in seeing featured in an Amazon Item of the Day, don’t hesitate to reach out. The best way to get in contact with us is via email at tips@toucharcade.com and be sure to include “Amazon Item of the Day” in the subject.

One of the best ways you can support TouchArcade is by doing your Amazon shopping through a TouchArcade affiliate link. We’ve set up the easy to remember toucharcade.com/amazon too if you want to type that in or bookmark it. We get a small percentage of anything you buy through any of these links, which otherwise would just go to financing Jeff Bezos’s experimental pizza bagel flavors or whatever else he’s up to now, and it goes a long way to supporting the site at no additional cost to you. These Amazon Items of the Day articles are all products we have used ourselves, and feel are things that the TouchArcade audience might be interested in!

It’s no secret that we friggin’ love the Nintendo Switch around here. In a lot of ways, it is delivering on the promise it felt like the iPhone and iPad were trying to make with portable gaming… before we got swerved into this alternate universe hellscape we’re living in now. 2018, am I right?! Anyway, the one thing that sort of sucks for the Switch as a portable device is that unlike the DS or 3DS, the screen and analog sticks are always exposed which isn’t great for just tossing in a bag. This had led me to try out a bunch of different cases, and eventually landing on the supremely minimalist Tomtoc Slim Hard Case. UPS just dropped mine off on Monday, and I’ve been super happy with it so far.

As far as a Switch case is concerned, the Tomtoc Slim Hard Case has everything you need and nothing you don’t. There’s just enough room for your Switch, a flap that you can keep some game cards in, and enough room to weasel some ear buds in as well along with maybe one other cord if it’s pretty short. The outer shell is also designed in a way that prevents having direct pressure on the analog sticks, which I really like.

The Amazon reviews are overwhelmingly positive, aside from a few one off negative reviews mentioning the case … smells bad? I’m usually pretty sensitive to that sort of thing and don’t have any problem with the Tomtoc Slim Hard Case. If I close it up around my nose and breathe deep, sure, there’s a bit of a plastic-y smell but I have no idea why you’d ever do this. So, I guess it comes down to this: If you want a reasonably priced super slim no frills Nintendo Switch case that provides good protection and your primary use for it isn’t breathing deep with it zippered around your face… I’m super happy with the Tomtoc Slim Hard Case. Also, it’s worth mentioning that if you want to opt for the grey color it’s a couple bucks cheaper, but, I like the black with the red zipper pulls.

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Thanks for checking out today’s Amazon Item of the Day, and as mentioned before, even if you’re not interested in this particular product, buying things from Amazon by first visiting toucharcade.com/amazon is immensely helpful in supporting the site at no additional cost to you. Additionally, if you’re ever thinking of signing up for any Amazon services, we’d really appreciate if if you’d do it through these links:

• Amazon Prime Free Trial – Free shipping, Amazon Prime video, Kindle books, Twitch goodies, and a bunch of other stuff bundled into one subscription.
• Amazon Prime Student 6-month Trial – A slightly different flavor of Amazon Prime, exclusive to students that costs half as much.
• AmazonFresh Free Trial – Amazon’s grocery delivery service.
• Amazon Home Services – Amazon vetted handymen, house cleaning, and similar.
• Amazon Music Unlimited Free Trial – Amazon’s answe to Spotify, Apple Music, and other similar services.
• Try Audible and Get Two Free Audiobooks – If you’re even remotely interested in audiobooks, Audible is the best.
• Join Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited – Basically the text equivalent of an Audible membership.
• Download the free Kindle app – The best ebook platform, largely because unlike iBooks, your library is totally cross platform.
• Shop Amazon Cell Phones – Wireless phones and service plans without the hassle of dealing with going to a store.

If you want to take things a step further, you can check out our Patreon, but either way we just appreciate you sticking with us and continuing to both visit and contribute to the TouchArcade community over the years! If you’ve got a product you’re interested in seeing featured in an Amazon Item of the Day, don’t hesitate to reach out. The best way to get in contact with us is via email at tips@toucharcade.com and be sure to include “Amazon Item of the Day” in the subject.

One of the best ways you can support TouchArcade is by doing your Amazon shopping through a TouchArcade affiliate link. We’ve set up the easy to remember toucharcade.com/amazon too if you want to type that in or bookmark it. We get a small percentage of anything you buy through any of these links, which otherwise would just go to financing Jeff Bezos’s experimental pizza bagel flavors or whatever else he’s up to now, and it goes a long way to supporting the site at no additional cost to you. These Amazon Items of the Day articles are all products we have used ourselves, and feel are things that the TouchArcade audience might be interested in!

I’ve thought these smart speaker devices were super stupid for the longest time, largely because of my experiences with Siri. Well, last time the Amazon Echo Dot was on sale I decided, “Eh, Alexa is turning into a meme I’ll spend $40 and try this out, it can’t be worse than Siri.” …Which rapidly turned into me strategically placing these things throughout my house because I use them so much. The Echo Dot I have in my bedroom I use as an alarm clock and to ask what the weather is going to be like when I’m getting dressed. The one in my bathroom (yes, I have one in my bathroom) I use to get “flash briefings” (quick news reports) to hear what’s going on during the day when I’m brushing my teeth. The Echo Dot in my kitchen is great for unit conversions and timers when cooking, and the list just goes on and on.

I think what makes Alexa so much more useful than Siri is it’s connected to Amazon’s larger cloud infrastructure which allow you to add “skills” to Alexa. For instance, if you enable the skills to do it, you can have it suggest wine pairings, order pizza, and even call people for you. My favorite killer feature is by using the Amazon Echo Dot as a poor man’s Sonos setup. I can say, “Alexa, play Spotify everywhere,” and my music will play all over my house. There’s an AUX output on the back too, so I’ve got a couple of them hooked up to older Bluetooth speakers I had laying around for better audio quality.

The Amazon Echo Dot has been fairly surprising, as I was almost certain it was going to be super dumb or not very useful when I first ordered it, and my experience has been the exact opposite. If you’ve never fiddled with Alexa before, $39.99 (as of this writing) is a super low barrier to entry with giving it a go- Just beware, if you find it as useful as I have you’ll probably be buying way more than one.

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Thanks for checking out today’s Amazon Item of the Day, and as mentioned before, even if you’re not interested in this particular product, buying things from Amazon by first visiting toucharcade.com/amazon is immensely helpful in supporting the site at no additional cost to you. Additionally, if you’re ever thinking of signing up for any Amazon services, we’d really appreciate if if you’d do it through these links:

• Amazon Prime Free Trial – Free shipping, Amazon Prime video, Kindle books, Twitch goodies, and a bunch of other stuff bundled into one subscription.
• Amazon Prime Student 6-month Trial – A slightly different flavor of Amazon Prime, exclusive to students that costs half as much.
• AmazonFresh Free Trial – Amazon’s grocery delivery service.
• Amazon Home Services – Amazon vetted handymen, house cleaning, and similar.
• Amazon Music Unlimited Free Trial – Amazon’s answe to Spotify, Apple Music, and other similar services.
• Try Audible and Get Two Free Audiobooks – If you’re even remotely interested in audiobooks, Audible is the best.
• Join Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited – Basically the text equivalent of an Audible membership.
• Download the free Kindle app – The best ebook platform, largely because unlike iBooks, your library is totally cross platform.
• Shop Amazon Cell Phones – Wireless phones and service plans without the hassle of dealing with going to a store.

If you want to take things a step further, you can check out our Patreon, but either way we just appreciate you sticking with us and continuing to both visit and contribute to the TouchArcade community over the years! If you’ve got a product you’re interested in seeing featured in an Amazon Item of the Day, don’t hesitate to reach out. The best way to get in contact with us is via email at tips@toucharcade.com and be sure to include “Amazon Item of the Day” in the subject.

One of the best ways you can support TouchArcade is by doing your Amazon shopping through a TouchArcade affiliate link. We’ve set up the easy to remember toucharcade.com/amazon too if you want to type that in or bookmark it. We get a small percentage of anything you buy through any of these links, which otherwise would just go to financing Jeff Bezos’s experimental pizza bagel flavors or whatever else he’s up to now, and it goes a long way to supporting the site at no additional cost to you. These Amazon Items of the Day articles are all products we have used ourselves, and feel are things that the TouchArcade audience might be interested in!

Alright, so todays’s Amazon Item of the Day isn’t one specific item as much as it’s raising awareness of Amazon tweaking the way their discount structure works on video game preorders. Basically, if you’re a member of Amazon Prime and you preorder video games over there you get two pretty substantial benefits: If the price is lower anywhere Amazon adjusts their price and Prime members get 20% off anything they preorder. This took a typical $60 video game down to $48, which is a pretty zany deal as typically new games don’t go on sale and even if you’re looking at buying a reasonably new-ish game used from Game Stop you’re lucky to get much more than $5 off retail.

Well, all good things must come to an end, and Amazon recently announced they’re tweaking the way these preorder bonuses work. Instead of getting a flat 20% off, game preorders will be full price and instead you’ll just get $10 in Amazon credit for select games. So, you’re getting slightly less off the price of these game preorders and instead of paying less you’re just getting Amazon credit back. It’s not a huge deal if you do a lot of shopping on Amazon, as that $10 will just roll into your next purchase but if you rarely shop over there it is way better to just get $12 off instead of $10 back to spend later.

Amazon switches over from the 20% off to the $10 back program on August 28th, so as of this writing you’ve got a week left to look through their list of game preorders and grab whatever you feel like preordering. Historically, Amazon doesn’t actually charge your card until the item is shipped, so you could go nuts just preordering everything you’re even remotely interested in to lock in the discount, then just end up cancelling whatever you decide you don’t actually want to buy as reviews start to trickle out. That doesn’t seem like the worst strategy, provided you’re vigilant about actually following through on the cancelling.

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Thanks for checking out today’s Amazon Item of the Day, and as mentioned before, even if you’re not interested in this particular product, buying things from Amazon by first visiting toucharcade.com/amazon is immensely helpful in supporting the site at no additional cost to you. Additionally, if you’re ever thinking of signing up for any Amazon services, we’d really appreciate if if you’d do it through these links:

• Amazon Prime Free Trial – Free shipping, Amazon Prime video, Kindle books, Twitch goodies, and a bunch of other stuff bundled into one subscription.
• Amazon Prime Student 6-month Trial – A slightly different flavor of Amazon Prime, exclusive to students that costs half as much.
• AmazonFresh Free Trial – Amazon’s grocery delivery service.
• Amazon Home Services – Amazon vetted handymen, house cleaning, and similar.
• Amazon Music Unlimited Free Trial – Amazon’s answe to Spotify, Apple Music, and other similar services.
• Try Audible and Get Two Free Audiobooks – If you’re even remotely interested in audiobooks, Audible is the best.
• Join Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited – Basically the text equivalent of an Audible membership.
• Download the free Kindle app – The best ebook platform, largely because unlike iBooks, your library is totally cross platform.
• Shop Amazon Cell Phones – Wireless phones and service plans without the hassle of dealing with going to a store.

If you want to take things a step further, you can check out our Patreon, but either way we just appreciate you sticking with us and continuing to both visit and contribute to the TouchArcade community over the years! If you’ve got a product you’re interested in seeing featured in an Amazon Item of the Day, don’t hesitate to reach out. The best way to get in contact with us is via email at tips@toucharcade.com and be sure to include “Amazon Item of the Day” in the subject.

One of the best ways you can support TouchArcade is by doing your Amazon shopping through a TouchArcade affiliate link. We’ve set up the easy to remember toucharcade.com/amazon too if you want to type that in or bookmark it. We get a small percentage of anything you buy through any of these links, which otherwise would just go to financing Jeff Bezos’s experimental pizza bagel flavors or whatever else he’s up to now, and it goes a long way to supporting the site at no additional cost to you. These Amazon Items of the Day articles are all products we have used ourselves, and feel are things that the TouchArcade audience might be interested in!

Chances are you’ve got a car charged plugged into the 12v outlet of your car (or cigarette lighter, if you’re real old school) and really just haven’t thought about it in years. It charges your iPhone, so whatever. But here’s the thing- Over the years, and particularly with newer iOS devices, you’re actually able to charge way faster with more powerful chargers- Almost twice as fast in fact.

There’s a bunch of different examples of this across the internet, but last year MacRumors did a test on these different charging options and found that if you’ve got an iPhone X, iPhone 8, or iPhone 8 Plus and charge either via a 12W USB port or a 18W USB-C port your overall charge speed doubles over using just the normal 5W USB charger that you’re probably rocking if you didn’t specifically look for a high speed charger.

Anyway, I’m a pretty hardcore Anker fanboy, and I’ve been super happy with the Anker PowerDrive II which both has a traditional USB port capable of fast charging anything that can be fast charged and a USB-C port that conforms to the USB-PD standard so it’ll not only charge your iPhone as quick as an iPhone can be charged but it’ll also work with MacBooks, the Nintendo Switch, and anything else that uses USB-C.

Upgrading a Anker PowerDrive II been pretty significant for me, as I can actually get a meaningful charge out of having my iPhone plugged in for quick trips. The one annoying part of the current USB-C iPhone charging situation is that Apple hasn’t MFi certified any third party USB-C to Lightning cables yet, so you’re stuck buying expensive official cables from Apple, or much cheaper “used” ones on Amazon. Hopefully the situation surrounding this changes, but, it is what it is. Apple wouldn’t be Apple without being real dumb about cables.

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Thanks for checking out today’s Amazon Item of the Day, and as mentioned before, even if you’re not interested in this particular product, buying things from Amazon by first visiting toucharcade.com/amazon is immensely helpful in supporting the site at no additional cost to you. Additionally, if you’re ever thinking of signing up for any Amazon services, we’d really appreciate if if you’d do it through these links:
 

• Amazon Prime Free Trial – Free shipping, Amazon Prime video, Kindle books, Twitch goodies, and a bunch of other stuff bundled into one subscription.
• Amazon Prime Student 6-month Trial – A slightly different flavor of Amazon Prime, exclusive to students that costs half as much.
• AmazonFresh Free Trial – Amazon’s grocery delivery service.
• Amazon Home Services – Amazon vetted handymen, house cleaning, and similar.
• Amazon Music Unlimited Free Trial – Amazon’s answe to Spotify, Apple Music, and other similar services.
• Try Audible and Get Two Free Audiobooks – If you’re even remotely interested in audiobooks, Audible is the best.
• Join Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited – Basically the text equivalent of an Audible membership.
• Download the free Kindle app – The best ebook platform, largely because unlike iBooks, your library is totally cross platform.
• Shop Amazon Cell Phones – Wireless phones and service plans without the hassle of dealing with going to a store.

If you want to take things a step further, you can check out our Patreon, but either way we just appreciate you sticking with us and continuing to both visit and contribute to the TouchArcade community over the years! If you’ve got a product you’re interested in seeing featured in an Amazon Item of the Day, don’t hesitate to reach out. The best way to get in contact with us is via email at tips@toucharcade.com and be sure to include “Amazon Item of the Day” in the subject.