Olivia Carter

When a lightning strike fried my gaming PC and TV on the same night, I learned the hard way that not all power strips are created equal. That $8 strip from the hardware store did nothing to stop the surge from turning my setup into expensive paperweights. After replacing everything, I went deep into researching … Read more

After testing dozens of options over the past three months, I picked the seven best smart power strips for home offices that actually deliver on app reliability, surge protection, and USB-C charging. My home office runs two monitors, a desktop, a laptop dock, a studio light, a phone stand, and a mechanical keyboard setup, so … Read more

Cell service disappears fast when you climb above 8,000 feet. I learned this the hard way on a backcountry trip in Colorado when my group split across two ridges and needed to coordinate a descent before a storm rolled in. That experience sent me on a mission to find the best long-range walkie talkies for … Read more

Cell phones fail when you need them most. I’ve been on enough backcountry trips to know that the moment you step into a canyon, a thick forest, or anywhere off the beaten path, your bars vanish. That’s where the best walkie talkies for camping earn their place in your pack. Two-way radios have been keeping … Read more

I learned this the hard way on a 14-hour drive to Colorado last summer. My phone died somewhere in Kansas because my old car charger couldn’t keep up with Google Maps running in the background, Spotify streaming, and my partner’s phone fighting for the same outlet. By the time we hit Denver, we had a … Read more

I have spent the better part of the last three months testing USB-C wall chargers across phones, tablets, laptops, and everything in between. My desk looked like a charger graveyard with cables snaking everywhere, but the testing process gave me real answers about which models actually deliver on their promises. If you are looking for … Read more

I learned the hard way that not all travel chargers survive a real international trip. Two years ago, I landed in Lisbon with a dead MacBook, a hotel room that only had one outlet, and a power bank that took six hours to refill. Since then, our team has spent 14 months testing 22 different … Read more

I tested 10 of the best car chargers for fast charging over six weeks, plugging them into everything from a beat-up 2012 Civic to a brand new F-150 with an idle-hungry inverter. I charged dead iPhones back to 80%, ran laptops while navigating on Waze, and tested three devices running at the same time. Below … Read more

Between phones, tablets, smartwatches, earbuds, and the occasional laptop, my family of four had seven devices fighting over three wall outlets. Every night turned into a cable negotiation. Someone’s phone was always at 12 percent by morning because they got the slow port, or their cable popped out of a loose outlet overnight. If that … Read more

I’ve been testing phone chargers for our team for over seven years, and I can tell you one thing for sure: the best fast chargers for Android phones in are not the ones that came in the box. Modern Android phones support USB Power Delivery (PD) and Programmable Power Supply (PPS), and grabbing any old … Read more