Over the last few years, I’ve been buying and using quite a few controllers across different consoles, PC, and mobile platforms. Some of them have been mediocre while others have been amazing. I also use these controllers across a variety of game genres and have slowly been finding how I sometimes prefer different controllers for different genres. After buying a few 8BitDo products, I’ve basically been a fan and buy any new product they release when I can to test out. The newest of these is the 8BitDo M30 Bluetooth controller I bought to use on mobile, Switch, and Steam Deck. There’s also an Xbox version that I will be buying soon to write about. The 8BitDo M30 controller has constantly impressed me, and I liked it enough to want to do a review of it despite its age, so here we are. Before getting into the full review, all mentions of the 8BitDo M30 controller refer to the Bluetooth version unless otherwise stated.

8BitDo M30 controller – what’s in the box

The model I have is the 8BitDo M30 Bluetooth version. This ships with the actual controller and a USB C to A cable. Mine also included an 8BitDo pin which I’ve put on my bag. The cable included is sufficient, but I’d really recommend getting one of these for use across your platforms if you don’t already have good cables.

8BitDo M30 controller compatibility

The 8BitDo M30 controller is advertised to officially support Switch, macOS, Android, Windows, Steam, and Raspberry Pi. I’ve used it on my Nintendo Switch OLED, Steam Deck (both LCD and OLED), iPad, and iPhone for daily use and for this review. When Nintendo announced those Nintendo Switch Online controllers for the various apps, I kept getting annoyed at the 6 button SEGA one being Japan-only and selling out quite fast. After getting the NeoGeo controller 8BitDo released for use on Steam Deck, I was looking at the Xbox lineup and found the M30 variant the company released. It then struck me that the M30 Bluetooth model exists and I ordered it. I’m glad I did because I love the controller and it might be my favorite fighting game and shmup controller outside of actual sticks and leverless controllers.

8BitDo M30 controller d-pad

Yes, I’m not exaggerating and this is mostly because the d-pad is that damn good on the 8BitDo M30 controller. If we look at the current consoles and the official controllers available, the Switch Joy-Cons are at the bottom tier for the d-pad (if you can even call it one) with the DualSense Edge (it improves over the regular DualSense d-pad) on the top. But that’s a big variance in price of course and the Xbox Series X controller has been very good, but none of them come close to how good the 8BitDo M30 controller d-pad feels for fighting games, arcade games, and shmups.

8BitDo M30 controller face buttons and in-hand feel

Aside from the d-pad, the in-hand feel of the controller will vary depending on your hand size and what controllers you’re used to playing with, but I like everything about it. The shoulder buttons, face buttons, and other buttons are all good and feel as they should to use. Aside from buttons, pairing the controller and the different modes are very easy to use or swap between. The back of the controller has a cheat sheet for the modes (switch, dinput, xinput, and macOS) and you basically hold one specific face button and the start button to turn the 8BitDo M30 controller on in a specific mode.

8BitDo M30 controller – battery life

The 8BitDo M30 controller has a 480mAh rechargeable battery. It is advertised as being able to deliver up to 18 hours on a full charge and it takes 1-2 hours to charge. I’ve not pushed it to 18 hours yet, but I’ve used it for more than 12 hours on a single charge multiple times. I do usually charge my controllers when not in use though. With this using USB C charging, I usually leave it plugged in after a few days of use. I don’t have any complaints with the battery life or charge time.

8BitDo M30 controller – Genesis Nintendo Switch Online, fighting games, shmups, and more

I originally thought I’d mostly use the 8BitDo M30 controller just on Nintendo Switch Online’s Genesis app and a few other games, but I found myself enjoying it more with just about every game. Playing shmups like G-Darius HD or even modern fighting games like Street Fighter 6 have felt great thanks to the excellent d-pad. Basically, you can safely enjoy the 8BitDo M30 controller across games that don’t require both analog sticks and can function with up to six or eight buttons and a d-pad.

I used the 8BitDo M30 controller over bluetooth on iOS, Switch, and Steam Deck and had no issues with inputs or connectivity. I also tried it wired and it works as it should. This is basically the perfect controller for games that don’t require the analog sticks for anything. So how does it play in modern fighting games? Well, I was surprised at how good it works. I know I shouldn’t be, but this is now my favorite fighting game controller outside of actual arcade sticks or leverless controllers.

On iOS, I used the 8BitDo M30 controller to play games like Streets of Rage 4, and it felt amazing. I’m considering buying the white variant of the controller specifically for use on iOS. When it comes to controllers for iOS, I don’t recommend buying this as your main controller though because there are too many games that require both analog sticks now with console game ports, but as a controller for older games and retro titles, this is unbeatable in its convenience and performance for its price.

The 8BitDo M30 controller has one issue though, and it may or may not be a big deal for you. The three buttons on top are smaller than the ones below. This is obviously to be as authentic as possible for the controller’s inspiration (the Mega Drive 6 button controller), but it isn’t ideal because of how the buttons sit in the concave area. This means the X button is at the edge nearly. It isn’t a dealbreaker and I got used to it, but having all six the same size would’ve been better. Outside this, I have no complaints. The 8BitDo M30 controller does more than what it advertises and I would recommend it even if it costs twice what it does right now. It is that good.

8bitdo M30 Bluetooth Review Score: 4.5/5

If you’d like to grab it, the 8BitDo M30 controller is available for $30 on Amazon in the Black and White variants. There’s also a 2.4G model that costs $5 less, but I haven’t used it yet. If you do end up buying it or already own one, I’d love to know what you think about it. Let us know in the comments below, and also if you’d like to see any specific controller reviewed.

If you buy the controllers or items listed and linked above through our links on Amazon, it helps TouchArcade in a small way.

It’s really sort of incredible just how cheap storage media has gotten over the years. I remember when USB was brand new I has a 32 megabyte flash drive I paid well over $100 for. Maybe more even. Well, today’s Amazon deal of the day is a SanDisk Ultra 400GB microSDXC UHS-I card for $62. As of this writing, there’s a little more than 14 hours left. This is a stupidly good deal, particularly considering that aside from Apple devices, basically everything that uses any kind of storage media takes microSD cards. Drones, GoPro cameras, the Nintendo Switch, all kinds of Android devices, etc.

Previously, the “sweet spot” was the 256GB card as the price jump between 256GB and 400GB was significant, but today’s deal that brings these cards down to $60 is real hard to pass up. Last time one of these deals rolled around (which I think I put it at around $80?) I grabbed one for my Switch and it is ridiculously liberating to just never really need to worry about space again, particularly as Nintendo keeps releasing these huge download-only games. This isn’t a junky card either, it’s a name brand, fast card. Usually when these ultra-cheap cards roll around they’re weird, slow, no-name cards we don’t even bother posting about.

And hey, buying through our links helps TouchArcade in a small way, so get loads of storage and throw us a bone at the same time!

Update: Looks like these sold out absurdly quickly. I’m going to keep an eye to see if there’s a restock, but the 256GB card for $44 is also a great deal.

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 robot St. Bernard army 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!

My local tabletop gaming Facebook group is absolutely losing it this morning over Gloomhaven being on sale today on Amazon for $103.37 down from its regular price of $140. Admittedly, I’m not as deep into the world of board games as I once was, but according to friends of mine, Gloomhaven is a lot like Space Hulk (and many other similar games) that are impossible to find and rarely sell for anywhere near the original retail price. I only even know one person who owns a copy of Gloomhaven, and when he brings it to the local game store, it’s a thing. If you’ve never heard of this before, the reason it’s a big deal is because it’s the #1 game, overall, on Board Game Geek, as well as the #1 thematic and #1 strategy game- Likely because Gloomhaven is not only unbelievably complicated, but also features a single player mode.

Take a look at this quick video to get an idea of what the game is all about:

The staggering thing about Gloomhaven is the absolutely unbelievable content in the box. It’s really hard to quantify this in any meaningful way if you’ve never played it before, but the box weighs 20 pounds. What other game have you played in your entire life that requires 20 friggin’ pounds of boards, booklets, cards, pieces, and other gizmos to play? Here’s a review by The Dice Tower, which is my favorite board game channel:

Now, the one odd thing about Gloomhaven is amongst those 20 pounds of pieces is a lot of various stickers which are applied on maps, cards, and all sorts of other places as you play. These stickers aren’t removable, which seems like a real odd oversight unless I’m missing something. (I’ve only every watched this being played at my FLGS.) It’s recommended that you pick up this removable sticker set, I asked my buddy who owns the game what the deal is with the few negative Amazon reviews, and his response was effectively, “I have no idea, mine are great.”

Gloomhaven is currently out of stock on Amazon, but they’ll ship whenever they get more which … hopefully is quickly. Either way, if you’re even remotely interested in board games, this is the crown jewel of any board game collection. Also, if you’re thinking ahead for Christmas gifts, if you have any board gamer significant others I’m fairly certain they’ll absolutely lose it if they open up a copy of Gloomhaven.

UPDATE: Ugh, looks like this deal lasted an annoyingly short period of time. While the normal price of $139.99 isn’t on sale, it still might be a decent “deal” as this game has absurd resale prices. Looking at what resellers are charging on Amazon isn’t anywhere near $139.99, which makes me wonder if it wasn’t resellers that scooped them all up?

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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 expedition to mine cheese from the moon 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!

If you’re an Amazon Prime Member, you now have the ability to purchase Amazon’s best-selling tablet for a price so low it’s sort of unbelievable. For $35 you can get a Fire 7 Tablet, you’ll need to get the 8GB model with special offers (basically ads on the lock screen) to hit that price point, but holy moly. Thinking back to when tablets were brand new things that felt like using something out of a Sci-Fi movie, if you would’ve told me one day you’d be able to buy one for $35, I’d think you were some kind of nut.

Now, the Fire 7 Tablet comes with some pretty significant caveats you should be aware of: This particular model is about three years old now, so it’s not going to have the latest and greatest hardware inside of it. By today’s standards, the processor is sort of slow and the 1024×600 7″ display will be way more pixel-y than you’re used to compared to the Retina Display of your iPhone. But, that being said, if you’re just looking for a ultra cheap Android tablet you can root and run emulators, give to your kids, or just use to watch movies or whatever else yourself at the gym, this tablet would do all of those things- And it has a SD card slot so you can increase the storage significantly if you’ve got an old SD card laying around.

The Fire 7 Tablet has a vast array of accessories you can buy for it, as all sorts of third party manufacturers have jumped on the bandwagon of making things for such a popular tablet, but I’d really recommend looking at other models if you’re going to be spending money on that many things to go along with it. For instance, Prime members can get the Fire HD 10 which is a better tablet in just about every way for $110. You get a quadcore processor, way more RAM, a way better screen, and other perks… But, it’s 3x the price.

Anyway, $35 for the Fire 7 Tablet seems like a pretty wild deal, provided you’ve got your expectations in check with what the device is capable of. Lightweight emulators, Netflix, YouTube, some basic older mobile games and things like that are all fine. Anything beyond that, you’re really better off saving your money for something a bit newer… But, hey, your kid who watches Peppa Pig all day won’t care about anything fancier than a YouTube machine, right?

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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 rotary dial cell phones 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!

When I bought my car ages ago, I remember it being a real big deal to me that I spend the extra cash to get the one that had GPS. Well, fast forward nearly a decade and the GPS in my car is old, busted, and severely out of date. Sure, I could pay Toyota a couple hundred bucks for new map data, but what’s even the point when you can just use Google Maps or Waze? Additionally, while using my iPhone for mapping became more common, using the CD player slot in my car stopped entirely- Making it the best place to put a phone mount.

The Mpow CD Slot Car Phone Holder is universally adored on Amazon, and at $9.99, is totally worth picking up over having your phone in your cupholder, in your lap, or in your hands. You slide the mount into your CD slot then turn the locking crank until there’s enough pressure to keep it there, then, a normal spring enclosure setup keeps your iPhone in place.

The Mpow CD Slot Car Phone Holder is totally universal, and works with any smartphone you’d ever want to put in it, with the one exception being if you have a super bulky Otterbox-style case. You might need to downsize if that’s the case. Either way, all the ports on the bottom are exposed so you can charge, run a line in, or whatever else.

If you’re not into CD mounts, I like the Anker Vent Mount which I’ll fully feature tomorrow.

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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. 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 rotary dial cell phones 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!

This is a little odd to feature on TouchArcade, but I’ve given this advice to so many of my east coast friends this week as they get ready for Florence that I figured I’d post it here in case it helps someone in the TouchArcade community as well. Anyway, if you live in an area that is prone to any sort of weather that might lead to power outages, it’s generally a decent idea to have a generator. The problem there is, it’s one more gas engine to maintain, and they can take up a ton of room in your garage- Or potentially are not feasible at all to own if you don’t have a garage. What a lot of people don’t consider is that you can get most of the functionality of a generator out of a high capacity power inverter hooked up to your car, like the POTEK 750W Car Power Inverter. Most folks are familiar with smaller inverters that you plug into a 12v socket that might provide enough power to charge a laptop, but higher capacity inverters connect directly to your car battery- Effectively turning the alternator of your car into a reasonably decent capacity generator that can run for hours and hours and hours.

The POTEK 750W Car Power Inverter is capable of providing 1500 watts of peak power and 750 watts of constant power, which should be enough to power most average sized modern refrigerators and a few other things. For instance, my refrigerator which I got a few years ago when it’s running only uses around 100 watts, but when the compressor first kicks on its usage surges up to around 700 watts. So, this inverter is completely capable of handling my fridge. If you’re not sure how much power your appliances use, both at peak and at idle, it’s reasonably easy to find someone who has figured it out by searching Google for your model number or you can get something like the Kill A Watt usage monitor (which is another useful gizmo to have). 750 watt inverters are also sort of the sweet spot for what most average cars can handle, but this is also a good thing to do a bit of research on if you’re driving something weird like a Smart FourTwo or something that might have a lower power electrical system.

While blackouts in my area (knock on wood) have barely lasted long enough to be worth worrying about, I grew up in a very rural area where multi-day outages after a storm wasn’t that abnormal. If you cover your fridge with a bunch of blankets to insulate it better, you can just run it on an inverter for long enough for the compressor to complete a cycle, then just plug in something else like your TV or whatever else, then power your refrigerator some more a few hours later. Does this work as well as having some huge whole house generator setup? No, of course not, but we’re also talking a $45 power inverter that you can keep in your blackout kit and basically forget about until you need it versus a multi-thousand dollar generator setup. The only other thing to keep this whole thing going is a heavy gauge extension cord, which you might even already have.

Even if this sort of thing doesn’t specifically apply to you now, the fact that you can do this is worth data banking somewhere in your brain, as you never know when you’re going to need to deal with extended blackouts or prepare for an incoming storm.

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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. 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 rotary dial cell phones 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 have so many friends of mine who have doorbells by Ring, that it really annoys me that I just don’t really have an even remotely ideal way to install one of these on my house- My doorbell is on my weirdly narrow door frame, and my exterior walls surrounding my door are this uneven flagstone material that looks cool, but… Well, I guess whoever built my house in the 60’s didn’t have smart doorbells in mind. If you live in a normal house, with normal walls, I highly recommend checking out the Ring Video Doorbell 2 which is on sale today for 20% off, bringing its normal $200 price down to $160. The original Ring Video Doorbell has been hovering at around $100 for a while now, and although it’s functionally very similar, the second generation Ring is basically better in every way: 1080p vs 720p video, the video processing is better as well which assists with night vision and motion detecting. Also, if you can’t hardwire it, the Ring 2 has a removable battery pack which makes charging way easier.

Anyway, if this is the first you’ve heard of these newfangled smart doorbell things, the way they work is by basically combining the basic function of a doorbell with a security camera, two way intercom, and push alerts. I was 110% sold on these kind of products when I was out to lunch with a friend who had one, the postman rang their doorbell to get a signature on a package, and they were able to have a conversation via the Ring app about just bringing the package back the next day when he would be home. At my house, when that happens, I’m left with the annoying “Sorry we missed you!” post card and the exponentially more annoying subsequent trip to the post office.

YouTube is also filled with these kind of videos where these sorts of smart doorbells have been used to either deter or catch package thieves. If you order things from Amazon or other places on the regular, and are in an area with lots of foot traffic, that’s one more reason to get one of these. The only downside to these devices is that there’s a $3/mo subscription to use all the fancy cloud stuff that makes the doorbell and the app all work together. A low-cost subscription like that is fairly standard for all these different video security solutions however.

If I had an even remotely good way to install one of these Ring Video Doorbell 2s at my house, I’d already have one. I’m super jealous of friends of mine who have had these things for years, and, today you’re able to save 20%.

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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. 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 rotary dial cell phones 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 think you could make a real strong argument that few skills are more important for kids these days to learn than the basic fundamentals of computer programming. Regardless of what they want to be when they grow up, understanding these things will be immensely useful as technology becomes more and more integrated with your life. You could even argue that knowing a programming language is more valuable than knowing a second spoken language. Problem is, as a parent, it’s real difficult to know where to start with all this stuff. The company Kano identified this issue, and has been shipping computer kits specifically for kids to build their own mini-PC and then use it to do a variety of activities to learn the basics of programming. Better yet, their products are based on the Raspberry Pi which is a totally flexible piece of open source hardware that you can just install any number of programmer-centric operating system environments on if they cap out with what Kano offers.

This is relevant today because the Kano Computer Kit is 30% off, bringing it down from its normal price of $149.99 to $104.96 with free shipping. Assembling the kit is the first part of the lessons that Kano packs in, and is incredibly simple. You basically snap a few pieces together, put it in a case, and connect a power wire and a HDMI cable to whatever you’re hooking it up to. This can be a super cheap monitor you have laying around or a TV, everything works.

The above video shows how it all comes together, and is actually based on the older version of the Kano Computer Kit. The new one is a bit faster, and has a few more goodies like some LED lights you can program. Kano’s YouTube channel is unbelievably exhaustive when it comes to different tutorials and troubleshooting guides too. I’ve given Kano Computer Kits to kids as young as seven, and it’s been pretty wild watching them figure it all out. This is the sort of thing I wish existed when I was a kid.

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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. 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 rotary dial cell phones 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!

Today we’re not really featuring a single item as much as we’re focusing on an entire category of items that are on sale. Amazon Basics is basically Amazon’s generic brand of stuff- Sort of like how Best Buy has private label products through the Insignia and Geek Squad brand names. In my experience, Amazon Basics are typically priced lower than similar products and are of the same (or sometimes better) quality level. For instance, this $5 Switch case is functionally identical to those that cost twice as much. We even use Amazon dog poo bags, and most of my HDMI cables are these Amazon Basics braided cables which work just fine while being way cheaper. My Amazon Basics spiralizer is no more or less junky than any other one I’ve used at friends’ houses when the low carb thing came heavily into fashion. Oddly enough, the best Amazon Basics product I own is this toiletry bag which I bought to replace a (very) expensive Samsonite bag that was very similar and the Amazon bag is … nicer? I’m not sure how that turned out to be the case.

These category-wide sales on Amazon are always a bit overwhelming as they sell so much stuff, but I guess way to look at the main Amazon Basics section as if you’re wandering down the clearance aisle at Walmart where you ignore $3 mop heads (unless you need one of those?) and zero in on things like $15 Switch AC adapter/charger, a $17 backlit “gaming keyboard”, a $6 bag for a SNES Classic and other weird stuff which might be just junk, or intensely useful to you!

While they don’t seem to be included as part of this sale, I’m a huge fan of the Amazon Basics Batteries which are just as cheap and good as Costco brand batteries!

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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. 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 rotary dial cell phones 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 the best products I’ve picked up recently for shooting video is the DJI Osmo Mobile 2. It’s a camera gimbal for your smartphone, which works frickin’ amazing for capturing steady video.

We’ve been using a DJI Osmo Mobile 2 to capture all of our event videos since GDC, and it’s ridiculous what a difference it has made in actually being able to do longer over-the-shoulder videos without them being a shaky mess. The DJI Osmo Mobile 2 does this using the same gimbal magic they use in their drones to always keep your iPhone pointing at the same thing regardless of how much you bob around.

Check out this basic video on how it all works:

We primarily use these things for what might be the most boring use for a camera gimbal, but people who are more into shooting video utilize the various features of the DJI app to do all their different time lapse and other visual tricks… Including hyperlapse. Here’s another video that demonstrates all these features:

The thing I love most about the DJI Osmo Mobile 2 is it’s one of those devices that is as complicated as you want it to be. For my purposes, I toss my phone in it and just use the basic iOS camera app to record video. This works totally fine, and the controls work over Bluetooth (except for zoom, that only works in the DJI app). Inside the DJI app, you can do complicated things like tracking of a subject to always automatically keep them in frame and all the other things shown off in the above video.

Most of all, it really just blows me away how cheap this technology has become. When I first started shooting iPhone gameplay videos a decade ago the camera setup I had to do it was huge, expensive, and really difficult to move around. Now days? My iPhone X is an incredibly capable video camera, and these gimbal accessories now cost less than $150 compared to this tech a decade ago basically being unaffordable to anyone but professionals. We are living in some pretty neat times!

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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. 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.