Roadtrip essentials for your next adventure

Whether a short trip or an overnight drive, a roadtrip with friends or family or even just by yourself is an experience worth having. And with modern technology, there are more ways than one to make the trip more comfortable, more convenient, and, in the end, more memorable.

1. Dashcam

Whether you’re driving alone or with passengers, safety should always be a priority. And what better way to stay safe than to have extra eyes on the road?

This particular dashcam set comes with two cameras — front and rear — and can be connected to your smartphone for easy viewing and transfer of footage. It also comes with a bunch of useful features like 24-hour parking monitor, built-in GPS, and emergency recording so your whole trip is covered if ever you get into an accident.

@themoderncreatures A front and rear dashcam that’s connected to your phone? That’s the DDPAI Z40. #dashcam #dashcamfootage #dashcamvideos @ddpai.dashcam ♬ original sound – The Modern Creatures

2. Portable jump starter

Another device for safety. And while you may possibly not need a portable jump starter, you’ll be glad to have one when you do.

A portable jump starter can save you from being stranded if your car battery dies. It’s a convenient and easy-to-use tool that can get you back on the road quickly. And this particular one even doubles as a power bank that can also charge your devices.

3. Phone mount

A proper cradle or mount not only adds convenience but also makes for a safer drive.

There are many options to choose from and you can pick the mount that’s best for you. You can go for a suction cup mount that you can put on your dashboard or windshield or you can get one that you can insert into the aircon vents.

The latter is useful in cooling down your phone if ever you’re using nav apps like Waze, too.

4. Cameras

There are many kinds of cameras that can use for your drives.

Want to get the whole picture? You can opt for action cameras like the Insta360 X3 or the GoPro Hero11. Not only can you take advantage of wide-angles and long recording, but you also get a lot of versatility from action cams like these.

You can mount them on the windshield, windows, and even on the vehicle itself. Just make sure to grab a reliable suction mount so they don’t fall off.

But if action cameras are not for you, you can always opt for smaller, easy-to-learn cameras like the Sony ZV-E10 or Canon EOS R50.

Looking for something even simpler? Grab yourself a smartphone with an amazing camera system like the Samsung S23 Ultra. You can even pair that with a stabilizer to get more impressive shots for your socials.

5. Electric cooler

Snacks are essential during a road trip. Beat the summer heat or just have a refreshing cold drink anytime by upping your roadtrip game with a fancy electric cooler.

This particular one is robust enough to store not just drinks but even fresh food like fish or meats. This is great if you’re the camper type or maybe wamt to store cold or frozen souvenirs on the way home.

6. Portable car audio

What’s a roadtrip without good music? And you can easily make your car audio sound better with the JBL BassPro Go.

What makes this worth the investment is the fact that it doubles as a portable speaker too. When attached to your vehicle, it acts as a subwoofer but you can easily take it out and use it as a regular Bluetooth speaker. And it sounds great too.

7. Multi-purpose indoor/outdoor charger

These days having a charger is pretty much a necessity. And while your vehicle may have its own charging ports, there may not be enough for everyone.

This multi-purpose charger is good investment because you can use it both in your car or as emergency backup for your home in case of power outages.

Unlike your ordinary powerbank, this particular charger can even power laptops, projectors, and even rice cookers if you plan on camping outdoors. There are multiple input options including USB ports and AC ports and even has a built-in lamp for emergencies.

Final thoughts

With the proper gadgets and devices, you can be equipped to handle whatever you may encounter on the road, There are tons of modern-day devices that can help you with various aspects of the drive. Whether it’s for navigation, comfort, or even for safety, you can make your adventure more memorable and less hassle-free.

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ASUS Vivobook Pro 14 OLED First Impressions: Armed for Content Creation!

03/09/2022

As content creators both for our website and YouTube channel, having a reliable laptop is a must for on-the-go productivity.

With our work consisting mostly of photo and video editing, our laptop not only needs capable specs to crunch processes, but it also needs an accurate display profile that’s close to real-life colors.

This will allow us to effectively color grade our images whether we want to show lifelike colors or experiment with other color palettes.

This is one of the ASUS Vivobook Pro 14 OLED‘s many strengths. But unlike the more powerful but bigger ROG Zephyrus S17 that we recently reviewed, this one can fit in an envelope-sized sleeve.

So we’re looking forward to seeing if we can do our usual editing routine in this smaller package.

We’ll be sharing our full review in a week’s time but for now, here are my first impressions.

The Vivobook Pro 14 OLED (M3401) comes with many similarities with models from the ZenBook line. It has the same sleek and thin profile, subtle accents, and an overall straightforward design.

I like it in its Quiet Blue color for that sort of stealthy appearance that doesn’t demand attention when you’re outside. But there’s Cool Silver as well for a more sophisticated look.


Weighing in at 1.4kgs, the Vivobook Pro 14 OLED is light, and moving from one spot to another is easy — great for sharing content with Vikka or if I need her opinions on my edits.

I also appreciate the number of ports it carries. From a standard HDMI, microSD reader, audio jack, USB Type-C, and a total of three USB Type-A ports, you have most of the connectivity options you need to accomplish work.

The keyboard doesn’t span out the entire chassis so you have extra space on both sides.

It’s interesting to note that the Power button on the upper right corner is the only key that’s recessed to differentiate it from the rest.

This specific key also functions as a fingerprint scanner for that added layer of protection. It also comes with slight accents like this white pattern on the Enter key — it adds a nice highlight and gives character to the laptop.

The touchpad is something I also want to mention since scrolling using it feels really nice to touch. It does say in its little sticker that it’s silky smooth and I didn’t believe it until I experienced it myself.

Additionally, it can be transformed into a Number Pad with a simple press of the toggle at the top right part.

Moving on, the bezels are not that thick but not that slim, either. It does, however, have this webcam up top with its own privacy shutter which is great, especially with the influx of today’s virtual meetings.

I no longer have to manually cover the camera with whatever I find.

I’ve watched a couple of YouTube videos on its OLED display and streamed a few shows on Netflix as well.

The laptop comes with a 100% DCI-P3 color gamut and a PANTONE validated display which together translates to producing lifelike colors and accurate hues.

These have been so far evident with the overall color of the content I’m watching and are especially noticeable on skin tones. They have that warmer, realistic tint to them compared to the greenish hue of LCD displays, in my opinion.

Its 14-inch panel comes with a 16:10 aspect ratio which is something new to me as I’m used to working on a more common 16:9 layout.

I had no problems with that since it worked to my advantage when editing videos, but I found that the taller 16:10 ratio gives you better screen real estate for other things like browsing the internet in multiple windows.

For content creation, it has also provided me with more spaces for my Workstation in Adobe Premiere Pro so far.

And color grading with its OLED display has been easier as I could be confident its colors are accurate.

Blacks are also deep which is expected of an OLED panel so watching movies and even playing games are more enjoyable and benefit from this feature.

In terms of audio performance, I’m always streaming music and its built-in speakers are decent enough for personal use.

Although when watching movies, I prefer being immersed in big sound so I might just hook the laptop up to external speakers using Bluetooth.

Inside, our Vivobook Pro 14 OLED comes with an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 graphics. There’s an option to go for lower-tier AMD processors and NVIDIA graphics cards but this is the top configuration you can get.

Meanwhile, it comes with either 8GB or 16GB RAM and up to 1TB of SSD storage, but what we have here is the 16GB/512GB variant.

One of the unique features of this laptop is that it’s equipped with dual fans for more effective cooling.

With them, ASUS promises up to 50W CPU performance for heavy users using its ASUS IceCool Plus Technology. I still have to put that to the test as I spend more time with it and will include it in the full review.

The Vivobook Pro 14 OLED also boasts fast WiFi 6 connectivity which is able to establish a more reliable internet connection.

This should be especially helpful to us since when we shoot outdoors and need to quickly share all those materials online, we demand a stable connection.

Its battery is rated at 63WHrs which should be enough for a few hours of heavy usage before needing to plug it again.

From the short couple of days that I spent with the ASUS Vivobook 14 Pro OLED, I could already transition from my desktop with only little adjustments.

Of course, I have to charge the laptop every night or so, but in terms of handling my workload, it was able to do so with no signs of stress or slowing down.

The ASUS Vivobook Pro 14 OLED starts at PhP 47,995 for the base model but the configuration with us is priced at PhP 74,995.

You can also avail of its Valentine’s promo bundle — every purchase of the ASUS Vivobook Pro 14 OLED comes with free Wacom Pad Intuos worth PhP 6,300 to further sweeten the deal.

We also have a full review out on the ASUS Vivobook Pro 14 OLED. You can head over here to watch it.

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