Eliana Willis

My perfect day ends with me being in bed by 9:30 and falling asleep right around 10 p.m. That’s easier said than done, but I try to get as close to a consistent bedtime routine as I can. After a good night’s rest, I am a better, nicer, smarter, quicker, healthier person. For those having trouble catching proper Zs, I’ve rounded up some of my favorite products I use ahead of bedtime while walking you through my nighttime routine. Feel free to copy any or all of these habits for better sleep — they’ve worked wonders on mine. Also: The best smart rings of 2025: I tested and found an obvious winnerOf course, buying these products isn’t going to save your poor sleep (or poor activity patterns, lifestyle choices, stressors, and all the other variables that contribute to healthy rest), but some of them might produce a pattern or a habit that you can implement for greater consistency, and thus, greater sleep. 5 products I use for my perfect bedtime routineI try to wrap up my day’s to-dos by around 7:30 or 8 pm. I’ve eaten dinner, washed my dishes, taken a shower, and am retiring to my room. Before I even begin my wind down (and the subsequent cup of tea I will eventually talk about), I am tidying up my bedroom. Doing so ahead of bedtime is a great way to clear your mind and your space of distractions. I’ll put my dirty clothes that have inevitably ended up on my bed in the hamper or my dresser. I’ll take the coffee mug into the kitchen and wash it. Studies have shown that cleaning your room can reduce stress and improve air quality. “Mess is stress,” Jourdan Travers, Awake Therapy’s psychotherapist and clinical director, tells Discover Magazine. I want to feel as at ease as I possibly can when I go to sleep, and a tidy room I’ve cleaned myself gives me that control.  More

D3Damon/Getty Images Pocket is going away. Mozilla’s “read it later” bookmarking service is being shut down and that’s a shame because Pocket was widely used and considered one of the best options for its purpose. Pocket integrated with most browsers and mobile devices via extensions and apps. Its purpose was to sync saved content automatically so users […] More

<!–> ZDNET’s key takeaways The Withings Scanwatch Nova is available now, starting at $599. It’s an elegant smartwatch with a one-month battery, water resistance up to 10ATM, and various health-tracking metrics. A $10/month subscription is required for some advanced metrics, and the watch is only available in one 42mm diameter. –> Healthy heart monitoring starts […] More

SSDs (solid state drives) are the perfect portable storage solution, and far better that the older HDDs (hard disk drives) with their spinning disks that are vulnerable to vibration and shock. Also: The best external hard drives you can buyBut the downside to many portable SSDs is that they can’t cope with even a little bit of water or dust. That means that they prefer an air-conditioned office much more than a dusty truck or wet tent. But the more I’m involved in outdoor photography and videography with drones, the more I need portable storage that doesn’t mine getting wet and dirty.Crucial has a new drive that’s up to the job, and it comes in multiple storage amounts: the X10 More

<!–> ZDNET’s key takeaways The Valortiva Octa A1 integrated amp is available on Amazon for $399. This integrated amp is so easy to set up that anyone can be dancing to their favorite tunes in minutes. The Octa A1 amp only produces 35W of power. –> Have you ever wanted to stream music (or a […] More

<!–> ZDNET’s key takeaways The Sandmarc Telephoto 2x lens is available now for $155. The lens attaches to your iPhone and makes images more vivid, adding a professional quality to your shots (and is cheaper than a DSLR). It is not available for Android and occasionally warps close-up images. –> Since I could hold a […] More

<!–> ZDNET’s key takeaways The Acefast Acefit Pro open-ear headphones are available on Amazon for $125. The Acefit Pro offer a high level of clarity, outstanding custom EQ, and an elegant lighting effect for nighttime activities. You’ll definitely want to use the app so you can make adjustments to the EQ as needed. –> Within […] More

Sabrina Ortiz/ZDNETApple finally entered the AI race at last year’s Worldwide Developer Conference when it revealed Apple Intelligence. However, some of the biggest updates announced at WWDC 2024 — such as a new and improved Siri and an AI that’s aware of your personal context from your daily phone use — have yet to deploy, leaving users frustrated. Still, I think there is hope. Apple has done a lot well with the limited features it has shipped — and offered a promising glimpse of what’s to come. For example, many of the new features — including Genmoji, voice memo transcriptions, and photo clean-up — are useful and easy to access, while also not being forcefully pushed to iOS users. Also: Forget Siri: Apple Intelligence’s true potential on iPad and Mac lies in third-party appsMost importantly, Apple’s A18 chip provides the iPhone 16 models with the infrastructure and compute necessary for Apple to support more compute-heavy AI features, while keeping Apple’s promise of on-device processing that can preserve your information’s privacy and security. Although the full Apple Intelligence suite of tools has yet to be revealed, the foundation is there. Here are three features that would make me a believer in Apple Intelligence. 1. A more Siri-ous voice assistantWhile Siri has a new look, with the screen glow showing up every time it’s activated and a new way to interact with the AI via text, it’s still trailing behind most AI voice assistants.   The biggest perk of conversational chat with a voice assistant is having it provide you — almost instantly —  with feedback on anything you may be thinking of, from simple tasks such as the weather and notifications to more complex ones such as advice and math problems. Siri doesn’t yet have the knowledge or intelligence to support this breadth of assistance.  More