Gear Haul: 10 Best New EDC Essentials (2026 Guide)

Our job here certainly has its perks. Every week, new gear releases land on our desks, and unfortunately, we don’t always have the time to give each one the full review treatment. But a lot of it is too good to let slide by without at least a passing mention.

That’s exactly what these Gear Haul roundups are for. No hour-long deep dives, just some of our favorite new EDC gear that should be on your radar, all covered in a quick-hitting format you can watch on a coffee break.

So without further ado, let’s get into some of the best new EDC gear that crossed our desks this month.

Anker Soundcore Space 2 Pro

First up is this week’s sponsor, and honestly, it’s a pretty fitting way to open the guide: the Anker Soundcore Space 2 Pro. It’s a $200 pair of over-ears built around one very specific promise. And that promise is that whoever’s on the other end of your call hears you, and only you. Not your keyboard, not your coworkers, and not the espresso machine behind you.

The tech making all this happen has some real chops. Anker’s new Thus AI chip first appeared in the Liberty 5 Pro earbuds, which earned a Guinness World Record for call clarity in independent lab testing, and the Space 2 Pro brings that same system to a full-size headphone. 

And now this new release also holds a Guinness World Record of its own: World’s Clearest Over-Ear Headphones for Calls, and it was earned in independent lab testing against 18 flagship competitors.

There are eight microphones in total, with six of them dedicated to pulling your voice out of the chaos. We’ve tested these in studio settings, over office chatter, busy streets, and some of our favorite bustling coffee shops here in LA for video calls – and the background noise just about vanishes across the board.

The ANC is the other half of the pitch with this headset. Instead of tuning it purely for airplane drone, Soundcore aimed its Adaptive ANC 3.0 at mixed office noise (keyboards, conversations, AC hum), and Anker’s own in-house lab testing puts it shoulder to shoulder with Sony flagships. Which, we might add, cost more than double the price.

Carrying them with you on a daily basis is easy, too. They weigh 262 grams and come equipped with a set of slow-rebound memory foam cushions, and we found them to be really comfortable to wear through a full workday.

You also get Bluetooth 6.1 with multipoint, LDAC support, and physical buttons instead of fussy touch panels. They also feature 30 hours of battery life with ANC on. And if you do forget to charge them, a quick five-minute charge gets you about 8 hours of battery life.

If your workday is more Zoom calls than critical listening sessions, this mic-and-ANC combo at $200 undercuts many of the usual suspects by a wide margin.

The James Brand The Helton

We love the classic Swiss Army knife, but it’s probably been due for a reimagining considering it’s been around for over a century. The James Brand felt like they were qualified for the task, and spent three years building its answer. 

The Helton is the brand’s first full-size pocket multi-tool, and it fixes three of the main things people have always complained about with a classic Swiss Army Knife: no locks, dated steel, and of course, nowhere to actually clip it.

Every one of the four folding tools here locks independently on its own liner lock. The headliner is a 2.3-inch partially serrated VG-10 drop point that opens via a machined nail slot, backed by spring-loaded scissors, a Phillips driver with a bottle opener built in, and a flathead that doubles as a file. And both drivers are magnetized, which is a small, but thoughtful touch.

The scales are constructed from 6061 aluminum over phosphor bronze washers, and James Brand decided to not use a single plastic part across the entire tool.  

It all adds up to a package that weighs 3.5 ounces and three and a half inches closed. Tucked into the scale you’ll also find tweezers and a metal pick, though running those means giving up the pocket clip so you’ll have to decide what’s more important to you.

And yes, we’ll be the first to say that at $169, it stings just a bit when a Victorinox Compact runs about $60. But it’s important to remember that you’re paying for the re-engineering, not the tool count. 

We’ve been using this tool since it dropped, and we have to say, The James Brand has done a great job here. It feels much better than any Swiss Army Knife, and it’s also much more carry-friendly than any comparable Leatherman.

The first batch sold out almost immediately, so the market seems to agree.

CW&T Little Scissors

Dedicated EDC scissors are one of those categories almost nobody is building in, which is exactly the kind of gap Brooklyn’s CW&T lives for. 

The Little Scissors are a collaboration with gnuhr, the ultralight gear label from former Nike ACG design director Nur Abbas, and not only are they just  as obsessive as that collaboration would suggest, they’re one of our favorite pieces of gear we’ve handled all year. These have made us smile every time we use them, and they’re just really well designed.

The handles are machined Grade 5 titanium, and so are the screws, The blades are VG-10, which is the same Japanese steel The James Brand just put in the Helton, and they’ve been great for all of the daily studio tasks we’ve thrown at them.

Of course, the selling point here is the folding action. Click the release latches and the whole thing collapses down to 62 millimeters. It’s small enough to vanish into a palm, a coin pocket, or the corner of a pouch, and they weigh just 24 grams. And, considering how much we love these, it should come as no surprise that action is as satisfying as the photos promise.

CW&T also machines dedicated right-hand and left-hand versions, a courtesy lefties almost never get in this space.

Now, $159 is a real conversation to have with yourself about scissors, and there’s no pocket clip either – which would probably make these perfect. But they’re EDC-friendly, made from titanium, and nothing else this small cuts like this.

Wuben E2 Pulse

Speaking of small, Wuben’s new E2 Pulse Lighter is one of our favorite new keychain additions. The whole thing weighs just ten grams, and we’re talking about the entire flashlight with battery included. 

It’s literally lighter than the keys it shares your pockets with. It’s also the cheapest thing on this guide by a mile, which is a nice bonus as well.

The Gradient Black version wears a translucent polycarbonate shell over an aluminum bezel, so you can see the guts of the thing, and the body fades from smoke to clear and almost reminds of a 90s gaming console accessory. There’s even a heartbeat breathing glow mode that plays in the design so well.

Wuben claims 150 lumens, and for finding a keyhole or a dropped AirPod, that’s plenty. The sneaky-good feature is the warm, high-CRI side panel light, which is nicer for close-up work than the main beam, plus red and blue signal modes for emergency situations.

Carry options include a tail magnet for hands-free work, a P5 quick-release buckle, and an included neck chain. USB-C tops off the 120mAh cell in about an hour, and it’s IP66 rated against weather.

The trade-offs are probably what you’d expect for a little light this. The sealed battery isn’t replaceable, high mode steps down quickly, and there’s no lockout, so it can turn on in a pocket. At twenty-something bucks though, we still think it’s a pretty solid deal.

Autodromo Group C Turbo Sport

As gearheads and former mechanics, we’ve had a soft spot for Autodromo since the early days. Nobody blends car culture and watchmaking quite like the New York-based microbrand, and the Group C Turbo Sport, its first new watch in three years, taps into one of our favorite racing eras.

Group C was endurance racing at its most unhinged, a time when turbocharged prototypes ripped down the Mulsanne straight at speeds north of 240 miles per hour, and we think the watch wears the reference well. 

The top of the dial is meant to read like a tachometer, right down to the etched grid and syringe hands, while the lower third holds an LCD window that’s styled to feel like a dash readout.

And that little screen isn’t decorative either. There’s a 1/100th-second chronograph in there, two additional digital time zones alongside the analog display, and a daily alarm. And when the lights go out, this thing comes alive twice over: the hands and indices are lumed, burning orange on our grey version, while the EL backlight gives the LCD that full Miami Vice glow.

The case is 38.5 millimeters across but just 40 millimeters lug-to-lug, since the FKM rubber strap integrates right into the case. And in anodized aluminum the whole thing weighs 58 grams.

The watch sits nicely on our producer’s 6.75-inch wrist, and at 11.4 millimeters tall, it’ll easily slide under any cuff. 

The movement is a dual-display quartz, one module driving both the analog hands and the LCD, but Autodromo doesn’t spec which one it is, so battery life is a bit of a question mark for now.

Each one is also outfitted with sapphire crystal, finished stainless caseback, and a respectable 50 meters of water resistance.

Clicks Power Keyboard

We’ll admit our bias right up front here: some of us burned through multiple BlackBerrys back in the day, so the Clicks Power Keyboard was one of the most anticipated tech releases on our calendar.

The pitch is simple. It snaps to the back of any MagSafe or Qi2 phone, and one push slides it open into a backlit physical keyboard with a real number row. When you’re done, it slides closed, pulls off, and your touchscreen phone can go right back to being a touchscreen phone. There’s no case commitment, and no permanent BlackBerry cosplay commitment either.

It’s a full Bluetooth keyboard under there too, with pairing for up to nine devices, so ours has pulled duty typing on an iPad and driving an Apple TV from the sofa. The 2,300mAh battery inside can also push 5 watts of wireless charge to your phone, which in our experience keeps the battery steady rather than charging it.

Now, we do love the idea of this thing, but it also still frustrates us. The round keys are pretty tiny (our thumbs needed a few days before the typos slowed down), holding it vertical can get awkward,, and the app has a mind of its own some days. 

Hold it sideways, though, give it a week, and it starts to grow on you a bit more. That tactile snap is just so satisfying.

We’ll wrap by saying it’s a first-gen product with very obvious first-gen flaws. But we’re still intrigued.

RhinoShield AirX

This past June, RhinoShield sent an iPhone 17 Pro to the edge of space under a high-altitude balloon and just let it go. 

The phone fell 100,416 feet onto the Swedish Arctic with no parachute. In fact, it was wearing nothing but an off-the-shelf AirX case. 

And, when the recovery team found it two days later, the phone still powered on, made calls, and even took photos. That’s an official Guinness World Record, and yes, it’s also the second one on this guide, for those keeping score at home.

Physics sticklers will point out that a falling phone hits terminal velocity long before 100,000 feet, and that’s absolutely fair. But the stratosphere added minus-60 temperatures and about 1% of sea-level air pressure, and the case shrugged off all three.

The tech behind the stunt is airbag logic: which is essentially 360-degree air cushioning with a compression-resistant structure that RhinoShield claims absorbs up to 80% of impact force, plus embedded buttons and pressure-relief chambers so it doesn’t feel like a brick in hand. 

It’s also worth mentioning that MagSafe works right through it, and the Flux Gray colorway we’ve been using has a translucent, frosted look that complements the iPhone well.

The whole case is a single recyclable material with no BPA or PFAS, and that’s noteworthy considering  most protective cases are glued multi-material sandwiches that are pretty much destined for a landfill. 

Nimble Sharepower

Lending out your power bank has become pretty common practice, but it’s still not one we’re super stoked about either. Nimble’s answer is so obvious, we’re almost annoyed nobody did it sooner.

The Sharepower is a 10,000mAh bank that splits into two independent 5,000mAh halves with a magnetic snap. Keep one, hand one off, and you can both go your separate ways.

Each half can genuinely stand alone. The primary has a fold-away USB-C plug and an LED percentage readout, while the other carries a braided USB-C cable that doubles as a wrist lanyard. And you don’t need a friend to split it either: we’ve been running one half on the phone while the other tops off our wireless earbuds.

Apart, each one pushes 20 watts, plenty to fast-charge a phone, and snapped together the stack outputs 35 watts across three devices. Our favorite detail is the pogo-pin handshake that equalizes charge when the halves reunite, so you never pair a full brick with a dead one.

Nimble builds the whole thing from post-consumer recycled plastic with no PFAS or PVC, and the full stack weighs 216 grams.

We did find the magnets release a little easier than we’d like in a crowded bag, there’s no wireless charging, and $80 feels pretty pricey when generic 10K banks go for thirty. 

Also, let’s be honest about the actual risk here: the half you lend out still might not come home.

DSPTCH x Oakley Terraforma “Striking Gold”

Oakley has been on a generational run, and we’d say the Terraforma has become one of our favorite Oakleys for people who want the brand’s sport DNA without the full chrome-wraparound commitment.

We love our run club aesthetic as much as the next fitness enthusiasts, but these understated square frames feature a flatter base curve and narrower lenses that reads lifestyle first, and performance second. 

For this San Francisco exclusive, the crew at DSPTCH dipped it in “Striking Gold,” a frosted translucent honey finish with a tonal grid motif wrapped around the earstems. 

The lenses are Prizm Tungsten Polarized, Oakley’s bronze-tinted contrast booster, and the warm tint against the honey frame is one of the better lens-to-frame pairings we’ve seen all year. O-Matter, for the uninitiated, is Oakley’s injection-molded thermoplastic, so the whole pair stays light and a little flexible rather than brittle.There’s also a small SF in the corner to round out the aesthetic.

Now, we have to talk about the case for a second, because DSPTCH did not treat it as an afterthought. It’s a custom eyeglass case inspired by the organic panels of the Oakley Sandbag, built from 420D ROBIC ripstop with 3D mesh and Tweave Durastretch, closed with a Fidlock magnetic latch, and finished with a removable snap ring so it clips to a strap or sling. 

Over on the Oakley forums, people are already lobbying DSPTCH to sell the case on its own, and we would absolutely second that.

At, $245 it does carry a collab premium over a standard Terraforma, but as a complete package, glasses, bag, and that case, it doesn’t feel unfair by any means.

Aulumu B01 Urban Transit Gear Sling Bag

Aulumu is a brand that we cover quite regularly, and they’ve built a cult following in a very short time frame machining cyberpunk MagSafe hardware. We’re talking kickstands, wallets, power banks – basically all things metal, and all things magnets. 

The B01, however, is the brand’s first swing at soft goods, and instead of leaving the magnets behind, they did something really creative and bolted them to the front of the bag.

That black aluminum cage on the face is a detachable magnetic phone mount with MagSafe on both sides. Your phone snaps in and out one-handed, with no zippers involved. The outer face takes whatever MagSafe accessories were living on your phone, a knurled knob adjusts the width for any iPhone from the 12 onward (MagSafe case required), and when you want a more “normal-looking bag”, the whole cage can be unclipped for a minimalist sling.

Aululu didn’t skimp on materials either. The sling itself is constructed from X-Pac fabric with YKK zippers and a Fidlock magnetic buckle you can pop one-handed. 

The bag features 2.5-liter capacity but it’s got a nice trick up its sleeve. There’s a bottom zipper that opens a mesh sleeve for a bottle or umbrella, allowing the sling to effectively expand to 3.5 liters. 

There’s a power-bank pocket beside the mount with cable routing to feed your phone while it rides, a hidden full-width pocket against your back, a key hook inside, and multiple card slots. And all of it weighs in at 400 grams. 

We applaud Aulumu for their continued innovation in the space, and while we love the bag’s capabilities, the futuristic techwear aesthetic is a real love-it or hate-it  commitment.

Gear Haul: The Best New EDC Essentials (June 2026 Guide)

If you love these quick-hitting gear hauls, be sure to check out our previous guide to the best new gear we received.