A Realist’s Guide to CES 2015, The Best Gear for the New Year, Car Stereo Bluetooth Kits, Deals, Updates and More

This (and Next) Week on The Wirecutter: A Realist’s Guide to CES 2015, The Best Gear for the New Year, Car Stereo Bluetooth Kits, Deals, Updates and More Is this email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.

Things We Like for 2015: A Realist’s Guide to CES Rather than cover every new gadget out of CES,we’ve put together a curated list of the things we think will prove to be the most useful in everyday life, some whimsical picks to make life more fun, and items we suspect might be the best new thing in its category. These are the things we’re looking forward to seeing in the coming year and maybe even buying for ourselves if they live up to the hype. The Best Gear for the New Year After the caloric free-for-alls of Thanksgiving and Christmas, how many of us resolve to be more fit on New Year's Eve? Don’t worry, we’re not trying to pile on the guilt. But we try to prioritize fitness and stress-reduction in our personal lives here at the Wirecutter and the Sweethome, and the new year is a great time to hit the reset button. The Best Bluetooth Kits for Every Car Stereo If you want Bluetooth in your car but don’t want to spend the money and/or time to install a new head unit, you have three options, depending on your car’s setup and whether your priority is making phone calls or listening to music. If you’re fortunate enough to have an aux-in port (basically a headphone jack), an aux-in dongle is the easy choice—it’s the most reliable solution and will generate the best overall sound and call quality. If you don’t have an aux-in port and value call quality over sound, a clip-on speakerphone is the way to go. Finally, if you care more about sound quality for music and podcasts than for calls, go with an FM transmitter. This year, we spent 20 hours conducting research and tests for this update, comparing 10 new units alongside our original picks to find the best in each category, so you can pick what’s right for your car. The Best Cheap Printer After 90 hours of research and testing, the best choice for a good, cheap printer is the Brother HL-L2340DW ($100). We checked out more than 100 low-end models, and this model packs the most bang for your buck. The cost per page is among the cheapest we’ve ever seen, setup is mercifully easy, and it’ll work with just about any modern laptop, smartphone, or tablet. Since it’s a laser printer, it’s well suited for running every day, sitting weeks at a time, or anything in between. It can’t print in color, and it struggles with complex graphics—but it’s the most efficient, least irritating way to make hard copies of term papers, tax forms, concert tickets, or other text-based documents from your home or home office. The Best Personal Breathalyzer After testing 12 personal breathalyzers against the alcohol-detecting devices used by law enforcement, it’s clear that the $130 BACtrack S80 is the most accurate and reliable and easiest to use personal breathalyzer that you can buy. When it comes to matching the results measured by police equipment, this device comes closer than anything else we tested. It’s relatively affordable and has everything you need to start testing right away, including replaceable mouthpieces—which are good for accuracy and hygiene, but definitely an ongoing cost to consider. We chose the S80 after testing breathalyzers in several separate drinking sessions last year and this year. In those tests, we cooperated with experienced members of law enforcement in two police departments, and interviewed a research physician who specializes in toxicology. The Best Smartwatch (for now) After almost a year on the market (and more than eight months after we first recommended it) the $200 Pebble Steel (also available at Best Buy) is still the best smartwatch for most people. Despite pressure from Android Wear, the Pebble Steel looks the best on most people, is solidly built and resistant to wear and tear, has a battery that lasts the work week, is equally capable whether used with Android or iOS, and has the most mature ecosystem of any watch on the market Inner Vision for the weekend of January 9, 2015 In this weekend’s edition of Inner Vision, learnwhy being frugal isn’t always your best bet, what to look for when buying a used DSLR, and how to deal with unwanted gifts. The Best Deals We Can Find Because we think we can make a small difference by being picky, here are some great deals on solid pieces of gear. Updates * Check out our drone, GPS running watch, solar battery pack, and bathroom scale guides for a few more things from CES 2015 that piqued our interest. * We updated our whole-home audio, exercise headphones, $200 in-ear headphones, car GPS, and Bluetooth car kit guides with a few new things we're looking forward to. * At CES 2015, Samsung introduced the first 1TB portable SSD, while Acer introduced the first 15-inch Chromebook. Meanwhile, Polaroid has a new instant camera and instant camera printer, and we're really looking forward to UE's new Megaboom rugged, portable Bluetooth speaker. [Best Portable Hard Drive, Best Chromebook, Best Instant Camera, Best Portable Bluetooth Speaker] * We've sorted through a few dozen fitness tracker announcements and updated our guide with a handful that look interesting: The Withings Activité Pop, Polar A300, Garmin Vivofit 2, andInBody Band. [Best Fitness Tracker] * A few things we're looking forward to: the Asus Zenfone 2 and LG Flex 2 Android phones, the Garmin Vivoactive fitness tracker/smartwatch/running watch combo, and the Incipio offGRID Express iPhone battery case. [Best Android Phones, Best Fitness Tracker, Best iPhone Battery Case] * Our waterproof camera, superzoom, cheap camera, action cam, and camcorder guides have all been updated with the most promising things we've seen from Panasonic, Sony, and Canon at CES so far. * We did not make a Best of 2014 listicle. * The Sony XBA-H1 sound even better than our main $100 in-ear headphones pick, if you don't mind spending a little more. [Best $100 In-Ear Headphones] * After researching several dozen models, we couldn't find one great laser all-in-one printer to recommend for everyone. But we do have tips for helping you find one that will fit your needs best. [Best All-In-One Printer] * Based on features, the $150 Oco camera looks like a potential competitor in our step-down category for wireless IP cameras. But we'll need to do hands-on testing to find out what its set-up process is like and how well the accompanying iOS and Android apps work. [Best Wireless IP Camera]