// ENGADGET — MOBILE & WEB
11 gadgets under $10 that solve everyday problems
You don't have to spend much to fix little annoyances in everyday life.
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Steve Jobs once said that customers don't know what they want until you show them. And he was right. But he was also lucky because he was showing people iPhones and not, say, rechargeable nose trimmers.
Of course, when Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, Amazon wasn't the global behemoth it's since become. Now there's virtually nothing Amazon doesn't sell, and a lot of it is dirt cheap. In the post-Bezos world, Jobsian marketing principles no longer apply. Customers still may not know what they want, but if it's cheap enough, they'll buy it anyway and then throw it out and buy something else.
Thus begins our quest to assemble a list of cheap gadgets that are worth every penny, which should come in handy around the shopping season. If you treat them right, these may last you for many holidays to come.
It's the middle of the night when you wake up and need to head to the en-suite bathroom. You snap on the light and you're blinded because it's too bright. Or worse, you wake up your spouse, who can't easily get back to sleep even with their favorite sleeping app.
This scenario may sound exaggerated, but if you've ever been there, you know it isn't. Or, to spin it back to Steve Jobs, you just don't realize what you need. In this case, it's a motion sensor light for your bathroom.
Decent motion-activated lights for around $10 that don't require any drilling come in two varieties. They're either battery-powered stick-ons like the Star-Spangled LED Puck Light ($8.99 for 5), or they plug right into a socket. The latter are more like smart night lights. The BN-Link Backlit Motion Sensor ($12.34 for 2), for example, has an auto mode that only activates with motion, plus a night mode that gives a dim light until activated.
In both cases, you get to see at night without waking anybody else up. And you're good to go for years because the bulbs are LEDs and use very little energy.
Those of us driving around without built-in infotainment displays in our cars have tried every so-called solution for mounting our phones: suction cups, clips, vent mounts and more. The more expensive and heartier the holder, the faster they wilt, with one exception: peel-off phone magnets.