1 / 11
HTC One Mini MSC. Photo: Josh Valcarcel/WIRED
One of the best parts of our jobs here at WIRED is that we get to test all the new things as soon as they come out. But we often only get a few days to play with something before having to to write about it. That's difficult -- getting a clear assessment about an object's worth when you have to crank out a written review in less than a week. There are some products that don't show their true colors until we've had several weeks, months, or years to experience them, live with them, play with them, and wear them. That's what we've rounded up here -- things we’ve been testing and love, or the stuff from our lives that we own and never want to let go. This is the gear we want to take everywhere. This is the stuff we want to cook breakfast for. These are the things we love.
Above:
HTC One Mini
When we reviewed the HTC One earlier this year, we liked it quite a bit. It made our Top 3 list. After our reviewer Nathan Olivarez-Giles was done with it, I carried it around for a month to get familiar with it. My clearest impression: It's just a touch too big. The One is not some comic monstrosity like the Galaxy Note, and I did like reading Kindle books on it. But it's still too big for me to use comfortably all the time. There are phones I consider to be perfectly proportioned: the Moto X, the iPhone 5s, and my trusty old iPhone 4. And here's another I can add to the list. The HTC One mini, has a 4.3-inch screen that's much more comfortable to use than the 4.7-incher on the One. On paper, that doesn't seem like a big difference, but it's really noticeable when you actually use the phone, especially with only one hand. The One mini is just much more pleasant to carry around and to interact with. It also has all the same design notes that made the One a stunner, including the smooth metal enclosure, the "UltraPixel" camera, and the front-facing speakers. It's important to note that the specs have been dumbed down. The mini's screen is not only smaller, but it also runs at 720p with a density of 341ppi, compared to 1080p and 468ppi on the One. The battery is weaker: 1800 mAh instead of 2300 mAh. Also, the processor is a dual-core 1.4GHz chip backed up by 1GB of RAM, instead of the One's quad-core 1.7Ghz brain and 2GB of memory. So, this isn't a phone for people who want the absolute screamingest performance. But something to realize is that for the majority of smartphone buyers out there, size matters. And it matters a lot -- more so than gigahertz and pixels-per-inch. They just want a phone they can use without fuss that also happens to be beautiful to look at. The One mini is for them. The weaker battery life is one possible stumbling point, but in my tests so far, the lil One still makes it through the day without needing a charge. -- Michael CaloreAll photos: Josh Valcarcel/WIRED 
