What’s In Our Everyday Carry: June 2023

Hey Carry Lounge crew: What new gear have you been adding to your everyday carry lately?

This past month, we’ve been testing out four new pieces in ours:

• A supercharged power bank that can juice up three devices at once
• An LED-wrapped USB-C cable that really stands out in dark rooms
• A sleek and slim EDC knife with a button-lock release mechanism
• A fresh new color of one of our favorite BigiDesign pens

Let’s take a closer look at each of them, getting into the nitty gritty details that make each piece a unique addition to your everyday carry kit.

Statik Ultimate Charger

Standard power banks might store 5,000 to 10,000 milliamp hours, or mAh, and offer around 30 watts of charging power. That’s enough to keep your phone and tablet in good shape while you’re away from home, but you won’t be relying on one of those power banks to charge your MacBook day to day.

Statik’s Ultimate Charger goes way beyond that. The specs here are pretty incredible: A 20,000 mAh battery capacity and a 65 watt charging speed. That translates to seven charges for your smartphone, or one full charge for a laptop, in record time — just two hours to charge a 13-inch  MacBook Pro. And it has ports for USB-C, Lightning, or MicroUSB charging, too.

Even with that kind of charging power though, the Ultimate Charger isn’t too bulky; it measures in at 6.38" x 4.17" x 0.57”, and weighs just over a pound thanks to its durable metal case. If you’ve ever been disappointed in the performance of smaller power banks, this new one from Statik offers a serious upgrade.

Statik GloBright LED Cable

Courtesy of the same brand that makes the power bank featured above, here’s a USB cable that’s both functional and interesting to look at.

First, the nuts and bolts: The GloBright Cable comes in at under 20 dollars, is 6 feet long, and offers charging speeds of up to 100 watts. That’s four times faster charging than your standard USB-C cable. And it’s all wrapped up in a durable sleeve that’s rated for 30,000 bends, and finished with metal housings for the cable ends.

But the real draw here is the GloBright’s RGB color wrapping. Taking a cue from the gaming community, Statik wraps this cable in color-shifting LEDs. That makes it uniquely visible in low-light environments, and just all-around pretty cool to look at while you’re charging up your phone. So if you like the bright style and high-speed charging capabilities, you’ll love this cord.

Civivi Knife Button Lock Elementum II Knife

We’ve had our eyes on Civivi’s Elementum II Knife for a while now, because its button-lock deployment is just too cool to pass up. They’ve done an amazing job of tuning the tension just right on this mechanism, so that it allows for super fast and smooth blade deployment without the risk of accidentally opening it in your pocket.

Even outside of the smooth and satisfying button open, the Elementum II is a really solidly made knife — especially for the price. It’s made with a blade steel called Nitro-V, which offers an excellent blend of toughness, corrosion resistance, and edge retention. That’s paired with a drop point blade shape and a hollow ground, both of which make it a great all-rounder of an everyday carry knife.

G10 scales in three different colors complete the look here, keeping the knife nice and lightweight, too. Overall, for under 80 bucks at the time of writing, the Civivi Elementum II is well worth adding to your everyday carry.

BigiDesign Bolt Action Pen

We’ve been using the copper and brass versions of BigiDesign’s Bolt Action Pens for quite a while now, and they consistently rank up there as our favorite pens for everyday use. The bolt action mechanism is so smooth and satisfying and fidgetable, and each pen is designed to be compatible with a wide range of inks to satisfy anybody’s writing preferences.

The latest version of the Bolt Action Pen is a really good-looking addition to the BigiDesign family. Its titanium body gives this pen a lightweight but solid feel in the hand, and the black diamond-like carbon coating gives it a slick tactical look and nice, grippy feel. And as always, BigiDesign offers a lifetime warranty on every one of their pens, making this a great buy-it-for-life option to add to your EDC.

What’s Next?

Things have been nice and busy around the Carry Lounge lately, and we’re hard at work on a new range of products for NutSac — which we can’t share details about just yet, but rest assured that we’ll tell you more as soon as we have the final designs nailed down! In the meantime, be sure and keep an eye on the new everyday carry videos we’ve been making, and our recent comparison article on the 5 best backpacks for everyday carry.