By Bryan Wall
Product Test Journalist | Kaipūrongo Whakamātautau Hautaonga
Small can be beautiful, but is it always practical?
Here are our thoughts on a selection of compact products – from a super-cute little EV to almost comically small kitchen, laundry and tech gadgets.
Honda Super-ONE
Honda promises “electric fun” with its new urban EV Super-ONE, and the car certainly looks fun – resembling a boy racer’s souped-up super-mini, harking back to the City Turbo of the 1980s and exuding hard-to-resist charm.
However, the price (from $41,900) and limited range at highway speeds will provide enough resistance for most.
If you’re after an EV, check our electric and hybrid car reviews.
Kmart’s 2L Mini Air Fryer
Air fryers are pretty compact anyway, so we’ve no idea what prompted New Zealand’s favourite bargain bazaar, Kmart, to launch a mini one.
This $49 fryer is tiny. Its food capacity is only 1.6 litres, and initially we thought it was a kid’s toy. It looks like it would only fit two nuggets and four chips – so perhaps it could work for a single person with a small appetite.
We did have a laugh at one review on Kmart’s website, even though we’re 99.9% sure they’re joking: “This product is so awesome. I use it to prepare lobster every night. Each night, lobster from the air fryer. Perfect every time 🦞”
Must be a small lobster …
If you want a more conventionally sized air fryer, head to our air fryer reviews page.
Kmart’s Cordless Mini Washing Machine
Kmart is on track to becoming our own domestic Temu, with offerings like this $59 mini washing machine.
It’s a 5-litre capacity, USB-charged clothes washer that runs a cycle of up to 20 minutes and looks like a cheap desktop dustbin. Big enough to wash a couple of pairs of undies, some socks and a pair of shorts, it’s probably best suited for camping trips or washing your pet hamster.
Check our reviews of this model’s bigger brothers.
Bunnings’ 5.5kg White Vented Clothes Dryer
The 5.5kg capacity will be more than enough for most households (our surveys indicate that average washing load sizes are no more than 4kg), although it’s clearly aimed at smaller households and apartments where space is at a premium.
Since this is a vented model, you’ll need either a hole in the wall or a window you can stick the vent hose out of, so you’re not discharging moisture straight into the room.
Check how other vented and heat pump clothes dryers performed in our tests.
Anker Nebula Capsule Air Pocket Projector
This $799 projector is small enough to fit in your pocket, yet capable of projecting an image up to 80 inches!
It needs a dark room to do it in, though, as it’s not the brightest of projectors, and the battery will only give you 2 hours of projection before it needs a charge. But for a quick and easy home cinema setup, especially with Google TV built in, we think it’s hard to beat.
Swiftpoint pen-grip mouse
We reviewed this tiny computer and tablet mouse a few years back – and I’ve been using one ever since.
Designed in New Zealand, it’s comically small and requires you to grip it like a pen, so takes a bit of time to get used to.
But the pen-style grip makes pointing more accurate, and the minimal effort required to move the mouse and the angle of the wrist while holding it can help reduce pain and discomfort associated with carpal tunnel syndrome and tendonitis.
You’ll also have to train your forefinger to make both left and right clicks, and move the scroll wheel, so it won’t be for everyone. But for the rest of us, this tiny mouse is proof that smaller is indeed better.
