Fallout Pip-Boy review: a wearable fit for the wasteland

Image: Amazon

It’s hard to accidental what, precisely, makes a plan timeless. Some classical gadgets are simply beautiful, portion others stay functional years aft they travel out. The database of genuinely timeless products successful tech is small, but there’s 1 sanction that looms large: RobCo Industries’ Pip-Boy. Sure, it’s comparatively simple, and immoderate of its features lone enactment if you’re stuck underground. But erstwhile a plan hasn’t changed for 200 years, you cognize it’s doing thing right.

For those who person been surviving nether an irradiated rock, a Pip-Boy is simply a wrist-worn machine that — contempt primitively being meant for the pre-war satellite and, later, beingness wrong of a Vault-Tec vault — has go an indispensable instrumentality for endurance retired successful the wasteland. It’s ample and rugged, though not peculiarly dense oregon uncomfortable, and is outfitted with plentifulness of satisfyingly chunky dials and buttons. From an aesthetic perspective, it’s amazingly versatile, pairing with everything from a Vault-Tec jumpsuit to raider armor. You ne'er truly person to interest astir when and wherever it’s good to deterioration one.

The Pip-Boy is dominated by a monochrome always-on display. What the surface lacks successful pixels, it makes up for successful accessibility; it’s agleam and wide capable to presumption anywhere, whether successful the blinding prima of the Mojave Wasteland oregon the dank depths of a Yao guai cave.

And you’ll decidedly privation to cheque it regularly due to the fact that the Pip-Boy tracks each kinds of utile wellness information. The show volition fto you cognize not lone erstwhile you request a Stimpak but besides wherever connected your assemblage to use it. And — possibly astir importantly — it has a built-in dosimeter that audibly lets you cognize erstwhile there’s excessively overmuch radiation around. Unfortunately, portion it’s large for life-critical information, the Pip-Boy does skimp erstwhile it comes to much modular wellness features. It doesn’t adjacent person a measurement tracker.

Image: Amazon

But it’s besides much than a wellness device. The Pip-Boy’s different large usage is arsenic a GPS. The maps diagnostic helps you enactment connected the close way portion hunting a bounty oregon searching for out-of-the-way settlements, and the caller AirTag-like instrumentality makes it imaginable to way tiny objects — like, say, a dismembered assemblage portion that is of large value to the Brotherhood of Steel — crossed ample distances. The wasteland whitethorn beryllium dangerous, but it’s beauteous hard to get mislaid if you person a Pip-Boy equipped.

The remainder of the functionality is simply a smattering of basal but utile features: a flashlight for navigating successful the dark, elemental games for uncommon moments of downtime, and the quality to look astatine photos (despite the information that the Pip-Boy doesn’t person a built-in camera). None of these are must-haves, but they bash springiness the instrumentality a flimsy leg-up implicit the contention (not that determination are immoderate competing devices anymore).

What’s possibly astir awesome astir the Pip-Boy’s occurrence arsenic a endurance instrumentality is that it wasn’t primitively designed for surviving a post-apocalyptic wasteland. It was created successful portion for beingness successful an underground bunker, which means that if you someway find yourself successful a vault, the Pip-Boy has immoderate added functionality. There are smarthome features that fto you unfastened doors with your wrist (though, naturally, the instrumentality lone supports the Vault-Tec standard), and a messaging app for sending notes and tasks to chap vault dwellers. Sadly, these features aren’t overmuch usage erstwhile you caput up to the surface.

Really, the champion happening you tin accidental astir the Pip-Boy is that it conscionable works. Centuries aft it archetypal launched, the instrumentality remains not lone functional but vital. You ne'er person to interest astir a bundle update degrading the acquisition oregon whether the radiation sensor is accurate. And erstwhile you’re successful a beingness oregon decease concern — which, let’s look it, is simply a regular occurrence connected the aboveground — that reliability ne'er gets old.

The biggest problem? Availability. Unless you’re calved successful a vault oregon hap upon the carcass of idiosyncratic who was, Pip-Boys are successful abbreviated supply.