Miami Heat at Toronto Raptors Game Preview
February 2025
The Echo Show 15 Is $100 Off Right Now
We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.
There are many options these days for smart products to keep our lives organized, like the Skylight Calendar and the Hearth Display, but they often come at a high price and with subscription fees. If you’re looking for a cheaper smart display option that is subscription-free, consider the 2021 Amazon Echo Show 15, which is $179.99 (originally $279.99) on Woot, its lowest price yet, according to price-tracking tools.
The device itself is new but it comes without a remote—but it’s not completely necessary, since it’s a touchscreen. (Remember, Woot only ships to the 48 contiguous states in the U.S. If you have Amazon Prime, you get free shipping; otherwise, it’ll be $6 to ship.)
The Echo Show 15 is a smart display that can mount to your wall, and like the name implies, it’s a 15-inch display. It works like an Alexa smart speaker but with a 1,920 by 1,080-pixel touchscreen. If you’re not looking to mount it, there is a stand you can buy separately.
The display uses Visual ID to scan your face with the front-facing 5MP camera to show you personalized calendars, reminders, to-do lists, and recommendations to everyone in your household who makes an account.
The camera and audio on the Show 15 are underwhelming, according to PCMag’s “good” review. You can use it to show photos when not in use, or more practical uses like showing the weather, calendars, or whatever widget you think you’d be using the most.
There are better non-mounted smart displays from Amazon, but they come at a higher price. Also, be aware that Amazon will be hosting a major event on February 26 where it’s expected to announce new Amazon devices and an improved Alexa. But if you want a smart display to mount on your wall at a low price, this is still a good deal.
Bucks vs. Wizards Odds, predictions, recent stats, trends and Best bets for February 21
Milwaukee Bucks at Washington Wizards Game Preview
Nine Tricks That Make Painting Any Room a Lot Easier
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
Paint is among the cheapest of home renovations—it freshens things, covers old chips and scratches, and it can make your whole house feel brand new in just a few days. Even if you hire someone to paint a room, the cost isn’t entirely prohibitive—between $350 and $850, on average, per room. That’s pretty cheap compared to other renovation projects, but it’s still a chunk of change. Since painting is generally within most people’s DIY skill set, a lot of folks decide to set aside a weekend, buy some painter’s tape, and tackle the job themselves. If that’s you, here are some tips to make the job a little easier.
Liquid masking tape
If you’re painting a room with windows or any other glass features, you know the pure tedium of applying traditional painter’s tape around the edges of the glass (plus the tedium of having to scrape paint off the glass anyway because you got sloppy). That’s where liquid masking tape comes into play: You slather this stuff on your windows (you don’t need to worry about getting it on the trim, because it will act as a primer coating on anything that’s not glass), let it dry, then slather your paint on, let that dry, then just peel the masking tape off like a plastic film. As you can see here, it works like a charm and will save you a lot of time.
Catch drips
Painting a ceiling? Sorry to hear that—be prepared to emerge absolutely drenched in paint as it drips down on you, and you’d better have a sturdy drop cloth over everything in the room.
That is, unless you use an inverted umbrella. This might sound silly, but it actually works—poke a hole in an umbrella, push your paint roller handle through, seal it up with tape, and proceed to paint the ceiling. The umbrella will catch all the paint drips, and you can safely paint the whole ceiling without worrying about spending the next day scraping tiny drops of paint off of every surface. Pro tip: Buy a cheap clear plastic umbrella so you can actually see what you’re doing. Alternatively, a clear plastic paint tray liner can do the same job with less bulk to maneuver.
A dirty paint tray
You may have been advised at some point to line your paint tray, either with a cheap plastic liner or any plastic bag you have lying around (or even aluminum foil). Yes, that spares you a lot of cleanup—but the real hack is to just not clean your paint tray at all. Drain excess paint back into the can, then just let your tray dry out. A layer of old paint won’t affect the tray’s usefulness.
The cardboard method
Painting floor trim can be a real challenge. You can either spend a lot of time applying painter’s tape all around the edge of the room to protect the floor, or you can try to spread a drop cloth near the trim—but drop cloths will always get in the way of your brush or roller, and have a tendency to shift away from the wall just when you need it to protect everything.
Instead, use a piece of cardboard (or other thin, impermeable material, like a plastic sheet). Insert the sheet into the gap between the wall or trim and the floor, paint that section with wild abandon, then slide the sheet forward and paint the next section. The sheet protects the floor, you get paint all the way to the edge, and you didn’t spend the last hour putting down and endlessly adjusting tape.
Petroleum jelly
When it comes to painting around fixtures and hardware like doorknobs, it’s best to either remove them completely or mask them well with tape. But if you want to avoid that or you have small areas you want to avoid painting—screws, for example—where dabbing a tiny square of painter’s tape is both annoying and ineffective, you have an alternative: Use some petroleum jelly. Dab a bit onto the spot you want to skip painting and any paint that accidentally gets on it will just wipe away when everything’s dried.
Paint pens
Whether touching up a spot you missed or correcting a mistake, any spot in your room that requires a very fine paint line (like around a wall plate or fixture you can’t or simply don’t want to remove) can be incredibly challenging for even the smallest brush. That’s where a paint pen comes in. These refillable devices make it super easy to get into tight spaces and do quick touch-ups without having to tape the whole area off and try to awkwardly angle a brush. Inspect your work the next day and fill in any thin spots right away, with zero extra prep.
Gloves and socks
If you’ve ever painted stair balusters or furniture legs, you know it’s a pain to get good coverage all around with a brush. So, skip the brush: Put on a nitrite glove, pull an old sock over that, dip into your paint can, and just grab whatever it is you’re trying to paint with your hand. This technique is a lot faster when painting any kind of oddly-shaped element, because your hand is a lot more flexible and dexterous than a paintbrush or roller.
Radiator brushes and paint pads
Trying to paint behind something you’d really rather not remove, like a radiator or toilet? You can get in as close as you can and hope the blank spot behind it isn’t noticeable, or you could buy a specific tool like a radiator brush or a paint pad that allows you to easily and quickly paint the area behind these fixtures—no removal necessary.
Caulk
Getting crisp, clean lines with painter’s tape sometimes seems like an impossible task. There’s always some element of bleed-through that needs to be cleaned up when the tape is peeled away. But you can avoid this and guarantee sharp lines with something called Back Caulking:
-
Leave a thin space between the edge of your tape and the wall—about the thickness of a dime.
-
Fill that space with a thin bead of caulk.
-
Smooth the bead with your finger and/or a damp cloth as you would with any caulking job.
-
Let paint dry, remove painter’s tape.
Ta-da! Perfect lines.
MLB 26-and-under power rankings, Nos. 20-16: Bobby Witt Jr., Lawrence Butler, Pete Crow-Armstrong already making an impact
The Twins, Royals, Athletics, Cubs and Cardinals make up the next tier of the 2025 rankings.
Nvidia Wavers Amid $113 Billion Data Center Target As Earnings Loom; Is Nvidia A Buy Or Sell Now?
‘Mar-a-Lago Accord’ Chatter Is Getting Wall Street’s Attention
The Fantasy Baseball Numbers Do Lie: There’s more to these 2024 stats than meets the eye
Fantasy baseball analyst Dalton Del Don examines some questionable statistics for the 2025 season.
Why Victor Wembanyama’s scary diagnosis is different than the one Chris Bosh faced
A well-known sports injury doctor explains that the Spurs’ extensive mileage is likely not to blame for Wembanyama’s newly discovered condition.