21 Day Fix Extreme Review
Aron Eugine
I tested the Ether Light XT Extreme on winter backpacking and camping trips in western North Carolina and Utah. Conditions ranged from extremely humid to extremely dry, with generally cold temperatures, mostly clear skies, and sometimes a fair amount of snow. For the most part, I was using my Feathered Friends Tanager 20 CFL Sleeping Bag (which I still adore, by the way) and a mixture of double- and single-wall tents.
Air Sprung Cells: To summarize from Sea to Summit, these cells form a network of interconnected air pockets that are ultimately what support your weight. To make the overall cell thicker with better structural integrity, the top and bottom pockets are also connected.
Easy inflation: The time-consuming, lightheadedness-inducing drudgery of inflating your sleeping mat is forever changed by this stroke of genius. It fills me with an unreasonable amount of joy every time I use the Airstream Pumpsack.
New for this winter bike commuting season are Extreme Bar Mitts. Like the original Bar Mitts the Extreme Bar Mitts are like mittens for your handlebars that stay on the bike. You operate the controls inside of them, possibly with additional gloves or mittens on.
Recently Bar Mitts sent me their new Extreme Bar Mitts model to try and it has finally been cold enough to put them to the test. I was concerned that Extreme Bar Mitts would be too warm, since I already found the regular Bar Mitts sufficient for me down to about 0F when paired with fleece-lined wool mittens.
First, the price. Regular Bar Mitts are currently priced at $74.95, while the Extreme Bar Mitts sell for $125. Our family saves $300 per month or more by not having a second car, so cost for appropriate winter biking gear is easy to justify compared to the alternative.
The larger size does present some minor challenges. First, when you remove your arms from the sleeves, where you aim to re-insert them is now a bit further away from the handlebars. I found the difference here small compared to the original Bar Mitts, but you definitely have to aim for the opening and not just for the handlebars.
You can see that it features a bit of velcro that you can reach into the sleeve and fix around the handlebar. This generally works well enough, but it can be a bit awkward to blindly reach a hand into the sleeve to fish this around.
I also like to a Mountain Mirrcycle Mirror with my Bar Mitts. On the original model I cut a hole to stick the mirror through on one side. As I review the latest options available, I see that both regular and Extreme Bar Mitts now have model options for bar ends (2 holes) or bar end mirrors (1 hole). This is the model I would likely buy in the future for myself, making the plugs less of a difference between the original and Extreme.
Finally, my favorite change. Extreme Bar Mitts have a removable cuff on the end of the sleeves with a slit opening that your arms go through. This makes the Extreme Bar Mitts much more fully enclosed and less like a open tube that you stick your arms in
With the Extreme Bar Mitts, I was not just sufficiently not-freezing, but comfortable even at 0F. At times I felt I was closer to sweating in the mittens than cooling down as I rode. In the teens and closer to the 20 degrees, I was almost too warm at times, and would flip open the convertible mittens inside the Bar Mitts and use my bare hands directly, although bare hands were a tad too cool at that temperature. Using lighter weight wind gloves in the teens would likely be perfect with the Extreme Bar Mitts model.
Previously I had decided that 0F was the coldest temperature I would consider bike commuting at. That was my limit, with the warm of my hands perhaps being my weakest point. But this week I was able to comfortably commute comfortably at 0F. With Extreme Bar Mitts, I think I could now comfortably bike commute at -5F with the gear I already have.
Asus' previous ROG Azoth was already pretty extreme with its impressive build, fantastic typing experience, and nod to keyboard enthusiasts and customizers. While it's one of my favorite keyboards, it's not currently on our best gaming keyboards list because, at $250, it's just a little too pricey.
The Asus ROG Azoth Extreme is even more... extreme, somehow. We first saw this premium version of Asus' already-premium gaming keyboard at Computex 2024, though we didn't get to spend much time with it in Taiwan. The Azoth Extreme manages to improve on just about everything in the original Azoth, with a full aluminum alloy chassis, a carbon fiber positioning plate, an adjustable gasket mount design, and refinements to sound dampening and stabilizers. Its OLED screen is slightly smaller, but is full color and supports touch gestures, and instead of coming with a DIY lubing kit, it comes with a wrist rest and two sets of magnetic metal feet.
The Azoth Extreme comes with several accessories, including the silicone wrist rest and magnetic feet. It doesn't come with the DIY lubing station that the original Azoth came with, because Asus decided a wrist rest was a more valuable accessory for most users (probably true). As far as customization goes, it comes with a keycap puller and a switch puller for hot-swapping switches, as well as a couple of extra switches and extra silicone pins for if you want to open up the keyboard. For connectivity, it comes with a 6.5-foot (2m) braided USB-C to USB-A cable, a USB extender, and Asus' ROG Polling Rate Booster, plus the 2.4GHz USB-A dongle.
The keyboard comes with doubleshot PBT keycaps, which have curved, textured tops and a "mid-height" profile that's lower than the traditional OEM profile you'll find on most mainstream gaming keyboards. They're fairly comfortable, and they do feel slightly more premium than the keycaps on the original Azoth, but they're not otherwise particularly noteworthy.
Asus has done some fine-tuning with the Azoth Extreme's stabilizers and has paid special attention to the spacebar, and the difference is noticeable. I detected perhaps a hint of stabilizer rattle in the backspace key, but only after going through all the keys, several times, looking for something.
The Azoth Extreme feels and sounds better than the original Azoth, which already felt and sounded great for a mainstream gaming keyboard. With the Azoth Extreme, Asus has definitely managed to hit actual enthusiast-level acoustics, no "for a mainstream gaming keyboard" tag necessary.
The ROG Azoth Extreme is configurable with Asus' universal peripheral software, Armoury Crate. Armoury Crate is my least favorite peripheral software, but you'll need to use it if you want to remap keys, customize the OLED screen and control knob, or change the keyboard's lighting. It also lets you access a handful of power and performance options, firmware updates, and Aura Sync, which lets you sync lighting effects across multiple Asus peripherals.
In addition to custom graphics, the OLED screen has four other modes: Date and time, laptop battery (only available if you're using a laptop), hardware information, and keystrokes per second (KPS). Only the graphic and KPS are turned on by default; the other modes you'll need to turn on in Armoury Crate. Once turned on, you can switch modes by swiping left/right on the screen, and you can switch through individual modes' menus by swiping up and down. Double-tapping on the screen brings up an overlay of keyboard status icons that show the caps lock and scroll lock status, current profile, current connection, battery status, PC/Mac mode, and the current functions of the three-way switch.
The control knob has several functions, which you can scroll through by tapping the side button. All functions are active by default; you can turn them off in Armoury Crate if you'd rather not scroll through functions you'll never use. The functions are: System volume, media track, keyboard brightness adjustment, OLED brightness adjustment, switch lighting effect, and customize. The "customize" function is a custom function you can configure (you can set scroll up, scroll down, and scroll click to perform any of the same functions you can set keys to perform).
The ROG Azoth Extreme offers three forms of connectivity: 2.4GHz wireless, Bluetooth, and wired (USB-C). It comes with a 2.4GHz wireless USB-A dongle as well as Asus' ROG Polling Rate Booster, which ups the keyboard's polling rate to 8,000 Hz in both wired and wireless mode. While you can make a reasonable argument for why an extremely high polling rate might be important in a gaming mouse for a very small fraction of gamers, I don't think you can make the same argument for a keyboard.
The ROG Azoth Extreme is a fantastic keyboard, no question. Asus is now solidly in enthusiast territory with this keyboard, and I won't pretend like I haven't been waiting for an actual enthusiast-level keyboard with a full suite of gaming features (even if I will always be at odds with Armoury Crate). But $500?!
You know how I said that $500 is an insane amount to pay for a mainstream gaming keyboard? Well, it's also an insane amount to pay for a prebuilt enthusiast keyboard. So the fact that Asus has managed to transcend the mainstream gaming category with this keyboard means nothing: for $500, you can just get your mainstream gaming keyboard and your enthusiast typing keyboard.
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For the longest time I was really been intimidated by the term "Extreme Programming" (XP) because for me the words represented an extreme form of something that I had very little experience or knowledge*. That is the reason I had kept myself away from reading literature on this concept although teams at ThoughtWorks had been following the values of XP long before I joined the organization. I read this book to strengthen my understanding of the core concepts of XP and deliver the same via a workshop.
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