98 TIME November 30/December 7, 2020
BEST INVENTIONS 2020
OUTDOORS
SAFER CYCLING
Bontrager WaveCel
Americans suff ered more than
60,000 cycling-related traumatic
brain injuries in 2019—about
15,000 more than in all of football
during the same period. While
no bike helmet is guaranteed to
prevent concussions, Bontrager’s
new WaveCel breaks ground
with a collapsible cellular
polymer, lined on the inside of the
helmet, that adds an extra layer
of protection to better absorb
rotational forces on impact than
traditional helmets do. In its
annual ratings of a helmet’s ability
to reduce concussion risk, Virginia
Tech gave the WaveCel its top
mark: fi ve stars. Prices range from
$99 for the youth model to $299
for the WaveCel mountain- bike
helmet. — SEAN GREGORY
ENTERTAINMENT
A REAL GAME CHANGER
Nvidia GeForce Now
Gaming isn’t cheap. PlayStation
and Xbox consoles cost
hundreds of dollars, and a top-
of-the-line gaming PC could set
you back thousands. And games
running on less specialized
devices—like a phone or
laptop—often do so slowly.
GeForce Now, a new service
from the chipmaker Nvidia,
does the hard work of rendering
graphics in the cloud, allowing
users to stream high-end games
like Wolfenstein: Youngbloodand Fortnite at top speeds on
their phones, tablets and non-
gaming laptops. Andrew Fear,
GeForce Now’s senior product
manager, likens the service
to “a superfast gaming PC in
the cloud.” Since it launched
in February, some 4 million
people have signed up for the
service—available for $4.99
a month—to play games on
whatever device they happen
to use, while maintaining speed
and quality. —MATTHEW GAULT