I test out the new Amazon Glow device, and also completely destroy it via my incompetence.
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Category Archives: Reviews
One-Netbook’s OneGX1 Pro – Didn’t Buy it for Gaming (with Teardown)
I’ll admit I was charmed by the full-sized specs of this diminutive laptop (or netbook, as you will), and I have a thing for tiny laptops in general. So I couldn’t resist it when Banggood offered it up to me in a full-on tracking cookie assault of marketing. (That being said, I purchased it from Amazon to avoid paying duties.) It’s a solidly built little machine, and a solid performer save for one thing: It’s not what I would consider to be a gaming computer. Though it is indeed sold as one, what with it’s somewhat-included side controllers and advertising to that effect. Sure, it can play some games just fine, but without some kind of even halfway-decent (even mobile-optimized) … Continue reading
AA Lithium Rechargeable Comparison: Jugee, Bonai, Amptorrent, EBL, Tenavolts, Gigastone, Deleepow
I’d been seeing a lot of different brands of rechargeable lithium ion standard-sized batteries on the market, and couldn’t decide which ones to buy. Hence, I bought many of them. Hopefully this helps you out of the same conundrum! I built a test “rig” (really just some plywood) which consisted of 5 each of milliamp-hour meters, 4-position battery packs, and 12 Ohm resistors. In all, I tested 7 brands of lithium cells, as well as 6 sets of alkaline batteries (as a point of reference for capacity), 1 set of non-rechargeable Energizer Lithiums, and 1 set of NiMH Panasonic Eneloop cells. The batteries were discharged until their aggregate voltage reached 3 (or 0.75V per cell) which I felt was a … Continue reading
The WAudio W-3900 Power Conditioner – A Surprisingly Mediocre Thing
The WAudio W-3900 Power Conditioner is a well-made PDU/power strip, with a couple of bucks worth of filtering components inside. If it were sold in the $50 price range, I’d definitely recommend it for its solid build quality, decent quality components, and retro looks. But at $180, the amount of power “conditioning” (it’s really just filtering certain frequencies of noise at low levels) doesn’t justify the price, IMHO. To be fair, the product can be found on AliExpress for $137 at the time of this writing. Though the marketing materials promise “the highest level of surge & spike protection”, in reality it is not what I would call a surge or spike protector. One weak PTC thermistor is presumably the … Continue reading
Pyle o’Crap – The PCO875 Power Sequencer is Neither a Conditioner, Regulator, Surge Protector, or Noise Suppressor
I purchased a Pyle PCO875 Power Sequencer simply to make a video about it, because I didn’t believe all of its claims. Though it does appear to be a somewhat-competently made power sequencer, the manufacturer’s statements about power conditioning, surge protection, spike suppression, filtering and so forth are all false. In the video I covered the Amazon listing’s specs for the device, but the specs are much the same on Pyle’s own website so it was no mistake in importing it over to Amazon. I’ll some screenshots here for posterity, because hopefully they’ll eventually correct their “mistakes”, and I want to have a record of what statements they were making at the time this video was created: I did manage … Continue reading
My Review of the TWA Hotel at JFK
Which Alkaline AAA Batteries are the Best (in 2020)? Allmax and Fuji.
I needed new batteries for my pepper grinder, and ended up going down a vast rabbit hole. First, I purchased 15 different brands/models of Alkaline AAA batteries from Amazon. (This cost about $150, which means that I strongly overpaid to run a pepper mill.) Then I built a test rig for at 15 battery types. (It’s a redic long video, but you can see the process at 50x speed which only takes a couple of minutes!) And used that to make the video at the top of this page, after running a 100 hour test. The spreadsheet with the raw data and calculated results for the tests is available on Google Docs: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-wWU2XRqiwQYu8Mf14S9t1k3e9BCGTiulbm4DLLoztk And you can watch me further discuss … Continue reading
Like Bees, the Yellow Jacket Power Strip (by Coleman Cable) is Terrible
Another sh*tty power strip
Welp, they’ve done it again. Any by “they”, I mean people that make poor quality electrical devices. Specifically Yellow Jacket, which is a Woods brand, which is a Coleman Cable brand, which is probably somehow owned by either Warren Buffet or the Koch Brothers.
I got this for $16.22 during an Amazon lighting deal, and even though that’s not a terrible price, the poor quality construction and the basic lie about the materials is what really angers me.
Join me as I disassemble and then curse at this poor excuse for a power strip, in my newest installment of first world problems.
The Keurig HOT 2.0 K575 Plus is a Disappointment
First World Problems I gotta start off by saying that I know that this is an extravagant waste of time and resources. I didn’t make this video because the K575 was slightly annoying, but rather because it baffles me that they became worse at designing coffee machines than before. It’s doubly confounding because Keurig has based their marketing on the K575 being a “2.0” brewer. As in a (supposedly) new-and-improved follow-up to their original line. Yes, it has a couple of advantages over the older B70 Platinum that I used for comparison. However, it seems that they increased the features without increasing the cost. That says to me that they designed these new brewers on a budget. A schizophrenic software … Continue reading
Power Strips Whatever Something Something: Furman SS-6B vs. Belkin Surge Protector [G9S12FG9]
Oshkoshbegosh!? Another long ramble about power distribution thingies for the home and/or office?!
Well it’s true. Hopefully my next video will not be about this subject.
This compares the relatively-generically-branded Belkin Advanced Surge Protector (which actually bears the handy model number of BE112230-08, like it came out of some kind of dystopian nightmare) to the easily-spoken Furman SS-6B (which itself sounds shockingly dystopian anyway).