Tag Archives: Let’s Open Asia’s Best Crap Box

I take an extensive look at the Ficihp / BQAA (I think they rebranded?) keyboard and monitor combo, and try it with a bunch of different devices and operating systems.

I test out the Unihertz Titan phone on Google Fi to see if it’s worth it as my wife’s new daily driver.

I fancied buying a couple of USB cables with in-built power meters, as well as a pair of multimeters with interesting aspects. For some reason all the brand names are capitalized in real life; I didn’t do that just for the title. I’m not yelling, I promise.

Don’t let people make fun of you for wearing this not-a-smartwatch, because it’s actually pretty good. If somewhat impractical to live with.

I take a look at the HOPI-9800 from #Shenzhen #HOPI Electronic Technology, a meter that displays the supply Voltage and frequency (or “frequence”) as well as the Amperage draw, overall power in Watts, power factor, and annual power consumption. It’s a somewhat dangerous contraption that’s not all that well put together. And I forgot to even mention the sketchy multi-national power socket.

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

DIY Tree I got this because it looked like a cool little project, and a neat (if tiny) gift for the missus. So that’s about the extent of my motivations. If you’re trying to put one of these together, I’m hoping that this video might answer a couple of your questions. It’s not really meant to be an educational video, though; More a demonstration of what’s involved in assembly for anyone considering a purchase. Speaking of which, if you want one you can pick one up for about 5 bucks over at banggood.com. And in case you were wondering, this is not a paid advertisement. I actually paid them for this thing, so it’s pretty much the opposite. (If this … Continue reading

I Love Strippers… …but not so much the VISE-GRIP self-adjusting style. And especially not the cheap Chinese ripoff version.

Here’s a tiny cellphone from Aiek (your top brand for cheap-ass mini phones, maybe). I got it for $10, and surprisingly it works pretty well! I forgot to mention in the video, but it’s GSM and definitely compatible with AT&T’s network. (I tested it using H2O Wireless, but they’re just a virtutal provider on AT&T’s system.) You can pick one up from Banggood, but unfortunately the price has jumped up twice since I bought it, and now it’s at an unfortunate $18.47 (October 8, 2016). I’m sure it’s sold elsewhere, so hopefully you can grab it for ten bucks from another source. The free delivery option was surprisingly fast to me here in NY at just over a week. This … Continue reading

Here are some collapsible LED “camping” lanterns from Etekcity. The reason I put “camping” in quotes is because there is no sign of waterproofing on these things. I suppose if you’re camping in the desert they’d be fine. Wait, no they wouldn’t be. Because one out of the four didn’t work, and the soldering was abysmal. If you want to see details, I do a tear down in the video.