Physical Things
Can you touch it?
- Household & Furniture
- hOmelabs Compact Laundry Dryer Review
- Tresanti Adjustable Height Desk ODP10557 Review
- Midea Duo 14,000 BTU Portable Air Conditioner Review
- Electronics
Household & Furniture
hOmelabs Compact Laundry Dryer Review
About
The hOmelabs Compact Laundry Dryer is a 3.2 Cubic Ft dryer that runs off a typical 120 Volt North American power outlet.
Purchase Date: 2021-04-10
Review Date: 2022-04-10
Update: This product no longer appears to be sold.
Review
This is a 120 Volt dryer, so just know that it will not dry as much nor as fast as a 240 Volt dryer. 120V is not drawback for this unit as you would only purchase it if you need a 120 Volt dryer.
Usage
At 3.2 Cubic feet, this dryer fits more clothing than a lot of other compact 120 Volt dryers. Less dryer loads is a good thing when you're already doing small loads.
I highly recommend that you spin dry your clothes before putting them in this dryer. With less heat output than a standard dryer it can take a very long time if your clothes go in soaking. Many hours.
You'll want to find a way to vent it outside. The easiest way is to pipe the exhaust air out a window. You can use either dryer ducting or even the tubing for a portable A/C.
Like any dryer, don't overload it and remember to clean out the lint. But beyond that, there's not much to say. It's a dryer and it works well.
Issues
There are very few drawbacks with this device, so I will mostly be nit-picking.
Occasionally the onboard chip will become confused and refuse to start the dryer. You can tell this has happened because it no longer beeps when you turn the dial, and of course it will not start. Unplugging and re-plugging in the dryer solves this issue instantly. When you place your dryer, make sure you can get to the power outlet easily for when this issue occurs (once every month or two).
The automatic sensor does not always do an excellent job of detecting how much time items need to dry. Sometimes it will end with clothes still damp, and other times it will continue drying for half an hour past what is necessary. I have not noticed a particular pattern here. I will often check on the clothes after it's been running a while, but not always. This is helpful to mix up the clothes and prevent some items from getting balled up and staying wet in the smaller drum.
The lint trap gets loose very quickly with use. After a year, this has not caused any issues beyond me dropping it in the dryer and spilling some lint inside, but it does speak to overall potential build quality.
Decision 👍
This dryer was a wonderful worthwhile purchase. If you need a dryer that runs off 120 Volts, but is still somewhat large and effective, this is a great choice.
If you're currently hang drying your clothes, as soon as you buy this you'll wish you bought it earlier.
The Rest
My Purchase Price (including tax and shipping): $337.87
hOmelabs Compact Laundry Dryer
Tresanti Adjustable Height Desk ODP10557 Review
About
The Tresanti ODP10557 is a 47" x 25" motorized adjustable height glass-top desk that raises up to 47".
Purchase Date: 2021-10-01
Review Date: 2022-01-21
I never said I wasn't messy.
Review
The Desk
At only 47" wide and about 25" deep, this is a small desk. If you're in the market for a larger desk, look elsewhere. If you're looking for a more compact desk, or don't need the extra space, then the size is not an issue. I can easily fit my laptop, an external monitor, and a lamp on the top, with room for my Keychron C2 keyboard, mouse-pad, and a little random junk. Okay, maybe I do have a bit too much stuff on my desk.
The desk feels very solid and well built. While I don't love the horizontal bar between the legs, I do understand that such a heavy desk needs good support down there, and I do often rest my feet on or over the bar.
The front of the desk is slightly concave. This helps you stand or sit marginally closer and feels natural. I was unsure about it at first, but have come to like the shape. The shallow pullout drawer on the front matches the curve and while it doesn't allow you to store anything too large, it is a huge plus and is greats for papers, notecards, pens, etc.
Powered Lift
This desk has a good range from low to high, however it does not go quite as high as some others. This has not been a problem for me, but if you tall you will want to check the max height to make sure it will be comfortable for you.
The speed and power of the motor are quite good.
I do not particularly love the touch sensitive buttons on the glass. They are extremely prone to accidental presses. Because of this the table comes with a physical lock button on the side to disable the touch controls. This just feels a bit clumsy. I have gotten used to pressing unlock, hitting my preset height, and them immediately re-locking.
The addition of two USB ports on the side is nice, but if you have the desk near a wall like I do then they are rendered useless.
There is a wireless charging pad on the top of the desk as well. This is nice to have an I do use it, but I would use it more often if the positioning of it was more natural. It's not in a place I find easy to position my phone on and would use it more often if it was, but this is not a major issue.
Issues
The glass top of this desk is not very scratch resistant. In less than a year there are scratches in the top surface. I would not say we have been particularly rough or gentle with this desk. It has been used on and off as a work-from-home station. The scratches are small and while not very noticeable on their own, they cast a shadow on the white subsurface if you have an overhead light, making them very noticeable. I'm surprised there are nearly half-a-dozen visible scratches already, even if they are fairly small.
The front pullout drawer on this desk is a big plus that many much more expensive models do not have. That said, the drawer is very stiff to open and close. You have to give it a decent amount of force you the drawer to close completely. This is a bit of a nit-pick, but it bugs me every time I use the drawer.
While I have not personally experienced this issue, I have read many reports of people unable to raise or lower the desk all the way because the sensors get out of sync. From my reading of this issue it is easy to fix by resetting the desk sensor. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2EuTVUHKk4
Decision 👍
This desk can often be purchased for an exceptional deal. It is definitely worth the price if you're looking for a sit/stand desk that is on the smaller size and won't break the bank, but is still well made. The issues I have listed are all pretty minor, just be careful not to scratch it.
The Rest
Midea Duo 14,000 BTU Portable Air Conditioner Review
About
The Midea Duo 14,000 BTU Portable Air Conditioner is available as just an AC or also with a Heat Pump. It comes with a dual hose and window attachment piece
Purchase Date: 2023-04-23
Review Date: 2024-03-01
Review
Installation
While this looks similar to many portable AC units, there are a few important differences that make installation trickier:
- The unit weighs about 75 lbs so you won't want to be moving it around a lot, even with its tiny wheels
- The hose is a custom shape so you won't be able to extend it without buying custom hose from Midea. The hose it does come with is quite short.
- The window attachment is flimsy and easily broken. It fits better in vertically closing windows than in horizontal ones.
In my personal experience, the window hose attachment came with a broken clip and never fit correctly. It took 10 Months of hounding Midea support to get them to send a new window attachment.
If your window is not close to the floor, you will need to raise the unit up for the hose to reach the window. I purchased a small table for this purpose.
Unless you have drain nearby for some strange reason, you will need a container for it to drain into. Depending on many factors these can fill very quickly or slowly. I recommend a large water jug.
Usage
The unit itself is quite good and efficient at providing both cooling and heat. Unlike a traditional AC unit it can run at different strengths, meaning it does not need to constantly click on and off to keep temperature. It can run at a low and quiet setting keeping the room at a more consistent temperature and only runs high and loud when extra cooling is needed (like right when it first turns on).
The app and wifi control are pretty good. One of my favorite features is the ability to set a nighttime "Sleep Curve" where you can schedule the desired temperature throughout the night. The physical remote is also very good and can be used as a remote room thermometer for the unit to get a better temperature reading across the room than what the unit measures itself.
I do wish that this unit had better integration with other smart home ecosystems. You're limited to turning the device on and off through Google/Amazon, but I'm unable to perform anything more intelligent like you would be able to do with a smart thermostat. This may be asking a lot for a portable unit, but it feels held back by it's decent app and lack of integrations outside the Midea ecosystem.
Issues
Midea customer support is atrocious in my experience. I got the runaround for 10 months with promises they would send me the piece that arrived broken. I finally got lucky and got a hold of someone who spent the time to get me the proper replacement part. If you have something more fundamental broken than just a plastic clip, have fun with the return process of a 75lb AC unit.
If you cannot put your Midea unit within two feet of a window, it won't work. You'll likely find yourself fighting with the window attachment and needing to raise your unit off the ground. Both of these issues make the unit not really portable.
Drainage is a real issue with this device. If you only use it for cooling, you can use a single drain, but if you use other feature like heating or dehumidifying, there are separate drains for each! Apparently they want you to move the single provide drain tube around every time you use a different feature. I am not able to comprehend why everything cannot drain to the same place and you may find yourself needing to buy extra drain tubes to use all the features. It is not practical to cap the drain and move the unit to drain as needed. The unit will fill with water much too quickly at times.
The heating functionality uses a heat-pump that could be a lot more efficient. It apparently cannot run if the temperature falls below the low 40s Fahrenheit. This may make the heating functionality useless for most people.
Decision 👎
I'm truly mixed on my final recommendation here. The unit itself performs well and is almost great, but the downsides make this less practical than expected. For the price, I would expect better drainage, better window attachments, and better company support.
If you have a drain situation setup, and your unit can be within two feet of a window, this may work great for you. Don't call it portable though.
This is a good first step at an inverter heat-pump style portable AC unit. Hopefully the next generation will resolve the quality of life issues and improve the heating capabilities.
The Rest
My Purchase Price (including tax and shipping): $719.39
Product Link: https://amzn.to/40k9Mm8
Electronics
Beats Studio Buds Review
About
The Beats Studio Buds are water resistant wireless earbuds with active noise cancellation and a long battery life.
Purchase Date: 2022-12-25
Review Date: 2022-12-31
Review
The Beats Studio Buds are a middle tier earbud with good sound quality. Their small in-ear form factor, sound quality, and battery life are all standout features, however they also lack some features that have come to be expected in premium earbuds.
Key features:
- Active noise control
- Long battery life for earbuds and case
- Quick recharge of earbuds in case
- Multiple mics on each earbud
Missing features:
- Proximity sensor for auto play/pause
The Good
The Beats Studio Buds have great build quality, a sturdy case, pretty good sound (for wireless earbuds), and great battery life.
The battery life here really is top notch, and even if you do use the earbuds so long that they run out of juice, they will quick-charge in the case. Put them in the case for just a minute or two and you'll get over an hour more listening time.
The earbuds and case have a great premium feel to them, this is important for earbuds as they are prone to breaking quite easily.
I find these fit very well in the ears, stay in better than I expected, and are easier to put in than I expected. You may need to spend a minute getting used to their shape and how to insert them. Despite their tiny size, they are easy to take out of the case and put back in without dropping them.
The Okay
The Active Noise Cancelling (ANC) and Passthrough modes are okay at best. I don't think they have included enough microphones on this device to provide higher quality ANC or passthrough unfortunately.
It is difficult to tell which sound mode you are in, especially since ANC and passthrough aren't very exceptional. Exacerbating this is the use of sound effects telling you which mode you are in when you switch. I will never learn which sound means which, and find myself switching though them multiple times and clapping or tapping to try and tell which one I am in. I prefer earbuds that say which mode they are in when you switch, For example speaking out the words, "ANC" or "Ambient".
The Bad
While one-touch pairing is supposed to do away with all your bluetooth pairing troubles, I actually had a worse experience pairing these to my Android phone than I have ever had with any bluetooth device in over a decade. The setup workflow is unclear as it tries to pair and install an app at the same time, leaving you on a screen with incorrect instructions. After my first time pairing, the earbuds would not reconnect to my phone, so I had to reset them and start from scratch. The second time I got errors with no way to resolve them. Eventually after a phone reboot and earbud reset everything paired fine. It was an incredibly frustrating experience and their app provides zero advice if everything doesn't go exactly as they have planned.
At this price-point it is unacceptable to not have proximity sensors.
It is not possible to control both ANC and volume at the same time. By default, you cannot control the volume level. I find it unbelievable that any company makes wireless earbuds that don't let you adjust the volume. Volume control is core functionality, full stop. Having said that, the poor passthrough does mean you could just give up that functionality and switch the headphones to volume control. Even with the change, volume control is still poorly implemented.
The case is very large despite these being very small earbuds. I'm not sure why they designed such a large case compared to other earbuds on the market. I want to keep earbuds in my pocket all the time, and these take up way too much pocket space. If you keep them elsewhere, this likely isn't as big of a deal for you.
Decision 👎
While the Beats Studio Buds have a quality build and decent sound, the feature-set for the price-point is not quite there. Never pay full price for these. Even on sale there are completing products with good sound that include more features.
Your pairing experience may differ, and I hope it does, but one-touch pairing did not live up to the promise for me. And when it fails, you'll wish for your old pair of earbuds that at least would pair, even if it took 1 minute the first time.
I am using and enjoying my pair since they were a gift, but even receiving them for free I still dearly miss a proximity sensor for auto play-pause.
The Rest
My Purchase Price (including tax and shipping): This was a gift. Standard retail price is $149.99. Can often be found on sale for $99.95
Product Link: https://amzn.to/3PjKA93
Boltune Wireless Earbuds 030 Review
About
The Boltune 030 are water resistant wireless earbuds with active noise cancellation and in-ear detection.
Purchase Date: 2021-09-10
Review Date: 2022-01-25
Review
The Boltune 030 are budget earbuds first and foremost. They drew my attention because they punched above their weight in features and promised audio quality. There are many different models that come out on a regular basis, so this review may function well as a general review of Boltune earbud quality.
Key features:
- Proximity sensor for auto play/pause
- Active noise control
- Long battery life for earbuds and case
- Multiple mics on each earbud
The Good
These earbuds are significantly better quality than their price may suggest. The audio quality is on par with $50+ earbuds, with healthy levels across the spectrum.
These earbuds are both comfortable to wear and use. The touch sensitive pads on each bud are easy to find and press with a light touch. The controls are easy to learn and I rarely found myself making mistakes after the first week of use.
Active noise control is a great feature, and it works very well here. You can turn it off if desired while listening to music/etc, or set it to passthrough to pause your audio and hear the outside world almost as clearly as if you didn't have earbuds in.
The batteries in the earbuds themselves last a long time, and the case will charge them up several times over before needing a recharge itself. I never found myself wishing the battery lasted longer. The case is compact, feels nice, uses USB-C, and fits easily anywhere.
The earbuds connect fairly fast since they start connecting as soon as you open the case lid. They are also reliable in their connection, and I have never needed to re-pair them to fix any issues. Taking one out of your ear causes them to auto-pause your music, and putting them back in resumes it.
The Okay
Build quality and longevity are where Boltune saved some money on these earbuds. They feel good enough quality to the touch, but with my first pair the touch controls broke out of the blue, and my second pair sometimes act up as well. Boltune did replace my first pair after having my run through some basic checks. But they also forgot to ship the replacement from their warehouse and after a month I had to reach out asking for a tracking update. They quickly shipped my replacement after that.
The Bad
I find the earbuds difficult to remove from the case. The shape of the exposed portion of the earbuds make them slippery and easy to drop when you are removing them. I would say be careful, but even still you are bound to drop them. This is bound to shorten their lifespan when coupled with their mid-range build quality.
In some instances one of the buds would not fully settle into place causing it not to charge. At least a few times one of the buds died on my because it had not charged, despite being in a charged case for hours beforehand.
The earbuds constantly disconnect and reconnect whenever I use them for phone calls. It appears that using the speakers and mic at the same time cause the connection to drop. The earbuds do automatically reconnect fairly quickly, but you can miss a lot of important things when audio cuts out for 5 seconds every few minutes. I do not know if this happens when connected to all devices, or it is an issue with my phone specifically. As it is now, they are not suitable for phone calls for me. Thankfully I only use them for music and podcasts 99% (invisible) of the time.
Decision 👍
When on sale for under $50, these are a worthwhile pair of wireless earbuds. They sound good and are feature packed.
The trade-off you are making with a cheaper pair of Boltune earbuds like this is reliability. You may occasionally run into audio, connection, or even hardware issues. I would not expect these to reliably work for more than 2 years.
With the exception of the connection dropping on calls (Which may be a deal breaker for many), I have not had any major frustrations with these earbuds, and I often hear similar or worse frustrations from people using expensive name-brand wireless earbuds.
The Rest
My Purchase Price (including tax and shipping): $39.75
Usually on Sale at TaoTronics
Usually full price at Boltune: https://www.boltune.com/products/bt-bh030-wireless-earbuds-030-bluetooth
System76 Darter Pro (darp5) Review
About
The Darter Pro is a 15" linux-first ultrabook made by System76.
Purchase Date: 2019-04-01
Review Date: 2022-01-20
Review
Let's start with the elephant in the room. Yes, I know that System76 doesn't design their own laptop chassis, but I also know that they release custom firmware and work with Clevo and others on the designs and configurations so this is not just an off-the-self laptop you can buy from anyone else. I do however look forward to the day when they can design and product their own chassis.
Specs
If you want a full spec list, check out their website linked below. These are my thoughts on some specific specs that are worth noting.
The matte screen is between average to good quality and supports 1920×1080 FHD. While higher resolution would be nice these days, for this specific laptop I think the battery life would suffer too much with a higher resolution display. The display gets decently bright for indoor use, but is a bit dim for outdoor use.
The Darter Pro only supports Intel integrated graphics. System76 makes other laptops with Nvidia cards, so if you're looking for gaming or rendering check out their other offerings instead.
The battery life is sub-par. Check out the Battery section below for more details. Maybe their newer models are better?
Lots of ports, we love lots of ports on a laptop. Yes a Thunderbolt dock is amazing, but it's no replacement for ports.
Build Quality
I'm pleasantly surprised by the build quality of this laptop for only being partially metal. The top portions are a nice brushed metal look and feel, the hinge has held up better than almost any other laptop I've purchased from any major manufacturer ever, and the keyboard feels sturdy and solid.
My dislikes with the build are:
- They keys are a bit mushy feeling, despite also feeling well made.
- There's a lot of plastic on the bottom and around the screen
- The mouse buttons are pretty poor. They are very wide buttons and don't click consistently across their entire length
This is really a pretty short dislike list. My 2019 model only has a single USB-C 3.1 port, but I believe their newer models have two USB-C 3.2 ports. So while I'm sad with my single port, you won't be.
I also have firsthand experience that System76 stands behind their hardware. Over a year into ownership a screw came loose on the bottom and fell out before I got around to tightening it. The screw was near the hinge and I could see the slight flexing would eventually cause hinge damage. I reached out to System76 and they had replacement screws in the mail to me at no cost that same week. No, the screws shouldn't have come loose, and yes sending replacements is not much to write home about, but since I had owned it for over a year, I'm not sure I would have been treated as well by many major laptop manufacturers.
Software
All of System 76's Laptops come with either their own Pop!_OS or Ubuntu preinstalled. Pop!_OS is a great, user-friendly, and stable OS that builds on what Ubuntu has done. I highly recommend you try out their distro if you get their laptop. You can always switch later if you prefer something else.
System76 has done a great job of improving hardware support over the old driver hunting days, plus has done a great job of providing native and open source firmware and other improvements you don't get when installing a distro on hardware that wasn't designed for it.
This isn't a review of Pop!_OS, but I do think it's a great distro with an exciting future.
Battery
Battery is the main drawback as I have never received good battery life with this laptop. My wife purchased an Lenovo laptop not long after I purchased the Darter Pro and her laptop's battery life blows me away. I wish I could get more than a few hours before I am critically low, even with power saving options enabled. Obviously batteries degrade over the years, but even to start it wasn't amazing. Before purchasing a new Darter Pro I would look around to see what people are getting for real-world battery life to see if it comes anywhere near the 9 hours they claim on their new model.
Support
I already talked a bit about their hardware support when I lost a screw, and maybe that wasn't worth mentioning. What is worth mentioning is that they provide software support as well. I reached out to their support one other time when I was having audio issues. Their support was quick to respond, collect logs from me, and begin troubleshooting what seemed like an OS issue. A quick fix later and I was good to go.
Decision 👍
Since 2019 System76 has revamped the Darter Pro with a new chassis that has better ports and a better screen design. I cannot speak to the new design's build quality since their site is sparse on build details, but if it matches the quality of the 2019 model then it's still a solid machine.
The Darter Pro is light and portable, but has a large enough screen to be really productive on it. It's perfect for work and development as long as you don't have very high graphics needs that will tax the integrated graphics.
The Rest
My Purchase Price (including tax and shipping): $1,995.60
View the official Darter Pro site: https://system76.com/laptops/darter
Wyze Cameras Review
I've used several different Wyze cameras over the years (Cam V3, Cam OG, and Floodlight), and while each camera may work slightly differently, overall they all have the same issues. This page covers my most common issues with Wyze cameras and why I recommend choosing a different brand. I will cover some of the positives as well, but I don't believe they overcome the negatives.
Functionality
Connection Times
I've found all my Wyze cameras to take about 3 seconds to connect at the best of times. Many times it will take 15 seconds for unknown reasons. Sometimes a camera will just refuse to connect entirely for a while. Try again in a few minutes and it might work. I've had non-stop connection issues with all Wyze cameras I have owned over several years.
While writing up this page I opened up several cameras to check on various things. Nearly half of them either took close to a minute to load or failed entirely saying they were offline. All the cameras are well within wifi range.
App Issues
Over time as Wyze has updated their app, various issues have come and gone. One thing that is constant however are bugs. The most frustrating bugs for me have been several times where I have had to clear all the app cache and settings before it would load any of my cameras. It's not worth spending your time fighting a never ending battle with frustrating app problems.
Additionally, different generations of cameras have entirely different UIs within the app. Feature like viewing recorded alerts or viewing the SD card recordings exist in different places with entirely different interfaces, how fun!
No RTSP Support
One day in the future you may want to explore expanding beyond basic Wyze Cameras. If so, it would be nice to bring all your cameras under one roof. Wyze cameras do not support RTSP which means you cannot use 3rd party NVR systems to manage or view them. In my security camera journey I've come to realize that RTSP support is mandatory to not get locked into a company's ecosystem.
There are some bridges that can take Wyze cameras and create an RTSP stream from them to help solve this issue. I've never gotten them to work and it's a hacky solution at best. Instead, support a company that supports open standards like RTSP.
SD Card Support
This one should have been a positive, and it is... until it isn't. Writing to an SD cart is a good backup to the cloud event recordings, and being able to access these recordings remotely is nice as well. You will find that you only check the SD card recordings when you need to review something. One of these times you'll find that the SD card failed and Wyze never bothered to notify you, and so that important event you thought you had recorded isn't recorded.
This is a deal-breaker. You cannot use the SD card recordings for Wyze cameras if the records won't be there when you need them. This is just a false sense of security. I guess you just need to remember to check each camera daily to make sure it's still working.
You do need to purchase SD cards rated to be used for continual recording, but even still Wyze is hard on SD cards and they will fail a lot. It doesn't help that Wyze has had bugs in the past which caused SD cards to fail even faster than usual. The savings you gain through SD cards instead of paying for cloud storage or a better solution with an NVR are lost to SD card replacement costs.
FloodLight
There's not much to say here. The Wyze Floodlight is trash. the PIR sensor is trash. Don't get it, it doesn't work.
Notifications
Too Many Alerts
While you can choose which area of the camera's view to use for motion detection, there are still a lot of issues. In the past I regularly received notification alerts for motion that occurred outside of the detection zone.
Inside the detection zone you'll get alerts for waving tree branches or changes in sunlight constantly. Good luck adjusting it to your needs.
One of my outside cameras is configured to listen for glass breaking and gunshot sounds. I get on average one notification for one of the other when neither has ever happened. It's no surprise that the camera can't properly detect sound, the microphone quality is the worst I have ever heard. I legitimately think these cameras would be better if they had no microphone at all. Why pretend?
Too Few Alerts
"Wait, I thought there were too many alerts?" I hear you ask. Sometimes there are. Other times really obvious motion events are completely missed. I have a camera pointed at my front door with a somewhat narrow detection zone due to trees blowing in the breeze. It almost never alerts when we get a package delivered and it is put squarely in the middle of the detection zone.
I've also gone through periods where the app just didn't send me any notifications. Then some app update would happen a month later and I start getting them again.
The combination of too many and too few alerts means you never see what you want to see. It is a fool's errand to get these cameras tuned just right to not miss everything and also not overwhelm you.
Poor Detection
If there is a car in frame, every notification will be "Vehicle detected." Is your camera pointed at your driveway and the sun shines through the trees at a slightly different angle as it crosses the sky? "Vehicle detected"
Your dog runs right in front of the camera in perfect lighting, "Motion Detected". I hope you didn't get tired of the tons of unnecessary notifications and turn off general detections and only enable alert for Pets, because then you won't get any notification at all. The "Smart Detections" Wyze offers sound nice, but are unreliable.
Security
Wyze took 3 years to patch a security issue
Wyze discontinued camera rather than patch security issue
https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/27/22904844/wyze-discontinues-smart-security-camera-wyzecam-v1
Wyze let others see inside your home
https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/8/23865255/wyze-security-camera-feeds-web-view-issue
Wyze did it again
https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/19/24077233/wyze-security-camera-breach-13000-customers-events
Positives
Subscription price for multiple cameras
At $100 a year, Wyze Cam Unlimited is a good deal if you have handful of cameras, and the price won't go up as you add more.
Unfortunately sometimes the app loses your subscription information for a period of time and downgrades your features and notifications. For me generally things start working again a few hours later, but in the meantime I've missed event recordings and have to dig through the (hopefully not failed) SD card recordings to see what happened.
Subscription is optional
You can run these cameras without a subscription using an SD card. Even notifications are very basic and you don't get the unreliable "Smart Detection" events, just general motion events.
Summary
Wyze is too budget of an option to provide a decent product. Every aspect of the Wyze ecosystem is poorly designed or poorly implemented. Wyze introduces new products and new bugs faster than they fix existing ones. Wyze has not shown proper due care for security incidents, which is unacceptable for a device that can let others see inside your home. The cheap entry point is not worth the sacrifices.
So what do I recommend instead? I don't have a recommendation for you yet. I'm testing out some camera brands with RTSP support, starting with affordable models first. I am using Frigate NVR with a centralized hard drive to store all the recordings on. So far I'm getting faster connection times and better object detection with no annual fee, but I have yet to settle on a preferred affordable camera.
Keychron C1 & C2 Review
About
The Keychron C1 and Keychron C2 are entry level wired mechanical keyboards. The C2 is a full-sized layout which includes a number pad, while the C1 forgoes the numpad for a more compact footprint.
Purchase Date: 2021-12-21
Review Date: 2022-01-18
Review
I personally used the Keychron C2 with the brown switch (shown above). For those newer to mechanical keyboards (as I am myself), a quick overview of the switch types:
- Red: Light weight, smooth/linear, and more quiet. Popular for gaming.
- Brown: Tactile feed. More noise than red
- Blue: Tactile and Clicky. Noisier, but best feedback on button press.
This mechanical keyboard is well built and sturdy. There are ABS plastic keycaps (not ideal, but perfectly fine for the price-point) included for both Windows and Mac layouts. The included USB cable is high quality, braided, and USB-C on both ends!
Pay close attention when purchasing this keyboard as it comes with 3 switch options (listed above), various backlight options, as well as Hot-Swappable or non swappable keys. I would of course recommend hot-swappable keys, but if you're looking to save money and don't ever want to change your key-caps, then you can skip it. Do note that the ABS keycaps it comes with will fade off well before the rest of the keyboard goes bad though.
As my personal intro to mechanical keyboards, I have no complaints about the design or layout, with one exception. I do not like how the top row, which contains the Function key as well as Media Keys, defaults to the Media Keys and only acts as F keys when the FN key is also pressed. The FN key is only on one side and I personally want to use F12 much more often than Volume up. I still have not adjusted to this, and it may just be me who prefers things this way.
Overall, I think for a Windows or Mac user you could not ask for a better keyboard for the price.
I however am a Linux user, and this keyboard does suffer some functionality issues under Linux. I was pretty shocked to find this out after purchasing, because the last time I had compatibility issues with a keyboard was... never. Someone will inform me I'm sure, but I cannot fathom the reason this keyboard would not work well in Linux out of the box, other than that Keychron must be trying to be a little too fancy behind the scenes.
Keychron pretends to solve this issue by pointing you to a generic Facebook group every chance they have. This is an extremely poor user experience.
Decision 👍
If you are looking for an entry level mechanical keyboard, or you aren't really sure what a mechanical keyboard is but know you need a better quality keyboard, I recommend the Keychron C1 or C2 to Windows and Mac users.
For Linux users, while there are workaround to get things working as you'd expect them to work, I cannot recommend this keyboard. While yes, Linux users generally have the knowledge to enable these workarounds, I would recommend supporting a company that also supports your platform. Keychron as a company does not support the Linux community.
The Rest
My Purchase Price (including tax and shipping): $54.49
Product link: https://amzn.to/4fRZhLq
TicWatch GTH Review
About
The TicWatch GTH is a health-centric budget smartwatch packed with sensors and running a custom OS (not Wear OS).
Purchase Date: 2021-08-10
Review Date: 2022-01-17
Review
The TicWatch GTH jumped out at me because of the large number of health features it packs in. The only other real smartwatch features it supports are notifications from your phone, and changeable watchfaces. You won't be installing any custom apps here, so expect a basic Fitbit rather than an Apple Watch.
Health Features
Skin temperature, blood oxygen level, heart rate, respiration rate, sleep tracking, step counter, workout detection (maybe more!). The sensors are where the GTH shines. I cannot speak to the accuracy of the sensors, but they record data at a frequent rate, and don't drain the battery. This is the reason you would buy this watch and it does deliver in this department. Through the companion app you can sync this data to a number of health services including both Google and Apple health.
The watch also has a moderate amount of built in exercise types you can choose from and while the watch does not support GPS, you can start a GPS track from the companion app on your phone if you will be bringing that along on your run/ride. While the number of exercise types supported is less than a Fitbit, my wife actually prefers how the GTH handles exercise tracking to that of the Fitbit Inspire.
Smart Watch Features
You can pick from a small set of predefined watch-faces. The selection is decent and changes with the season.
You can see notifications from your phone, but not respond to them. The font used by the watch is an atrocious monospaced font that doesn't allow much text to fit on the screen. It's difficult to overstate how much the font detracts from the rest of the watch. This is one of the main areas that I wish Mobvoi would push out an update for. There's no reason for the font to be as bad as it is.
That's about it smartwatch-wise. There are a few built in apps for things like the weather, but don't buy this watch if you're looking for a full-featured smartwatch. It's much closer to a Fitbit Tracker in terms of smartwatch features.
Battery Life
Expect several days of battery life, potentially up to a week. There is a battery-saver feature, but it limits the functionality of the watch so much that I find it not very useful. Unfortunately I do not believe you can prevent it from turning on automatically when the battery gets low.
Look and Feel
The screen is 360 x 320px, which does let you see the pixels, but is still crisper than many other watches, especially in this price range. The screen can also be a bit dim in the sunlight and there is a pretty thick bezel around the edges. However in this price range these are definitely acceptable trade-offs.
The overall watch design looks good and well-made, but it only comes in one color, so I hope you wanted it in black. Picking up a decent 3rd party watch band will really improve the look beyond the basic black rubberized one it comes with.
Connectivity and Companion App
This is where the TicWatch GTH falls flat. The Mobvoi companion app is worse than the terrible font the watch uses. The watch does not stay connected to the phone app for very long meaning your health data will stop syncing. You won't get any notice that the connection isn't working either. Using either the phone or the app to attempt to reconnect is a fool's errand as they provide no help or insight into how you might resolve the issue. The most recent time this happened to me I had to factory reset the watch AND uninstall/reinstall the phone app before it would re-pair. This is a deal-breaker for this watch unfortunately.
There have been no software updates released by Mobvoi since purchasing this watch.
Decision 👎
Despite delivering a great package with all the health sensors you would want, the lack of care that Mobvoi has put into resolving the issues there are is a deal-breaker here. As a standalone health watch, the GTH is a great device, especially for the money, but the utter failure of Mobvoi to improve notifications or fix basic syncing functionality shows that the company has moved on from this device, and you probably should too.
If Mobvoi pushed out an update improving the notification font and fixing the connectivity issues I would heartily recommend this watch to those primarily looking for health features in their watch.
The Rest
My Purchase Price (including tax and shipping): $55.99
View the official Ticwatch GTH site: https://www.mobvoi.com/us/pages/ticwatchgth
Tapo C720 Floodlight Review - Also known as Tapo TC55
About
The Tapo C720 (The Tapo TC55 is the exact same thing) is a combination floodlight and Tapo security camera. It is designed for mounting to an electrical box or replacing an existing floodlight. Connection requires connecting bare wires and it does not plug directly into an outlet.
Review
Installation
The installation process of this floodlight is quite easy. Easier than other floodlights even. Tapo provides a special mount that you screw in and attach the wires to first. This can be done without any wire nuts and avoids needing to hold the entire floodlight while connecting!
Once the mount is screwed into your electrical box and the wires connected, you just push the floodlight on top of it and screw it down. I do with the floodlight "snapped" onto the mount a little better though as I had to fiddle to get it positioned correctly.
Overall this process took just a couple of minutes to remove an old floodlight and install this one.
The Good
In the Tapo app this floodlight has good configuration options for brightness and what types of events and what areas should trigger the floodlight.
The PIR sensor has 3 detection zones (left, center, right) that can be enabled/disabled and an overall sensitivity to adjust.
The camera can also be used to set custom detection areas and you can select which types of motion on the video should trigger the light as well. Anything from none, to all motion, to specific objects like people or dogs. You also get this full control over which events trigger notifications in the app.
The camera and lights are very adjustable (physically) and can be pointed in many more directions than some other floodlights.
The camera has a quite wide field of view. They claim 150 degrees and who am I to disagree, I traveled the world and the seven seas... Sorry I got off topic there. A floodlight cam generally needs a good field of view and a high resolution (2K) to take advantage of that, so this delivers there.
The Tapo app is pretty good, and I will review the app and other common Tapo camera features separately and link that here. In short, cameras generally connect quickly and the app is way more reliable than the Wyze app. In addition Tapo wired cameras support RTSP so you can use your favorite NVR instead of Tapo if desired.
The Okay
The camera quality is good, but not amazing. This is a bit of a nit-pick for the price-range, but motion can sometimes have artifacts visible in the recordings. The video resolution of 2560x1440 is great and pretty sharp. If you find yours not to be sharp, be sure to check the Video Quality settings as sometimes Tapo defaults to a lower resolution by default for some strange. You paid for 2K quality, why would you want less?
The special/convenient mount Tapo provides can cause issues with some mounting configurations that other floodlights do not. The mounting bracket itself is not sealed or water resistant and can leave gaps for water to get into the electrical box. The floodlight itself that attaches to the bracket is waterproof and has gaskets, but you may need to caulk around the bracket to avoid water intrusion. Most of these issues could have been prevented if the back of the mounting bracket also had a gasket.
The design of the mount can also causes the floodlight to not be as secure in some situations because it uses a single central screw. There are screw positions available along the sides to further secure it or anchor it directly into a wall, but my electrical boxes are mounted at an angle so I can only use the central screw to mount it.
If you have a flush, well mounted electrical box then the mounting hardware is a breeze and should work flawlessly, but in other situations it works, just not as well as traditional hardware.
The Bad
The floodlight is either on or off. There is no setting to leave the light on low and then raise the brightness when an object is detected.
Because the PIR sensor is on the bottom of the camera, adjusting the camera position adjusts the PIR detection area as well. If I turn the camera 90 degrees left to look along a wall, the PIR can no longer see along the wall to the right. This may or may not be an issue for you, and I have not seen any camera floodlight cameras that allow the PIR sensor to point somewhere other than where the camera is pointed.
You can not daisy chain another camera off of this floodlight. This was a neat feature of the Wyze floodlight (The only neat feature of it). If you need other cameras in the area, your options are to run them to another outlet, tap them straight into the same electrical box and potentially lose some waterproofing, or use a battery/solar style camera.
The camera reset button is exposed for anyone to press. Oddly enough it's mounted on a screwed in cover to protect any SD card you may have inserted, but I don't understand why they didn't leave the button under that safety cover too.
Decision 👍
Floodlight cameras can be a bit expensive. When this floodlight goes on sale it's definitely worth the purchase. It also works much better than the floodlight cameras I have tried from Wyze.
If you're looking for a floodlight/camera combo, this is a great choice and better than others I have tried. If you just need a standard floodlight with PIR sensor, I would stick with a traditional floodlight.
The Rest
My Purchase Price: This was a gift, but sells between $100 - $150
Tapo C720 product link: https://amzn.to/4j1Ndd6