WEBVTT

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buy an unlocked Intel 4th gen core i7 or core i5 processor and get a free copy of

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rome 2 total war click now to learn more welcome to the first in a series of

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wireless gaming headset reviews we are actually going to have the h wireless

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and the vengeance 2100 coming soon but

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this my friends is the astro a50 gaming headset now i've been asked a lot of

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times to cover astro products but as a member of the

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so-called glorious pc gaming master race i actually thought that they were a

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small niche brand until i went to pax prime and they were absolutely

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everywhere i mean like everyone was using these headphones and i was like

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okay so i smartened up and promptly went to see astro and asked them to hit me

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with their best shot so to speak and the guy punched me

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uh whereupon i quickly clarified that i meant for him to send me a headset after

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the show and here we are one headset and

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one sore gut later now let's go ahead and open this baby up they actually sent

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over the a50 wireless headset which is

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their premium top of the line headset and it happens to be the battlefield 4

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edition so it comes a little stop don't return this to the store contact astro

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for support as well as a quick start guide but you probably won't need that

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because it was pretty easy for me to set up anyway and then we also find the

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headset itself the mix amp tx which is

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their base station right here the wireless transmitter and then another

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piece of plastic that's removed their packaging is excellent really like this

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then underneath that we find an xbox chat cable we find a usb charging cable

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as well as another usb charging cable this is cool because you can actually

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run one cable to the base station and then it has a pass-through for charging

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so the base station can actually sit on the is

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included headphone stand and then charge your headset from there so i'm just

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going to go ahead and pop that out and then of course there's a spitf audio

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cable so that's an optical audio cable under there as well

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now construction and looks of the headset itself with some metal in the

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construction actually these posts right here and a softer foam than the

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vengeance 2100s with a really nice soft cloth covering the

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material quality feels better than average especially for a gaming headset

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they are a little bit on the heavy side but that's probably the sturdy metal

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posts that are used for the size adjustments the id the industrial design

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i feel strikes a fantastic balance between gamery looking and pro grade with a

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mostly black color scheme with a couple of tasteful orange accents i mean i

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don't know about you guys but i'd feel pretty silly spending 300

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on something that looks like a toy for 12 year olds so i think that this was a

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great way to go even though it is a you know bf4 edition like i don't mind

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getting a couple in-game items with my purchase and a bit of a different color

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scheme but i don't want game branding plastered all over it either like we've

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seen with some logitech peripherals in the past in terms of general features

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they weigh in at 360 grams or so they

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are pc mac xbox playstation phone av

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system whatever compatible you can plug in anything with an optical out or an

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auxiliary out into them as well as usb

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it has they have an integrated non-user replaceable battery which is comparable

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to the vengeance 2100s but i don't feel is as strong as steelseries's swappable

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battery system on the h wireless and i

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think that's pretty much it for my little feature list in terms of comfort

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they were not comfortable to me at first

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they have very little clamping pressure even out of the box so there's not

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really much break-in and i found them quite difficult to wear um i found that

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they were like falling off my head until i tweaked the headband size a little bit

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tighter than i would normally like to do and then they were very solid now the

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a50s headband gets away with the required tightness for a couple of

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reasons so number one is it has a very soft foam and number two even more

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importantly this flexible middle piece right here is really smart because even

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if your ears aren't quite aligned on your head like mine aren't you are able

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to clamp it a fair bit tighter and it adjusts to your head it's actually quite

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nice and now that i know how to use it properly i give them a definite you know

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gold star of appreciation for comfort the material on the ear cups um doesn't

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really feel like anything special on the ears but the foam inside is a nice

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medium softness feels like a memory foam nice slow retraction so combined with

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the very very soft material here but i mean like i said it doesn't feel like

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leather or anything it just feels like a really nice soft material they are

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definitely good enough out of the box and should even break in even nicer in

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the long term they are noticeably heavier than the vengeance 2100s and the

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steelseries h wireless but particularly compared to the 2100s i find that

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because the weight is sitting in closer to your head i don't get as much

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shake even when i move my head quite quickly now their website has some

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nonsense about wearing them around your neck or over your head but i just i

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gotta call them out on that because they're gonna slip right off of of me they and i have a

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medium-sized head and they're basically like they're hanging off your ears at

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that point that's like saying you could wear your hoodie backwards

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you could but you won't all right let's move on to the range test for my range

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test i did five different locations i stayed within the same room so that's

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about a ten foot max i went down to the other side of the wall but still quite

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close i went down a hallway i went down to the stair landing which is uh like 15

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feet away and a wall i went down to the bathroom downstairs and finally i went

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down to the basement with the base station itself installed in my office

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connected to my laptop so this was uh performed about the same as the

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vengeance 2100 for our range test maximum volume of the astro a50s these

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can easily get uncomfortably loud there

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is no shortage of amplification going on here so unlike the h wireless which

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actually didn't get like painfully loud for me uh these ones you can drive them

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as high as you want to go however unlike both the h wireless and the vengeance

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2100 they don't seem to have any kind of limiter to prevent overdriving the

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speakers and introducing distortion the a50s just let you go as high as you want

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even though it'll sound like completely like ass once you get to a certain level

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but don't worry about that guys the distortion doesn't come in until long

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after most people would be extremely uncomfortable in terms of noise

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isolation i'd say they're about average for a closed back headphone the cloth

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ear cups are going to resist a sweat more than

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something like a faux leather but what they also do is they leak sound more

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than a faux leather wood so you know whether you like isolation or whether

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you don't is up to you but i'd say they're about average for closed back which is generally more isolation

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now let's move on to the listening tests all of these tests were performed using

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the onboard dac so i wasn't actually using the analog in in a separate dac

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this gives us the best apples to apples comparison for the way most people are

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going to use these and we use them on a pc for sound quality i would say it is

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adequate it's really nothing special especially

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at 300 and especially compared to the

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better steel series h wireless um with that said while the usual sin that

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gaming headsets commit which is the overdone boomy bass at the expense of

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other parts of the listening experience isn't nearly as bad as some other game

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gaming headsets notably the razer kraken forge which is also 300

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there is definitely some looseness and boominess to the base and some details

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in the mids are lost even with the balanced eq setting in fact to the point

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where the mids were kind of hard to evaluate they're there i mean they're

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good enough that i can hear everything clearly it's not like the dialogue in a

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movie or a male vocalist in a song is going to be

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completely impossible to hear but they are obscured somewhat by the lows highs

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on the other hand are clear which is expected you got to hear dim footsteps

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if you're going to market something as a gaming headset so the a50s definitely

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don't disappoint there i guess that's most of what i have to say for for lis

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subjective listening tests but i feel like it's important to mention that when

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we're comparing 300 wireless gaming headsets against what

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else you can buy for three hundred dollars we have to be fair so i i could

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say yeah for two hundred dollars you could get uh wired audiophile grade

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headphones that'll blow the doors off of these or really the other ones in this

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roundup as well but it's because i don't really have any

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experience with audiophile grade wireless headphones i can't really speak

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to whether they're a great value against 300 audiophile wireless headphones so

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all i can really do is compare these three against each other and talk about

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it that way so first up for double the price of a Corsair vengeance 2100 you're

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getting more bass certainly you are missing out on some of the details in

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the mids but you are also getting the included stand you are getting varied

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configurable inputs and you're getting console compatibility which is sort of a

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big deal the 2100 is pc only oh well mac

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only as well but you have to have a usb port that like you know drivers and stuff you're also getting more premium

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feeling materials compared to the 2100s and you're getting the handy dandy

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controls on the right ear cup that let you change your eq profiles so there's

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three different presets you can adjust the mix between chat volume and game

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volume on the fly just by pressing these buttons right here that's a very nifty

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little feature and but you are paying twice as much for it

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compared to the steel series h wireless which costs the same you're getting much

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stronger like more sound in that very low frequency range

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but other than that they are quite feature comparable and the h wirelesses

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do sound uh well-roundedly overall better i mean for me personally that

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trade-off of more rumble is not worth it but if you want your ears to tickle and

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you want to feel it when an explosion goes off then i guess these would be the

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ones to do it for you the last thing this is this is something

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i'll let you guys kind of listen to for a moment this is my microphone test with

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the astro a50 wireless microphone i hope

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you guys enjoyed it so that was my microphone test um i

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don't think i have to tell you how good the microphone is on the a50s i consider

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it to be a courtesy thing to have a microphone that is not offensive for

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your teammates to listen to and this one really doesn't qualify for me i mean

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data compression in online chat applications will level the playing

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field a little bit because even a good source won't sound that great but

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starting with a better source does still help a lot and these were by far the

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worst performing uh microphone in the roundup i also don't really like boom my

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mics compared to retractable ones the ideal position for a headset microphone

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is the corner of your mouth and i find that you know with a boom mic it's like either you know what do i do i bend it

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here first so that i can try and get it in the right spot i find them hard to

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adjust to get in exactly the right spot so they end up in front of your mouth a

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lot uh the position lock see you can see it actually

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locks into position and the automatic mute that goes along with this boom mic

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though is actually um not not a terrible implementation

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so i think that's pretty much it for the astro a50s like this video if you liked

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it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment and let me know

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who you think is going to be the big winner of this roundup i think i've probably given a fair number of hints

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already but regardless let me know what you think and as always guys don't

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forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips for more unboxings reviews and other

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