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discount sites like deal extreme aliexpress and ebay can be a great way

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to get awesome deals on used or off-brand tech products and if you're

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like me and you're kind of a gigantic cheapskate the prospect of saving money

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can be pretty enticing but

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today's video is a cautionary one a

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buyer beware tale of making sure that you think critically about a great deal

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before pulling the trigger because even spending one dollar is a waste of money

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if you don't get anything useful in return for example this usb 2 Ethernet

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adapter that is advertised as being 10

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gigabit ready for just over four dollars

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a piece is very eye-catching but as we are going to see a lot of the time

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things like this are just too good to be

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true unlike our sponsor thermaltake and their

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a500 case which features a modern minimalistic design brushed aluminum

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panels and dual hinge swing tempered glass doors check it out today at the

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link below

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so you might understandably find yourself thinking wow a 10 gigabit

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Ethernet adapter for four us dollars well gee

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that sounds like a way better deal than this 10 gig adapter from akitio that

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costs a whopping 200. i mean why is this

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thing even so expensive well

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now that they're both here these products don't even seem to be in the

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same universe as one another the akitio

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uses a high speed Thunderbolt 3 interface it's got a large

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well-ventilated aluminum chassis it's got a nice premium feel to it including

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a removable cable and

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we actually haven't tested this yet but theoretically if we plug it into a

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device like oh say a laptop

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that was a five four gig file

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okay so 10 gig working on a laptop and that's

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nice it's bus powered too it doesn't need any external power adapter

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now let's turn our attention to our

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deal extreme adapter this one is made of cheap plastic

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with flimsy connectors and a cable that i think could probably

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best be described as flaccid

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it's driverless that's pretty nice but

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what in the world could that be 100 megabit per second

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let's take that same four gig file and have a real bad time this doesn't

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even make sense why is it going at 20 megabytes a second oh my Wi-Fi still

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okay and you're done bud oh boy yeah that's

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what we were expecting literally

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slower than wi-fi so

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at this point it's fairly clear that this product has been misrepresented

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by the website that's selling it but the problem is that by the time you've got

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it in your hands to test it unless you're going to pay you know 25

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bucks to ship back a four dollar item it's a bit too late to find out that

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your steal of a deal was just a steal of

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your money so how do you differentiate between a scam

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like this and the real thing before you pull the trigger you know

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what i'm going to use this 10 gig adapter for my web browsing for the rest of this

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video because it's sexy now because

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there are cases where you can find extraordinary value from up-and-coming

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manufacturers or on liquidation deals we're not saying that you should just

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dismiss outright anything that seems to be a bargain we're just saying that your

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spidey sense should be tingling and you need to make sure that you're doing

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extra research so the first thing that we're gonna

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check is whether there is blatantly conflicting information on the product

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page check out for example this blender that's advertised as three horsepower

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and 2200 watts for a cool ninety

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the problem here is that the most you can consistently pull from a 120 volt

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circuit is about 1500 watts before you

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risk tripping a breaker and the description of the item actually does

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correct this misleading title so then in the case of our adapter here we can

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actually see that the title and the detailed specs below are at the very

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least consistent both claiming to be 10 gigabit per second but then getting into

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our next tip if we look closely at the product photos

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we can actually see that this adapter is

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clearly labeled fast Ethernet which yes young kids out

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there is the actual official name for

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100 megabit Ethernet that is only one

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percent of the advertised speed and this

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is far from the only example of blatant mislabeling on sites like this one it's

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a very common practice used to lure in

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unsuspecting customers there are the scam sd cards that we recently did a

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video on fake brand name fashion goods cables that are supposedly certified for

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apple devices and of course misleading batteries some of the batteries we found

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even used quotation marks in the title around the capacity and then show the

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real capacity in the description below although i'm pretty sure that real

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capacity is probably a load of bunk as well

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it's almost like click bait titles except in this case you're paying for it

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and it's definitely false advertising

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back to our Ethernet example though we've already got enough evidence to

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turn us off of this thing but there is still more for us to learn here

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conflicting specifications can be a surefire way to identify bs

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so then we've got that claimed 10 gigabit per second transmission speed

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well that's pretty cool but what's also included here in the description is that

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it's usb 2.0 type c

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now most people understandably might see a usb type-c connection and go oh well

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that's really modern and fast but as a tech nerd i know right off the

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bat that type c is a physical standard

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that can carry all kinds of different signals and the usb 2.0 protocol isn't

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spec for anywhere near 10 gigabit per second speed actually it tops out around

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5 of that now if you're not so technically

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inclined you might not know or even have the

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desire to know what the differences are between all the usb versions

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and that's where our next tip comes in if you don't know what a specific term

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means that doesn't mean it's not important so google it and this can be

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applicable to any marketing terms or buzzwords because those might not mean

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anything at all even if you know less bondage on your new phone sounds really

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enticing back to this specific title again though if you search up usb 2.0

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the first thing that's going to come up is the wikipedia page for usb and it

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shows that usb 2.0's maximum signaling rate is 480 megabits per second oops

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oops the final nail in the coffin here is actually the model number which we

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can see in the photo remarketing of existing products is

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very common on these types of marketplaces see soldier console so with

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a quick google search we find that this part number actually corresponds to a

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realtek Ethernet controller that's designed to run at 10 megabit or 100

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megabit speeds now that i think of it we should probably crack this open and find

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out if it's even a proper real tech controller not yet though we'll get to

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that after our last tip you might have noticed that one thing that we didn't

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mention is user reviews and we'd love to say

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that that's a good way to avoid scams and negative reviews

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should be heated for the most part it's just that they're not the silver bullet

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that you might hope fake positive reviews have become a huge problem even

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on reputable online stores like amazon as for these ones well simply put

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they've been well pretty misleading from our experience this particular item

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actually doesn't even have any reviews yet but deal extreme

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shows items with no reviews as having

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five filled in stars and that only changes if our review is submitted all

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right anyway we've had our fun now i think it's time for us to crack this

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nut open uh Jake what was the plan here uh

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cut stuff i guess so this is cool as expected

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we've got only four conductors here which tells us that

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yes of course this is not going to transmit anything more than usb 2 speeds

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you would need nine conductors for usb 3 and 20 actually yeah how many frames 24

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yeah for Thunderbolt 3. so yeah yeah this is clearly

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very clearly not anything other than usb2

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yes it is a real tech controller well at least it's printed as that

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so one question you might ask yourself is if you've only got four conductors

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here why do you need this 24 pin connector on the other end i mean it

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just comes down to convenience usb type c is reversible it's durable and of

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course modern devices are switching over to using it it's just that we're clearly

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only using a couple of pins for the actual data

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interface on it so everything else is just blank it's just not connected to

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anything by contrast let's open up our 10 gigabit

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adapter here and this is one whoa

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beefy beefy friggin thing although i gotta say

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the design of this chassis is not really that amazing because there's no

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like heat conduction

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yeah between smaller but yeah i bet you it's

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very strong yeah i'm sure it is you could probably play hockey with it and

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then come back and use it as your adapter

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just canadian things so there it is

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if you want 10 gigabit connectivity you've got to have a 10 gigabit ready

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chipset and of course you've got to have an

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interface at the other end that is actually capable of taking that 10 gig

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and transmitting it to something and you've got to have a way to

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dissipate all the heat and whatnot apparently wow this chip is so gives off

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so much heat they've actually got a thermal pad on the back the ihs here is

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almost as wide as this entire board what's under there not bad d-round

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probably or the Thunderbolt chipset oh you're probably right

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seems fine oh man oh god

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what the hell kind of thermal pad is this excellent where's your pointer

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thing i don't know it's in your pocket i just want to see

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oh my god

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this is physically oh man is that like an actual like just bare silicon too

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that you're just like i don't think so no no i think it's on the package oh god

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the noises ah stop

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just chill just chill it's all good

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well i can't read it anyway i'll have to replace those thermal panels

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yeah do you mind Jake i don't think i have much choice

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bad noise yeah oh god i hate it it's so bad sorry i'm sorry

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it's like the tech nerd equivalent of nails on a chalkboard

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scratching a microcontroller with a knife

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and i can't read it the markings are like what like scratched off with a knife

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no they're just really faint and not like

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obvious anyway somehow all like scratched

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all right well here you go

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well thanks for the condom so conclusion time then we know that

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four dollars versus two hundred dollars is a huge gap and this is a pretty

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obvious example of seems too good to be true but the point of making this video

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was to go through some of the steps that you can take for something that isn't

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quite as obvious to determine the fake stuff from the real stuff and we hope

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that even if this might not have been useful for you maybe you can share this

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video with someone that you know who has been hoodwinked before

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massdrop and sennheiser have teamed up to bring us the pc37x gaming headset it

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features angled drivers and an open back design for a nice natural sound and

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better stereo imaging and those drivers actually come from the same family as

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the hd598 and hd 600 series headphones

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they come with a noise cancelling microphone and they're available on massdrop at the link below for just

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119.99 for a limited time go check them out so thanks for watching guys if you

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disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get

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subscribed to reconsider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description like

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to be very clear as long as you know what you're getting four bucks is like

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four boxes four bucks you need a 100 megabit adapter uh while you're down

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there you can check out our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum it's totally worth a

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join