WEBVTT

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tech is becoming an expensive hobby what's a budding enthusiast to do

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shop at the dollar store i'm gonna tell you what tech stuff is okay to buy at

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the dollar store and what stuff you definitely want to get somewhere else

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you don't need to go anywhere else for our sponsor though storyblocks save time

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and money with storyblocks get studio quality stock video clips for just a

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fraction of the cost check it out today at the link below or at the end of the

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video

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going to start off with the batteries because i want to do this live i've

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already tested these alkalines over here with my trusty

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sega battery killer here and i've got a set of home depot alkalines that are

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acting as our control why am i specifying alkaline so much because

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these batteries well their brand name and proudly proclaim super heavy duty

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power but they're carbon zinc batteries now

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what are those they have similar voltages to alkaline but

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they're a simpler kind of battery that's non-rechargeable and has about a third

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of the energy density i am looking forward to seeing the game gear destroy

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them it's a little frustrating these come in packs of five but this idiot

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takes six because game gear that's why but

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uh i will give it a shot hey okay

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so i'm going to leave that there so i can see it while we keep going i expect

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that this is not going to last very long i bought five pairs of headphones over

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here and let's start off with these elektras here i got them for a

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buck 25 and they come in this little tube and

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these are bad they sound like absolute ass they have plastic spurs just coming

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off of them and they only come with the one set of ear tips

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they have no lows no mids and no highs like basically the

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whole thing is just a fuzzy mess they don't even get very loud they're

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uncomfortable they're impossible to get out of that stupid packaging they're

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just bad like even voice content like youtube videos sound like they're coming

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out of a cheap phone speaker they also don't have left or right indicators on

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the stems let's uh let's forget these exist and just

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move on with our lives these could not be any more different

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the cable on these actually feels like it's made of something quality

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even though it's probably not and they just like they feel like something

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that's a little more premium you know you've got these extra ear tips you've

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got a microphone built in that's pretty cool they don't make a good seal

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but they sound perfectly fine they may cost three times as much as those like

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those are a buck 25 these are four dollars they're just so so much better

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now reviews do suggest that quality control is a bit hit or miss and given

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that you can get legitimately good sounding earbuds from someone like kz

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for less than 20 bucks you're probably safer giving the dollar store earbuds in

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general a pass but you could do much worse in a pinch than these rexes like

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they have a v-shaped audio curve so they're high on the bass the mids are a

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little bit down and then the treble is a little bit high and what that gives them is a sound

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signature that sounds very fun and normal i'll roll the rest of the

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headphones up like so they're all cheaply made a big surprise

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right but like they're sharp i hurt myself adjusting one of them

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because the adjustment mechanisms are so crunchy and

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they all sound like they're playing through a pillow especially the extra

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bass one here like this one almost literally has like an l-shaped response

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curve to my ears anyway with no mids or highs to speak of and the base is money

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too

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i i can't i'm trying to go one step trying to no all of them are

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uncomfortable and only one of them the vortex here has any padding at all and

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it doesn't help yes they make noise but they're all

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terrible

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just don't buy headphones from the dollar store we paid four dollars for

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each of these and i feel cheated next up we have

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the tech one bluetooth speaker now you would think that it's gonna be

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blue but in fact is green

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uh i i don't really hate it it's got the

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smallest usb cable in existence but

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it's got this little suction cup that's actually quite quite good

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and it's supposed to be water resistant i don't know how much i would trust that

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the buttons are horrible like it's literally just this like membrane here

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stretched across it but there's tactile switches beneath that

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so you can actually miss the buttons while pressing the buttons

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like i'm pressing right now there's nothing being clicked i need to move

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over there's where the button is

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it's wonderful you turn it on it actually does have a

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lithium-ion battery in it that's what the usb cable is for i might need to

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read the manual that's in french but today we are going

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to solve all of them at once this

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so that sounds okay not great

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but it sounds perfectly fine for like a voice call maybe which this seems to be

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what it's designed for with this little call answer button here so i don't know

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if i hate that necessarily like you could have this hanging next to your

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shower not in your shower again i wouldn't recommend actually having this

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in water let's try some crab ray real quick

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okay so it's crunchy but it actually doesn't sound too bad like it's got more

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bass than you'd expect it to have sounds like um just basically a generic laptop

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speaker i certainly don't feel cheated like i feel with these

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whatever you'd call these headphones

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that that was the Windows 3.1 logoff sound

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now for tools and supplies i'll be honest with you right now i don't expect

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these to be unusable will it last forever probably not but

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you're also not paying a whole lot for them like stuff like these parts

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organizers here these are pretty cool i actually had another one here and

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this is totally fine you could fit flash drives you could fit mounting hardware

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pretty much whatever you need into this thing this cost two dollars and fifty

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cents this thing here this costs what was it like two dollars this magnetic

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parts tray these things go for three dollars canadian at the dollar store

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whereas like you'd spend ten dollars getting them in from amazon i don't see

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any problem with this kind of thing at all i found it in the like the tools

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hardware section but you can find stuff like this as well in the kitchen section

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now they also had a pack of 60 zip ties for a buck 25 this is something that's

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technically a worse value per tie than buying in bulk on amazon but if you

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don't need like hundreds of them you're saving a buck or two now these aren't

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very flexible but they are made of nylon and they're thick

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enough to be sturdy and they're about the right size for cable management

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inside of a pc chassis this eight piece pack of hook and loop

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ties however not so much eight isn't a lot and

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they're squared off with no anchor they do have a little pull tab on them but

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they're too short for bundling more than a couple of cables together and too fat

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to do cable management inside a pc what's worse you can get a hundred pack

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of ties that are tapered and have an anchor for less than 10 bucks on amazon

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these are a pass unless you're desperate i also got this two pack of long neck

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magnetic screwdrivers for a dollar and they look alright

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they feel every bit as cheap as they were but the phillips driver's got a nice

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point to it it's pretty much ideal for working inside of

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a computer it's probably not going to stand up to abuse but considering how

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much screwdrivers go for on amazon it'll definitely do as a quick and dirty drive

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the same can sort of be said for these precision drivers here they'll do

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the job i don't know the the mechanism it feels gritty when you turn it

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it's just got this little nut on the end here there's all kinds of like burrs

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from the manufacturing process that are still on here that are going to cut up your fingers and they're not even held

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in like in any way shape or form if you drop this case and it opens up or you

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already had it open it's just gonna all go everywhere that being said it does have a decent

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variety of bits so it's it's not amazing

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then again i mean if you don't have an ifixit kit maybe this is what you reach for this

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flashlight is an interesting case on the one hand it weighs nothing and it's like

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really creaky plastic on the other it actually does put out more light than my

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phone's flash does like visibly

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you can focus the beam

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is it worth a dollar and three triple a's objectively i guess so but i don't

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think you'd be in too many situations where

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this much light is enough but your smartphones isn't and one thing i think

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is ridiculously useful is this here

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six in one pen it's a pen it's a stylus it's a ruler

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it's a level and it's even a pocket screwdriver with two slightly magnetic

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bits pen just twists out like that stylus on the back there unscrew the stylus you've

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got a screwdriver with two bits phillips and flathead which is actually super

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handy legitimately think this is pretty cool like it's even

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got yeah it's got the ruler it's got the level it's actually pretty cool and like for a

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dollar it's super awesome they sell these on amazon for like a dollar a

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piece too so this is actually a decent buy what else is there in these lovely

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bags i got from ltdstore.com not supposed to talk too much about these

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but they do have these little pockets in them that actually make it really nice

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for keeping things organized two different colors and two different sizes

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lttstore.com i picked up some chargers

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big clive i am not but looking at the guts it seems pretty

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similar to a poundland charger he took a look at a few years ago i'm not sure

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that these things have what it takes to drive two usb ports simultaneously

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though like maybe i'm just being a hater the car adapter should be fine like it's

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a much simpler device though again i doubt it could reliably run the two

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outputs that it claims to have simultaneously and while i'd normally

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distrust any kind of power strips or

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power devices at all from a dollar store this brand

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from what i can tell is actually pretty reputable so as long as you're not

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loading this up with way more than it can handle it says it can do

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1875 watts i don't think you'll have a problem but it won't do surge protection

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all it is is copper on the inside or brass even i think uh just conductive

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metal that you're plugging into ah and oh you know what

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this looks like a job for the okay

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this looks like a job for the magnetic screw picker-upper

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that works just fine it's actually really nice it's like

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okay it's not really nice but like that's a nice length for one and it

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works just fine it's a little bit gritty in the mechanism it's it's not bad for i think

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that was actually literally a dollar of course batteries aren't the only thing

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for powering tech that you can get at the dollar store they also have

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usb cables and HDMI cables too look at

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all these i got this here transparent one i got this here blue one that lights

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up and i have this one that's pretty long and has a braided cable but of

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course we need to know whether or not these are going to pass the tests that

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we're going to throw at them that's why i have the cable tester although we

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don't need the cable tester to see that this one is not going to pass because it has no shielding whatsoever and usb 2.0

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requires shielding uh let's make some room here

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oh yeah let's try the one that we know won't pass first into the usb type a

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port and into the micro usb port

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yeah of course if we look at the details on this one

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no shielding it's probably gonna work but this one might be prettier actually it

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does have that clear motif but it lights up so let's see if we can make that

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happen no

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also it's like blinking

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fail no shield once again everything else looks good

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actually the ground wire on this guy here wasn't good either but that's uh

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that's working correctly in this one so that's better oh well it looks like it

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again would probably work but why chance it

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now this guy looks a lot better like it looks like one of those cables that

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you'd want to carry around

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micro usb in and

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you had high hopes so did i actually but again it doesn't have the shield

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and it's failing on all of these in the resistance test which

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yeah this this one's not so good you can even see in this in the eye here

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it is pretty lopsided so unfortunately the highest quality

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looking cable out of the entire bunch is the lowest quality cable of the entire

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bunch even this guy is a little bit better in terms of how

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its test results went this thing costs 3.50 canadian but it

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says that it's a high speed with Ethernet which means that it's got to be HDMI 1.4 compliant 5 feet 3d ready all

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right so let's get it out of the package here at least it looks like it's gold

00:13:57.040 --> 00:14:02.000
plated i guess uh HDMI

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high speed with Ethernet that's what this purports to be

00:14:03.839 --> 00:14:07.040
moment of truth

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oh it failed everything okay so these pins are just not connected

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uh all the all the shields and the power wires as well

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holy cow oh Ethernet what happened to you oh

00:14:22.399 --> 00:14:28.639
no okay maybe maybe we're pushing it a little bit too hard let's let's go back

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to like HDMI like regular speed or something the the lowest standard of

00:14:31.120 --> 00:14:37.040
HDMI that is just HDMI just just HDMI

00:14:38.320 --> 00:14:44.000
at least signal integrity looks good this time that impedance is just way too

00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:49.040
high and yeah signal integrity looks okay it's probably no surprise that all

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of the usb and HDMI cables i picked up literally failed when i fired up the

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total phase tester and the reason why is none of them are shielded like they're

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supposed to be and in the case of the HDMI cable that lack of shielding

00:14:58.000 --> 00:15:02.959
basically mangles the signal it should conform to the spec if it says that it's

00:15:01.600 --> 00:15:09.440
the spec but no now does that mean it's not going to work absolutely not i mean it might work

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fine but it also might not be this is why we need LTT Labs get

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subscribed because we're going to have more updates on that as we continue to

00:15:14.880 --> 00:15:20.800
build it out okay 100 worth of dollar store tech items is obviously a little

00:15:19.279 --> 00:15:25.199
more than i thought there would be here because we ran out of time on friday and

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now here we are actually a week later because the batteries in the game gear

00:15:26.560 --> 00:15:31.600
were so bad that they drained me for a week

00:15:29.839 --> 00:15:36.240
okay here we go let's talk about the game gear first our control which was

00:15:33.920 --> 00:15:40.720
the home depot batteries lasted a little over six hours which is more than i

00:15:38.320 --> 00:15:44.240
expected and these alkalines actually lasted pretty much exactly the

00:15:42.480 --> 00:15:49.839
same time yeah that actually is kind of interesting because those are the e-circuit branded like dollar store

00:15:47.279 --> 00:15:53.360
batteries as for these name brand panasonic zinc carbon batteries they are

00:15:52.639 --> 00:15:58.959
like an hour and 14 minutes or something like that while i was waiting for my ride on

00:15:56.959 --> 00:16:01.839
friday it died in my pocket that should tell you something about the difference

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between zinc carbon and alkaline batteries those batteries are still in

00:16:03.920 --> 00:16:10.240
there so there's still a little bit of charge in there but they're mostly used

00:16:07.440 --> 00:16:14.480
just like andy and me yeah what does that leave us with it's a

00:16:12.560 --> 00:16:18.160
yes on most of the tools and supplies the parts organizers one of the pairs of

00:16:16.320 --> 00:16:22.320
headphones and the bluetooth speaker the alkaline batteries and the usb chargers

00:16:20.560 --> 00:16:26.079
with asterisks on both of those last ones in the maybe pile we've got the

00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:29.040
flashlight the precision drivers the carbon zinc batteries and the hook and

00:16:27.680 --> 00:16:33.680
loop straps and in the no pile we've got literally

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all the other headphones and all of the usb and HDMI cables not that that's a

00:16:35.920 --> 00:16:41.440
huge surprise to anyone do you guys have any dollar store tech that you swear by

00:16:39.440 --> 00:16:44.720
and want us to check out who knows maybe i can convince Linus to give me the

00:16:42.639 --> 00:16:48.959
company card for another shopping spree gotta admit it was actually kind of fun

00:16:46.880 --> 00:16:52.399
just like our sponsor storyblocks thanks to storyblocks for sponsoring today's

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at storyblocks.com Linus tech tips thanks for watching guys this one's a

00:17:31.679 --> 00:17:38.160
really different so if you go check out our recent video on why everyone's

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buying the logitech g502 hero spoiler it turns out it's a great mouse

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for the price who knew