get a load of this guy trying to make videos about useful affordable gadgets
he's got no beard and didn't even know
about any of this awesome stuff this video is brought to you by Wicked
cushions and I have no idea how I lived
without any of these handy Tech items under a hundred bucks starting with the
AV Hersey ct3 I'm not even sure how to
describe this thing it's a multimeter it's a power tester basically it tells
you everything you want to know about anything USB just plug it in and you can
monitor voltage and current both what supplied and what's used by whatever
devices you have attached and it can even log that data over time so you can
determine either for individual items or even groups of items the total charge
capacity then there's the second view that shows you positive and negative
voltages on the data lines bus voltage bus current bus power along with
whatever fast charging spec you happen to be currently running which leads us
into some much more interesting capability if we go into this menu here
we can check the reported capabilities of any USBC cable by reading its e-mark
chip you see as part of the USBC standard the e-mark chip is required if
a C2C cable is anything other than a simple USB 2 cable that can handle three
amps this chip lets the devices on either end of the connection know that
the cable can safely handle the power or data speeds that they're trying to
transmit so we just plug in one end of our USBC cable to the ct3 and select the
e-mark reader if the chip is present we get a bunch of information about the
cable if it's not well then we know it's a simple USB 2.0 cable capable of up to
three amps what a Time Saver this is when you're trying to thin the herd
going back to the menu again we can also see what types of charging a particular
device supports it will identify Quick Charge 2 3 and 4 capabilities USBC power
delivery and even dietary charging formats from the likes of Apple Samsung
and others the ct3 can even go beyond that and let you trigger any of your
supported charging protocols for your charger and lock them in say for example
you were worried about reduced battery life time from charging your devices too
quickly and you wanted to force your device to charge at a slower rate well
you can totally do that just be sure you know what your device can accept because
you can absolutely break things within correct settings and you'll need to
remember too to release the charger from your trigger before you use it on
something else we're really just scratching the surface with this thing it's scriptable via Lua so you can write
your own charging routines for LiPO batteries it can pull data from OnePlus
Dash cables and apple Chargers it can test cable resistance it has a built-in
oscilloscope to show you the bus voltage over time and it's expandable with a
load cell so you can do all of these tests and more with a specific load
applied to the device and on top of all that it connects to custom software on a
PC to give you even more granular control we need to move on but let's
just say it is an amazingly capable device for just seventy dollars and on
that note so is your old pair of headphones if only the ear pads weren't
falling apart that is where these WC
freeze replacement ear pads from Wicked cushions come in the pads that I've got
here are specific to the steel series arctis Nova wireless headset but these
are available for a wide variety of headphones and headsets starting at just
thirty dollars it takes just a few minutes to swap out your worn out less
comfortable or uglier ear pads with Wicked cushions and give your old
headphones a new lease on life our set is a little thicker and a little firmer
than the stock ones using a combination of cooling gel and memory foam with a
breathable Sports fabric slash PU leather cover that noticeably improved
Comfort however that can be a double-edged sword I mean it does solve
a problem that some people have with this particular headset you can see there's an ANC mic that's inside each of
the ear cups that kind of protrudes from the fabric here these can be really
uncomfortable for certain people depending on your ear shape well by
increasing the thickness of the ear cups you no longer feel them however changing
the shape of a pair of headphones can have a negative impact on their
performance thankfully after a quick round of testing from the Labs team we
saw only a minimal impact on the frequency response of our arctis headset
which is good because that was a requirement for us to accept their
sponsorship for this video good job you guys and they look pretty cool too oh
and good job Pine 64. you might know
these guys from their Linux based Pine phone or their hundred dollar Linux
laptops but they also make this the Pine
Sol smart soldering iron you just put the handle and tip together tighten this
little set screw then plug it in and you're ready to go it can be powered
from a 12 to 24 volt Barrel Jack or even
via USBC supporting both USB PD and
Quick Charge 3.0 the Special Sauce here though is its onboard 32-bit risk 5 SOC
that's running iron OS a smart soldering
iron operating system that offers customizable automatic sleep motion wake
temporary power boosting for right as you're touching whatever it is you want
to solder to give you a little a little bit of extra help to get it flowing and
even battery protection if you're running it off of a bank of lipo cells
and that's all in your choice of 31 languages the interface is fairly
straightforward to navigate on the small Auto rotating OLED display cool right
and you can quickly dial in any temperature between 100 and 400 degrees
Celsius and the tip will reach operating temperature in just six seconds going to
sleep when it's idle to save your workspace and any unsuspecting pets or
children who might accidentally come across it at just 25 direct from Pine 64
the pine cell is a must add to your Tech Sac for any on-the-go repairs you might
need to make speaking of which do you have your Tech sack yet check it out at
lttstore.com and check out our next little tool to stuff into it a portable
storage Drive is still one of the most useful things that a tech can carry in
fact you might even have one on your keychain but you might be surprised to
learn how cheaply you can DIY a really
high performance with one these days I am talking two terabytes of speedy 10
gigabit per second storage for less than a hundred dollars all you got to do is
combine a nice 69 NVMe drive with a 16
enclosure and you're ready to go I'm not
gonna pretend you can't get a random two terabyte thumb drive for less money than
this but in spite of the blue connectors that many of those have there is no way
you are getting anywhere near the read and write speeds of this guy and they're
also nowhere near as rugged like man
good luck beating this thing up oh here's another you already have one but
uh this one is better item whether it's for your switch your steam deck or your
laptop you already know how useful a type c dock can be for connecting
multiple devices to a single port and for getting back connectors that
manufacturers have decided you just don't need any more like say for example
USB a ports or additional HDMI ports
well doc cases smart hubs not only look sick but they expand the basic
functionality of a dock with an integrated display when you plug in a
device it shows you the USB standard and maximum speed of whatever you just
plugged in it'll also show you details on USB power delivery and the edit info
for just about any monitor that's connected to the HDMI port but wait
there's more using this button we can view more detailed information about the
HDMI connection as well as manually setting HDMI EQ parameters which can
help improve the connection quality for longer high-speed runs and like the ct3
that we showed off earlier it allows you to manually configure USB power delivery
specifying which PD version to use and
how much of the up to 100 watts of power to reserve for the dock itself which
effectively lets you dial in the exact level of power you want to provide to
the host device the single button interface does take a little getting
used to you have to use a mixture of short long and double clicks to navigate
around the UI but most of the time you're going to be just looking at the
data that's displayed on the main screen not actively tweaking settings now this
is the Explorer Edition of the Smart Hub which lets you get a peek at the
internals and starts at 90 dollars with free usbas a USBC all capable of five
gigabit per second and HDMI port and an additional USBC for up to 100 watts of
power delivery and for an additional 10 there's a pro version that swaps out one
of the USB a ports for gigabit Ethernet or for fifty dollars less than this one
you could just get a similar dock from ugreen that has all the same
connectivity but doesn't have a screen I mean look I didn't say any of this stuff
was essential I just said that it was handy now just because our last video in
this series is old enough to start kindergarten in the fall doesn't mean that we've forgotten the most important
part the full disclosure section these handy Tech videos are much more of a hey
you should think about buying this thing compared to our normal videos so we want
to make sure we're transparent about how we choose the items and how we acquired
them Wicked cushions sponsored this video and sent us half a dozen sets of
cushions for this steel series headset our writer Jordan who gets paid the same
regardless has been wearing these things for a couple of weeks and gave them a
thumbs up that's good enough for me the pencil soldering iron was recommended by
several of our staff and it turned out we had actually already purchased one
for a different video so we snuck It Off the Shelf to show you guys today the ct3
power meter has been kicking around our writer's room for long enough that we're
honestly actually not sure whether we bought it or it was sent to us by the
manufacturer it's so cool though I'm surprised we haven't shown it off before
and given the features it offers we're probably going to buy even more of them
and the NVMe drive and enclosure were purchased from Amazon for this video and
finally both versions of the doc case explore were sent to us by doc case for
an unrelated video and we just liked them so we included them here just like
we also included this Segway to our sponsor Wicked cushions Wicked cushions
want to bring you the best replacement ear pads on the planet their WC freeze
cooling ear pads use two pieces of cooling gel one under the PU leather on
the inside of the ear cup and one under the breathable Sports fabric on the face
of the pads to help keep your ears cooler for longer if they eventually get
too warm or you accidentally leave them sitting in front of a hot PC exhaust all
you need to do is pop them in the fridge for a couple minutes to reactivate the
cooling gel Wicked cushions are available for more than a dozen headphone manufacturers and in a variety
of patterns from simple black to these 90s style ones that are perfect for
watching Saved by the Bell reruns Wicked cushions are a great way to Breathe new
life into Old headphones or improve comfort and add Flair to your new ones
use the link and coupon code in the description for 15 off your order if you
liked this video we've got a whole series of Handy Tech videos and we're
going to link the latest one here for you to check out