I'm sorry I've been so preoccupied with
useless expensive crap lately that I've been neglecting the stuff that actually
works and does so on the cheap well I'm
getting back to my roots today welcome to Handy Tech under $100 episode
11 full sale university offers degree programs both on campus and online
combining creative problem solving with real world experience learn more at the
link below so first up I've got a bit of
an odd one I have to confess I just take
my disposable batteries with me for recycling whenever I have the hankering
for Swedish meatballs from the cafeteria of the local Ikea I had never heard of
recharging alkalines but apparently it's been a thing for over two decades with
the first consumer disposable battery recharger the Buddy L supercharger
having been released in 1993 now that one didn't really last
thanks to its tendency to stop charging the batteries early and the extremely
difficult battery insertion process but I have its great great grandson the
mighty charger if you throw away disposable batteries you're throwing
away money as far as I'm concerned and as seen on TV badge might as well read
shoddy useless gimmick but I figured what the hey let's give it a shot
so I devised a test putting a set of three Kirkland ablea batteries in one of
my kids toys recording the discharge time and then with all those warnings
about leakage or explosions in my mind I
set up a safe space to recharge them with nothing flammable within 4T in my
garage my recharged batteries ran for
less than half of the time of my original test but I've since done a lot
more research on the topic and yes alkaline batteries can be recharged
n you can't recharge disposable batteries now you can with Mighty
charger it needs to happen in bursts to
keep the battery acid from leaking out the pressure release valve and it works
best if the batteries aren't fully drained and then even so you'll only get
10 consecutively shorter Cycles recharges dead disposable alkaline
batteries up to 70 times that's right if you're lucky compared to hundreds or
thousands on a proper NIMH but for items
like kids toys where I don't want to invest in expensive rechargeables that
I'll probably end up losing when they leave their junk outside in the rain
this is a great solution here's how to
order moving on it's no secret that I
love high-end audio crap the most expensive headphones I own is a pair of
Odyssey LCD 2s that I picked up used for
still over over $1,000 Canadian a couple
of years ago but that doesn't mean that I can't also appreciate value and item
number two is both the cheapest pair of headphones that I've ever gotten from
anywhere other than a dollar store and arguably the best bang for thee Buck
audio device I have ever laid my hands on as far as packaging product
appearance and included accessories go the Venture Electronics monk plus is
actually pretty comparable to those Dollar Store earbuds you get the earbuds
themselves these marvelous foam pads that serve to well pad your ears a
little bit and increase friction helping keep them in your ears complete with
bonus color cating red for right blue for left and you get this carrying bag
that dank memes aside is just a bag it's
actually made out of shockingly thin plastic and doesn't even reseal it's not
much better than the free bags at the grocery store for putting your apples in
funny story though when they first started charging for the regular
shopping bags at our local grocery store my wife would actually take a bunch of
those free ones and then put our groceries in them at the checkout she
only stopped doing it when I refused to continue to go shopping with her out of
embarrassment anyway I digress what's remarkable about the monk plus is that
they actually sound pretty darn good the
closest thing to a fair point of comparison that I have would be apple
Earp pods which have more thump at the low end and that I personally find a
touch more comfortable but whose mids are relatively veiled making vocalists
get a little lost by comparison so yes
in spite of the price difference I found
the monk plus more pleasing to listen to
than Apple earpods wait what's that I didn't tell
you the price yet oh they're five bucks
on AliExpress plus a few bucks for shipping I mean sure the build quality
is nothing special and they don't include an inline microphone or
controller but at 17th the price if
you're one of those people and you know who you are who loses your earphones all
the time come on man just buy seven of
these and then don't stress about anymore am I right I'm right moving on
have you ever wanted to recharge your doublea batteries only to go damn it I
don't have a battery charger on me and even if I did there isn't a wall outlet
for miles yes the next handy Tech is another
battery item these are called USB cell batteries and they're made by moxia
energy limited the difference between these and any other nickel metal hydride
batteries are several first they are
only 1300 milliamp hours which both theoretically and in practice is much
less than the 2,000 milliamp rating of Amazon Basics rechargeables and closer
to 13 the capacity of a disposable alkaline second they are about
$10 per battery or about five times the
price of the aforementioned Amazon Basics so uh
lonus why well this is pretty cool don't
let its appearance deceive you the USB cell includes in addition to the
internal cell DC to DC voltage conversion circuitry a charging
indicator LED and a USB plug under the
positive terminal they can be recharged in about 5 hours over USB and while I
wouldn't recommend buying a ton of them the capacity to cost ratio just doesn't
justify it if there was a double A battery that I was going to carry around
in my bag with me for emergencies the convenience here is
undeniable the last item is another always with me always with you item and
charging related again in the old days
every device used a different proprietary vill charger which was a
total nightmare then everything switched to micro USB a
completely different nightmare one that's finally almost over with
lightning hav't taken over all of Apple's mobile devices and USB type c
riding in on its white Steed covered in shimmering armor for everyone else one
small problem it means for techies you're carrying around a minimum of
three charging cables if you want to be ready for your own needs and those of
your friends so pick up one of these I'm
not married to a particular brand here but these converter tips are available
individually or in packs and are much less bulky to carry around than a bunch
of cables I keep them in my at all times
bag all right so then as always with handy Tech here's the disclosure bit the
mighty charger was purchased by me out of morbid curiosity I wanted to know
what melted batteries look like and I was pleasantly surprised when I didn't
see them the USB cell batteries were a similar story and the monk plus
earphones were provided by massdrop a conflict of interest if I ever saw one I
mean $5 of sponsorship here yeah that's
right as for my two examples of cable tip adapters uh one was included with a
ZTE axon 7 engineering sample and the other was purchased by Brandon for his
own personal use and was then stolen by me when he showed it to me what aing
chump which brings us to today's episode sponsor full sale
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more about full sales web and Technology programs visit full sale. edu Linus
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