This video is brought to you by the Corsair Vengeance K70 and K95. These
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Corsair.com/vvenancegaming to learn more. Welcome to my unboxing of the Folk
Us or Focus or whatever you want to call it. Their domain is folk. us. And the
objective of this product is to help you
focus. I have no idea if it's total snake oil or if it's an actual thing.
So, I decided to buy one. We did not have this review sample provided to us.
I just forked over the money. I'm like, "Okay, I got to see this in action." So,
their tagline is be fast, be focus. And
the implication of that is that this will make you faster and more focused.
It uses a technology called TDCS or
transcranial direct current stimulation. So while there may be evidence that TDCS
does do something, it's usually in a clinical setting and it's usually with
uh much different equipment. So this is the first consumer grade device that has
gotten FCC approval. There's no FDA certification of any sort on it because
it is not considered a medical device. it is being marketed as a gaming device
to help you well focus a little bit better. And uh whether or not these
claims are true, I sort of, you know, definitely open for to debate. But
anyway, the point is that there is it is not being sold as a medical device. So,
let's go ahead and open it up, find out what's inside. The first thing we get is
a couple of focus stickers. Maybe just staring at those will help you focus.
You never know. Uh, we also get a manual and warranty which shows you how to use
it. So, the default settings will do 1
milliamp for 10 minutes. It also shows you on their website how to apply it to
your head in a sort of similar to this but a little bit different graphic.
Shows you how to put the sponges on. It really does feel very spacey. Ah, here
it shows you the available TDCS modes. Now, it should be noted that not much in
terms of clinical trials has been done on the default mode that the Focus runs
in. But if you get the accessory pack or extras pack or whatever else it's
called, you get a few different things including some different modes. So, you
get sinus pulse, nose, and sham mode.
Sham mode is exactly what it sounds like. It's actually faking it so that
you can do blind tests and so you can figure out if it actually has any
effect. It includes a bunch of extra sponges. So those are dampening sponges.
Uh includes whatever these are. Some more pads for things. Some more wires
and doodads. Ah external. Right. These are the external pads and external
leads. So you can actually hook them up a little bit differently. Right. We got
more of those. Again, another little
carrying case as well as evidently a
stand for the focus. All right. So
there's the extras pack. At any rate, I was mostly interested in the additional
modes since some of the modes that it enables have been a little bit uh better
investigated. Uh there's an app that allows you to control it. So, you can
use the touch sensitive controls on the device itself or you can use an app in
order to adjust from anywhere from 0.8 milliamps to 2 milliamps and anywhere
from 5 to 40 minutes. So, the app is
coming soon for iOS, coming soon for Android, and there will be Windows, Mac,
and Linux ones as well. So, let's have a
look at the Oh, okay. I guess so. Inside here, you get a little bottle for
dampening your sponges. You also get a charging cable. It uses micro USB
because everything does these days, even though it's a big piece of crap. And you
get a set, two sets of sponges. Now, our Focus appears to have arrived damaged,
which is very disappointing, but I can see what happened here. I may attempt a
DIY repair, but I would have hoped that that buying something that's a
commercial product versus a DIY product, I would have been able to uh, you know,
just use it out of the box. Moving over to the back of the unit, we find the
touch sensitive buttons. So, these ones are for adjusting things up and down.
This can be used in any number of different ways, whether it's to start
Bluetooth pairing. It flashes the logo over here, either blue or red or fading
or breathing or whatever to uh signify different modes and different settings
as you as you're adjusting things. Wouldn't have minded a little on screen
display because I think that would make life a little bit easier. Um down here
we find the charging port as well as an onoff switch and the port for the
external electrodes which were included with our extras kit. So you can either
plug in one of them just like that. So, this is a single single lead or there's
a there's one that comes with uh with dual leads. So, there you have it. Now,
it should be noted that um Focus does
not recommend using this thing for anything other than sedentary gaming.
So, it's not like, oh, I want to be better at, you know, playing hockey, so
I should, you know, use this thing for a little bit and uh hope that that's the
effect that it has. They they're expecting you to just use it for gaming.
Um, so we'll see how long it takes someone to use it for something other
than gaming. Uh, they say there's quite a few, you know, various side effects
that you could experience. Nausea, headaches, fatigue, visual artifacts. If
you experience any of these side effects, stop your session. You may feel
tingling, hot or cold sensations. If they become uncomfortable, painful, stop
your session. So, uh, basically, I mean, from from sort of a pure common sense
perspective, zapping your brain with, uh, electrical sort of, you know,
nonsense just seems kind of insane. But I'm definitely going to try it out. And
we will be following up once we get a working unit with our impressions of the
Focus once we've had a chance to uh, sit down and try it out a little bit. So,
very, very exciting, guys. Thank you for checking out my unboxing and overview of
the Focus TDCS device. Don't forget to
subscribe to L's Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.