Handy Tech Under $100 Episode 1
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,425 words · ~7 min read
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Welcome to something we've never done before. This is actually going to be kind of a three-way unboxing of just
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some recent stuff that Linus Media Group employees have bought that we think is
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useful and we wanted to show you guys. So, first up is the Anttech Advance uh
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uniquely named four- port USB charging station. What this is is it is from a
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reputable brand, so you can actually trust it. And it is essentially a USB
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power hub that is able to charge your devices not only faster, but also more
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efficiently than other solutions. So, inside the box, you find an AC power
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cord and the USB charging hub itself. So, it's got a 2 or rather a 2 amp port,
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another 2 amp port, and two 1 amp ports. All you do is plug it into the wall, and
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it can provide a total of up to 5 amps. So, you'll notice this is a little bit
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less than the 6 amps of total power that it can theoretically deliver on the
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ports. But that's fine. It just means that things will go a little bit slower if you occupy all of them in your
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charging devices all at the same time. The reason for going with someone like
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Anttech for this is because all these safety certifications over current
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protection, over voltage protection, all of that kind of stuff that it says it
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has, it'll actually have. There are lots of other sort of cheap um Asian
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knockoffs of products like this, but many of them either I don't necessarily
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trust them. I don't necessarily think they're safe, or they are not actually
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rated to output a decent amount of amperage on each of the ports. So you
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could plug a bunch of things into it, but they'd be limited to anywhere from,
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you know, two amps to three amps total in spite of having a ton of USB ports.
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So this highly recommended one lives on my nightstand now and has replaced a
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Power Squid with a whole bunch of separate AC to USB walls plugged into
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it. It's definitely a lot less bulky.
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All right, let's move that out of the way. The next product, this is actually something that I bought. This one was
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for me. I picked it up from Sennheiser. It is their little desk clamping
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headphone stand. If you're any thing like me, then you've got headphones that
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either live around your neck or on your head or on your desk or on the floor.
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Those are those are the places that they end up. So, this guy right here just has
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a little adjustable piece. So, you can pop it out like this. If I can figure
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out how to do it. There's a little clamp here. Okay. So, you pop it out. You put it into any one of the three positions
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so that it can either clamp onto a small desk, a medium desk, or a large desk. It
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just has a little spinning thing right here that you can lock into place. Then
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when you're done with your headphones, you can hang them on there. And the
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advantage of having a real headphone stand versus uh some people also use
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banana hooks. That's a pretty common sort of like sort of DIY mod for a
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headphone stand. The advantage of having one like this is that because it's going
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to match the curvature of the top of your headphones and it has a little
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groove for it, they're not going to fall off and the foam and padding is not
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going to be damaged or indented in any way over the long term. And as you can
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see, this is a Steel Series headset I have on it right now. So, it's not
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limited in any way to just Sennheiser headphones. It's just one of the nicer
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ones out there. It's nice and padded and stuff. Our third one, this one was
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actually ordered by Edel and he's got a very unique need for this particular
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product, but there's lots of other uses for it. So, this is the Into Circuit
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Powerbank PC Castle 26,000. And it's uh if anything was over
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9,000, this is it. So, the first thing you find inside the box is the PC Castle
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26,000. On the top, you see a voltage indicator, 19 volt, 16 volts, or 12vt
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output. You've also got an LED indicator for the battery life. So, you can see
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we're at around 80%. On the three sides, there's nothing other than screws. And
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on the bottom, you've got some little feet to hold it in place. So, what the devil is this thing? It is a
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26,000 milliamp hour essentially battery
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bank. So on the back you find a 2.1 amp
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USB output, a voltage selector switch that goes from 12 to 16 to 19. These are
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clearly labeled on the bottom of the unit, and then you have DC out and DC in
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for charging. It also comes with a variety of tips. So while I'm unpacking
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the accessories here, I'll walk you guys through why Edel needs one, and that is
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so Edel is Diesel, just for those of you who aren't familiar with the real names
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that we're using for people now. Um, so he has a Blackmagic cinema camera and
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wanted to have something that could be kind of strapped to the camera or
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clipped to a tripod that would provide much longer battery life at a very
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reasonable cost. So, it's under $100. In fact, all of the items we have here are
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under $100. I think this one's like 30 bucks, 40 bucks or something like that.
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And the headphone holder is about $20.
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Um, so he wanted something to give a much better battery life for that, but
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it actually can work for a lot of different things as well. So you'll see
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it comes with a wide variety of notebook tips. So you can actually use this to
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extend your notebook battery life. Just for scale, I'm going to hold it up next
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to what I'd consider to be a fairly typical gaming notebook. This is a
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GX GX 660 from MSI. So it's it's bulky,
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but if you had this in your bag in addition to your gaming notebook, it's not the end of the world. And to put it
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in perspective, this is 26,000 mAh. This notebook has a 7,800 mAh battery. So,
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you'd be looking at about 4 to 5xing the
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effective battery that you'd get out of your notebook uh using one of these
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tips. There's also an AC to DC plug. So,
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you go ahead and plug this in. This is how you actually charge the unit. So,
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that is an 18.5 volt 2 amp adapter in
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order to charge that baby up. You've also got a USB to DC adapter. You've got
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some other random adapters. So, the idea is that it comes with H There we go. So,
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we've got like uh looks like iPhone as well as micro USB. So, there are some
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adapter tips for this guy right here so that you can have whatever you're going
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to need in order to charge things off of the unit. And finally, it comes with a
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little carrying case and a warranty card. So, very, very versatile. I think
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a couple other people here are planning to get one, so that was why I figured I'd show this to you guys. Thank you for
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checking out our little I guess we'll call this segment stuff that costs less
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than $100 and makes your geeky life better. Like the video if you liked it,
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dislike it if you disliked it. You can check out the links in the video description if you have any sort of if
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you're interested in getting any of this stuff and leave a comment letting us
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know what you think of this segment. Do you want to see more kind of, you know,
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buyer guides for cool tech gadgets and stuff like this? And as always, don't
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