Before You Buy 119 (Transcript)

Show Tease: Coming up on Before You Buy today, we have a really cool new ultra book! A really interesting camera, of sorts. And some really cool new iPhone, and tablet accessories. Check it out! Netcasts you love, from people you trust! This is TWiT. Bandwidth for Before You Buy is brought to you by CacheFly, at cachefly.com.

Shannon Morse: Hey everybody! Welcome to Before You Buy! This is TWiT Networks products review show! I’m Shannon Morse, your host of the day. And today, we have some really interesting new reviews of you’re favorite gadgets. And accessories for the very cool gadgets that you have at home! First off, we have a really interesting one. I’ve been looking forward to this like crazy. I kind of want to get one of these, but I’m going to wait until I see Bryans review of it. This is the Think Pad Yoga. Let’s go ahead and check it out.

Bryan Burnett: Bryan Burnett from Before You Buy. Taking a look at the Lenovo Think pad Yoga. The ThinkPad series of Laptops are specifically made for business, and iconic for being minimalist, matte black, and made from tough materials. The design was originally inspired by traditional Japanese box. The Yoga puts a flip on the ThinkPad design by incorporating a hinge system, that not only allows for the screen to fully rotate, but also has a new lift and lock keyboard that lays flat when the screen is folded into a tablet position. The heavy duty hinges are very sturdy, and never felt flimsy at all. Other than the features I mentioned before, the Yoga is very much like any other ThinkPad. Spill resistant and back lit keyboard. The infamous red nub track point. A buttonless track pad, and 3.0 USB drives on either side of the Yoga. Also included is an SD card reader, a mini HDMI, a volume rocker, a rotation lock for when you put the Yoga into tablet mode. And a pressure sensitive stylist. Inside the magnesium alloy frame of the Yoga, is an Intel i5, running at 2.3 gigahertz. 4 gigabytes of RAM, along with a 120 gigabyte SSD. This keeps Windows 8 feeling pretty snappy and responsive. Battery life was adequate, with my battery finally running down at about the 7 hour mark, after doing web browsing, watching some videos, and some light gaming. Graphics are held by Intel’s HD 4400, and it’s pared to a 12.5 inch, 1920X1080 screen. It’s multi-touch, and in this configuration the Yoga is priced at $1,399. To answer the question I’m sure all of our audience is asking, will it play goad simulator? Yes. Yes it will. Not great but well enough for your goat to get into some mischief. The gorilla glass works well in tablet mode, and allows you to take full advantage of window 8s gesture features. The screen is a matte finish, which helps with glare, and when using the pen, gives a more paperish feel to it. The pen input is very good, and pressure sensitive due to the wackem active digitizer. The speaker’s emanate from under the keyboard are what you’d expect from a ThinkPad. They’re okay, and in a small room, by yourself, they’re fine. But one thing to note, when using the Yoga in tablet mode, the volume is definitely dampened because it’s facing away from you. For pros on the Yoga, the first pro is in the name. As a convertible, it gives you the flexibility of how you’d like to use the hardware. With the new lift and lock keyboard design, the Yoga feels a lot more solid when holding as a tablet. The 10 point multi-touch display is very responsive, includes a stylist, and in my opinion, touch is a must have when trying to use with Windows 8. The I5 processor matched SSD makes boot up lasts only seconds, and loading apps a snap. As for cons, as an Ultra book, the Yoga is slightly on the heavy side. Which as a laptop is hardly noticeable at all. But when using the Yoga as a tablet, the weight is more apparent. The touchpad itself is very good, so why would it be listed as a con? By default, Windows 8 gestures are enabled, which on a non-touch laptop might be helpful. But on a yoga, which has a great touchscreen, the gestures are just too sensitive. In normal use, I’d find myself accidently swiping from left to the top, making typing out this review very frustrating to say the least. So here’s a quick tip, if you want to get rid of that, go to control panel, hardware and sound, device and printers. Right click on the Lenovo PC, click the mouse properties, and under the ThinkPad tab, uncheck enable gestures. This made getting around on the ThinkPad much, much better. Finally, the last con is price. At $1,399, which by no means is outrageous for this hardware, adds up for this Ultra-book that isn’t quite great as a laptop, or a tablet. In the end, the Yoga is a compromise, a very good compromise, but like most things in life, being a jack of all trades means you’re a master of none. I thoroughly enjoyed my time using the Yoga, I don’t personally own a tablet, because I need the use of a keyboard for must things. But I do own an Ultra-book, because I want something light and tough that I can carry back and forth to work. For most people a Yoga could be a compromise worth buying, especially for someone who wants the pen input. As for looks, I personally like the subdued nature of the ThinkPad design, and the most flashy aspect of it is the red eye that lights up in the ThinkPad logo. So is the ThinkPad a buy, try, or don’t buy? If you need a laptop that has pen input, multi-touch, the Yoga is a buy. But if you’re in the market for just a good ultra-book, there are other options with better screens and better price. And if you’re in the market for a tablet, there’s always the Surface Pro 2, if you’re looking for something smaller. So in the end, I’d have to give the Yoga a try. I’m Bryan Burnett from Before You Buy, and thanks for watching.

Shannon: Oh hey, Bryan!

Bryan: Oh hey there Shannon!

Shannon: So you like it?

Bryan: Uh, yeah! I like it a lot! I don’t think it would be perfect for everybody, but I had fun drawing on it, so…

Shannon: I think it’s gorgeous, I really like the fact that you were able to draw on it. I love the fact that the keys just kind of go into it, whenever you flip it over like that. That’s really nice additional feature with it. So that was the ThinkPad Yoga, from Bryan Burnett. And where can people find you if they’re interested?

Bryan: They can find me every Thursday with Padre.

Shannon: Good! Or right here, TV.

Bryan: Or BYB, yeah. TD usually.

Shannon: What’s your twitter account?

Bryan: At cranky hippo.

Shannon: Yay! Thank you so much Bryan! That was wonderful. Of course if you guys have a gadget that you want us to review, you can always email us. It goes straight over to Carston, our producer, as well as myself. That is byb@twit.tv. Alright, let’s go ahead and take it on to our next review. This one comes from Chad! Our very own mine craft guy! So he is reviewing this brand new camera from Sony. It’s called the Sony cyber shot DCS QX100. So brand new one. We did review the QX10, a little while back. That was a don’t buy, but I want to find out if this one is any better, so let’s check it out.

Chad Johnson: Hello! My name is Chad, I’m with TWiT and Before You Buy, and today I’m reviewing the Sony Cybershot DSC-QX100. The idea behind this is basically it’s just a lens that you add to the front of your smartphone, and you use it with an App to take high quality photos with a nice lens, and optical zoom, that of course, your phone can’t pack into such a slim area. Going around what the hardware looks like. On the top you have an on off button. You also have an area for NFC, we’ll get to that in a little bit. You have your toward and wide slider. Your shutter that you can half press to focus, and full press to take a photo. There’s a small speaker in there, so you can hear that happen. It’s talking about is Carls lens, whoo hoo. On the bottom you do have a tripod mount. On the other side you have a release for the back. On the font you have a servo controlled ring so you can zoom in and out. The way that you would use this normally, with a smartphone, is pull down the little feet. Drop your phone into it. And now you kind of have a little camera with basically any smartphone. I’m using the nexus 5 here, but it fits just about any phone. And you can pair, if you’re using Android phone, by just holding the phone up to the NFC area of the camera, and eventually the magic of NFC will work. It’s using Wi-Fi direct to connect directly to the camera, once it’s paired you’ll be able to actually see a life view. You can see there’s a little bit of chunkiness every once in a while. Sometimes the frame rate goes down, and sometimes it’s impressively smooth. And sometimes it doesn’t do that, as you can see right now. But then other times it’s really amazing at how fluid it is to use this. If you take a photo with it, pretty simple, I just took a photo using the on camera button. It will detect that you took a photo, and then using Wi-Fi direct, it will download that photo to your phone. It does have a slot for an SD card, so right now I have a 32 gigabyte SD card inside of the camera. And that means that you’re able to take multiple photos at once, and it should save them to the SD card, and then try to fetch them over to your phone as fast as you can. In terms of battery life, it’s actually a pretty big downside. The battery life of the camera doesn’t last too long. Only a few hours from what I’ve found. The app, at least on Android, is really, really …I would almost say buggy in how much battery it drains. And then it just said that it force quit. Okay, let’s go down the specs sheet. Effective 20 megapixels. You have a one inch sensor size. It shoots in jpeg format, and its focal length is 28 millimeters to 100 millimeters. Let’s talk a little bit about video. This also does take video, but with a lot of caveats. One, you have to have a memory card, and then also, when you’re shooting video there’s no way to tap to focus. You can tap to focus when you’re using the app on your phone, when you’re taking photos, but that’s just not an option when you’re taking video. So let me go ahead and get to the pros and cons. On the pros, this is going to take much better photos than your camera. It does connect with any camera. And I do like the wireless transfer of files. On the cons: There’s no flash on this, so you’re going to give that up. I thought that the app needs a lot of work, and less than stellar video performance without tapping to focus. And needing a memory card to take video. MSRP is coming in at around 500 dollars. You can get it now, its available now at Amazon, and all over the place. Buy, try, don’t buy for the Cybershot DSC-QX100, I’m going to say don’t buy. I feel like there’s some revisions that are needed for this. There’s some very slow transfer time. Its video wasn’t that astounding. But the dream of having a lens that you can just attach to a smartphone that you already have, use a smartphone as a monitor for this lens, it seems like they’re very, very close, but not there yet. I wouldn’t quite suggest people buy this product just yet. Maybe revision two. Thanks for much for watching, I’m Chad Johnson for TWiT.tv, and before you buy. See you next time.

Shannon: Alright! We’re over here now, and that was Chad with the Sony Cybershot DSC-QX100!

Sarah Lane: Good work Chad!

Shannon: Good work chad! Now, Sarah Lane!

Sarah: Hi!

Shannon: How are you?

Sarah: I’m good! How are you?

Shannon: If you guys don’t know already, Sarah Lane is in charge of one of the coolest, and one of my favorite shows on the network. It’s called IPad today.

Sarah: It’s a good one?

Shannon: Yes!

Sarah: Oh good! Thanks!

Shannon: Right during social hour. I enjoy your shows.

Sarah: Thank you so much Shannon.

Shannon: And tech news tonight!

Sarah: Yeah! In fact, that’s actually why I’m sitting here right now, because everybody who is watching the live stream every day at 4 PM pacific, we do an afternoon edition to the stories that TWiT thinks is interesting for our audience.

Shannon: Yes! You do an excellent job with that show.

Sarah: Well you’re the nicest! Thanks!

Shannon: Now you have a bunch of different things going on here, but today we’re checking out the Une Bobine, correct?

Sarah: Yeah! I think it’s a French term for something cool!

Shannon: it looks cool!

Sarah: I think. So here’s what’s going ton, Carston, our producer for Before you Buy, was like Hey Sarah, you want to check out this? It’s right up your alley. And I was like what is it?

Shannon: its right up your alley, what?

Sarah: What is it?

Shannon: It’s a stand.

Sarah: It’s a stand! It’s a USB charging IPhone stand.

Shannon: So last time I had one of these in my car it basically went like this… that’s all it did.

Sarah: I don’t know, I mean check this out. Take a feel here. Because the whole idea is…

Shannon: Wow, it feels sturdy.

Sarah: It’s a company called fuse chicken, actually that made the Une Bobine. And yeah, when you have a little fun with it, you can almost make a bunch of ridiculous shapes for it. But really it’s meant to do exactly what you’re doing right now.

Shannon: Wow. It seems to work just fine.

Sarah: Yeah. I have a phone, and I’m using it as some sort of second screen type thing. And I’m sitting at my laptop all day, or something else that requires USB power. I go ahead and plug it in, I can certainly read it better than I could read it flat, I find.

Shannon: Oh absolutely.

Sarah: So it’s not doing anything revolutionary. But it’s kind of cool, and you can get a little creative because if you’re not, you know, in a windy spot. And you’ve kind of got a cool situation, you can have your iPhone up sort of high. Of course, I don’t actually have it plugged in right now, I don’t want it to sink so it’s like… You kind of have to be careful about it. First I was like….

Shannon: As she breaks her phone.

Sarah: … maybe I could create like, you know, like an animal balloon, or something. Like a clown would. You can’t actually make anything too special with this, but it is kind of a novel idea. You know what this actually was it started as a kick starter. In 2012, I think they wanted, actually I have it up here because I want to get it right. They wanted just under 10 grand. Now if somebody said I wanted 10 grand for this, I’d be like you’re nuts! They got 212,000 dollars!

Shannon: Wow!

Sarah: So this was successfully funded the summer of 2012. So it’s actually a real product now, they have, because of course they have the nine, the 8 pin connecter for, basically lightening.

Shannon: The newest one.

Sarah: Yeah, but then if you’ve got an IPhone 4, or 4S, or even a Micro USB version, they’ve got a couple others too.

Shannon: Oh that’s cool. So I could get one for my Nexus.

Sarah: They have, if you’ve got a cigarette lighter in your car, and you want to be able to charge using the car accessory, you can do that as well. So there’s actually kind of a nice array of products. This particular one, is the one that I would use for my 5S, is 35 dollars. It’s $34.95

Shannon: That’s it? Wow!

Sarah: Yeah. I’m glad you’re impressed.

Shannon: I was actually expecting it to be more. Because a lot of times you see these really interesting accessories that are a little different, and they charge like 50 plus.

Sarah: At first I sort of laughed at this, like is this really an accessory? And now I feel like it’s so simple it’s kind of genius. And I see why they got so much money.

Shannon: So does this charge your phone?

Sarah: Yeah.

Shannon: It does charge. Does it work really nice and fast, like a regular charger?

Sarah: It’s no different than any other power supply that I would connect VIA USB. So yeah, for 35 dollars you’ve got something that’s definitely going to be a conversation piece, and you can make it your own, with some limitations

Shannon: Pros and cons?

Sarah: Pros: I think that is, I just wish I would have thought of it! Why didn’t I make that kick starter? Obviously people have better ideas than I do. The pros that I think it’s simple, it’s obviously very portable. Because you can kind of like, you know. It’s like now okay, it almost disappears on itself type thing. It’s easy to pack up and take wherever. And you can make it a variety of different shapes. Cons: It’s somewhat limited. A. If you want your iPhone to stand up, then that’s great. But it’s not as if you can really get too creative with the design of it. So I would say if you are looking for, if you’re looking for any sort of a charger that can give you some vertical ability, absolutely buy it!

Shannon: Excellent. Thank you so much, Sarah!

Sarah: You’re so welcome, Shannon.

Shannon: That was the Une Bobine, if you guys are interested in checking it out yourselves. And you can find Sarah Lane here at TWiT.tv

Sarah: I never leave this seat.

Shannon: Never. You sleep there.

Sarah: Yeah, it’s getting weird.

Shannon: You eat there. You cook noodles.

Sarah: Look at all my…this is where I eat my candy.

Shannon: Thanks Sarah.

Sarah: Thanks Shannon.

Sarah: We have an interesting product. Actually an accessory round up from Father Robert Ballecer coming up right now. I was pretty interested in checking this out as well, because I have several accessories as well and I need a place to keep them all. So Padre, tell me should I buy, try, or don’t buy these?

Fr. Robert Ballecer: I’m Father Robert Ballecer with the TWiT.tv network. And I’m taking a look at some power and connectivity options from Kanex. It’s the Doubleup, the duel roll, and the Sydnee. Now the double up as the name may suggest, is a duel USB charger. There’s a lot of these on the market, but where this differs is that it has two full 2.1 AMP fast charging ports. I kind of like that. Now it is a travel charger, so it has things like the retractable prong, so you can get it nice and neat, and ready to go into your travel bag. And it also has these little lights here, which will turn green if you’re using an IOS device if your iPhone hits 90% charged, or your iPad hits 98% charged. It’s a nice way to tell at a glance if your device is ready to go. Now I do on the pro side like the 2.1 AMP ports. I like the ability to fast charge multiple devices. Two tablets, two phones, or any combinations. I also like the fact that it is travel size. It’s compact, it feels like its’ going to last. Now on the con side, well there’s the price. Its 30 bucks, which is actually quite a bit. It’s more than 50% more than what I would expect from a device of this type. And also the lights. The really cool feature only works if you’re using IOS. This is the Kanex Dualrole. And again, as the name might imply, it has two roles. USB adapter, and USB 3.0 hub. If you travel with a MacBook air or an ultra-book, you know that ports are at a premium. So why would you waste one of the points with a USB wired adapter? Which is what I always do from traveling, I want to plug in. Well this means you don’t have to compromise. Go ahead and plug in this one plug into a USB 3.0 port, and you get 3 additional ports, plus your wired adapter. Now this is designed for travel because this cable is attached. It also tucks in so you can get this nice felt packet. They’ve also included a USB 5 volt port, just in case you want a full powered USB hub. Now on the pro side, I’d have to say that I love the fact that it’s OS agnostic. This will work with PC, with Mac, with Lennox. I also like the fact that it is so well designed for travel, and that it’s fast. On the con side: Well, I really can’t think of anything. This is sort of the perfect design for a traveler. It’s nice and light, and it travels well. So there’s that. Now this big boy is the Sydnee. As you can see it has sort of this internal compartment, divided by this clear poly Plexiglas thing. Well it allows you to put up to three tablets into the stand, one, two, and three. And the one in the front can be used on the stand as its being charged. One the back it has a 4 port, full powered USB charger. That’s 2.1 amps x 4. Which means you can fast charge 4 devices at the same time. Tablets, phones, again, any combination that you want. They also include this cable management loop, which allows you to get your cables out of the way, and combined with a notch at the top, give the stand a nice neat look. Now, on the pro side, I’d have to say that it does work really well. It’s a nice command center for all your devices to put them in one place. Also, I really like the 4 2.1 AMP charging slots. It really lets me charge everything I want at the same time. On the con side, the cable management is a little on the useless side. It wasn’t really well designed. It looks good but it doesn’t function all that great, unless you have 4 exactly identical cables. Same type, same material, same length you’re going to get sort of a sprawl. It’s not a good look. The other con is the price. Well its 100 dollars listed on the Konex website, you can find it as low as 65 online, say on Amazon. I don’t like that range, at 100 it’s too expensive, 65 dollars it’s just about right, but well there you go. So the big question, buy, try, or don’t buy? Well for the Sydnee, I’d have to give it a solid Try. Almost a buy, if you could get it for 65 dollars it definitely is a buy, if you’ve got a lot of tablets, if you’ve got a lot of phones. If you’ve got a mess on your desk, this is a nice way to get organized. For the DoubleUp, I’d have to give this a try, almost a don’t buy. Just because there are so many other products out there that doe the same thing for less money. And this really only helps you if you’ve got an IOS device. However for the Kanex Dualrole, this, without a doubt, is a buy. If you’re a traveler, this is the device that you should be travelling with. I’m Father Robert Ballecer, with Before You Buy.

Shannon: And that was Sarah Lane, and Father Robert Ballecer, with their products. Those were very, very cool! Thank you guys! And of course, if you want to check out all the different reviews on line, maybe you wanted to share one with your friends, you can check them out at youtube.com/beforeyoubuy. We made sure to split them all up for you, so you can find each and every review very, very easily. Now our last review from the day comes from, of course, the one and only Leo Laporte.

Leo Laporte: Hello.

Shannon: Hello Leo, how are you?

Leo: I’m good. Another kick starter project, like Sarah’s.

Shannon: You’ve been wearing this weird looking thing on your shirt all day.

Leo: All day? For the last four weeks!

Shannon: four weeks?

Leo: You just didn’t notice, which is probably a good thing. This can get you beat up in the mission district of San Francisco. This, it was a kick starter project in the fall of 2012, at the time called momoto, a Swedish company, by the time they were ready to ship these in late 2013, early 2014, they were renamed to Narrative. This is the narrative clip. Get narrative.com. 279 dollars. What do you think this does, when you look at it?

Shannon: Does it talk to you?

Leo: Well you probably know what it is.

Shannon: Yeah, I know what it is.

Leo: You’re hoping that the people at the gym who see you wearing this think it’s a pedometer, because it is a camera.

Shannon: It looks kind of like one.

Leo: Yeah, and if you don’t look too closely, they may not see the lens. That’s a 5 megapixel camera, with a 70 degree angle. So it’s really, it’s not super wide. It is, in fact it’s a little bit vaguely telephoto. And here’s the thing. It has its own memory. And it takes pictures every 30 seconds, just forever, always.

Shannon: Interesting. So it seems like it’s working out to be your own personal diary of sorts.

Leo: It’s something they call life logging, and the idea has been around for many years, going back to Steve Mann at MIT, who was wearing the thing.

Shannon: Oh yes!

Leo: And Gordon bell whose wife, Gwynn, founder of the computer history museum in town, in Mountain View, has Alzheimer’s. Gordon had been thinking about this kind of thing, he even wore a camera around his neck for a long time as a Microsoft fellow. But because of Gwynn, he came up with the idea that this might help you with your memory.

Shannon: Wow! That’s kind of cool.

Leo: So if you don’t know what you did, and so this would be useful to review your day. But more likely the idea is you’ve been wearing this over a period of years, and now you’ve got a diary of your entire life. Now of course, it’s not got enough memory to record more than a day or so, several thousand pictures.

Shannon: Well now I’m considering buying one because I know somebody who has a disability like that.

Leo: It might be good for Alzheimer’s, yep. It has only about a day or two of battery life.

Shannon: Oh ok. So they have to remember to charge it.

Leo: So basically what happens is you get home and you plug it in… Yeah, they have to remember! That’s a bad thing. You have to remember to plug it in. You’re going to plug it into a computer, it’s got a micro USB, and so you can plug it in to any cable. And you’re going to plug it in to a windows or a MAC PC, because they have software. The software is going to pull the images that have been on the camera, off the camera, as well as recharge it. There are four lights here that will tell you charge statement.

Shannon: Do you have to use your software? Can you copy and paste it?

Leo: You have to use their software, and it does an interesting thing that you may, or may not like. It uses your computer as a temporary storage. You can have it save the pictures there but there’s so many they say you might not want to do this. This is going to fill up your drive, and then uploads it to the get narrative servers. So your pictures don’t actually live on your computer, that’s not the normal way to use it, unless you specially ask. The idea is that they live on the server. And then they have an Android app that you can browse through your pictures with.

Shannon: Oh I see!

Leo: So you need a computer, you need an android or iPhone device, an android or IOS device. It doesn’t have an iPad app, but I’m going to show it to you on the IPad, and then you get a year free, but eventually you’re going to have to pay narrative to store these pictures. That’s quite a bit of data.

Shannon: Yeah, it sounds a little bit expensive, and it also makes my red flag of privacy go off.

Leo: Well there’s so many red flags that are going to go off with this thing. I mean first of all, you’re wearing it everywhere. The bathroom, the gym to bed, you’re wearing it everywhere! So at some point somebody is going to figure out, dude you’re taking it! If you think Google glass is expensive this is worse! There’s no way of knowing it’s taking a picture, it doesn’t really announce itself as a camera.

Shannon: So is it taking pictures right now?

Leo: yeah!

Shannon: That’s creepy!

Leo: The theory though, is it’s just for you. It’s not… you’re not going to post…and when you see the pictures you’ll realize why. A couple of the user interface notices, if you double tap it, that says take a picture right now. And it marks it as a favorite in the collection. They figures, well he must have wanted that one. If you put it face down, it senses that it’s dark and it stops. So that’s one way to either turn it off, or save battery life. It also knows what position it’s in so you can clip it in any way.

Shannon: Oh that’s cool!

Leo: It has a magnetometer, an accelerometer. Does not have a GPS, doesn’t know where you are.

Shannon: Probably good.

Leo: Well, you know, I think what happened, it took them more than a year to get this out, and they thought it’d be out a lot sooner. It turned out to be harder to do this than they thought. Let me show you the user interface of the pictures. This is the narrative app. Now I’m going to show you on an IPad, it’s an iPhone app. So let me show you the interface. This is the narrative app, it’s free by the way. And you can download it on android or IOS. This is.. I’m using it on IPad, but it’s really an IPhone app.

Shannon: Okay.

Leo: The settings not much, right?

Shannon: Yeah, it looks pretty easy.

Leo: Nothing in fact. It interfaces to the narrative servers though, in Sweden, right? So this is the start photos. These are the ones I double tapped, and presumably these are the ones you cared a lot about. And you’re probably noticing right now, a little something. These pictures suck. There are a couple of reasons they suck. One is, you’re wearing a kind of cheap camera on your lapel. And so what its recording is not necessarily what you would record if you were taking pictures. So here’s an example, I put this on a ledge, so it recorded me, and this is something that you can do, you don’t have to be wearing it. So it recorded me setting at my computer for hours on end. This is MacBreak Weekly, we can go through this.

Shannon: Oh, so you’ve got your microphone.

Leo: This is my point of view. Now, there’s another issue that’s probably unique to me, I’ve got a bit of a belly and so the thing is tilted up. It’s always looking up. So here I am at home. And then I get in the car, and I drive. You see that. I get in the car, but it’s looking up. It’s not! So you never…none of these pictures give me anything that you really. I mean I’m not going to share this to twitter, to Instagram, but it might be enough to tell me where I was, what I did today, right? And if you talk to somebody for any length of time, you’ll see their face. You’ll say “oh, yeah I had a nice conversation with that guy.” What you mostly realize is how much time you spend setting at a computer for one thing. At least me, and I think many of the people who watch this show. Now noticed this is trimmed the moment, because of the accelerometer, it’ll kind of notice if some of the pictures are going to be blurry, or not good. If you un-trim them, you’ll notice it went from 158 pictures untrimmed to 329 pictures. So it’s storing a lot of pictures. This is 329 photos over a two hour period. And as you can see, well it’s a lot, and it’s not that interesting right. Now I’m in my office sitting. That’s what it looks like when I’m sitting in my office. So you’re not in most of these pictures unless you take it off and put it on a ledge. When I first got it, I suppose it’s here, I wore it at a party. So I got to see kind of the party.

Shannon: Oh that’s cool.

Leo: yeah, that was kind of fun. This goes back to March. Well I don’t see the party on here.

Shannon: Well look at all those photos.

Leo: Yeah! Well it’s a photo every 30 seconds. Two photos a minute. That’s 120 photos an hour. It’s a lot of photos.

Shannon: It seems so niched to me, it feels like…

Leo: Well first of all, its 279 bucks, I don’t recommend it. This is definitely a do not buy. I’ll give you the pros and cons here. But there is something going on here. They were trying to raise 50,000 dollars, they raised half a million dollars. There’s definitely interest in the idea of life logging. The pros are that it does pretty much what it says it does. It has enough memory to take pictures every thirty seconds. It’ll do a whole day. It can actually do a day and a half, or two days. All of that works. It uploads to the servers effectively. I use the MAC Client, works fine. You plug it in, and it immediately starts to pull the pictures off. The negatives, the pictures aren’t great. A. it’s 5 megapixels, and B. It’s only 70 degree angle. It’s a fairly narrow, it’s fairly telephoto, so you don’t… I think this should be like 24 millimeter lens. It should be a big wide fish eye, because then I’d see more of what’s’ going on. I’m surprised they didn’t do that. And then, of course, the cost is a little high. And the privacy implication, and the chance of getting beat up in the mission district, high as well. On the other hand, I should say there is something there. It’s part of this quantified self. The idea that your life can be remembered in this passive way, I just wish it were better pictures, you know. And I wish I were in them. So what I often did is I put it on a shelf here and stick it somewhere like that. And see if I did this, it would see me, and that might be what you’d end up doing. But that does raise another negative. It’s very easy to lose, can you see that.

Shannon: That’s true. It’s very small, very lightweight.

Leo: I lost it a couple of times, and I went, where’d it go? It’s on the seat of the car, or I left it behind. You know, I lose fit bits every 5 or 6 weeks. This is a 279 dollar doodad that’s going to be very easy to lose, you’re lucky I still have it for review.

Shannon: So maybe they should put a little GPS in it so you can track it.

Leo: Yeah, or some beeper, or something. I just think that mostly, you’re going to get in trouble if you wore this around. I wore this at the gym, and I Just thought someone is going to slug me!

Shannon: It does feel a little awkward to know you’re taking photos all the time.

Leo: Well I know what I’m doing. I’m taking a picture of you, every 30 seconds.

Shannon: A little weird.

Leo: It’s very weird.

Shannon: So do you give this a buy, try, or don’t buy?

Leo: No, it’s a don’t buy. It’s too expensive. But I praise the guys at Narrative, I think this is a great idea. Continue working on this, I’m glad I gave them my money, because I want to support this, I think there’s something here. This is probably, you know if it’s for you. It’s probably not for you.

Shannon: Yeah. Well thank you so much Leo, and thank you to all of our reviewers that we had on today. We really love each and every one of them. Of course, if you want to check out all of our reviews you can check those over at twit.tv/byb. And you can email us at byb@twit.tv, again. I’m Shannon Morse, your host of today. And this was Before You Buy. Remember before you buy anything. You’ve got to watch, Before You Buy! Bye!