Before You Buy 142 (Transcript)

Coming up on Before You Buy, we have a couple of speakers, we’ve got survival light sticks, some plants growing right in front of me. And, what do you know, a phone. It’s time to watch Before You Buy!

Netcasts you love, from people you trust. This is Twit! Bandwidth for Before You Buy is brought to you by CacheFly. At cachefly.com. This episode of Before You Buy is brought to you by The Bouqs. Beautiful affordable flowers grown on an active volcano and shipped for free. For 15% off your first bouquet, visit thebouqs.com/twit and use the code TWIT at checkout. That’s thebouqs.com/twit and use the code TWIT to save 15%.

Jason Howell: Hello everyone and welcome to today’s episode of Before You Buy. Of course I am not Leo Laporte, I am Jason Howell filling in for Leo. Doing my best but you can never truly fill in for Leo. He’s been doing this show so long he doesn’t stumble over his words in ways that I probably will. But I’m happy to be here filling his shoes. Sitting right next to me I have another guy that from time to time fills Leo’s shoes. Chad Johnson, how are you doing sir?

Chad Johnson: Doing great. I’m doing fantastic.

Jason: Fantastic. You were blasting my ears before this show started with some intense dance music.

Chad: I was. I would like to know what my neighbors think of me. Because not only do I scream…

Jason: Because of the speakers or other things?

Chad: Because of the speakers, but also, I will record videos in the middle of the night where I’m screaming at other people on the other end of the line…

Jason: I’m not sure what they think of you either.

Chad: This speaker review though, is a lot of fun I’ve got to say.

Jason: Alright. What have you got here?

Chad: So I have three speakers and they’re all from the same company. 808 audio. And they’re all Bluetooth speakers. You can see we have the 808 Hex SL, the 808 Hex TL and the 808 Hex XSL. S, T and X is how it works. All of them are Bluetooth. They all have ox inputs. So on the back of each of them they have a place you can plug in a headphone. So if you happen to have a device that isn’t Bluetooth ready, don’t worry, this will support it. They’re all covered by a one year warranty and they all have- this one right here does not have a micro USB. This is the only one that doesn’t have a rechargeable battery included. If you’re going to use batteries with the TL you need to use 8 AAA batteries.

Jason: is the TL kind of considered the middle of the line?

Chad: Yes. But it doesn’t have the rechargeable battery. So I’ll go ahead and start with the SL. The SL is the smallest of them by obvious looks. It has a few functions. It has a volume up/down. A synch button. And then at the bottom there is a power toggle. This is just a switch so when you shut this down, you just flip the switch and you can see the LED light on the bottom, it’ll just shut off. This is made with aluminum, in fact this is my favorite out of all of the build qualities.

Jason: It looks really light.

Chad: Well, its heavy enough I would say.

Jason: Something like this, because it’s super portable you don’t want it to be super light and fragile. Throw this in your backpack, it’s going to crumple.

Chad: Exactly. And also, the weight, there is a pretty substantial battery in here. They claim it’ll last up to 12 hours. I didn’t play it continuously for 12 hours, but it definitely lasted a few days, about a week actually. With me not charging it and playing it while I was doing laundry and things like that. This was by far my favorite form factor out of all of the speakers as well. This can easily fit into the back of my pocket. It may not seem like it, but it fits in a back pocket quite easily. What I normally do with it is I’d do laundry, throw this in my back pocket, and then I’d have audio throughout the house no matter where I walked. And I know that sounds a little bit absurd, but it was the most enjoyable thing ever. On top of that, because of its size, if I didn’t want it in my back pocket anymore, I can just set it next to the sink if I was doing dishes or chores around the house. And it also is the correct size to put into a cup holder if you want to throw it in your car. Some things it doesn’t have is play/pause/skip to next and back features. You have to do that on your phone. For a quick audio snippet, obviously it’s going to be the quietest out of the three because it’s the smallest. It only has a single speaker in there. I would say that that’s a pretty substantial amount of audio out of something that’s less than half a foot tall. Let me make sure there isn’t anything else that I’m forgetting. The wireless range of Bluetooth for all of these is around 30 feet. There were times that I had forgot that Id set my phone in the bedroom and it wasn’t until I was in the kitchen, which Is a hallway, a living room and a second hallway away from my bedroom, that I realized that it started to break up because I was so far away. And there’s also an air conditioning in the middle of that. On the pros, on this device, I really like that it was metal. Its construction is by far my favorite. And its super-duper portable. For the cons, no play/pause/skip buttons.

Jason: What is the price on that one again?

Chad: This is $70. Or sorry, $59.99, coming in at $60. I think that that is a very good price point for that one. Next is the TL. The TL has two speakers. Actually it has 3. It has 2 on the front and one bass on the back. Now this is plastic construction, unlike the aluminum that was the SL. On top of that it doesn’t use a micro USB to charge, it uses an actual AC cord. So if you lose this you cannot charge it.  In fact, you have to use the AA batteries unless you want to radio shack and pick up another charger. The sound quality on this, let me go ahead and switch over. All of these will make this sort of audible sound whenever they are connected. So you’ll hear that coming up here. In just a second. And the other one, the SL actually makes a sound when it’s disconnected. This has the power button and audio buttons on the top as well as the synch button. No play/pause on this. Let’s go ahead and give you a quick glimpse of how loud it is.

Jason: A little more clarity on this one for sure.

Chad: Definitely. And it’s more directional. Because of the speakers on the front and on the back. I got to say, I’m jumping a little bit ahead, but out of the TL and the XL, I liked this one’s form factor, that it was tall instead of wide. Because this fits a lot better on a night stand than this. So I want to point that out. So pros/cons on the TL is that I liked its taller form factor, I didn’t like the fact that it’s made out of plastic. And that it didn’t have a micro USB charger, it has the DC in charger. The TL costs $80. So we went from $60 to $80.

Jason: A $20 jump for a little more clarity.

Chad: Yeah. And you can guess the pattern. This is $100 for the XL. So this is the highest end one. It does have a rechargeable battery inside of it. And it has a micro USB to charge. Nice thing about this is it has a handle, and then on the side you’re also given your skip to next track/last track/play/pause, and then here on the other side is your volume/up/down/pair/power buttons.

Jason: And those are all controlling whatever Bluetooth device you happen to have connected to that point.

Chad: Exactly. IOS or Android for all of these. And then at the bottom is your little subwoofer here. That’s kind of hidden so it’ll hit the table. Let’s just go ahead and pair this one up. It’s also plastic. It’s like a matte plastic. I have to say the feel is really nice on that, but I really kind of miss the- it might be metal, it’s almost hard to tell because of the matte-ness of the finish. In terms of usability, this one I left in my kitchen most often, because that’s where I have the counter space. And this one I left on the night stand for use there. That was it turning on, and now it’s paired. So it makes two sounds when you turn it on.

Jason: I like the name. I like that they chose 808. Obviously it’s a play on 808 which is kind of an old school type of drum machine that you hear on all types of music since the 80s, so I think it’s kind of a cool choice that they did.

Chad: And all of them have a really nice design language. They all have this hex sort of grid on the front, and I really kind of like that throughout all the products. Let’s go ahead and hit play. Definitely the loudest.

Jason: Yeah. A little harsher though. I don’t know if that’s because it’s facing out more. I’m not sure why that is but it kind of hurts a little bit.

Chad: And this is all the way up.

Jason: It could also be the song.

Chad: It’s funny, you were part of the mixing process for these songs, and you’ve heard these songs so many times you can tell instantly where it’s harsh, if it’s harsh on the top or the bottom. So this one comes in at $100, on the pros, it’s the only one that has the play/pause/back/forward buttons. On the cons, I didn’t really love how wide this is. The form factor of it. On the pros it also has a handle, which is kind of cool. So buy/try/don’t buy, let’s just go down the line. For the SL, this is definitely a buy. In fact, when we send this back, I’m going to probably go buy this for myself. Because I enjoyed it. Just walking around the house without headphones on, being able to hear phones ringing or cats screaming or I don’t know. It was really nice. On the TL, this one is going to be a try. Because it doesn’t have the rechargeable batteries which was a little bit of a bummer. And then on the XL I’m also going to give this one a try. It just didn’t seem like it was worth the basic doubling of price for the extra play/pause and synch features and I wasn’t super thrilled with the footprint of it. But I did like that they added back in a rechargeable battery and those extra features. So this is a try. So buy, try, and try. For the 808 Hex series of Bluetooth speakers. And they all come in some freaking crazy packaging. You could put this on a desk and it would be a jewel. So all of them come in very fancy packaging. Which you’re probably paying for.

Jason: Chad Johnson, thank you so much for showing off those speakers. And playing my music one too many times. Next time just a little dance music.

Chad: Okay. Absolutely.

Jason: Okay, so we actually have another review coming up. Right now Aaron Newcomb of Floss Weekly on the TWiT network did a review of a smart herb garden. Let’s check that video out.

Aaron Newcomb: Hi everybody, Aaron Newcomb here back for another byb review. This time I’m reviewing the Click and Grow Smart Herb Gardening system. It’s a great little project, especially if you don’t have a green thumb. What this is, is it’s a self-enclosed container that comes with everything you need to grow your own. In this case herbs. It comes with seeds, it comes with little pots that you put in the system. And it comes with a grow light. It’s all packaged together so you don’t have to buy anything else. All you have to do basically is just add water and the plants will grow. So it’s very, very easy to use. This runs right now for around $100 on amazon. So it’s a little pricy. But like I said, it comes with everything, you’re not going to have to run back out to the store to get anything. If you get this thing in the box, everything that you need is there, literally, except for the water, which is great. Speaking of the box, the box is really neat. The box has all the instructions built onto the inside of the box. So you’ve got some instructions on the outside, it tells you what the herbs are that you’re going to grow, and when you open it up, everything kind of folds out, it’s packaged very nicely. You pull the things out and it tells you even on the boxes, the individual boxes for example, that has the little containers with the dirt, it tells you exactly what to do and how to put them into the container. It tells you how to fill the water. The waters pretty neat because it has a little built in float. You can’t see it, it’s down here. There’s a little built in float and so you add the water until the float comes up so its level with the top. So it’s really foolproof. The other great thing about it is it has a built in timer for the grow light. So you don’t have to worry about setting up your own timer, unplugging it every day. The timer comes with a plug. You just plug it in when you want to start the light hours. So if you want the light to come on at 6, 7, 8 in the morning, it will stay on, I believe, for about 14 hours. So you just plug that in when you want the cycle to start. It will automatically from then on turn off. So that way you’re not kept up at night by this glowing thing in your kitchen or wherever you set this thing up. So that’s really nice. So this is dead easy. That is the one really great selling point about this. The negative part about is that you could really easily do this yourself. I am a do it yourself kind of guy and so I like to look for ways to reuse things, to recycle things, and do this yourself. So if you know a little bit about gardening, really anything about gardening, you could set up a similar system. The system that this uses is called sub irrigated planting. And you can actually replicate this system yourself using just a 2 liter bottle. So I’ve got a picture of one I did online and you can see, basically what I’ve done is cut a 2 liter bottle in half, turned it upside down, filled the bottom part with water, and filled the top with soil. And then you can put in one of those peep pellet things, put your seeds in there and all you have to do is refill the water from the bottom when it gets low. By doing this, number 1 you’re recycling a 2 liter bottle, and basically it’s the same system that you have that we’re talking about here. So pros and cons, pros are, it’s dead easy. There’s nothing that you can do wrong here. It’s basically foolproof. You don’t even need sunlight. It provides its own light. All you need is access to water and that’s it. So if you really want something that’s dead simple, or maybe you live in an area that doesn’t get a lot of sunlight in the winter time, like Iceland or Norway or someplace like that, and you want a system to grow some herbs during the wintertime, this might be a good option for you. If you do have access to light, however, I think it’s a lot easier and a lot cheaper, for sure, to go out and do it yourself. The cons are the expense. $100 to grow 3 herbs that you could buy in any nursery for probably a couple bucks a piece, that’s really, really steep. And I think that, like I said, it’s going to be a special case where you can go out and actually afford and justify the price of buying this. So that’s definitely the con. In this case. So my recommendation for this is try. Like I said, if you’re in one of those special circumstances where you don’t have a lot of light or you don’t have access to common planting materials around, maybe you’re going to bring this into an office, or maybe you’re allergic to dirt, this would be a good thing for you to buy. Otherwise don’t waste your money. Go out, do some recycling or go buy a pot and a plant and put it in there and I think you’re going to have similar success. So with that, I will turn it back to you. Thanks for watching.

Jason: Alright, thank you Aaron for showing us all about that plant which I wasn’t quite sure of when it was on the table in front of me at first. But it all makes sense now. Hey, what do you know? We’re on a completely new set, and I’m here with Tonya Hall, how are you doing?

Tonya Hall: I’m doing great, how are you doing Jason?

Jason: Doing awesome. We were kind of taking a look at your gadget while things were getting set up and we were all placing bets on what it actually is. So lucky you, you get to tell us.

Tonya: I get to tell you. Well, okay. So I don’t know, a couple months ago we went through a pretty scary natural situation, natural disaster. The earthquake. And we had a little shake-a-thon here at the brick house. That’s one way to put it. And it happened at 3 o’clock in the morning. And it got me thinking, what you have, if for some reason, because in Sonoma and Napa the lights went out, so there was no electricity. So this is a Champ 10 in 1, home portable survival light stick. So there you go.

Jason: Kind of looks like the want at the airport to make sure you aren’t carrying any weapons. So it’s a light stick.

Tonya: It’s a light stick. It’s also actually an am/FM radio, and it has the NOAA weather radio so you can get weather radio even without am and FM stations. Something else that I find really interesting, it’s got a solar charge here.

Jason: Excellent. So you could keep this in your car... although I guess if you have it in your car you have it stored away and it’s not gathering a lot of solar energy.

Tonya: And it’s got a rechargeable battery. So it comes with this cord right here, which probably a lot of people have laying around, it’s got the USB and micro cable. So you charge it, and it actually could be substituted as a phone charger. So if for some reason you needed to charge your phone, you could use this in place of that. It’s got a flashlight here.

Jason: So wait a minute, you can use this to recharge your phone?

Tonya: That is correct.

Jason: Oh, that’s pretty nice. Do you know the size of battery that happens to be in there or…?

Tonya: No, I don’t.

Jason: I’m just wondering how much charge it would give to your phone. But even a little bit in an emergency situation might give you enough to make that call.

Tonya: Exactly. And so there’s two lights. There’s this desk light, which they kind of advertise, which is a big part of it. And that’s operated here on this little dial. It’s got a dimmer as you can see. And it has a light on the bottom, there’s a switch right here. And you just turn that on. So there’s two flashlights. Which it’s kind of neat that it does have a dual purpose. So if you wanted to use this on your desk, it actually does have a purpose. And it’s bendable so if you’re trying to do something and get to a certain angle. So you can maneuver it a little bit. It’s also got an alarm. Hold this button down. And if you notice, this did flash so if you had to set up an alarm you could. The other thing that it does is, it’s got a magnet on the bottom. So if you needed to be sturdy on your car, you could set it up.

Jason: So you could get in and work on the engine and put it on whatever you needed to stick it to in order to have your workspace.

Tonya: That’s right. And it has a crank as well, so you can charge it this way.

Jason: Aah, that’s kind of a big deal.

Tonya: Yeah. So I think these are a good idea to have and if you do have it on your nightstand you could- when the earthquake- I woke up. And if the lights went out- they didn’t here in Petaluma but they did other places- if they had, 15,000 people lost their power. So this would have been something that would have come in real handy. I could have easily gone outside, it also has an alarm so if something happened and I needed to notify people, it’s kind of a neat little tool there.

Jason:  Excellent. Yeah, I know at least at our house, we have a bunch of flashlights, and they all have batteries and things like that. But in the case of an emergency, knowing where they are in order to use them. So probably, bedside might not be a bad place for that. Especially since it can act as a lamp as well.

Tonya: And it doesn’t just sit there and collect dust waiting for a chance to be used in an emergency, you could actually use it on your desk. So it could be something that you can use on an ongoing basis.

Jason: Alright, so what do you think? What are some of the pros and cons?

Tonya: So I would say there are actually more pros than cons. I like the solar capability, that you can actually- you don’t have to have electricity, you can recharge it if need be, via solar. I like that it does alternate as a phone charger in case you need one. Because that would be the time that you actually need to make that phone call, provided you actually have cell service. And that you can use it as a multipurpose. There are so many things you buy for survival stuff and I’m a little guilty of that. I have a lot of survival stuff.

Jason: I would rather have lots of it than not enough of it.

Tonya: But most of it is stuff that you’re never going to take out of the bag. You’re never going to use it. This is something that you can actually use, and it will be somewhere you know where it is because you can just grab it and go with it. What I did was, to test the battery of it, it lasted four hours on a full charge, which isn’t bad. But as far as a con goes, the con is because this is a rechargeable battery, you can’t actually but batteries in it. So if you had disposable batteries and you wanted that as an option, that’s not an option. That’s really the only con that I had. It’s not a real rugged design, I don’t think that’s their goal, I think their goal is to be a little more sleek and that sort of thing. But I liked it, it’s about $70, which is fair. And most of the ones that were also $70, who had the radio and all the other bells and whistles, did not have the solar capability.

Jason: excellent. That looks fantastic. So you’d say, buy, I’m assuming?

Tonya: I would say buy.

Jason: Alright, cool. This is the Champ Survival Light Stick Weather Radio. Nice light stick as far as light sticks go. Although I have not many to compare them to.

Tonya: And if you have a child, it could be-

Jason: Believe me, if that was in the house it would be used for many things, not just emergencies, and it wouldn’t be me using it, it would definitely be my kids. Well there you go. Champ Survival Light Stick, a buy from Tonya. What do you know about the Bouqs? What do you know about flowers? Are you a fan of flowers?

Tonya: I love getting flowers.

Jason: Yeah? Well, have you ever ordered flowers online?

Tonya: I have, as gifts, and I love getting them online.

Jason: Excellent, well, I’ve ordered flowers online. I’ve definitely been burned ordering flowers for my mom who lives in Idaho for mother’s day. And her not getting the right bouquet or being delivered late or whatever. There’s hidden shipping charges, there’s crazy upsells, what shows up often doesn’t look like what’s ordered. It’s kind of a pain. That’s a big deal right there. Thebouqs.com is changing the way you order flowers online. That’s thebouqs.com. Bouqs because they took bouquets and basically they simplified them. Bouqs offers roses, lilies, daises and more, all in beautiful, colorful and creative arrangements. Thebouqs.com sends flowers straight from sustainable, eco-friendly farms located on an active volcano in South America. Volcano flowers is what we’re talking about here. Go to the website, take a look at the arrangements and there’s beautiful flowers and then once you find out they’re grown on an active volcano, it just kind of takes it up another level. The South American volcano is 10,000 feet above sea level, which means more sun. More sun means more colors and as far as flowers go, that’s kind of what you’re looking for. These Bouqs are fed by pure volcanic snow melt and mineral rich soil. Bouqs actually cuts your flowers on the day you order them and they’re shipped straight from the farm so you get the freshest Bouqs possible. And all orders are backed by the Bouq’s happiness guarantee. You can also sign up for the bout’s concierge service and arrange for the Bouqs to automatically deliver flowers on birthdays, anniversaries, or just because. Take the reminder out of the equation, which is sometimes what I need to do. Send myself a calendar reminder, like this is the day I need to do something, it’ll do that for you. Best of all the pricing is up front and the checkout process is painless. Your loved ones are going to get beautiful, unique flowers and you’re going to save cash money. So to send your loved ones incredible flowers grown on an active volcano, make sure and let them know that because it’s kind of important, they’re probably going to go “wow” when they hear that. Visit thebouqs.com/twit. Bouqs start at $40, and here’s kind of a cool thing, you can double the number of blooms for just $10 more. So you get twice as many blooms inside your order for just $10 more and you’ll save 15% off your first Bouqs by entering the code TWIT at checkout. Plus get free shipping within the US. Not a bad deal if I do say so myself. That’s thebouqs.com/twit and remember to use the code TWIT to save 15% at checkout. And we thank the Bouqs for their support of Before You Buy and the TWiT network. Now I feel compelled to go ahead and log on and send my wife some flowers. Because you know what? She deserves it.

Tonya: She does.

Jason: And I’ll tell her that Tonya at work says “I agree, your wife needs flowers.” She’ll be like “I don’t care, I just want the flowers.”

Tonya: Then you can set a reminder to send flowers randomly. I love that.

Jason: I love it, I love it. Now I’m going to talk about not a bouquet of flowers here on the show, that I have to review anyways. But a phone. This is the HTC Desire 510. HTC is trying to elevate their efforts in the low to mid-range category right now. For a while they kind of devoted themselves to the hero phones, the upper range. And now they’re kind of getting back into putting out some lower and mid-tier options. And threats what the Desire 510 is all about. The price on this device, it released just a couple of days ago, you can find it on Sprint, and you can find it on some places like Boost Mobile. You’re going to find different prices for this device and that’s a pretty important part of my review. On Sprint, if you go to Sprint, you’re going to find it for $216, but on Amazon you’ll find it for $120 off contract. Boost you can actually get it for $100 flat off contract. So it’s definitely on the lower price range as far as that is concerned. So let’s take a look at the specs here real quick. 4.7in display, 480x854. That’s 208 pixels per inch. So it’s pretty low. We’ll get to that in a second. It’s running a 1.2GH quad core snapdragon 400 processor with 1G ram. It also has 4G storage. And if you have had a smart phone you know that 4G gets eaten up real quick, so keep that in mind. The good news is, underneath this back cover here is a micro SD slot that can store up to 128G of extra storage. So I would say that’s almost a guarantee. If you get this phone you might as well pick up an SD card to throw in there. 5mp camera, 1.3 mp front facing camera. It is running, this particular device especially, this is an LTE capable device. So it’s running on Sprint’s Spark network. And that’s kind of a big key for this device. It’s a low cost entry for LTE speed and connectivity. It’s a 2100 milliamp battery on the back. Again, that is also removable so you can swap that out if you have a backup battery. There’s no NFC on here, its running Android 4.4 with Sense 6 overlay. And if you like HTC Sense, you’re going to get some of the slashes like this is blink feed which is kind of like a lurged kind of combined social network feed so you get everything in one feed. But you’re not going to get all of their extra bells and whistles, I’ll get to that in a second. They also have a bunch of different colors so if you want to customize this you have lots of choices. You have the deep grey, white, this is a navy blue color, and there’s a jet black. Although it kind of looks purple to my eyes, what would you say?

Tonya: I’d say it’s a midnight blue.

Jason: Okay so it’s a blue. I get my blues and purples mixed up sometimes. So just take a look at the design real quick, if you’re familiar with HTC’s recent design language over the past couple of years, you’ll definitely see some of the design notes from the HTC 1, both the M7 and the M8. It has some of that although it’s a mono, one speaker up at the top as opposed to stereo speakers. So maybe a little chunky, but honestly I think the design is one of the strong suits of this device. Especially for such an entry level device, it’s really comfortable and it’s not incredibly heavy and I think that they’ve made some really good choices as far as making a nice comfortable phone for such a low price. The camera, I would say there’s a couple of picture choices in the trickster if you want to show them, but no surprise here, on the lower end devices, regularly what you see are just pictures that just really aren’t that great and it’s hard to tell when you’re looking at it on the display here but really the pictures- when you get them on the computer and blow them up- there’s a lot of kind of blurriness and a blandness to the color. Although Tony is looking pretty awesome right there, got to say. But overall it’s a fixed focus camera. What that means is there is no way to focus. So you get the focus that you get and that results in pretty blurry images. Flowers that were really just fuzzy and blurry, all that kind of stuff. So big surprise here, on a lower end phone, you’re not getting it because it has the best camera in the world so keep that in mind. Performance, I actually thought this performed pretty darn well for a low cost device. Browsing, OS level stuff is pretty smooth and everything. It does break down though when you get to gaming. And I’ll tell you something, its two fold. One, storage limits. With 4 gigs on here, I tried to install one of the games I test on a lot of devices, its Real Racing 3, and I installed it and it ate up the rest of the remaining storage. I could do nothing with the phone because I’d run out of space. Because of one game. Keep that in mind. Also, I was playing RipTide GP2, which is another game I like to do and it involves moving your phone from side to side in order to steer, and the problem with that is the viewing angles on the display- see how much that drops out when I angle. So literally, the screen goes dark when you angle it too much. So keep that in mind. It can play these nicer games but you’re not going to have a great experience doing it, because you can’t see half the time. So we might as well talk about the display really quick, as I said, horrible viewing angles, pretty dull washed out colors. The resolution of the display is low res. You can definitely tell, like, on lower end devices after a little while playing with them, what they kind of cheaped out on a little bit to hit that cost. And here it’s definitely the display and the camera. Low resolution. The screen actually has this crazy, I don’t know, the feel of the screen and how it picks up fingerprints, is way worse than I’m normally used to seeing. So keep that in mind, it got really fuzzy really quick with just a ton of marks and even cleaning it off can be kind of challenging. And a lot of reflections as you can see. And then finally, it is running Sense 6 with some of the extras that you’ve come to know from HTC software. Like Blink Feed like I said. You can also get the dot view case which I don’t have to review, but it’s basically a case that goes over and lets through certain dots to give you kind of like this old school digital read out when it’s in the case. Kind of cool. It doesn’t have boom sound for enhanced audio quality, the speakers pretty alright. There’s a lot of software included on here. So like I said, that 4 gig of space gets eaten up quick. Thankfully you can uninstall some of that stuff so I was able to do that, not a problem. So that is it. What do you think so far?

Tonya: I’m thinking well then who would use this phone? Because it clearly isn’t for pleasure. A lot of people, the only camera they have is in their phone, and if you’re going to get it for a young person because of the cost, they probably would want to play games. So what really comes to mind is, what about for business? Is this something you could offer to your employees at a really low cost? You really don’t want them to be playing games and they’re not supposed to be taking pictures.

Jason: Straight up, out of the box, 3 out of 4 gigs on this particular device, were eaten up by all the other stuff. So you basically have a gig. So I suppose through the enterprise that could be an option, but a: are the people going to want this device? I guess if it’s the only option, it’s the only option. And B: If you have any other things you put on the device for your enterprise, you’re going to quickly run out of space and managing documents might be a challenge. So yes, micro SD card might save the day there, but it’s a really fair question. I think ultimately what this is about is price more than anything. Its I want a smartphone, I don’t have very much money to spend on a smartphone, I have $100 so hey, here’s what you can get for $100. So let’s do this, let’s tackle the pros, here. I think the design was a good tradeoff for a low end device. It’s really kind of comfortable to hold and you have a little bit of color customization. It’s LTE capable, which I think is another one of its strong suits and I think it makes it maybe more enterprise friendly because it’s super-fast when you’re out on the road. And price on some carriers. Though the price is also kind of a con because if you’re on Sprint, $200 unlocked or $220 unlocked for this, is way overboard, I would not recommend that. The cons, the display. I really didn’t like the display at all. The camera of course. I didn’t expect the camera to be too great, but I was confirmed with that. And then of course, the limited storage. I really fluctuated between try and don’t buy on this, only because you have to compare it against similar spaced phones, or similar priced phones, right. if all you have is $100, you want a smartphone that’s reasonably capable, then this might actually be okay, because I understand the peeling back on some of the specs in order to hit $100 out of pocket unlocked for this device. But if you’re on Sprint and you’re thinking about this device and its $220 unlocked to get it, don’t buy it. Ultimately I think try. There are other alternatives, the Moto G for example, is very similar to this device and wins in almost every category. The only thing the Moto G doesn’t have is LTE. So if LTE is your thing, that’s what you need, then this might be one of the few games in town. It’s like a try/ borderline don’t buy. But I think if LTE is important to you, its worth considering.

Tonya: There you have it.

Jason: So there you go. The HTC Desire 510. That is the device. Well that is it. Another episode of Before You Buy. Just had a lot fun hosting the episode this week. Leo will be back next week and I want to thank everybody who reviewed. Tonya Hall, thank you for joining me here at the table. And we had Chad Johnson, Aaron Newcomb, just a lot of fun, so thank you all for joining us. You can always catch the show on our website. If you go to our website at twit.tv/byb. You can subscribe, download. Of course we’re on YouTube as well so search for it there. All of our reviews posted on YouTube individually as well as in the entirety of the show. So just to go YouTube and search for Twit before You Buy. That is it for this week, we’ll see you next week on Before You Buy, and remember, you gotta watch, before you buy!