(soft playful music)
- All right.
"Dope Tech". One of my favorite series.
It's the most fun because we get to bring together
a bunch of different things
that all have something in common.
A bit of a theme, if you will.
And the theme for this one
is a little bit different.
All the items we're gonna do in this video
I had rock bottom, super low expectations for.
That's just the way it was,
and they all managed to exceed those expectations
in some way.
It doesn't mean they're good products.
In fact, I don't even recommend buying
any of the things that we talk about in this video,
but they all did manage to clear that ultra-low hurdle.
You'll see what I mean.
So, okay, the first one
is a family friendly household robot.
It's right here.
Astro, say hi.
(Astro chimes) Thanks. Yeah. Okay.
So, this is Amazon's Astro,
and it's a robot.
You'll see what I'm talking about.
So, you might have seen the commercial they put on YouTube
for showing it rolling around and being helpful to people,
bringing people drinks, things like that,
but you might have also, like me,
seen the headlines about it.
Basically, that it's an unmitigated disaster
and it throws itself down flights of stairs.
I honestly don't think I would ever buy an Astro bot
for my own home.
It's basically an Alexa speaker on wheels
with a 10 inch screen,
and then with a camera and a microphone
to act as a security camera.
Yeah, my expectations are down here.
But the funny thing is, we got it. I'll unmute it.
We got Astro, and we started using it,
and it turned out that there were a couple things
that were impressive about it.
Three, to be specific.
The first one is just how impressively confident it is
at maneuvering around.
So, Astro has a huge wheel on either side
that lets it go over bumps and cables
and move around dramatically better
than any Roomba or robot vacuum,
and it's really good.
I mean, you just watch it cut around corners
and cut close to objects.
It never really hits them,
but it seems to run routes
wherever it thinks it should be going really well.
It moves around new objects that were put in place
after it mapped your space,
and it just kind of rolls around confidently.
Honestly, at this point, I kind of wish it had
a vacuum cleaner attachment or something,
because it feels like this could be miles more productive
than any of the actual robot vacuums.
But it is also notoriously bad with glass walls
and weird architectural features.
It actually comes with a set of stickers
to put on any glass wall
so it knows that the wall is there
and it doesn't smash its face into them.
Also, we don't have any stairs in here.
So, yeah.
Anyway, the second thing is literally
just the set of speakers in Astro.
So if you ask it to play music or watch a video or something
and you get through the set up process
and connect your Amazon Music account,
it's kind of like a mini boombox on wheels,
which is kind of a unique product by itself, I guess.
So you can ask it to play videos like an Echo Show.
It'll also try to play videos on its 10 inch screen
so you can watch like a YouTube video with great sound,
but the video will be at ankle height,
so there's that.
It also randomly likes to remind you
that it can act like a bird or a whale,
and then it'll actually do it loudly.
But the last thing just has to do
with the screen they put on this thing, where the face is.
Now, it's not that it's a particularly bright,
or high resolution, or high refresh rate screen,
no, it's got a five megapixel camera on it
that's not amazing.
You know, it's designed to just quickly look around
and recognize people,
but it also gets that wrong all the time, too.
So, what's impressive about the screen?
Well, it sort of acts like a face,
like a human-like character all the time.
It looks at you, it has these expressions.
It's muted right now, so it looks like it's a asleep.
I hit the unmute button,
and it wakes up and it makes these expressions and noises,
and then, when I call it's name
from wherever I am in the room,
it could just be hanging out somewhere,
it's shockingly good
at triangulating where the voice came from
and pointing the face at it,
which doesn't sound that impressive,
but when you think about it, it's kind of amazing.
Look at this. Look.
Hey Astro. (Astro chimes)
How did it? It's so good at that.
Hey Astro. (Astro chimes)
I mean honestly, this isn't particularly useful at all.
I mean, all it's doing is pointing the screen at me,
but it's just something weird
about the way it looks at you,
and it looks right at you every time,
and it gives you some facial expression every time.
It's also typically a blank stare,
so like, if you give it a command it doesn't understand,
it just looks at you.
It doesn't show any error messages.
If you say a command
and it doesn't know what you're talking about,
it just doesn't do anything.
It just looks at you.
There's also sometimes when I'm walking by it
and I haven't been in that room in a while,
and it sort of perks up and looks at you
and like, winks and makes a noise
and says it misses you, which,
it's a thing that it does sometimes,
but I just couldn't get over how good
the triangulation of like,
looking at the voice was super good.
That's dope tech, but, you know,
there's a laundry list of reasons
I would not actually buy this robot.
From all the setup bugs and non-responses
to the terrible facial recognition
mistaking me for other people in the studio,
to the shin-height video calls.
Now, there is a telescope and camera at the top
which will pop out and let you take a higher quality selfie
or check to see if the stove is on
or if something's on the counter,
and you can remote control it
if you're away from the house.
But the max height is 42 inches,
which is still, like, below hip height,
and there's this tough, laggy steering and turning process
that's just not very intuitive or fun at all,
and then the last fun part that you probably saw in the ad
is it would like, bring drinks to people,
so I could send it to another room
and it would grab a drink from me,
but that, of course,
requires someone being in the other room
and then putting a drink in the back
and then being sent back
to where the person initially called it from.
And so, it's just kind of like,
you might as well just have someone
bring you a drink in the first place,
and all of that's not even considering
the slightly uncomfortable reality
of having an Amazon camera and microphone
follow you around your house all the time.
So, but it is kind of cool at some stuff.
Four outta 10.
All right, so, this.
Looks like a normal smartwatch, right?
A little thick maybe, but overall, a pretty classic design.
This is called the Huawei Watch Buds.
Why is it called the Watch Buds, you ask?
Well, okay, so I have a theory about two-in-one devices
that basically, anytime you combine two product categories
into one product,
it has to be worse at something,
at one of those things.
Like when you get
those two-in-one folding laptop-tablet hybrid things.
It's kind of a worse laptop,
because now it has to be thinner
to be able to fold all the way around,
but it's also a worse tablet
because the keyboard is still on the back when you fold it,
and it's kind of awkward.
So anyway, this is a hybrid watch and earbuds.
Watch Buds.
So now, my expectation with this thing is that,
according to my theory,
it's either gonna be worse earbuds,
or a worse smartwatch, or both,
but let me just take a minute to admire the fact
that they actually pulled this off
and made it a real product in the first place,
so this thing, it's by Huawei, it's real,
it's around 550 bucks,
and Huawei knows how to make a good smartwatch,
so this is a pretty premium, large sized watch,
steel, leather strap.
It is kind of heavy,
but it doesn't look too ridiculous on your wrist,
just like a normal, thick, premium smartwatch,
until you hit that neuraled button right there
at the bottom,
and it opens up and reveals your earbuds.
Each one is automatically paired to your phone,
so the second you grab one off this magnetic lid,
it takes over your audio from your phone.
So, okay, real world situation.
You're getting a phone call,
but you're about to go drive somewhere and walk around
so you wanna be hands-free,
so you just pop this open, put one earbud in,
and you're connected to your phone and on the call already.
So yeah, these earbuds are truly mini.
They look tiny in my hands.
Actually, tiny in anybody's hands,
and then there's a clever bit of software trickery.
So, these two buds here are actually basically identical.
There's no right and left.
Instead, they have a magnetic strip all the way around
so you can just slap them back in the lid
in whatever order you want and close it,
not really think about orientation,
and then when you take them out and put them in your ears,
apparently, all it takes is one, two, nod gesture,
and already, it knows which one is the right ear,
which one is the left ear,
and then calibrates your stereo signal accordingly.
That's pretty cool.
So, okay, for the two-in-one question at the beginning,
according to my theory,
these are either a bad set of earbuds,
or a bad smartwatch, or both.
So, which is it?
Well, it's mostly bad earbuds.
Like, impressively enough,
if you're into Huawei smartwatches before,
you already know,
some of the watch GTs have like, a week of battery life.
This watch, connected to your phone
and acting like a normal smartwatch,
can still get three days of battery life,
which, in smartwatch world, is actually still quite fine.
Like, the display is still large and bright,
and nothing about it really feels compromised
other than the fact that maybe it's a little bit heavy,
but I think if you gave this to like, nine outta 10 people,
they would never suspect that there's earbuds inside.
But the earbuds themselves,
that's where they they kind of feel much less premium.
Like, they have active noise cancellation
that barely works,
but like, who cares?
This is much more of a convenience play.
This is not for amazing sound quality.
This is for the like,
I'm about to get on a phone call right now
and I don't wanna have to fumble around and find my earbuds.
They're just always on my wrist at all times.
They have a three hour max battery life
with active noise cancellation on, fine,
but if I was gonna listen to something
or do some audio activity for more than three hours,
I'd probably have a comfortable pair of headphones
to do that with.
So this is just like, pure convenience.
Jump on the phone call,
you'll never lose your earbuds,
or, I mean, I guess you could just lose your whole watch.
In which case, you lost your earbuds, too.
I don't know.
I thought it was a cool idea.
Seven outta 10.
All right, so this last item,
it's called The World's Fastest Shoes.
(sighs) So, I've seen a lot of
last mile transportation fads in my day.
From Segways, to scooters, to hover boards, boosted boards.
This problem has been solved many times.
So when I started seeing these things pop up,
my expectations were very, very low.
But basically, the explanation is
these are basically robotic motorized roller blades.
There's eight roller blades on the bottom of each one.
Put your foot in, and you strap your foot in
with your shoe still on,
and that's how these work.
Then the idea is you just keep walking
like a normal person with your normal stride,
and because of the motors and the wheels,
it'll accelerate the way you walk by up to 250%.
So, for those wondering,
they're claiming it'll have a maximum speed,
once you get going, of about five to seven miles an hour.
But then I saw the site's demo videos,
and I saw Casey Neistat stat's video,
you've probably seen that,
they're called the Shift Moonwalker shoes.
You're supposed to just be able to walk naturally,
and then the motors and the wheels kick in,
and it's a natural acceleration,
and you just start to magically cover more ground
than you normally would if you were just walking,
so I had to try 'em.
Basically, okay, they work as advertised,
meaning that you have to try to walk like normal
and really heel-toe it,
and after a few steps, you start to hear the motors kick in,
and it almost feels
like a controlled rollerblading experience.
Controlled meaning you don't just go as fast
as if you were free rollerblading,
but you are more stable
because you're wearing your normal shoes,
and then you're strapped into these platforms,
and these things are heavy as hell.
So there is a bit of a learning curve,
and you just start to walk around
and you definitely feel ridiculous
when you first learn them
and you start to accelerate more and more quickly.
Turning is really hard
because you can't really turn while that foot is down.
All eight wheels are on the ground,
so you can only turn
with the foot that's in the air before it lands.
All of this, you can get used to over time,
so there's a learning curve,
but what you don't really get from the videos on the site
is just how heavy these things are
and how how loud they are as you're walking.
They're like clomp, clomp, walking around,
and the the whirring of the motors at the same time.
You can hear someone coming from a long way away with these.
So, as I'm using them, I start to think about the question,
which is, would you prefer this over a hover board,
or over an electric skateboard or something,
or just actual roller blades?
And so, the pitch is that the advantage of these
is that you can walk with the normal energy of walking,
and it just sort of effortlessly glides you along
at a faster speed.
Kinda like one of those runways at the airport,
but it's kind of not exactly true
because of how heavy they are
and the extra energy needed to pick up your feet.
But if you get up to the top speed,
I will say the amount of energy you're spending
is less than trying to jog at that speed.
But the entire time, I couldn't get outta my mind,
one of these things, which had its day, the hover board,
is going to be a faster top speed
and less energy than walking,
and if you wanna go up or downstairs or something,
you just get off and just carry it.
Or one of these, an electric skateboard,
something like a boosted board,
has a higher top speed than both of these,
and is also less energy than walking,
and also, you would have to just get off
and carry it up the stairs.
So the advantage of these
would be that you get to keep them on more often,
and that it feels more natural
because of the walking motion.
Theoretically though, you could leave these on
as you go up and down stairs
if you're feeling really bold.
I'll leave you with this, though.
They do charge via USB type C,
so there's a plug in the back of each of them,
and they last five to seven miles of range
on one battery charge.
They are water resistant, and they cost $1,400.
So, five outta 10.
Anyway, I'm glad I got to testing,
'cause I was really curious what they would feel like.
(grunts) Let me know what you think I should test next
on "Dope Tech".
Thanks for watching.
Catch you in the next one.
(Shift Moonwalkers whirring) (chill music)