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- Yo what's up? MKBHD here.
Welcome back to Dope Tech, I love doing these,
the series where I find the dopest tech
and then share it with you.
So we got a couple things with this one.
First one is these.
These are battery banks.
This is the Shargeek Storm 2 and Storm 2 Slim.
Let's be honest.
Most battery banks are basically the same thing, right?
They're all kind of boring,
but I have gone on to basically replace all
of my functional battery banks in my life with these
because they're the same thing, but cooler.
Maybe transparent tech is having a moment here
in 2022 because we've seen the nothing phone,
the nothing earbuds, and some other transparent stuff.
Logically, why not try it with power banks too?
And it turns out it looks sick.
So basically all power banks inside,
they have gotta have batteries.
They also have a logic board and some ports.
This one does a great job
of being able to see straight inside,
I would say in a tasteful way,
but I also haven't flown with this yet.
And so I kind of wonder what the TSA would think
about this design.
Luckily it's got a little label
that says airline safe on it.
That should do it.
But I think the best part is it's actually
a really good power bank.
So all the ports are on one side here.
The small one, the slim, has one USB A and one USB C,
and it's 20,000 milliamp hours.
That's enough to fully charge a brand new MacBook Air.
And I say that
because it also outputs enough power to do exactly that.
The USB C port here will outport up to 100 watts.
And the best part is there's this little screen here
on the power bank that lights up when it's doing something,
it has all kinds of nerdy information
about every single little thing
that's going on in real time.
So your charging power, wattage,
amperage, temperature, and everything.
It's actually sick.
So yeah, as soon as I plug something in,
I know how much power it's giving or receiving.
I don't know if you remember that cable
I showed that's in the what's in my bag video,
that also showed how much power was going
through it on a tiny screen.
But this is kind of like that
but with any cable you want.
So the bigger version has more ports and it's also bigger
so it has more capacity.
This one is 25,600 milliamp hours,
that will charge a 14 inch MacBook Pro from zero
to 100 in an hour and a half.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is
unless the airlines take them from me,
I'm gonna use these for everything now.
I really like them.
Currently we use it literally to power the Mix Pre3,
my audio device for recording videos.
They have this terrible design where you
need a power bank instead of putting batteries on the back
because it blocks the SD card slot.
Anyway, I'm loving them.
They're both $200, not cheap, but hey, this is Dope Tech.
Okay. So this thing is ridiculous.
So Samsung reached out and they wanted to sponsor
a look at their new Odyssey Ark gaming monitor.
I've seen some pretty crazy monitors in my time
but nothing like this.
So this is a massive 55 inch corner to corner
165 Hertz curved gaming monitor.
Pretty sure it's the only monitor
in the world with that exact spec.
And it has a one millisecond response time.
Plus it's AMD FreeSync Premium Pro certified.
So it's definitely built
for gaming and in every way, this thing is ridiculous.
It basically feels like putting a TV on your desk,
but way more powerful.
And it needs some pretty serious hardware
like this huge foot wide metal stand
and the mount that's attached
to it to hold the whole thing above your desk.
So why would someone get something like this?
What is this capable of?
Well it turns out pretty much everything.
So it plugs in via this box back here
like some other Samsung TVs
and there's four total HDMI 2.1 ports on the box.
So you can give it a bunch of inputs.
And then there's this remote,
looks like a skinny TV remote that comes with it.
And there's also this, which is called the Ark Dial.
It's kind of crazy.
I've never seen anything like this before,
but basically instead of having to reach all the way
around the back of this huge monitor,
you have the controls on this dial
and it connects wirelessly via Bluetooth.
And that's how you get
to your settings and control this monitor.
So you can sit it anywhere you want
at your desk for controls and
both this and the remote have solar panels on them
so you should actually pretty much
never need to charge them, which is super smart.
So this Ark Dial will let you control pretty much everything
about this monitor,
but while you're just using it like a normal monitor,
not even gaming,
just for productivity and stuff like that,
it's still very impressive.
It is a huge monitor.
And at this resolution
it can fit a ton of stuff on the screen,
any app or program that benefits from spreading things
out will never look better than it does on this monitor.
Also the whole thing has a matte anti-glare finish
that cuts down on reflections
or any lights that may be in your living space.
And you can put tons
of things on the screen to your heart's content.
And I feel like because of the curve,
it's not as neck breaking
as something this size would be if it was flat.
So just so you know,
this is called a 1000R curve monitor because the radius
of the circle that this monitor would make
if you extended it all the way around
into a circle is 1000 millimeters.
So the smaller the number, the more pronounced the curve.
And this one curves so much that the upper and
lower corners really do stretch into your peripheral vision.
It just gives you maximum immersion.
And then, as you can imagine, it's incredible for gaming.
So I've gamed on a lot
of nice monitors in the past couple of years
and also tried gaming on TVs in the past.
This isn't quite like either one of those experiences
because the size and the height and the sheer curve
and the image quality,
it's just an amazing setup
for pretty much any game that you throw at it.
Also the speakers built in aren't bad, either.
There's four speakers
at each corner and 2 central woofers.
So just with the monitor's built in speakers
you're getting a Dolby Atmos setup
and it can help with object tracking sound
because the left and right channels are so far apart.
This is a quantum mini LED display at 4K resolution.
So there's legitimately details in the darkest
and brightest parts of scenes in games,
but also Samsung says there is a multi-layer neural network
for upscaling,
but just like playing a game full screen,
obviously it's incredible,
but let's say your neck does get tired.
You're not really so used to turning your head as much
or maybe you're just super used to playing a game
on a smaller screen, like a 24 inch or 27 inch screen.
All right, no problem.
So this Ark Dial lets you pop
into a setting called flex move screen.
You hit that.
And then you can literally drag down the size
of the monitor to whatever size you want it to be.
You want a 30 inch monitor?
You want a 27, you want a 24, 22, whatever,
all of these different sizes are available to you.
It kind of looks crazy tiny,
and you can move it around, maybe put it in the middle
so you're not looking down all the time.
There's your smaller monitor. It's convenient.
Fun fact, this graphic that's behind
whatever your screen would be actually changes based
on what's on your screen.
So it matches the colors.
If it's dark, then it'll be dark.
If it's bright and colorful,
then it'll match the colors.
But probably the most extreme feature of them all,
this whole thing,
this gigantic panel rotates 90 degrees
to create this towering 55 inch diagonal monstrosity
that's literally curved over your head
basically towering over you.
So seeing this monitor in portrait mode is wild
and there is even a couple window management
features to help you make the most of this ridiculous
amount of vertical screen real estate.
Here you can see it mimicking three
27 inch monitors stacked on top of each other,
each with something completely different
going on the screen.
So productivity can be fun.
Each of these windows is the size of an entire monitor.
And if you're feeling bold,
it's actually the world's best shorts or reels
or TikTok monitor where you can truly kick back
and immerse yourself and waste unbelievable amounts of time.
There's actually also a feature called Eclipse Sync
which has 2 lights on the back
of the monitor that will change colors
based on what's in the game to reflect
off the wall for even further immersion.
But let's be honest.
Most of the time,
your eyes are gonna be all over this display all the time.
Now this is Dope Tech.
So we know it's the craziest bleeding edge stuff.
But if you do wanna actually get your hands
on something like this, it'll run $3,500.
And if you wanna justify it,
you could say it's kind of like
having three or four monitors in one.
So yeah, shout out to the Odyssey Ark for that.
That brings me to my third and final item here.
Now, as you can imagine,
the webcam situation with a huge monitor,
with any huge monitor can be pretty crazy,
but also webcams generally are pretty trash.
But then this Insta360 Link webcam started showing
up on my feed actually a lot in the last couple days,
there's a bunch of sponsored videos.
This one clearly isn't sponsored by them
but I did get my hands on it and I wanted
to check it out and it turns out it is really cool
and very impressive for certain groups of people.
So first of all,
if you're just looking for a quality upgrade,
a dedicated webcam will always give you
that over a built in.
So with this one, you're getting a half inch sensor,
4K 30 FPS video, face detect auto focus.
This is easily miles better
than any normal built in webcam into any computer.
It's kind of like the Opal C1,
but they're both like a step below using your literal iPhone
as your webcam with Continuity Camera.
But as you can tell just by looking at it,
it's this little rig here.
It's about more than just the camera quality.
It is all about the features.
So you can see it's got an entire gimbal
built in like someone sawed it off the bottom
of a drone and stuck it onto a webcam.
And the world of motion controlled video camera
just opened up a world of possibilities.
So having a swiveling, tilting,
articulating camera as your webcam
means it can follow you around
and track you around a room no matter where you go.
And it is 1,000% faster and more responsive
than like what we've seen when Apple does
the super ultra wide camera and then does center stage
and crops in.
This just, this is,
I feel like I can walk around the room and it'll follow me.
So this will clearly be pretty sick for streamers
but I think underrated,
it would actually be even better probably
for remote work and remote learning, things like that.
Because continuing along the theme
of this being the smartest webcam I've ever used,
it can obviously use the gimbal to point in any direction.
So it's a really solid desk view because as you can imagine,
it literally just tilts down and points more directly
at your desk and then proceeds to use
sort of extra processing to create a pseudo top-down view
kind of like what Apple did with Continuity Camera.
But then probably the most useful one,
there's these tracker stickers that come with the webcam.
All you have to do is put one on each corner of a whiteboard
and then move the whiteboard somewhere into frame.
And then all you have to do is give it a peace sign
and it'll go into whiteboard mode.
You can see the whiteboard over there behind me.
It's not even like
in the normal frame of view of the webcam.
I'm just gonna give it a piece sign.
It blinks.
It goes into whiteboard mode.
And it sort of locates the whiteboard,
takes a second.
You can see it going over my shoulder there.
That's the whiteboard.
And then it snaps in
and now you are fully on the whiteboard.
Look at this, I'm teaching,
I'm instructing things on the whiteboard
from across the room.
So easy.
Like this is everything Apple Center Stage
ever wanted to be.
Obviously they want you to be able to put your iPad down
and walk around the kitchen and it follows you.
But yeah, this will literally follow you
and complete 360 degree around your laptop.
It's much better.
So yeah, I'll give it another peace sign.
It'll realize it can go back to me, snaps back to me.
And then yeah,
we're just using the webcam like normal again.
But it also has a feature which is when you stop using it,
so I'll stop recording and then you close the app
and it goes to sleep,
after a while it just shuts down
and faces straight down,
which is sort of a privacy feature
which just means it won't be able to look up and at you.
It's nice that a webcam that can turn around
doesn't when you're not using it.
It's a privacy feature.
So yeah, that's gonna easily qualify
for the smartest webcam I've ever tried,
but it's pretty smart
that a camera company, which Insta360 is,
is making a webcam.
So that's why it's also fantastic quality
and everything else that's around it works pretty well.
So yeah, pretty sick.
That's why it's Dope Tech.
So that's it for this one,
a super cool clear battery bank,
an insane 55 inch super curved gaming monitor,
and the smartest web cam that I've ever tried.
I really enjoy doing Dope Tech videos
and I'm glad we're bringing them back.
Kind of surprised we haven't done more.
We'll probably do another one soon.
Any case, thanks for watching this one.
Subscribe to see the next one when it comes out.
And I'll talk to you guys in the next one. Peace.
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