- Hey guys, it's popping Jacques Slade here
and back with a,
well, not really an unboxing this time,
this year we're gonna look at some technology.
2017 has been an amazing year
when it comes to technology
from cell phones to augmented reality
to computer processing to virtual reality,
all those things have just expanded
in some amazing ways this year.
So what I wanted to do
was get with my good friend, Austin,
and give you the top five tech gadgets
we figured for the year of 2017.
Let's start will cell phones,
because I figured that's something that everyone has,
and there were a lot of cell phones released this year.
- And there's a lot of good ones,
like the iPhone 10 on the super high end,
there's also a lot of interesting, kind of budget options.
And that's actually kind of where the Pixel comes in.
It's something that's kind of
a little bit more in the middle.
Especially the standard Pixel 2.
This phone, it's $650,
like, aw, that's so expensive.
But when you consider that stuff like the Galaxy Note 8
and the iPhone 10 are $1000,
this doesn't look quite so crazy anymore.
- Not at all.
Now obviously something that we all do with our phones
is take pictures.
So how does this camera stand up to
like the iPhone 10 or the Samsung?
- This is the best camera you can get on a phone,
period, right now.
It is so good.
Now mind you, the iPhone is right up there.
It's not a huge difference,
but I, personally, prefer the Pixel camera.
Like, generally speaking,
it's maybe not always the absolute best
in every possible way at all times,
but it's consistently good.
You can almost always guarantee
that if you pull this out of your pocket,
and you just snap a picture,
it's gonna give you a good image.
It's gonna be something that's reliable.
It's gonna look solid.
Have you ever seen the portrait selfie on this guy?
Then (mumbles) as AR stickers.
So, boom.
- [Jacques] There we go.
- Portrait. - Perfect.
- [Austin] Isn't this cool?
- So that's something that people may not necessarily know.
Now they see the Samsung camera,
and they see the iPhone camera,
and they know they have two cameras,
this one only has one,
but it's still able to do the same sort of portrait mode.
- Essentially they're just using software.
They're using machine learning
to be able to figure out what your face is,
what your jacket is, whatever, you know,
what is you, versus what the background is.
They cut it out, they blur it,
and you get something like that
which looks awesome.
- Yeah, looks really great,
and by comparison, you can get the XL,
which is a little bigger,
but the internals are still the same,
as the regular pixels - Same camera,
same specs.
The big difference is that it's gonna be a bigger screen.
This one looks a little bit, kind of older.
'cause obviously you've got these giant vessels.
Looks like a slightly older phone
than something like that,
but it's a couple hundred bucks cheaper,
and for my money, it's kind of worth it.
- That's number five.
The first one on our list, the Google Pixel 2.
Moving from cell phones,
we have computers.
And now, there are a ton of computers.
There's budget computers,
there's really, really expensive computers.
There's computers that separate,
there's computers that don't separate,
there's laptops, there's just a world of computers
and laptops that released this year.
- I feel like this,
you can describe that with almost everything you just said.
It's almost all of those things.
- Right, this is the Microsoft Surface Book 2,
and this is the new version.
This is the 15 inch version.
And why would you say this one,
is, I would say, your pick of the year?
- Well, there's a lot of interesting stuff it does.
So, I think, sort of the party trick here,
is that if you press a button on the keyboard,
give it half a second,
go click,
and you can just take off the screen
and turn it into a giant 15-inch tablet.
But you're also still getting performance.
I mean, yeah, you're not gonna get any ports
besides a headphone jack here,
but you can still use it.
It's gonna last you a few hours.
But once you actually drop it onto the dock,
it magnetically attaches,
and you get yourself a really powerful laptop.
- It's a full-fledged laptop,
and the table part obviously, when you take it off,
it's not as powerful as Austin said,
but it's a great movie device.
If you want to watch it,
like if you're in bed and you don't want the full laptop,
you can disconnect it and watch it.
Or if you're playing video games,
or say,
you're traveling and you're on a plane,
you can disconnect it and play some video games
on just the tablet
and you don't have to have the full laptop with you,
which I think
is definite benefit. - And my favorite part,
and the most ridiculous thing is that you can use it
like this.
You know, I think the idea is that you can use it
as like a tablet stand kind of thing,
but I just like the idea that
in 2017 you can buy a laptop
that looks like that.
- Like that (laughs), and the benefit of that,
if you're an artist,
you can fold this down,
and they have the Microsoft pen,
and you can draw here using Photoshop,
and it's a full-fledged laptop
even when you take it off,
it's still a full-fledged laptop.
So it can still run all your apps
whether you're doing Photoshop,
or whether you're just watching YouTube videos
or something like that.
- It's powerful too.
You're getting a Core i7 processor,
you're getting a high-end video graphics,
it's got over ten hours of battery life.
They only thing that I kind of don't like about it
is that when you close it up,
it doesn't actually completely fold flat,
so it has a little bit of a lip
because of the way that the hinge attaches,
which makes it a little bit thicker,
a little bit more bulky than other laptops might be.
But it gives you a lot of stuff that you just
can't get elsewhere.
- Right, and you still get all of your ports.
You get USB, you get an SD card slot,
which is a big thing for people that do videos
or if you do photos or anything like that.
You take pictures of your kids,
you can just slide the SD card slot right it,
you don't have to worry about buying any cables
or anything like that.
- No adapters here.
- Let's move on to the next one.
Coming in at number three on the list
for the top gadgets of 2017
is the Google Home.
This comes in two variants.
- Actually three,
there's even the Max now.
- There's the Max, that is true.
They have the big, giant speaker.
They have the Google Home, and the Google Home Mini.
And these are basically
personal assistants.
It's Google at your,
and I don't want to say your fingertips,
at your voice. - At your voice.
- At your beck and call.
- There you go.
- Yeah, yeah,
so and they do literally everything.
They can connect to your smart home,
they can just be your weather device,
they can play music.
So why is Google Home such a big deal
and why does it matter for 2017?
- So this is the original Google Home.
This actually came out at the end of last year,
and it was cool, but like 130 bucks or so.
It's kind of one of those things
where it's interesting,
but it's maybe not the most useful thing in the world
at that price.
But this year, is when they brought out
the Google Home Mini.
Now it's normally 50 bucks,
and that's a pretty decent price,
but right now, it's like $30.
And for that, it sounds good.
It's got a pretty decent speaker.
Maybe not quite as good as this,
but like you said, you can do things
like control lights if you have a smart home set up.
- Right, so we have one of these at home
in our living room, or right in the kitchen,
and like, when we take the kids to school in the morning,
or when you leave in the morning,
it's hey Google, what's the weather like right now?
And it'll literally.
- Right now in Claremont, it's 53 and cloudy.
Today it will be partly cloudy, with a forecasted high
of 58 and a low of 40.
- It's getting cold.
- Definitely getting cold.
And it doesn't stop at the weather.
You can literally ask it anything.
Hey Google, who is Jay Z married to?
- Jay Z has been married to Beyonce since 2008.
- It even gives the date, that's--
- Yeah, that's really, really nice.
So there are a range of topics you can cover.
Basically anything that you would type
into a Google search field,
you can ask the Google Home.
Now the speaker does sound better on the Home,
than it does sound on the mini.
- And the Home Max sounds even better,
but that's $400.
- That's $400.
- I mean, it does the same thing,
but you almost, at that point,
you're just buying a really expensive speaker
that happens to have Google assistant.
It's not quite the same thing as
a small speaker that is mostly there
just to sort of give you information,
kind of do a lot of the assistant stuff.
- You can easily set an alarm,
you're cooking,
you're taking a nap,
all of that stuff.
This is the way to go.
Definitely helps you and,
I would say, makes your day a little bit easier.
- Absolutely.
- Alright now, we talked about cell phones,
we talked about computers,
now we're moving to something that
I didn't know I was going to like as much
as I liked.
But now it's become something that,
you see it a lot more,
and once you start using it,
it just becomes something that just becomes a part
of your everyday life.
And when you don't have it,
you're like, wait, oh,
where did I put those?
- You're really hyping this up.
- Yeah, I'm really hyping this up.
It is the Apple Airpods.
Now these are expensive.
Before we even jump,
these are expensive.
They're $160,
$159 technically.
But, they are amazing.
- These are the first wireless headphones
that are fully wireless, right?
So you can like, take one out,
put it in one ear,
put the other one in the other ear,
there's nothing going between them.
They actually work just as well as normal headphones, right?
They don't sound amazing.
You're not buying these for like, some crazy,
over-the-top audio quality.
What you're getting these for is the simplicity of like,
hey, I'm just gonna throw them in my ears,
completely forget about it,
and they just work,
which is not something you can say
about most blue tooth headphones,
especially the ones
that are actually completely disconnected.
- Right, and just to be total disclosure here,
these work best with Apple products.
- Yes, they will work with other things,
but because the way that they actually attach
to your iCould, they'll sync between your devices,
it works a lot smoother when you have, you know,
like an iPhone or if you have a Mac or anything like that,
it will be able to jump between them easily.
- For battery life, these last for five hours,
but, they have the charging kit,
and you can charge up to five times?
Is it four, five times?
- Four or fives times, yes, something like that.
- Yeah, so you can carry this around,
and it's small enough that literally this can fit
in your pocket or you just throw it in your purse.
- I always think it's like a floss container.
It always looks that to me.
- It does, it does look a lot like a floss container.
Now I've seen these
all over the place, from New York to LA.
You see people using these all the time
and it just seems really, really convenient.
And they also have controls on the ears.
So what are some of the controls you can use?
- So, you can enable Siri, you can you know,
change the track.
And one of the cool things is,
they actually have little sensors built into the ears,
so when you take it out of your ear,
it knows, and it will pause your music.
So it's cool, is your like walking through
or you're at the gym or whatever,
you take that out for a second
and you go, what was that?
Okay, whatever, put it back in,
keeps playing your music.
Like,
they're just simple.
I think the crazy about this is that like,
they just work, and that's so rare for wireless headphones,
especially stuff that's like, untethered.
Sure, if you get like a pair of over ear cans
that, you know, they'll sounds better,
but they're just not gonna be anywhere near as seamless
as just something like this,
where you just pull it out of your pocket,
toss it in,
and plus you just throw this in your pocket
and now you don't have to worry about it.
- Right, if you're happy with the way
that the headphones sound,
and you're,
that came with your phone,
this is definitely, probably a better resource for you,
and you'll learn,
I think you'll really learn to like them.
2017 didn't see a lot of
action in the video game world,
but there were two things that really,
I think, made a big difference
for those that like to game.
One was the Xbox One X,
which is more of a big, giant console,
but the thing that I think really helped move
the culture was,
the Nintendo Switch.
- It's so killer.
- Absolutely - it's such a new,
unique concept.
The idea is, is that if you take off the controllers,
this just looks like any kind of
generic, small, seven inch tablet.
But, the idea that this is now a Nintendo console,
so you're getting stuff like Mario,
you're gonna be getting Pokemon,
you're getting all the cool franchises
that you probably grew up with,
but you're getting it in something that is
just as powerful as something like a Wii U,
but you know, you can actually take it with you.
Play Mario Kart on a train,
on a plane, on a bus, whatever,
and it's the full package.
- As opposed to letting the kid take your iPad
or something like that,
they have this,
which is something that's just a little bit,
I would say a bit more engaging,
and it allows them to play.
- The games are incredible.
- Right, the games are just really great,
and if they have friends,
they can play with friends in the car
'cause you can connect one together
and play with the Joy-Cons
and play a game, or you can pass one Joy-Con
off to another kid and play.
- And that's really cool about it
because you can just pop the Joy-Cons off,
so if you want,
we can say, you know, we set up the switch here,
we can each grab a controller,
we can play Mario Kart together.
Or, if you want you can just take this,
drop it in the dock,
and it's connected to your TV,
and you're using it just like a normal console.
So it really is the best of both worlds.
And that's not something I expected,
and then is I saw it and was like, aw, it's kind of cool
but it's gonna be gimmicky,
it's not gonna work that well.
But it just does.
- This is the gaming system
for people that travel.
I have to travel a lot
because of the business that we're in.
I was in New York last week,
and on the subway,
like there's people just sitting down,
playing Nintendo Switch,
like there's not even people on their phones,
they're on the Nintendo Switch.
Pricing wise,
what's the Nintendo Switch?
- So this guy's gonna run about $300,
so it's about the same price
as something like a PS4, or an Xbox One,
but what you're getting here is something that is
kind of better in some ways.
Sure, it's not going to be quite as powerful,
especially when you look at like the One X
or the PS4 Pro.
It's going to be just as good
as you know, say the Wii U or something.
It's gonna look good.
And a lot of the games actually look better
than they really should considering what it's running on.
- Considering what it is, yeah.
I would say, if you're gonna buy your kid
a gaming system, or if you're looking for something
that was really hot for 2017,
the Nintendo Switch is probably the one.
And to be honest, your kids probably already know
about it.
- They're telling you about it already.
- They're tell you about it already.
So, I just want to say,
thank you guys for watching.
Hope you enjoyed this video.
These are the top five gadgets that I think for 2017,
that really stand out.
There's a lot of stuff that releases every year,
but these five, I think, really made a difference,
and they're impacting people's lives
in a way that's significant.
- Absolutely, yeah.
- Alright, well, I'm Jacques Slade.
- I'm Austin Evans.
- Appreciate you guys watching.
We'll see you soon.
Peace.
(upbeat music)