- Today I am embarking on a challenge.
I am typing in a very cleverly-worded phrase
into Amazon search, and I have to buy
the first non-sponsored search result I see.
So we need to think about this from the perspective
of giving Amazon enough to work with,
without being too descriptive.
I wanna try to actually trust the Amazon recommendations
to lead me to the promised land.
Okay, so, the first thing I need,
and this is actually something I really want for myself,
is a new tech bag.
Okay, high-quality tech pouch.
Enter button is being pressed, now.
All right, sponsor, sponsor, sponsor.
First actual result, travel gear tech bag organizer!
This actually looks nice.
Wait a minute. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this works.
44.95, what could go wrong?
You know what I need for my pouch?
I need a cheap 5G smartphone!
(groans)
Sponsor, sponsor, and I don't wanna look.
Samsung Galaxy A13, $263!
Look at that chin! What is this, 2017?
Do I have to?
- [Ken] Yes.
- We might not be off to a great start,
but I have confidence that we can bring this back.
I'm feeling bold, I'm feeling adventurous.
Weird electronics.
(screaming)
It's a $5,000 projector!
Whoops, oh, I accidentally exited pay. Oh no!
I accidentally just...
- [Ken] That to our cart real quick.
- I am frightened, terrified, petrified,
of what I'm about to get next.
- [Ken] Austin Evans.
- You want me to type in the words, Austin Evans,
and just buy it?
- Yeah. - What's it,
it's not gonna be on here.
- Oh, no, there's an auto-complete for Austin Evans.
I don't like that.
- Oh, what?
"Steve: A Tale of Ghosts, Death Cults, and Victory Pizza"
by Austin Curtis Evans.
- [Kinsey] You got a competitor.
- Steve is a beer-guzzling monster hunter
who's very good at his job,
until he accidentally kills a pizza guy
that was in the wrong place at the wrong time. (laughing)
Budget gaming keyboard.
- [Ken] Is this just cause
you don't wanna spend a lot of money
on a keyboard? - Yes, it is.
The MageGee!
What the [censored] is a MageGee?
For 30 bucks!
I mean, you know what, for 30 bucks, what could go wrong?
Let's go, MageGee.
I'm not gonna look, I'm not gonna look, I'm not gonna look.
MacBook Air, $224!
Hey, that's actually not bad.
All right, we're- - Funny iPhone case.
- Okay, I'm not sure
if I should be listening to you guys right now.
Are you sabotaging me, or are you trying to help?
- [Kinsey] Trying to help.
- That was a really quiet, "Trying to help."
I don't think I believe that.
- [Kinsey] We're making good content. (laughing)
- Is that a pig butt you can squeeze
on the back of the case?
I will be taking no more suggestions from the group.
I'm gonna drive the ship now.
YouTube camera for YouTubers.
You know, they don't show any photos of the actual,
oh, there, that's it.
Oh, oh, that's not as good.
Well, I'll see you in a moment
after I press the order button
on this terrible, terrible decision.
- You have to run 1,000. - What's up, MKB8K here.
- He has to run. - Today, we're here
with the crispiest tech videos - Oh yeah, okay.
- of all time. (Ken groans)
Excuse me, I've gotta jump in my Tesla real quick.
I'm gonna do a studio tour, maybe a little desk setup.
How do you feel about Android phones? I'm a huge fan.
Frisbee! (blowing air)
(Ken laughing)
I need to become a more well-rounded tech YouTuber.
And the way to do it
is not by buying expensive cameras, oh no.
Here, can you hold this pile of garbage?
I just need to lean into my ABCs of being a tech YouTuber.
To be clear, this is a actual book
that Linus Tech Tip Sebastian wrote himself.
For my little gamers.
A is for arcade.
Do you want to have some fun?
Insert two coins please, player one.
C is for clickbait.
This is what I do to get views on my videos.
Oh wait, no, I'm sorry. That was the wrong page, oops.
T is for tech.
When it comes to tips, I've got a lot.
- [Ken] No, it does not.
No, no way. - It says that, it says that.
It says that. - It does not.
- Thanks to Amazon, we have learned how to be MKBHD.
We've learned how to be Linus Tech Tips himself.
But you know who I wanna be today? Austin Evans.
- [Joanna] (laughing) Sorry.
- What's so funny about Austin Evans?
- [Joanna] (laughing) Nothing.
- So you may not know this about me.
In my downtime, which I have lots of,
I am a prolific novelist,
and have written many acclaimed stories,
such as, "Steve: A Tale of Ghosts, Death Cults,
and Victory Pizza."
Look at that, Austin Evans.
Above the boots were a pair of jeans
that had faded the old-fashioned way,
and a White Snake shirt
that had been picked up at a concert decades ago.
I'm already asleep. This is terrible.
Let's move on to better Amazon items,
'cause I don't remember writing that.
Been on a little bit of an adventure so far,
but the most important part of being a YouTuber
isn't your Red, isn't your expensive server setup,
isn't your questionably-written novels.
Oh no, my friends, it's about making videos.
And you know how I make videos?
With a camcorder.
Wow! If you have giant hands, this is a great grip for it.
We've got a hot shoe, very important.
A cold shoe, technically.
We've got a lens cap, which dangles,
so, nice audio as you're filming.
I will say one thing, though, look at that USB-C port.
Now, that, my friend, is some tech.
Our digital professional microphone.
Welcome.
(camera blings)
- [Ken] Oh, that's nice.
- [Austin] Okay, we are now recording,
using my professional YouTube camera.
So that's Ken.
- Hi.
- [Austin] I'm gonna zoom in on you real quick,
so. - Okay, digitally?
- Nope, that's optical. That's super high quality.
All right, let's see this beautiful image quality.
Okay, we are now recording,
using my professional-
That's not crispy, that's deep-fried.
This is a case, not just for anything.
Oh no, my friends.
It is a butt case. (laughing)
Does anyone have a 14 Pro?
- [Joanna] Yeah.
- Thank you for the donation! - Oh wow, I need a case.
- Well. - Convenient.
- [Austin] Oh yeah, look at that!
It's like a squishy pop socket that feels a little gross.
Try, use it like a pop socket, like with your hand there.
- Oh, you can put your pinky there.
- [Austin] Yeah, you can put your pinky
- Wow. - underneath the butt.
At what point do we need to start censoring this item
is my concern here. - It's cute, though.
- It is cute.
And then you tap. - It has the pig.
Okay, well,
not when you do. - No, don't do that.
Don't do that.
(case rattling)
- Sounds like quality.
For 40 bucks, man, how could I possibly go wrong?
Wow, those are cool! So cool!
They do have USB-C and an aux.
You've got noise-canceling and Bluetooth as a button here.
I mean, these look all right.
For context, I paid $40 for these headphones.
I'm very, very confident
that they're gonna be totally worth my money.
(clears throat)
So, I'm gonna hit the button once, ANC on.
Technically, that is active noise canceling.
The problem is, is that it is incredibly subtle.
Like, it doesn't really cancel much noise.
Like, just putting the headphones on,
like, just passively removes a lot more of the noise.
My bigger concern though,
is that you hear, like, a high-pitched noise.
It's like, it's like, (hums) like the whole time.
Like, it's a little subtle. Eh.
Let's listen to some music,
and it's gonna make me feel a whole lot better about this.
I'm gonna just feel great.
40 bucks, remember, $40.
(crickets chirping)
- [Ken] Oh, Jesus Christ.
- Okay, wow, I'm so happy they don't sound bad,
and I did something right finally!
- [Ken] All right, well, I'll be the judge of that.
- Nope, nope, that's fine.
For 40 bucks, you could do so much worse.
Those might be some of my favorite headphones
that I've ever tried, under like 50 bucks.
Now when I was looking for a cheap 5G smartphone.
Thankfully, Jeffy B came through
with a banger of a recommendation.
All right, inside, we've got ourselves the phone itself.
Okay, so, I'm surprised at how big it is,
my first impression.
It's just, it's so big in my hand.
- That's what she said! (laughs)
- Michael.
- [Austin] Also very green. I actually like this color.
- Green? - That's blue.
- No, that's blue-green.
- Here's a tree. - Uh-huh.
- A lot of green on it.
- Yep, does appear. - Look at your shirt.
That's blue. - That's blue.
This is blue-green.
- [Joanna] (chuckles) No.
- On the back, it looks actually very similar
to the design language that Samsung use
for their higher-end phones.
There's no camera bump or anything.
You just have the three little cameras,
which, I will say,
based on, I think, my memory of the listing,
it's like, only one of these is, like, the main camera.
Then it's like a macro and a depth sensor,
which are essentially useless.
Man, this is not a great LCD.
I would just say, like, I can, on the white screen,
it's gonna be a little hard to see on camera.
I can see, like, little bits of, like, ghosting.
Like, it almost looks like it's an OLED
that's been burned in a little bit.
Oh my God.
If I wanted to get the A13, mind you, this is renewed,
Amazon's selling it for $114 right now.
Am I gonna look on the bright side of the situation,
now that I've spent $260, or $80,
or whatever this thing was, on a device,
which is immediately half the price, and not great?
I'm just gonna spin it.
Why don't we take some photos?
Why don't we see just how great this camera is?
Wow! It's like my hand is right in front of me!
This is incredible!
- [Ken] (chuckling) It is in front of you.
(both laughing)
- That's, the colors
are impeccable. - Flattering, wonderful.
- Ken, would you say that you are a fan of music?
- [Ken] Yeah.
- Would you say that you're a fan of Japanese music?
- [Ken] Yeah, a lot.
- Well, have I got the item for you.
- The Otamatone?
- If you take a look at the front here,
it's Japan's favorite musical toy.
- Yeah.
- But if you look on the back, it's from mywadenki.com.
- Oh!
- See?
If you're not familiar, Ken is the host
of the very successful, Denki YouTube channel.
Denki is Japanese for electric.
- Thank you!
- [Austin] So, do you remember when was the first time
we took a look at an Otamatone?
'Cause it was like episode two or three of mystery tech,
like five years ago.
- [Ken] It was a long time ago.
- Right? - Yeah.
(Ken playing instrument)
- [Joanna] That's so cool! (chuckles)
(Ken continues playing instrument)
- Okay, Bill Clinton, calm down!
- [Joanna] What?
(crew laughing)
- Wow! What a delightful weird tech item from Amazon.com.
(jazzy music)
So when we searched for cheap tech gadget on Amazon,
a way to enjoy my life sounds like a great way of doing it.
Oh, what the, who wants a sleep mask this big?
Bluetooth, music, calling?
Wait, I guess it's got a microphone too,
so you can literally be like, walking around like,
"Yes, yes, yes, the KPIs are great.
Sell the stock."
So we've got a couple of controls on the front.
So we've got volume up, volume down, as well as power.
A little lump here,
for, I'm assuming, where the buttons are,
and maybe a battery?
We've got a female USB-C, so this is kind of,
I'm assuming that you can plug this in and charge it,
and then you just tuck it away
when you don't want it anymore.
And then I do feel, on the side,
part of the reason why the thing is so wide,
is you got yourself two little speakers.
After a long, hard day of pretending to make content,
it's time to take a little nap.
So, I'm gonna go pull up my favorite music lullaby,
"Sea Shanty 2."
You know what, I'm actually gonna say,
for 25 bucks, this is not a bad idea.
So it's relatively comfortable.
It's a little bit annoying
to have these sort of speakers over your ears,
but it's not bad.
Like, it's better than having, like, earbuds in,
and it definitely blocks the light out relatively well.
Like, if I'm trying to just block the world out,
I don't wanna hear things,
I don't wanna, like, see anything,
I actually kinda like this.
This might be the item I am most interested in.
So, a few months ago, we did a video,
buying a bunch of cheap Macs on Amazon.
And I will say, that it did not go particularly well.
So when I type the words, cheap Mac in Amazon,
and let Bezos take the wheel, this is what showed up.
So this is listed as a 2014 base model 11-inch MacBook Air,
which means it's got the Core i5,
only four gigs of RAM, and 128-gig SSD.
I still think this is probably a better move
than actually spending $169
on, like, an HP Stream or something.
But let's take a look, let's take a look.
This was, on the Amazon page, listed as, "Refurbished
but in poor cosmetic condition," right?
So if it's a little scratched up, it's fine,
'cause we saved ourselves like, 20 bucks, 30 bucks,
compared to the regular one.
And importantly, this little yellow sticker says,
"Ready for reuse, full function tested."
Here goes nothing.
(quiet upbeat music)
What? That's in bad cosmetic condition?
Okay. - Still gotta see
what the inside is. (laughs)
- Yeah, I'll take a look at the inside in a second.
So, there is a scratch along the bottom,
but I would say that's very minor.
So this has 100% been dropped, I would say, on this corner.
When I buy a laptop that says,
"in poor cosmetic condition," this is not bad.
But I think the question's gonna be,
what does it look like when we open it up, ready?
And totally fine!
There is one little dent underneath the display,
as well as a smaller one over here,
but that's not really gonna affect anything.
Trackpad is totally fine, keyboard is nicely cleaned.
Let's see if it fires up, though.
That'll be the real question. Let's go!
Jeffy B, my boy, yeah, led me
to the promised land of a cheap Mac.
Unlike last time, in which you took my money,
and gave me a bunch of garbage town stuff.
This actually has, we got USB 3.0,
headphone jack, and MagSafe, as well as another USB 3.0,
and a little Thunderbolt 2 port.
We certainly got lucky, I think,
with the cosmetic condition of this,
but at $170, pretty good.
Oh, interesting! So they didn't categorize this correctly.
It's not a 2014, it's a 2015 MacBook.
So I will say, the battery is only showing up
with 72% charge, which is weird
because it only has 118 cycles, which is not much at all.
But they did claim
that this would have 80% charge or better.
So I'll say, that's a little bit of a concern.
100%, the biggest problem with this device
is the lack of a retina display.
I mean, even, like, a 1080p display is so much more usable,
not only just because of the sharpness
and the contrast and everything,
but also just the simple fact
of you've got so little screen real estate, right?
Like, you can't even multitask that well.
You put two windows side by side, they're tiny.
If you wanna get yourself
into a relatively decent modern Mac, not bad.
I just wish they would've given me a better battery.
Welcome, my friends, to the MageGee,
the best budget gaming keyboard on Amazon, theoretically.
I don't know if I like that noise.
That's not a good keyboard noise.
Let's just keep our minds around the idea, $27.
Oh, they have a bunch of key caps!
That's actually really nice, for 27 bucks.
So they advertise this as a 60% keyboard.
It does have the arrows, though.
You do have the dual-stage feet too.
So you can just pop out the lower ones, or the full foot.
I actually kinda like the key caps
that they've given us, too.
They're very plain-looking,
but I don't think that's really a problem.
All right, gonna give it first try,
see how this keyboard is.
(quiet upbeat music)
73 words per minute on my first try.
So, a few things.
These switches do feel kind of cheap.
There's definitely a little bit of a delay
as you sort of compress the key down.
It doesn't pop up as quickly as I would like.
It's not the most amazing keyboard I've ever tried,
but, I mean, if this was 40 bucks,
I'd still think it's decent.
And at $27, this is legitimately worth picking up.
Just, it's a low-end mechanical keyboard for a reason.
Those switches are not amazing.
So when I searched high-quality tech bag,
this is not quite what I had in mind.
So this is a tech pouch
and electronics organizer in dusty teal.
So they've got a little bit of padding in here.
So you got a bunch of little, like, slots and organizers.
You've got, oh, a bunch of 'em.
You got a little zipper compartment, more slots,
and then a little, like, mesh pouch?
So, it feels good.
This is obviously meant to be living
inside of a backpack or something,
where you can keep everything nice and organized.
But for $45, I'm gonna give this a soft thumbs up.
Obviously, I've gotta put my green phone,
oh, oh, oh, oh, look at that!
That's a good, that's almost a match.
- Wow, actually though. - Almost a match.
- [Joanna] It's still not green.
- It's dusty teal.
As someone who has purchased
a cute game controller or two in my day, the Kinvoca
is about the cutest controller I've ever used.
This was $36, which is certainly cheaper
than, like, a pro controller or something,
but also, that's not, like, super, super cheap.
Look how tiny it is!
Look at my hands on this controller.
I didn't realize how small it was, looking at the listing!
This is clearly for people with little baby hands.
- [Joanna] Or kids.
- Oh, kids exist. I forgot about that.
- You have two of them. - Ya have one.
- It's fine. It looks really cute, though.
You got the ears, you've got your sticks.
Does have USB-C, as well as a sync,
and it does have an aux jack on the bottom.
Let's sync it up, shall we?
- [Ken] Oh, they light up!
- Oh my God, that's cool!
So I will say, it does feel like
there's a little bit of latency.
I dunno if it's just the regular Bluetooth,
but like, I feel like there's like, a half second
between when I do anything and anything actually happens.
There we go! That's what I'm talking 'bout.
Buying this for kids, they're just playing,
like, Mario Kart, or whatever, totally fine.
(upbeat dance music)
(upbeat dance music continues)