- Of all the cool gadgets in Star Trek,
one of the least appreciated is the Universal Translator,
which lets the crew of The Enterprise,
or Voyager or Discovery, talk to pretty much anyone
through their communicators.
(speaks in alien language)
So when I heard there was a real world version
called Travis, I jumped on it faster than you can say,
"Open hailing frequencies."
(upbeat pop music)
I'm a little late to the game on Travis.
First of all, this is the second generation of the product
with voice control and wireless charging
having been added since version one,
which sold over a hundred thousand units by the way.
Second of all, it's not the only product
of its kind on the market.
I saw a competitor called Pocketalk at IFA 2018,
which offers some of the same features
and is priced about the same too.
And I really can't go further without addressing the price.
If you don't get in on the early bird pricing,
you're gonna be paying about $250 for this thing.
On the one hand, that price seems justified.
The hardware is very well built
with a comfortable soft touch coating and a rounded design
that makes holding it up to someone's mouth
a little less intimidating.
The touch interface is Android based,
and once you get used to it,
it actually is pretty easy to use.
You use one button to translate your words
in the outbound direction, and then,
you press the other button to translate the words
of the person you're talking to.
There's Bluetooth on board if you wanna use a headset,
and there's a fairly speaker
if you don't with noise cancellation on the microphones.
I took it to Berlin and Stockholm,
and with fairly light to moderate use,
I got a couple days between charges,
which lives up to the 12 hour use claim.
In short, it does what it says it's gonna do.
You know what else does the same thing,
my smartphone, your smartphone too.
I mean, download Microsoft Translator or Google Translate,
and you get many of the same features for free.
Also, this includes an ability Travis doesn't have.
You can take a picture of something and translate text.
With Travis, my only option was trying to sound out
a Swedish sign by reading it aloud,
which went about as well as you might expect.
I asked Travis's maker about this.
You know, why not just use your phone,
and the company actually had a pretty good answer.
Travis understands more.
Google Translate only lets you talk in 41 languages,
and Microsoft Translator tops out at 11.
Well, Travis can translate 105 languages,
eight of which are stored locally.
The others require a data connection
for which Travis uses either wifi or a 4G SIM card.
Travis uses 16 different translation engines too,
so the translation quality should be better
than the competition as well.
Those are legitimate advantages.
Man, if I had more conversations with native speakers
in my travels, I'd call this a review
instead of just a hands-on video,
but most of my travels take me to places
where English is spoken.
And most of my use cases rely more
on translating text than voice.
Travis is just built for a different kind of person.
Doing more talking, going to more distant destinations,
a customer who's willing to carry a separate device
and pay for a SIM card to power it
if it means having a little more comfort on the go.
The device can also function as a 4G hotspot by the way.
If you meet all those criteria, or for some reason,
you just don't use smartphones
but still need a translator like this,
you might wanna snag Travis at the early bird pricing
while you still can.
I'll drop a link in the description for your convenience.
For everyone else though,
your smartphone is probably enough.
(upbeat pop music)
And this is yet another video recorded on the road,
this time from San Francisco, folks.
As usual, I'll ask your forgiveness
on the hotel room sound quality, and also as usual,
I'll ask you to subscribe to theMrMobile on YouTube
so you don't miss the next video coming very soon.
Until next time, thanks for watching
and stay mobile, my friends.
(upbeat pop music)