- Tech is becoming an expensive hobby.
What's a buddy enthusiast to do?
(angelic choir music)
Shop at the dollar store.
I'm gonna tell you what tech stuff
is okay to buy at the dollar store
and what stuff you definitely wanna get somewhere else.
You don't need to go anywhere else for a sponsor, though.
Storyblocks, save time and money with Storyblocks.
Get studio quality stock video clips
for just a fraction of the cost.
Check it out today at the link below
or at the end of the video.
(upbeat electronic music)
I'm gonna start off with the batteries
because I wanna do this live.
I've already tested these alkalines over here
with my trusty Sega battery killer here
and I've got a set of Home Depot alkalines
that are acting as our control.
Why am specifying alkaline so much?
Because these batteries, well they're brand name
and probably proclaim super heavy duty power,
but they're carbon zinc batteries.
And what are those?
They have similar voltages to alkaline,
but they're a simpler kind of battery
that's non-rechargeable and has about
a third of the energy density.
I am looking forward to seeing
the Game Gear destroy them.
It's a little frustrating.
These come in packs of five,
but this idiot takes six.
Because Game Gear, that's why.
But I will give it a shot.
Aye, okay.
So, I'm gonna leave that there so I can see it
while we keep going.
I expect that this is not gonna last very long.
I bought five pairs of headphones over here
and let's start off with these Electras here.
I got them for $1.25 and they come in this little tube.
These are bad.
They sound like absolute ass.
They have plastic spurs just coming off of them
and they only come with the one set of ear tips.
They have no lows, no mids, and no highs.
Basically, the whole thing is just a fuzzy mess.
They don't even get very loud.
They're uncomfortable, they're impossible to get
out of that stupid packaging,
they're just bad.
Even voice content, like YouTube videos,
sound like they're coming out of a cheap phone speaker.
They also don't have left or right indicators on the stems.
Let's forget these exist and just
move on with our lives.
These could not be any more different.
The cable on these actually feels like
it's made of something quality,
even though it's probably not.
They feel like something that's
a little more premium, you know?
You've got these extra ear tips,
you've got a microphone built in, that's pretty cool,
they don't make a good seal,
but they sound perfectly fine.
They may cost three times as much as those,
those are $1.25, these are $4,
they're just so, so much better.
Reviews do suggest that quality control
is a bit hit or miss.
And given that you can get leigitimately
good sounding earbuds from someone like KZ
for less than $20,
you're probably safer giving the
dollar store earbuds, in general, a pass,
but you could do much worse at a pinch than these Rex's.
They have a V-shaped audio curve,
so they're high on the bass,
the mids are a little bit down,
and then the treble is a little bit high
and what that gives them is a sound signature
that sounds very fun and normal.
I'll roll the rest of the headphones up like so
and they're all cheaply made.
Big surprise, right?
But like they're sharp.
I hurt myself adjusting one of them
because the adjustment mechanisms are so crunchy
and they all sound like they're playing through a pillow,
especially the extra bass one here.
This one almost literally has like
an L-shaped response curve, to my ears anyway,
with no mids or highs to speak of
and the bass is muddy, too.
(upbeat electronic music)
I can't.
I'm trying to go one step.
No.
All of them are uncomfortable and only one of them,
the Vortex here, has any padding at all
and it doesn't help.
Yes, they make noise, but they're all terrible.
(upbeat electronic music)
Just don't buy headphones from the dollar store.
We paid $4 for each of these and I feel cheated.
Next up, we have the Tech One Bluetooth speaker.
Now, you would think that it's gonna be blue, but in fact,
it's green.
(Andy laughing) (Anthony giggling)
I don't really hate it.
It's got the smallest USB cable in existence,
but it's got this little suction cup
that's actually quite good.
And it's supposed to be water-resistant.
I don't know how much I would trust that.
The buttons are horrible.
It's literally just this like membrane here
stretched across it,
but there's tactile switches beneath that,
so you can actually miss the buttons
while pressing the buttons.
I'm pressing right now.
There's nothing being clicked.
I need to move over, there's where the button is.
(button clicking)
It's wonderful.
(speaker beeping)
You turn it on.
It actually does have a lithium ion battery in it.
That's what the USB cable is for.
I might need to read the manual.
That's in French.
- [Video] But today, we are gonna solve all of them at once.
- So, that sounds not great,
but it sounds perfectly fine for like a voice call, maybe,
which this seems to be what it's designed for
with this little call answer button here,
so I don't know if I hate that necessarily.
You could have this hanging next to your shower,
not in your shower.
Again, I wouldn't recommend actually having this in water.
Let's try some "Crab Rave" real quick.
(upbeat electronic music)
So it's crunchy, but it actually doesn't sound too bad.
Like, it's got more bass than you'd expect it to have.
Sounds like just basically a generic laptop speaker.
I certainly don't feel cheated
like I feel with these whatever
you'd call these headphones.
(speaker beeping)
(Anthony laughing)
That was the Windows 3.1 logoff sound.
(electronic chiming)
Now for tools and supplies.
I'll be honest with you right now,
I don't expect these to be unusable.
Will they last forever?
Probably not.
But you're also not paying a whole lot for them.
Stuff like these parts organizers here,
these are pretty cool.
I actually had another one here and
this is totally fine.
You could fit flash drives,
you could fit mounting hardware,
pretty much whatever you need into this thing.
This cost $2.50.
This thing here, this costs, what was it, like $2.
This magnetic parts tray,
these things go for $3 Canadian at the dollar store
whereas like you'd spend $10
getting them in from Amazon.
I don't see any problem with this kind of thing at all.
I found it in like the tools hardware section,
but you can find stuff like this as well
in the kitchen section.
Now, they also had a pack of 60 zip ties for $1.25
and this is something that's technically a
worse value per tie than buying in bulk on Amazon,
but if you don't need like hundreds of them,
you're saving a buck or two.
Now, these aren't very flexible,
but they are made of nylon and they're
thick enough to be sturdy and they're about
the right size for cable management
inside of a PC chassis.
This eight piece pack of hook-and-loop ties, however,
not so much.
Eight isn't a lot and they're squared off
with no anchor.
They do have a little pull tab on them,
but they're too short for bundling
more than a couple of cables together
and too fat to do cable management inside a PC.
What's worse, you can get 100 pack of ties
that are tapered and have an anchor
for less than $10 on Amazon.
These are a pass unless you're desperate.
I also got this two pack of long neck
magnetic screwdrivers for $1 and they look all right.
They feel every bit as cheap as they were,
but the Phillips driver's got a nice point to it
and it's pretty much ideal for
working inside of a computer.
It's probably not gonna stand up to abuse,
but considering how much screwdrivers go for on Amazon,
it'll definitely do as a quick and dirty drive.
The same can sort of be said for
these Precision drivers here.
They'll do the job.
I don't know.
The mechanism, it feels gritty when you turn it.
It's just got this little nut on the end here.
There's all kinds of like burs from
the manufacturing process that are still on here
that are gonna cut up your fingers
and they're not even held in,
like in any way, shape, or form.
If you drop this case and it opens up
or you already had it open,
it's just gonna all go everywhere.
That being said, it does have a decent variety of bits,
so it's not amazing.
Then again, if you don't have an iFixit kit,
maybe this is what you reach for.
Now this flashlight is an interesting case.
On the one hand, it weighs nothing
and it's like really creaky plastic.
On the other, it actually put out more light
than my phone's flash does, like visibly.
You can focus the beam.
Is it worth $1 and three AAA's?
Objectively, I guess so,
but I don't think you'd be in too many situations
where this much light is enough
but your smartphone's isn't.
One thing I think is ridiculously useful
is this here six-in-one pen.
It's a pen, it's a stylus, it's a ruler,
it's a level, and it's even a pocket screwdriver
with two slightly magnetic bits.
Pen just twists out like that, stylus on the back there,
unscrew the stylus and you've got a screwdriver
with two bits, Phillips and flat head,
which is actually super handy.
Legitimately think this is pretty cool.
It's got the ruler, it's got the level.
It's actually pretty cool.
And like for $1, it's super awesome.
They sell these on Amazon for like $1 a piece too,
so this is actually a decent buy.
What else is there in these lovely
bags I got from lttstore.com?
I'm not supposed to talk too much about these,
but they do have these little pockets in them
that actually make it really nice for
keeping things organized.
Two different colors and two different sizes.
Lttstore.com.
I picked up some chargers.
Big Clive I am not, but looking at the guts,
it seems pretty similar to a Poundland charger
he took a look at a few years ago.
I'm not sure that these things
have what it takes to drive two USB ports
simultaneously, though.
Maybe I'm just being a hater.
The car adapter should be fine.
Like, it's a much simpler device, though, again,
I doubt it could reliably run the
two outputs that it claims to have simultaneously.
And while I normally distrust
any kind of power strips or power devices at all
from a dollar store, this brand, from what I can tell,
is actually pretty reputable.
So as long as you're not loading this up
with way more than it can handle.
It says it can do 1,800 and 75 watts.
I don't think you'll have a problem,
but it won't do surge protection.
All it is is copper on the inside,
or brass, even, I think.
Just conductive metal that you're plugging into.
And you know what?
This looks like a job for the...
This looks like a job for the magnetic
screw picker upper?
- [Andy] What?
What?
(Andy laughing)
- That works just fine.
It's actually really nice.
Okay, it's not really nice,
but like that's a nice length for one
and it works just fine.
It's a little bit gritty in the mechanism.
It's not bad for, I think that was actually literally $1.
Of course, batteries aren't the only thing
for powering tech that you can get at the dollar store.
They also have USB cables and HDMI cables, too.
Look at all these.
I got this here transparent one,
I got this here blue one that lights up,
and I have this one that's pretty long
and had a braided cable.
But, of course, we need to know whether or not
these are going to pass the tests
that we're going to throw at them.
That's why I have the cable tester,
although we don't need the cable tester
to see that this one is not gonna pass
because it has no shielding whatsoever
and USB 2.0 requires shielding.
Let's make some room here.
Oh yeah.
Let's try the one that we know won't pass first.
Into the USB type A port and into the micro USB port.
(computer buzzing)
Of course.
If we look at the details on this one, no shielding.
It's probably gonna work, but...
(Anthony sighing)
This one might be prettier, actually.
It does have that clear motif, but it lights up.
So let's see if we can make that happen.
(computer buzzing)
No.
Also, it's like blinking.
Fail.
No shield.
Once again, everything else looks good.
Actually, the ground wire on this guy here
wasn't good either,
but that's working correctly in this one,
so that's better.
Oh well.
It looks like it, again, would probably work,
but why chance it?
Now this guy looks a lot better.
It looks like one of those cables
that you'd want to carry around.
Micro USB in and...
(computer buzzing)
(Andy laughing) (Anthony sighing)
You had high hopes.
So did I, actually.
But again, it doesn't have the shield
and it's failing on all of these in the resistance test,
which yeah.
This one's not so good.
You could even see in the eye here,
it is pretty lopsided.
So, unfortunately, the highest quality looking cable
out of the entire bunch is the lowest quality cable
of the entire bunch.
Even this guy is a little bit better
in terms of how its test results went.
This thing costs $3.50 Canadian,
but it says that it's a high speed with ethernet,
which means that it's gotta be HDMI 1.4 compliant.
Five feet, 3D ready.
So, let's get it out of the package here.
At least it looks like it's gold plated, I guess.
HDMI, high speed with ethernet.
That's what this purports to be.
Moment of truth.
(computer buzzing)
(Andy laughing) (Anthony giggling)
It failed everything.
So these pins are just not connected.
All the shields and the power wires as well.
Holy!
(Anthony laughing)
Oh, ethernet, what happened to you?
Oh no!
Maybe we're pushing it a little bit too hard.
Let's go back to the like HDMI regular speed or something,
the lowest standard of HDMI.
That is just HDMI, just HDMI.
(computer buzzing)
(Anthony giggling)
At least signal integrity looks good this time.
That impedance is just way too high.
Yeah, signal integrity looks okay.
It's probably no surprise that
all of the USB and HDMI cables I picked up
literally failed when I fired up
the total phase tester and the reason why is
none of them are shielded like they're supposed to be,
and in the case of the HDMI cable,
that lack of shielding basically mangles the signal.
It should conform to the spec if it says that it's the spec,
but no.
Now, does that mean it's not gonna work?
Absolutely not.
I mean, it might work fine,
but it also might not be.
This is why we need LTT Labs.
Get subscribed because we're going to have
more updates on that as we continue to build it out.
$100 worth of dollar tech items
is obviously a little more than I thought
there would be here because we ran out of time on Friday
and now here we are actually a week later
because the batteries in the Game Gear
were so bad that they drained me for a week.
(rhythmic drum music)
Here we go.
Let's just talk about the Game Gear first.
Our control, which was the Home Depot batteries,
lasted a little over six hours,
which is more than I expected,
and these alkalines actually lasted
pretty much exactly the same time.
Yeah, that actually is kind of interesting because
those are the E-Circuit branded dollar store batteries.
As for these name brand Panasonic zinc carbon batteries,
they are like an hour and 14 minutes
or something like that.
While I was waiting for my ride on Friday,
it died in my pocket.
That should tell you something about
the difference between zinc carbon and alkaline batteries.
Those batteries are still in there.
So there's still a little bit of charge in there,
but they're mostly used.
Just like Andy.
And me.
Yeah.
What does that leave us with?
It's a yes on most of the tools and supplies;
the parts organizers, one of the pairs of headphones,
and the Bluetooth speaker, the alkaline batteries,
and the USB chargers with asterisks
on both of those last ones.
In the maybe pile, we've got the flashlight,
the Precision drivers, the carbon zinc batteries,
and the hook-and-loop straps.
And in the no pile, we've got literally
all of the other headphones and
all of the USB and HDMI cables,
not that that's a huge surprise to anyone.
Do you guys have any dollar store tech
that you swear by and want us to check out?
Who knows.
Maybe I can convince Linus to give me
the company card for another shipping spree.
I gotta admit, it was actually kind of fun.
Just like our sponsor, Storyblocks.
Thanks to Storyblocks for sponsoring today's video.
Ever needed a quick clip for a video,
but didn't have the capacity to make it for yourself?
Well, Storyblocks helps you bring your stories to life
without sacrifice due to time, budget, or resources.
There's over one million royalty-free assets
for you to choose from,
including 4K and high definition footage,
Adobe templates, music, images,
and a wide array of diverse and inclusive content.
There's subscriptions for every budget,
so you can choose the plan that works for you,
from their unlimited all-access plan
that gives you unlimited video and audio downloads
to their enterprise licensing so your
entire company has access to assets as you need them.
We even use Storyblocks here at Linus Tech Tips
when we need stock footage fast.
Check out Storyblocks today at
storyblocks.com/linustechtips.
Thanks for watching, guys.
This one's really different,
so maybe you go check out our recent video
on why everyone's buying the Logitech G502 Hero.
Spoiler, it turns out it's a great mouse for the price.
Who knew.