How's it going guys, I'm ThioJoe and like most of you over the
years, I've definitely bought things that I do not need.
They were completely unnecessary.
So that's what we're going to go over today.
Specifically having to do with tech, gadgets, just things that are
completely overkill, impulse buys probably spent too much on it, but
I'm glad that I have them nonetheless.
And I've got nine of them for this video.
So nine overkill gadgets tools, whatever you want to call it in this video.
So let's get started with number one.
This is going to be the most expensive thing on the list.
This is the Bosch D-Tect 150 wall scanner.
It's essentially a completely overkill stud finder, but it can do obviously
a lot more than just finding studs.
Now, the reason I was inspired to buy this was when I was installing the LG TV.
You may have seen me do a review of, I actually had to find the studs and I have
several stud finders because stud finders are basically the printers of the tool
world, where no matter how much you spend on one, it never exactly works perfectly.
And that's even the case with this.
But hopefully this works a little bit better.
Basically this uses radio signals where you put this against the wall and roll
it against the wall and it will do all sorts of fanciness to figure out what's
behind the wall, not just in terms of a stud, but it also has lots of other
modes that I will never use and are completely unnecessary for what I bought
it such as concrete, wet concrete, deep, concrete in floor heating, drywall
metal, and a signal view mode, which literally just outputs the raw signal
wave forms of what's behind the wall.
So you can cut.
Figure it out for yourself, if you really want to.
And like I mentioned, you basically rolled this thing against the wall
and as you roll past something, it will show up as an object.
And then when you roll back onto it, it'll show you basically
the center of that thing.
And it seems to work pretty well, at least in ideal conditions.
I mean, I would really hope so considering how much it costs.
You can see here, this is an example of the stud right behind the TV.
You basically roll it past, it seems pretty consistent.
It shows right up pretty clearly.
And then it will show you the center of it as you roll over it.
So this is a lot nicer than other stud finders.
That just kind of beep when you're over a stud and you can never really tell if
it's exactly on the center or whatever.
But even this thing is not perfect.
And because it uses radio waves, it is susceptible to certain kinds
of radio signal interference.
And sometimes I've noticed if I get too close to, I guess, smart home
devices, like smart light switches and stuff, even if it's not right next
to it, it'll say strong radio signal detected, and then just turn off.
And then you can't use it around those things, which is kind of annoying.
So.
I still have yet to find a stud finder that truly works perfectly every time.
I don't think such a one exists.
All right.
So up next, we have a completely unnecessarily expensive and overkill
thermometer that you can buy.
This is from what I understand, the kind they use in a lot of
hospitals doctor's offices.
This is the Welch Allen SureTemp Plus 960 model.
It's an oral thermometer.
You're like, why did you spend so much on a fricking thermometer?
I know I asked myself that too, but with the whole coronavirus going on.
You know, there were times where I was feeling paranoid.
I'm like, oh, I feel a little bit off.
Do I have a fever?
And I use one of the in ear thermometers and it would show like
a little bit elevated temperature.
And then I was reading that those axillary I think is the name of those, those
thermometers measure, temperature higher than what the oral thermometer would.
So I was like, you know what, screw it.
I'm just going to get the best, most expensive thermometer you can possibly
buy the kind of use in doctor's offices.
And apparently this is it.
So I spent the money on this and, uh, I mean, it works well and it
reads temperatures really quickly and sure as hell beats the $5, little
digital thermometer I was using an, I honestly would not trust.
And basically how it works is you take the probe out of the little, well
here, and then you stick it into one of the probe covers and then you put
it in your mouth and it just tells you the temperature in a few seconds.
And then there's a little thing that will pop off the plastic
cover when you're done, and then you put it back into the well.
So hopefully with this, I will now be a little bit more certain
about what my true temperature is.
If I'm ever feeling a bit paranoid.
Okay.
This next one I've had for a few years.
I think I mentioned it in the video in the past, and it is a breathalyzer,
a pretty professional one, actually.
And you're thinking, what on earth?
Why do you have a professional breathalyzer, that's what
this whole video is about.
And I don't even remember how I came across this.
I think I was reading about breathalyzers one time, some article popped up and then
I was reading about the different types.
And then I was looking at the difference consumer levels.
And then there was professional levels there, like authorized be used by police.
And this was one on the list.
So I was like, of course, if I'm going to get one.
Completely unnecessary gadgets.
I have to get the professional level one.
So that's what I bought.
And really this is just for fun.
You're having a party.
It's like a, I don't know, gimmick, you could say, oh, how drunk are
you going to take the breathalyzer?
Now, obviously I would not recommend using this as like a challenge.
That would be a terrible idea.
And certainly even if I have one drink, I have a policy, personal
policy that I never drive.
Even after having one drink.
So it's not like I'm saying, oh, use the breathalyzer.
Oh, I'm okay to drive now.
No, that's not anything like that.
If anything, I would use this to convince people if they want to drive after
drinking, no, don't look you're over the legal limit anyway, something like that.
So it can come in handy, uh, either for fun or for practical
uses to help people not to drive.
So, Hey, whatever, it's another gadget I just happened to have.
All right up to number four, we have another device you've
probably never heard of before.
This is a capnometer.
So specifically the it's a capnostream 35.
And the purpose of this it's a medical device basically meant to measure the
amount of CO2 in your exhaled breath.
Yes.
I know this is a completely random list, but still pretty interesting,
and funny thing about this.
This is usually like a multi thousand dollar medical device.
Because healthcare costs, but I got it off eBay from some, medical device liquidation
company for like a couple hundred dollars.
So definitely a heavy discount.
Don't think I spent the full price on this.
Anyway, this was another thing that kind of was inspired by the whole Corona virus.
You know, I am not going to be using this to medically diagnose myself or anything.
I was more reading about, I don't know, oxygen levels.
CO2 levels and stuff like that, and came across the name of this type of device,
which measures all that sort of stuff.
So this has basically an input where you have canulas.
I think they're called where you basically put it in your nose
and then you exhale into it.
And there's a pump that puts it into this.
And we'll tell you the concentration of the exhaled CO2, etCO2, I believe
end-tidal CO2 it's called and also as an input for an oximeter, I believe
it's called it goes on your finger and then it will measure your actual
oxygen concentration in your blood.
So it'll measure your pulse rate, your breathing rate, all sorts of stuff.
So to me, this is all just kind of interesting stuff, you
know, fun fact type of thing.
I don't really intend to use it for any real device.
I don't really find it very practical, but still just a cool thing to have.
All right the next one I have also talked about in previous videos,
this is a really bright flashlight.
I believe it's about 32,500 lumens in one flashlight.
This flashlight was a few hundred dollars and it's the ACE beam X 80 GT.
And you can see all the LEDs in here and I'll try to show in a
cutaway just how bright this thing gets, but it's extremely bright.
I mean, if you looked into this directly for too long, you'd probably would
blind you for a good amount of time.
And one funny thing is you might notice this has an actual handle on it.
And that is because this thing, literally when it's on it's full, maximum
brightness, literally it will get so hot that it will become uncomfortable to hold.
So it literally has a handle on it.
And the batteries in this flashlight are not normal batteries that
you would use like AAA, AA.
These are 18650 batteries, which are very common if you are looking for them, but
you can tell they're absolutely huge.
The 3100 milliamp hours lithium batteries each, and there's four
of them and pretty much this entire housing fits those batteries.
So that's why this is so thick and chunky.
And if I'm not mistaken, it's probably has some sort of temperature sensor in there.
And it'll actually automatically shut off if you leave it on
too long, it gets too hot.
So it doesn't catch on fire or something like that.
And even with these massive batteries in here, I don't
think this will last very long
on full brightness.
I think it's only going to last like a few minutes tops.
So it draws a ton of energy gets very hot.
So this is not exactly a normal everyday flashlight that you would need.
All right, up next number six, we have a sound meter
measures, the loudness of things.
This is a class one sound meter from sper scientific, and there's a couple
of different classes of sound meters.
There's class one and class two class two is a little bit less accurate.
And basically the whole purpose is to just measure the decibel level.
The loudness of things around it.
This one in particular cost about I think, $300.
And I think when I originally bought it, I was looking up different,
uh, earbuds and was reading about ear damage and loudness levels.
And that just kind of got me interested and curious about just
how loud certain earbuds were.
And was I listening to loud, stuff like that?
So of course I went out and bought the most expensive and accurate
sound meter I could possibly.
Which is this one.
And obviously I'm being a little bit sarcastic.
Of course, there are a lot more expensive ones when it comes to
scientific instruments, but I wanted a class one sound device, and I
believe this was actually the one of the cheapest class one sound meters.
Anyway, you can see what this thing, which honestly has the color I can
only describe it as "1930s green", and it has lots of different settings.
So you actually have to choose a range of decibels.
That is like an estimate.
So 30 to 70, 60 to 100 and then 90 to 130, and then there's time weighting
which is going to be fast or slow.
So the fast one is like instantaneous, slow, I think takes an average over
maybe a second or a couple seconds.
There's max hold where it will just
show you and stay at the maximum thing it reads.
And there's also an interesting one frequency weighting.
So apparently there's a few different ways you can interpret sounds.
There's the, A frequency waiting, which kind of mimics the human ear more so where
it cuts off the very high and very low frequencies that the human ear can't hear.
And the C weighted is apparently more accurate at very high decibel
levels, like above a hundred, it kind of more mimics the human ear.
So there's lots of different settings on this and you can see how it works.
It's very simple.
It'll literally just tell you the decibel level of what's around.
So again, this is more of just a curiosity type gadget.
All right number 7, we have a compound microscope.
You'd probably use these in school.
This is a medium range one, basically.
I mean, these things can go into like thousands of dollars.
This one was about 600 bucks.
And the reason it's that expensive is because it has, what's called a
phase contrast kit with it, which basically means it's easier to
see certain biological elements like cells and stuff like that.
And it just has a couple different, uh, extra objective lenses on them.
And just, uh, kind of plate that you can see, this is the phase contrast plate.
And it does something that I forget how it's described basically just
makes things look more contrasty.
And I think this is just kind of a generic microscope brand,
like basically made in China.
I don't think there's it's a super scientific name brand or
anything like that, but still cool.
I believe I used this in one of my joke videos talking about how to increase
your wifi speed or something like that.
So just a cool thing to have.
Ok number eight, we have something that's probably good for you.
Fitness buffs out there.
This is called a dynamometer, and this is a quite professional grade one.
There are some that you can buy on Amazon that are way
cheaper, like probably under $50.
Basically this just measures grip strength specifically.
So you basically just squeeze as hard as you can on this thing.
It'll tell you how hard you're pressing down on it.
And specifically this is a Jamar branded dynamometer.
And I'll try to do a demo right here.
I'll try to do it, but my hands are kind of sweaty.
Sometimes it's hard.
It starts to slip.
I was only able to get about 105 pounds right there.
I wasn't trying exactly hard.
I wasn't trying hard, okay!
But if you look at the documentation that comes with,
it actually comes with a chart.
It'll actually show you the average strength for men and
women for different age groups.
And for my age group, it shows that about 120 pounds.
So I was able to do it at about one 10.
I really have not been working out.
I'm really slacking.
So in the past, I've definitely had it around 120 or a little bit more.
But I'm kind of slacking on it now.
Anyway, the reason I got one is I read that it was good for not just
measuring overall kind of strengthen for your grip, but it's also
possibly a way to test overtraining if you're over-training too much.
And you find one day that your grip strength is extremely weak compared
to normal, then maybe you should take that day off you're just not
recovering well enough stuff like that.
So that's just one reason I thought it'd be good to have.
Anyway finally up to number nine, we have a tech gadget that you may
have seen in my previous videos.
You can actually see it right now.
This is the AXIS gear blind system.
It's basically a electronic blinds motor that will raise
and lower your blinds for you.
And for what it is, it's pretty ludicrously expensive.
It's like $250 normally, I think at the moment it's on
sale for like 150 or something.
The reason I got it was because.
The blinds that I have, they're actually pretty heavy.
They're like blackout blinds and just reaching over the desk to
freaking pull this thing up every single day gets kind of annoying.
So I was like, I wonder if they make a gadget, that'll do it for me.
And they do make several, but apparently this one being so expensive,
it's actually like the best one.
The thing is it's very, very slow from what I understand.
I'm not an engineer, but apparently gear systems, if you want it to be strong,
you need it to be slow and vice versa.
If you want it to be fast, it has to be not so strong.
And considering it's a tiny little gear and it's actually pulling
a deceptively strong amount of weight if you do pull down on it.
So it's pretty slow and it is supposed to tie into smart home devices like
Smart Things from Samsung, but literally it does not work half the time.
You can just press on it, which is usually what I do.
But the smart home connection barely works.
I gotta say, but still it's better than leaning over every and pulling it up.
And yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds, talk about a first world problem.
So yeah, those are nine completely overkill, unnecessary gadgets that
I have accumulated over the years.
And if you're wondering if you should buy any of these,, the answer is
probably almost certainly no, there's probably cheaper alternatives for every
single one that work almost as good.
So you could just get something like that, but despite all that, I
will put links in the description
if you want to specifically check out the things that I've mentioned
in here, if there is a link available for it, of course, if you guys want
to keep watching the next video I'd recommend is a review I did of my
new LG TV that LG provided to me.
So I didn't spend any money on that, but it is nice they gave me one.
So I did a full review of that.
I'll put that link right there if you want to check that out.
So thanks so much for watching guys, and I'll see you in the next video.