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Reviews of compute equipment and PC accessories.
This product is sold under several different brand names including Egoway, Zodiac, Runpower etc. For a generic charger it does fine, with about the same charge speed as the original cable. The ends fit together fine. The cable is almost identical to the original, in build quality and design which is both a good and a bad thing.
This A95x is a good value TV box bundle, with fast processing and a nice keyboard. The 1GB ram version will work best for users who plan to watch TV, movies and install limited apps, but as with any TV box I advise spending a little bit more for a 2GB/16GB version as there will be far more space to install apps and better performance overall.
I owned this TV box for about a month before reviewing it. For that month it worked fine, but it suddenly stopped functioning. It turns out that the soldering around the power port had failed, and the power port separated from the board. This is likely due to heat. For this reason, I could not recommend this TV box despite its great performance.
The TL-WDR3500 is one of the least expensive dual-band routers, but it doesn’t sacrifice on speed. The 2.4ghz range is fantastic, but the 5ghz range leaves something to be desired. That being said, this router is perfect for small apartments and has never bogged down even with 10+ devices connected at once. In the month I’ve owned the WDR3500, this router has performed admirably without fail for wired, wireless and USB connections. I would highly recommend it for smaller apartments or when 5ghz range is not a necessity.
I’ve drawn with a half dozen graphics tablets and I can say the Huion H610 is among the better I’ve used. The pen pressure works great, with decent weight variation. The tablet has a modestly rough texture to it, not exactly like drawing on paper but not smooth either. It reminds me of drawing on my old Wacom Intuos 2 in terms of handling – and that’s a good thing. The only parts that were difficult was the driver install.
In a world of shady USB-C connectors, it’s nice to know which cables won’t fry devices. The Blitzwolf cable is fully USB-C spec compliant and is also on Beson Leung‘s recommended cable list (he is a Google engineer that is reviewing 3rd party USB-C cables to inform the public which should be avoided). All of my tests checked out too: the cable successfully negotiates the correct amperage based on the device it is plugged in to and passes CheckR tests. The cable is correctly advertised as a USB 2.0 cable, so it is better for charging than data transfer and it does charge at full speed. Insertion and removal of both ends is smooth but firm and the cable is decent build quality. The red braided length is a good stiffness and the cable ends are a strong aluminium. I would recommend this cable as a spec compliant charging cable that looks quite good.
This keyboard is one of the better feeling (non-mechanical) keyboards I own, with fast and accurate key response. It is similar to a high end laptop keyboard, with a slightly smaller than average key layout and springy feedback. I can type significantly faster with this keyboard then I can with the other wireless keyboards I own due to the response of the keys. Unfortunately the touch pad kind of sucks.
The Gatekeeper is a simple device to lock and unlock a computer based on proximity to the USB receiver. It works well enough.
The Satechi Bluetooth gamepad has a similar look and feel to an Xbox controller. The button action is springy and the response of the triggers is great. I tested the controller with some playstation emulators and it worked great. After mapping the keys in the application it was just like playing the game on a real console.
At work we use a couple Brother laser printers internally for non-important documents, mainly copies of customer invoices and printing e-mails for hard copy backups. This means that we’re going through a toner cartridge every week, and the OEM carts are insanely expensive (more than we spent on the printer). I made the suggestion that we should try some 3rd party / remanufactured carts in order to save a few hundred dollars a month in toner so we gave these a shot. The idea was that even if only 1/3 carts worked we’d still be in the green compared to OEM prices.