Before You Buy: Thinkpad Yoga, Narrative Clip, and More! | TWiT.TV

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Coming up on Before You Buy today, we have a really cool new ultrabook, a really interesting camera of sorts, and some really cool new iPhone and tablet accessories. Check it out.

[00:00:15] Speaker B: Netcasts you love from people you trust.

[00:00:23] Speaker C: This is TWIT. Bandwidth for thought. Funding for Before You Buy is brought to you by Cashfly at cachefly.com.

[00:00:35] Speaker A: Hey, everybody. Welcome to Before You Buy. This is TWiT Network's product review show. I'm Shannon Morse, your host of the day. And today we have some really interesting new reviews of your favorite gadgets and accessories for your very cool gadgets that you have at home. First off, we have a really interesting one. I

[00:01:01] Speaker A: have been looking forward to this like crazy. I kind of want to get one of these, but I'm going to wait until I see Brian's review of it. This is the ThinkPad Yoga. Let's go ahead and check it out.

[00:01:11] Speaker D: Brian Burnett from Before You Buy, taking a look at the Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga. The ThinkPad series of laptops are specifically made for business and iconic for being minimalist, matte black, and made with tough materials. The design was originally inspired by a traditional Japanese bento box. The Yoga puts a flip on the Thinkpad design by incorporating a hinge system that not only allows for the screen to fully rotate, but also has a new lift-and-lock

[00:01:37] Speaker D: keyboard that lays flat when the screen is folded into a tablet position. The heavy-duty hinges are very sturdy and never felt flimsy at all. Other than the features I mentioned before, the Yoga is very much like any other Thinkpad. Spill-resistant and backlit keyboard, the infamous red nub trackpoint, a buttonless trackpad, and 3.0 USB drives on either side of the Yoga. Also included is an

[00:02:02] Speaker D: SD card reader, a mini HDMI, a volume rocker, a rotation lock for when you put the Yoga into tablet mode, and a pressure-sensitive stylus. Inside the magnesium alloy frame of the Yoga is an Intel i5 running at 2.3 GHz, 4 GB of RAM, along with a 120 GB SSD. This keeps Windows 8 feeling pretty snappy and responsive. Battery

[00:02:27] Speaker D: life was adequate, with mine finally running down at about the 7-hour mark after doing some web browsing, watching videos, and some light gaming. Graphics are handled by Intel's HD 4400, and it's paired to a 12.5-inch 1920x1080 screen. It's multi-touch, and in this configuration, the Yoga is priced at $1,399. And

[00:02:53] Speaker D: to answer the question I'm sure all of our audience is asking, will it play Goat Simulator?

[00:02:58] Speaker E: Yes.

[00:02:59] Speaker B: Yes, it will.

[00:03:00] Speaker D: Not great, but well enough for your goat to get into some mischief. The Gorilla Glass display works well in tablet mode and allows you to take full advantage of Windows 8's gesture features. The screen has a matte finish, which helps with glare, and when using the pen, gives more of a paperish feel to it. The pen input is very good and pressure sensitive due to the Wacom Active Digitizer. The speakers that emanate from underneath the keyboard are what

[00:03:25] Speaker D: you'd expect from an ultrabook. They're okay, and in a small room by yourself they're fine, but one thing to note is when using the Yoga in tablet mode, the volume is definitely dampened because it's facing away from you. For pros on the Yoga, the first pro is in the name. As a convertible, it gives you the flexibility of how you'd like to use the hardware. With the new lift-and-lock keyboard design, the Yoga feels a lot more solid when holding as a tablet. The

[00:03:50] Speaker D: 10-point multitouch display is very responsive, includes a stylus, and in my opinion, touch is a must-have when you're trying to use Windows 8. The i5 processor matched with the SSD makes boot-up last only seconds and loading apps a snap. As for cons, as an ultrabook, the Yoga is slightly on the heavy side, which as a laptop is hardly noticeable at all, but when using the Yoga as a tablet, The weight is

[00:04:15] Speaker D: more apparent. The touchpad itself is very good, so why would it be listed as a con? By default, Windows 8 gestures are enabled, which on a non-touch laptop might be helpful, but on the Yoga, which has a great touchscreen, the gestures are just too sensitive. In normal use, I'd find myself accidentally swiping from left or the top, making typing out this review very frustrating to say the least. So here's a quick tip.

[00:04:41] Speaker D: If you want to get rid of that, go to Control Panel, Hardware and Sound, Devices and Printers, right-click on the Lenovo PC, click the mouse properties, and under the ThinkPad tab, uncheck Enable Gestures. This made getting around on the ThinkPad much, much better. Finally, the last con is price. At $1,399, which by no means is outrageous for this hardware, adds up for an ultrabook that isn't

[00:05:07] Speaker D: quite great as a laptop or a tablet. In the end, the Yoga is a compromise. A very good compromise, but like most things in life, being a jack-of-all-trades means you're master of none. I thoroughly enjoyed my time using the Yoga. I don't personally own a tablet because I need the use of a keyboard for most things, but I do own an ultrabook because I want something light and tough and that I can carry back and forth to work. For most

[00:05:32] Speaker D: people, the Yoga could be a compromise worth buying, especially for someone who wants a PC with pen input. As for looks, I personally like the subdued nature of the Thinkpad design, and the most flashy aspect of it is the red eye that lights up in the Thinkpad logo. So is the Thinkpad Yoga a buy, try, or don't buy? If you need a work laptop that has pen input, multitouch, the Yoga is a buy. But if you're in the market for just a

[00:05:57] Speaker D: good ultrabook, there are other options with sharper screens and better battery life for a similar price. And if you're in the market for a tablet, there's always the Surface Pro 2 if you're looking for something smaller. So, in the end, I'd have to give the Yoga a try. I'm Brian Burnett from Before You Buy, and thanks for watching.

[00:06:15] Speaker A: Oh, hey, Brian.

[00:06:16] Speaker F: Oh, hey there, Shannon.

[00:06:16] Speaker A: So, you like it?

[00:06:18] Speaker D: Uh, yeah, I like it a lot. I don't think it would be perfect for everybody, but, you know, I had fun drawing on it.

[00:06:24] Speaker A: I think it's gorgeous. I really like that you were able to draw on it. I love the fact that the keys just kind of go into it whenever you flip it over like that. That's a really nice additional feature with it. So that was the ThinkPad Yoga from Brian Burnett. And where can people find you if they're interested?

[00:06:39] Speaker D: You can find me every Thursday on Know How with Padre.

[00:06:42] Speaker E: Yay!

[00:06:43] Speaker A: Or right here TDing.

[00:06:43] Speaker D: Or here on BYB, yeah, TDing usually.

[00:06:46] Speaker A: What's your Twitter account?

[00:06:47] Speaker D: @CrankyHippo.

[00:06:48] Speaker C: Yay!

[00:06:49] Speaker A: Well, thank you so much, Brian. That was wonderful. Of course, if you guys have a gadget that you want us to review, you can always email us. It goes straight over to Karsten, our producer, as well as myself. That is byb@twit.tv. All right, let's go ahead and take it on to our next review. This one comes from Chad, our very own Minecraft guy. So he's reviewing this brand new camera from Sony. It's called the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-QX100.

[00:07:17] Speaker A: So brand new one. We did review the DX or QX10 a little while back. That one was a don't buy, but I want to find out if this one's any better, so let's check it out.

[00:07:28] Speaker F: Hello, my name is Chad. I'm with TWiT and Before You Buy, and today I'm reviewing the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-QX100. The idea behind this is basically it's just a lens that you add to the front of your smartphone, and you use it with an app to take high-quality photos with a nice lens and optical zoom that, of course, your phone can't pack

[00:07:53] Speaker F: into such a slim area. Going around what the hardware looks like, on the top you have an on/off You also have an area for NFC. We'll get to that in a little bit. You have your toward and wide slider, your shutter button, which you can half-press to focus and then full-press to take a photo. There's a small speaker in there so you can hear that happen. This is

[00:08:19] Speaker F: talking about its Carl Zeiss lens. Woohoo! On the bottom you do have a tripod mount. On the other side you have a release That's it for the back. Along the front, you have a servo-controlled ring so you can zoom in and out. The way that you would use this normally with a smartphone is pull down the little feet, drop your phone into it, and now you kind of have a little camera with basically any smartphone. I'm using

[00:08:44] Speaker F: the Nexus 5 here, but it fits just about any phone. And you can pair it if you're using an Android phone by just holding the phone up to the NFC area of the camera, and eventually the magic of NFC will work. It's using Wi-Fi Direct to connect directly to the camera. Once it's paired, you'll be able to actually see a live view. You can see

[00:09:09] Speaker F: there's a little bit of chunkiness every once in a while. Sometimes the frame rate goes down, and sometimes it's really, like, impressively smooth. But sometimes it doesn't do that, as you can kind of see right now. But then other times, it's really amazing at how fluid it is to use this. If you take a photo with it, pretty simple, I just took a photo using the on-camera

[00:09:35] Speaker F: button, it will detect that you took a photo, and then using Wi-Fi Direct, it will download that photo to your phone. It does have a slot for an SD card. So right now I have a 32 GB SD card inside of the camera, and that means that you're able to take multiple photos at once, and it should save them to the SD card and then try to fetch them over

[00:10:00] Speaker F: to your phone as fast as it can. In terms of battery life, it's actually a pretty big downside. The battery life of the camera doesn't last too long, only a few hours from what I found. The companion app, at least on Android, is really, really— I would almost say buggy in how much battery it drains. And then it just said that it force quit. Okay, let's go down the spec sheet.

[00:10:26] Speaker F: Effective 20 megapixels. You have a 1-inch sensor size. It shoots in JPEG format, and its focal length is 28mm to 100mm. Let's talk a little bit about video. This also does take video, but with a lot of caveats. One, you have to have a memory card, and then also when you're shooting video, there's no way to tap to focus. You can tap to focus when you're

[00:10:51] Speaker F: using the app on your phone when you're taking photos, but that's just not an option when you're taking video. So let me go ahead and get to the pros and cons. On the pros, this is going to take much better photos than your camera. It does connect with any camera, and I do like the wireless transfer of files. On the cons, there's

[00:11:16] Speaker F: no flash on this, so you're gonna give that up. I thought that the app needs a lot of work, and less than stellar video performance without tapping to focus and needing a memory card to take video. MSRP is coming in at around $500. You can get it now. It's available now at Amazon and all over the place. Buy, try, don't buy for the CyberShot DSC-QX100.

[00:11:44] Speaker F: I'm going to say don't buy. I feel like there are some revisions that are needed for this. It's very slow transfer time. Its video just wasn't really that astounding. But the dream of having a lens that you can just attach to the smartphone that you already have, use the smartphone as a monitor, for this lens. It seems like they're very, very close, but not there yet. I wouldn't quite suggest

[00:12:10] Speaker F: people buy this product just yet. Maybe revision 2. Thanks so much for watching. I'm Chad Johnson for TWiT.TV and Before You Buy. See you next time.

[00:12:19] Speaker A: All right, we're over here now, and that was Chad with the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-QX100.

[00:12:27] Speaker B: Good work, Chad.

[00:12:28] Speaker A: Good work, Chad. Now, Sarah Lane, hi! Hi!

[00:12:31] Speaker B: How are you? I'm good. How are you?

[00:12:33] Speaker A: If you guys don't know already, Sarah Lane is in charge of one of the coolest and one of my favorite shows on the network. It's called iPad Today.

[00:12:40] Speaker B: It's a good one!

[00:12:41] Speaker D: Yes.

[00:12:41] Speaker A: Oh good, thanks! That one and Social Hour. Yeah, I very much enjoy your shows.

[00:12:44] Speaker B: Thank you so much.

[00:12:45] Speaker A: And Tech News Tonight.

[00:12:47] Speaker B: That's right. Yeah, in fact, that's actually why I'm sitting here right now, because, um, anybody who's watching, uh, the livestream, uh, every day at 4 PM Pacific, we do, uh, An afternoon edition of the stories that TWiT thinks is interesting for our audience.

[00:13:01] Speaker A: Yes, and you do an excellent job with that show.

[00:13:03] Speaker B: Well, you're the nicest.

[00:13:04] Speaker A: Thanks. Now you have a bunch of different things going on here, but today we are checking out the Une Bobine, correct?

[00:13:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's a French term for something cool. It looks cool. So here's what's going on. Karsten, producer for Before You Buy, was like, Hey, Sarah, you wanna check out this? It's right up your alley. And I was like, what is it?

[00:13:28] Speaker A: It's right up your alley. What? What is it? How does this work?

[00:13:31] Speaker B: You know what it is?

[00:13:32] Speaker A: Okay, so it's a stand.

[00:13:33] Speaker B: It's a stand. It's a USB charging iPhone stand.

[00:13:39] Speaker A: So last time I had one of these in my car, it basically went like this. Well, that's all it did.

[00:13:45] Speaker B: I'm— I don't know. I mean, check this out. Take a— take a Take a feel here. Because the whole idea is—

[00:13:51] Speaker A: It's really sturdy.

[00:13:52] Speaker B: If you look at the— it's a company called Fuse Chicken, actually, that made the Unbobin. And yeah, when you have a little fun with it, you can almost make a bunch of ridiculous shapes for it. But really, it's meant to do exactly what you're doing right now.

[00:14:07] Speaker A: It seems to work just fine.

[00:14:08] Speaker E: Yeah.

[00:14:09] Speaker B: If I've got a phone and I'm using it as some sort of like a second screen type thing, you know, and I'm sitting at my laptop all day or something else that requires some USB power. And I go ahead and plug it in. Well, I can certainly read that better than I could read a flat iPhone.

[00:14:22] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely.

[00:14:23] Speaker B: So it's not doing anything too revolutionary, but it's kinda cool. And yes, you can get a little creative because if you're not, you know, in a windy spot and you've kinda got, you know, a cool situation, you can have your iPhone up sort of high. Of course, I don't actually have it plugged in right now because I don't want it to sync, so it's like, bleh. But you have But you have to be kind of— you kind of have to be careful about it. At first I was like, ooh, maybe

[00:14:48] Speaker B: I could create like a, you know, it's like an animal balloon or something like a clown would. You can't actually make anything too special with this, but it is kind of a novel idea. And you know what this actually was? It started as a Kickstarter in 2012. I think they wanted, you know, actually I have it up here because I want to get it right. They wanted just under 10 grand. Oh, that's not bad at all. Now if somebody said I want 10 grand for this, I'd be like, you're nuts. They got $212,000.

[00:15:15] Speaker F: Wow.

[00:15:16] Speaker B: So this was successfully funded, uh, the summer of 2012. So this is actually— it's a real product now. They have, um, because of course you've got the 9, uh, the 8-pin connector for, you know, basically Lightning.

[00:15:28] Speaker A: The newest one.

[00:15:29] Speaker B: Yeah, but then, uh, if you've got an iPhone 4 or 4S or even a micro USB version, uh, they've got a couple others too.

[00:15:38] Speaker A: I should get one for my Nexus.

[00:15:39] Speaker B: If you've got a cigarette lighter in your car and you want to be able to charge using the car accessory, you can do that as well. So there's actually kind of a nice array of products. This particular one, which is the one that I would use for my 5S, is $35. It's $34.95.

[00:15:55] Speaker A: That's it? Wow. I was kind of expecting it to be more. I'm glad you're impressed. I was expecting it to be more because a lot of times you see these really interesting accessories that are a little different and they charge like $50+.

[00:16:06] Speaker B: I actually feel— yeah, at first I sort of laughed at this.

[00:16:08] Speaker A: So I feel like it should be around $100.

[00:16:09] Speaker B: Is this really an accessory? But I actually think it's so simple that it's That's kinda genius.

[00:16:14] Speaker A: Now, does it charge?

[00:16:14] Speaker B: I see why they got so much money.

[00:16:16] Speaker A: I assume it does charge. Does it work really nice and fast like a regular charger?

[00:16:20] Speaker B: Any— it's, it's no different than any other power supply that I would connect via USB. Cool.

[00:16:27] Speaker A: All right.

[00:16:27] Speaker B: So yeah, for $35, you've got something that's definitely gonna be a conversation piece, and you can make it your own with some limitations.

[00:16:35] Speaker A: So your pros and cons.

[00:16:36] Speaker B: Pros, I think that it is I just wish I would have thought of it. Like, why didn't I make that Kickstarter? Obviously people have better ideas than I do. The pro is that I think it's simple. It's obviously very portable because you can kind of like, you know.

[00:16:51] Speaker A: Oh yeah.

[00:16:51] Speaker B: It's like, now, okay, well, oh yeah, it almost disappears on itself type thing. You know, it's easy to pack up and take wherever. And you can make it a variety of different shapes. Cons, it's somewhat limited. If you want your iPhone to stand up, then that's great, but it's not as if you can really get too creative with the design of it. So I would say if you are looking for— if

[00:17:17] Speaker B: you're looking for any sort of a charger that can give you some vertical ability, absolutely buy it.

[00:17:22] Speaker A: Excellent. Thank you so much, Sarah.

[00:17:25] Speaker B: Well, you're so welcome, Shannon.

[00:17:26] Speaker A: And that was the Unbobin if you guys are interested in checking it out yourselves. And you can find Sarah Lane here at TWiT.TV.

[00:17:34] Speaker B: I never leave this seat.

[00:17:36] Speaker E: Ever.

[00:17:36] Speaker A: You sleep there.

[00:17:37] Speaker B: Yeah, it's getting weird.

[00:17:39] Speaker A: You eat there. You cook meals. Look at all my—

[00:17:42] Speaker B: this is where I eat my candy.

[00:17:45] Speaker A: All right. Well, thank you, Sarah.

[00:17:46] Speaker B: Thanks, Shannon.

[00:17:47] Speaker A: We have an interesting product, actually an accessory roundup from Father Robert Balazs coming up right now. I was pretty interested in checking this out as well. Because I have several accessories at home and I need a place to keep them all. So Padre, tell me, should I buy, try, or don't buy these?

[00:18:04] Speaker E: I'm Father Robert Balasare with the TWiT.TV network, and I'm taking a look at some power and connectivity options from Connexx. It's the DoubleUp, the DualRole, and the Sydney. Now the DoubleUp, as the name may suggest, is a dual USB charger. There's a lot of these on the market, but where this differs is that it has 2 full 2.1 amp fast charging ports. Kinda like that. Now it is a travel charger, so it has things like the retractable

[00:18:30] Speaker E: prongs so that you can get it nice and neat and ready to, to go into your travel bag. And it also has these little lights here which will turn green if you're using an iOS device, if your iPhone hits 90% charge or your iPad hits 98% charge. It's a nice way to tell at a glance if your device is ready to go. Now I do, on the pro side, like the 2.1 I like the ability to fast charge multiple devices, 2 tablets, 2 phones,

[00:18:55] Speaker E: or any combination. I also really like the fact that it is travel size. It's compact, it feels like it's gonna last. Now on the con side, well, there's the price. It's $30, which is actually quite a bit. It's, it's more than 50% more than what I would expect from a device of this type. And also the lights, the, the really cool feature, only work if you're using iOS. This is the Connexx Dual Role, and

[00:19:20] Speaker E: again, as the name may imply, it has 2 roles: USB adapter and USB 3.0 hub. If you travel with a MacBook Air or an Ultrabook, you know that ports are at a premium. So why would you waste one of those ports with a USB wired adapter, which is what I always do whenever I'm traveling and want to plug in? Well, this means you don't have to compromise. Go ahead and plug in this one plug into a USB 3.0 port and you get 3 additional

[00:19:45] Speaker E: ports plus your wired adapter. Now this is designed for travel because this cable is attached. It also tucks in so that you can get again this nice svelte package. They've also included a 5-volt USB port just in case you want a full-powered USB hub. Now on the pro side, I'd have to say that I love the fact that it's OS agnostic. This will work with PC, with Mac, with Linux. I also like the fact that it is so

[00:20:10] Speaker E: well designed for travel and that it's On the con side, well, I really can't think of anything. This is sort of the perfect design for a traveler. It's nice and light and it travels well. So, yeah, there's that. Now this big boy is the Sydney. As you can see, it has sort of this internal compartment divided by this clear poly— plexiglass thing. Well, it allows you to put up to 3 tablets

[00:20:36] Speaker E: into the stand. 1, 2, 3. And the one in the front can be used on the stand as it's being charged. On the back, it has a 4-port full-power USB charger. That's 2.1 amps times 4, which means you can fast charge 4 devices at the same time— tablets, phones, again, any combination that you want. They also include this cable management loop which allows you to get your cables out of the

[00:21:01] Speaker E: way, and combined with the notch at the top, give the stand a nice neat Look. Now, on the pro side, I'd have to say that it does work really well. It's, it's a nice command center for all your devices to put them in one place. Also, I really like the 4 2.1 amp charging slots. It really lets me charge everything I want at the same time. On the con side, the cable management is a little on the useless side. Wasn't

[00:21:26] Speaker E: really well designed. It looks good, but it doesn't function all that great unless you have 4 exactly identical cables— same, same type, same material, same length, you're gonna get sort of a sprawl. It's not— no, it's not a good look. The other con is the price. Well, it's $100 listed on the Connex website. You can find it as low as $65 online, say on Amazon. I don't

[00:21:51] Speaker E: like that range. At $100, it's too expensive. $65, it's just about right, but well, there you go. So the big question: buy, try, don't buy? Well, for the Sydney, I'd have to give it a solid try, almost a buy. If you could get it for $65, it definitely is a buy. If you've got a lot of tablets, if you've got a lot of phones, if you've got a mess on your desk, this is a nice way to get organized. For the

[00:22:17] Speaker E: Double Up, I'd have to give this a try, almost a don't buy, just because there are so many other products out there that do the same thing for less money. And, uh, well, this really only helps you if you've got an iOS device. However, for the Kinect's dual role, this without a doubt is a buy. If you're a traveler, this is the device that you should be traveling with. I'm Father Robert Balisare with

[00:22:43] Speaker E: Before You Buy.

[00:22:44] Speaker A: And that was Sarah Lane and Father Robert Balisare with their products. Those were very, very cool. Thank you, guys. And of course, if you want to check out all the different reviews online, maybe you wanted to share one with your friends. You can check them out over at youtube.com/beforyoubuy. We made sure to split them all up for you so you can find each and every review very, very easily. Now, our last review of the day comes from, of course, the

[00:23:09] Speaker A: one and only Leo Laporte.

[00:23:11] Speaker E: Hello.

[00:23:11] Speaker A: Hello, Leo. How are you?

[00:23:13] Speaker C: I'm good. Another Kickstarter project.

[00:23:14] Speaker F: Yeah.

[00:23:14] Speaker C: Like Sarah's.

[00:23:15] Speaker A: So you've been wearing this weird-looking thing on your shirt all day.

[00:23:19] Speaker E: All day?

[00:23:20] Speaker C: For the last 4 weeks.

[00:23:21] Speaker F: For 4 weeks?

[00:23:22] Speaker C: So this, you just didn't notice, which is probably a good thing. This can get you beat up in the Mission District. This is— was— it was a Kickstarter project in the fall of 2012, at the time called Memoto, a Swedish company. By the time they were ready to ship these in late 2013, early 2014, they were renamed to Narrative. This is the Narrative Clip. getnarrative.com. $279. What do you think that is when you

[00:23:47] Speaker C: look at it?

[00:23:47] Speaker A: Does it talk to you? It must tell— there's a lens on it.

[00:23:51] Speaker D: Well, you know what it is.

[00:23:51] Speaker C: Yeah, you kind of know what it is. You're hoping that the people at the gym who see you wear this think it's a pedometer, because it is a camera.

[00:23:57] Speaker A: It looks kind of like one.

[00:23:59] Speaker C: Yeah. And if they don't look too closely, they may not see the lens. That's a 5-megapixel camera with a 70-degree angle. So it's really— it's not super wide. It is— in fact, it's a little bit vaguely telephoto. And here's the thing. It has its own memory, and it takes pictures every 30 seconds, just forever, always.

[00:24:20] Speaker A: Interesting. So it kind of— it seems like it's working out to be your own personal diary of sorts.

[00:24:26] Speaker C: It's something they call lifelogging. And it's actually— the idea's been around for many years. years, going back to Steve Mann at MIT, who was, you know, wearing the thing.

[00:24:33] Speaker A: Oh, yes.

[00:24:34] Speaker C: And Gordon Bell, whose wife Gwen, founder of the Computer History Museum down in Mountain View, has Alzheimer's. And Gordon had been thinking about this kind of thing. He even wore a camera around his neck for a long time as a Microsoft fellow. But I think because of Gwen, he became interested in the idea that this might help you with your memory.

[00:24:56] Speaker B: Wow.

[00:24:57] Speaker C: So if you don't know what you did— and so this would be useful to review your day, but more likely the idea is you've been wearing this over a period of years and now you've got a diary of your entire life. Now, of course, it's not got enough memory to record more than a day or so. Several thousand pictures.

[00:25:13] Speaker A: Well, now I'm considering buying one because I know somebody who has Alzheimer's.

[00:25:16] Speaker C: It might be good for Alzheimer's patients. Yep. It has only about a day or two of battery life.

[00:25:21] Speaker E: Oh, okay.

[00:25:22] Speaker C: Basically what happens, you get home and you plug it in. Yeah, you have to remember— that's a bed. You have to remember to plug it in, and you're gonna plug it into a computer. It's got micro USB, so it'll work with any standard cable. And you're gonna connect it to a Windows or a Mac PC because they have software. The software is going to pull the images that have been on the camera off the camera, as well as recharge it. There are 4 lights here that'll show you charge state. In fact, if I double tap it, you'll see.

[00:25:47] Speaker A: Do you have to use their software?

[00:25:48] Speaker C: You have to use their software. And it does an interesting thing that you may or may not like. It uses your computer as a temporary storage. You can have it save the pictures there, but there's so many they say you might not want to do this. This is going to fill up your drive. And then uploads it to the Get Narrative servers.

[00:26:04] Speaker D: Really?

[00:26:04] Speaker C: So your pictures don't actually live on your computer. That's not the normal way to use it unless you specifically ask. The idea is that they live on the server, and then they have an Android or iPhone app that you can browse through your pictures with.

[00:26:17] Speaker A: Oh, I see.

[00:26:18] Speaker C: So you need a computer, you need an Android or iPhone device, Android or iOS device. It doesn't have an iPad app, but I'm gonna show it to you on the iPad. And then you're gonna— you get a year free, but eventually you're gonna have to pay Narrative to store these pictures. It's quite a bit of data.

[00:26:36] Speaker A: Yeah, it sounds slightly expensive, and it also makes my little red flag of privacy go off.

[00:26:42] Speaker C: Well, there's so many red flags that are going to go off with this thing. I mean, first of all, you're wearing it everywhere. The bathroom, the gym, to bed. You're wearing it everywhere. So at some point, somebody's going to figure out, dude, you're taking— I mean, if you think Google Glass is offensive, this is worse. There's no way of knowing it's taking a picture. It doesn't really announce itself as a camera.

[00:27:01] Speaker A: So is it taking pictures right now?

[00:27:02] Speaker C: Yeah. The theory, though, is that it's just for you. This is not— you're not going to post it. And when you see the pictures, you'll realize why. A couple of things, a couple of user interface notes. If you double tap it, it says take a picture right now, and it marks it as a favorite in the collection. It figures, well, you must have wanted that one. If you put it face down, it senses that it's dark and stops. So that's one way to either turn it off or to save battery life. It also knows what position

[00:27:27] Speaker C: it's in, so you can clip it in any way.

[00:27:29] Speaker A: Oh, that's cool. So it'll automatically rotate.

[00:27:31] Speaker C: It has a magnetometer, accelerometer, Does not have a GPS. Doesn't know where you are.

[00:27:37] Speaker A: Probably good.

[00:27:39] Speaker C: Well, I, you know, I think what happened— they took more than a year to get this out. They thought it would be out a lot sooner. It turned out to be harder to do this than they thought. I think that's what happened. Let me show you the user interface of the pictures. This is the Narrative app. Now I'm going to show you on an iPad. It's an iPhone app. So let me show you the interface. This is the Narrative app. It's free, by the way, and you can download it on Android or iOS. This is I'm using it on an iPad, but it's

[00:28:04] Speaker C: really an iPhone app. The settings, not much, right?

[00:28:08] Speaker A: Yeah, it looks pretty easy.

[00:28:12] Speaker C: Nothing, in fact. It interfaces to the Narrative servers, though, in Sweden, right? So these are the starred photos. Those are the ones I double-tapped. And you can— so you can see those presumably are the ones you care a lot about. And you're probably noticing right now a little something. These pictures suck. So there are a couple of reasons that they suck. One is that you're wearing a kind of cheap camera on

[00:28:37] Speaker C: your lapel. And so what it's recording is not necessarily what you would record if you were taking a picture. Now here's an example. I put this on a ledge, so it recorded me— and this is something you can do, you don't have to be wearing it— so it recorded me sitting at my computer for hours on end. Big deal. Let me— this is MacBreak Weekly. We can go through this.

[00:28:57] Speaker A: So we got your microphone.

[00:28:59] Speaker C: This is my point of view. Now, there's another issue that's probably unique to me. I got a bit of a belly. And so, the thing's tilted up. It's always looking up. So, here I am at home. And then I get in the car. And I drive. You see that? I get in the car. But it's looking up. It's not—

[00:29:16] Speaker A: Right.

[00:29:16] Speaker C: So, you're never— none of these pictures are going to be anything that you really— I mean, I'm not going to share this to Twitter, to Instagram. But— It is kind of cool. It might be enough to tell me where I was, what I did today, right? And if you talk to somebody for any length of time, you'll see their face. You'll say, "Oh yeah, I had a nice conversation with that guy." What you mostly realize is how much time you spend sitting at a computer for one thing. At

[00:29:42] Speaker C: least me, and I think many of the people who watch this show. Now notice this is trimmed the moment because of the accelerometer, and it can kind of know if some pictures are going to be blurry or not good. If you untrim them, it went. Trimmed went from 158 pictures, untrimmed 329 pictures. So you can, you know, it's storing a lot of pictures. This is 329 photos over a 2-hour period. And as you can see, it's, well, it's a

[00:30:07] Speaker C: lot, but it's not that interesting, right? Now, then I'm in my office sitting. That's what it looks like when I'm sitting in my office. So you're not in most of these pictures unless you take it off, you put it on a ledge. But if you, you know, if you, if you don't be great, the first, when I first got it, I suppose it's here. I wore it at a party, so I got to see kind of the party.

[00:30:28] Speaker A: That's cool.

[00:30:29] Speaker C: Yeah, and so that was kind of fun. This goes back to March. Well, I don't see the party on here.

[00:30:36] Speaker A: You have all those photos.

[00:30:36] Speaker C: Yeah, well, it's a photo every 30 seconds, 2 photos a minute, 120 photos an hour. It's a lot of photos.

[00:30:43] Speaker A: It seems so niche to me. It feels like I personally wouldn't need it.

[00:30:48] Speaker C: Well, first of all, it's $279. I don't recommend it. I mean, this is definitely a do not buy. I'll give you the pros and cons, but I will say that there is something going on here. They were trying to raise $50,000. They raised half a million dollars. There's definitely interest in the idea of lifelogging. The pros are that it does pretty much what it says it does. It has enough memory to take pictures every 30 seconds. It can do a whole day. It can actually do a day and a half or 2 days. All

[00:31:13] Speaker C: of that works. It uploads to the servers effectively. I used the Mac client. It worked fine. fine. You plug it in and it immediately starts to pull the pictures off. The negatives are the pictures aren't great because it's, A, it's 5 megapixels, and B, it's only a 70-degree angle. It's a fairly narrow— it's fairly telephoto. So you don't— I would— I think this should be like a 24mm lens. This should be an 18mm. It should be a big wide fisheye.

[00:31:37] Speaker F: Right.

[00:31:37] Speaker C: Because then I'd see more of what's going on. I'm surprised they didn't do that. And then of course the cost is a little high. And the privacy implication and the chances of getting beat up in the Mission District, high as well. On the other hand, I should say that there is something here. The idea, it's part of this quantified self, the idea that your life can be remembered in this passive way. I

[00:32:02] Speaker C: just wish it were better pictures, you know? And I wish I were in them.

[00:32:06] Speaker E: Right.

[00:32:07] Speaker C: So, what I often did is I'd put it on a shelf here and stick it You know, somewhere like that. And see, if I did this, it would see me, and then, you know, that might be what you'd end up doing. But that does raise another negative. It's very easy to lose. Look at that.

[00:32:19] Speaker A: Can you see it? That's true. It's very small, very lightweight.

[00:32:21] Speaker C: I lost it a couple of times. Where'd it go? It's in the seat of the car. You know, I left it behind. So, you know, I lose Fitbits every 5 or 6 weeks. So this is a $279 doodad that is going to be very easy to lose. You're lucky I still have it for review.

[00:32:37] Speaker A: Maybe they should put a little GPS in it so you can track it.

[00:32:40] Speaker C: Yeah, or some beeper or something. I just think mostly, you know, you're gonna get in trouble if you wear this around. I wore it at the gym and I thought, I just— somebody's gonna slug me.

[00:32:48] Speaker A: It does feel a little awkward to know that you're taking photos all the time.

[00:32:50] Speaker C: Well, I know what I'm doing. I'm taking a picture of you every 30 seconds. It's very weird.

[00:32:55] Speaker A: So do you give it a buy, try, or don't buy?

[00:32:56] Speaker C: No, it's a don't buy. It's too expensive. But I praise the guys at Narrative. I think this is a great idea. Continue working on this. I'm glad I gave them my money because I want to support this. I think there's something here. This is probably, you know, you know if it's for you. It's probably not for you.

[00:33:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Leo, and thank you to all of our reviewers that we had on today. We really love each and every one of them. Of course, if you want to check out all of our reviews, you can check those over at twit.tv/byb, and you can email us byb@twit.tv. Again, I'm Shannon Morse, your host of today, and this was Before You Buy. Remember, before you buy anything, you gotta watch Before You Buy.

[00:33:38] Speaker B: Bye!

[00:33:39] Speaker A: Peace.