- 2 months ago
Follow along with our video and audio producer, Andru Marino, as he takes a train to a destination that has been self-advertised online as the “Pancake Capital of the World.” Andru is equipped with products from our feeds that might help him work on his travels, such as a fold-out monitor, a foldable keyboard, or a sun hat with solar-powered fans attached. Emphasis on the “might.” Let us know which one is your favorite.
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TechTranscript
00:00This is a hat, I think. Is this a fan?
00:05Ha ha ha. A fan on it.
00:08Oh, that'll be great, because I think it's going to be kind of warm.
00:18Have you ever been inspired to do something based on your TikTok feed?
00:23Maybe a video about a restaurant compelled you to go out for breakfast?
00:27Or a travel video made you book a train ticket?
00:31Maybe a product review helped you make a buying decision?
00:34These days, it's almost like, when does that not happen?
00:38So much of our lives are on the internet, and we almost can't avoid the algorithm becoming a muse.
00:43I would actually go to the gym and do this. I kind of like this.
00:48We hear from a lot of readers about these random little gadgets that get served in their video feeds.
00:54Tiny Bluetooth speakers, folding monitors, silly cameras.
00:58But how good are these really?
00:59At The Verge, we spend a lot of time reviewing premium products like the iPhone, the latest gaming laptop or tablet.
01:05And at the same time, these silly little gadgets are flooding our For You page.
01:09So it might be finally time to test the most viral ones out there.
01:13So let's take this stuff and head out to a travel destination that might show up on a video feed.
01:18And ultimately see if trending products are just buzz pushed by influencers, or will actually make my real-world experience worthwhile.
01:26Oh.
01:27Oh.
01:29So the day before my trip, I was given a bunch of so-called viral gadgets that TikTok has been serving people in their feeds.
01:36Okay.
01:37Okay.
01:38A Crate-Mate high-speed card reader case.
01:43This is something I would actually use.
01:46Okay.
01:47This is a hat, I think.
01:48What is this?
01:49It has built-in fans in it.
01:51Okay.
01:52I got a fork here.
01:55Oh.
01:56Long fork.
01:57Oh my God.
01:58This is a 14-inch portable monitor.
02:02Oh, neat.
02:03This is a digital camera.
02:06Kind of looks like one of those old-timey cameras.
02:09Like with the little...
02:10Oh, that's neat.
02:11Okay.
02:12A neck phone holder.
02:14Oh, this is great.
02:15This is what you're supposed to do with it.
02:17What is this thing?
02:18TikTok remote control page turner.
02:21It's like a little ring?
02:23Let's see what this is.
02:25Oh, okay.
02:26It's a foldable keyboard with a touchpad.
02:29Oh, and a bag.
02:31Thank God.
02:32Okay.
02:33There's like a zipper on the bottom.
02:37Sort of stuff can fall out.
02:39I think that's it.
02:42The next morning, my co-director Alex and I arrived at Penn Station in New York to take
02:47an eight-hour train ride to try and demo all these gadgets.
02:51Our destination?
02:53Williamsburg, Virginia is a popular travel destination on the East Coast, which is now
03:02calling itself the Pancake Capital of the World due to the large number of breakfast spots
03:07in town, all pretty close to each other.
03:09And this year, this particular weekend, was the first annual Pancake Festival put on by
03:14the town's tourism organization.
03:16Regional food festivals have popped up a lot in the age of social media.
03:19I personally love going to them.
03:21I've done a lot of videos and podcasts about these kinds of things.
03:25Alright, I'm here in Middleton, Wisconsin for the National Mustard Festival.
03:29A Pancake Festival is another example of an event you might see in your TikTok feed.
03:34I myself got ads for the Pancake Festival on both TikTok and Instagram, and was rather
03:39excited to take this trip to check it out.
03:42A lot of the gadgets we picked out were great for traveling on a seat for hours, so we decided
03:53to film a lot of the process here on a train.
03:56What we were looking for is how productive or useful these products are, the level of quality
04:01and reliability, and comparing that with the price, with an overall rating system of 1-5 pancakes.
04:12First up, the Mobile Pixels Duex Max, a 14-inch, 1080p, portable, slideable monitor.
04:20I actually really like the idea of having a monitor that slaps on the back of my laptop
04:25and can slide out when I need it.
04:27You do have to stick four magnets on the back of your laptop that will just stay there forever
04:31as long as you want to use this.
04:33So what I do like about the monitor is that if you want to power it not through the laptop
04:40and plug it into like an outlet externally, you can do that and then just use the HDMI
04:48if you don't want to take up a port.
04:50But if you want to just use USB, you can just power it and use it as a second monitor with USB.
05:01So you only really need one cable into the computer, which is great.
05:05Pulling the screen out and back in is a little annoying at times, especially with the magnets sliding along the spacers.
05:12If you don't pull hard enough, it kind of gets stuck.
05:14But if you pull too hard, you'll rip the monitor off aggressively.
05:18That being said, it does feel fairly durable and there's not too many moving parts to really break it.
05:24You could just use it as a monitor for anything like your phone or maybe like a switch or an Xbox or something like that,
05:31which you can just do like a book here.
05:34Oh, I can also like do a little presentation mode like this still upside down.
05:42You can adjust simple things like brightness and color on the display itself,
05:46but orientation and sizing, you'll have to go into the computer settings.
05:50And you have to go into your settings every time you want to switch sides or flip the display.
05:56The monitor quality is just fine.
05:58It's a generic 1080p LCD screen.
06:01So I won't be doing some high level color correction work on this,
06:05but it totally does the job when you just want a bigger screen setup.
06:08This only works if no one is sitting next to me.
06:11Like someone's going to just have this monitor here the whole time.
06:15For almost $200, I'm not sure you're getting a lot out of this small slideable monitor,
06:21but the design is unique enough that if this is the style you'd get the most out of compared to other pop out displays,
06:27then I don't think you'd be too disappointed unless you're a pixel peeper.
06:31So this gets three pancakes productive yet clunky.
06:36I actually tried to get some work done on the train and that portable SD card reader was pretty nifty in this case.
06:43I already have a SD card reader in my laptop, but there being a micro SD card reader in there was actually helpful for intaking our DJI Osmo footage.
06:51And then I got this cable plugs attached to it.
06:57I guess you have to keep the thing out like this dangling like that.
07:05You can only read one card at a time.
07:07It can only hold four SD cards, four micro SD cards and two nano SIM cards,
07:12but it would save some space in my bag instead of carrying a separate card reader and a separate carrying case.
07:18For $40, this gets three pancakes. Useful, but not necessary.
07:23An alternative setup I thought I would try on the train was using my phone as a main computer
07:29because most of the time when traveling recreationally, we're not bringing our laptops.
07:33So I'm going to use my neck mount to prop up the phone and a wireless keyboard to type on my phone
07:39and that scroll or ring to swipe without having to use the touch screen.
07:43Then this goes on like this.
07:46The neck mount worked just fine, but the way it clamps down, it got in the way of some of the buttons on the side of my phone.
07:52I've used neck mounts before that holds the phone with a magnet on the back, which is way more convenient.
07:57I'd say for $25, this is a little overpriced for a plastic necklace, but it will make do for the rest of the trip.
08:04And that gets two pancakes.
08:06The TikTok scroller ring started to become my favorite gadget of the bunch because of how compact and less subtrusive it was compared to everything else.
08:16In this little carrying case, which I kind of like, so it charges the ring and all that.
08:21There are two main use cases for the ring, scrolling and controlling your music apps, which I think is pretty convenient
08:27because it's a one handed gesture to just skip a track or pause a song.
08:31However, when you do use it on an iPhone, you have to turn on assistive touch on iOS, which is that little white button that stays on your screen at all times.
08:40It gets in the way a lot when you're using your phone if you don't really need it.
08:43And I don't particularly like having it on all the time.
08:46Though for Android, you don't have to do this process.
08:49When I paired it, it just worked instantly.
08:51You know, I'm going to just relax, scroll my TikTok feed, my ring.
09:00Yeah, because I can just put my hand down here and watch my TikToks.
09:11This is so dumb.
09:12But the ring is a little buggy.
09:14Sometimes it would just stop working altogether on the iPhone, which I guess happens enough that they included a page in the instructions on how to fix it.
09:22After a while of using the ring, that plastic bit wrapped around my finger started to get a little bent.
09:27This made it so it didn't fit snugly in the case anymore and kept popping out, which led to it not charging at times.
09:34The battery only lasts an hour and a half, but that charging case extends it a lot longer.
09:39For $17, I give this three pancakes, a stocking stuffer.
09:44Oh, there we go.
09:46Okay, cool.
09:47Okay, so I paired the Bluetooth keyboard to the iPhone.
09:52I'm going to see how it works.
09:55How would you...oh, I can scroll.
09:58Okay.
09:59I'm going to type, start typing with this.
10:02I immediately see what's wrong here.
10:04Is this little crease in between the keys shortens some of the keys.
10:10So this V, I was typing V.
10:13And I hit the center where the hinge is.
10:17And it didn't do anything.
10:19So it's missing...it feels like I'm missing letters when I'm typing something.
10:24I guess it's nice to have a compact, full-size keyboard.
10:27It did fit perfectly into one of the pockets in my backpack.
10:31And it paired to my phones just fine.
10:33But otherwise, I think it's more inconvenient than it's worth.
10:36If you're really trying to save some space, maybe you'll find that useful.
10:40But even for $28, I think you'll find it incredibly frustrating to type on.
10:45And for that, it gets two pancakes.
10:47Okay.
10:48So I'm going to go to...
10:50Let's see.
10:51Purge.
10:52Dot.
10:53Com.
10:54There we go.
10:55See?
10:56And then I'll scroll down.
10:57Oh.
10:58No?
10:59Oh no.
11:00Okay.
11:01There we go.
11:02Wait.
11:03Is this upside down?
11:04So it was scrolling up instead of down.
11:07Okay.
11:08There we go.
11:09Wait.
11:10Is this upside down?
11:11So it was scrolling up instead of down.
11:14Okay.
11:15There we go.
11:16And then I could click on a story with the trackpad.
11:21Okay.
11:22And then...
11:23I can scroll down and read my story.
11:28Kind of.
11:29The trackpad isn't great.
11:33Kind of.
11:34The trackpad isn't...
11:35Great.
11:46The next day we set out in the morning to check out the Pancake Festival in Colonial Williamsburg.
11:51Focusing mostly on testing out that hat, the camera, and the fork.
11:56It was very cloudy that day.
11:58Not an ideal climate to test the solar powered fan hat.
12:02But we did get it working.
12:03Oh yeah.
12:04Okay.
12:05This one's moving.
12:09Alright.
12:10Yeah.
12:11Feeling...
12:12Cause it's a little warm out today.
12:14A little humid.
12:15These fans are actually doing the job.
12:17Too bad I look like an idiot though.
12:20What I like about this hat is even though it is something with another USB port you have
12:24to worry about, it never really ran out of battery.
12:27The solar panels kept the fan moving throughout the weekend and well into the following week.
12:32I've seen a lot of videos of people cutting grass on a sunny day with this hat.
12:36And I think that's the perfect scenario for this product.
12:39A moody morning at the farmers market?
12:41Not so much.
12:42The hat is good in the rain.
12:44That's for sure.
12:45It's kind of like blowing water in my face.
12:49I'm gonna give this, uh, 2.5 pancakes.
12:54As for that retro looking digital camera, this thing was bonkers.
12:58Let me show you what the quality of the pictures look like.
13:01This all looks like stuff I've taken on a phone from 2012.
13:05Nothing like those twin lens reflex cameras it's trying to look like.
13:09It's just some crappy sensor.
13:11I do like that little viewfinder at the top though.
13:13That is the neatest part by far.
13:15But it's not always the best way to take a photo.
13:18If you wanna go take it down like that you can't see the...
13:21What's that?
13:23This is how I gotta take a picture of my pancakes like that.
13:29The video is also not great.
13:31The buttons are not intuitive so you kinda forget which ones take a photo and how to take a video.
13:36One way to take a video is this little side crank.
13:39Which will start to capture motion but without sound.
13:43And resulting in shaky footage while you're winding that lever.
13:46So I'm gonna give this one pancake.
13:49Junk drawer material.
13:51We got to the festivities a little early.
13:55So in the meantime we decided to hit up the many pancake houses in Williamsburg.
13:59Because I gotta use that fork.
14:01Oh.
14:02Immediately see the problem here.
14:07When I'm trying to like cut the pancake it falls over.
14:11Cause it starts spinning.
14:13This is kind of the worst fork for pancakes.
14:16For cutting a pancake.
14:17But I mean if you do extend it a little bit it's a little stiffer.
14:21So like I can...
14:26That was actually an easier experience.
14:32I mean this was really just made to pull pranks.
14:35But even then it still doesn't work that well.
14:38This only gets one pancake.
14:40Because I only ate one pancake with it.
14:42Headed back to the pancake festival.
14:45It started to rain.
14:48And apparently they had already started the pancake eating contest without us.
14:52To get ahead of the rain.
14:54Got the check there.
14:56And then it started to pour.
15:04So really not that eventful of a day.
15:06We actually have to go catch our plane back to New York.
15:09So it's kind of a wash.
15:12But really that's not the point of the whole video.
15:14More about the journey than the destination I think.
15:21So that was my trip.
15:23I feel like I'm forgetting something.
15:25The backpack.
15:27Here's the thing about the backpack.
15:29When we ordered that backpack.
15:31It said it had a USB port on it.
15:33We clicked the link from that video.
15:36And ordered it.
15:38And we got it in.
15:40And there is no USB port on this thing.
15:44At all.
15:45And this is kind of a metaphor for the muse of the algorithm.
15:48Like all this stuff kind of sucked.
15:50None of it like met our expectations.
15:53I didn't give anything over three pancakes.
15:56And also the pancake festival.
15:58Was rained out.
15:59So I think it's best to manage your expectations.
16:02For what you see on social media.
16:04And what is being sold to you on social media.
16:06Maybe this stuff is good in specific travel scenarios.
16:09With specific travelers in mind.
16:11But I don't think it actually made our experience any better.
16:15I would argue that these gadgets kind of made our trip worse.
16:18But I did travel to a new place I've never been before.
16:21And if a TikTok algorithm inspired you to do the same thing.
16:25I think that's okay.
16:31Sorry.
16:32I don't know if I can do more pancakes actually.
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