Jay Mattison is back this week as we spend most of the show looking at just what is on his desk! Man is it a nice desk!  We also review a very small ITX gaming case and look at a new Dell XPS 15 9500 laptop. We finish the show with some impressions on Microsoft Earbuds vs Apple Airpods Pro.  I think you will enjoy the show.

Full show notes, transcriptions, audio and video at http://theAverageGuy.tv/hgg452

Join Jim Collison / @jcollison and Mike Wieger / @WiegerTech for show #452 of Home Gadget Geeks brought to you by the Average Guy Network.

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Podcast, Home Gadget Geeks, Jay Mattison, desk, laptop, headphones, gaming, desktop, Apple, Microsoft, performance

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Desk Tour 2020: Minimal Work & Gaming Setup

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79JX4OmFBpE

— Desk Gear —

Monitor – Acer 38-inch: https://amzn.to/2GMBWgb

Speakers – Dynaudio Xeo 2: https://amzn.to/2KgRETd

Speaker Mounts: https://amzn.to/2yfnBYS

DAC/AMP – Monoprice Monolith: https://amzn.to/2ymXAXu

Desk Legs: https://amzn.to/31j2jlW

Desk Pad: https://amzn.to/2YsVFvd

Gaming Headset: https://amzn.to/2KWqAbg

Chair – Boulies: https://amzn.to/2GMoCbX

Gigabyte Aero 15 Classic: https://amzn.to/3dfWETH

Cable Wrap: https://amzn.to/2zafLzx

USB Hub/Card Reader: https://amzn.to/3cj5VtU

Laptop Stand: https://amzn.to/2yoomyz

Headphone Hooks: https://amzn.to/35vILOC

AMP Shelf: https://amzn.to/3c0YSpA

Headphones: https://drop.com/buy/massdrop-x-focal…

The Smallest ITX Gaming Case Ever (3.1L)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqJFyaAT81E

https://tekeverything.com/j-hack-pure-mk2-review/

XPS 15 9500 Impressions & Issues

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7vmezJewYs

Additional Topics

Microsoft Surface Earbuds vs Airpods Pro

https://www.apple.com/airpods-pro/

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface-earbuds/8r9cpq146064?activetab=pivot%3aoverviewtab

Jim Collison  [0:00] 
This is The Average Guy Network and you found Home Gadget Geeks show number 452 recorded on July 16 2020. Here on Home Gadget Geeks we cover all your favorite tech gadgets that find their way into your home news reviews, product updates and conversation all for the average tech guy. I’m your host, Jim Collison broadcasting live from the average guy TV Studios here. pretty warm. There’s a heat wave going on in the south. That’s good Jay that’s making its way to Midwest. We’re looking at 99 or 100 on Saturday. Yeah, yikes. Yeah, so no good. How’s Philly? weather? You guys are getting a lot of rain. This?

Jay Mattison  [0:50] 
Yeah, it’s been rainy. It’s been rainy. We had actually a mini heatwave, but it was still raining the whole time. So it was been like 95 here which is you know, it’s hot. Yeah. Like It was a beautiful,

Jim Collison  [1:01] 
perfect. So we had a 75 degree day the other day and I was like, that’s when you get a break in the middle of the summer that you can kind of just go outside and enjoy it. We went for a walk a little bit of time on the deck. Yeah, it’s pretty great summer we’ll be gone before we know it. And you know, we’ll be wishing for these days. We’ll post this show with some pretty good show notes that I just stole right from Jays YouTube channel. So those of you available there a lot of the things we talked about if in fact, if you’re listening to the audio only version of this, you might want to head over to YouTube and just watch the video because we’re going to show we’re going to kind of go through de Jay’s desk, and we’re going to show some pictures so you might want to join us on YouTube. for that. We’ll try to describe them as best we can. So for those of you in the car, those who still are commuting, Jay you’re not commuting right are you home you working from home now through the panda

Jay Mattison  [1:54] 
my apartment, thankfully I had this YouTube office so I just converted

Jim Collison  [2:01] 
work from home. Well, you probably didn’t have to change very much, right?

Jay Mattison  [2:04] 
No, I changed nothing. Yeah, changed. So it’s been it’s been fine for me. I feel for everyone with kids out there no office space.

Jim Collison  [2:14] 
Yeah, have you been tempted, and this has been my problem working from home, you got all this gear. And so during the day, you start thinking about things like, Oh, you know, I could, I could move this around. Or I could try this out. I’ve been tempted by the the mid day tech bug.

Jay Mattison  [2:31] 
Yeah, I’ve been more than tempted. I’ve given into temptation. But luckily, I’m good at just getting what I need to get done. So now being from home, I have like calls and stuff obviously, with clients and I’ll make sure everything’s taken care of for that. But now I find like, I might stop working at like three and then come back at seven. And do you know, I mean, some things that I wouldn’t normally have done when I was going into the office every day but so you’re just pivoting making the best the best of the situation

Jim Collison  [2:58] 
any Are there any Or any talk of going back for you into a regular office kind of setting.

Jay Mattison  [3:05] 
So we have an office in Minnesota and one in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Office we are closing. And so yes, small office where we are. So it doesn’t look like at this point, we’re gonna open up and go back fully, at least in the foreseeable future. We’re thinking about maybe getting a smaller space where we can do like collabs and presentations. Okay, at least not for the rest of this year.

Jim Collison  [3:30] 
So you’re home for the duration at this point. And have you found Okay, so it sounds great. I mean, like today, I went out mowed the lawn at lunch, so that was kind of, you know, checking the weather. I was like, okay, it’s gonna get really hot this weekend. It’s it’s not even at yet right now. I could get out there and get on that lawn. So I just did right. Same kind of thing. And then I, you know, you kind of make up that time that’s in there. But have you found yet like, you get kind of sick of I mean, I know you got a sweet desk and we’re gonna Talk about that but you get kind of sick of sitting at it after a while and can you do it on the weekends? You’re doing them in the weekdays? Have you had that happen to you yet?

Jay Mattison  [4:09] 
Sometimes, I mean, to be honest, I love sitting here so it’s not that I’m not gonna lie and pretend it’s bad but you know sometimes you do because you’re doing your work work and you’re doing your side work and you’re doing your for play here and playing games, you know, whatever I’m doing. So yeah, sometimes I just try to get out. We have a nice trail right around this this my apartment complex, I can just walk around you know, ride a bike, do whatever, just try to get out, stay active. Get out of this room, sometimes, you know, yeah, go hang out with my laptop in the living room, do whatever I need to do, but, you know, just making the best of the situation. But yeah, you definitely you’re gonna get tired of it sometimes. Yeah, are you guys in situation so you can’t get out? You don’t have to wear masks when you’re out. You can you can kinda move around. Or what’s Philly like? If you’re outside for the most part up Up until I think about, I think, a week or so ago, you didn’t have to wear a mask. They did pass a mandate, I believe. But no one’s really monitoring if you’re walking on the trail, you don’t need to be wearing a mask if you’re going to be going to a restaurant or even going to take out everyone has matched on all the time you have to any any sort of any business. Yeah,

Jim Collison  [5:20] 
anytime you’re in crowds, we’re starting to lock down we’d open back up we’re not locked back down again, Nebraska has not had a problem but but we’re not the hotspot for it, but many of the businesses are starting to require it so I think we’re gonna go back to it. The other night I was here at my desk and I just kind of got sick of like, I don’t want to look at YouTube anymore. I don’t want to I don’t want to look at you know, spreadsheets or write stuff. I just got in the car and drove around like I went to Target and walked around and just drive.

Jay Mattison  [5:49] 
I go that’s I forgot about that. I go for drivers, maybe three or four times a week. Just get out and take a half hour sometimes more. A lot of good roads around here. fun car, so

Jim Collison  [6:01] 
it’s a good time. Yeah, no, well, good. Well, Jay Madison’s with us tonight he is a tech everything tech everything calm. And he’s been on the show good friend of the show. wanted to have him back cuz he’s doing some really cool stuff. Jay, welcome back. Thanks for having me. We, I was as I was preparing for the program, I went out and saw your most recent video about your kind of your desktop date. And I joke with you online, I’m like, we could probably spend the whole show just talking about your desk. You’ve kind of taken you’ve taken the idea of a clean you know, well cable managed, like I’m the opposite by the way. I have lots of desk in the for you, I look at your desk and I’m like, would you just come over and do some cable management for me? Could you just come over and you know, wrap some things or lay some things out? What is that from you? Have you always been? I mean, is that something you’ve kind of grown into or Have you always been very neat and organized and I like a clean look on that because it’s super clean.

Jay Mattison  [7:03] 
I’ve always liked my technology to be neat and clean for whatever reason. I’ve always been a big fan of symmetry. Yeah, I’ve even when I was a kid, you know my Genesis and stuff was positioned perfectly you know, the last

Jim Collison  [7:18] 
word data for

Jay Mattison  [7:20] 
the Tech has always been immaculate for whatever reason. Now the rest of the room might have closed everywhere.

Jim Collison  [7:26] 
Yeah, no, no, no worries in your added a lot. I mean, we just were talking about that you’re at the desk a lot. One of the things so it’s kind of interesting. I think you’ve I think you’ve taken a traditional stand up desk. And did you just install a door on top of it? Is that is that what I saw on the YouTube video?

Jay Mattison  [7:43] 
Yeah, so I spent a lot of time trying to find a desktop or desktop, you know, slab whatever, once IKEA Lowe’s anywhere I could find to try and find a frame that was wide enough and deep enough. I’d like to Pretty straight and up close to the depths. So finding a frame that could could handle everything that I wanted to put on it, obviously, the 38 inch ultrawide monitor super big and wide computer headphones speakers, I wanted everything to be on the desk, but also it’s still kind of look cool and be able to sit and stand and rise and all that fun stuff. And eventually I came to the realization that there really wasn’t a desktop that fit what I was looking for one inch or one and a half inch thick, dark gray color that there just wasn’t one out there. That’s when I kind of stumbled upon the solid slab doors. You can get from like Lowe’s, Home Depot anywhere. And the finished ones look really nice. They look pretty much just like a desktop In my case, and it’s 84 inches wide and 36 inches deep. So that’s a measurement that you’re just not really going to find and it’s also super sturdy because it’s a door. So it was a really good decision. It wasn’t Yeah, it came in It was like around 400 bucks at the time but Yep,

Jim Collison  [9:02] 
I think the the one you listed on your YouTube video was is out but the white version of it 409 on that and I think they say they take up to 70 or 87 inches wide which it’s almost like this is made for a door in a lot of ways right? Would you pay did you go Did you go to the big box or to the to the home center and pick up a door? Is that what you

Jay Mattison  [9:24] 
did? Yeah, I ordered directly from Lowe’s people are always asking me I they did not sell this specific one that I have anymore. I don’t believe this. I’ve had this for a few years now. And oddly enough, it hasn’t bowed or anything. It’s it’s still perfectly straight.

Jim Collison  [9:38] 
Is it MDF or is it solid core? So it from what I gather it has solid edges and there is some sort of MDF filling because when I drill into it, it doesn’t feel like it’s solid all the way all the way through. There is some sort of filling though, and there’s bracing throughout the whole thing though, which is a little different than you just get from a hollow door even cheaper. It desk where they just have that paper filling. That’s not sturdy so it’s not it’s not like 600 pounds and you know like a medieval door but it’s certainly doing the job. Well so that but that would give someone who was crafty or someone you could take an antique door right i mean you could get a big oak. You could go down to the antique center or some you know, an old barn, right i mean it would give you some options I never would have thought and I didn’t know like this was a monoprice base that you bought. I didn’t know you could buy just the base separately and then put your own desktop on front of it did did you drill into it at all just putting holes for wires to come through and and do that

Jay Mattison  [10:44] 
for wires that you drill obviously the legs and to just keep it sturdy but to be honest, a desk this large you wouldn’t necessarily even need to do that because of the weight and what’s on top but I did just to be safe and because I’m using as headstand desk. Yeah wires for wires. I use an Ikea rack the I can’t remember what it’s called but it’s that standard gray IKEA rack that everyone has and every bill you’ll ever see online, I can probably find it.

Jim Collison  [11:08] 
Yeah, I was gonna see if it was an S but basically it looks like a shoe rack right that you put underneath there that’s got some that’s got some wiring on it then you can route the wires through it right and and it’s what I liked is your cable management’s functional. My son who is a cable management King, this kid like, he zip ties everything at any I think he measures the intervals which were you know, it’s like every two inches or whatever. I’m not I couldn’t do that when I looked at yours. I was like, Oh yeah, okay, I gotta pick up one of those. So I Can I just get that from IKEA if I if I go online,

Jay Mattison  [11:47] 
like 11 bucks, okay, or four screws and you can just route everything through there. There that is a game changer because like you said, um, I like things to look neat. The cables don’t for me underneath. It does have to be like Doesn’t have to look in the exam piece as long as they’re tidy and they’re not gonna fray or damage or bump into each other

Jim Collison  [12:06] 
I’m cool with that would you have considered glass on top of there a big a big piece of mid probably be pretty expensive but would you would would you

Jay Mattison  [12:14] 
desk in the past and keeping it clean by itself was just not worth it?

Jim Collison  [12:19] 
Yeah, it is. It is kind of that is I have a black desk at work that for whatever reason picks up my fingerprints really well. So like every time I just touch it, you know, you can kind of see where your hand was. So I think those kind of materials I’m assuming on a door like that it’s kind of the veneer or whatever is on there. The wood that’s on there. handles fingerprints and you had I think it was you you’re you’re using a felt. I’m not I’m not a mousepad but a desk pad. Yeah, big. And it’s interesting because I had bought a black neoprene just like every other tech guy, right. And you nailed it in the Do you were like, men, you just look at things the wrong way and it gets dirty right? I’m sure in the chat room there’s some some guys maybe some gals out there that have used those. But you went with felt it because you it just it. Tell me where’d you get that and how’s it working?

Jay Mattison  [13:17] 
I got that from Amazon it was again this just like one of those magic finds I was looking for just alternatives. Because like I said those neoprene decimates you anything you do to they’re dirty instantly and I’m very active on my mousepad gaming even just moving your mouse they would get worn down they become Greg they don’t look so good. So I found this which I actually sold this out when I put the video

Jim Collison  [13:41] 
you know, I was wondering why all these things on Amazon are sold out because

Jay Mattison  [13:47] 
you I was looking at it. I can just anytime it comes back in stock because I can see on my Amazon Associates like when things are purchased and it just goes but this was only it’s $13 and it looks super high end It’s nice and smooth tracks very well for, you know, gaming or just productivity, obviously, it looks great. It’s like a nice dark grey that hides anything. I’ve spilled. I spilled spaghetti sauce on this, and you just wipe it out. And it’s gone. Yes, I do as much as

Jim Collison  [14:15] 
I do. I do too. I, I just spilled the whole thing of coffee all over mine. And it’s actually it’s laying over something, you know, it’s over here laying over, kind of drying out, right?

Jay Mattison  [14:27] 
Yeah. So there’s the dark one that I have the dark, right. And there’s also a light gray model. So if you have like a lighter wood or a different color desk or white, that might go a little bit better. But yeah, just put on notifications. If you want one, the value is insane. At you know, 13 bucks, you really can’t beat it.

Jim Collison  [14:44] 
Ryan says in the chat room. He’s a desk mat user. And he is at a different set a different brand.

Jay Mattison  [14:51] 
I’m not I’m not sure if he is referring to a mat just in general Matt. Yeah.

Jim Collison  [14:56] 
Yeah. So that that may be one recommendation. I take from you that when I replaced this because that neoprene was getting nasty. Yeah. And and so when I saw that on there, it’s like, oh, okay, that makes sense. You’re also you’ve kind of gone curved monitor right on this as well. Let me bring this up. So you’re doing the Acer Is this the right one?

Jay Mattison  [15:19] 
That is the right one? Yeah, yeah. So I’ve been looking for. I was looking for a monitor, I was an ultra wide guy, since they started making them I had the original Dell 29 inch, I’ve always just liked the form factor. And I was using a 34 inch but I wanted something a little bit bigger with a little more vertical real estate. And then I found this guy, so 3840 by 1600, almost 4k, but it also had the benefit of being IPS and 75 hertz with free sync. So get a little faster refresh rate, it’s a little crisper on gains. And it looks great. I mean, it’s accurate for obviously I do editing, rendering, you know, a lot of Photoshop, so I need to have something that’s both accurate. can do double duty, and work for gaming. And this is a fantastic one. LG has some similar models that work really well as well. And I’ve been loving this thing. It’s great.

Jim Collison  [16:11] 
I use the Dell version of this ultra sharp IPS. When I came home from during the pandemic, when I came home to work full time, from here, I left my monitor, you know, in those days, we thought maybe a couple weeks. So I was like, I’m not gonna haul this big 30 You know, this big 34 inch monitor home, or 3030 I think it’s 38 in so I was home for two days. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I need like I need it because it’s so much better on your eyes. I mean, I know it’s a gaming. It’s really designed and it’s best in a gaming scenario. But from a productivity standpoint, Jay I couldn’t I couldn’t not have it. Like I love to read email and do what I need to do on social on it because it’s so clear and having No, I know it doesn’t equate to to 1080 monitors together, right. It’s a little smaller than that. But, but good enough. Yeah, right.

Jay Mattison  [17:09] 
Yeah. Now I’ve been thinking of getting one of the 49 inch versions. But I’m just like, do I really need that? Probably not. Is it worth the price that you have to pay to get it? Probably not. Next word if you can see behind me that monitor there that’s my that’s my actual Let me blow you big. Oh, yeah, right there. Yeah, that’s my monitor from work. I went and picked it up. Because I bought one for myself because like he said, I was so used to using ultra wide. I go to work and I’m on like, a 23 inch just regular mine. I couldn’t I couldn’t deal with it. Yeah. Well, myself one and then I just picked it up because obviously, the offices are all close.

Jim Collison  [17:51] 
Yeah, well, and I I took mine back because I started going back. I’ve been going back in one or two days a week at this point. And so I took my back in Have a stand up desk at work and I just like my work setup. And I miss it, not not having it here. And for podcasting for what I do here, I like having two full size monitors and I’ve got them on a mount. So they’re, you know, one’s flat and the other ones that kind of tilted off to the right. That works well for me. I don’t know if I’d want to do curve that way. I did that at work for a while. But man, that is a nice monitor, you have it mounted. I haven’t seen this before. The tendency when you mounted on a desk is to put that mount in the center. And then the monitor on the monitor sits on it. You actually got it on a on a on a swivel mount and that monitor the amount since off to the left, which I thought was kind of cool. Why’d you do it that way?

Jay Mattison  [18:44] 
Um, I don’t, there wasn’t really like a definitive reason. You know, there was one. There were two reasons. So one, I thought it looked cool just subjectively just I just Oh, that looks different. And it’s not the same as everything else. Also. When you mount it off center like that, because it’s curved, you can get it closer to the wall. So you can have the actual mounting arm lean back, like if you, if anyone gets a chance to look at the video, when I zoom in behind it, you’ll see that the actual arm is tilted backwards so that the monitor is essentially flush with the end of the desk, as opposed to being sticking out by what would normally be sometimes four or five inches. And I’m someone I’ve really good vision. I don’t like the monitor being that close. I like it being as far away from me as I possibly can. So for me, that was kind of like like a no brainer, other than mounting it to the wall. That’s pretty much the best case scenario.

Jim Collison  [19:39] 
Yeah, and there’s a good shot on screen of your desk layout. I’ve had a scratchy voice all day, I hope I hope it doesn’t go out by the end of the podcast. It’s it’s struggling but I was just impressed that that you’ve got it to the left. And I was at first when I was looking at that I was like, well that’s unique, but It is kind of a unique look,

Jay Mattison  [20:01] 
you know, it doesn’t. I think it looks kind of makes it look like it’s floating a little bit more to you know, kind of that like floating there.

Jim Collison  [20:07] 
Yeah, no,

Jay Mattison  [20:08] 
I think a little more usable space underneath if you need it. So yeah, I really kind of I just like the way it looks and it helps me get it a little further away.

Jim Collison  [20:16] 
And then did did you mount some lights behind it?

Jay Mattison  [20:19] 
Oh yeah. LED strips behind there. I use them. Honestly, I just keep them at a static white 99% of the time unless I’m shooting something because I just find it relieves eye strain and I’ll have to have lights all over the room on and I’ve been doing that for years. And I think it’s it’s been pretty effective for me.

Jim Collison  [20:38] 
What is it just the just plug in or how are they powered and what are they wired up to?

Jay Mattison  [20:43] 
Yeah, it’s just those like cheap $20 kits you get on Amazon. It’s just literally plugged in. I if you’re going to do this, any of you watching I would probably opt for one that plugs in through USB. If you have a big monitor, they now have some really good kits that just plug in through USB And all you have to do is hit them with the remote you don’t have to have that transformer box like I have because it’s a whole box and remote and set up and all that stuff so but they’re super cheap I got these for 20 bucks I have them on my TV and also on my my monitor here you can kind of see the glow

Jim Collison  [21:14] 
in the picture. Ya know, it looks good. I think on the video you get a really good feel for how it kind of glows and I like that I’ve never been I’ve never been able to figure out backlighting very well that’s just not something that I think of but when it’s done and it’s done well it looks really good right when you hide the lights hide behind something when they’re kind of coming up. That looks good. Your your laptop is over there to the left on this picture. So do you but I don’t see cables coming out of that thing. So are you hiding those as well? Or how does that work?

Jay Mattison  [21:46] 
Yeah, I had some. I wish I didn’t show in the video. Actually I have some the power cable and a USBC cable mounted underneath there. So if I need to charge up or plug in, you can kind of see it. Little bit and outside. That’s actually my ex laptop I’ve been. We had to divorce and

I didn’t do on. I’m sorry, did you get

Jim Collison  [22:10] 
costly?

Jay Mattison  [22:12] 
It was the whole thing. But yes, I do have cables strategically mounted anywhere I can I use and I believe I mentioned this in the video or in past videos for sure. There are little three amp strips that stick to the underside of a desk and they just have a clip that opens up. I use those everywhere, anywhere I can, I can use them, I use them. Because if you they’re removable, and if you just want to unclip your charger you just want to done but I like to have everything mounted, easy access so I can just charge and keep going.

Jim Collison  [22:44] 
Yeah, one of the I think the three M or the hook, cabling business, the more that that area of the market has gotten really good like if you go to Walmart or Target or whatever you can get Some crazy things to organize your desk with, right? I mean, it’s just never been never been a better time. To get that done I’ve been one of the things I’ve been doing at home is I actually change the Window Settings in my work laptop so it’ll work closed. So I just opened it up, start it in the morning, close it and slide it underneath the monitor, I have a I have the monitor I’m using at home has a really deep well in it. And so it just sits inside and then powers the monitor. It could be a big monitor. In this case, it’s a 24 inch so it’s not it’s not huge, good enough IPS. So it’s really good. Like again, I get some I have some good has some good readability but I have found kind of getting that stuff out of the way and kind of keeping the area clean. It just sits actually right over here. Um, this is productive for me. I think probably for you as well. Right. You feel more productive when you don’t have a whole bunch of clutter.

Jay Mattison  [23:54] 
Yeah, I can’t stand clutter. Even my desk at work is completely clean like this. There’s nothing that is very similar setup to this. I need everything to be clean so I can focus and just do what I’m doing. You know I’m I’m right with you.

Jim Collison  [24:10] 
I have a pair of Roland speakers that I bought, oh maybe 15 years ago they don’t look that old I mean they’re they’re ma eights they were in their day they’re pretty average they were a couple hundred bucks new so for you know 15 years ago 200 bucks not not too bad. been struggling with the the volume control I’ve tuned it so much back in the day, you know, be up on the shelf, I grab it, they get broken. So I’ve got to kind of rigged in I was looking at the speakers on your desk and you can see these really, really well here. Let’s not talk about the price first because nobody will listen after that. But tell me tell me a little bit about your shelf speakers because they’re pretty nice.

Jay Mattison  [24:51] 
Yeah, so the speakers obviously the computer stuff it you know, I build a lot of computers. That’s what I do. That stuff comes easy to Just what do you need your computer to do? What do you need your monitor to do? The speakers were probably the most difficult thing I’d say the speakers and headphone although audio gear, that was the most difficult thing to come by. So I spent a long, long time I demoed a ton of speakers, trying to find a unit that was both self powered for one, I used to have a powered whole system where there was a receiver sitting over on the other side of the room, cables running all over the place coming up to my desk. It was a nightmare. So I wanted something that was self powered, that was small enough to fit on a desk and compact, but also to provide really high level audio. So I listened to a lot of flat tracks, I listened to title hi fi, I am a bit of a quote unquote audio file, whatever that means to you, but I do like good sound, and also something that had the ability to do decent low end. And that’s really difficult to find all of those things in one tight little package and I stumbled upon these The dynamic of co2 and now there’s the zero 10, which is essentially the same model but just newer tweaked driver or whatever they’re calling it, it has a slightly different look. And I went to a local store demo them. And I was just blown away the low end the detail how how the sound quality is on par with, you know, something that you would find in the 1500 or $2,000 range, but they’re completely self power. So they have 60 watt amps internally, that drive the woofer. And the tweeter, they do wireless so you can do app decks if you want to stream from your phone or from your desktop, laptop, whatever have you. But they also do spit it fin RT as in they can handle pretty much anything you would want you want to do. You have the zero fours up those are their their big brothers. And they also had a VESA mount so I could mount them to monitor arms and have them on my desk in the perfect position. kind of sitting and pointing at me so they were kind of the perfect storm one of those like dream projects. It’s like a kind of an aha moment. This is everything I’ve been looking for. Let’s see your point earlier. They weren’t cheap but you can find them now maybe use for for a decent price hopefully but they were one of the things that I will always say was well worth the price. Sometimes you pay a lot for something it’s not worth it. These have been worth every penny.

Jim Collison  [27:20] 
You reviewed an XPS 15 DELL LAPTOP recently. That was a $5,000 laptop. Do you? I, to me, it seems like you there’s a few things you really spend your money on speakers, laptops or the gear we’re going to talk about a mini computer here in a little bit. But what’s been interesting, it’s in speakers, you know, the rest of the stuff like the pad was fairly inexpensive, the like, you know, you’re not although we’ll talk about your keyboards, maybe they’re expensive as well. But you do what I like about it is Seems like you’re there’s there’s a few things you really care about sound is one of those. Yeah, right.

Jay Mattison  [28:06] 
For sure. I’m not the kind of person who can, for whatever reason, I’m not the kind of person who can just deal with. When it comes to audio. I need it to be quality. I just yeah.

Jim Collison  [28:17] 
I don’t know why that is. But yeah, it’s good. We all have our things. Right. You know,

Jay Mattison  [28:23] 
that doesn’t mean it has to be expensive. There are a ton of great products, audio wise that that can do great things for a decent price. You know, they’re really great, especially in the headphone market. There’s amazing products. Yeah, but I was looking for kinda like the dual holy grail of everything.

Jim Collison  [28:39] 
How often are you on speaker versus headphones?

Jay Mattison  [28:42] 
Um, probably 80% speakers. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I try to avoid headphones as much as possible.

Jim Collison  [28:49] 
So, Jay, in the picture, you’d mentioned these speakers have a VESA mount on the back. Are you using the VESA mount to mount these on your desk?

Jay Mattison  [28:59] 
Oh, Yeah, yeah, that was that was one of the like cooler things about them that I that was like one of the determining factors in terms of flexibility. So both here obviously I had the mounted flush to that. These two I guess they’re an 18 inch high VESA stance, which lets me similar to the monitor get them further back and closer to the wall than I would if they were just sitting on regular stance. But also in the future if I’m going to go off flat I can just mountain quickly to a wall similar to a monitor with with any sort of mounting plate so that flexibility for me is just really invaluable.

Jim Collison  [29:33] 
Now if that’s not common and speakers It’s been a long time since I’ve looked at a pair of speakers that have been more than $7 Have you are that is that is having a VESA mount pretty unusual to have on the back of the speaker.

Jay Mattison  [29:46] 
Yeah, you will find speakers, particularly smaller speakers and you know, desktop PC speakers, those kind of Logitech stuff like that, that might have a single screw mount to mount or like we’re challenging channels speakers might have them but it’s rare that you see desktop. I guess bookshelf sized speakers that have a full VESA mount so all four port all four mounting points that’s that’s pretty rare

Jim Collison  [30:13] 
you you also wrapped okay this was interesting in the cable management area and I’ve never seen this before, but instead of just like most most guys would have just zip tied the the cables going down but you actually found like a wrap that that taco taco because it’s unique. I’ve never seen that before talk a little bit about it.

Jay Mattison  [30:34] 
Yes, I mean when you spend seven hours a day on Amazon events

Jim Collison  [30:39] 
well and sell everything out apparently because everything we look at that you that you have sold out.

Jay Mattison  [30:46] 
Some of us yeah, it was it’s been a good good couple months but on Amazon, I do I spent a lot of time just looking for things that can enhance my setup or PC or whatever. And I don’t remember how I just stumbled upon these sort of neoprene sleeves. And all you have to do you buy them, they’re like, again, around 10 to $15. You just cut them to whatever length you need. And they have Velcro on one side so that you can wrap them around any sort of pole or put them wherever you need. And they are, they’re matte black, they blend directly in like when you look, look at the picture earlier, you can’t really even tell that they’re there. And they had pretty much any cable and you can use it you can use them anywhere. So that was kind of like a easy win. Something that anyone could pick up and just kind of tidy up there the setup and cable management because there are cables coming off of the speaker.

Jim Collison  [31:35] 
Is this what we’re looking at? Is that the right I can Okay,

Jay Mattison  [31:39] 
there are a million of them. So they’re all pretty much the same. Okay.

Jim Collison  [31:43] 
Yeah, not a terribly not a terribly expensive option again, you know, to wrap them but, but I thought that was cool. Again, for me, maybe one of those things, I got cables everywhere and I just this last week and I just moved. I was talking about this site Every morning when as soon as spod cast coach I realized that a PC in front of me that the fan so this would have probably driven you crazy. So the fan in it it’s it’s a double, double thick right 120 millimeter. I think I yank this out of an old Dell server. Like it moves some air like this thing loose America it also makes some noise and and I didn’t realize you start not hearing things anymore. You know like when you have something around you that is making noise you kind of start ignoring it. And yeah, you kind of do and I kind of had gotten used to it. I knew it was there but I kind of put up with it. Well it gotten loud enough it was affecting it was coming down the microphone it was affecting my sound down here. In stream yard tries to adapt when it hears noise, it’ll bring up the volume, because it thinks it’s it thinks the algorithm thinks it’s a voice. So I’d stop talking it. Couldn’t hear But would hear something so the volume would go up and then when I would come back on the mic and get really loud, and then it would hear my voice and adapt and go down. I wouldn’t do it all the time. But when this fan was running, like it was doing it all the time. And so I did some troubleshooting this weekend, rip this thing out and placed it. Ryan actually gave me a recommendation. And I just bought it I don’t. He’s like, hey, go buy a few of these things. And but hold on, see if we can find a name on this thing. It’s a knock to knock to redo i think is what it is. It

Jay Mattison  [33:37] 
is very likely realize great. Yeah, so I mean, you look at like, if anyone watches any of my builds, pretty much I pretty much only use not to offense. They’re amazing. They’re they’re silent, essentially silent. They are built to really high standard. They just do a great job. I mean, those fans will last forever. So that was a great recommendation.

Jim Collison  [33:56] 
Well and and really he’ll bring it up On Screen really, really quiet, like so just going from a really loud fan to a really quiet fan. It’s like, at first that’s like, is that thing on? I had to look at it like, Is it working? You know what I was doing some temp checks and just you know, it’s really a CPU fan for me. It’s I’ve got a CPU fan on it, but this blows over the top of the CPU fan and then has some front facing fans that exhaust right out of it. Man, what a difference it makes to, to have that so I just, you know, it’s it’s one of those. It’s one of those things that you you just don’t know how good and I think $14 for a fan that’s pretty reasonable lunch thing.

Jay Mattison  [34:46] 
Yeah. Especially for they have tremendous warranties. And they they’re silent, but they move a ton of air also. So it’s not like it’s just, it’s quiet and your CPUs overheating. It’s it’s quiet, and also

Jim Collison  [34:59] 
it’s Cool, moving somewhere. I have always, you know, again, I think I ripped this out of a old Dell server. I was impressed. Like how thick this thing is. Have you ever seen a fan this thick?

Jay Mattison  [35:11] 
I do not. I don’t think I’ve seen 120 millimeter fan that thick. Yeah, like, you know, those server, small 1640 millimeters. But that’s that’s a huge one.

Jim Collison  [35:20] 
Yeah, this thing moves some air I’m thinking about putting it on the deck to, to kind of, you know, to kind of move some air around during the summertime here. But, um, so, so back to the cable management. So I was moving some so I was moving those PCs to get them away from the desk. And I realized as I started digging in just how bad my cable management was, it’s like, things are all because, you know, you start moving things around and you start doing other things with it and pretty soon it’s just, it’s just a cable mess. And so, I like that. I like that right? Because you can. One of the things I hate about zip ties is it seems like as soon as I zip tie it, I look over and I missed the cable. Right? You got a snippet

Jay Mattison  [36:11] 
if that’s our suit again, clean if if, like if I if I did a build sometimes I use zip ties internally because they’re super tight and they’re ultra clean. But yeah, like you said you had to be on point everything

Jim Collison  [36:26] 
Yeah, yeah, well and the other thing is if you zip it and cut it that end that you cut is now a razor blade. And you add like that’s how it during the war that’s they set those up as traps for soldiers right you step on it, you’re gonna get cut. And it is I’m always reaching in and just gouging you know, gouging out my arm. So I’m gonna I’m gonna have to pick up some of these sleeves and and have them on and I need to have them just like bioman So I have we switched to earbuds but you’re also we talked about this the last time you were on, you got a really good pair of headphones that you wear. What do you like? And why do you like them because I think we think Bose makes great ones but you’ve got show us show us what you got.

Jay Mattison  [37:20] 
So I mean I have a lot of headphones. These are the ones I use on my desktop. These are the folk out he likes from mass drop. So basically a mass drop and folk out combination or combo deal. They’re open back so you can see kind of like the you can see through some of the the mesh there. These are very, very good headphones, one of the kind of products that’s performed well above its price. Again, these aren’t cheap either, but these are kind of the thing you buy it and you have these for the next 10 years. You know, you don’t need another set, but if you’re at home doing critical listening like I do, I listen to a lot of high quality tracks like I mentioned earlier, and even just casual stuff that you Just anytime music you like these will reproduce that sound and reproduce it. Well, they are tremendously open that open soundstage for me is something that I really, really like I don’t like closed back headphones. I don’t like that close back feeling. I don’t like the pressure that builds up in your head when you have closed back headphones. So these are just like kind of perfectly and they look really nice. They’re very well built premium leather material. So everything the static of everything about it, I really do. Like,

Jim Collison  [38:28] 
how often do you wear those? Probably,

Jay Mattison  [38:34] 
I try to get in a couple hours a week, so maybe three or four days a week I’ll put them on. I even started gaming gaming and believe it or not, which is definitely not what they’re built for. But they do very well. Any latency on them when you’re when you’re gaming with them. And otherwise. Oh, they are wired okay. Yeah, they’re wired so they’re good. I do also have the Sony was 100 Mx three, whatever the the noise cancelling headphones are for when you’re on the go. Those are pretty good too. those are those are fantastic. Those are the two primary Big Boy headphones that I use.

Jim Collison  [39:10] 
We I alluded to this earlier. And you did a review of Dell XPS 15 9500 which is the big boy right on the XPS line. That is their flagship model. Yeah, so there’s the XPS 15 9500 in the 17 9700. So it’s just whichever screens got but but pretty pricey. Did they send this to you? Or did you have to fit the bill for it? Because you’ve you found some things wrong with it in the radio?

Jay Mattison  [39:38] 
They sent it to me but I had to send them 20 $500

Unknown Speaker  [39:45] 
they sent it to me on the house.

Jim Collison  [39:48] 
I’ve never heard of a deposit on a review. That’s pretty awesome.

Jay Mattison  [39:52] 
No, I just bought this I I wanted to um, it was when I sometimes when I see a product But announced or teased, whatever it may be, I just know it’s going to be good. I know something was probably going to be special. And in this instance, I wanted to know, I wanted this laptop, it was kind of the, again, a holy grail product for the way that I work. The way that I game the way that I operate in life. This had everything that I was looking for inside of the most possible compact shell. So I thought it was really really cool. It looks fantastic. It performs well. But yes, there are a lot of issues with the laptop, at least there were at launch.

Jim Collison  [40:36] 
Did you did you replace it? Did you?

Jay Mattison  [40:39] 
Yeah. Okay, this is my third, where am I on the screen. This is my third model right here. This is the third one I actually went and picked this one up from micro center. So there were a lot of issues. If you get anyone had a chance to see the video, I kind of went over him. But the biggest issue and that people are reporting this all over the place. The trackpad, it has like a double click when you go in there, which is just like a very, very poor job with QA and quality control. I mean, it’s there stuff like that. Outside of that. I mean, the performance was really good. I didn’t have any issues there. There was an issue that I found with the GPU where it wasn’t giving you max performance, but it seems like they have fixed that with firmware. So that’s good. Battery life is great. Audio issue

Jim Collison  [41:25] 
fixed with the drivers, the audio issue. I forgot about that one. You did? I did.

Jay Mattison  [41:33] 
Yes, so there was an audio. There’s an audio software that’s installed on there. It’s called max audio. And it does, I guess, sort of like a DSP or signal processing on all the audio, whether it’s through the speakers, or through the headphones. What I found was, if you do delete the program, or unsought the program, which is a pain, you have to go through all sorts of steps to do that, that the actual onboard audio through the speakers was compromised. They’re using that DSP To make their actual speakers sound better, so I came to the solution of just disabling it for headphones and stuff like that and it’s been okay, it’s been fine. It’s not it doesn’t seem like it’s processing the audio anymore which is which is fine. But you do kind of need to hold on to it just for the actual on board sound if you want to use the speakers, which is again, not ideal, not something that you should have to

Jim Collison  [42:24] 
do you said I mean, you’re an audio file and so it’s it sounded like there’s they’re adding some compression to it through software that just isn’t acceptable to you. And you’re like, Okay, this isn’t going to work you need to stop Give me the full fidelity

Jay Mattison  [42:38] 
right? Yeah, exactly. And I even if you This is your first set of speakers, you would notice that something was off. It’s It sounds very odd. So disabling it though, for headphones is has been effective. So I think it’s in a good spot. It’s gotten to the point where I can listen to it and obviously I’ve been doing a lot of Bluetooth now with my with my laptop trying to Wireless, since there’s not a lot of ports on it, but it’s really a really, if you can get through all of those, those little quirks if you can kind of deal with that stuff. Like I said, this is my third one, and this one had the trackpad issue too, but I loved everything else about the laptop so much that I was just like, I’m just gonna deal with one of your one of the viewers said, Hey, if you just turn that thing over, take the cover off the back, you pull something out, put a piece of tape in there, put it down and tighten it down really tight. It goes away.

Jim Collison  [43:31] 
So why didn’t you try that? Yeah, Jay. Oh,

Jay Mattison  [43:37] 
I did I did this before I made the video. I didn’t want to show that in the video.

Jim Collison  [43:42] 
Yeah.

Jay Mattison  [43:43] 
Because I wanted people to know, hey, like this is an actual issue. And that wasn’t really a full review. But yes, yeah. That viewer I 100%. Try that. It works to a degree. It depends on how the actual track that is. What I settled on was I’m not going to get too deep because I don’t have any images or videos of this right? There are two little wells that the trackpad depresses into. I filled them with double sided tape and essentially just froze the track that so it doesn’t click at all, which doesn’t matter to me. It’s all tap. I only tap anyway. Okay, so I was planning on making a follow up video with kind of like the current status.

Jim Collison  [44:19] 
Yeah, this was just a first impressions. The one we’re looking at here is just kind of your first which is actually a really detailed video for first impressions to you do a really nice job on this like this is, by the way, this is the first time I’ve been I’ve been streaming YouTube on YouTube. And it works like he used to be you do this and it was all jittery. And this is actually pretty good quality. Like, I didn’t know what it sounds like. But if you’d also a second ago, it also showed it flipped over with the back off, there’s an extra M. slot in here talks about that.

Jay Mattison  [44:55] 
That is that’s a feature that I’ve I essentially this One must have in a laptop, I need storage. A lot of people need storage if you do any sort of gaming, or you do any sort of creation, that second drive is critical. So the XPS 15 both the 15 and 17 inch miles do have dual m that to drive slots, which is fantastic. They also have user upgradeable Ram. So I got the 16 gig model, but at some point I’m sure I’ll upgrade 32 gigs you can do that all yourself. I bought the model with a one terabyte SSD installed and then I got another Samsung 970 EVO to add to that, so I’ve got two terabytes in there. So when I’m need space for adding video files to edit, you know, all that good stuff. I’ve got enough hard drive space to do so and also enough to store my games, movies, all that fun stuff as well. So that’s a critical critical feature and for something this compact, it’s really impressive that it’s in there.

Jim Collison  [45:50] 
I really liked your choice at 20 $500 deposit story. I wish that would have been true. Like I really, I really, really wish that that part The story had been true. This wouldn’t be a, this wouldn’t be an interview or a podcast with you if we didn’t kind of talk about the smallest computer form factors that you could get your hands on. Right? And let me let me bring this up. Let me see if I can get you just recently reviewed here, we’ll throw this up. You just recently reviewed this. This case, talk a little bit about this one.

Jay Mattison  [46:28] 
So that this is very interesting. This is from and I have it right here. This is a the J hack. Pure mark two, I reviewed the original j hag pure, which is this. This is the bigger brother. And yes, this is the bigger model if you can believe that. It’s fitting right in the palm of my hand essentially. But it’s an ultra compact case 3.1 liters, which is makes it the smallest gaming case in the world essentially, since you can put a dedicated graphics card into it. Now it’s supports low profile graphics cards only. But and that limits Due to a GTX 1650, if anyone’s interested in what you can actually do, but that’s plenty enough to play tennety p games, you know, at 60 frames per second for the most part with and you should be fine. You know, if you’re looking to do high end triple A gaming at 144 frames or something like that, obviously you need more powerful stuff. But if you want something super compact quiet you can throw in the living room or just have as a emulation box that can play some other games where you need something that you can throw in a bag and take for new work or to your other beach house, whatever have you. This is a really cool case that I actually really like performs very well. It can cool itself. And it looks great, you know, just just sitting on a desk.

Jim Collison  [47:38] 
In this case, you installed a small form factor GPU in it as well. 1010. Now what’s the what’s the model on this one,

Jay Mattison  [47:47] 
the GTX 16 1650.

Jim Collison  [47:50] 
How did that perform? Do these have are these significantly reduced in performance? Are you getting some similar performance out of them as you would have full size GPU

Jay Mattison  [47:59] 
so This performs from testing in about as well as a desktop 1650 under extreme load, it will definitely be louder. It has those tiny fans but you can’t see there. The heatsink is literally just a slab of aluminium, it’s thick. So and that’s a very low powered part to begin with. So it does you can kind of see it there it’s really just a block of aluminum. So it cools itself pretty well. And the performance was was was really good it’s probably in line with what you would get from say a laptop that had a 1660 ti in it or something like that if that means anything to anybody out there. But yeah, basically setting up gaming pretty much whatever you want to play you should be okay with that.

Jim Collison  [48:42] 
I you put an AMD chip in here as the as the CPU you also talked about the difference, like the cooling the cooling devices, we’re going to have Ryan come on here in a little bit talking about cooling but don’t you can’t use the same stock fans, right You can’t just swap out it until Are you if you had to choose between an Intel and in AMD right now if you had to make a choice, what do you choose today?

Jay Mattison  [49:07] 
I guess the

my question would be for what purpose? Oh, okay, so why? Well let’s read into that question a little bit. I mean, I’m let’s just say gaming because that’s what most people care at the gaming level. So let’s just say gaming. If price isn’t an option and you want a game that Intel still has the best gaming CPUs, the 1090 K is still their new releases still going to be the best quote unquote consumer gaming CPU, but value value wise, you cannot go wrong with AMD. What they’re offering for the money is super impressive. Technology. They’re way ahead of Intel on a seven nanometre process, and you really can’t go wrong. So if I’m doing anything, but say peak gaming build, I’m probably going to end okay.

Jim Collison  [49:58] 
Yeah, I think that’s my son did that Now he did go Intel. He did go Intel recently, from a from a small form factor standpoint and from if say was building small form factor productivity, does your answer does your answer change?

Jay Mattison  [50:12] 
Oh yeah, I mean AMD all the all the way it’s gonna run cooler and give you better multi threaded performance. So you’re gonna be able to, for everyday tasks, the AMD CPU is probably going to be the better option. They’re like,

Jim Collison  [50:24] 
look how little I mean, look how little space is in that case. Yeah. Do you think that can make it any smaller? I mean, you’re This is your world, are they? Are we gonna, can we physically get any smaller than this?

Jay Mattison  [50:38] 
I don’t. Well, you could technically, maybe make it shorter, use a lower riser, and then limit the cooler height to even lower than 47 millimeters. But the question is, would you do that? Like at that point, it’s kind of like what are we really doing here? In terms of usable, performance based system Systems This is probably as small as you’re going to see. Exactly. Which is, which is fine with me. I mean, this is plenty small.

Jim Collison  [51:07] 
You didn’t like that riser. You’re you’re in the video. You’re kind of complaining about that riser.

Jay Mattison  [51:12] 
Yeah, so you can see it kind of sticks out and it’s overlapping with some of the components. If that was a fixed piece, that would be a lot cleaner. There be even better airflow. But again, risers? Is this small company going to really develop their own riser? No, but it could just be something that would be cool to have. Yeah,

Jim Collison  [51:29] 
yeah. Jim Shoemaker in chat, I have too many controls to do here. Let’s see. He had said what, what uh, what should I use if I want to run Microsoft Flight Simulator? 2020.

Jay Mattison  [51:41] 
Mmm hmm. I’m not sure how I believe if I remember correctly, that’s a pretty heavy multi threaded game, quote unquote game. So I probably go with the AMD part. Any one of their eight course depending on your budget, probably You know, a 3700 X, you could start there that’s very affordable right now they’re sitting at around 200 at the moment. So you could build a really, really good gaming system that should be able to handle that with no worries. That would be a great place to start since that’s not a crazy graphic intensive game probably rely more on the multi threaded performance of that CPU there.

Jim Collison  [52:21] 
Good recommendation. All right. elephant in the room, we had a massive fail. He said Microsoft led us down is this is this what led us down. This is what led us down.

Jay Mattison  [52:34] 
I think last time I was on, we were talking about raising the razor buds I had that were true wireless. So when I’m not sitting at my desk, looking for peak, audio file performance, whatever that means. I do enjoy just I can listen to just casual stuff. So I’m I’m walking around the street, I don’t need it to sound amazing. I want something that’s convenient, that can pop into my ears and just do its thing. So we had those razor pods last time. For their, like 100 bucks, and since then I’ve gone and tried some new things. So the surface buzz which I have here, which I tried and failed to use earlier, and the apple EarPods Pro, yes, I’m betraying all my windows people. I’m sorry, I apologize. But I tried these out as well. And they’re both. They’re both good at what they do. They’re just good at very different things. So I’ve seen a lot of reviews of these surface buds out there. And most of them have been negative. A lot of people saying that they don’t sound great, they’re blah, blah, blah. They’re not air pods essentially is what they’re saying. But these are if you are someone who stays home, if you are looking for a headphone you can use in your office, and you still need to hear what’s going on around you. These are very good. Outside of our little snafu earlier. They’ve been rock solid.

Jim Collison  [53:52] 
They had to fail on primarily, you know, Windows type friendly podcast, right.

Jay Mattison  [53:57] 
Exactly, exactly. I mean, They’re hideous. As you can see in the picture. They’re giant discs that sit in your ear, they look really stupid. So and they will fall out if you kind of run around or die then after working out kind of, some of you might be able to do with air pods Pro, but they have probably the best sound quality of any ear bud style headphone I’ve heard sounds like without the seal, which isn’t a ton of ton of headphones. But if you like that kind of open feeling, and you don’t want to have that pressure build up, these are these are actually really good. They’re not cheap, and I don’t whether they’re worth the price of $200 is going to be up to you. But I’ve liked them a lot. You can compare multiple devices, you can have your phone and you can have your, your PC, your laptop, if your user like me with a lot of devices, that’s great. Just run it in parallel to different things. And they’re just they’re just really good headphone so I’ve enjoyed these a lot. But they are the only available in white. Yes. Yikes. They’re available and white and all I have hopefully doesn’t kick my audio but I got a skin. If you can see that there. Hold on. Let me let me focus in on you. Yeah. Oh, okay $8 skin to hopefully change the color a little bit because they look ridiculous. I mean hair pies don’t look great, but they’re small. These are huge discs that sit in your ears, then they do that full gesture controls you can do skip tracks forward backing volume up all that fun stuff play pause. So that stuff is good there.

Jim Collison  [55:27] 
Yeah, well, I think the that was the whole hope was that it would make the gesture control a little easier. I see people struggling with the air pod gesture control. You know, they’re you know, there’s only so many things you can do on something you can’t see that’s attached to your head at the moment. someone’s talking to you. You can’t hear them. You’re trying to shut stuff off, right? I mean, it’s it’s kind of a mess. It would it would. I’ll be honest, if you had great place for it. Maybe this works. This way you’ve got the air pods. It’d be a great place for voice commands to does it does the Siri work on on? Can you tell Siri what to do to for the EarPods well that Will that work?

Jay Mattison  [56:13] 
Yeah for these yes you think I believe it’s a long press I’ve done it by accident and same obviously with the you can say hey Siri to the airport, but you have to touch him

Jim Collison  [56:22] 
to

Jay Mattison  [56:22] 
say to just use Command with the the Microsoft buzz you have to hold

Jim Collison  [56:29] 
it, hold it, press and hold. The other day I forget where I was at. Where was I? Let’s see, I was somewhere. Oh, it’s out in the garage. And I just cleaned up I did a total Rebuild of my garage this last weekend. I know I got enemy but I took everything out in the driveway, throw away a bunch of stuff and then just took back in when I needed right. So I had an old school I’ve taken a member those kitchen radio CD units that you could put in under the shelf right Yeah, 15 or 20 years old? Well, we replaced one in the kitchen. And so I took out into the garage. I’m like, well, it’d be nice to have something in the garage to play music, right? They sound okay. So it was playing music. Somebody came out, Sarah came up my wife to talk to me. And I turned to it. Like I was gonna say, Hey, lady, like I was trying. I’ve gotten so used to controlling I never I didn’t think I’d get to this, but I’ve gotten so used to controlling audio with the voice that I didn’t even I was like, Oh, I actually have to go touch that. And do you know,

Jay Mattison  [57:37] 
caveman tech

Jim Collison  [57:38] 
is what is this? This madness? But it just it kind of goes I still think we’ve got a ways to go on your buds. Like I just don’t think they’re all the way even as good as those are that you have in right now. Yeah, you’re good. I still think we have a ways to go there. I think the user interface on Amazon still difficult.

Jay Mattison  [58:01] 
I think we need to figure out if a a honestly, I’d rather allow these companies just get rid of the touch controls, rather than have what they currently have, which is a mess. You know? Yeah, just yeah. Use the device to control rather than having to touch and brush and do all these gestures it just yeah, that Well, yeah, the pros are not bad because it has a stock that you squeeze. I think that’s a decent way to do it, I guess. But again, this isn’t perfect. None of none of this stuff. Yeah. So yeah, I don’t really know. As long as I rather they nailed down audio and features and call quality first. I’m worried about touching and swiping and all that stuff.

Jim Collison  [58:39] 
Yeah, I just like it off my watch. You know, and then it would just it would just control that’s probably how I that’s probably how I do it. If I was gonna do it.

Jay Mattison  [58:48] 
Yeah, you have Apple Watch there.

Jim Collison  [58:50] 
Yeah, for Yeah. Before the the old series for which I love. It’s a great and I’m an iPhone guy. So like I never my whole family has gone pixel. You And is m phi. I’m sorry. And and I’m I’m the last holdout on an iPhone. I am

Jay Mattison  [59:07] 
a die hard iPhone guy.

Jim Collison  [59:09] 
Yeah, me too, cuz it works really well that means that

Jay Mattison  [59:12] 
it just works perfectly. I mean, well, no complaint, although, I don’t know if you’ve seen the surface Neal that new phone they have coming out just pictures of it. Yeah, just pictures of it. That is like the ultimate temptation. I don’t know if I’m gonna be

Jim Collison  [59:29] 
I am for sure. An iPhone guy. Well, if you get if you get a hold on, let me know have you on as soon as we get you on to talk about it? Because I think that’ll be interesting. It’s either gonna be super great and revolutionary, or it’s gonna be a Surface RT, like, you just you just don’t know you did with Microsoft. You just don’t know. Sometimes it’s hit or miss. They’re trying you know, Apple does all this stuff behind the scenes. You never know. I mean, I’m sure they’ve had thousands of fails in this in the labs. You never know. Microsoft’s labs are in public. Like they just do everything like it. Let’s just release it. It’s not ready. I know but we’re gonna release it anyways.

Jay Mattison  [1:00:09] 
Pricing is going to be important. If it’s a less than it’s people are saying could be 1500 dollars, which is a tough pill to swallow for a first generation device like that. Right? Right. I’m thinking come in closer to that premium thousand dollar mark. I think people will really consider it. I mean, because I know I’m someone who will buy expensive electronics. I’m not paying 1500 dollars

Jim Collison  [1:00:33] 
to spend four grand on a laptop, but you know, I’m not spending more than 1000 on that on that phone. Oh, it’s not a phone, whatever it is. whatever whatever it is. Phone hybrid. What Yeah, yeah, no, it’ll be interesting. That’s is that coming out this fall?

Jay Mattison  [1:00:50] 
Supposedly, the rumors are It was supposed to come out holiday but now they’re pushing it up. So it should be out there talking maybe end of summer, early, early spring or spring, early fall, so it should be out. They were saying as early as August 5, which I think is not true. I don’t see that happening. But September October around the iPhone launch could be realistic. Yeah. Smart.

Jim Collison  [1:01:12] 
Yeah. And what what iPhone Are you on right now?

Jay Mattison  [1:01:15] 
I am on the

11.

Jim Collison  [1:01:19] 
Right? Yeah, sure.

You know, you switch your phone too much when you go, when or it just works and you don’t have to think about it. I’m still on an eight plus. And I’m gonna, I’m gonna ride this thing till it’s dust. They, you know, apparently they’re not breaking them anymore for a bad battery gate. And so, I think I could get a couple couple more years out of this thing. It’s just, it’s, it just works. It’s so great. Hey, speaking of that last question for you before we let you go Apple switches to arm and it’s their own version of arm. Right and, and let’s be really, really clear. I mean, Microsoft’s working hard on the arm side as well. Well, they’ve kind of partnered up with Qualcomm. But what do you think of what what do you think of this announcement from from Apple? And does it change anything in the space?

Jay Mattison  [1:02:09] 
So this is a very interesting, I think a lot of people are looking at it purely from the perspective of an apple user, what its gonna do for Apple products. And I think that that’s going to be positive for them in the long run, assuming they can get the developer support for all their apps. If you just look at the way that their processes and their phones work, how efficient they are, how powerful they are. It’s really a compelling package when you scale that up to a laptop and or desktop. I really think performance wise they’re going to be right there, if not better, you know, Intel has been dragging their feet for a long time now they’ve been on 14 nanometers since 2014. The smell 2020. I mean, apples on seven, AMD is on seven. So there’s a lot of room there to both increase gains in terms of battery life, and also just General performance, I think for them, it’s a smart thing to do. It’ll save them a lot of money to Intel charges, a boatload for people to use their parts. So it’s kind of like a no brainer. They’re big enough, their user base is big enough that they can, they can get the support for developers. And I think it’ll unify all those apps as well, which will now be able to be run on their main desktop, so it’s a no brainer for them. I’m more excited to see what it forces Intel to do, because Intel is obviously still going to power PCs, Intel and AMD coming in the future. We’ve been in a race for higher core clocks and more cores for the last 20 years. And if you look at the apple approach, it’s not always five gigahertz. It’s four cores that are high performance. And here’s four cores that are efficient. And you know, it’s it’s using a product that is smart, and does what the user needs it to do as opposed to brute force and or just here specs dumping specs at you. Yeah. So I’m super excited to see what in Intel’s done they’ve already announced a product that works similarly to that Apple, a 12 x chip that’s really compelling to me with those different purpose cores. And I just want to see what they do they’ve got to come back swinging they’re obviously dominating the mobile market and still the desktop market but they have to do better and I think this was what the kick in the pants that any they’re gonna lose a huge chunk of revenue. And they’ve got to make that back another way and that’s gonna be bringing us products for the PC market that are just better.

Jim Collison  [1:04:28] 
Yeah, no, I agree with ya. I think this is anytime we get this kind of innovation. This good it when people when people get slapped around a little bit and get angry and upset and things start changing, which is good. I think it’s a good I think it’s a good thing as well. So I’d be excited to see I do love you know, you mentioned this I do love philosophy of getting the right core doing the right job. And, and you know, we’ve we’ve seen some hints of this. It’s only getting better, and we really need it. We’ve also seen some battery and provements which have really, really helped. And so, you know, that have those two going and combo really continues to give us high powered devices that last as long as they should. I mean, remember, the days when a two hour battery on a laptop was pretty good deal? Like you were Well, yeah, this is so great, you know, and then four hours and then everybody struggled for the longest time to get beyond four. You know, and you you were lucky if you had four in the very beginning and that would degrade the two or one in the two years. Yeah, the laptop right?

Jay Mattison  [1:05:36] 
Yeah. You got to hit eight pretty much for most ultra poor really do don’t hit eight. Yeah, yeah. Next is XPS. 15 is it’s in that eight range. It’s got a 4k screen, which obviously diminishes battery life a lot. But if you’re just watching the video, you can get to eight watching YouTube. I mean, that’s crazy that a six cores CPU and a GTX 1650 graphics card can can do What they’re doing now. So the efficiency gains have been been pretty good.

Jim Collison  [1:06:04] 
There’s there’s some different there’s some definite passive aggressiveness going on in the chat room right now as we’re talking about this. We were talking about that device and Joe says, hopefully that’s an Android device. And then Kevin says I was 14 looks great. And Joseph looks like they implemented live tiles. how innovative I like that. Right. We saw the course that was a Windows thing way back. Yes. Fun. He Yes, there’s a little toothless. He’s what’s funny is everyone will love him on iOS, right? Like,

Jay Mattison  [1:06:32] 
oh, this is a brand new feature. I’ve never seen it before ever in my life. So I don’t know what this is talking about.

Jim Collison  [1:06:39] 
Yeah, it’s like a Windows Phone. Sorry, your again, you know, it’s just like the tablet. I saw early tablet versions from Microsoft in like 2002. And, and they and they were big and thick and they were ugly. They didn’t work very well, but they were trying it. And then of course, the iPad comes along and just rocks. The whole Yeah, rock solid thing. So

Jay Mattison  [1:07:01] 
if anything about Windows Phone is that was a good platform. Yeah, it was a really good platform that came out four years too late, you know, they wrote their feet on it, like old Microsoft needs to

Jim Collison  [1:07:13] 
do it. Listen, so it was beta and VHS one. So it’s not always right. It’s it’s not always what worked best. As you think about the fall it maybe you’ve alluded to this already, but But you say you can answer the same. You can answer it the same way as you think about fall and Christmas and New things that you’re looking forward to. What’s kind of the one thing that you’re really kind of watching or looking forward to as we think about new announcements? Come Come winter. One thing, that’s tough one thing 10 of your top 10 of your top thing.

Jay Mattison  [1:07:49] 
Well, I mentioned the Microsoft, the NEA. That’s very interesting. Um, I am honestly curious to see what the new generation of gaming consoles looks like. They’re promising a lot of things, the new Xbox and PlayStation. They’re promising a lot of performance, PC levels of performance. And we’ve heard this before. I’m super curious to see what the actual performance of these systems is. And I’m curious, you know, violent.

I don’t know, maybe.

Jim Collison  [1:08:20] 
Come on, you drop four grand on a laptop. They’re gonna be like 500 bucks, right?

Jay Mattison  [1:08:25] 
Yeah, I don’t know.

Maybe if they’re exclusive, there’s some good exclusives maybe for the PlayStation side that I might want to play. Sure, sure. And I’ll give you one more bonus one, AMD laptops, AMT, AMD CPU laptops. They have been trickling out slowly. They have that I don’t know if you guys are aware of the zephyrus G 14. I don’t know if you’ve seen that one. But it’s a 14 minute or not millimeter a 14 inch gaming ultra portable with the RT x 2060 in it that has an eight core CPU that kills any Intel part that’s available right now. The AMD is crushing it with their mobile and desktop CPU. So I want to see more of those devices starts to trickle out and during the back half of this year and into next year, that’s kind of like,

Jim Collison  [1:09:12] 
yeah, hopefully, hopefully this pandemic won’t fire everything up in the process of getting it seems like so far, even though this has been going on. We’re still like, it hasn’t stopped most of these announcements and the innovation. It seems like we’re getting through that. I mean, that’s that’s the feeling I’m getting, which is good. If this could have a potential. I mean, I would think about if this pandemic had been 10 years ago, we would have we would have come to a grinding halt on some of these things. But with everybody working from home and seems like it’s better. Do you get that feeling? Like? I feel like the tech sector hasn’t stopped like it’s still continuing, hey, nothing’s wrong. We’re continuing. You know, do you get that feeling?

Jay Mattison  [1:09:54] 
kind of business as usual? I think the only the real concern for them was manufacturing in China. I think once that kind of got ironed out in fact, we started opening up things were pretty much business as usual here. So because obviously American most of the skilled jobs can be done from

Jim Collison  [1:10:11] 
Yeah, computer. Yeah, yeah. And I think in the manufacturing, I think in the Silicon Valley and like Intel has a major lab and you know, where you got to be the Can’t you know, you can’t, you can’t do die work at home. Right, that veal? I think they figured out how to do that in a remote or not in a remote but I mean, it’s socially distanced away or something they’re in aren’t they in white suits? I think they are anyway, yeah. They’re probably like naturally fills clean rooms. Anyways. Yeah. Hey, what’s one thing? What’s one thing the pandemic took away from you that you’re looking forward to having back?

Jay Mattison  [1:10:50] 
I’m going to the movies.

Jim Collison  [1:10:52] 
Yeah, that’s a good one. I know. Are they gonna want to? Are they gonna even be like, is that movie theater is are they gonna survive? They’ve been closed for five months?

Jay Mattison  [1:11:04] 
I don’t know they’re saying that some of them may not because movie movie turnout was down already. So this is not helped. And now with movies being new movies coming out at home, you know, for streaming I know that cats kind of out of the bag a little bit now, so I don’t know. I hope it does. I love going the movies. I love the whole thing. You know, the $20 popcorn?

Jim Collison  [1:11:26] 
Totally. you’re signing for a second mortgage. I just wanted a drink. I just remember

Jay Mattison  [1:11:32] 
I went to see what did I see? I think it was like Avengers. Last one. Okay, me and one other person. Mm hmm. The tickets with popcorn and like drinks. It was $78 Oh my god. This hurts me so bad. But I’m gonna do it again. Because like a big thing, these movies.

Jim Collison  [1:11:52] 
It’s ridiculous. Our driving or our theaters turn into a drive in. So they put up big screens. It’s you know, it’s a really wide complex. So they put up big screens on either side of the doors and then set up kind of drive in tune to the station. Now they’re not showing any they’re showing old movies like it’s not there’s nothing new doing it this westers like yeah, like Ghostbusters and Top Gun, you know, not the new one, but the old one. And in those kinds of movies and in our churches even done, that’s where they’ve gone they’ve gone drive up and so I kind of wonder will that get them by will they sell enough $14 popcorn you know, to be able to stay open? I just don’t know someone coming. How do they do the concessions so someone like come up to the car or you have to chuck it at you?

It’s like a football of popcorn

Jay Mattison  [1:12:49] 
or cannon.

Jim Collison  [1:12:54] 
hotdogs. Do do. They do it at the baseball scene. I think That’s I miss I used to go watch quite a bit of triple A baseball here you know we’ve got a we have a baseball team here in Omaha and it’s a sweet stadium and it’s just a great experience and I kind of missed that you know being being able to do that so and maybe going into Best Buy like you know I’d never thought I’d miss BestBuy but

Jay Mattison  [1:13:20] 
but you know, Microsoft or Zopa or they have one in your area now. Either heaven aka Miko center. They’re they’re open they are

Jim Collison  [1:13:30] 
Yeah, my best buy has not you can’t well that’s not true. Our best buy it you could go in the employee takes you in and it’s like a personal shopping experience. But you have to you reserve it you show up and they help you pick what you need and then you buy it and or you can buy it online but there’s no going and there’s like no people going in and out of that store right now. It’s all by appointment only or you buy it online. Hey, I know I bought What did I buy? I bought something from them. I needed something broke here and I needed it. Oh, it’s the modem. When my modem went bad I bought a modem from there. Within 45 minutes I had an email online like hey, it’s ready for pickup and I went down and as I was pulling in you on the app you just say I’m here gap comes out like drop in your car you’re done. I was like, why are we doing this this way?

Jay Mattison  [1:14:22] 
All the way in I think one drive thru

Jim Collison  [1:14:25] 
and I should I should order my beer that way more that would be super convenient and drive thru beer Spencer

Jay Mattison  [1:14:31] 
right down the street for leaves. Yeah, maybe.

Jim Collison  [1:14:34] 
Now I know I need to I need to take advantage of it more. So Jay, thanks for thanks for saying yes and jumping on. It’s always great to have you on here. Really what what’s coming up on your channel, you got anything you want to you want to promote on your channel.

Jay Mattison  [1:14:50] 
Coming up, I have a oh I have a I’m going to do a Mac Mini killer build in this case. So I’m going to put more power four components in here. So that’s Coming up. I have a review of this chair behind me which you can’t really see. But it kind of has my logo

Jim Collison  [1:15:08] 
on it. Yeah, nice like a custom

Jay Mattison  [1:15:10] 
premium chair that you can get in any color you can get logos engraved on it or not engraved coolant on it for pretty affordable price. What else do I have? Oh I have a follow up video on the XPS 15 and then I’m going to do a USBC accessories video. So all the stuff I’ve been using power to power banks cool little downloads all the fun stuff so that’s some good things in the work they’re in the works there and should be fun

Jim Collison  [1:15:34] 
great tech everything on YouTube. I think your tech everything on Twitter and maybe tech everything on everything at this point right? Everything get out there follow jay he does a great job love watching his videos and keeping up with them if you’re if you like if you like small form factor, he is really the resident expert in this expression in our community. And j appreciate hang tight for one second. Let me let me kind of wrap this thing up. As we do that a couple reminders if you want to support the Home Gadget Geeks here on Patreon, the average guy TV slash Patreon there’s still some slots available. Just two slots left. So if you want to, not really but just you know you want to add some demand there, just two slots on on Patreon laugh if you want to go and support the average guy TV slash Patreon. Big thanks to Christian over at Maple Grove Partners. If you need hosting for anything Christians got plans to start at 10 bucks, high speed, low drag all kinds of great stuff. He does a great job over there. Maple Grove Partners comm any hosting he can do just about anything Maple Grove partners.com I appreciate his sponsorship of that. And then if you haven’t download the app just for emergency purposes, you never know when you’re going to need Home Gadget Geeks on the road. Best way to do it go to Home Gadget geeks.com download the app have it on your phone, Android I don’t know why you’d want it on Android but on iPhone where it’s better. You could have that on there as well. And it’s free. That’s the best part about it. Download have it available you can start Actually the best way to listen to the live show and to stream it live is off the app. We are live every Thursday at 8pm Central. Nine Eastern out here at the average guy.tv slash live. Don’t forget we’ve got my daughter’s coming up. J I’m gonna have my daughter on the program. In two weeks. She’s gonna come on she was super popular. I mean, you’re popular. Don’t get me wrong. You are really popular when you come on the show. But she’s got I mean, we had people emailing me asking for her specific. So Sam Yeah, it is pretty great when you can podcast with the kids. So give you a hard time. That’s pretty fun. Yeah, she cuts me no slack. Like, like, hey, like respect. I’ve been doing this for 10 years. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care super. Yeah, see, we’ve spent the last five months together and like if I if if it’s so funny cuz she’ll go toe to toe with me on political or anything. social things and she just does not like I don’t get it. Dad credit. She just goes for the throat and I’m like you’re a stranger. Wait a minute, like this isn’t Facebook back. She’s. So Mike Wieger is back next week and then Sam is on the week after that. So come back and listen to those live as well. If you’re listening live, thanks for that. If you’re not, I mean, if you’re not, well come out and join us live every Thursday, the average guy.tv slash live. We do it all the time. Thanks for joining us tonight. With that we’ll say goodbye, everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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