Counter point I have a harbor-freight drill that has lasted almost a decade. I recently replaced it because I needed more torque.
If you're careful there are so, so many harbor freight tools that likely come off the back of the same Chinese factory name brands do. Their "professional" line is about 50-70% less expensive and performs as well. The impact wrench is better than a Milwaukee, and their professional torque wrench comes within tolerance to a Snap-On.
For someone who doesn't need a QA cert for insurance/licensing reasons harbor freight is a miracle. Likely because it's the EXACT same stuff. Nothing is made in America anymore.
This is really the way to go. Most "cheap" tools will offer the same or similar performance to the name brand ones or like you mentioned you'll splurge on a nice one and realize you only need it for one or three jobs and the generic brand would have sufficed. I've been buying harbor freight tools for years I can think on one hand the amount of tools that have broken and it's usually not because they weren't up to par for the right job but because I did a hackjob and macgyvered them for something they were never meant for.
I bought the $15 HVLP spray gun and it performed very well for years. When it finally could not be cleaned up and repaired anymore, I just bought a new (now $17) one and have been using that one for years, too. $32 for a decade worth of spraying paint.
Can you point me to that HVLP gun for under $20. I have purchased two different ones for ~$100 each and they make this list of "things I regret"
I also subscribe to the buy cheap, if you use it alot and it's not working out buy a much better model. I've done that for years and have a hodgepodge of brands that make me happy. The only exception is battery powered tools, I did some research, decided that Dewalt would be a good choice. I didn't want to have 10 different kinds of battery packs around, so picked the battery ecosystem and went from there.
And when I buy a wood chipper, my Fujifilm printer will be the first thing through it. I have wasted more time and supplies to get pictures that look like a 2 year old colored it. So sad.
I sometimes buy quality tools for a single job. Generally, I can complete a job at 90% of pro quality at 30% of pro prices and that includes buying the tool. So if it is really never going to be used, I can always resell online.
I think it depends on the type of tool. If it's a specialty tool that I don't expect to use more than once or twice, I'll go for cheaper model. On the other hand, if it's something that I expect to use a lot then buying a quality tool (possibly used) is the better route. All of my cordless power tools are Makita but my 2 Makita drills were both bought used. For hand tools like combination wrenches and sockets my default route is used SK Tools bought at yard sales, pawn shops, eBay.
Depends what you do. Good tools are expensive, but sometimes you only need to use a particular tool for one particular job, and it would be a waste of money to buy a tool made for professional every-day use.
I bought a flathead screwdriver at a dollar store fifteen years ago. It’s one of my favorite tools. Good grip, I don’t care about damaging it. Then again my second favorite tool is a top brand driver. You must learn the rules well enough to know when to break them. You must meditate on this.
I have spent thousands on the cool noise cancelling bluetooth headsets. Each of them is garbage. (I just kept buying them, hoping that at least one of them is not only hyped, but have some substance also)
Also, just broke a cheap Hama mouse into pieces, literally today. It was only like ~$5, but the worst piece of trash I have had: it turns off after 2 minutes of inactivity, and on top of that it can't wake up always... (well, couldn't wake up. It's in the mouse-heaven now)
Have had great luck with my Soundcore by Anker Space Q45 Adaptive Active Noise Cancelling Headphones. They are cost competitive, but not perfect. Recommend.
Thanks, but the truth is, a few months ago I "accidentally" tried a good old cabled Audio Technica, and suddenly I realized that I haven't really enjoyed music for a good part of the past decade. I'm back in the middle-ages, when it comes to music listening, and there is no way I'm switching.
There's no better noise cancelling than as much bulk around your ears and as thick a wall around your room as possible! I too have a wired Audio-Technica (ATH-M40x) and can highly recommend it. I got immeasurable pleasure out of discovering that many of my favourite pieces of music had entire lines that I never knew existed when still using lesser audio equipment!
Another suggestion of mine is to listen to CDs from the late 80s, when record labels considered 'digital' a mark of quality and actually followed through with the marketing. They tend to be the best, in my opinion - they have good dynamic range which nowadays is usually compressed out of the recordings to maximise loudness, and they had just started using 192kbs bitrates, which I consider to be at the upper level of my hearing ability. No help for new albums, of course, but hopefully those will have FLAC downloads available as some consolation!
Have you ever tried the Tidal streams (https://tidal.com/sound-quality) in FLAC? Are those at all comparable to these high-quality recordings you mentioned?
As someone who grew up later in the MP3 era (90s), I guess I never knew what "good" audio ever sounded like. I'd love to do a back-to-back comparison of the same song, one in "modern" shitty no-dynamic-range and the other in a higher-fidelity version to see if I can notice any difference at all. Between my consumer equipment and my aging ears, I dunno if I'll be able to at all...?
I don't understand your "192kbps" remark. It seems to be a reference to some sort of lossy compression, but the context was audio CDs (from the 80s, even!). Audio CDs are all uncompressed PCM at 1411kbps, nothing else is possible - especially in the 80s! Lossy audio compression was in its infancy, and mp3 was not defined until 1991.
Yes, that was an error; sorry for any confusion. What I was trying to express is that the bitrates of digital recording equipment in the early 80s had become so high that the digital recording would be effectively indistinguishable from its analogue source. Yet, not long beforehand, the capacity and speed of digital memory was insufficient to keep up with the required ~44khz sampling rate required.
It seems that my confabulation of 192kbps was also a gross underestimation - apparently, the Sony PCM-1, which was released in 1977, already had a bitrate of 573kbps.
I have these headphones, they are great. Amazing price.
I recently bought a pair of Bose QuietComfort Ultra and sent them back because I had nothing but issues with them and they were barely any better than the Anker's when working. Certainly not worth the price difference.
Out of curiosity, what issues have you had with them? (I'm not at all involved with their development, just a fellow user of them).
I had the Bose and Sony ones. They were OK, just uncomfortable. Been using the in-ear Airpods Pro for a few years now, for everything from work to flights to trains to exercising, and I love them soooo much... they're probably my favorite tech purchase ever (and I don't even have an iPhone). Pairing is always a pain in the ass (I just manually pair again with every device I want to switch to) but other than that, they've been so nice.
Personally, I'm not an audiophile, but I find the audio quality incredible (vs my Sonos speakers, wired Koss PortaPros, generic soundbars, Sony XM3 and Bose QC35s, etc.) and the comfort unbeatable. But some people hate the in-ear kind.
Anyway, not trying to convince you of anything, just wondering what made your experiences so different and bad?
My problems were very varied, depending on the specific model. Trying not to make it a full rant. While I have many types of music on my player, primarily I listen to rock/metal.
Common problem: ANC changes the music too. It messes with the mids and highs, regardless of the model. Some are better than the others... but of course ANC can be turned off, which I did frequently in the past years. Oh, and the low battery warning: "ATTENTION - battery will be empty in 4 hours, let me disrupt your music every 60-120 seconds till the end of time!".
Bose QC35, QC45: They are pretty much the same, both inside and outside. Very comfortable, can't argue with that. They randomly they cut off the first/last 2 seconds of the tracks (how did they even release them like that is a mystery for me). Also, no bass, no highs, just a pile of mids. Almost 0 dynamics - you will never hear any other instruments else during a bass-guitar heavy track...
Sennheiser PCX-550 ii: It sometimes sounded fairly decent, even with ANC, however rather uncomfortable. The touch interface is catastrophic (in humid weather all the controls activate at the same time. Literally: volume up-down, play-forward-pause-call, all at the once). It had the worst bug I saw so far: about once every 2 weeks it made some extra loud shrilling noise that made me shit my pants (I'd guess the ANC got into some self-amplifying feedback loop). After it came back from "warranty-repair", it did it again within 3 days.
Marshall Monitor II ANC: mushy pile of mids, sounds actually bad, especially for its price. I really thought that it was made for rock music, but no. It is mostly made for audible books. Controls look cool (5-way joystick), but hard to use in practice: if the button press is even half a degree off, it doesn't register. Especially unusable while walking. Used two different sets of this model (after a warranty exchange). Earpads break after 6 months (for both sets). The second set it literally a pain to wear: it makes the top of my head hurt after 20 minutes.
Sony 1000XM2: Very bad touch interface, it feels like the gestures are randomly changing function. Keep disconnecting and stuttering. Sometimes after 20 minutes, sometimes after 2 hours. The only guaranteed thing is that one of them happens sooner or later. If I apply a ton of EQ on each track one by one as they are played, it is possible to get decent sound of it. But usually I just want to listen to music, without messing with EQ every few minutes.
Airpods pro: Keeps disconnecting. ANC keeps turning on and off, living its own life. Sometimes only one side has sound. But it doesn't sound bad, when it works. It doesn't happen very often though. Too bad Apple ran out of SW developers.
I have only one BT headset that I keep using still, though exclusively for workouts: Sony MDR-ZX770: I got it like 8 years ago. It sounds crap, but very robust and reliable at what it does. If you want a bad sounding cheap headset, I recommend this one lol.
I had some random headsets from Amazon also, Chinese garden variety, but I won't even say anything about them.
But in a nutshell, that's why I have had enough. Now I'm just back to oldschool headsets, and hear every instrument without bugs.
> Airpods pro: Keeps disconnecting. ANC keeps turning on and off, living its own life. Sometimes only one side has sound. But it doesn't sound bad, when it works. It doesn't happen very often though. Too bad Apple ran out of SW developers.
Given the popularity of the product you’re presumably aware this isn’t a typical experience. I certainly haven’t encountered disconnects or ANC switching off uncommanded, and the only time I get one-sided sound is if one side runs out of battery. You might consider asking Apple to replace them.
And it's not only the Airpods that are very popular.
All of them are popular and most of the people don't face this issues.
I have some Sony XM3 and although the touch interface is weird you get used to it and I never face issues with connection as stated.
This is hilarious. The Devil's been urging me to buy one of high-end ones for the past year -- I specifically clicked on this post hoping to see someone regretting buying one of these things so I could use it as fuel against my utopian fantasies.
My Bose QC15 headphones (bought around 2009) are probably my best tech purchase ever. I've had to replace the foam ear pad pieces twice, but otherwise they're fantastic. These are wired (no bluetooth).
A TCL TV. It broke exactly after the warranty expired (led issues). I was planning to replace the leds, then discovered that the screen is glued to the frame. I gave up in disgust.
Apple MacBook Air 2020, intel edition. Such a piece of junk and shame on Apple for releasing it knowing that they’d have launched the M1 in just a few months. Maximum corporate greed.
8 months (though I imagine sales may have tanked in June when they announced the transition to Apple Silicon, so Apple probably only got 3 months of sales.)
But it was in fact the fastest intel MacBook Air - and it still is.
What few people outside Apple (or even inside given Apple's notorious secrecy) probably realized in early to mid 2020, even after the WWDC announcement, was how great the Apple Silicon/M1 MacBook Air was actually going to be, and how it would transform expectations for performance and battery life in a fanless laptop.
Perhaps Apple should have offered a trade-in scheme like they did for the Lisa/Macintosh XL. I wonder if they offered upgrades to the buyers of the October 1999 Power Mac G4 (PCI Graphics) which was replaced by a better model only two months later.
Let's also recall that the 2020 MacBook Air launched in March 2020, at the onset of the pandemic. Nobody knew how serious that would be and what the impact would be on tech manufacturing, especially in China. It was the last major launch before global lockdowns set in and it wasn't clear when the next one would be possible.
I have this one and love it. The M1 would have been worthless to me anyways since I wanted 1 laptop to run MacOS and Windows. Unfortunately I think this is the last Mac I’ll be able to get because of the transition.
Do you need to boot into win? If so, I see why the new machines are not for you. If you can get away with virtualization, VMware Fusion is now free.
I used Fusion for my previous job from the start of the pan until last year (so first on an Intel Mac, then on an M1 MBP) and it was good enough for what I needed. Win for Arm was obviously faster than Win x86 on the previous machine, even when it was a preview release. Then again, my needs were not extreme.
My first and last experience with an Android based TV device.
Since 2018 or so, I've been using a small Windows PC with a Hauppauge WinTV Dual USB tuner (ATSC, watch as you record a different channel in the backgroud) and DVBViewer software. Use a web browser for streaming.
Sonos speakers. I got a big system during COVID and it got me through isolation. But then they decided to redo the app and the new one is terrible (not that the old one was ever great; software is not their strength). It's still a buggy mess to this day. Some of the hardware died too, and they don't offer repairs. Their customer service sucks too. You can't email them anymore and you have to wait hours on the phone.
I went from loyal supporter to wanting to get rid of the whole system. Buyer beware. Company has really gone downhill. I wish they'd fire the CEO.
Leadership ignored them, launched the app anyway, lost a ton of their stock value, and then laid off 100 employees.
I dunno wtf the board was doing at the time, but they should've removed the leader, rolled back the update, apologized to everyone and then worked to rebuild the experience and trust from the ground up. They never bothered with that, instead doubling down on the new app, keeping the CEO, and gradually restoring features. It still hasn't reached feature (or stability) parity with how it was a few years ago. I barely ever use my system anymore because it's so bad. (I really should sell it, but I just don't even want to touch the software to reset it, or try to support the buyer if they run into setup issues... which they will... because it's that bad.)
Empty promises from people we don't trust is not a way to win back loyalty. It's just lame PR damage control that fools nobody. They've been doing that for months now and the system is still half broken. Every week I run into issues and I've stopped trying to even report them anymore. RIP. I used to love my Move so much =/ At least that will keep working in Bluetooth mode... I hope.
Never going to buy a smart speaker system again. Dumb old cables is the way to go.
Have you tried recently? I’ve been playing with music-assistant, snapcast, and shairport-sync on some raspberry pi zeros. Synchronization has seemed to work incredibly well during my experiments.
Sonos syncs things up well-enough that a pair of them can be used in stereo. The stereo pair will play in-phase (allowing for imaging like with conventional stereo rigs), and stay locked together even as devices are added and removed to/from a group.
There are zero audio sync issues between speakers all wired to the same receiver. You can get an input cable that connects to a headphone jack to make an iPhone resemble a CD player input on the back of the receiver. Also need an apple dongle for phones w/o headphone jacks.
The very mild inconvenience of using different speakers in different rooms to me is very tolerable vs. the horrible experience with my Sonos speaker deciding to stop working or can't connect, forcing updates, etc. when I just want some chill vibe background music.
I bought the cheap IKEA variant and it uses the same crappy software. I once spent a couple of hours adapting a new device into the system.. in the end I had to flash it first and setup everything from scratch. I will not buy any more devices.
Also I don't understand why they can't play sound from any android device since I can make a radio station on Linux and stream audio to it. I mean playing podcasts on the Sonos speakers would be great..
Their software stack is just terrible. Even after multiple resets, many of their devices would not work. Some of their error screens are secretly stateful too, requiring you to do the same thing 4-5x before it'll let you try an alternative workaround (which will sometimes work). The old app was mediocre, but predictably so, and you could usually work around issues with the community's help. The new app is so bad and unstable that half the time server issues will prevent you from being able to finish setup even if you do everything right. It's aggravating.
A friend of mine built his own clone using Raspberry Pis and generic speakers and that works way better than the Sonos stack.
That's the way to go... I guess I always knew, in the back of my head, that a proprietary cloud app was a bad idea... I just didn't think it would get THIS bad. I thought the company would work to protect their reputation and users, especially after they already had at least one similar debacle in the past (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonos#Controversies). I was wrong. Very, very wrong.
Sonos were originally great, when they were a platform to injest your music and stream to your various rooms.
That was years ago, and now they want to own the whole thing, from music to speakers, and are willing to brick old devices to force you onto more isolating versions of their app.
I'm very glad I never switched to them (was close when Logitech killed squeezebox), and would not recommend them to anyone for any reason.
Just did a CTRL-F to find this. I fell for the shiny marketing and thought Sonos had a great reputation. The app is bad, the native voice control is bad, and Alexa doesn't work properly for me (cannot get it to drive Spotify no matter what I do).
I have to agree with this. The software was always serviceable before the new app. I have a Sonos speaker in my kids’ rooms that we often use for audiobooks and lullabies.
Even with the latest version of the new app, when I play something on both speakers, there is a delay from seconds up to a minute before sound comes through the second speaker, they play at wildly different random volumes each time, playing Audible books within the Sonos app no longer works, Airplay won’t connect about 30% of the time, and sometimes they just decide not to work at all for no apparent reason.
Every night I fight the urge to throw them in the bin. I’m contemplating replacing them but don’t know enough about alternatives yet.
Got a Sonos One for free when I bought a new phone once.
So many issues with setting it up with WiFi. Gave up and used an ethernet cable.
It's absolutely useless without a network connection, as it lacks bluetooth. You can't use it as a speaker for a Windows machine, only for MacOS (using AirPlay). I only use it for Spotify.
I've had a bit of Sonos gear: A Play:1, a Bridge, and a fancy jog-wheel remote that I forget the marketing name of.
They deliberately bricked the jog-wheel remote around a decade ago. ("We aren't just not going to support these anymore; we're actually going to remote-brick every single one of them.")
Upgrading the Play:1 to S2 broke the Bridge. (It wasn't bricked, but it was incompatible with their S2 and thus became useless to me; they didn't care.)
Lately, the Play:1 has distortion in the woofer. Sounds like normal audio stuff; a torn surround, maybe. I don't know how to open it to even do a visual inspection.
At 0/3, I've got a lot to complain about with Sonos.
But the one thing I'm not complaining about is how it worked (when it worked): It is a networked loudspeaker, with network datagrams on one side and audible music on the other side. Once music is playing (started by an app or computer software or UPNP or whatever), it continues to play that music all on its own.
It continues to play music if I take my phone and wander off, or take a call, or if I reboot my PC. It lets someone else control the music that is playing. Other than control, one or more Sonos speakers comprise a standalone system that is dependent only upon having the network behave.
I have a very effective LAN in my house, just as I have also had in other living situations. That's an advantage and I want to use it.
I definitely don't want things like this to be burdened with Bluetooth's problems.
>It is a networked loudspeaker, with network datagrams on one side and audible music on the other side. Once music is playing (started by an app or computer software or UPNP or whatever), it continues to play that music all on its own.
This has been my experience, too, as long as you don't touch it. Using the controls to skip a song has caused issues before, as well as unpausing after you've paused it for a while.
That said, most of those problems have been solved by just using ethernet instead of WiFi. Even with my access point being 1~2m away, I've had connectivity issues.
I wouldn't throw it away nor sell it, as it works fine when it does work.
I generally always had good results with my regular wifi, but I had more-predictable results with a Bridge (which just produces a dedicated 801.11 "SonosNet" network), when that device still worked for me.
When I occasionally installed Sonos professionally (a long time ago), we always installed a Bridge into a system or made sure that one Sonos endpoint/speaker was plugged into Ethernet by design. In doing so, this allowed the Sonos-widgets to form their own meshed wifi network that generally behaved just fine.
(And no, none of that is quite ideal.
These days I'm mostly divorced from Sonos. But I sometimes have issues with my various Google Home and Alexa devices that connect with wifi. To combat this, I also plug my old-school tiny-ass Chromecast Audio into an Ethernet adapter, as well as the CCwGTV on my main BFT. I do this just to be sure, because having consistent audio is very important to me, and it does work.
But these devices don't make their own mesh like Sonos can do. [Well, maybe Alexa devices can if combined with an Eero router to steer the whole ship, but I don't want that at all.])
Level smart lock. I have a handful of issues with it, but the big one is that it falls in the category of "tech product never tested outside of California" because the thing just does not work outside of the Goldilocks days where it's not too hot, cold, humid, or dry (for me, it works maybe half the time during the summer, and never during the winter). To hardware product designers: capacitive touch sensing is not reliable in the cold.
I had the nest lock for a long time and was really disappointed with battery life and reliability.
The Schlage encode plus smart lock is the only one that seems to work right at the moment (it also looks the worst). NFC is the way to go for most uses, and matter over thread beats WiFi anything by a long shot.
Not sure about capacitive buttons, but I can see real buttons wearing out or allowing moisture through.
There are a variety of outdoor rated pushbuttons you can buy that don't have their electrical properties change due to the moisture content of a user's fingertips, or lack thereof.
But just to be clear - the level doesn't have buttons. It has touch sensor on the enclosure to lock/unlock by just touching the lock, while it looks like a plain-old deadbolt. The problem is the sensor is garbage, so it's basically a plain-old-deadbolt but costs 5 times as much
After a few years and several doors/apts, the deadbolt itself seems to be showing some issues sometimes (have to pull the door close tightly for it to lock right)... I'm not sure if that's a door alignment issue or maybe a thermal freeze/thaw issue or something... need to debug it further... but it's a lot cheaper and more reliable (and uglier) than most smart locks I've tried, including the much fancier ones.
Level has a keypad as an extra, so I thought you were talking about that. They also support NFC, but that has nothing to do with capacitive sensors. Anyways, I never heard anything good about that lock and so never bothered trying it. The Schlage Encode Plus is pretty reliable (I researched a bunch of reviews before buying) for how up I use it, if only it weren’t so ugly.
Their website doesn’t even list an operating temperature range. Huge red flag for a piece of equipment that is installed outdoors.
If you buy something that is installed outdoors, make sure it’s from a company that has previously manufactured things that are installed outdoors, or it will be a piece of shit.
I recommend the encode plus rather than the encode, since the former is matter over thread and not Wi-Fi, and will be more reliable with better battery life.
Yale Real Living electronic locks have been great for me down to -30ish F. I’ve never used any of the wireless smarthome bits tho - just standalone locks.
I bailed on Level (now using a Schlage Encode Plus) after the second time a battery died in it with zero notification from the app. Given time of the year, I suspect it probably wasn't helped by temperature.
Surprised about the mac- I still have a maxed out 2010 Macbook Pro - 16gb ram and SATA- and it has aged so well it is still fully usable with most modern software and workflows, and feels fast. I also have a new Apple Silicon Macbook Pro and it is the screen and battery that mostly makes the newer one fundamentally nicer to use. I don’t game or do intensive things like video editing though- mostly just web and coding in a terminal.
I tried buying a monitor direct from a Chinese company (Innocn). It broke within 8 months. They never listed a warranty, but I (stupidly) assumed it was at least a year; but no, it was 6 months. After having such a bad experience, I went looking and apparently was not the only one. Many others had their monitors die and the company would purposefully drag out the RMA process past the warranty period.
Long story short, warranties still matter, and it should be a big part of any expensive purchase decision.
Those throwback re-releases of Sega or Atari consoles with a bunch of games built into them. They're fun for the first few hours and they work well, but they end up collecting dust. Turns out those games aren't as fun as they were when I was a kid and didn't have many options for gaming.
I played for a few minutes, listened to Hell March (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3YzmjmAGoI) for nostalgia, and then remembered why I moved on. Games sure have changed a lot in the intervening decades, lol.
I've found this as well, nostalgia factor is fun for a limited time. Then it becomes a question of if I have the patience and dexterity to slog through a game to the end much like I did when I was younger.
If given the chance, playing for nostalgia reasons is fine, just set the expectations lower on how much fun it will be. Spending a lot of money to play? Probably not worth it, find a bar-cade or someone else to loan you a system for a day or two.
Redmi phone after long iphone use, as an experiment. I used it for six+ months, made sure I get used to it before criticizing, then sold it to a colleague. The upside is, I got a new iphone instead and it felt like changing from new shoes to old comfy ones.
Well, the Redmi segment from Xiaomi is known to cut corners to give you the feature-packed phones at a low price, usually they are the least consistent experience compared to flagships and POCOs, their other cheap brand. Same warning goes for Oppo and Vivo cheaper series: they don't seem to have a good mix of specs, they pick one or two things as the main selling point but skimp on the rest. Middle range and flagships are fine tho.
I use iPhone mainly, but for Android I usually stick to either Pixels or Motorola, even the cheap ones have been quite reliable for me, both hardware and software, plus they are usually a good deal.
Hardware-wise it was fine, actually, wasn’t the cheapest one and watched some reviews beforehand (now I think it was mi, not redmi even).
Miui was fine too, it was generic “android experience” that made me hate it. I avoided sharing details cause neither HN does usually like it nor I want to remember. It was one of the biggest physical and psycological a reliefs in my life getting a new iphone afterwards.
A touchscreen laptop, I thought it would be incredibly useful and fun back when they were getting popular, but when I got one, I completely stopped using the touchscreen after a few months. I just didn't find it useful.
Are people really still mad about this?? In my country we switched to LED lights like… 10 years ago, maybe more? It’s not a big deal, we had light, we still have light. I don’t see what makes it "awful, ugly, unpleasant", is it really that bad? That just sounds like a gross overreaction to me but maybe I’m missing something?
My house is about 55 years old, originally it had 3 x 60W bulbs in the living area. So dark. Now it has LED downlights and 2 pendant lights - I added it up to just over 60W, and much brighter. I'll take the modern lighting thanks!
Part of the issue is that if you go to a hardware store this is what it will be.
A couple of years ago I looked through all the bulbs at my hardware store, they had Chinese brands and name brands like Philips and Osram. None of the bulbs had a CRI higher than 80.
It's weird. It is not rare to find at a given store that all the name brand bulbs have "CRI > 80" (probably 80.5) and some cheap off-brand product has CRI > 95. You really need to check the labels. IME, high CRI products are otherwise fine as well, e.g. no flicker.
Yes! LEDs are the wrong color, flicker, and are directional plus they burn out in just as much time as a good old incandescent but cost more than 10 times the price and when that happens you can't just dispose of them in the regular household garbage (actually one could). They are only better than the compact fluorescent that were all the rage for a while.
Well that's the problem. There are a lot of low-quality, defective LED bulbs being sold. Consumers don't have an easy way to find good ones. Just paying more or looking for a trusted brand name is no guarantee of quality.
This is true of all consumer products, not LEDs specifically. LED lighting has been mainstream long enough now that you can find plenty of information on which specific brands and models are decent.
My personal anecdote is that I have yet to have any Philips LED bulbs die on me. The oldest ones I have are from 2012.
FYI, Osram is a zombie brand these days. The company was broken up and the consumer lighting brand was sold to some Chinese company that is selling some stuff branded with it.
I've had LED bulbs that lasted for well over a decade. Most seem to be pretty indestructible. But I've got one rail-mounted system using GU-5.3 leds that all seem to die pretty quickly. Not sure what's going on there.
I am. LED lights are too bright, wrong colours, etc. I will want incandescent lights (including incandescent Christmas lights). We don't need to be very bright, nor does not need to be on all the time (especially, Christmas lights can be made flashy and don't need on all the time). But, often, they are using LEDs that are too bright and wrong colours. (Actually, I had also heard on CBC radio that some scientists also say so, even the ones that they try to make more red than blue, are still wrong)
People eat fast food and don't understand why people cook at home. People listen to music on their phone speaker and don't understand why people would buy HiFi speakers. People use the internet without an ad-blocker and don't see a problem with it. What they're missing is what you're missing regarding light bulbs.
The next time you're in a restaurant, public place or somebody's home and notice that you're feeling good and comfortable, try to think about what makes you feel that way. It is probably that they've put thought in things such as illumination.
I doubt that is the reason I tend to hate being subjected to bright LED lights for more than about 20 minutes a day.
Most agree that the light from most LED light bulbs (i.e., having a pronounced spike in intensity in the blue wavelengths) is bad for you in the evening and in the night time, but I'm saying I don't even like it in the morning if my exposure is too long (and when I'm having a bady day "too long" might be as short as 10 minutes).
CRI cannot be the issue with GGGP because he writes that LEDs "are still awful compared to incandescent bulbs" and we know that incandescents (being very low in the blue part of the spectrum compared to its output in the orange and the red) have worse CRI than even the crappy LED bulbs.
CRI is also not why I dislike most LED light bulbs either.
I'm not sure where you're getting that info, but it's wrong. Incandescent are blackbodies and as such have perfect CRI. Their color temperature is different from daylight, but CRI is measured using a source of the same color temperature for reference. A candle also has perfect CRI.
Also, to be clear, I'm not claiming that CRI is the root cause here, rather that it should indicate if there's a spike in the blue.
I bought about 20 halogen ceiling lights for my housei last year when we remodelled. The electrician installing them could not understand why I didn't go for LED. I mumbled something about CRI and R9, but it seemed to just confused him more.
Best decision ever. The lights are dimmable and they have such a beautiful glow. It's so noticeable that guests comment.
I also now buy halogen on sight from the hardware store and stockpile, as their days are surely numbered.
Eh. I agree that there are a lot of shitty LEDs out there, but any of the Philips bulbs that say "EyeComfort" are actually pretty decent. I have replaced tons of incandescent bulbs with them and it has pretty much always been a noticeable upgrade. No weird shadows, no flickering (I'm super sensitive to this, unfortunately), and their CRI numbers seem legit.
Not sure what you expect from your light. But from all the random bulps I've seen and tried I still very much like all my WiZ bulps, their light and also that I can control them with a HTTP API without awkward hacks our cloud weirdness.
I switched my entire home back to incandescent lights, and put dimmer switches on everything to make them as dim, and warm as possible. High quality incandescent bulbs last effectively forever when dimmed.
Our bodies do so much better when it is dark near bedtime, that the idea of “efficient lighting” to save energy just makes little sense. A person only needs about 20 watts of warm incandescent lighting to read or talk to family after sunset- which costs essentially nothing. We overlight everything because it is so cheap to do, but harms us.
I usually buy them by the box on eBay... but any hardware store will have "special purpose" bulbs even in places where they are banned for general lighting sales, some of which are still basically regular bulbs but labeled for "appliances," "marine," or "rough service." You can also get old fashioned edison bulbs on eBay. Any standard dimmer switch will work.
Here in Finland, the only light bulbs to buy are LED light bulbs. They are so much more freaking expensive that old school light bulbs; as for color, there are warmer light options but it is different than old style light bulbs. They tend to last longer and use less power (as advertised), but my understanding is that the old practice of turning off a light if it is not in use for an hour is not worth the bother for LED's; I remember reading that their lifetime is two numbers: number of hours on and number of times it is turned on and off.
Heaven help you if you have a small child in the house that loves to flip the lights on and off.
So you mean cheap LED bulbs. There are warm-white LEDs these days that give a very pleasant warm-white. And you can of course still mix it with normal white and the other colors.
Let me tell you about color temperature. I have soft warm led light in my workshop. 2700k is a warm indoor yellow color temperature. 5000k is a harsh bright hellish blue.
A “gaming headset” with a built-in microphone. The sound quality was fine but the build quality was terrible. It broke apart while I was wearing it, after owning it for less than a year.
Now I just use a pair of Sennheiser studio headphones and a usb desktop microphone, and they’ve lasted for years with no issues.
There are also inline headset mics for sennhesier headphones that work reasonably well (they’re part of the cable that plugs into the headphones). More convenient than a desk mic imo.
Dell XPS 9440. Worst keyboard I've ever seen on a Dell laptop. I'm not a fan of the MacBook keyboard either, and this is worse. The touch-activated F row makes accidental activations of Delete / Insert too easy. The flat keys are harder to distinguish, making accidental activation of caps lock a common occurrence. It was a work laptop and so fortunately I didn't have to pay for it.
Personally I'd say my most regretted purchase was the Brand New Model F Keyboards "ortholinear" - It's modeled after an ErgoDox but critically both halves are not connected, so in reality it's two separate keyboards. I don't know how anyone could release something so useless for ~$700. I'm sure all of their other offerings are great, however.
The Dell XPS line I have bought once and will never buy again. I believe mine was a souped up 92xx. Less than a year later the battery bloated for no reason. Put another one, bloated again. Turns out there was some manufacturer issue with the charging unit in the motherboard and by that point it was out of warranty.
I will never buy another XPS. For all of apple's faults, with the exception of the 2018 model pros, I have never had much of a problem.
Samsung monitor. I decided to upgrade my WFH situation, and bought their 49" G9 Neo (5120 x 1440, 240 hz). I've always gone with Alienware/Dell in the past, but I assumed there were always better products out there. The Samsung display died on month 13 (one month out of warranty). The repair would've cost almost what I paid for the monitor outright. $1500 down the drain.
Windows gaming laptop from MSI. It's not bad at all, but the battery life is horrible and gaming performance is OK. I finally built a gaming PC which I like a lot more.
As for a portable machine, I should have just got a Macbook.
Hah, coincidentally I just made the switch from an Acer gaming laptop to a Macbook and couldn't be more pleased. All the games I actually play (nothing graphically intensive) still work on the M3 Macbook via Wine, and the performance is just fine. Meanwhile, the rest of the experience of actually using the laptop got massively upgraded. Better screen, better speakers, better touchpad and keyboard, way better battery life, and when I open the lid the Macbook wakes from sleep essentially instantly.
For more graphically intensive games, I still have a Windows desktop. I don't think I will ever buy another "gaming" laptop.
Funny enough, I inherited an MSI notebook that wasn't working to my parents' satisfaction (no idea why they bought it, their use case is pretty basic), installed Linux on it and it's actually a really great laptop (apart from the battery life lol). Great performance , lots of ram, nice screen, nice body, everything works (even touchscreen, stylus and fingerprint sensor). But free is free, for $3k of my own money I'd buy a Lunar Lake or Strix Point laptop and save some $$$.
I don't have the floorspace to walk around, there's only one app I even use (Wander) and it gives me a headache after a few minutes. And now both of them are obsolete. Even the default environments are disappointing.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 217 ms ] threadIf you're careful there are so, so many harbor freight tools that likely come off the back of the same Chinese factory name brands do. Their "professional" line is about 50-70% less expensive and performs as well. The impact wrench is better than a Milwaukee, and their professional torque wrench comes within tolerance to a Snap-On.
For someone who doesn't need a QA cert for insurance/licensing reasons harbor freight is a miracle. Likely because it's the EXACT same stuff. Nothing is made in America anymore.
If 6 months pass and you are still using it, and notice it not being enough for your use, then get a quality one.
I've seen many quality tools that have been used once or twice after years, bought out of impulse.
I also subscribe to the buy cheap, if you use it alot and it's not working out buy a much better model. I've done that for years and have a hodgepodge of brands that make me happy. The only exception is battery powered tools, I did some research, decided that Dewalt would be a good choice. I didn't want to have 10 different kinds of battery packs around, so picked the battery ecosystem and went from there.
And when I buy a wood chipper, my Fujifilm printer will be the first thing through it. I have wasted more time and supplies to get pictures that look like a 2 year old colored it. So sad.
And for the "occasionally hang up a painting or some shelves" type DIY it's fine.
If you didn't buy it at harbor freight, buy your next suspiciously cheap tool at harbor freight.
Also, just broke a cheap Hama mouse into pieces, literally today. It was only like ~$5, but the worst piece of trash I have had: it turns off after 2 minutes of inactivity, and on top of that it can't wake up always... (well, couldn't wake up. It's in the mouse-heaven now)
Another suggestion of mine is to listen to CDs from the late 80s, when record labels considered 'digital' a mark of quality and actually followed through with the marketing. They tend to be the best, in my opinion - they have good dynamic range which nowadays is usually compressed out of the recordings to maximise loudness, and they had just started using 192kbs bitrates, which I consider to be at the upper level of my hearing ability. No help for new albums, of course, but hopefully those will have FLAC downloads available as some consolation!
As someone who grew up later in the MP3 era (90s), I guess I never knew what "good" audio ever sounded like. I'd love to do a back-to-back comparison of the same song, one in "modern" shitty no-dynamic-range and the other in a higher-fidelity version to see if I can notice any difference at all. Between my consumer equipment and my aging ears, I dunno if I'll be able to at all...?
It seems that my confabulation of 192kbps was also a gross underestimation - apparently, the Sony PCM-1, which was released in 1977, already had a bitrate of 573kbps.
Brothers in Arms was one of the first albums recorded on a Sony 24-track digital tape machine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothers_in_Arms_(album)#Recor...
I recently bought a pair of Bose QuietComfort Ultra and sent them back because I had nothing but issues with them and they were barely any better than the Anker's when working. Certainly not worth the price difference.
I had the Bose and Sony ones. They were OK, just uncomfortable. Been using the in-ear Airpods Pro for a few years now, for everything from work to flights to trains to exercising, and I love them soooo much... they're probably my favorite tech purchase ever (and I don't even have an iPhone). Pairing is always a pain in the ass (I just manually pair again with every device I want to switch to) but other than that, they've been so nice.
Personally, I'm not an audiophile, but I find the audio quality incredible (vs my Sonos speakers, wired Koss PortaPros, generic soundbars, Sony XM3 and Bose QC35s, etc.) and the comfort unbeatable. But some people hate the in-ear kind.
Anyway, not trying to convince you of anything, just wondering what made your experiences so different and bad?
Common problem: ANC changes the music too. It messes with the mids and highs, regardless of the model. Some are better than the others... but of course ANC can be turned off, which I did frequently in the past years. Oh, and the low battery warning: "ATTENTION - battery will be empty in 4 hours, let me disrupt your music every 60-120 seconds till the end of time!".
Bose QC35, QC45: They are pretty much the same, both inside and outside. Very comfortable, can't argue with that. They randomly they cut off the first/last 2 seconds of the tracks (how did they even release them like that is a mystery for me). Also, no bass, no highs, just a pile of mids. Almost 0 dynamics - you will never hear any other instruments else during a bass-guitar heavy track...
Sennheiser PCX-550 ii: It sometimes sounded fairly decent, even with ANC, however rather uncomfortable. The touch interface is catastrophic (in humid weather all the controls activate at the same time. Literally: volume up-down, play-forward-pause-call, all at the once). It had the worst bug I saw so far: about once every 2 weeks it made some extra loud shrilling noise that made me shit my pants (I'd guess the ANC got into some self-amplifying feedback loop). After it came back from "warranty-repair", it did it again within 3 days.
Marshall Monitor II ANC: mushy pile of mids, sounds actually bad, especially for its price. I really thought that it was made for rock music, but no. It is mostly made for audible books. Controls look cool (5-way joystick), but hard to use in practice: if the button press is even half a degree off, it doesn't register. Especially unusable while walking. Used two different sets of this model (after a warranty exchange). Earpads break after 6 months (for both sets). The second set it literally a pain to wear: it makes the top of my head hurt after 20 minutes.
Sony 1000XM2: Very bad touch interface, it feels like the gestures are randomly changing function. Keep disconnecting and stuttering. Sometimes after 20 minutes, sometimes after 2 hours. The only guaranteed thing is that one of them happens sooner or later. If I apply a ton of EQ on each track one by one as they are played, it is possible to get decent sound of it. But usually I just want to listen to music, without messing with EQ every few minutes.
Airpods pro: Keeps disconnecting. ANC keeps turning on and off, living its own life. Sometimes only one side has sound. But it doesn't sound bad, when it works. It doesn't happen very often though. Too bad Apple ran out of SW developers.
I have only one BT headset that I keep using still, though exclusively for workouts: Sony MDR-ZX770: I got it like 8 years ago. It sounds crap, but very robust and reliable at what it does. If you want a bad sounding cheap headset, I recommend this one lol.
I had some random headsets from Amazon also, Chinese garden variety, but I won't even say anything about them.
But in a nutshell, that's why I have had enough. Now I'm just back to oldschool headsets, and hear every instrument without bugs.
Given the popularity of the product you’re presumably aware this isn’t a typical experience. I certainly haven’t encountered disconnects or ANC switching off uncommanded, and the only time I get one-sided sound is if one side runs out of battery. You might consider asking Apple to replace them.
But it was in fact the fastest intel MacBook Air - and it still is.
What few people outside Apple (or even inside given Apple's notorious secrecy) probably realized in early to mid 2020, even after the WWDC announcement, was how great the Apple Silicon/M1 MacBook Air was actually going to be, and how it would transform expectations for performance and battery life in a fanless laptop.
Perhaps Apple should have offered a trade-in scheme like they did for the Lisa/Macintosh XL. I wonder if they offered upgrades to the buyers of the October 1999 Power Mac G4 (PCI Graphics) which was replaced by a better model only two months later.
https://512pixels.net/2020/01/some-short-lived-macs/
I used Fusion for my previous job from the start of the pan until last year (so first on an Intel Mac, then on an M1 MBP) and it was good enough for what I needed. Win for Arm was obviously faster than Win x86 on the previous machine, even when it was a preview release. Then again, my needs were not extreme.
My first and last experience with an Android based TV device.
Since 2018 or so, I've been using a small Windows PC with a Hauppauge WinTV Dual USB tuner (ATSC, watch as you record a different channel in the backgroud) and DVBViewer software. Use a web browser for streaming.
https://www.dvbviewer.com/en/index.php
I went from loyal supporter to wanting to get rid of the whole system. Buyer beware. Company has really gone downhill. I wish they'd fire the CEO.
Leadership ignored them, launched the app anyway, lost a ton of their stock value, and then laid off 100 employees.
I dunno wtf the board was doing at the time, but they should've removed the leader, rolled back the update, apologized to everyone and then worked to rebuild the experience and trust from the ground up. They never bothered with that, instead doubling down on the new app, keeping the CEO, and gradually restoring features. It still hasn't reached feature (or stability) parity with how it was a few years ago. I barely ever use my system anymore because it's so bad. (I really should sell it, but I just don't even want to touch the software to reset it, or try to support the buyer if they run into setup issues... which they will... because it's that bad.)
Apparently they're trying to make some changes with adding advisory boards, etc. But that won't help if leadership doesn't change. It was arrogance that brought them this mess, and the same people are still in charge. https://www.audioholics.com/news/sonos-backpedals https://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/sonos-pledges-ch...
Empty promises from people we don't trust is not a way to win back loyalty. It's just lame PR damage control that fools nobody. They've been doing that for months now and the system is still half broken. Every week I run into issues and I've stopped trying to even report them anymore. RIP. I used to love my Move so much =/ At least that will keep working in Bluetooth mode... I hope.
Never going to buy a smart speaker system again. Dumb old cables is the way to go.
Most things with "smart" in the name are never worth the investment.
Sonos really sucks at software, but they get that right. And the speakers are good quality.
Do DIY solutions accomplish this?
The very mild inconvenience of using different speakers in different rooms to me is very tolerable vs. the horrible experience with my Sonos speaker deciding to stop working or can't connect, forcing updates, etc. when I just want some chill vibe background music.
Also I don't understand why they can't play sound from any android device since I can make a radio station on Linux and stream audio to it. I mean playing podcasts on the Sonos speakers would be great..
The FOSS Soundsync used to work with Sonos speaker but I think they blocked them: https://github.com/geekuillaume/soundsync
A friend of mine built his own clone using Raspberry Pis and generic speakers and that works way better than the Sonos stack.
That's the way to go... I guess I always knew, in the back of my head, that a proprietary cloud app was a bad idea... I just didn't think it would get THIS bad. I thought the company would work to protect their reputation and users, especially after they already had at least one similar debacle in the past (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonos#Controversies). I was wrong. Very, very wrong.
That was years ago, and now they want to own the whole thing, from music to speakers, and are willing to brick old devices to force you onto more isolating versions of their app.
I'm very glad I never switched to them (was close when Logitech killed squeezebox), and would not recommend them to anyone for any reason.
Even with the latest version of the new app, when I play something on both speakers, there is a delay from seconds up to a minute before sound comes through the second speaker, they play at wildly different random volumes each time, playing Audible books within the Sonos app no longer works, Airplay won’t connect about 30% of the time, and sometimes they just decide not to work at all for no apparent reason.
Every night I fight the urge to throw them in the bin. I’m contemplating replacing them but don’t know enough about alternatives yet.
So many issues with setting it up with WiFi. Gave up and used an ethernet cable.
It's absolutely useless without a network connection, as it lacks bluetooth. You can't use it as a speaker for a Windows machine, only for MacOS (using AirPlay). I only use it for Spotify.
Wouldn't ever buy any of their stuff.
They deliberately bricked the jog-wheel remote around a decade ago. ("We aren't just not going to support these anymore; we're actually going to remote-brick every single one of them.")
Upgrading the Play:1 to S2 broke the Bridge. (It wasn't bricked, but it was incompatible with their S2 and thus became useless to me; they didn't care.)
Lately, the Play:1 has distortion in the woofer. Sounds like normal audio stuff; a torn surround, maybe. I don't know how to open it to even do a visual inspection.
At 0/3, I've got a lot to complain about with Sonos.
But the one thing I'm not complaining about is how it worked (when it worked): It is a networked loudspeaker, with network datagrams on one side and audible music on the other side. Once music is playing (started by an app or computer software or UPNP or whatever), it continues to play that music all on its own.
It continues to play music if I take my phone and wander off, or take a call, or if I reboot my PC. It lets someone else control the music that is playing. Other than control, one or more Sonos speakers comprise a standalone system that is dependent only upon having the network behave.
I have a very effective LAN in my house, just as I have also had in other living situations. That's an advantage and I want to use it.
I definitely don't want things like this to be burdened with Bluetooth's problems.
This has been my experience, too, as long as you don't touch it. Using the controls to skip a song has caused issues before, as well as unpausing after you've paused it for a while.
That said, most of those problems have been solved by just using ethernet instead of WiFi. Even with my access point being 1~2m away, I've had connectivity issues.
I wouldn't throw it away nor sell it, as it works fine when it does work.
I generally always had good results with my regular wifi, but I had more-predictable results with a Bridge (which just produces a dedicated 801.11 "SonosNet" network), when that device still worked for me.
When I occasionally installed Sonos professionally (a long time ago), we always installed a Bridge into a system or made sure that one Sonos endpoint/speaker was plugged into Ethernet by design. In doing so, this allowed the Sonos-widgets to form their own meshed wifi network that generally behaved just fine.
(And no, none of that is quite ideal.
These days I'm mostly divorced from Sonos. But I sometimes have issues with my various Google Home and Alexa devices that connect with wifi. To combat this, I also plug my old-school tiny-ass Chromecast Audio into an Ethernet adapter, as well as the CCwGTV on my main BFT. I do this just to be sure, because having consistent audio is very important to me, and it does work.
But these devices don't make their own mesh like Sonos can do. [Well, maybe Alexa devices can if combined with an Eero router to steer the whole ship, but I don't want that at all.])
The Schlage encode plus smart lock is the only one that seems to work right at the moment (it also looks the worst). NFC is the way to go for most uses, and matter over thread beats WiFi anything by a long shot.
Not sure about capacitive buttons, but I can see real buttons wearing out or allowing moisture through.
But just to be clear - the level doesn't have buttons. It has touch sensor on the enclosure to lock/unlock by just touching the lock, while it looks like a plain-old deadbolt. The problem is the sensor is garbage, so it's basically a plain-old-deadbolt but costs 5 times as much
After a few years and several doors/apts, the deadbolt itself seems to be showing some issues sometimes (have to pull the door close tightly for it to lock right)... I'm not sure if that's a door alignment issue or maybe a thermal freeze/thaw issue or something... need to debug it further... but it's a lot cheaper and more reliable (and uglier) than most smart locks I've tried, including the much fancier ones.
If you buy something that is installed outdoors, make sure it’s from a company that has previously manufactured things that are installed outdoors, or it will be a piece of shit.
This Schlage model has a listed operating temperature range, because Schlage has been manufacturing things that are installed outside for over 100 years: https://www.schlage.com/en/home/products/BE489WBCENFFF.html
lenovo thinkpad, used as a linux notebook, but the trackpad is difficult to use under linux.
I wish they would bring back a 27" iMac and Target Display Mode.
Long story short, warranties still matter, and it should be a big part of any expensive purchase decision.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BNM56PF5
I played for a few minutes, listened to Hell March (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3YzmjmAGoI) for nostalgia, and then remembered why I moved on. Games sure have changed a lot in the intervening decades, lol.
If given the chance, playing for nostalgia reasons is fine, just set the expectations lower on how much fun it will be. Spending a lot of money to play? Probably not worth it, find a bar-cade or someone else to loan you a system for a day or two.
I use iPhone mainly, but for Android I usually stick to either Pixels or Motorola, even the cheap ones have been quite reliable for me, both hardware and software, plus they are usually a good deal.
Miui was fine too, it was generic “android experience” that made me hate it. I avoided sharing details cause neither HN does usually like it nor I want to remember. It was one of the biggest physical and psycological a reliefs in my life getting a new iphone afterwards.
You can also just buy a $100 usbc touchscreen if you really ever need one.
I gotta find an excuse to use this thing.
They are also inescapable, which means we are cursed with ugly, unpleasant lighting basically everywhere.
A couple of years ago I looked through all the bulbs at my hardware store, they had Chinese brands and name brands like Philips and Osram. None of the bulbs had a CRI higher than 80.
I work for an electrical wholesaler and checked. We have 18 bulbs in stock with a CRI higher than 80, which is the average. The lowest is 55.
My personal anecdote is that I have yet to have any Philips LED bulbs die on me. The oldest ones I have are from 2012.
> no it didn't
Whatever.
Light bulbs once had a cartel making them worse. LEDs probably do too but now we have fewer manufacturers.
> no it didn't
If this is how you think the conversation went, I suggest you reread both your own initial comment as well as my reply.
Some of it could be because I have defective red/green color vision, but so do about 15% of all males.
The next time you're in a restaurant, public place or somebody's home and notice that you're feeling good and comfortable, try to think about what makes you feel that way. It is probably that they've put thought in things such as illumination.
https://budgetlightforum.com/c/other-light-types/led-light-b...
Most agree that the light from most LED light bulbs (i.e., having a pronounced spike in intensity in the blue wavelengths) is bad for you in the evening and in the night time, but I'm saying I don't even like it in the morning if my exposure is too long (and when I'm having a bady day "too long" might be as short as 10 minutes).
https://www.crslight.com/images/kelvin_cri_comparison_chart....
CRI is also not why I dislike most LED light bulbs either.
Also, to be clear, I'm not claiming that CRI is the root cause here, rather that it should indicate if there's a spike in the blue.
Best decision ever. The lights are dimmable and they have such a beautiful glow. It's so noticeable that guests comment.
I also now buy halogen on sight from the hardware store and stockpile, as their days are surely numbered.
https://store.waveformlighting.com/products/superwarm-1700k-...
Our bodies do so much better when it is dark near bedtime, that the idea of “efficient lighting” to save energy just makes little sense. A person only needs about 20 watts of warm incandescent lighting to read or talk to family after sunset- which costs essentially nothing. We overlight everything because it is so cheap to do, but harms us.
For bed time applications, a guy here was selling the "bed time bulb." I got one and liked it.
Heaven help you if you have a small child in the house that loves to flip the lights on and off.
https://wginc.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/WGI-Color-Tempe...
Now I just use a pair of Sennheiser studio headphones and a usb desktop microphone, and they’ve lasted for years with no issues.
Personally I'd say my most regretted purchase was the Brand New Model F Keyboards "ortholinear" - It's modeled after an ErgoDox but critically both halves are not connected, so in reality it's two separate keyboards. I don't know how anyone could release something so useless for ~$700. I'm sure all of their other offerings are great, however.
I will never buy another XPS. For all of apple's faults, with the exception of the 2018 model pros, I have never had much of a problem.
So far aside from cell phones and tablets nothing has worked right.
For more graphically intensive games, I still have a Windows desktop. I don't think I will ever buy another "gaming" laptop.
I don't have the floorspace to walk around, there's only one app I even use (Wander) and it gives me a headache after a few minutes. And now both of them are obsolete. Even the default environments are disappointing.