The Chaser Report - The Future of... BATHROOM MIRRORS? | Welcome To The Future

Episode Date: March 24, 2023

An exclusive episode from the Welcome To The Future feed! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to Welcome to the Future. It is Dom Knight and Charles Firth in a very echoy room because this particular version of the Future Charles has us stuck in a tiny room. We're in the same room sharing a microphone which we never normally do. No. It's unhygienic. We're far too close to each other. It's unpleasant. But this is the room that we're about to pat out with acoustic foam and make into the world's greatest podcast slash podcast studio potentially the only problem with the plan Charles is there's no way

how would we fit shitty Bluetooth into that plan I think everything everything in the podcast studio will be connected by only via Bluetooth yeah it will be the most annoying studio in the world so this sorry if this sounds really but thank you for finding us on

the welcome to the future feed now you might be hearing this on the Chaser Report feed on the weekend but it's a standalone podcast now and it's going to be released everywhere It's Welcome to the Future Wednesday, a new episode dealing with only the worst tech to be released in the past week. I can't believe nobody else has thought of this as a podcast category because, you know, there's a lot of good tech out there. I mean, so many great tech podcasts. I'm a big fan of, of, you know, Micab HD, the Waveform podcast.

They're always keeping up to speak with what's happening with the best, what works now. But what about the worst? about the stuff that shouldn't have, not only does it not work well, but the very concept behind it is deeply flawed. Funny you should say that, because today we are reviewing something that is best described by saying, what do you get if you mix narcissism with Bluetooth? I'm trying to think, we've covered so many Bluetooth devices that shouldn't have Bluetooth. How literal is this?

A mirror. It is a mirror. It's the smart mirror. A smart mirror. There is a whole category of products, which I didn't even know. no existed until last week of smart mirrors, right? Okay. So I've seen in a shopping centre, I saw a mirror where it can also project ads onto it.

So it's a mirror some of the time and a screen the rest of the time. And at no point in the three years since they've installed it, this is at the World Square Shopping Centre in Sydney, if you understand. Have they ever sold an ad? Right. It is always, the mirror has annoying ads for ads on mirrors underneath your own image. And no one has ever bought. one so that's a deeply stupid idea what's the smart mirror well the smart mirror so the product that

we're reviewing today is called the gan pay 20 by 28 inch LED mirror right right or but LED bathroom mirror really and um i chose this one because i think it it really epitomizes There's a lot of what all smart mirrors have, which is it has a light around its frame. Oh, yeah, so like a kind of what is a Hollywood mirror. Yeah, like LED. The stars dressing room, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's got speakers.

So you can sync it to your phone and listen to music on it, right? Right. And it works as a mirror. Like, it's got... This is making my mind. my head hurt. So, so previously we had mirrors that weren't smart, that was reflective, in rooms that had their own independent light sources, like a ceiling light.

Yes. And then you would have speakers separately, like you have radio or whatever. Yes. But never before was it's been converged into one device. Why? Why do we need these things in the one device? Presumably because they'll break every so often. Right.

And then you, because the problem with mirrors at the moment is you buy one, you probably last a hundred years. It does. You don't need to replace it. You just install it in your bathroom. Maybe once every 20 years when you renovate your bathroom, you might get a new mirror. But there's no need to sort of replace a mirror. That's true.

It's just a mirror. But what if you added a whole of things that would then constantly break? That's so true. Then you'd have to keep replacing your mirror. Well, that's what you want. But also the upgrade cycle, Charles. Like what tech companies are trying to do is take things that we had. I mean, when I grew up, we bought a phone.

Yes. And that phone just stayed there. Stayed on the wall for 20, 30 years. There was no need to replace it. You don't want. Now we get a new one every year or two. Yes. So what they're trying to, you know, microwaves, all these,

even cars, they're trying to get us upgrade all the time. But no one's ever thought of upgrading a mirror before because we foolishly saw them as devices with only one feature, which was static. Well, I can assure you that if you bought a GANPAY, a bathroom mirror, you would probably want to upgrade it pretty quickly because I want to run through the, The main comedy about this product is in the reviews, right? Oh, I love the movie. The first thing is, and what we should do is probably there's some reviews from online.

I'm going to actually play you a clip. Can I just clarify it before we get into the reviews? Yeah. The only thing it has, other than a regular reflective mirror, is Bluetooth speakers in a light. Like there's no sort of smart thing that recognizes your face. There's no cameras or anything. It's not doing anything with your reflection.

It's got buttons. Oh. It's got buttons. on the on the mirror like like it's sort of cool like the buttons sort of it's like touch sensitive glass thing and they light up and you can turn on the light oh okay but there's still no features beyond a separate light and a separate speakers like there's not doing anything intelligent

with the image it's on the mirror it's not a screen is what I'm saying it costs like $179 no it doesn't I've now understood the full extent of the smartness of this device. Got it. I'll play this clip. This is a man reviewing the smart mirror. He quite likes it, it would say. This is how you connect the Bluetooth.

As you can see that I'm going, it's very simple. Just you need to go to the setting, Bluetooth setting, then just off, then on it, then just connect with LED mirror. Now it's connected, then just select your favourite song,

song and just play your favorite song and you can listen so there you go to connect the mirror to your Bluetooth you have to turn your Bluetooth off first right of course it's very and he says it's very intuitive yeah because you know like if I'm explaining to my you know mom or something like that my 70 year old mom what you know how to connect her Bluetooth to her mirror then saying to her well the obvious thing to do is to turn off your bludgette. Just disconnecting. Yeah. Fantastic.

The other thing that he, for some reason, leaves out of that wonderful tutorial is he's using an Android phone ride. Right. It would seem that you cannot connect iPhones to this particular brand of Mera. There's a litany of Amazon reviews of people giving it one or two stars saying, you know, It's great It's sort of The light seems to work

And everything But I can't connect my iPhone Is that I mean I don't want to Praise Apple to the extent of Android I mean I'm an Apple fan In this campaign Is it possible

That the reason why we are Curious about how this device Could possibly have a function Because what it actually does Is he uses Android phones It's much less secure To surveil you It basically

It uploads your It's like the sort of speak So it's like television's for 994 Like it watches you, it basically surveils you And the iPhones block that Because I can't, the only purpose I can possibly think of Having a speakers in a smart mirror Is to just monitor the person

The idiot who uses it 24-7 So they don't realise Like, it must be a nefarious purpose No, it's to listen to music Why do you need speakers in your mirror? How long do you spend in front of the mirror? Like, who spends the duration of a song Looking at their mirror?

Like, that's three or four minutes. Who needs, I mean, admitted, I hate looking at mirrors because of how I look. But who are the people out there who need all that mirror time? But, no, but, like, your mirrors in your bathroom, you put the song on and then you have a shower. And you're rocking out to the... There's a total use case there. There would be a use case anyway, except for the fact that... That doesn't connect.

The other point is that all the reviews, even the fairly positive ones, point out that the speaker is a really shit speaker. Well, it sounded terrible in that little clip. It sucks. It sucks. It says AJ, who gave it one star. The other reviews, I'd just go through. The first one is, and this hadn't crossed my mind when I was thinking about smart mirrors,

but where do you plug a smart mirror in? Oh, that's a good question. Yeah. So you need to get it professionally installed. Of course. Yes. So the thing is that the manufacturers of this mirror, haven't really thought about how big the plug needed to be.

So apparently the plug head is huge. And so you actually... I see it up to or like power pack or something. Yes. And so you need to... It's much, much thicker than the mirror itself. Right. So you need to basically create a huge hole in your wall

and get an electrician to create a recess. You've got to spend hundreds of dollars digging out a giant hole in your wall and burying a power plaque in it. Yes. For a device that you'll probably need to replace. within 12 months? No, not within 12 months. Generally, the reviews say that it dies after about six months.

And presumably being in an environment full of moisture in the bathroom is not great for it. Jesse Rafferty reckons hers turned up, broken on arrival. You can't hang it properly. Oh, that's the other problem is it's very hard to hang properly. Apparently it doesn't sort of sit flush to the wall. Brilliant. But then the other, the best thing is the mirror itself, somebody did a test on the actual quality of the mirror.

Are you said, they fucked up the mirror bit? Yeah. And apparently, you had one job. It's not, it's not shatterproof. So what it does is if you chip it, it explodes. It's got this sort of explosive quality to it. Right. So one's tiny divot off the side, as happens, for instance, I don't know,

in shipping, and the entire thing will shatter into a thousand tiny, cutty pieces. Yes, that's exactly right. It is not explosion proof, not safe, exclamation mark. Yeah, so if you want to get that, it's called the GANPAY 20 by 28 inch LED bathroom mirror. You will be able to get it from Amazon for about $179 Australian. Seriously? Yes. Because how much does a Bluetooth speaker for the bathroom that's waterproof cost?

but you can put next to your existing mirror. And I'm just hypothesizing, Charles, that your bathroom already has lights in it. Oh, the other thing is, sorry, and the other thing is, sorry, I just forgot one of the key features is that, you know the buttons that I was doing about? Yes. They don't work.

They don't work when it gets foggy. The touch functions doesn't work. Oh, and so, so it's got an auto off feature. Right. But apparently the auto off feature doesn't work. you know like after the first time it gets foggy it just permanently doesn't work so it's not moisture proof and so it's not fucking waterproof it's impossible to turn off but there's this hilarious review from this woman saying she's got it installed she thought it was wonderful after 10 days

the auto off function stopped working so just shining this bright light out of her bathroom 24 hours a day the thing i love about this charles is it these aren't reviews from all people that like you would think normally when you look at Amazon reviews you're thinking okay this is just a cross-section of the population but no these are the kind of people who would order a smart mirror that costs

$179 and they still didn't like it that's extraordinary it's a bleeding edge mainly because the mirror shedded their hands oh my God yeah so if you're wanting a smart mirror that doesn't connect to your iPhone and

probably will hurt you and we'll break after a few weeks. It will either be light up when you don't want it to or hurt you physically. We've reviewed a lot of terrible bullet-tooth device at Charles. I think this is the first one that could actually maim you. When we're decorating this new podcast studio, Charles.

Yes, we should get a smart mirror. I really think a smart mirror would be wonderful. Everything in this studio should be smart. We should get a smart water bottle. So we don't get dehydrated. Yeah, and absolutely smart microphones just to ensure no one ever has to hear this podcast. Thank you for.

listening. Please jump on Apple Podcasts and give us a review. Look, obviously five stars. You're not reviewing the product. You're reviewing the podcast about the products. Yes. And we'll catch you next time here on Welcome to the Future. Welcome to the Future. Our gear is from Ride. We're part of the iconoclast network, which is a network that we run that also includes the chance to report the shot podcast and more exciting things to come. And if you've got any suggestions for things you want us to review on this podcast, email, podcast. podcast at chaser.com.com. That's the one.

Catch you next time in the future. Future, future, future.