Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Our Favorite Underrated YouTube Channels, Mechanical Keyboards, & Tech Embargoes Explained

Episode Date: November 15, 2019

This week, Marques and Andrew recommend a few of their favorite lesser-known YouTube channels, look at the world of Mechanical Keyboards and how much we still need to learn about them, and take the "Explained!" series to the podcast to explain how embargoes work and how they affect content creators. Plus, some fun behind the scenes stories before we wrap it all up with our regularly-scheduled Listener Q & A! Show Links: Twitter: https://twitter.com/wvfrm Marques Twitter: https://twitter.com/mkbhd Andrew Twitter: https://twitter.com/andymanganelli Zuckerberg Meats: https://bit.ly/33M038k T-Roy Cooks: https://bit.ly/2rGviDP Bouldering Bobat: https://bit.ly/32HtOpF JomBoy Media: https://bit.ly/2pil1Ne Doug Demuro: https://bit.ly/2Kg5ep8 Calebcity: https://bit.ly/2X6KfKX Bjorn Nyland: https://bit.ly/2QeuSie Keychron K2: https://bit.ly/33IXZOv Steel Series Apex Pro: https://bit.ly/32HIll4 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home. Out. Uncertainty. Self-doubt. Stressing about not knowing where to start. In. Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done. Out. Word art. Sorry, live laugh lovers. In. Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire. Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. Hello, welcome back to another episode of Waveform.

We're your hosts. I'm Marques Brownlee. And I'm Andrew Manganielli. And today on episode 9, we're going to open up our subscriber page and suggest some of the YouTube channels in our sub boxes that we both watch. Then we'll dive into the mechanical keyboard rabbit hole, which is exactly what this podcast is for. Then after that, we're finally going to talk about a topic that we've wanted to for a while. In fact, we had a video planned on this, but decided to hold off and it's just a podcast topic. We're going to do a little embargoes explained segment where we dive

into what embargoes are in the tech world and the YouTube world, how they affect creators, how they affect the viewers. Then we'll follow all that up with a Q&A at the end. Let's get into it. All right. You're ready for your last podcast as a technically not married man? Yeah, I guess. It's going to be a good one. It's going to be a great one. All right. So quick recap from the last podcast episode, which was January. Wow, January. This is your flies, doesn't it? Which was November 1st. A couple of videos since then. We can just sort of breeze through these. Yeah. one was LG g8x. Thank you Yeah, there we go full name

This one was just sort of a analysis of where I think folding phones are because you saw the phone By itself, it's not that Incredible or standout ish in a way no But the crazy thing about it is it's 699 and it comes with that second screen. And this to me sort of proved that the easy take about foldables is wrong. I guess I think a lot about like what's the easiest take on something? Like when foldables start coming out for the first time, the easy take was, oh, these are dumb. It's a gimmick. It won't last.

But I think when you start to see a market slowly mature, you get more and more different options and different ways to differentiate themselves. You have Surface Neo and Surface Duo, and you have Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X, and suddenly there's different ways to make a folding screen and a folding phone and this Razr now. And I think G8X ThinQ, as horrible as that name is, was a pretty big point in proving foldables are coming.

So that was the title. Yeah, I think so. Also, there are some people who argue that if it has a hinge, it's not a foldable phone. It's still a phone that's folding. It still folds. The screen's not folding. We're never saying the screen is folding,

but I still count that as a folding phone. Would you say technically we already had folding phones with flip phones then since they had hinges too? They folded. Sure. as a folding phone. Would you say technically we already had folding phones with flip phones then since they had hinges too? They folded. Sure. Okay, folding smartphones. Maybe we'll tidy it up to that a little better. Folding smartphones, which is what I'm just calling foldables, but y'all know what I mean.

Yeah. Cool. Okay, so then we had Beats Solo Pro. This one kind of came out of left field, and I wasn't really expecting to like a pair of beats this much but we got it out the box and I just started casually listening to them and then it turned into a flight with them and another flight with them and suddenly I like them a lot um so we reviewed them yeah uh have you listened to them yet or no I guess not I didn't I put them on. I didn't get to test them for a long time. I know one of your main critiques on it was on-ear after a long time gets uncomfortable. It's really true.

The headphones we're in right now, the M50s, are like my first ever over-ear headphones that I've really liked a lot. And over-ear versus on-ear is the biggest noticeable thing about these headphones. They're like clamping like onto your actual ears and and that's like uncomfortable for a while yeah i do like the only reason i don't use them anymore i have to say beats while a lot of people make fun of their quality and how it's like it looks good but doesn't always feel great beats always has great cushioning true they're like it is very soft and very very comfortable i honestly the days of like beats being the obviously trashy sounding headphones are kind of kind of over i think now you have

powerbeats pro you have the new solo pro or yeah solo pros you have the new studio threes um there's still some older headphones kind of sitting out there that have a weird sound signature but like if you're buying a new pair of beats since apple bought them they're doing a good job so i'm hoping like they keep this trend up and maybe beats can be the headphones that combine great looks yeah with great sound someday and big prices big prices yeah well i mean it's always yeah that's probably always the main that's an apple thing about it but yeah but that happens so then we move from that to another pro pair of headphones. We reviewed the AirPods Pro. You guys already know about AirPods Pro.

We've talked about them a lot, but the full review is out. I think the conclusion we've reached is these are pretty great, and they're going to sell a lot. Yeah, I don't think anyone's surprised by that. Do you think you'd get AirPods Pro if there was, like, an Android equivalent of them? Yes. If I had an iPhone, I'd buy airpods pro in a heartbeat yeah um i think that's a no-brainer pretty much we what we try uh oh razor sent us those new razor hammerheads yeah right yeah they were they're much more like the old airpods which don't fit in my ear which is a bit bummer i actually like really wanted to use them but they don't really fit in my ear they don't

have silicone tips right but I do have to say I tried them with video and I voices matched with video like there was no lag that I really noticed which is really hard to find in a pair of Bluetooth so that's that's something I want to check out so like everyone's making their own you know totally wireless headphones now and each of them has their own sort of differentiating thing about them. Yeah. So Google's Pixel Buds, you know, the last year it was like, oh, you can do this translation with them. Apple made AirPods for the iPhone.

We all know how that went. You have Surface headphones, Surface Buds now for the Surface products that came out. And like you see this going down the line. Razer comes out. they're making their Hammerheads earbuds. And the differentiator with those is super low latency because they're a gaming company and you want low latency wireless and basically you want to be able to game while hearing everything in real time.

But really the problem with Bluetooth, like you said, is like you're just watching a video and like voices are delayed relative to what you're hearing I feel like my brain just has sort of calibrated for that delay in a way. I can't it's so bad I can't do it. Yeah, I don't know I wish I hadn't but I do notice the difference now when I go back to wired versus wireless But yeah, that's I got to try those out. I feel like that might be an interesting Perk of them. I wonder i wish they had silicon tips i'd i'd probably just use them they're still the hard tips they're still hard tips the case is great oh wait the case is great

except that when you open it your right headphone is on the left side and your left headphones on the right side what i'm trying to think of why that would make sense but it doesn't that i mean that is like the most nitpicky thing possible. No, that's not nitpicky. I was just like, why? It makes no sense. When you're taking out of the case, there's no reason to reach across to... No, that's not nitpicky.

That's just dumb. No, yeah. I was just trying to think like, oh, would my right hand reach across? No, because then it wants to... Being your right... Yeah, I don't know. That's a strange quirk. But it is one of the better cases. It's small. It's USB Type-C. It be in your right ear. Yeah, I don't know. That's a strange quirk. But it is one of the better cases.

It's small. It's USB Type-C. It fits in your pocket. But that is a weird tidbit about it. Interesting. Okay, well, we reviewed AirPods Pro, Beats Solo Pro, hoping for some more Pro products coming soon. But we took a little bit of a retro look back with one more video,

which was iPhone 11 versus OG iPhone. i had a lot of fun just messing around with the old iphone to see what it was i'd never i've never held one before that was my first time that was the second time i've ever held one oh yeah first time i ever even held an original iphone was uh at the iphone 10 event i held justine's for like a quick minute. And before that, I had a classmate with one way back in the day. I don't think I ever owned it. It was in high school. But yeah, that's the first time I really get to mess with it. Yeah, it's a brick. It's a solid little phone and it worked. We got three of them and all three of them worked. That was very surprising. They were beat to hell. I got them on eBay, which was sort of a risk.

I gave up on the idea of getting a brand new in the box iPhone because you're going to pay a lot more for it and you're also at the risk of probably getting scammed. You get resealed boxes and half of them probably already used. But I just went and just got a used couple of iPhones and it was a lot of fun. Yeah. And me not updating my computer saved us on that one. It did.

Because when we turned all of them on, they all said connect to iTunes. And we were like, oh man, iTunes isn't a thing anymore. Yeah. Wait. I've been saying remind me tomorrow for the past year pretty much. I still have iTunes it worked it worked and we got to set it up and boot into iOS 3.1.3 um so if you want to watch that video check it out it's a fun one it's surprising how much the iPhone still does but also how similar

it is in a lot of design ways to the new iPhone just in in what it can do also the camera is hilarious yeah not really funny no flash no zoom no no tap to focus no tap to focus we kept trying to take photos of you on the roof and you were just a silhouette every time because no tap to expose yeah uh no selfie camera no video mode just just a webcam oh, the slowest shutter in the world. Shutter lag. It took me back to the days of when like removing shutter lag was like a huge deal. For some Android phones when you have like a, it would make like a fun noise when you had like zero shutter lag. Anyway, good times.

All right, content we liked. I think you had a fun idea for this one. Yeah, I think we were both kind of thinking if there was one video that really stood out and we couldn't think of it so i decided let's uh let's tell the audience three channels each of us follow that the audience probably wouldn't suspect we did three youtube channels three youtube channels yeah okay i do you want to go first uh sure okay let's go all right maybe i'll subscribe to these channels hit me uh yeah they're pretty niche but okay we'll see. All right.

My first one is, you know, I don't know how much the audience knows, but I've in the last couple of years really loved taking up cooking. I recently got a smoker and I've loved smoking stuff. Smoking these meats? Smoking these meats. Yeah. If no one's seen that video, please look up Mark Zuckerberg smoking these meats. It'll be in the show notes.

It's incredible. Yeah, we'll put that in the show notes. Um, so smoking super fun takes a lot of time. It's one of those things you don't want to mess up because it takes like 12 hours. So I started looking up YouTube videos like you do with any issue you have in the world these days.

Um, found this channel called T Roy cooks and he's just the most wholesome, nice guy in the world with this backyard setup of 10 different smokers. 10 different smokers? Yeah, there's all sorts of different ones. So he's like a reviewer of smoking meats? It's more like instructional video, but he has different smokers, different size smokers.

There's different ways to do it. I think the one he mainly uses is the one that I have. His daily driver. His daily driver. He makes just really simple, good videos, super informative. Every time I watch one, I have to make whatever I watch. This past Christmas, I bought an uncured ham

and smoked it myself. Like that might be one of the allures of cooking channels that I think I underrate is like when people follow instructions or DIY stuff, especially in the beauty community, I see this is like the connection you have between teaching someone to do something and them successfully doing it for the first time is like really strong. And so, yeah. And like food, like, you know know the binging with babish type of channel where like someone makes something successfully and you get to follow along and

make it yourself that's pretty powerful that's pretty cool yeah it's just doing the ham i did a brisket this weekend that turned out incredible um and like this is just stuff that you normally have to go down south to to get some good barbecue or something and now i can do in my backyard and because of this guy it's just entertaining and i watch it and i i like study it it's weird to say i'm like studying how to cook from him but i am all right so there's one rant on my channel t-roy cooks uh my next one i've mentioned before i started climbing this year which i've really enjoyed there's a channel called bouldering bobat i'm kind of embarrassed i still don't know what bobat means um they're in they're from the uk so there's a lot of english slang that i just have absolutely no clue what they're saying um but it's fun to listen to for some reason um basically it's just it's a really good mix of people who are really

really talented at climbing but it's also just this group of guys who are really, really talented at climbing, but it's also just this group of guys who are having a really fun time and pandering or making fun of each other and just having a good time while doing a bunch of really sick climbing. And the guy who edits all of it, Omar, has a great music playlist as well. So all the music's super on point. You probably won't care about the climbing at all,

but maybe I'll show you some of their music. I think it's all royalty free too if they're doing it. I'm super down for that. All right. And then last one I have, I think I may have mentioned once, Jomboy Media. J-O-M. Yeah, J-O-M-B-O-Y Media. He's really blown up the last couple months.

He mostly does baseball commentary videos but like oh this one yeah really fun really niche little plays in baseball they're usually like two minutes long one of them was about this uh pitcher who whenever he makes an error he like throws up on the mound and uh all sorts of just like little really funny things but he's absolutely hilarious i don't watch baseball now that baseball is over he's starting to do some like hockey which i i really really like and then every friday he does something called fun sport friday which is just the most crazy sports ever and he just commentates on them i just showed you one before this uh some sport in asia where they play on horses and you throw a dead goat carcass into like a giant

hole. Nice. So yeah. My favorite part of that was like, that's it's, you know, they're on horseback and they're like grabbing this, this literal carcass and like throwing it around. And the best part is they were like filming it in like 4k and there's like drones crossing in front of the shot to get like the aerial view. That was pretty inspiring. Meanwhile, using that high-tech dead goat carcass. Yeah, that was pretty wild. Yeah. All right.

He's hilarious. He's also in New Jersey. If you ever wanted to come on and tell us a little bit about his setup and how he pumps videos out a lot. Okay. Like normally you see someone upload, it's one video.

He uploads, there'll be like five videos. He could be in this building. We wouldn't even know. He could be. Because he doesn't show his face, right? No, he does show one video. He uploads, there'll be like five videos. He could be in this building, we wouldn't even know. He could be. Because he doesn't show his face, right? No, he does show his face. He has a podcast also. He's a big Yankees fan, so he has a podcast about the Yankees

that I think he live streams or records, but I mostly just watch his quick commentary videos. They're super funny. All right. So I've got three channels here. One of them we've talked about, and you already know about it, but I'm subscribed to a certain car reviewer who reviews every car as if it's a 90s sedan

that you're thinking about buying off the lot, and that is Doug DeMuro. He just has a certain way of talking about every single car as if you've never heard of it, but it might actually be worth buying. So I've watched his videos for a while. He's super entertaining. They're amazing.

And he's also pretty knowledgeable about cars. It takes a lot to be... He has to be. It's crazy. You can't just be entertaining and then not know anything about cars and then you won't learn much from the video. I legitimately learn a lot

about the different heritages of different cars compared to each other and what's actually unique about certain cars because sometimes you look at a supercar and you're like well i figured they all have aero like that and you're like actually no this is like a super custom bespoke way of doing it so fascinating stuff i love doug demura's channel yeah he's amazing another one that i i've watched a lot, especially this year, Caleb City. He does a lot of sketches and a lot of referential stuff, which references a lot of anime that I don't actually know about, but I love the style of the sketches anyway. He posts them on Twitter and YouTube and you can watch them anywhere, but one of my favorites

was I think it's called If Bugs All Introduce Themselves. I think I know. So he starts as like, I'm a carpenter bee. I'm a hard worker. I like to make holes in wood and it goes around the circle

with different bugs introducing themselves. And I guess I'm just spoiling the punchline, but it ends with a wasp. And I was like, I'm a wasp. I just like hurting people. And the sketch, like timing and the editing, it's all really funny. So highly recommended.

Okay, I'm gonna have to look that up. That's nice. Another one is a superhuman interview. I'll show you that one later. Okay. I'll put it in the show notes too, because that's pretty great. Last one is a man in,

ooh, what country is he in? He seems like he bounces back and forth. I'll just say a man in Europe who reviews all the most niche stuff about electric cars, mainly Tesla, but also in his own unique way. His name is Bjorn Nyland. Bjorn B-J-O-R-N. That sounds very Scandinavian. Yes, and a lot of cold weather you know driving about measuring the efficiency of a tesla when the battery gets below zero and like doing range tests i think he he did a range

test when the uh the new model s came out he had a friend with the new long range with 373 miles and he said okay let's try it and just went for 370 miles and see how long it would go. Highly recommended. If you're into any of the niche Tesla stuff, which I know some people listening probably are at this point, you're welcome. Check out Bjorn Nyland's channel. They're great. Cool. Also. Sorry.

Yeah, no, I think that's pretty much it for the channel stuff. I was just going to say how I, for the audience out there, I tried to get Marques to talk about something other than Tesla by three channels you wouldn't guess. And there you go. Two of them basically talk about Tesla. Still managed to work it in. That's just the way I go here. On waveform. Also, I have a nice little, maybe a segue of another thing that I found, I guess, online that I really liked this week.

I am now using full-time a mechanical keyboard. And this is only news because I've been using computers for 12 to 15 years and never once stayed with a mechanical keyboard. I've had laptops. I've had other low-profile keyboards. I've had chiclet-style keyboards. And in the last couple years with Macs profile keyboards i've had chiclet style keyboards and then the last couple years with max i've just had chiclet style yeah like desktop keyboards

and i don't know what even prompted me oh you know what i remember yeah uh i got sent a mechanical keyboard and it's it's specifically for pcs in fact the company that sent it is called glorious pc gaming yeah race or something like that. And the keyboard was awesome. And I was typing on it. I was like, these switches are great. It's nice and compact. It's even like cool looking on my desk. But a couple things about it weren't quite right.

It was a wired keyboard and that's common, but I was so used to wireless and not having the clutter. And it was a PC keyboard. So it had a Windows button and it didn't have, obviously, the command and the option buttons. So it wouldn't exactly line up. It didn't work. The media controls didn't work for the Mac. There was no brightness up and down.

So I couldn't quite get myself to switch to it, but I couldn't get over how much I liked that keyboard. So I went back on this little quest of looking through mechanical keyboards for Mac. I had made a few purchases in the past. I had a DOS keyboard, but I never quite settled on one. And then weirdly, I found the Keytron K2. I don't know how to say that. K-E-Y-C-H-R-O-N.

I'd never heard of them until you got one. Yeah. I mean, I bought one online, and the day after I got it in the mail, I got an email from them saying, hey, would you like us to send you one? Which is pretty funny timing. But, yeah, I got it in the mail, and it is pretty much everything that I sort of wanted, and that's why I got it. It's wireless.

It's low profile. Has arrow keys. Has Mac keys. Has function keys. And it's got the brown switches that I liked. It's pretty sweet. It's pretty nice. Would you call that low profile?

Well, I mean, no. Okay. I mean, it's hard when you're comparing it to the chiclet style iMac keyboards that they send with you. Right. It looks gigantic. Yeah. So if you want actually low profile, meaning on your desk, low key travel, this is not that at all not not one bit but the the footprint of it is actually pretty small I didn't get the one with the number pad all the tweets and comments are like what I love number pads why didn't you get one I don't know I had

a number pad I used it sometimes for like I have like a financial document I type in sometimes but other than that I could go without the number pad yeah for sure so i got the one with arrow keys and no number pad and i'm a fan so far but you've been in this this gaming world for so long yeah you've you know way more about mechanical keyboards than i do i'd say i've used them for a long time i don't know how much more i've never gone like into the deep nitty-gritty of it but i've definitely used them for a while so you see my setup now. Am I missing anything right now? Like I have, all right, so here's my setup right now. It's the Keychron K2.

You can see it. It's got an aluminum frame, brown switches, and I think they're Gateron brown instead of Cherry MX brown. the glorious one

they sent before were Gateron. Yeah. I mean, they really didn't feel that much different. Yeah. There's probably some mechanical keyboard people out there like, you think Gaterons feel the same as Cherry?

This is all very new for us. Yeah, to me they do. So, yeah, the brown switches. And then I took some other keys from the glorious PC Gaming Race keyboard. I took the letter keys and the escape key and the arrow keys from that keyboard. So I already have quote custom key caps. So I feel like I'm in that world right now. Okay. Uh, it's wireless. It's got Bluetooth. It's got RGB, but I don't really care about that. It's like, I just could go with white backlight and that's fine. Is that, am I, am I set?

You're further along than I've ever been oh wow i mean like i've tried a bunch of different switches i the first mechanical i ever got was i think some sort of cooler master probably like one of the cheapest ones they sell and it was browns and i i loved it um just like being able to really feel when you're pressing the key when you're playing game i think is the main reason people really like mechanical keyboards it wait let me bring this over okay i think we should have a a whole a whole mess of them and do a little keyboard asmr but we'll do so what are these these are browns these are browns they sound here i'll just point the mic at it All right. So those are Browns.

Pretty sweet. Yeah. They definitely have a clank to them. They're very tactile. You can feel it. They're not the most tactile. Here's what I learned actually about these. So the actual switch is not that loud, but just the way I type with a pretty good amount of force the sound

you're hearing is actually the key cap colliding with the base of the keyboard so if I had I guess something like a blue switch where it was like really tactile you'd hear two clicks every time I typed well we have a blue we can bring it over let's do it right now all right let me hold on I'm just gonna go grab a bunch of keyboards and we'll... This is turning into what I thought it would. This is going to be a total mess, but let's... It's perfect. Okay.

Here it is. Yes. This is the first... This is the DOS keyboard you brought over with the blue switches. Yeah. Wait. Can we put your browns next to it? Yeah. I want to hear blues next to browns.

This DOS keyboard with blue is the first mechanical keyboard I ever tried for Mac specifically. Okay. It's like the first result on Amazon when you search for it. This is what the blues are. Okay, cool. Now go to brown. so like that to me is like a pretty subtle difference when i'm actually typing there's i feel like it's a subtle difference when you're just like what you mean feel wise uh yeah yeah and feel and sound like i noticed the the little clickier-ness of the blues.

There's way more of that like, yeah, that click. It's more click with the blue. The blue is more satisfyingly clicky, but to me a little too loud. It's too much for sure. Yeah. I feel like blues have your own office if you're ever buying blues switches.

I think also if you're getting Razer, I think they call them green switches. I'm pretty sure it's very similar similar but they are definitely the loudest browns are a nice in between of like uh blues and reds i think it offers a little more tactile feedback uh a little louder than red but a little quieter than blue i think it's a really good in between the reason i switched from, so I originally had browns and then I went to reds. The reason I switched is because I was living in a one bedroom apartment and my fiance, our bedroom was right on the other side of the

wall from my computer. So yeah, she's a teacher. She wakes up super early in the morning. So browns were pretty loud. So I switched to reds because they're quieter actually wound up loving them not just at first it felt a little mushy but the noise is quieter and on top of that people talk about like fatigue which i hate saying fatigue while i'm playing games but if you're at the computer for a really long time typing for a really long time it's real having a little less uh like feedback when you're pressing does get nice interesting okay so i switched to reds i absolutely love them then steel series actually uh they found out i played games from the podcast so they sent a couple things over and i they sent a keyboard i wasn't really that

excited about it because as far as i know it's some sort of proprietary switches that have something to do with depending you can set each switch to how far down you press it to activate it, which is cool, but I don't, I don't see a need for that and how I play games and then I started using it and I, I really loved it. It's a little mushier, but I don't know why I just, it feels really smooth. So I'm going to show you a little, yeah, we're going to do some more. Let's hear it. I'm going to show you a little.

We're going to do some more. Let's hear it. Coming in hot. That's pretty solid. It's interesting what you're saying about fatigue because I was trying. I started with red switches, and I found that because they were a little bit mushier, I was pressing all the way down every time and lifting all the way up. And the more I typed, the more fatiguing that actually was.

Where the clickier ones, because I didn't have to push down as much and reach up as much, it was less fatiguing to type a lot. You know when you hit the button, so you're not worried that you're missing the button. Right, I was typing more deliberately with the reds and I was typing more like touch typing. Yeah the others All right I mean, that's a good point

I it might just be getting used to something I have to say when I first switched to Reds the other thing that kind Of throws me off typing wise is at work. I use a chiclet style. Yeah, um Just like during the day. First of all, all four of us were using mechanical keyboards in here It would you just have a headache all day like the ibuprofen we would take in here would be astronomical. Um, so chiclet style for everyone in a workplace is really nice. Uh, I've gotten really used to it. So then going back and having this like more raised keyboard, but just playing games was so much better on it. I didn't have to type that much in games. Now I'm playing

a game where i type a little more in so switching to this one i've gotten more used to it and it's i would claim even mushier but i've wound up really liking that and i feel like once you get used to it yeah you're not like you said slamming on keys to make sure it gets pressed uh all right so i'm gonna do that one before we just used it was a asus rog i forget the name i'm sorry but they were red keycaps the one i was using at home was a hyper x something tkl the 10 keyless ones i really like that form factor uh tkl is great that um you lose your numpad you still have your arrow keys, you still have your home page up, page down, print screen buttons.

Do you use print screen? I use print screen. For whatever reason, this new SteelSeries keyboard that I got that I'm going to let you listen to in a second does not have the print screen button. I know I can remap it, but it's like the one thing I dislike. Oh, and it doesn't have a braided cable yeah yeah i'm kind of bummed about that but otherwise i'm in i love this keyboard for some

reason so okay let's take a listen real quick i'm ready that does sound really satisfying. I want you to try this, actually. It's going to feel really weird after blues and browns, but I don't know. Even my fiance tried it, and she's like, oh, these feel really mushy. And I was like, I'm so proud you used that word. Like, that's i don't mind him i don't i i like him more than reds

i think reds were i i initially picked red literally because i was like i like red red's a good color let's try red that's a good color that I don't ever see the actual color too but uh yeah this this is kind of nice red turns out to be my least favorite keycap really smooth right yeah yeah and it's got nice keys like yeah seem pretty durable there's something about it just like it just feels really smooth when I'm typing or playing a game and because of that I just yeah I've really grown to like it I'm sure there's a lot of uh mechanical keyboard buffs out there who do some really really cool stuff that I just yeah I've really grown to like it I'm sure there's a lot of a mechanical keyboard buffs out there who do some really really cool stuff that are just oh I don't get me started okay so I think this is this is the cool part look I got into this world and like every time this happens every time every

video we make every single time I dive into like a little bit of a new topic immediately after my inbox is filled with, don't forget about this, or wait till you find out about this. So like, you know, I'll interview a CEO and then my inbox has five more requests to interview their CEOs. I'll talk about a PC case

and then my inbox is filled with PC cases. It makes sense, it's just like, it's a little late. I can't like include the things in the video, but sure enough tweet about or i share this new mechanical keyboard i like and the world i'm exposed to is like you know youtube channels dedicated to hour-long live builds of making a keyboard from scratch with like every single switch and key and like custom artisan keys and different material choices and all the all the panda keys and all the other key switches I didn't know about like this this world is awesome I'm super super new to it but I I was

exposed to a whole lot and I'm very excited yeah I think I think the one of the really crazy things is like custom keycaps and not just like like custom keycaps for everything but they make these like artisan single keycaps and not just like like custom keycaps for everything but they make these like artisan single keycaps that people usually use for like the f keys or the escape key and i have this i have this custom escape key right now that just says ascend yeah but i i have been seen the ones that they're like cheeseburgers or like pokemon i saw a gengar one that was insane someone who makes one of those has promised to make an MKBHD logo Escape Key. That's so cool.

And I can't wait. That's going to be really cool. Yeah. Just like diving into YouTube is pretty crazy how people make all these. And it's cool because you can make it literally exactly how you want to if you get into that, which is going really deep. Yeah. want to if you get into that which is going really deep um yeah i know one there's one youtube channel called ski with pete who's pretty local and he does he does live streams of just building and it's a pretty good following yeah it's it's really it's really cool i wish i could get into

it i know it's a time and money sink that i don't think i'm ready for so right now i'll just use my gaming keyboards i guess but but one day i hope i have some times maybe when i get old enough instead of doing model trains i'll do mechanical keyboards that is that is that going to be the tech model trains yeah i'm totally fine with that being uh just building your own keyboard from scratch in your woodshed in your in your backyard yeah i mean it wouldn't be wooden probably hopefully but that sounds like a pretty sweet hobby you heard it here first. When Marques and I are retired, we're going to be building mechanical keyboards in the

retirement home. It'll be great. So yeah, I'm in this world now. I'm happy to be a part of it and feel free to send me all kinds of other custom mechanical keyboard stuff. This is something that will probably end up in a Dope Tech episode in the near future. All right, let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll talk about our main topic, which is embargoes explained.

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For example, a runner could be training for a marathon, or they could be late for the bus. You never know. Ambition is on the inside. So that thing you love, keep doing it. Drive your ambition. Mitsubishi Motors. All right, welcome back.

Welcome to Embargo's Explained. This is the rabbit hole we've all been waiting to go down. So have you ever wondered why sometimes you log on to YouTube and suddenly there's eight videos right at the top of your sub box all about the same new product? You ever wondered why that happens? Have you ever left a comment saying, did you guys plan this? Have you ever tweeted at the creator asking if this was a collab, even though it really wasn't? This is the result of an embargo. What is an embargo? Well, there's a lot of different versions.

We're going to talk about sort of the way it works in the tech world because it's sort of a curious way it works and maybe get in the weeds about it. But this happens in other industries, other product industries. Generally, NDAs are very common. But let's talk about it. Yeah. So I'll just start with what is an embargo and we can go from there. So an embargo is an NDA, which is a non-disclosure agreement with an expiration date and time. That's basically what it comes down to. So you might be a tech company and you go, hey, we have this new product and we'd really like to show the world,

but we don't want any of our competitors to know about it. So we're going to make people who see it ahead of time sign a non-disclosure agreement, which means they can't share anything about this. But eventually when the product comes out, they'll be able to talk about it. So we'll have it expire at noon on Wednesday and then they can talk about it. Yeah. That's basically what an embargo is. The embargo is that date and time. What happens a lot in the tech world is a company will use it basically as a tool for press. They want to brief you and show you their new product before it comes out. This is sort of where the meme comes from yeah hi my name is Marques and I've been using this for a month of where they'll show you the tech product they want to get it all out there but they want it to be a secret so they can

launch it first and then anyone who's seen it beforehand can talk about what they've seen so you might see a bunch of people go on stage for an event. I'm going to try to do this without talking specifically about companies and we'll see how far I get, but you might see a bunch of people talking on stage about, let's say, a new smartphone that's coming out and wow, all this is new information because it totally didn't leak. That's amazing. The event ends and then boom, the embargo, which is perfectly timed to when the event's supposed to end, will drop. And then everyone who's seen it beforehand, which is your six favorite tech YouTubers or your 16 favorite tech YouTubers, will all publish their videos at once. This tends to happen because when the embargo expires, it's generally in your best interest if you're press or a YouTuber who has sort of created

a piece around it, it's generally in your best interest to just publish right at the embargo. Yeah. You don't have to. That's the thing. You don't have to. And this has been a case a couple times where a product will come out and our video is not quite ready yet or there's one or two other things we want to include in it. And so I won't publish right at the embargo, but maybe wait a couple hours or a day or two, finish the video and then publish it. But that's generally what happens. That's why it might seem like notification spam or your sub fee getting taken over by random products some days is because yeah, their companies are really smart about when to make their embargo and then who to share it with.

Yeah, they wanted to add on to the hype. A lot of times you see it after events, like you said. So what's more exciting than to have the event? Everyone gets excited for the event, which are a lot less exciting, I feel like now, because we see the leaks. Yeah, leaks have kind of ruined that. But they ultimately want the event to roll out you get your first look from the event and then right after all of your favorite creators are posting videos so you're probably going to watch three or four videos on the same product again right after it's possible yeah it's a good

way to add some hype along with you know just keeping it secret beforehand. Yeah. There's also different ways that different companies will use embargoes. And they'll also make like sort of different types of embargoes. And it's a really hazy world because some companies do it way better than others. And when I say better, I mean they're just more clear about it. But here's an example, a no-name example. A company is coming out with a new, we'll just say phones, new smartphone, and they know when their launch date is going to be. It's going to be December 1st, right? Yep.

And they want to share this with a bunch of YouTubers, uh, a week beforehand. They want to share the product with them so that they can take videos of it, make their first impressions. But they're not allowed to review the phone until a second embargo on December 5th. Yeah. So now you're the YouTuber and you just, you know, you've gotten the product, you've seen it, you've got your first impressions of it, and they may even send you home with it. it, you've got your first impressions of it, and they may even send you home with it, but you have an NDA to not talk about it until the first and an NDA to not review it until the fifth. On the first, do you publish your first impressions or do you just keep waiting because you already are basically

reviewing it for the fifth? That's a decision that a lot of people in a lot of different states in their youtube channels have to make and usually the answer which is a business decision is both yeah just do both because when the phone gets announced on the first that's like the hottest day to talk about a new product yeah that's when everything's coming out that's when everyone's looking it up oh my god this is new here's my new information about it. And then it sort of dies down and then it goes on sale a week later and everyone's sort of gotten their information from the impressions but haven't seen reviews. That's when a review will come in,

but it'll sort of be late. So people are already looking at what they want to buy. Sometimes it's weird. I feel like you usually see reviews scheduled around the actual, because we all know like release dates are generally a week or two after the launch event. It's always better, to me at least,

if the review embargo is before the actual order date. It just seems to make the most sense. People want to see an actual review and know about the product, not just see it before they make an order. So it's weird when it's a sort of a clever move by the company to make that second embargo because they're making a second wave of press. Right. So if they just said the embargo date to talk about the phone at all is the first, then everyone who'd been using it for a week would review it on the first. Pretty much. That's like generally how it would go. But by creating this second embargo of you can't, but they'll have some language like you can't evaluate it until the fifth,

you can't do any comparisons until the fifth, but you can give the specs and the fact sheet and what's actually being talked about on stage. So yeah, it'll be like, well, okay, I'll talk about everything on the first, but then I still want to review the phone, so I'm going to talk about it again on the fifth uh or sometime after that and it becomes like a tool for the press to use and i've seen products with three embargoes which is hilarious but there's yeah it was a camera embargo okay it was like a second feature i don't even remember that that's crazy

yeah so it's uh it's sort of a confusing spot to be put in sometimes. Yeah, that's the thing is a lot of them are super confusing. I think we had one that was you're allowed to do like your unboxing and show the phone off, but you're not allowed to show any of the new features unless you took the film of it at the event. Yeah. We're going so nitty gritty intogritty into that it's like you have to expect someone's gonna just accidentally mess that oh well that's a whole nother thing so yes

sorry well no no yeah we can talk about that so yes so like if that example is that's a thing where like you have a product there's a hands-on impressions area at the event oh okay great you can take as much footage as you want there you can review it there for all you want to but like i don't know how good that review will be well yeah i mean they've had a lot of them when they do those hands-on places your embargo is basically lifted the minute right you get there right so we've seen people i've seen austin and his team editing on the street in new york yeah it's insane how fast they get some of their stuff out yeah but yeah so that causes a little

bit of chaos. Sorry to interrupt you. That just means people are trying to, as soon as they're allowed to get some footage of something, take advantage of that. So that happens immediately. I'll talk about Apple because I think that's a pretty classic version of this. But yeah, in this scenario

you are allowed to do whatever you want with the device on the hands-on area and then also we will give you a device that you can leave with but you cannot use that device to review until a second date in the future which means they you know may have a different software on it they may have different you know expectations for how close that is to the final retail product that's the retail box all these other things um i guess generally it should be pretty clear ideally but we'll go to the second point which is that people mess it up all the time and there's seems like there's no real repercussion for it i've been

pretty good about not i'm probably jinxing myself. I've been pretty good about not, I'm probably jinxing myself, but I've been pretty good about not breaking embargoes on anything for a while, because that's, there's no great reason to, if you want to leak something, like now you're a leaker. Great. Congrats. Yeah. So that's, that's sort of where we're at is like people do mess it up and it's sort of a shrug, maybe a slap on the wrist. I don't really know what happens. There's probably something in an inbox, but yeah, it just happens. There's a lot, a lot of things to take account of. Yeah. I think I can think of one. I won't name what it was, but we accidentally put something in a video that wasn't the main subject of the video that was under embargo. Very few people caught it. I think it wound up the next day coming out of embargo okay

do you remember what it was oh uh i don't remember what it was but i think i'm remembering what you're talking about where yeah the next day uh well the next day we just got an email that said like hey you're allowed to talk about this and yeah blah blah i think they mentioned that the video and that they liked it i think they i think i found that yeah i think i remember this so i found out that the embargo had dropped the next day and i realized that the product appeared in a video when they emailed me saying thanks for the shout out and i like scrolled back up and like read the date again and i was like wait this was early but they thanked me that's weird uh and then they're yeah they're like yeah feel free to review it or whatever but

that was that was pretty funny for anyone wondering it it wasn't very interesting it wasn't like a phone or something it's just the only thing i can think of yeah that we accidentally showed previously sometimes it gets to the point where we get packages all the time it's hard to keep and a lot of the times they come from pr companies who don't put the embargo in there, they'll shoot it in an email, but our email is destroyed every single day. So it gets tough. And, and I'd say every time somebody comes over to collab with us, or we're just trying to shoot like an Instagram story or something, you do this solid check of like, wait a minute, look around the room. Is there anything in the frame that I can't? Can people see this? people see this no yes gotta reshoot that maybe move that out of the way yeah should i blur that yeah uh it's true yeah we sort of have a mini

procedure now where every time a new product comes in and we all sort of do the rounds of checking it out we all always have to go wait can we share this yeah let's just make sure and then uh we'll usually come up with a date or yes or no um Yeah, I think a lot of people wonder about the phone stuff because that's sort of where the meme was born of like, I've been using this for a while. Here's what I think of it. The question is like, well, what do you mean? How have you been using it for a while?

That's something that companies have found that it makes a lot of sense for them to do is they will either give you, yeah, like a smartphone, for example. So they'll give you the smartphone for the week or two weeks or three weeks leading up to launch. And so by the time the phone actually launches, I don't have just my impressions. I can like tell you how good the battery life is, how good the camera is, how good it compares. I can review this phone on day one um so they'll have an embargo and they'll tell you you know once the event's over

you can publish whatever or at this exact time the embargo will lift and you also don't know who else is beholden to the same embargo as you you always just find out when it lifts like oh cool this this uh this other website and these two other youtubers also had the same product cool um and i've actually seen that this is just a psa for youtubers i've seen that get used against people in a sort of a weird way uh so one was for oh wow should i just talk about dyson i'll just talk about Dyson? I'll just talk about Dyson. So the Dyson integration, which was maybe you forgot about it by now, but a while back there was a certain Dyson vacuum that seemed like every tech YouTuber made a video about, but they reached out to everyone individually. And I only find out about this by putting the pieces together because of what I watched,

but they reached out to me saying, Hey, we're Dyson. We have this sweet new vacuum. Here's our budget. Would you like to make a whole video about it? And, uh, it's not, it's not out yet. So there's an embargo and a time to do that. And I was like, Oh, well I like their vacuum, but you know, a whole video about a vacuum, not really interested. We brainstormed a little bit, but for us, we couldn't think of a good way to put it in. Yeah, sometimes there's ways to do it. Like there are genuinely creative. Linus did it and it was hilarious. Yeah, exactly.

It like showed a ton of awesome stuff about his studio and he still put the vacuum in and it was a great video. Exactly. So there are ways to do it. But at the time I was like, oh, you know, I'm not going to do a whole video about this vacuum. So thanks, but no thanks. And they're like okay cool um but i like i like marked that date and time on my calendar so that i could see like who did if anyone else like wrote an article about

this vacuum or whatever and sure enough the day of uh that that like post to come up i saw like two or three other videos at the same time as in my calendar. And then like two hours later, I saw two or three more videos. And then two hours later, I saw two or three more videos. And it sort of like trickled all day. And I was like, there's no way this is on purpose. And it also happens to happen on the exact hour every time, which basically leads me to believe, and maybe Dyson, correct me if I'm wrong, but they just gave everyone privately a bunch of different embargoes and everyone signed those contracts and everyone was not allowed to publish. Even though it didn't

matter, the product was already out. They sort of use this as a press tool to sort of extend that press cycle. They rode the wave a little extra longer than usual because they had videos coming out all day instead of just in the morning. It worked perfectly. And it worked great. It's literally all Twitter could talk about. I loved every minute of it.

It was everywhere. Twitter was hilarious that day just about wondering who the new Dyson video was going to come out for. And we bought the vacuum. I love the vacuum. I bought one for the studio and I bought the I bought the vacuum yep I love the vacuum I bought one for the studio and I bought one for at home not because of the videos but because I like the Dyson vacuum anyway this is turning into great promo for Dyson yeah um but yes I did enjoy seeing

all those videos but it was fascinating because I know if I had signed that contract and I had a video waiting to go live at a certain time I would have gone live at that time and it would have been somewhere in the first half, but like in the middle of like all of this unexpected chaos. It sort of brings me back to the early days of YouTube where like big brands, like, I don't know if Burger King ever did it, but like, you know, one of those huge brands would do like a burger video with like the four. This was back when you could do a video with like the five biggest YouTubers at once and have the budget for it. And it would be like, whoa, holy crap. Shane Dawson, Fred, Ray William Johnson, they all did a video about this burger at the same time. That's crazy.

That was like a true YouTube takeover. But now you can sort of do like mini takeovers. So fun times. over us so fun times i think i think my ideal embargo if i'm doing a tech product if anyone's listening is to just make it as clear as possible and that's usually they're pretty good at it like when you read through the contract it's like hey don't talk about it till this date sure cool got it um and i'm sure we'll have some q a's about the more specifics of it but like yeah when you get into these weird like half embargoes or two different embargoes for the same product, that's when it gets a little weird. And you got to draw the lines in the sand a little deeper.

But that's just me. I'd say ideally review embargo should always be before the order date. Oh, yeah. For the benefit of consumers who want, who trust reviewers or even just want to gauge their own interest based on full reviews, not unboxings. Like, listen, unboxings are awesome. A lot of times you get to see, I don't get the feeling of an iPhone from an iPhone commercial because it's perfectly shot in all these amazing different ways. Yeah. Yeah. So like, I want to see a couple of people actually having hands on of an iPhone. So unboxings have their purpose. They're

great to come out on the day of launch events so you can see what other people think of it super initially. But a full review embargo should always come out before an order date because I don't want to not place an order because I don't know what the review's like. See the review, love it, and then realize I'm four weeks back ordered because I had to wait one more day before their embargo came out. So here's another thing to consider. How long the reviewer has had the product for the embargo and what video ends up getting made.

This is something that's happened with like, I'll talk about AirPods because that's also a pretty well-known product. But like when you guys saw the AirPods video came out, that was an embargo. There were a couple other videos at that exact time you guys probably also saw those um but when you have a product like that that you've had for 12 hours yeah you can't review it in 12 hours you have to test the battery life and the sound and all these other things i mean maybe you can review it in 12 hours but how good would it really be like that's not up to the standard that a lot of us hold ourselves to so yeah you you sort of get a feeling of like,

well, I know where everyone else is at. Everyone else got this at roughly the same time as me, probably, unless you're Calvin Harris and you just have the Mac Pro sitting in your studio right now. So you can kind of get a judge for like, well, we've all been using it for the same amount of time, but three of us reviewed it and the other three have a first impressions

because we know we have to test it a little more. That always gets kind of fun. But yeah, we generally would like to have the product at least a week. I don't know. A smartphone, you gotta use a week, right? A week is, yeah. I think a week is pretty much the minimum, but. I could review a smartphone in five, six days, I think is my feeling because i get so calibrated with

smart within like yeah i mean you've been doing it a lot of people have been doing it for a long time a week is generally a week is enough to get your your good review of it anything else you would have to wait till like six months to see how it holds up to to condition regular everyday conditions and and if it slows down, anything that happens like that, but we're not gonna wait six months to review. Right, if my iPhone X review came out six months after the phone came out, it would be almost useless to people

who were thinking about buying it. Yeah, no one would care about it because we would all be talking about the next one already. Yeah, I guess the whole point of a review is to decide if it's worth buying or not. So the better the conditions of that embargo can be towards facilitating a correct answer of that question, the better, which is a long way of saying let us really use it. Yeah. No, it's a whole world out there.

We have a whole Q&A coming up, and we'll talk more about, i'm sure embargoes and like testing products and fun stuff like that but yeah that's that's basically it am i missing anything i don't know um i guess the only other thing i can say is please people when we we put an impressions out please stop saying this is a terrible review and it's short if it's a review it'll say review in the title specifically almost every time and if it's not it will be in the reviews playlist so if you're not sure if it's a review or not if it's not in the reviews playlist it's not a review it's on the channel it's like on it's in the middle of the home page of the channel there's a reviews playlist and an impressions playlist if it's in the reviews playlist it's a review if it says impressions in the title it's not a review yeah so there you go yeah and so this

all this embargo stuff explains that a little better why we do impressions and why we do reviews and why impressions aren't bad reviews they're just impressions they're just first impressions yeah cool all right well we'll take a quick break and we'll come back we'll do some q a from twitter about embargoes and all bunch of new tech stay tuned Stay tuned. With Uber Reserve, good things come to those who plan ahead. Family vacay? Reserve your ride as soon as you book your flights. To all the planners, now you can reserve your Uber ride up to 90 days in advance. See Uber app for details. Support for the show today comes from NetSuite.

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We'll talk embargoes for a little bit, I'm sure, but then all kinds of other tech, of course, naturally comes up on Twitter. So let's get into it. And so right at the top by Jeremy, I can pronounce that name, how many times do people catch you using a secret device out in the wild so i guess like an unannounced phone yeah do i ever do we ever get caught using it i think i'm pretty good about not showing what i'm using and yeah yeah it's usually you who's using the phone beforehand um Right. So that all relies on you.

I definitely remember sometimes people like, oh, what phone are you using? And you're like, hmm. Yeah, I'll literally not answer. Yeah, you'll see. It's in my pocket. So like that sometimes, I don't think I've ever seen somebody,

and you would know this better, who's come up and been like, that's the new X. Never happened. Okay, yeah. Yeah. And also the thing is I carry two phones. So if I up and been like that's the new x never happened okay yeah yeah so and also the thing is i carry two phones so if i'm using one phone that's under embargo and someone says hey what phone are you carrying right now i'll pull out the other phone the iphone uh and usually that's not a problem so yeah i think the only phones are not a lot of them are super like unique that you can tell from far away and like be positive enough to go up to somebody

you don't know and be like is that this i think the only thing i can think of is when iphone 10 came out it wasn't it was when it was past embargo already but people just weren't used to seeing it out in the wild and they'd be like oh can i look at that real quick that's a new iphone i'm thinking of getting one and you know the hardest part about uh reviewing a smartphone specifically and trying to use it a lot before it's gonna make a video about it is taking photos with it so like going into new york city and like and trying to take pictures and put it back away or like taking pictures from a car or something like that i think that's the that's the time when maybe i don't even know but maybe people do look and notice the phone. Yeah, because you're like holding it out in front of you. Yeah, you're like holding it out in the air. And you never use a case, so it's a lot more obvious.

True. I mean, usually when the phone's not out yet, there's no cases either. True. But I don't use a case, so that's also true. But yeah, I don't think that's really happened. I do have, I think I might have told this story before. I was reviewing a OnePlus phone, and i broke it before it came out did i tell that story before i'll tell it again because it's pretty great i was using uh it was

back when i played for the philly phoenix and i was i drove to practice and my phone there's this little like shelf in the trunk of the model s where you can like put things and then like take stuff out your trunk and i put the phone on that shelf and then like took things out my trunk and like bumped the shelf and the phone slid and fell out of the trunk of the car and like landed on some concrete. And the phone wasn't out yet. Not only was the phone not out yet, but I hadn't shot any footage of the phone yet. So I had to go like real quick, ask them,

hey, do you have another one that i could possibly use to to make this video because uh it got interrupted we'll put it that way um yeah i think that's about that here's one i don't know if you let's see if you have an answer for this what's the hardest product you had to keep quiet before a review could go out uh the hardest product to keep quiet about before a review huh i don't luckily most of them are only about a week yeah usually it's not too bad i kind of remember the uh when i first saw the red hydrogen before it was even like a real thing um that was pretty crazy and then i made a video and then got to share that but that was pretty wild because no one that was pretty crazy. And then I made a video and then got to share that. But that was pretty wild because no one that was like a world exclusive, basically. Yeah. And even that video,

it didn't really show it. It was like your reaction. Yeah, I show the back of it and I couldn't show it on. So it was kind of an interesting like back and forth. Like, what do you want me to show or what am I allowed to show? Because I'll just tell you what I want to put in the video and you can tell me if there's anything off limits. That was a sort of a unique conversation where there was no signed NDA. That was just like me and another guy who works for Red. You probably already know what I'm talking about, but yeah, that was a, that was an interesting one. Um, other than that, yeah, we don't really do anything too insane. It's gotten pretty formulaic with smartphones. Yeah. I can think of something that's not it wasn't an embargo it

wasn't a review or anything but we had to keep quiet which was when we first did our camera bracket test last year like keeping those results were just like it was tough because we didn't want you can't show them till the video comes out or else the video is totally pointless so like but each week we would go through and we would see the results of everything and be like, most of it was, oh my God, the Pocophone beat something again. Holy, the Pocophone, the Pocophone. And it was, it was so much fun behind the scenes and we could just like not share it with anyone, but then sharing it with everyone was so worth it. Yeah. Like seeing reactions of that was, was great. That's so true. It was our own embargo. Yeah. our own little embargo of when the pokephone beat the iphone 10 in the first round but nobody tweet

anything about this this is incredible uh yeah that was true and you know that also reminds me of is we have like stuff in the studio sometimes that's under embargo and i have to make sure to like put it away or not leave it like right in front of the door because if anyone walks by technically they can just walk in and like see whatever is in our studio so that's another thing we gotta yeah we talked about that before of like not putting it in video or like posts we make but we also just have a glass door so yeah and like we're probably one of the more interesting looking studios on the floor so people just look in all the time. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know how much you could figure out, but if there was somebody who really knew what something was, they could probably zoom in through the door and take a picture of something. Take one of those blurry cam photos. Yeah. We like to hide it on the far end of the studio usually. 2020, that'll end though. New studio, new space. Yeah.

Nothing leaks from that space. Oh, someone says, Pierce asks, what are you expecting for the tesla pickup event which is i think next week at this time by the time you're listening to this um and when i think about that like this is one of those few i'll call it a tech product but one of those few tech products that really has not leaked at all in any way other than intentional tweets by Elon basically yeah Tesla does a great job at doing that and you know why why it's because they own the entire not the entire but many many many parts of that like there will be no fully assembled Tesla truck anywhere outside of Tesla because they make it so you don't have third-party

manufacturers right so I don't know don't have third-party manufacturers. Right. So I don't know if that's third-party, but yeah. Well, basically, yeah. Like when iPhone, when Apple goes to Foxconn to build their millions of iPhones, that's thousands and thousands of employees that don't work for Apple seeing the iPhone, handling the iPhone, packaging the iPhone, then it has to come back to Apple, right? Tesla Roadster 2020 did not leak at all because they don't have

to take it outside of tesla they build a prototype in-house they test it within their own walls and no one out that outside of the company will see it so the same thing with the pickup truck like no one outside of that you know development team basically because they haven't manufactured it yet they haven't like done i don't know parts requests. They make the batteries and everything. The most anyone could know about the pickup truck is like, oh, they ordered windshield wiper actuators from Sony or whatever because Sony makes everything. So yeah, I'm fascinated with the pickup truck event.

I'm excited to see it. All the renders look like too futuristic. That's the thing. Yeah, he keeps calling it. The last thing he said was a blade runner but what he called it cyber truck he literally tweeted cyber truck unveil um so yeah all the renders are pretty wild but that's just what they are is just like fan-made renders and people trying to use hints and things like that to assume what it might look like but really

the design of this thing is a total mystery it's cool because like rumors and hints that turn into renders for phones usually wind up being very very close because we've seen so many phones we know design choices of companies but this is a whole new space so renders look completely different from other renders and now like we're gonna see a finished product that probably won't look anything like these insane like 2050 looking this is like video game trucks this is the first time tesla's had a chance to really flex a new design language i think because yeah we all know model y was going to look just like model 3 and model 3 has a lot of the same cues from Model S, which looks just like Model X, right? So they have the Roadster with some similar lines and a semi truck is, I guess, kind of different.

But the crowd that would buy a pickup truck is the like exact opposite crowd that would buy a Tesla Model 3 in many cases, right? I guess in terms of design, you can't really take the front of a sedan like car and make it into a pickup truck if anything it would look like the x i guess maybe that's like the closest it could look like i don't know if it will but imagine a model 3 on the front of a pickup truck it just makes absolutely no go watch simone geertz's video again truckload like that's a pretty little different it's a great project but it's an awkward-looking car. That pickup truck is not something I don't think people buy. It's awesome she got...

It looks like she's getting invited to the event. I hope to see her there. Yeah, we hopefully will get footage of it as soon as it rolls out, and everyone will get their first impressions of it, but that is something that I'm excited for that hasn't leaked. I was also told I'm taking delivery of my car this week and i was told to wait until at least this event to see if anything got announced with model s uh i didn't wait we'll see if i regret it that 100 will probably here comes applied yeah so yeah

that's coming soon so i got a question um from rafael who asks how much or what kind of prep do you have to do before reviewing any tech products? Also, hello. Hi. What's up? So I mentioned earlier, I think I could probably review a smartphone in like six days. And that's because I've reviewed so many smartphones in the last 10 years that it's kind of,

I have it, I feel like down to a science and it's an evolving science because phones change, but like, I know I have to test the camera. I got to use it every day, figure out what the battery life is like, get a good variety of sample size with what my screen on time is going to be. I got to do some side-by-sides if it's got some comparatives that I know it's going to be similar to. If there's a previous generation, I got to see how much better it's gotten. If there's new features, I got to test those, see if they're reliable, see if they're reliable, see if they're private or not.

There's like a pretty solid list of things that I know I have to do. And then once I've done that, I pretty much know everything I need to know about this phone. And then just, do I like it or not? What's the price like?

I think it takes me longer for non-smartphones because those are things that I go through this process with less often. So when this Mac Pro comes out, that's going to be a longer review process when the Pro Display XDR comes out. I mean, there's not much you need to talk about with this screen. Yeah, I guess both of them, ultimately, you're still using the same operating system, but something like a Windows laptop, that's tough to review. And people always want Windows laptop

stuff, but that takes way more time because you use mac os and i like to yeah i like to fully immerse myself in this like world of this product so if i do get into fully reviewing something that's incompatible with the rest of the products in my life it takes me longer to get into that and really review it so yeah smartphone that would be the shortest time for me five to seven business days delivered. And I think the longest might be honestly a car, right? Cause that's something you have for like many, many years and you don't really know what you think of it until you've driven it for a month. But-

That's something you, yeah, you want to last forever. Yeah, so I don't know if I've ever really done a car review because I've done like impressions of cars and like autofocus, we get to talk about parts of cars but i've never really reviewed a car um and i think things like yeah like windows laptops you get the occasional like computer that's not something that i would typically use or like a boosted board which is like we don't use them all the time it's really fun to play around with some things have i don't know how this is gonna act as an actual mode of transportation yeah really nuanced feature sets that you figure out when you use them all the time. It's really fun to play around with. Some things have, I don't know how this is going to act as an actual mode of transportation. Yeah. Really nuanced feature

sets that you figure out when you use them like over and over every day. So yeah. Uh, someone, Rudy asks, how often do you get approached to test a product without payment? Uh, Rudy, I have some news. I have never accepted payment to review a product in the thousand plus videos I've made on this channel. And I think a really good disclaimer that I've seen other YouTuber, Mr. Mobile make is, I mean, he says it every time, maybe he doesn't have to, but it's good that no company that sends him a product to review ever gets any sort of review copy or editing ability of that review before it comes out. And I thought that was fascinating when I first started hearing him say that because I was like, well, of course they don't.

That wouldn't make it a very good review if you let them change what you say or pay you in any way. So they're finding out what you say when everyone else finds out. But it turns out he's saying that because some other reviews do do that. Some other reviews actually let the company edit what they say. Some others are sponsored by the company that makes the product that's being reviewed. There's all sorts of other things that get into a gray area that I feel like we've totally avoided. Like we just don't do sponsored reviews at all.

We try and keep as little conflict of interest as hopefully zero conflict of interest. If it's a product in a space that we review we probably won't accept payment from you yeah um if for some reason it's in a whole nother category and it's like a video we can just talk about some features on we'll think about it but you guys have watched the channel for a long time we very rarely do sponsored stuff yeah another thing some people like to ask about is like an event, maybe there's an event in California or something, or they want to bring you out there to see a new product. Do they pay for your flight or your hotel, your travel or anything? Because they do do that with

some people, some other, I guess there's YouTubers and journalists who will accept like travel payments or whatever. I also don't do that so not that it matters and not that it would change the way i talk about a product yeah but i also always we always book our own flights and we'll fly out and lose money every time but that's just kind of the way it goes yeah we have to make sure the hotel is as close to in and out as possible exactly they just don't provide they're never willing to work with us on that no yeah we we usually get uh close to an airport and in and out and travel pretty light so yeah that's how it goes i have one from neil that's a question for andrew okay have you had a look at the new google stadia coming out

and if so what do you think about it so i have a couple thoughts on stadia i'm really not that excited about it because i think latency is going to be a way bigger issue than they they think it's going to be okay or then they think it isn't going to be an issue with um i think it's like 60 milliseconds is the estimated latency on it which is not good that's really bad it's a lot i think yeah most like gaming monitors are like a 1ms delay and like uh a good ping right now is like 20 to 60 so you and to think about that you're adding that on top of your ping or is it your ping i don't know either way that looks bad one of the ways they're trying to fix the solution is by some sort of ai that's learning how you play

so it can guess the buttons you're going to press before you press them. I think I made a tweet about this a little while ago. It's like, if it's just going to predict how I'm going to play, at what point is it going to get so bad that I'm just not even playing anymore and it's turning into a choose-your-own-story adventure or I'm just watching Netflix?

Will these video games just turn into a movie at this point? You just look at the keyboard and it just turning into a choose-your-own-story adventure, or I'm just watching Netflix. What if video games just turn into a movie at this point? You just look at the keyboard, and it just aims a headshot for you. That's actually this big issue in the gaming world is it's much harder to aim on controllers, so a lot of console-based shooters have a little bit of an aim assist. Because there's no way you can rotate someone's like crosshair on a controller as fast as you can like whip a mouse across a keyboard,

a trackpad or a mouse pad, sorry. So there's a little bit of aim assist. So what people have been doing is they've been finding ways to plug a keyboard and mouse into a console. So now they're getting the advantage of keyboard mouse with added aim assist. I think Destiny 2 like had a huge, huge issue with that when they first released and that's a big issue

i think the theory behind all of it is really great kind of like nvidia geforce now where it's like you can play these high demanding games when you don't have the resources to put into a computer or a console that can run it that's the dream yeah that ultimately what they're doing is great for gaming and i think for a lot of single player games it'll be great but i'm the kind of person who mostly only plays multiplayer games and latency just absolutely kills the experience i think competitive multiplayer okay competitive i think is the key word i think this is going to be this has the potential in a dream world to be awesome for a lot of casual gamers exactly who don't necessarily care as much about the latency might not even notice any delay um but still at the the higher end

and competitive gaming you're going to see people who just don't use stadia um but yeah i think in a dream world they're aiming for like the middle 70% of people who are just playing whatever. I'm not the best person to ask if I'm excited. I think it'll be great. That's what I should say. Not for me. It'll be great. All right.

We're going to do last question here. Which two flagships of this year would you want to combine to give rise to the best phone you could possibly have right now? Two flagships. So I think about this all the time, but for me, I think it would be somewhere between... I think the easy answer is... Hold on. I could go iPhone 11 Pro and Pixel 4, but I'm debating if I want to go...

Yeah, I'm going to go iPhone 11 Pro okay and OnePlus 7 Pro and then tell us what you want for right okay so I want the camera from the iPhone 11 Pro because I can't get the pixel actually okay here here's what I'll do sure take the OnePlus 7 Pro everything about it but then replace that 90 hertz curved screen with a 90 hertz flat screen, right? So I'm like combining the refresh rate of the OnePlus with the flatness. Okay, you're really combining. Yeah, I'm like stirring the pot. But I want the flat screen, and the iPhone kind of does that for me.

But still 90 hertz, 1440p OLED from the OnePlus 7 Pro. Then give me the camera set and that image processing pipeline from the iPhone. Replace the whole camera set from the OnePlus 7 Pro. Okay. image processing pipeline from the iPhone. Replace the whole camera set from the OnePlus 7 Pro. Then give me the battery life and optimization from the iPhone, but the fast charging of the OnePlus 7 Pro, and that's it.

Do you usually get wireless charging from? Yeah, sure. I kind of got used to just having fast charging and using it all the time, but if you, yes, you're right. iPhone does have wireless charging, so toss that in there too. All right. I think I'm going to go a little different route and i'm just going okay we've talked about this before pixel 4 had a lot of comments about it i actually had an issue with my three yeah so i jumped onto the four for now i'm trying it out it's all right

that's a warm take yeah i really. I was very excited for it. And there's a lot of things I like about it. There's still just battery issues and just general specs that aren't- Have you forced 90 Hertz? Probably not. I haven't yet. I probably could because I haven't really spent that. That's the thing. I haven't spent too many days where I haven't been at my desk at some point where I can get thrown on a charger and be okay so battery life hasn't been an issue for me yet we'll find that out soon because i'm going on my honeymoon in like two weeks where i will have very little time to charge it yeah so but other than that if i had to combine another phone with the i'm doing this in the sense of i'm trying to make the pixel 4 as good as possible okay i'm going to take everything about the pixel 4 it's software it's camera

you know i can force 90 hertz if i do this and i'm going to take the rog phone two specs and just throw it into the pixel so now i have a what 5 000 milliamp hour battery you have a 6 000 milliamp hour battery now yeah oh my 6,000 milliamp hour battery now. Oh my God, sorry. That's insane. I keep forgetting about that. Yeah, and then what, 12 gigs of RAM or something like that? You get the new chip. You get the A55 Plus that the Pixel doesn't have.

You get, yeah, 12 gigs of RAM. You get UFS 3.0 storage, which the Pixel doesn't have. You get the huge battery, which the Pixel doesn't have. You get front-facing speakers if you want them yeah like i would be okay with i'm narrowing this bezel down a little bit and having a little more of a bottom bezel i still really the forehead looks so much worse i put a case on mine like do you see this it's even more exaggerated yeah the forehead looks so bad when you're adding another like a couple millimeters of yeah top black rubber case still not a huge fan of that yeah but as far as using the phone like gestures i've gotten kind of used to swiping from the side i'm still not a huge fan of i found like swiping through an album or like instagram stories yeah i got you i used to swipe from the side so

now every time i just go back by accident instead of going through a story they really need to PSA Google they really need to customize that gesture to be only left or only right because yeah I will swipe through albums and accidentally swipe from the edge and go back to I do the same thing but other than that 120 hertz yeah 120 hertz oh yeah I wouldn't even have to force 90 hertz with a big battery because I would just have 120 hertz. Just lock it at 120. Yep. Yeah. Okay. I like that move.

Cool. Keep it the same size, though. I mean, it's going to be thick. It's just like the steroid Pixel 4. Juiced up Pixel 4. I like it. I like it. Okay. All right. I think that's a good place to end it. We've got a bunch of talk. We got the embargoes. We got the Q&A. We got got our new tech we got our content of the week and new channel shout outs the show notes will be full with anything you want to check out for what we talked about this week i'm sure there's some good stuff in there yeah i feel like there's a lot of stuff there's some nuggets for sure um that's been it thank you for listening and we'll catch you

guys soon waveform was made in partnership with studio 71 and our intro outro music was created by cameron barlow