Before You Buy 141 (Transcript)
Leo Laporte: Coming up, the vBold
Speakers from Velodyne, the Ultimate Ears Bluetooth Speakers, the Thecus
network attached storage, and I've got the new iPhones; my reviews of the
iPhone 6 and 6+. It's time to watch Before You Buy.
Netcasts you love. From people you trust. This is
TWiT. Bandwidth for Before You Buy brought to you by Cachefly,
c-a-c-h-e-f-l-y.com.
Leo: Before You Buy is brought
to you TheBouqs; beautiful, affordable flowers grown on an active volcano and
shipped for free. For 15% off of your first bouquet visit thebouqs.com
and use the code TWIT at checkout. That's t-h-e-b-io-u-q-s.com/twit;
don't forget to use the code TWIT to save 15%.
(Intro music plays.)
Leo: Welcome to Before You Buy,
the product review show where we get all the latest, greatest stuff, parcel it
out to our various TWiT family members, and give you a chance to see what it
would be like to actually own these products. We got these new headsets
in. Bryan Burnett, our Technical Director, he is a big time gamer; he
likes to sit there and frag people. We thought we could get his opinion
of the Velodyne vBold headset, Bryan?
Bryan Burnett: This is Bryan Burnett from
Before You Buy and TWiT, and today I'm looking at the vBold overear Bluetooth
headphones. At a glance you can see they have a pretty artistic design
with a jigsaw pattern kind of button system on the right side. Taking a
closer look you have your volume buttons along the edge. On the left side
is a regular headset jack so you can plug it into a device that may not have
Bluetooth. Charging the vBold takes about an hour and a half to get back
to full battery and gives you 10 hours of talk and music time. One nice
design feature of the vBold is that it collapses. It doesn't really get
very compact, but definitely less unwielding when you fold it on itself.
It comes with a travel pouch if that is something that you are interested
in. As for build quality, it doesn't feel too flimsy, and the hinges on
the sides feel relatively solid when you put it in its collapsed mode. It
has an integrated microphone which I will do a little test with. This is
what the microphone sounds like on the vBold. You can tell that it is a
little hollow, but considering that there is no mic extension it is not terrible.
Also, Velodyne claims a 30 foot range with the Bluetooth, and that is
pretty accurate. Now for sound, the 40 mm drivers inside the headphone
sound really good. They have a good range and decent base for this size
of headphone. For the ear cups, they are relatively small sided.
They do fit over my ears comfortably, but if you have larger ears you may
want to try this headphone on an make sure that your head doesn't get pinched
in them, because then I could see these being a little less comfortable then
they are for me. Now one of my favorite features on this headphone is
NFC. These headphones do come equipped with NFC, which is my preferred
way of connecting to any device. As for pros and cons, the sound on these
headphones is really good for their size. After gaming and listening to
music for a few hours they are still really comfortable wearing. Also,
the inclusion of NFC makes it super easy to pair to my phone or other NFC
enabled devices. As for cons, the buttons took a little time to get
memorized because there is no indication on the actual headphones of what each
button does. There isn't any noise cancelling, and at the price this
headphone comes listed at it would be something that you would expect.
The last con is the mic, which is okay for taking calls, but I've
definitely had gaming headsets with better mics on them. So with the
listed price of $349 I would have to say that this is a don't buy, but on Amazon it's listed at $148, so if this headphone fits your head
comfortably I would say a try. This has been Bryan Burnett from Before
You Buy reviewing the Velodyne vBold headphones.
Leo: Thank you Bryan Burnett. He is, of course, our
Technical Director; you will also catch him on Know How. He is an inventorite, you
know projecter, he likes to build stuff and has got some great ideas, and you
can watch him on Know How now. Time is as long as we are talking
Bluetooth, not headsets, but speakers; Tonya Hall, who is the host of Marketing
Mavericks on this network, got the Ultimate Ears Bluetooth speakers and gave us
this review.
Tonya Hall: Hi, I'm Tonya Hall. I'm the host of Marketing
Mavericks here on TWiT TV and I'm going to review the Ultimate Ear 360 Boom
Speakers for you today. I've got two of them to
review. They actually come in different colors; here you see two of
those. For starters let's talk about the shape and style. These are
pretty lightweight; I would say that they are just over a pound, so very easy
to carry. Some of the aspects of the speaker are that there is the volume
which I really like because on some of these speakers it's really small and
it's just embossed, it’s not actually as visible as here. Here is the up,
here is the down. Here is the power, right here if you can see that. The
pairing is right here. On the bottom you have a very unique little clip
here that you could attach to a carabineer to maybe carry it around. You
have an audio input and the charging right here. The reason that I have 2
is because that one of the unique things about these speakers is that you can
actually use 2 at once, which is kind of nice. They are 15 hour battery
life for each one of these. Here is something really neat; I want to show
you how to actually check your battery life. You can press the volume up and
down at the same time which is very cool. I've had Bluetooth speakers
that did not tell you they were dying or had some sort of indicator but then
suddenly they just died. This is a really neat way to check it.
Again, 15 hours is a really long time. That's longer than all of
the other portable Bluetooth speakers that I've checked before. The range
is about 50 feet, and especially if you have 2 of these, you've got quite a
distance. You can put these in the middle of the room or on either edge
of the room and you are going to fill the room with music. The other
thing I would say about this is they are really loud in a good way. You
can turn it up to the highest volume and they are going to be very, very loud
for you. This is turned down. Let me turn it up for you. You
can hear the bass. This is not even all the way full volume and as you
can tell it's very loud. These are both water resistant so you can have
them maybe at pool side, maybe you want to take one to the bathroom for a nice,
long, hot bath, or maybe you want to have it at the dinner table with you and
if you spilled some water on it it should be okay. I wouldn't immerse it
in water because that's not what it is made for, but it is actually durable and
cleanable. So again, if you have this at a party and somebody spills
something on it they are very easy to clean. They both come with a bright
yellow charger, and wall adapter, and instructions. The other thing that
allows you to use both of these at the same time is their free app that is
offered for the speakers by UE. It does allow you to pair up both of
these 2 speakers at the same time, and there is an alarm in here, there is
settings, and it's got some instructions in here. It's good to have if
you decide to purchase 2 of these and it's a free app. So here are my
pros. The volume; it's really loud when you want it and it's got good
bass. It's not overpowering but surprisingly pretty strong. The possibility of 15 hours play time; I did say possibility, it
does depend on volume. And the 50 foot reach which is pretty far. The other thing that I like is that it's actually
water resistant so that you can have it next to the pool, or maybe by the
bathtub, whatever, I really like that. Some of the updates from the last
time that we reviewed these are the customer equalizer settings, so basically
it just memorizes your preferences which is great, you don't have to reset it
every time. It's got a 32 step volume control and if you don't want to
adjust the volume there you can actually use the new fader in the app.
There is also an alarm in the app which is new, which I actually found
kind of handy. The double up feature also remembers if you are pairing
the 2 speakers. Here are the cons. This is a personal thing, and I
think if you are spending a couple of hundred dollars then you are going to
want a carrying case. The packaging could actually be used as a carrying
case, but the packaging probably wouldn't last that long as a carrying case.
Although it is nicely packaged you wouldn't actually use it long term as
a carrying case. The battery is not replaceable; again for the price that
is kind of a downer, and the battery life doesn't last as long when the volume
is turned up. Keep in mind, it does say 15 hours, but if you are listening
to it at high volume it isn't going to last more than 3, 4, or 5 hours.
The price is at $199 which isn't bad considering the fact that you
actually have a really good quality speaker. I mean, this is one of the
best that I have actually reviewed. Again, it's easy to use and you can
do 2 at a time. Overall, I would say the Ultimate Ears UE Boom 360
Speakers are a definite buy. Thanks so much. I'm Tonya Hall, and
you can follow me at Marketing Mavericks on TWiT TV.
Leo: Thank you Tonya. Tonya
Hall, the host of the great Marketing Mavericks show on this network. It's a fascinating show if you want to see how marketing
is changing in the world of the internet. Just a little note, those
speakers are really Logitech speakers I think. Ultimate Ears was acquired
by Logitech a year or two ago, and they still use the Ultimate Ears brand, but
those feel like they are more like a Logitech pair of speakers than the
Ultimate Ears. Coming up, our iPhone 6 review, but
first Chad Johnson the old redhead. Chad produces all of my shows,
and he is also the host of his own like 18 other shows. I'm going to see
if I can remember them. OMGcraft, the Minecraft show, fabulous, you can
watch it on YouTube on our network. What else, redditUP, the show all about
reddit. The Giz Whiz, the show with the guy in the mustache and the
things. Am I missing anything?
Chad Johnson: Just this show.
Leo: Just this show.
Chad: It seems like I'm on it
every week.
Leo: And he's on all the time.
Actually, this is a kind of a more technical thing to talk about; network
attached storage.
Chad: Right.
Leo: The idea being that it's
really a computer without a keyboard, mouse, or monitor. You attach it to your
network and you use it for all of the computers in your network to backup and
to store media files. I've never heard of this company, is it Thecus?
Chad: Thecus. Thecus is actually pretty
popular in the NAS space. This is sort of a NAS that
you would use in the house. It's a 2 bay; a lot of
these have multiple drives. You could also buy less expensive home
versions that don't have 2 bays, but this one does, which is kind of nice.
Leo: Two things you get
with multidrive NAS storage are, of course capacity but also redundancy so it
is a little more reliable. With 2 drives you have to choose, don't you
between redundancy and capacity?
Chad: Absolutely, so this has 3
raid options. You can do either raid 0,
which means that they are keeping them copied over; raid 1, which is striped so
it is better performance...
Leo: And it’s twice the size.
Chad: It' twice the size. But, no, that would
actually be the same.
Leo: Yeah, no, striped you would
get...
Chad: You would get twice the
size, but you get half the reliability because if one drive dies you lose all
of that stuff.
Leo: They call that scare raid. I think that is raid 0. Raid 1 is mirrored, which
means that each drive has the same contents. It's more reliable but not as great a capacity.
Chad: I didn't have matching drives.
Leo: What's the third one, 0+1?
Chad: It's actually jbod, just a
bunch of disks, which means that you will take all of the disks and it will
basically merge it into one big disk that you can have access to.
Leo: That's the problem with 2
drives. You don't get the higher
quality raid that gives you better redundancy.
Chad: Right, so just a bunch of
disks is where I decided to go into because I didn't have matching drives.
Leo: So you put a terabyte drive
and a 2 terabyte drive in?
Chad: I put a 2 and a 3 terabyte
drive in, so 5 terabytes in there. Setup process is all done
on the web; you just have a portal that you go into and you have a kind of
familiar looking web interface that if you have had to do any setup on a
wireless access point or any of those wireless routers it's about the same
looking process with menus and that sort of stuff. Not desktop class I
would say with absolutely usable menus, but it's all you need. On the
back of this it has an Ethernet port, which you need for it to be a network
attached storage device, it's that. It also has USB 2 an USB 3 which
means that either A, you can copy off of a USB disc onto this, there is even a
USB copy button on the front, or you can extend the drive by adding your own
USB drive on to the back of this.
Leo: That's kind of interesting. I could take an existing
USB drive, hook it up, and press the button, and it will copy it without a
computer.
Chad: Which is pretty neat. This is running, it's
basically a Linux computer just like you said, so inside of here is a PowerPC
800 MH processor. It only has 512 MB of RAM and then, of course, the 2
large drive bays, that are SATA drive bays. That's about it on hardware.
Plastic case, there is a small fan on the back here for that. One
thing that I do want to mention is that this is pretty loud. In fact, it
was so loud, I had this in my bedroom, and it’s so loud...
Leo: How loud is it? I'm sorry, I missed my
queue. How loud is it?
Chad: That I could not keep this going while asleep. The fan was so loud that
I had to turn it off every night, which is what you don't want to do with a
NAS; you want to keep it on all the time so that you can have your backups
always running.
Leo: So you need a closet for
this or a room that is away from where you sleep.
Chad: Right, or if your router
happens to be in the hallway or in the living room that would make a lot of
sense. That router happens to be
in the bedroom because that's where I'm going to lounge on my bed and type away
on a laptop so that's kind of a disappointment. In terms of the software,
it does do a lot of features, it's got a system log, you've got notifications,
and you can change your raid partitioning. Of course you are going to
have to almost always delete the data that you had stored on the drives if you
are going to change the raid around. This is hot swappable so if you have
your raid as a redundant and one of the drives dies you can throw a new one in
with it still running and it will rebuild.
Leo: That would only be in raid
1 mode.
Chad: Right, exactly.
Leo: I guess in jbod you could
do that because if you did it with striped mode, raid 0, then your data is
gone.
Chad: Your data is gone at that
point. You can also sign in with a
Thecus id, and what that allows you to do is that is sets up a dynamic link so
that wherever you are across the world, even if you have say a dynamic IP
address at home, you will be able to use their T-OnTheGo App to access your
data on the drive. You can get at photos, and videos, and stuff from your house
using the Thecus id so that you don't have to set up any weird dynamic DNS
stuff or forwards and stuff like that, which is pretty nice.
Leo: Really this is commodity
category where most mass drives have kind of the same basic functionality.
It's those little extra things are what make one better than the other
and I like that, the dynamic IP address.
Chad: Absolutely, absolutely, so
the biggest thing also on this is also the price. The MSRP is $150, but you
could easily find it on the street for $116.
Leo: That's minus drives, but
that's a great price.
Chad: It's a really good price
for a NAS.
Leo: Very aggressive.
Chad: And you can tell that they
cut a few corners like this tiny fan on the back. I was talking to Padre
and he was like normally there is just a huge fan right here to pull the heat
out of this. For the pros I'm going to give it that it's fairly easy to
set up, it has a few different raid options, and the price is very competitive.
On the cons it was pretty loud, I really wish that both on the T-ToGo App
and the web portal version that they would update the user interface, but that
might be something that they can't do, so bad user interface is also for the
cons. So coming in at $150 MSRP but easily found all over the internet
for $116 for the Thecus. I don't even think I said the model number.
This is the N2310 Thecus 2 drive NAS. I'm going to give this a buy.
I liked it. It was loud, but you have got to give up something to
get that price. I think that this is a very competitive price and also in
doing my research on NAS's in the category this was by far the least expensive
with the most features.
Leo: Yeah, a great value, the
Thecus, if you need an inexpensive 2 disk array NAS, thank you OMGChad.
Do you have anybody special in your life? Do you ever miss a
birthday or anniversary and say I wish I could have remembered so that I could
send them flowers? Do you ever have that happen
to you?
Chad: Sometimes.
Leo: Yeah, it happens to me
pretty much yearly. Well, I've got a solution
for you from The Bouqs. Bouq as in bouquet,
b-o-u-q-s, thebouqs.com, beautiful affordable flowers. They grow themselves. This is different. Most florists are buying
flowers, they have got to get the flowers in, they ship them to you, by the
time you get them they are days old. The Bouqs actually grows their own
flowers from a sustainable farm on, get this, an
active volcano in South America. They are volcano flowers! One of
the reason that they do it is, of course, at that 10,000 feet above sea level
they get more sun. The volcanic snow melt and mineral rich soil make more
beautiful, vibrant colors. They are gorgeous flowers, and because they
grow their own they cut the flowers the day that you order them. They are
shipped straight from the farm so your bouq is fresh. They have apps for
IOS, Android, and Windows Phone so that you can order right from the phone if
you want. They are all backed by the happiness guarantee. This is
what I love, the concierge service. You can arrange for them to
automatically deliver flowers on special days or just because, on your schedule
for The Bouqs. I think this is great. Pricing is up front. I
like that too. I hate it when you go to a site and they say $40 for the
flowers and then another $50 for shipping and handling. They don't do
that to you. The checkout is painless and your loved ones get unique
flowers grown on a volcano. You save the money. They've got lilies,
daisies, and more. You see these beautiful arrangements. You will
find them at the website, thebouqs.com. Prices start at $40, double the
blooms for just $10. Once they are shipping it to you just say double the
blooms for $10. By the way, you will save 15% off of your first order by
entering the code TWIT at checkout. Maybe today is not the day that you
need beautiful volcano flowers delivered to your door.
Chad: The volcano collection. That's what it says up
there.
Leo: It is, these are from the volcano. But, make a note of this, and when the day
comes that you need flowers remember thebouqs.com. Visit
thebouqs.com/twit, and don't forget to get the app on your phone. This is
when I always remember, on the way home when it's almost too late; if it's on
the phone then boom, bing, The Bouqs.
Chad: For me this is great news
because I like to give my parents flowers all the time. When Mother's Day comes
around and I never know who is responsible...
Leo: You can set that up. You can set that up.
You and your family, your brothers and sisters, can set that up automatic
floral. I like it, thebouqs.com/twit; free shipping within the US, 15%
off when you use the offer code TWIT, alright, from The Bouqs. Well Chad
and I waited in line, so did Jammer B, who else was in the line?
Chad: There was Greg, and Jeff
Needles was there, and Glen.
Leo: We had a big group. Glen
was there, too, yeah. Everybody wanted the new
iPhone. It was interesting; when we
canvassed our staff everybody wanted the big new iPhone.
Chad: Absolutely.
Leo: So this is it, this is the
6 and the 6+. These are the new iPhones
from Apple, available for sale at Apple stores but also all of the carriers in
the US; Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and a few of the smaller carriers
as well. You will also find it internationally now I think in 13
countries, or maybe even more, and more all of the time; soon to be in China
and all over the world. These are easily the hottest, most awaited phones
in the US. You could tell by those long, long lines. So my review
having now admittedly only getting it on Friday; I didn't get an advanced copy
like some people. First of all I think even if you look on TV, this is the
iPhone 6, the 4.7 inch screen, it's so thin and so beautiful. These are
easily the more elegant, beautiful phones Apple has ever made, and I think
probably the most elegant and beautiful phones on the market today.
They've really done a stellar job. We've heard that they are going
to be fragile. All smartphones are fragile. This is not sapphire.
We think it is probably Gorilla Glass 3. Yes, they do crack.
We've seen people crack them already, but what phone doesn't? We've
even seen reports that, more likely the bigger 6+, will bend in your pocket.
Well are you surprised? Look at that, it's so thin. You are
going to want to be careful with these and probably get an OtterBox Case if you
are a fumble fingers. But that has always been true of iPhones, and it's
no less true now. iFixit does report that these
are a little bit more fixable, that the screen comes off a little bit more
easily so there will be an aftermarket third party screen replacement and so
forth. As you would expect, it is the kind of the state of the art in
IOS. The fingerprint reader, the Touch ID as Apple calls it, works
spectacularly well. I've trained it, for instance, so that I can use the
iPhone in my right hand and just tap the Touch ID with my thumb and it opens up
right away. You can also use it to make Apple Store purchases and iTunes
Store purchases. As you know, with Apple Pay, their electronic tap to
pay, soon you will be able to use the fingerprint to actually make purchases in
the store because yes Apple has finally included NFC, Near Field Communication, chips in their phone. That's a chip that has
been in many other phones, but now that Apple is doing it I expect to see it in
use more often. Apple Pay will debut next month; it's not available.
You really can't use the NFC chip right now for anything else.
Best cameras on the market, in fact we are starting to see reviews come
in. I've seen a lot of the reviews, and I've seen a lot of the images,
and yep, Apple has done it again. Still 8 MP but they have improved the
quality of the camera. The software behind it is superb. The tool
tone flash means that flashes look better because they are color balanced for
the environment you are in. You may not even need the flash. Both
phones do a lot of trickery to get excellent low light photography, and
especially the iPhone 6+ which has an optic image stabilizer in it. Apple
also made a big deal about the phase focusing built into the sensor chip on
this phone, and indeed it focuses very quickly. The super slow mo video
is superb and gorgeous. So they've really made a phone with a camera that
is second to none. In fact, I would say this is still the best camera on
the market today. That's pretty impressive considering that Apple hasn't
upped the number of pixels, but they have made major improvements in so many
areas that this is just a fantastic camera despite the immense amount of
competition for that title. IOS 8 has some very nice new features that I
think you will like a lot including the new notification system. Now, of
course, if you have an older iPhone you can still get IOS 8 on your 5s, or your
5, or even your 4s, but it really sings on this partly because this phone has
the new a8 chip. Here is Kevin Rose's slow mo of the Tony Hawk event.
This is the 240 FPS slow mo, so that is what, one quarter speed?
Chad: Yeah.
Leo: And it just is fantastic. Play that again Bryan. It starts at full speed and
then slows down.
Chad: It's mind blowing.
Leo: It's done in metadata so
that you can actually edit it and have any portion of the entire video be slow
mo or not. That's really nice after
the fact control. Apple's IOS 8 means also
that it's easier to share videos and pictures with people. They've added additional
sharing features. I think that they have really done a nice job.
Look at that. That is spectacular. That's with a phone!
Chad: That blows my mind. I remember trying to get 60
frames high speed off of like actual film cameras, and it's so difficult.
Leo: Remember, it is a very
competitive market. Samsung phones have super
slow mo. There are a lot of phones
out there with these kinds of capabilities. In many cases Apple is just playing catch up with the market
today, yet it's really well done. The 6+, which is a 5.5 inch screen, has some additional features specifically for this big
screen. I have to say, if you have been using an iPhone you are going to
be a little bit challenged by the size. This is not just a little jump,
this is a massive jump. Let me open Apple's mail program and show you.
For instance, as you turn the phone on its side you are able to, let's
cancel out on this so that you can see, you are able to go from looking at a
message full screen to looking at it much more like a desktop or iPad interface
where a list of messages is on the left and the message itself is on the right.
This is great and it's not just mail, it's throughout the iPhone.
Of course, Apple has updated many of its programs to take advantage of
this. Others have not, in fact, one negative you will see on both phones
immediately on Google and other applications have not been updated for the new
screen resolutions. That means that they are scaled. Apple does a
good job with scaling, nevertheless it looks a little weird; the text is a little
bigger than you probably want it to be. I expect every company though
will be quickly working to update their apps to work better with IOS. Let
me run through the pros and cons. I have them right here, let me just
switch over to my sheet. This, I would say, and this is totally
subjective, the most beautiful smartphone ever made. If you take a look
at it you may disagree, but you can't disagree that it is absolutely gorgeous.
It's got the best cameras on a phone; it's not just me, DXO and others
have agreed; crisp, brilliant, responsive touchscreens. These are not
unique; in fact we think that the touchscreen on the 6+ is the exact same part
as one the OnePlusOne. It is certainly the exact same size and has many
of the same features, but it looks good. Apple always does a little bit
extra to make their stuff look a little bit better. You have got to
admire Apple's commitment to security and privacy, and that is something that
Apple is doing with IOS 8 and across the board. It's something that they
are going to have to do because of course if we start using these for
electronic payments and for recording health we are going to care a lot about
privacy and security on this phone. There is nobody better when it comes
to privacy and security than Apple. Apple has begun to really tout that
as a feature, and I believe that it is something that they should tout.
It's something that they do particularly well. You get that kind of
built in to all of the iPhones; in fact into many of the IOS 8 devices.
The hardware on this allows things to be even more secure. The
fingerprint solution works fabulous; better than Samsung's, better than
anybody's. The Apple ecosystem itself is going to be an advantage as
Apple Pay comes to the front. As we see more HomeKit and HealthKit tools
that will make for a better user experience. I like messages. I
don't know if you have used messages. If most of your friends and family
are in IOS you will love messages. It's easy to send now not just text
messages, but audio and pictures. It's really a very elegant solution.
It works best when you are going IOS to IOS however, and there are still
issues moving back and forth from IOS to Android. If you are a Macintosh
user, a computer user, you will love the continuity and hand off features that
will allow you to use your new iPhone to make phone calls on your desktop
computer and to send messages from your desktop computer and respond to them.
I have to say, finally we have screen sizes that
are comparable to the rest of the world. I like a big screen and I'm
really glad to have a screen with a little bit more real estate although a
funny thing happened to me on the way to the Apple store after I started
playing with these. I really feel for most Apple users who are used to
the smaller 4 inch screens or less, the iPhone 6, the 4.7, even this is going
to feel a little big; this is the phone that you should get. 4.7 inches
is exactly the right size. I really thought I was going to want a bigger
phone but I am still drawn inexorably to towards the 4.7 inch phone. It
feels good in the hand. If you are already using an iPhone this 5.5 inch
screen is going to be such a big jump. I recommend that you at least
strongly consider the iPhone 6 and not the iPhone 6+.
Chad: I think that you were
making a really good point on MacBreak Weekly that the 6+, all it does is
stretch your apps even larger.
Leo: It's great for people with
poor eyesight but it's not like you get to use that real estate except for the
sideways mode.
Chad: It's not like Android where
the app will refit and you will maybe get an extra row of icons or an extra...
Leo: That may change. People can make their apps
so that they know which phone they are on and people will start taking
advantage of the extra real estate. For right now it is just bigger, not
necessarily better.
Chad: It's more difficult to use
basically.
Leo: And harder to use with one
hand of course. I don't use one hand, I'm used to using two hands now because of big phones
that I've been using. One handed iPhone users, stick with the iPhone 6;
you are not going to want to go to the +. The A8 processor, by the way,
getting great results in benchmarks; it's among the fastest processors on the
market today. The GPU is also very good. Apple's new Metal
software, kind of DirectX for the iPhone, means games really sing this.
This is going to be a great platform. That might be one reason to
get the bigger phone. If you are a gamer the 6+ would be a fantastic
platform as the iPad has been up to now. However, there are some
negatives. Nobody is perfect in this world. It is a closed
ecosystem; that is a pro and a con. The closed ecosystem means Apple
controls it more tightly. They can ensure your privacy and security but
it means that you can't do as many things as you want. In many cases
Apple is kind of a nanny. Lots of popups and warnings, "You are
being followed", "Location Turned On", stuff like that.
Some people will be reassured by that; I found it a little bit annoying.
It's not quite as flexible as the Android ecosystem. These are the
most expensive phones on the planet except for the Vertu diamond encrusted
phones; for a stock smartphone, top of the line 6+ with 128 GB of ram; $948.
That's more than most computers cost these days. It's a very
expensive phone, and that will set some people back on their heels a little bit
too. Finally, fewer customization choices; Apple is very clear that this
is the screen that you are going to see when you launch. There are no
third party launches available. They have only recently added third party
keyboards. Basically, when you go with iPhone, when you go with any Apple
product, it is Apple's way or the highway. You only get 3 different
colors, you can get the space grey back, there is a gold back, and there is a
silver back. The front can only be black or white, and the black only
goes with space grey, the white with the other two options. It's kind of
like Henry Ford who said that you can get a Model-T in any color you want as
long as it is black. Apple really doesn't like to make too many different
kinds of phones. That will probably be the final negative is that they
are hard to get. Good luck finding them. That will ease up over
time, but the success of Apple's iPhone really means that you do have to end up
in many cases waiting in line and waiting to get your phone. A lot of
people who ordered their phone online will be getting their phone around
Thanksgiving time. That's a long delay. If you are in China you are
just going to have to send somebody in the States to get in line for you
because they are not available in China yet. So, pros and cons, there you
have it. Obviously I'm going to give the iPhone 6 and 6+ a strong buy.
These are Apple's catch up products that make them a totally strong
competitor in the phone marketplace. They are not necessarily better in
every respect than what is out there from Android and even Microsoft; they are
better in some respects, many respects. My recommendation if you are
choosing a smartphone is to try them all and find one that fits your needs
best. But boy, if you are an iPhone user you are going to be very happy
when that new iPhone comes in the mail because these things are gorgeous, they
are beautiful. Again, consider the smaller one if you are not absolutely
sure you can use that 5.5 inches of real estate. That's it for Before You
Buy for this week. I hope you have enjoyed the show. Thanks to our
reviewers, Bryan Burnett, and Chad Johnson, and Tonya Hall. Thanks to you
for watching the show. We appreciate it. You can watch Before You
Buy be produced live every Tuesday afternoon. We are after Security Now
about 3-3:00 Pacific time. We also make the full
show available on our website, twit.tv/byb. On YouTube, in fact we do
something special on YouTube; we not only give you the full show but we chop
each review up so that you can share if you have some friends who are
interested in the iPhone you can share that particular review with them.
That's youtube.com/beforeyoubuy. Email is byb@twit.tv if there is some products that you would like to see and we will make
sure that we take a look at them for you. That's it for this edition of
Before You Buy. We thank you for joining us. Remember, you have got
to watch before you buy! We will see you next time.