- Tech is becoming an expensive hobby. What's a buddy enthusiast to do? (angelic choir music) Shop at the dollar store. I'm gonna tell you what tech stuff is okay to buy at the dollar store and what stuff you definitely
wanna get somewhere else. You don't need to go anywhere
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money with Storyblocks. Get studio quality stock video clips for just a fraction of the cost. Check it out today at the link below or at the end of the video. (upbeat electronic music) I'm gonna start off with the batteries because I wanna do this live. I've already tested
these alkalines over here with my trusty Sega battery killer here and I've got a set of Home Depot alkalines that are acting as our control. Why am specifying alkaline so much? Because these batteries,
well they're brand name and probably proclaim
super heavy duty power, but they're carbon zinc batteries. And what are those? They have similar voltages to alkaline, but they're a simpler kind of battery that's non-rechargeable and has about a third of the energy density. I am looking forward to seeing the Game Gear destroy them. It's a little frustrating. These come in packs of five, but this idiot takes six. Because Game Gear, that's why. But I will give it a shot. Aye, okay. So, I'm gonna leave that
there so I can see it while we keep going. I expect that this is
not gonna last very long. I bought five pairs of
headphones over here and let's start off with
these Electras here. I got them for $1.25 and they
come in this little tube. These are bad. They sound like absolute ass. They have plastic spurs
just coming off of them and they only come with
the one set of ear tips. They have no lows, no mids, and no highs. Basically, the whole thing
is just a fuzzy mess. They don't even get very loud. They're uncomfortable,
they're impossible to get out of that stupid packaging, they're just bad. Even voice content, like YouTube videos, sound like they're coming
out of a cheap phone speaker. They also don't have left or
right indicators on the stems. Let's forget these exist and just move on with our lives. These could not be any more different. The cable on these actually feels like it's made of something quality, even though it's probably not. They feel like something that's a little more premium, you know? You've got these extra ear tips, you've got a microphone
built in, that's pretty cool, they don't make a good seal, but they sound perfectly fine. They may cost three
times as much as those, those are $1.25, these are $4, they're just so, so much better. Reviews do suggest that quality control is a bit hit or miss. And given that you can get leigitimately good sounding earbuds from someone like KZ for less than $20, you're probably safer giving the dollar store earbuds, in general, a pass, but you could do much worse
at a pinch than these Rex's. They have a V-shaped audio curve, so they're high on the bass, the mids are a little bit down, and then the treble is a little bit high and what that gives them
is a sound signature that sounds very fun and normal. I'll roll the rest of
the headphones up like so and they're all cheaply made. Big surprise, right? But like they're sharp. I hurt myself adjusting one of them because the adjustment
mechanisms are so crunchy and they all sound like they're
playing through a pillow, especially the extra bass one here. This one almost literally has like an L-shaped response
curve, to my ears anyway, with no mids or highs to speak of and the bass is muddy, too. (upbeat electronic music) I can't. I'm trying to go one step. No. All of them are uncomfortable
and only one of them, the Vortex here, has any padding at all and it doesn't help. Yes, they make noise,
but they're all terrible. (upbeat electronic music) Just don't buy headphones
from the dollar store. We paid $4 for each of
these and I feel cheated. Next up, we have the Tech
One Bluetooth speaker. Now, you would think that it's
gonna be blue, but in fact, it's green. (Andy laughing)
(Anthony giggling) I don't really hate it. It's got the smallest
USB cable in existence, but it's got this little suction cup that's actually quite good. And it's supposed to be water-resistant. I don't know how much I would trust that. The buttons are horrible. It's literally just
this like membrane here stretched across it, but there's tactile switches beneath that, so you can actually miss the buttons while pressing the buttons. I'm pressing right now. There's nothing being clicked. I need to move over,
there's where the button is. (button clicking) It's wonderful. (speaker beeping) You turn it on. It actually does have a
lithium ion battery in it. That's what the USB cable is for. I might need to read the manual. That's in French. - [Video] But today, we are
gonna solve all of them at once. - So, that sounds not great, but it sounds perfectly fine
for like a voice call, maybe, which this seems to be
what it's designed for with this little call answer button here, so I don't know if I
hate that necessarily. You could have this hanging
next to your shower, not in your shower. Again, I wouldn't recommend
actually having this in water. Let's try some "Crab Rave" real quick. (upbeat electronic music) So it's crunchy, but it
actually doesn't sound too bad. Like, it's got more bass
than you'd expect it to have. Sounds like just basically
a generic laptop speaker. I certainly don't feel cheated like I feel with these whatever you'd call these headphones. (speaker beeping) (Anthony laughing) That was the Windows 3.1 logoff sound. (electronic chiming) Now for tools and supplies. I'll be honest with you right now, I don't expect these to be unusable. Will they last forever? Probably not. But you're also not paying
a whole lot for them. Stuff like these parts organizers here, these are pretty cool. I actually had another one here and this is totally fine. You could fit flash drives, you could fit mounting hardware, pretty much whatever you
need into this thing. This cost $2.50. This thing here, this
costs, what was it, like $2. This magnetic parts tray, these things go for $3
Canadian at the dollar store whereas like you'd spend $10 getting them in from Amazon. I don't see any problem with
this kind of thing at all. I found it in like the
tools hardware section, but you can find stuff like this as well in the kitchen section. Now, they also had a pack
of 60 zip ties for $1.25 and this is something that's technically a worse value per tie than
buying in bulk on Amazon, but if you don't need
like hundreds of them, you're saving a buck or two. Now, these aren't very flexible, but they are made of nylon and they're thick enough to be
sturdy and they're about the right size for cable management inside of a PC chassis. This eight piece pack of
hook-and-loop ties, however, not so much. Eight isn't a lot and they're squared off with no anchor. They do have a little pull tab on them, but they're too short for bundling more than a couple of cables together and too fat to do cable
management inside a PC. What's worse, you can get 100 pack of ties that are tapered and have an anchor for less than $10 on Amazon. These are a pass unless you're desperate. I also got this two pack of long neck magnetic screwdrivers for
$1 and they look all right. They feel every bit as cheap as they were, but the Phillips driver's
got a nice point to it and it's pretty much ideal for working inside of a computer. It's probably not gonna stand up to abuse, but considering how much
screwdrivers go for on Amazon, it'll definitely do as
a quick and dirty drive. The same can sort of be said for these Precision drivers here. They'll do the job. I don't know. The mechanism, it feels
gritty when you turn it. It's just got this little
nut on the end here. There's all kinds of like burs from the manufacturing process
that are still on here that are gonna cut up your fingers and they're not even held in, like in any way, shape, or form. If you drop this case and it opens up or you already had it open, it's just gonna all go everywhere. That being said, it does have
a decent variety of bits, so it's not amazing. Then again, if you don't
have an iFixit kit, maybe this is what you reach for. Now this flashlight is
an interesting case. On the one hand, it weighs nothing and it's like really creaky plastic. On the other, it actually
put out more light than my phone's flash does, like visibly. You can focus the beam. Is it worth $1 and three AAA's? Objectively, I guess so, but I don't think you'd
be in too many situations where this much light is enough but your smartphone's isn't. One thing I think is ridiculously useful is this here six-in-one pen. It's a pen, it's a stylus, it's a ruler, it's a level, and it's
even a pocket screwdriver with two slightly magnetic bits. Pen just twists out like that,
stylus on the back there, unscrew the stylus and
you've got a screwdriver with two bits, Phillips and flat head, which is actually super handy. Legitimately think this is pretty cool. It's got the ruler, it's got the level. It's actually pretty cool. And like for $1, it's super awesome. They sell these on Amazon
for like $1 a piece too, so this is actually a decent buy. What else is there in these lovely bags I got from lttstore.com? I'm not supposed to talk
too much about these, but they do have these
little pockets in them that actually make it really nice for keeping things organized. Two different colors
and two different sizes. Lttstore.com. I picked up some chargers. Big Clive I am not, but
looking at the guts, it seems pretty similar
to a Poundland charger he took a look at a few years ago. I'm not sure that these things have what it takes to drive two USB ports simultaneously, though. Maybe I'm just being a hater. The car adapter should be fine. Like, it's a much simpler
device, though, again, I doubt it could reliably run the two outputs that it claims
to have simultaneously. And while I normally distrust any kind of power strips
or power devices at all from a dollar store, this
brand, from what I can tell, is actually pretty reputable. So as long as you're not loading this up with way more than it can handle. It says it can do 1,800 and 75 watts. I don't think you'll have a problem, but it won't do surge protection. All it is is copper on the inside, or brass, even, I think. Just conductive metal
that you're plugging into. And you know what? This looks like a job for the... This looks like a job for the magnetic screw picker upper? - [Andy] What? What? (Andy laughing) - That works just fine. It's actually really nice. Okay, it's not really nice, but like that's a nice length for one and it works just fine. It's a little bit gritty in the mechanism. It's not bad for, I think that
was actually literally $1. Of course, batteries aren't the only thing for powering tech that you
can get at the dollar store. They also have USB cables
and HDMI cables, too. Look at all these. I got this here transparent one, I got this here blue one that lights up, and I have this one that's pretty long and had a braided cable. But, of course, we need
to know whether or not these are going to pass the tests that we're going to throw at them. That's why I have the cable tester, although we don't need the cable tester to see that this one is not gonna pass because it has no shielding whatsoever and USB 2.0 requires shielding. Let's make some room here. Oh yeah. Let's try the one that
we know won't pass first. Into the USB type A port
and into the micro USB port. (computer buzzing) Of course. If we look at the details
on this one, no shielding. It's probably gonna work, but... (Anthony sighing) This one might be prettier, actually. It does have that clear
motif, but it lights up. So let's see if we can make that happen. (computer buzzing) No. Also, it's like blinking. Fail. No shield. Once again, everything else looks good. Actually, the ground wire on this guy here wasn't good either, but that's working correctly in this one, so that's better. Oh well. It looks like it, again,
would probably work, but why chance it? Now this guy looks a lot better. It looks like one of those cables that you'd want to carry around. Micro USB in and... (computer buzzing) (Andy laughing)
(Anthony sighing) You had high hopes. So did I, actually. But again, it doesn't have the shield and it's failing on all of
these in the resistance test, which yeah. This one's not so good. You could even see in the eye here, it is pretty lopsided. So, unfortunately, the
highest quality looking cable out of the entire bunch is
the lowest quality cable of the entire bunch. Even this guy is a little bit better in terms of how its test results went. This thing costs $3.50 Canadian, but it says that it's a
high speed with ethernet, which means that it's gotta
be HDMI 1.4 compliant. Five feet, 3D ready. So, let's get it out of the package here. At least it looks like
it's gold plated, I guess. HDMI, high speed with ethernet. That's what this purports to be. Moment of truth. (computer buzzing) (Andy laughing)
(Anthony giggling) It failed everything. So these pins are just not connected. All the shields and the
power wires as well. Holy! (Anthony laughing) Oh, ethernet, what happened to you? Oh no! Maybe we're pushing it
a little bit too hard. Let's go back to the like HDMI
regular speed or something, the lowest standard of HDMI. That is just HDMI, just HDMI. (computer buzzing) (Anthony giggling) At least signal integrity
looks good this time. That impedance is just way too high. Yeah, signal integrity looks okay. It's probably no surprise that all of the USB and HDMI cables I picked up literally failed when I fired up the total phase tester
and the reason why is none of them are shielded
like they're supposed to be, and in the case of the HDMI cable, that lack of shielding
basically mangles the signal. It should conform to the spec
if it says that it's the spec, but no. Now, does that mean it's not gonna work? Absolutely not. I mean, it might work fine, but it also might not be. This is why we need LTT Labs. Get subscribed because we're going to have more updates on that as we
continue to build it out. $100 worth of dollar tech items is obviously a little more than I thought there would be here because
we ran out of time on Friday and now here we are actually a week later because the batteries in the Game Gear were so bad that they
drained me for a week. (rhythmic drum music) Here we go. Let's just talk about the Game Gear first. Our control, which was
the Home Depot batteries, lasted a little over six hours, which is more than I expected, and these alkalines actually lasted pretty much exactly the same time. Yeah, that actually is
kind of interesting because those are the E-Circuit
branded dollar store batteries. As for these name brand
Panasonic zinc carbon batteries, they are like an hour and 14 minutes or something like that. While I was waiting for my ride on Friday, it died in my pocket. That should tell you something about the difference between zinc
carbon and alkaline batteries. Those batteries are still in there. So there's still a little
bit of charge in there, but they're mostly used. Just like Andy. And me. Yeah. What does that leave us with? It's a yes on most of
the tools and supplies; the parts organizers, one
of the pairs of headphones, and the Bluetooth speaker,
the alkaline batteries, and the USB chargers with asterisks on both of those last ones. In the maybe pile, we've
got the flashlight, the Precision drivers,
the carbon zinc batteries, and the hook-and-loop straps. And in the no pile, we've got literally all of the other headphones and all of the USB and HDMI cables, not that that's a huge surprise to anyone. Do you guys have any dollar store tech that you swear by and
want us to check out? Who knows. Maybe I can convince Linus to give me the company card for
another shipping spree. I gotta admit, it was
actually kind of fun. Just like our sponsor, Storyblocks. Thanks to Storyblocks for
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here at Linus Tech Tips when we need stock footage fast. Check out Storyblocks today at storyblocks.com/linustechtips. Thanks for watching, guys. This one's really different, so maybe you go check out our recent video on why everyone's buying
the Logitech G502 Hero. Spoiler, it turns out it's
a great mouse for the price. Who knew.
