All right Dope Tech! One of my favorite series. It's the most fun because we get to bring together a bunch of different things that all have something in common. A bit of a theme if you will, and the theme for this one is a little bit different. All the items we're gonna do in this video uh I had Rock Bottom super low expectations for it.

That's just the way it was and they all managed to exceed those expectations in some way. It doesn't mean they're good products, in fact I don't even recommend buying any of the things that we talk about in this video, but they all did manage to clear that ultra low hurdle. You'll see what I mean. So okay.

the first one is a family friendly household robot. It's right here. Astro Say hi to the thanks Yeah, Okay, so this is Amazon's Astro and it's a it's it's a robot you'll you'll see what I'm talking about. So you might have seen the commercial they put on YouTube for showing it rolling around and being helpful to people bringing people drinks things like that.

But you might have also like me, seen the headlines about it basically that it's an unmitigated disaster and it throws itself down flights of stairs. I Honestly don't think I would ever buy an astrobot from my own home. It's basically an Alexa speaker on Wheels with a 10 inch screen and then with a camera and a microphone to act as a security camera. Yeah, my expectations are down here, but the funny thing is we got it.

I'll unmute it. We got Astro and we started using it. And it turned out that there were a couple things that were impressive about it. Three, to be specific, the first one is just how impressively confident it is at maneuvering around.

So Astro has a huge wheel on either side that lets it go over bumps and cables and move around dramatically Better than any Roomba or robot vacuum. And it's really good. I Mean you just watch it cut around corners and cut close to objects? It never really hits them, but it seems to run routes wherever it thinks it should be going really well. It moves around new objects that were put in place after it mapped your space and it just kind of rolls around confidently.

Honestly, at this point, I Kind of wish it had a vacuum cleaner attachment or something because it feels like this could be miles more productive than any of the actual robot vacuums, but it is also notoriously bad with glass walls and weird architectural features. It actually comes with a set of stickers to put on any glass wall, so it knows that the wall is there and it doesn't smash its face into them. Also, we don't have any stairs in here, so yeah, anyway, the second thing is literally just the set of speakers in Astro So if you ask it to play music or watch a video or something and you get through the setup process and connect your Amazon music account, it's kind of like a mini boom box on Wheels which is kind of a unique product by itself I guess so you can ask it to play videos like an Echo Show It'll also try to play videos on its 10 inch screen so you can watch like a YouTube video with great sound, but the video will be at ankle height so there's that. It also randomly likes to remind you that it can act like a bird or a whale and then it'll actually do it loudly.

but the last thing just has to do with the screen they put on this thing where the face is now. it's not that it's a particularly bright or high resolution or high refresh rate screen. No, it's got a five megapixel camera on it that's not amazing. You know it's designed to just quickly look around and recognize people, but it also gets that wrong all the time too.

So what's impressive about the screen? Well, it sort of acts like a like a face like a human like character. all the time it looks at you. it has these: Expressions it's muted right now so it looks like it's asleep. I Hit the unmute button and it wakes up and it makes these expressions and noises.

and then when I call its name from wherever I am in the room, it could just be hanging out somewhere. It's shockingly good at triangulating where the voice came from and pointing the face at it, which doesn't sound that impressive, but when you think about it, it's kind of amazing. Look at it. hey.

Astro how did it? It's so good at that. hey Astra I mean honestly, this isn't particularly useful at all. I mean all it's doing is pointing the screen at me, but it's just something weird about the way it looks at you and it looks right at you every time and it gives you some facial expression every time. It's also typically A Blank Stare So like if you give it a command, it doesn't understand, it just looks at you.

It doesn't show any error messages if you say a command and it doesn't know what you're talking about, it just doesn't do anything. it just looks at you. There's also sometimes when I'm walking by it and I haven't been in that room in a while and it sort of perks up and looks at you and like winks and makes a noise and says it misses you. which is it's a thing that it does sometimes.

but I just couldn't get over how good the triangulation of like looking at the voice was super good. That's dope. Tech But you know there's a laundry list of reasons I would not actually buy this robot from all the setup bugs and non-responses to the terrible facial recognition mistaking me for other people in the studio, to the shin height video calls. Now there is a telescoping camera at the top which will pop out and let you take a higher quality selfie or check to see if the stove is on or if something's on the counter and you can remote control it if you're away from the house.

But the max height is 42 inches which is still like below hip height and there's this tough laggy steering and turning process. this is not very intuitive or fun at all. And then the last fun part that you probably saw in the ad is it would like bring drinks to people so I could send it to another room and it would grab a drink for me. but that of course requires someone being in the other room and then putting a drink in the back and then being sent back to where the person initially called it from.

And so it's just kind of like you might as well just have someone bring you a drink in the first place and all. That's not even considering the slightly on uncomfortable reality of having an Amazon camera and microphone follow you around your house all the time. So but it is kind of cool. add some stuff four out of ten.

All right. So this looks like a normal Smart Watch Right A little thick maybe, but overall a pretty classic design. This is called the Huawei Watch Buds. Why is it called the watch Buds you ask? Well okay so I have a theory about two in one devices that basically anytime you combine two product categories into one product, it has to be worse at something at one of those things.

Like when you get those two in one folding laptop tablet. Hybrid things. it's kind of a worse laptop because now it has to be thinner to be able to fold all the way around. But it's also a worse tablet because the keyboard is still on the back when you fold it and it's kind of awkward.

So anyway, this is a hybrid watch and earbuds watch buds. So now my expectation with this thing is that according to my theory, it's either going to be worse earbuds or a worse smart watch or both. But let me just take a minute to admire the fact that they actually pulled this off and made it a real product in the first place. So this thing is, it's by Huawei It's real.

It's around 550 bucks and Huawei knows how to make a good Smart Watch So this is a pretty premium large sized watch. steel leather strap. It is kind of heavy, but it doesn't look too ridiculous on your wrist, just like a normal thick premium. Smart Watch Until you hit that knurled button right there at the bottom and it opens up and reveals your earbuds.

Each one is automatically paired to your phone, so the second you grab one office magnetic lid, it takes over your audio from your phone. So okay, real world situation. You're getting a phone call, but you're about to go drive somewhere, walk around so you want to be hands-free so you just pop this open, put one earbud in, and you're connected to your phone and on the call already. So yeah, these these earbuds are truly mini.

They look tiny in my hands, actually tiny in anybody's hands. And then there's a clever bit of software trickery. So these two buds here are actually basically identical. There's no right and left.

Instead, they have a magnetic strip all the way around so you can just slap them back in the lid in whatever order you want and close it. Not really. think about orientation, and then when you take them out and put them in your ears, apparently all it takes is one two nod gesture and already it knows which one is the right ear, which one is the left ear, and then calibrates your stereo signal accordingly. That's pretty cool.

So okay for the two in one question at the beginning. According to my theory, these are either a bad set of earbuds or a bad smart watch or both. So which is it? Well, it's mostly bad earbuds. like.

Impressively enough, if you're into like Huawei smart watches before, you already know some of the watch GTs have like a week of battery life. This watch connected to your phone and acting Like a normal Smartwatch can still get three days of battery life which in Smart Watch world is actually still quite fine. Like the display is still large and bright and it just nothing about it really feels compromised other than the fact that maybe it's a little bit heavy. but I think if you gave this to like 9 out of 10 people, they would never suspect that there's earbuds inside.

but the earbuds themselves, that's where they kind of feel much less premium. like they have active noise cancellation that barely works. but like, who cares? this is much more of a convenience play. This is not for amazing sound quality.

This is for the like: I'm about to get on a phone call right now and I don't want to have to Fumble around and find my earbuds. they're just always on my wrist at all times. They have a three hour max battery life with active noise cancellation on fine. but if I was going to listen to something or do some audio activity for more more than three hours, I'd probably have a comfortable pair of headphones to do that with.

So this is just like pure convenience. jump on the phone call, you'll never lose your earbuds. or I mean I guess you could just lose your whole watch in which case you lost your earbuds too. I don't know I thought it was a cool idea.

Seven out of ten, All right. So this last item is called. it's called the World's Fastest Shoes. So I've seen a lot of uh Last Mile Transportation fads in my day.

From Segways to scooters to hoverboards boosted boards, this problem has been solved many times. So when I started seeing these things pop up, my expectations were very, very low. But basically the explanation is these are basically robotic motorized rollerblades. There's eight rollerblades on the bottom of each one, Put your foot in and you strap your foot in with your shoe still on.

That's how these work and the idea is you just keep walking like a normal person with your normal stride and because of the motors and the wheels, it'll accelerate the way you walk by up to 250 percent. So for those wondering, they're claiming it'll have a maximum speed once you get going of about five to seven miles an hour. But then I saw the sites demo videos and I saw Casey Neistat's video. you've probably seen that they're called the Shift Moonwalker Shoes You're supposed to just be able to walk naturally and then the motors and the wheels kick in and it's a natural acceleration and you just start to magically cover more ground than you normally would if you were just walking.

So I had to try them. Basically okay, they work as advertised, meaning that you have to try to walk like normal and really heel toe it. And after a few steps, you start to hear the motors kick in and it almost feels like a controlled rollerblading experience controlled. Meaning you don't just go as fast as if you were free rollerblading, but you are more stable because you're wearing your normal shoes and then you're strapped into these platforms.

And these things are heavy as hell. So there is a bit of a learning curve and you just start to walk around and you definitely feel ridiculous when you first learn them and you start to accelerate more and more quickly. Turning is really hard because you can't really turn while that foot is down. All eight wheels are on the ground, so you can only turn with the foot that's in the air before it lands.

All of this you you can get used to over time, so there's a learning curve, but what you don't really get from the videos on the site is just how heavy these things are and how loud they are as you're walking. they're like Clump Clump like walking around and the whirring of the motors at the same time you can hear someone coming from a long way away from these. So as I'm using them, I start to think about the question. which is, would you prefer this over a hoverboard? or over an electric skateboard or something? Or just actual rollerblades? And so the pitch is that the advantage of these is that you can walk with the normal energy of walking and it just sort of effortlessly.

Glides You along at a faster speed. kind of like one of those runways at the airport, but it's kind of not exactly true because of how heavy they are and the extra energy needed to pick up your feet. But if you get up to the top speed I will say the amount of energy you're spending is less than trying to jog at that speed. But the entire time I couldn't get out of my mind one of these things which had its day, the hoverboard is going to be a faster top speed and less energy than walking.

And if you want to go like up or down stairs or something, you just get off and just carry it. or one of these, an electric skateboard something like a boosted board has a higher top speed than both of these and is also less energy than walking. and also you would have to just get off and carry it up the stairs. So the advantage of these would be that you get to keep them on more often and that it feels more natural because of the walking motion.

Theoretically though, you could leave these on as you go up and down stairs if you're feeling really bold. I'll leave you with this though they do charge via USB type C, so there's a plug in the back of each of them and they last five to seven miles of range on One battery charge. they are water resistant and they cost 1 400 dollars so 5 out of 10. Anyway, I'm glad I got to testing because I was really curious what they would feel like.

Let me know what you think I should test next on dope Tech thanks for watching catch in the next one.