I used to have a Kobo Aura HD. I bought it to read books, but I didn’t read many books—I ended up reading mostly manga. Recently I’ve found a few things about the Kobo that annoy me. First, manga isn’t great on it, since the screen is small. Then there’s the lack of marketplace apps—you can flash Android, but it’s an old version and the experience is poor. On top of that, Kobo’s official services are no longer available in China, for reasons you can guess. So I started thinking about switching. The requirements: a bigger screen, convenient app support, and a reasonable price. That’s when I saw Onyx had announced a new 10-inch e-ink device, the Boox Note. They said pre-orders would start around New Year’s, but January came and went without anything happening. Then they said pre-orders would start on February 4th, which got pushed to February 7th. Anyway, it still shipped before Chinese New Year, Tmall offered interest-free installments, and the first batch came with a free case. Pretty decent overall.

Almost three years ago (damn, has it been that long?) I bought an ASUS Xonar U7 sound card to get audio output while my laptop was hooked up to a dock. And now, three years later, that sound card has started acting up. Roughly, the problem is it often doesn’t get enough power and won’t come up—plug it in and it isn’t recognized. After unplugging and replugging it a bunch of times it occasionally has a chance of working. Eventually I couldn’t stand spending ages plugging and unplugging every day when I brought the computer home, so I decided to replace it. I had three requirements: USB powered, I don’t want to plug in a power supply Has audio input The DAC chip can’t be too crappy Has a headphone output jack I looked through a whole pile of Chinese-made DACs and couldn’t find one I was happy with. The biggest pain is that they don’t have audio input, and they can’t be USB powered either—they all make you drag along a big power supply…

I’ve written before that for the OnePlus 5, the official protector is what I recommend. And for the Sony XZP, Banana’s soft film. Problem with soft film is it deforms easily and gets dirty fast — you’re basically replacing it every month. Which is when you start missing glass film. Shame that glass film on this thing always leaves a white edge. Sure, there’s white-edge oil, but it doesn’t last — two weeks tops and it’s gone, time to re-oil. And the stuff in those bottles really does seem to be just plain oil. Completely unreliable. Then I saw someone on XDA post a video of a fully transparent, fully laminated glass protector for the Sony XZP. And that’s when I noticed: the lamination process uses “optical adhesive” as the filler. It’s liquid going on, and sets into a semi-solid — way more trustworthy than oil. So I went looking for someone on eBay selling it, and what do you know, I found a seller offering liquid optical gel for white-edge repair. Tried it right away. Works well. Thicker than your average white-edge oil, but it still seeps into the edge just fine — a little pressure with your finger is enough.

I know the manufacturer Songri (Matsunichi) — back in school I was really into Pocket PCs, and there was a company with that name at the time, they made Pocket PCs. The specs were nothing special but the price was cheap, so it stuck with me. I never actually bought anything from them in the end. Years later, the next time I hear the name, it’s these pack-in earbuds.

I was using the FiiO X7 along with the Sony Walkman A35, but juggling two devices was a hassle, and the Sony WM1A was out of my budget. Then the ZX300 came along at a middle price point, with the China model being the ZX300A. I put in a pre-order, and after attending Sony’s listening event I felt it was acceptable, so I didn’t cancel. It finally arrived a while back, and I’ve been listening for two weeks now—mostly satisfied.

It’s CD show-off time again. I bought quite a lot this time, and it’s been a while.

I was using a ThinkPad X250 before this, and I upgraded it bit by bit over time, but I had a few complaints about that laptop: Cooling was terrible. Hook it up to a dock and it hits 90°C in no time, and breaking 100°C was routine. I tried modding it, but it was basically useless. Performance was lacking. With the dock running dual 1080p displays, it just couldn’t handle it—open YouTube and performance explodes. Build quality was so-so. The ThinkPad X250 was a step back from the X230 in terms of build. It’s all fiberglass, even though every media outlet hypes it as carbon fiber. It’s not, and there’s no metal either. Fiberglass, plainly put… is plastic. Overall, the laptop was okay at first, but later it started to annoy me, so I planned to upgrade after two years. This time I looked at the X270, but found nothing new, and it seems the ThinkPad series has given up on the X200 line. So my targets were the ThinkPad X1 Carbon and Yoga.

I used to wear a Xiaomi Mi Band on my right wrist. Honestly there’s nothing really wrong with it, but I bought it at launch, my mom wore it for a year, then I wore it for another year, and then the strap snapped and the charger went missing… I figured I’d just buy a replacement part, only to find the official store had discontinued every accessory for it, and the prices on Taobao were somehow higher than a brand-new one cost back then. Forget it, I got my money’s worth, so I gave up. But wearing something on my right wrist had become a habit, so I thought I’d get something else to wear. What though? Maybe something that actually looks good? That’s how I came across the Misfit Ray.

Obviously I’m a handheld nut, and my love for handhelds outweighs any other kind of console gaming. In some ways I even use the Surface Pro 4 as a handheld, even though it’s not remotely “handheld” sized. A while back I got my hands on the GPD Pocket. It’s great in every way except that gaming on it is a hassle — compared to the GPD Win it has no built-in gamepad buttons, and the default keyboard is just painful. So pairing it with an 8BitDo portable gamepad does the trick.

I was originally going to buy a Nintendo Switch, but I’m broke, and there were games like Mario 3D Land I’d never played, so I figured I’d just get a 2DS LL first.