I’d been using the Moto 360 2nd, but it had been nearly two years, so I figured it was time for a change. Then the LG Watch Sports came out, and I saw you couldn’t swap the strap, so I didn’t buy it. Half a year went by and there was still nothing I liked. I figured, fine, if I can’t change the strap, then I just won’t change it… When I went to order the LG Watch Sports on Google Play, the titanium version was out of stock, of course. Then one night I refreshed out of boredom and there it was. Ordered it right away, and it turned out I’d picked the wrong payment method and paid $16 extra in shipping, even though the Google Play Store page said free shipping. I was worried it’d sell out so I didn’t look closely. The next day I saw the extra charge and asked Google for a refund. They said no… So I said, fine, I’ll return it and order again. They said it had been more than two hours, so no returns… I’ve got a few choice words for them that I’ll keep to myself. So I chalked it up as a lesson learned. The surprise was that when it arrived via a forwarding service, there was no customs duty… I looked, and the customs declaration listed the thing as an “electronic watch.” Clever. I wonder if next time I forward a phone they could write “cordless telephone”…

If you search Quora for “what headphones are good,” you’re bound to come across a brand called Superlux. I’d never heard of this brand before, and probably nobody else had either, but there are just a ton of people on Quora hyping it up. Most importantly, it’s cheap—only 78 yuan, and shipping is fucking free. A while back I stopped even going on blind dates, felt empty inside, and just started buying shit. I’d sworn off buying audiophile-mysticism products, but I just wanted to see whether Superlux was all hype or not. Ordered on JD.com, said it ships from JD, but it still got third-party treatment. Anyway, it arrived. I listened to it for about a week, on and off. Not long, but I basically get it now—why people hype this thing, and why it’s so cheap.

I pre-ordered this one and slapped it on the moment it arrived.

I’m not really interested in Tongque’s earphones, but I do enjoy watching their founder pick fights with people on X (Twitter). Honestly, the way he goes after people is pretty on point — some folks really are that dumb and deserve it. I didn’t want to buy a Tongque earphone, though, because word was the sound was pretty mediocre. Then I saw the founder announce the new EN700 Pro in red and black, 12 months interest-free, and his line “if the sound’s bad, you can hit me.” So I bought one on impulse.

The GPD Pocket is the follow-up to the GPD win. There were a few things I wasn’t happy about with the GPD Win: The screen was awful. After finishing Baldr Heart on it I felt like I was going blind. Bad cooling, which is why so many people modded theirs. I didn’t want to bother. Cheap build. All plastic, and the construction was just passable — usable, nothing more. The keyboard was useless. That thing was on the level of calculator buttons… worse than a Wenquxing electronic dictionary. So I backed the GPD Pocket crowdfunding campaign… and once it arrived, plenty of surprises.

I have two phones. Before, it was a Nexus 6P and a Nexus 5X—one on China Mobile, one on China Unicom. Right now the Unicom one is Sony’s XZP, so for the Mobile line I picked the OnePlus 5. OnePlus 5: OxygenOS leans stock. Snapdragon 835—honestly, at this point if it’s not a Snapdragon 835 I don’t even want to use it. Chinese full-network support, plus warranty. Supposedly the warranty service is good. Build quality is solid. I watched that foreigner’s bend test video—the OnePlus 5’s materials are impressive. Then again, OnePlus has always been a spec-stacking factory. The OnePlus 5 still meets my few requirements for a phone—except the screen… but since it’s a secondary phone I don’t care about the screen. So I bought it.

After years away, I paid the Sony tax again: I bought an Xperia XZ Premium. I’ve said the reason plenty of times. I need a phone with a system that leans native, looks good and squared-off, and doesn’t have any weak or outdated spots in the specs… So the Xperia XZ Premium walked into my sights. Native-ish system First Snapdragon 835 in the world with a 4K resolution Squared-off design and a full mirror screen Checked the price and it was even a bit cheaper than a certain Pixel… so I preordered. Before preordering I figured it definitely wouldn’t drop in price, and I thought it probably wouldn’t either, but it seems it still dropped a few hundred bucks. Fuck.

I bought a cheap second-hand colorimeter before. It worked, sort of—it was a second-hand piece of junk, after all. Then during the 618 sales I stumbled on a deal for the Green Spider 5 and picked one up to play with. A lot of people will tell you to get the Red Spider 5 instead, but the truth is the Red Spider 5 and Green Spider 5 have identical hardware; the difference is the software. And you can solve the software problem with the third-party DisplayCAL, so the discounted Green Spider is the better buy. The only downside is that if you use that 1000-yuan software, calibration is a lot faster.

Ranked matches in 王者荣耀 hadn’t been going well lately. Someone suggested I buy a “touchscreen” controller to improve the feel of the controls and boost my win rate, so I did. Taobao has way too many kinds of these things, so I bought every single type. Right now these products fall into three categories…

Probably thanks to the massive reaction to that little fidget cube thing, more and more toys that “look useless but keep your hands busy” are hitting the market. The most typical recent example is this thing: the fidget spinner. Fidget spinner, as the name suggests, is a top you spin between your fingers. Simple construction, clean look. Hold the center pad, find a way to get it going, and that’s it. It really does spin more easily than your average metal disc—feels super smooth. If you get the force right, you can keep it going for several minutes without stopping. Right now fidget spinners come in two main shapes: two-armed and three-armed. Shape doesn’t change the game, though…