Xiaomi had a sale a while back, so I picked up this water purifier for a little over 1000 yuan, with six months of interest-free installments thrown in. Xiaomi actually sells a bunch of under-sink purifier versions, and I honestly don’t know which model I got — probably the 400G one, the single-filter version.

Needed something at home to listen to music, so I decided to buy a network speaker. Honestly, I know the best in this category is the Apple HomePod. But nobody in my house uses Apple devices except my wife, and I’m an Android guy, so buying it was obviously unrealistic. Ended up going with Sonos, and I had solid reasons for choosing Sonos:

I figure plenty of rich folks, Wu Lao Er included, have already moved on to the OnePlus 7 Pro. Me, I’m still on a OnePlus 5. Though my OnePlus 5 is really my backup phone. It’s fine, honestly. Performance holds up, no reason to replace it. Only the protector I’d stuck on it cracked, so I decided to get a new one. The protector I had on the OnePlus 5 before was from Fangshao. The coating on that one felt weird to me, not smooth enough — probably some knockoff coating from a small factory. Since the Nillkin protector on my Pixel 3 XL feels great and the coating is great too, I decided to give the Nillkin one for the OnePlus 5 a shot. Then I used it and cried.

Intel recently released the AX200 series of Wi-Fi cards. A batch showed up on eBay too, and surprisingly cheap — pretty friendly compared to the old 7265 and friends, which used to run close to 200. And after the ThinkPad X250, ThinkPad products no longer have a whitelist. Still, even though by conventional wisdom Intel wireless cards and Linux get along just fine, I have to say this product is an exception.

A while back there was a thread on Reddit recommending some cheap Chinese e-waste, and it was pushing this Bluetooth speaker: the Jambox mini. I’d honestly never heard of this Jambox mini thing. I just saw the thread hyping it up with “can’t lose at this price” and “beats stuff at the 500 yuan tier,” so since it was cheap I figured I’d buy one and mess around with it. This kind of thing always reminds me of back in the day when I’d read some idiot “poison-pen” post going on about how some earbuds only cost 49 or 99 and you can’t go wrong buying them, and in the end it turns out you really can’t go wrong — they just sit there gathering dust. This time I couldn’t hold back and ordered one. And the seller, who seemed to be some kind of official Foxconn outlet, took nearly a week and a half to ship. But it did eventually arrive. The speaker is bare-bones: just the unit and a charger, that’s it.

A while back I bought a discounted Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 tablet on eBay to replace my Mi Pad 4 and 360 N7. Its job is watching videos and gaming, plus whatever else comes up. The reasons were simple, just three: The Mi Pad 4 has a “screen gets hot and touch stops responding” problem, so it can’t game The 360 phone games fine but the screen is harsh on the eyes, and the system is basically abandoned after launch Neither of them supports stereo sound for videos — both are single-speaker Don’t ask why I didn’t get an iPad. I don’t use Apple, so Samsung was the only option — it’s the highest-performance Android tablet out there right now. Eventually I searched Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 on eBay and found a US V version with a 4G module, model T837V. Got it for just over 3000 yuan. I’ve used it for almost a month now, so I can share my impressions.

The Redmi Note 3 my parents have been using is almost two years old now, and I’ve had it repaired a bunch of times to keep it breathing, but recently I found out my dad smashed the screen again. So I couldn’t be bothered to keep it on life support. The Redmi Note 7 is out, so let’s just switch to that.

I ordered a RhinoShield case on Black Friday when it was on sale, and then one thing led to another. After a bunch of tweaking, the phone feels pretty good to use now, basically satisfied, so I’ll sum it up here.

A while back I modded my OnePlus 5 for wireless charging, so this time I went ahead and did the in-car setup to match. Right now the only trustworthy car wireless charger you can actually buy online is Philips. I know Philips is a company that slaps its name on just about anything, but they seem to have done this one properly.

I bought a Retro Game handheld a while back and it felt pretty good, but something was always missing. Even after updating to the foreign custom firmware, plenty of rough edges remained — short standby time, an ugly look, that sort of thing. The guy behind that firmware has released a new build, possibly the true final version this time. Flashed it and it’s actually decent. Also took the chance to dress the thing up a bit, and I’m liking it more and more.