A while back I was listening to a podcast from Aifou, and one line stuck with me: “I think the most impressive thing about Lei Jun is that he can push prices down so low that nobody else can match him.” In that context, judging by the standard of “pushing prices down,” Lei Jun really is impressive. Whether it’s Xiaomi or Redmi, they’ve definitely driven down the price of a lot of things. But is that what “impressive” really means—driving down the price of something expensive so it sells cheap? Shouldn’t it be the opposite? Isn’t it far more impressive to take something worthless and sell it at a very high price? By that standard, the “Big Monster Block Bluetooth Earphones” are a very “impressive” product.

Haven’t done an impulse buy in a while. This time it’s because I saw this thing was cheap enough: A 99-yuan Bluetooth earphone with aptX support and killer battery life. So I bought one to check it out — my laptop supports aptX now too, after all.

Google Pixel Buds are Bluetooth earbuds from Google. Unlike the other Bluetooth earbuds that came out around the same time, these supposedly support all sorts of real-time translation, plus Google Assistant of course.