I bought a Cardboard a while back, but that was the first generation. And the first gen had plenty of rough edges—it didn’t fit big phones (even though my phone at the time was still a Sony Z1), and there were hardly any apps (aside from a few demos there was basically nothing to play). Then recently I stumbled on the fact that YouTube now has a proper 360° VR video channel, and that’s when it hit me: the second-gen version of that box from Google I/O was already dirt cheap on Taobao.

Originally I just wanted a Nexus 6. After a year and change with a Sony, I’d decided Android is better off with something close to stock. But this time around they announced the Nexus 9 and Nexus 6 together, so I got carried away and bought both. The Nexus 6 is still on a plane; the Nexus 9 arrived a week ago. Here’s roughly how it went. I bought straight from the Google Play store. Lots of people say that if the credit card billing address you register with Google Wallet doesn’t match the forwarding company’s receiving address, Google will cancel your order — and that Google cancels orders like a maniac. From what I can tell, most of those people had never had a Google Wallet account, maybe not even a Google account. They rushed to sign up through some temporary proxy just to buy a Nexus, then rushed to place an order, so of course Google figured them for scalpers or a sketchy account. So basically: if you’ve bought things with Google Wallet before, or you’ve had a Google account for ages, Google will let the billing-address thing slide. Mine went through fine. Google Play doesn’t ship directly. You can buy the Nexus 9 from Amazon with direct shipping, but there’s $70 in tax, so forwarding is cheaper. I used Benniao (笨鸟海淘) as the forwarder — partly because I couldn’t get registered with 转运中国, and the other forwarders were either backed up or banned electronics. Benniao was just okay, honestly. Not what I’d call fast: 25 days from shipment to delivery. Four of those days were bad luck landing on a weekend when they’re closed, so I had to wait until Monday for shipping and customs to continue. I got the 32GB black version. Forwarding cost 70 RMB, and customs hit me for 200 RMB on the electronics. Work out the total yourself if you care.

Cardboard is a little freebie Google handed out at its developer conference. With a handful of demo apps it gives you a fairly basic virtual reality experience — basic, but supposedly mind-blowing. Supposedly. I saw people’s reactions on various forums, and the crowd was unanimous: it blew their faces off, it was the shit, it was unbelievably awesome. So of course I got curious… no, really, curious. So I picked one up. Mine was 20 yuan on Taobao. You can also download the PDF template and DIY one out of cardboard yourself — the box is cheap, the convex lenses are the annoying part to find. When it arrived, the knockoff level turned out to be pretty high. Apart from the missing NFC, everything it should have is there.