Review: Merit Sweatproof Bluetooth 4.1 Headset

The Merit Sweatproof Bluetooth 4.1 Headset is great value workout headphone. I've been using them for a little while now and have very much enjoyed using them. While I am no workout junkie by any stretch (seriously), I found them a pleasure to use. Here is a breakdown of the pros/cons:

 

Pros:

+ Easy bluetooth pairing. Couldn't test NFC pairing on my iPhone 6+.

+ Lightweight.

+ Sweatproof. (Mowing the lawn in 100+ degree weather counts.)

+ Cable perfect length.

+ Excellent battery life and fast charging.

+ Microphone works great.

Neutral:

= Sound isn't best in class, but definitely better than default Apple Earpods.

= Siri doesn't work super great, but I didn't expect it to.

Cons:

- Kind of big.

- Inserts are a little stiff.

Overall, given the price and features, this is an excellent value. If you're looking for an audiophile pair of bluetooth headphones then these are definitely not it, but that's not the target market. These are meant to be a simple, no-fuss bluetooth headphone that will last for a while and deliver your tunes while breaking a sweat. Highly recommended.

Review: EasyAcc USB 3.0 Card Reader

In today's world, all of our data has to be stored somewhere, and if you are into photography like myself, you probably have a mix of cards lying around. It's becoming more critical to transfer that data quickly from one medium to another.

The card reader itself has a nice finish and is very solid, though it is a tad bigger than others, but this is just a minor issue. It comes with a USB 3.0 cable which will work on any computer, Mac or PC, with a USB port (USB 3.0 is backward compatible) and does not require any drivers. It supports these card formats (which will suit 99.9% of people needs): MS, TF, M2, SD, XD, and CF. Though, another minor quibble would be a Micro-SD slot as well. To be fair, most micro-SD cards come with an SD adapter, I just don't always have mine with me.

My test set up was to take a lot of pictures on my Canon 6D in RAW mode with a 64GB Lexar SDXC 90MB/s, where most images are about 25MB apiece. In the end, I had 3.04GB of data spread across 124 files. The test was to check the time it would take to transfer all 124 files from the camera's USB port and then from the EasyAcc USB 3.0 card reader. I chose this setup, because for me, this is the most common use case. Here are the results:

From Camera: 4 minutes 25 seconds
From Card Reader: 0 minutes 50 seconds

I think one of the telling factors here is I believe the Canon 6D is only USB 2.0 compliant which would explain the speed difference. In retrospect, I'm starting to wonder how I ever got by transferring my images over the camera USB and not a card reader such as this, especially since I have had USB 3.0 for a while.

Overall, this is a great little unit and will be an integral part of my photography workflow, especially during weddings when I need to transfer pictures quickly. Recommended.

Review: PB6400CS Portable Charger

Portable chargers have become a staple for me lately. If you are even remotely a gear junkie like myself, then one of these bad boys is a must have. If you're traveling often, it's silly to go without one since you don't have to scurry around the airport to find a wall outlet or be "that guy" at the conference who's hogging the wall outlet.

The EasyAcc portable charger is a no-fuss, simple charger with great features. The 6,400mAh capacity is plenty to give my iPhone 6+ two full charges (we'l get to the numbers later). The iPhone 6+ is already has excellent battery life, but this makes it all the better. It feels well constructed and has a nice, smooth finish, giving it a nice, solid feel in the hands. The footprint is very small and easy to carry. The one thing I particularly like about this model is that it has a single 2.1A x 5V USB output which is best for rapid charging with a 2A x 5V input USB-micro input for charging the charger. There's also an LED for flashlight mode, which can be redundant if you have a smartphone, but it doesn't hurt anything to have it there. There are 4 blue LED lights around a single on/off button which give the status:

4: 75-100% Capacity Remaining
3: 50-75% Capacity Remaining
2: 25-50% Capacity Remaining
1: 5-25% Capacity Remaining
Blink: 0-5% Capacity Remaining

For real-world usage data, I used my trusty iPhone 6+ on iOS 8 with Wi-Fi on and Bluetooth on. I took several calls, checked e-mail, browsed the web and played a game or two during each charge (since you'd likely be using it if you're charging, at least I do.)

Charge iPhone from 36% to 100% took 1:21 hours to charge. Charger went from 4 lights to 2.
Charge iPhone from 29% to 100% took 1:44 hours to charge. Charger went from 2 lights to blinking.

If you weren't using the phone during charging, you could theoretically get two full charges on the iPhone 6+, but I was pretty happy with these numbers.

Overall, you can't go wrong with this charger. It's the best balance of price vs. features and does and excellent job on delivering. I highly recommend it if you are looking for an excellent charger.

News: Pebble Time on Kickstarter

Source: Kickstarter

If you remember how much we loved the original Pebble from our earlier review, it should come as no surprise that we are excited to eventually get our hands on the newly announced Pebble Time on Kickstarter. The Pebble Time sports a color e-ink display with 7 day battery life.

The Kickstarter for the Pebble time showed up earlier today with a $500,000 goal by March 24, 2015. Within 24 hours, it has far exceeded that goal and is currently around $7.7M as of this writing. Apparently, this has set a bunch of new Kickstarter records.

What makes the Pebble so appealing is it's use on both popular mobile platforms, iOS and Android. The longer battery life of 7 days requires less charge time compared to its competitors which see 1-2 at most. We'll see how it fares against the almighty Apple Watch which is due in April.

We'll keep you posted with a review down the road!

Review: iClever IC-BTH01 Lightweight Wireless Bluetooth Headphones

Today we will be reviewing the iClever IC-BTH01 Lightweight Wireless Bluetooth Headphones.

I will begin by saying I'm a sucker for headphones and have many lying around the house and office. Fortunately, I have a job where I can listen to my music a majority of the day and decided this is the best way to put headphones through their paces. 

The headphones were incredibly easy to pair with my iPhone 6 Plus, in fact, so easy that all there is to say is that they just work the way you would expect, and that's good. Throughout my workday I made a few occasional calls homes and listened to about 3 hours of music (I had several meetings) and the rest was idle. At the end of the day I still had about half a charge left on the headphones as reported from my iPhone.

The only real complaint I have is the shortness of the cable between the earbuds. This makes it somewhat difficult to use behind the head (in front just looks silly). This directly affects the other small issue I have which is it makes the microphone sit a bit behind where I would like. This was apparent when making calls because my wife had a hard time hearing what I was saying.

I usually prefer over-the-ear headphones over ear buds due to comfort for long listening sessions, but I have to admit that these were comfortable enough for a couple hours of use before getting a little uncomfortable which is better than expected.

The sound quality was on par with what I expected. All the ranges were there and the bass was not over bearing which is a trend in headphones these days, so I was glad to hear that they aren't trying to knock your ear drums out. They sounds good over several genres from classical to rock.

Pros

• Great battery life.
• Easy connectivity and use.
• Good sound.
• Easy and quick charge.
• Comes with extra sized ear buds.
• Good quality build.
• Flat cabling for easy storage.
• Decent price.

Neutral

• This is more of a preference thing, but I would have liked skip buttons on the controls.
• Not the comfiest of headphones, but definitely good for longer sessions than most ear buds.

Cons

• Short cable makes it somewhat difficult to use behind the head.
• Microphone made it somewhat difficult to hear for those I was talking to, this is mostly due to where it rests due to the shortness of the cable.

Overall, these are a great set of headphones and a great step up from the packages Apple headphones. They are a great value and I would recommend them for anyone looking for a decent budget bluetooth set of headphones.