Kinivo BTH220 Bluetooth Stereo Headphone

On January 23, 2013 By Michel McDonaldIn Cell Phone, Cycling, Diet, Exercise, Products I LikeLeave a comment

My new headphones arrived today and I am beyond excited about them. At first they didn’t fit me and I was ready to throw in the towel and pack them back up to ship back to where they came from, but I gave them another chance and now they fit me like a glove.

I watched a few YouTube reviews which I know I shouldn’t do because they almost always put the product down and compare them to higher end products, but these were okay and gave it a high rating for its price. One guy said there was a bit of space where sound escapes or whatever, and that is true, it’s not air tight, but when have headphones ever been air tight? Who cares!

I did call myself on the phone so I could see if I could hear it ring and I did and it answered like it was supposed to when I pushed the button. So cool! That’s the issue I had with my other phone when I was riding my bike. It would be in my camelbak and I couldn’t get to it in time because I’d have to pull over and take the camelbak off and find it and by then the person hung up or was leaving a message. Sometimes I’d have it in my pocket in my shorts, but it gets uncomfortable in there and I’m always afraid the phone will drop out as I’m riding and I will never even know. Nobody ever calls me except for my partner, but he is why I have a cell phone, so if I’m out exercising on my bike, he will be able to get in touch with me, or if I have an accident I can call either him or 911 depending on the severity of the accident.

I activated the voice dialing feature and it asked me to choose between the voice dialer that came with the phone or Robin which is an Android’s Siri challenger (it’s free in the Google Play store). I chose to use Robin by default because the voice dialer that came with the phone sucks. It never recognizes what I say. If I say “Call Home” it calls my friend Ruth lol. At least Robin understands me.

The sound quality is actually amazing. I pressed the button once and it automatically started playing music that I had on my phone. I thought I would have to load the music but I didn’t. It’s more amazing than I thought it would be. I press the button once to start and stop the music and when it starts back up again, it continues where it left off. I loaded Noom to begin an exercise and it started, but I could barely hear the voice talking, which is actually fine by me because I don’t want to hear how fast I’m going or how many calories I’m burning. Surprise me! I’m actually going to mute that during workouts.

The headphones are very good and I am so glad I bought them. They are definitely going to come in handy when I begin cycling this Spring as my cardio to help me lose weight. I normally ride 22 or 23 miles per day which is a bit much for some, but it’s enough for me. It’s not too much, I could go more but I just don’t want to. Obviously I haven’t tried them to receive a phone call on the bike because the bike is missing a back tube, but I will find out in a couple of months and I will try to remember to update this post.

I highly recommend these bluetooth headphones. Mind you, I base my opinion on wearing them for 10 minutes so this isn’t really a review at all, it’s more of a hey it was awesome for the first 10 minutes, you should try it.

If you do have a pair of these, please do me a favor and comment and tell me how you like them and what you use them for.

Update: I wanted to give an update on these since I’ve had them for a week. The instructions say to charge it fully, then let it drain completely, then charge it again and drain it again. Holy crap, that is taking forever to do because the battery seems to go on forever. I’ve already drained it once and that took at least 3 days to do. I’m on day 2 of trying to drain the battery for the second time. The way I’m doing it is to just play music all night long. Well, it has an 8-hour battery right? Well, 8 hours pass and it’s still going strong. I use it the whole day and then play music all night again and it’s STILL going.

One of my concerns when I bought these headphones was that it wasn’t going to last my 2-3 hour bike rides, well that’s out the window because I could probably ride for 3 days straight before the battery died lol. So no worries there for me now. That’s actually a relief. The box says 150 hour standby time and 8 hour talk time, so I’m just guessing that if you don’t use them too often, don’t expect to have to charge them more than once or twice a week, if that. These are damn good headphones in my opinion. So worth the $30 I paid.

Oh and one more thing. The sound is AMAZING! What is it that the annoying reality celebs say? AMAZEBALLS? Well, that it is. The sound is so awesome and you don’t lose quality from that space between the headphone and your ear. The headphones seem to be a bit stretched out more than it was when I first opened the package. It goes back to being small, so it’s stretchy I guess lol. Stretchy hard plastic. Yeah.

I was watching a YouTube video with Karl Pfeiffer (Ghost Hunters Academy and Ghost Hunters International) and his voice sounds perfect. It’s not too loud, it’s not too low, it’s exactly the way it should be. Before I couldn’t watch his videos because the volume on my monitor sucks, same with my Chromebook. I can finally hear him with these headphones.

Oh I was told in video reviews that you can fold it and put it in the little pouch that they included with the headphones, but they don’t recommend doing that because the plastic gets too loose when you try to fold it. It stops snapping into place in other words. So I’m going to take their word for it and keep them open at all times and never store them in the bag. I’d rather they be in plain sight anyway.

That’s all for now.

Could the Star Trek comm badge become a reality?

On December 18, 2012 By Michel McDonaldIn Products I Like, Science Fiction, TechLeave a comment

I saw a picture on Facebook today of the Starship Enterprise from the original series, but it was all made of Christmas lights. That got me thinking about comm badges. I consider myself to be a nerd, but I don’t have a Star Trek uniform or a comm badge, so perhaps I should either buy one, or turn in my nerd membership card.

As I was browsing Google, it came to me. I wonder if they make a Bluetooth enabled comm badge that looks exactly like the Star Trek comm badge that actually works with your phone. Most phones now have voice recognition right? So I wonder if they have made a comm badge that when you tap it, you can say “Call Aunt Louise” and it places the call.

Guess what… I found it! It’s not exactly what I had in mind, but it is a step in the right direction. This is called “CommBadge” and it works with your iPhone and Android phone using BlueTooth technology. It isn’t in the shape I was hoping, but how can I expect them to legally use that licensed design without incurring lawsuits?

This is a start up company, so they don’t actually sell these yet, but if they can get their funding with Indie GoGo, then they will be able to make and sell these and perhaps every person in the world will have one. They have 10 days as of this posting and have only raised $18k of $100k, so unless people help them out, we will probably never see this awesome design.

May I convince you? They have several different models. One without anything that just has the regular features, then they have others that have a badge holder for work and one that has the retractable badge holder for perhaps those who need to swipe their badge. It all does the same thing whether you have the badge holder or not and that is almost exactly what you think the Star Trek comm badge would do.

You press the button (the speaker) and you hear that iPhone Siri ding ding sound and you tell it what you want and it responds without you ever having to take your phone out of your pocket. Android has something similar to Siri, but they don’t show that in the video (below). You can tap the CommBadge and say “Call Sally” and it will dial her number and you and everyone else around you can hear Sally answer the phone and talk and you can talk back to her. I assume when the conversation is over you hang up by pressing the button again.

What is more exciting is that you can chat with your phone just like you normally do. Like my partner likes to talk to his iPhone to text people. He will say “Text Mike” and then he will say what he wants to tell me and the words spell out on the screen. I assume it would do the same thing, without you having to look at it. Of course Siri’s voice recognition software isn’t exact every time so there might be some confusion when I receive the actual text, but I won’t know until this thing ever comes out.

I am also assuming that you can get directions too, but I don’t think Siri will tell you to go here and turn there and get you to your destination just by using the CommBadge. I have tried it by looking at the phone and there weren’t any turn by turn directions from Siri, I had to actually look at the screen. But that would be cool if she gave you a heads up while you were driving without looking.

Anyway, here’s the video, perhaps if you like it you might want to help their cause to get this thing started. I’m sure whatever you donate, you will get that product if and when they launch it. I think it’s awesome and I would help if I had the money, but it’s Christmas. How do they expect people to have money this month? I mean seriously lol.

Tell me what you think. Would you use this? If I had an android phone, I certainly would.

Merry Christmas

On December 25, 2011 By Michel McDonaldIn Christmas1 Comment

Can you believe that it’s finally Christmas? Neither can I, I mean, it seems like it was just summer like a week ago, and now it’s Christmas, and it will be a whole new year in a week.

We didn’t go out of town like we usually do because Darrin thought he was going to work on Monday, and he didn’t want to drive for 6 hours just to have to drive back home tonight. So instead, we stayed home to enjoy the peace and quiet.

Presents… Darrin has the job, so he makes the money and buys everything. I can’t even afford to buy underwear, which by the way I asked for and got lol.

He really needed good cell phone service instead of his crappy Net10 service, so we went to Verizon and he bought himself an iPhone 4S. He wanted to buy the iPhone 4 because it was $99, and at first he did, but then they added $45 tax and sold him a package of accessories and it all came to $199. I told him to buy the 4S because I knew he would kick himself in the ass if he didn’t, but he didn’t think he could afford it. When he realized that the 4 didn’t do what the 4S did (Siri and voice recognition instead of typing), he changed his mind and switched a couple of days later. He had to pay the tax on the first one, plus the $35 restocking fee, but he’s really happy with it and that’s all that matters.

He asked me what I wanted, and he bought me the underwear that I mentioned before. 2 packages of boxer briefs which had 4 pairs per package for $32 each, but it was buy 1, get 1 half off, so it was $48 total before tax. See why I can’t afford to buy underwear? It’s expensive as hell lol.

We went to Kmart yesterday to buy presents for other people and he decided that he wanted to buy me something else, so he bought me a lava lamp. I’ve always wanted one, but could never afford one. It looks cool when it is working, but it’s mostly a blob on the bottom. I don’t know why it isn’t doing what it’s supposed to, but then again isn’t that just my luck? I finally get a lava lamp and it doesn’t go up and down. But I still love it and I’m sure it will eventually get the hang of it.

Chips high school girlfriend gave him a tetris game, no not the video game, this is a physical game with plastic pieces. It’s called Tetris Link. I think that I love it more than he does because I’m a gamer and he isn’t. He said he wanted to give it a try, but if he doesn’t like it then the only way I will be able to play it is if I can get people to play it with me via Google+ Hangouts.

I made some pumpkin pies yesterday and gave one of them with a container of Cool Whip to our tenant. I don’t know if they really wanted one or not, but I made it for them so I hope they like it. I love pumpkin pie, I don’t think you can have a Christmas without pumpkin pie, but that’s just me.

My final present will be the Christmas episode of Doctor Who. If we had gone to San Diego today, I would have missed it because I don’t have a DVR. I would have had to wait until it repeated, which I’m not sure when it will. So I’m very happy that we didn’t go for that reason.

We had lunch at China Town Buffet. We were going to go to either the Golden Corral or Hometown Buffet, but neither of them were open, so we ate Chinese food instead. It was good, I mostly ate all chicken, which is all I ever eat there, but it was very good and filling.

Well, I hope you all have a great Christmas and get lots of presents that you were hoping for. Happy Holidays.

Pictures – click to see it bigger.