hwa2u.com

It’s December, so let it snow. 😉

After 4 months of using my Pebble Steel smartwatch, I feel grateful that I made the choice to buy the watch, it’s been really useful for me.

I pair the watch with my tablet, the Nexus 7 2013, and I use it to relay all the notification from my tablet to me, so I get to read the notification without even touching my tablet. This is very useful for me especially when I’m working, as I easily get hooked up with my tablet when I start playing with it, this will cause distraction and reduce my productivity, it’s not a good image to portray. Other than that, I also use the watch to keep track of my sleep pattern.

The battery life is satisfying, I can use it for at least 3 days without even charging it, sometime can go for 5 days.

Of course I wouldn’t dare to say the watch is perfect, there are still places that I think it can be better. One of them being the buttons, as I mentioned before, the buttons is really hard, even after 4 months of using it, the button doesn’t get to lose that much, I can feel the tactile a bit but not much.

Another thing is, from time to time the notification will cause the watch to crash, when this happen, the watch will keep on vibrate non-stop until I soft restart it, by holding the left + right middle button. This is actually quite critical, because the vibration will drain the battery. There’s one time when I finish charge the watch, unplug the cable and left it on table, then the watch crash. When I check the watch about an hour later, the battery left only 10%.

My review for the Pebble app store is, it sucks. The app store is sluggish, it appear to be heavy load although there are nothing much in the page. Also, there aren’t many apps in the app store for you to play around.

And those are the bad things about the watch, nothing serious.

Though I’m satisfy with the watch, but I will still suggest to wait a while if you are planning to buy one. The Moto 360, which can be a strong competitor for Pebble, will be release soon. From the promo video it looks promising, cool presentation, nice UI, nice design and touch screen!

After 2 months of waiting, finally my Pebble Steel has arrived!! Yay~!

For those who have no idea what it is, Pebble Steel is a smartwatch that started from a Kickstarter project, quoted from Wikipedia.

The Pebble raised $10.3 million for Kickstarter, making it the most successful product funded through that company up until then. Best Buy, an American consumer electronics corporation, began selling Pebble smartwatches in July 2013, and sold out within five days.

That’s the brief history of Pebble smartwatch, I would say up until now, there are no other smartwatch that can match the functionality of Pebble.

However, I must also mention that Motorola is currently working on a smartwatch that’s running on Android Wear, the Moto 360, which I think can be a strong competitor for Pebble. But Moto 360 will not be release until mid summer 2014.

Anyway, so I received the watch today, it came with 2 bands, the metal one and leather as part of introductory program for USD249, a normal package will only come with either the leather band or the metal one, depend on which package you choose.

The first impression for the watch is simply amazing, I like how they package the whole thing, doesn’t feel cheap at all, and the cable that come with it is magnetic and will snap into place when the connector is near to the watch.

If you must ask what’s the thing that I don’t like about the Pebble Steel, for now I would say the buttons. Although the buttons is advertised as responsive and tactile, but it’s not as tactile as I initially expect, the buttons is kinda hard to press, and I must apply a certain amount of force to press it, and I don’t really feel the tactile. I hope that’s just temporally, hopefully soon the buttons will be lose a bit and feel little better when pressed on.

As I just receive the watch today so I have nothing much to say but a first impression. Hopefully someday I’ll write a review for this watch.

Update:

Yes, I wrote a review for the watch, please read it here.

After using my Razer BlackWidow Ultimate 2013, I’m so addicted to mechanical keyboard that I decided to get another one for my office. So I pick Ducky Zero DK2087 Tenkeyless keyboard, the one with Cherry MX Blue switch.

The keyboard come in a standard keyboard layout except for the numpad, hence the Tenkeyless, I choose tenkeyless for it compact size, so I can easily bring it around if I needed to. The Ducky Zero range is a mechanical keyboard that focus on basic functionality, no fancy lights etc, just the keyboard it self, so what you pay is what you get.

I got this keyboard for RM269 which I think is quite reasonable for a mechanical keyboard, maybe because of the lack of numpad make it slightly cheaper. I did some modification to the keyboard, I changed the space bar and the Windows key to blank so it doesn’t have the Ducky logo. I also change the WASD and arrow keys to yellow keycap and escape key to red keycap, just to make it a bit fancy. Since I mainly use this keyboard in the office, I also put each of the key an O-Ring so it’s not so loud, but surprisingly, this actually make the keyboard even better to press!

So far I’m very satisfy with this Ducky mechanical keyboard. In fact, after the modification I made, it’s even better than the Razer BlackWidow Ultimate 2013! I don’t have the keyboard picture for now, I’ll include a picture when I have the chance, so for now, use your imagination. 😛

Now that if you still remember, I mentioned that I bought a Razer Orochi 2013 just last year. Well, the mouse is great, but it drain battery like mad when using it in Blueooth mode, so I started using cable, and the mouse is not wireless anymore, plus it use up my USB port, so what’s the point?

So I went to search another mouse, this time, I chosen the Logitech Anywhere Mouse MX. This mouse is using the Logitech Unifying receiver technology so it’ll still use up one USB port, but at least it’s wireless.

I has been using the mouse for a while now, and I kinda like it, I think most probably I’ll settle down with this mouse. But we shall see then.

Snow come late this year. But heck they are here now, at hwa2u.com.

Merry Christmas 😉

After much consideration, I finally decided to buy this mechanical keyboard, the Razer BlackWidow Ultimate 2013. The keyboard is costing RM439, but I got it for RM410, quite a bargain. 😀

Razer BlackWidow Ultimate 2013

Razer BlackWidow Ultimate 2013

Razer BlackWidow Ultimate 2013

Razer BlackWidow Ultimate 2013

Razer BlackWidow Ultimate 2013

The Razer BlackWidows Ultimate 2013 is a mechanical keyboard aim for gaming usage, with individual back light under each key and also a function to disable the Windows button to prevent accidentally pressed the key and minimize the game while playing.

There are also other features such as on-the-fly macro recording and up to 10 profile changes. But all this require you to install Synapse 2.0, a driver software that store your settings in the cloud.

So far I has been using it for normal typing and also a few gaming sessions, and it’s awesome, the pleasure of pressing each key with the tapping sound is like biting a crunchy potato chip, the sound effect really works, and you feel like you are typing fast! Like a hacker trying to penetrate a system, just like in the movie. LOL!

Of course there are few things that I need to get used to, one of it being the keys layout. While the keyboard is following the standard QWERTY keyboard layout, the placement of the key is slightly off a bit comparing to my previous keyboard, especially the functional keys on top.

Also I’m not sure why I keep pressing the caps lock when pressing A button, I suspect it’s caused by the 5 macro keys at the left side, which make me place my left hand a bit too far to the left and pressed the wrong key.

But I’m quite satisfy with the keyboard, minus the accidentally pressed the caps lock button, but I don’t think that’s an issue, I just need some time to get used to it.

I has been using this mouse for a week and guess what? The battery just died out today. 🙁

The battery consumption is really one of the major flaw for the Orochi, if you plan to use it entirely on Bluetooth mode you really have to reconsider whether to get it or not, imagine changing battery every week, unless you have 2 rechargeable AA battery.

I’m not very sure whether is it because of the battery that I use, I was using the battery that bundled with the mouse, which is Energizer and I think it’s just the normal one. But unfortunately it only last for a week before the battery indicator turn red, and just a day later it started to blink then initially died out. For now, I guess I have to use it with the micro USB cable that come with the mouse.

There’s another minor issue when you using it with the cable, which you might find it very hard to pull the micro USB out from the mouse. Whenever I’m done with the mouse and wanted to pack it, with limited space to grab the micro USB, I find it’s extremely painful to unplug the micro USB, for the first few time you really have to endure the pain and pull it hard.

But I believe this won’t last long as the more you unplug, the micro USB port will loosen a bit and eventually things will get easier, as recently I find it’s not as troublesome to unplug the micro USB.

Well that’s it, that’s the only 2 issues that I’m complaining for the Razer Orochi 2013. Apart from the battery issue, which I kinda workaround it by using the micro USB cable. Other than that I’m very satisfy with the performance of the mouse, and the size is not too small for my hand and just right for portability, the forward and back button near my thumb is mimicking my MX518 therefore I don’t have to change my habit in using mouse, and the ability to change the cursor speed on the fly is really the cherry on top of the cake.

So I finally decided to get my self a Razer Orochi 2013 mouse for RM279, it’s a performance mouse that focus on mobility, perfect for my MacBook Air.

Actually, the MacBook track pad is already perfect for browsing. But I need a mouse to play games, and I don’t want to waste a USB port just for a mouse as the USB port for MacBook Air 11″ is very limited, it has only 2 ports. 🙁

However, since the Bluetooth in my MacBook is not very utilized, so a Bluetooth mouse will be a better choice, and with Razer Orochi capable of hooking it to Micro USB cable and turn it into wired mouse, I can always change it to wired mode if Bluetooth performance is not up to my preference.

Comparing to my Logitech MX518, Razer Orochi is a little bit of small in size, but this isn’t an issue, it still fit in my hand and I don’t have to hold it like I’m squeezing the mouse.

Speaking of Logitech MX518, boy I just realized this thing has stayed with me for 8 years, 8 fucking years and still kicking, the only thing is that the black rubber part look kinda gooiest, but not sticky though, I really need to clean it up one day considering how long it has serve me.

For now, I’ll just enjoy my Razer Orochi, and hope that the Logitech MX518 will last another 8 years.

After about a month of wait, finally my Audio-Technica ATH-M50 headphones has arrived! In conjunction with my 2013 birthday hehe! I bought this headphone from Amazon for USD114.96 including shipping, that’s a good bargain actually, almost half the market price.

I has been using Philips SHP-895 all this while, and it’s actually not bad, although the headphone is a bit stiff, but the build quality is good and after 8 years of using it, the only damage is slight crack at both side of the hinge, which doesn’t effect the functionality at all.

Also, the Philips SHP-895 is using microfiber cloth to wrap the sponge in the can, one of the main reason I choose this headphone last time due to synthetic leather often fall apart after using it for some time.

ATH-M50

For my Audio-Technica ATH-M50, I haven’t use it long enough to write a full review of it, but so far I’m very satisfy with the headphone, the sound is great although it hasn’t burned in yet, and it’s very comfortable to use, the sponge is soft and is wrapped with synthetic leather, I hope it won’t started to wear off after I use it long enough.

Well that’s all I can say for now, let’s hope this headphone will last me another 8 years. 🙂