Amazon is seriously taking away all my money. I usually always preach financial literacy and making smart financial moves, but trustttt. I understand that lifestyle creep and I can always somehow find a justification for work. I’m working on bettering my finances and it’ll happen, but in the mean time here’s my July haul!
Amazon Haul | July 2018
This was a must buy for me since I’ve lost about three USBs and have yet to replace it to my everyday carry, but I didn’t just want any old regular USB. If I haven’t already mentioned yet, I’ve been slowly trying to work solely off my phone. So my goal for this USB was to have something compatible with my phone. There are OTG cables available but since USB-C is becoming the dominant port I wanted to get a flash drive that had a USB-C port as well as a USB 3.0 port.
Hence this guy: Aceyoon Swivel USB Flash Drive – 32 GB. There are a bunch to choose from on Amazon but this was the one that caught my eye. I like: the metal build, a notch to attach to your keychain, that it’s not a slider it has a swivel instead and that it’ll look clean in my everyday carry. There was only about a $3-4 discrepancy between the cheapest and this design I liked so that’s why I picked this one!
Don’t Buy This 10000mAh Power Bank
This was a great purchase in theory, however after I’ve used it for a couple of days there are a few caveats I have with it.
- You pretty much always have to use the micro-USB you would think that they would make the cables interchangeable but they have dedicated ports and the USB-C is the exact same port as the iPhone cords so you must make a choice
- The ports are extremely inset to the charger. So what that means is if your cables break that’s it. You can’t do anything that cable is done for and you can’t use that power bank anymore.
I know in my video I said it’s alright but writing it down highlights how big of a drawback this is and although it makes my life easier to not have to remember cables this is pretty shitty. So I’ve made an executive decision and I’m saying don’t buy this charger. It’s not worth $30 in the long run get a legit charger, there’s actually so many on Amazon: $20 for a 10000mAh, a solar powered one for $39.99, the list is endless.
Yeaaaaa, so don’t cop it. If you can’t make up your mind I’d recommend the 10,000 mAh Anker Power Core for $36.99, it’s small, reliable and carries more than enough charge to fill your phone at least 3 times. And unlike the sketchier one that I picked up this one has a 18-month warranty and everything that I’ve had from Anker has lasted so I haven’t even touched the warranty yet. So that’s what I’d recommend
Amazon Basics Power Strip
I’m sel-f-un-employed, so I work a lot on the go; coffee shops, libraries, food courts, parking lots, lol. You get it. Chances are you’ve probably been in a scenario when one of your devices are dying, and you need an outlet. But everywhere you look they’re all full. This is your $5 solution, it’s seriously this simple! All you gotta do is, ask if you could plug this in and you’re set! Plus you can share that power with multiple people (up to 5!). FYI there’s 6 outlets in case you don’t want to do the math.
I use this power bar on a regular and would recommend it to almost everybody. I specifically bought this one cause it was “cheapest”. It’s from Amazon Basics so you know it’s reliable. But if you got money to spend, I’d recommend copping one with usb ports. From personal experience, I’ve forgotten those cubes multiple times. So having USB ports on your outlet is pretty key.
Peak Design – Leash Camera Strap
If you haven’t heard of Daniel Schiffer, I recommend you go check him out now. He’s where I’ve learned anything about cinematography, I know nothing but this guy is a wealth of knowledge. So if you enjoy seeing beautiful things I guarantee you won’t be disappointed with his videos.
Nonetheless, about this camera strap. It’s not only a pretty looking camera strap but it’s super useful. You can adjust the length easily by just pulling on the strap (I know pretty much all camera straps are really easy to use but you don’t understand how easy this things slides till you use it). On top of the ease of use, it’s also easily interchangeable if you have multiple cameras. They give you 4 connectors that attach to the strap simply by sliding it in and detach by pushing the red pieces and sliding them out. So they’re easy to use, make your life easier, look good and it’s hella secure.
I grabbed mine on Amazon but I’d recommend checking out Daniel Schiffer’s channel to see what would be best for you. I mean anything he recommends is like a must buy, but if you needed more assurance, I dunno what mine would do but I say it’s an easy cop. Get it!
Western Digital External Hard Drive 4TB
Not actually a July Amazon pull but I haven’t revisited this since Black Friday. It’s such a game changer to life, I think I actually might get a next one. Especially, if you’re a creator having external hard drives are an essential to your work flow.
I already souped up my laptop but that’s not enough, I’m always in the need for more storage. On top of that, I’m a careless creator and I only have one SD card, so when that’s full, I always need a place to dump my footage so without that hard drive I’d have to delete a bunch of stuff which is a no-no. Even if you aren’t a creator having a place to empty storage is just good practice. I understand the fear of losing information so that’s why backups are so important.
Which is leading my to have the need for a RAID array but I feel like it’s still a concept that flies over my head. So if you guys can help explain it to me that would be blessed!
Samsung T5 Portable SSD
Building up on that souped-up computer, having an external SSD is clutch. Though this is still all new to me, when it comes to video-editing I’m learning it’s important to have “scratch disk”.
Basically you don’t want your OS and your footage to live on the same drive. SSDs are a must because they are so fast to read and write so it makes sense to have your OS to live on an SSD, however the more you learn about computers you learn that SSDs have a limited number of “writes” so if you are constantly working on your SSD (ie video editing on your MacBook Pro with you drive) it can lead to premature failure of your drive. Leading your computer to be unusable, and I don’t know how to fix the newer laptops yet. So I’m not sure why I haven’t figure out how to use it as a scratch disk yet, but in theory you’d use this external hard drive every time you need to edit footage and this will hopefully lengthen the life of your laptop.
I still need to do more research on this but this is the theory.
Blue Yeti Microphones
This was the main reason I went in to purchase stuff on Amazon Prime Day but then I got too excited and ended up with everything else. I’ve always wanted a Blue Yeti, probably since MKBHD covered it back in the day. I always had a fascination with audio engineering and making music and what not (no I’m not a singer lol don’t expect any EPs). But yea I guess this was like a tool I’ve always wanted but anytime I’ve seen it go on sale I’ve always been in a financial bind. Not like I’m doing any better but I’m hoping that having this microphone will allow me to constantly keep creating content even when I’m not up to being in front of the camera.
Unfortunately, I don’t think you can plug these into your camera (lol but not like any of our cameras have microphone jacks anyways). But this microphone is really nice and I think what they are ideal for are: podcasts, screen recording and just regular recording. I’m hoping to dig into these endeavours and we’ll see what happens! 🙂
I’m hoping to get a review about this soon time but for now….
I’ll catch you in the next one 😉
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