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Pushing it against a wall is fine, the clearance thing gets overstated. I’d rather have it tucked out of the way than have it sitting somewhere I trip over it. Placement matters less than people make it sound.
Touch controls always sound nicer on paper than they are in real life. I usually prefer a physical button because at least I know when I’ve actually pressed it, even if it looks less sleek.
Google Maps has gotten better at showing chargers but I still open a charging app before a longer drive to make sure the ones on my route are actually working. The nav app gets me there fine, it just doesn’t tell me much about whether the stall is free or busted. For weekend trips that extra check has saved me a couple of annoying detours.
My cousin stayed with us last summer and I tried the whole guest access thing through the app. It actually worked fine for the week he was here, he could turn the porch light on and off and mess with the living room plug for his phone charger. The one thing that got annoying was he kept adding his own schedules to the plug so my coffee maker started brewing at like 5am on weekends. Nothing broke and my main settings stayed put, but I had to go in and delete his little automations after he left. So it does the job for basic control, but if your brother is the type to poke around in settings you might end up cleaning up after him anyway. Not a huge deal, just something I didn’t think about beforehand. Are you mainly worried about him resetting stuff or just changing the schedules you already have set up?
Mine gets the soap off without any hassle, no streaks on the paint so far. It’s not a pressure washer blast but it’s quicker than my old nozzle was.
Shelf above head height is a waste for these. I had mine up on a cabinet for a week and the air just hovered up there, nothing reached my desk. Moved it down to the actual desk and it was a completely different thing.
I mostly care about having a rough sense of what normal looks like for me, not a super precise baseline. A week of low sleep after a late night is way different from a week of low sleep with nothing unusual going on, and that contrast is what makes a change feel real to me.
I actually leave mine out for calls most of the time. Not because it sounds terrible, I just find it easier to tuck the phone against my regular ear and not think about it. Takes two seconds.
I had the opposite issue with mine. Even on the lowest setting it was still too much for the keyboard and I ended up with keys feeling a bit off. I just went back to a can for that job.
The one I got had a small setup card tucked under the console, not a full manual. It shows which buttons to hold for pairing and that was enough for me. 🙂
Not wearing glasses doesn’t make these pointless at all. I picked up a pair mostly for the glare on my commute and I’ve ended up using them way more than I expected. The over-glasses bit is just one way to wear them, not the whole point of the design. Mine sit like normal sunglasses and I forget I have them on half the time, which is more than I can say for the cheap pair I had before that slid around constantly.
The part that actually surprised me was how much they help when the sun is low and bouncing off the car in front of me, or when the road is wet and everything reflects. That used to leave me squinting for the whole drive. It’s not some magic fix for bad weather, but for normal everyday driving it makes things calmer on the eyes.
If you’ve got normal vision and you drive a lot, it’s a reasonable thing to have in the car.
I usually just give the panel a quick rinse and dry it with a towel first. Doing it in the shade makes the biggest difference for me, the cloth glides way better when the paint isn’t hot. If it’s toasty out I’ll wait till later in the day.
You do have to pick one or the other since it sits in the port. I just leave mine in and plug the scanner in when I actually need it, which isn’t often. Takes two seconds to swap, so not really a hassle for me.
I’d probably just get a separate natural gas alarm if that’s the part you actually care about. The combo units are fine for smoke and CO, but I wouldn’t trust the gas sensor as my only warning. For a kitchen, a dedicated plug-in gas alarm feels like the safer bet.
For basic chatting with your grandma, the two-way mode is honestly what it’s made for, it’s not just travel phrases. I used mine with my aunt who only speaks Cantonese and we had a normal back and forth conversation, just keep sentences on the shorter side. The app works over bluetooth so it doesn’t live on wifi, though I usually have my phone data on anyway.
Mine stays in the bathroom closet and it still clumps, so I don’t think it’s just your cabinet humidity. I’ve had the same bag since spring and it got lumpy about a month in. Still foams fine though, I just break the chunks up with a spoon before scooping.
I opened mine right away and screwed up the first bite pretty bad, but a second round in hot water fixed it. The material still felt fine to me, no weird softness or anything. So yeah, you can redo it, just don’t leave it in the water too long.
I gave mine to my dad and he just leaves it on the default setting all day. For plain two person talking it clearly helps him, but he’s never once touched the mode button. So yeah, you can basically set it and forget it.
I don’t think the setup part is really where most of the experience lives. I borrowed one from a friend for a weekend to mess around on some scrap wood, and yeah it turned on and the tip was already in, so there wasn’t some assembly ritual. But honestly the first ten minutes or so I was pressing way too hard and getting these ugly deep gouges instead of clean lines. Light pressure and letting the tool do the work made a bigger difference than anything about charging or installing tips. So if you’re asking whether you can just unbox and go, sure, but “go” the first time probably won’t look like the lines you’re picturing. That part just comes with a bit of time on scrap before you touch anything you actually care about.
My guest room setup actually did better on 2.4 because the 5GHz signal barely reaches down the hall. So switching bands isn’t automatically an upgrade, it depends where the router sits.
I’d push back a little on the idea that the ID is just a bonus. If you actually want to know what’s visiting, that’s kind of the whole point of the feeder, otherwise you’re just collecting clips and guessing.
I do move mine around a lot more than the manual suggests. It’s not that it feels weird to me, but I get more out of it if I do shorter stints on my traps and then switch to my upper arms. I figure the 20 minutes is just the cap so you don’t overdo it, not a target you have to hit.
I actually think the short battery life works in its favor for garage duty since you’re not out there for hours. One charge is usually enough to push everything out and call it done. The dust cloud is real though, so maybe open the other door first.
I kind of went through the same thing when I first got mine. I kept checking the teeth after every couple of passes and convincing myself one side was getting more work than the other. Turns out I was holding the whole thing slightly tilted without realizing it. Not the file stroke itself, but just how I had the tool seated on the bar. Once I started paying attention to that before even starting, the results evened out a lot.
That said, I do think there’s a ceiling to how consistent it can be. It’s not like a machine that does everything for you. You still have to build a bit of a rhythm with it. I will say my chains definitely cut smoother now than when I was trying to freehand it, so even on my worst day it’s still better than what I was doing before.
I also found that I was being too picky with how perfect the angle looked on each tooth. Sometimes under good light they look slightly off to me, but the chain cuts fine and stays sharp for a decent amount of time. So I stopped obsessing over it and just went with how it performed rather than how it looked.
Curious though, are you comparing the teeth visually or just judging by how it cuts?
I kinda disagree with the “just grab one when you order” take. I think it’s actually nice they don’t include a card, because the ones they bundle in are usually tiny or slow anyway. You’re better off picking exactly what you need for your trips. I’d rather spend a little extra than get stuck with a card that barely holds anything.
I gave up on using mine for anything above chest height for this exact reason. The spray does hold up fine when you’re close to the glass, but the second you have to angle it upward or reach a bit, it turns into a misty mess that lands everywhere. I still use it for the lower sections and just wipe down after.
You might get lucky with it sitting in the yard, but I wouldnt count on it catching every bark from across a fence. The sensor seems to work best when its fairly close to where the dog usually stands, otherwise it just misses some barks and the timing gets thrown off. I’d say set it up closer to the fence line and you’ll have way less babysitting to do.
