Product review: Nitecore HC30 1000Lumens CREE XM-L2 U2 LED Headlamp Handheld Flashlight

This is a unique headlamp. It is a band that accepts a small flashlight, which can be used by itself or as part of the headlamp. I really like the flashlight, but using it in the headband was not ideal. First, I am not able to shine the flashlight down because the light gets into my eyes if the flashlight is pointed down. This does not happen in a typical headlamps which have a light that can be ratcheted down because the casing shields the light from the eyes. The ratchinging mechanism gives me a better control over where the light is aiming. The flashlight is larger than a typical headlamp light and it makes the headlight more top heavy than my other headlights.



The flashlight itself is very nice. It is relatively small - 4 inches long and it weighs 4.5 oz (with battery installed). The flashlight has 5 brightness levels: Turbo, High, Mid, Low, Ultra-low.



Lux meter readings:

At 12 inches the lux meter showed

' 13840 lux on turbo high setting

' 7210 lux on high setting

' 2050 lux on medium setting

' 45 lux on low setting

' 4 lux on ultra low setting

' For comparison, a 60 watt fluorescent bulb at the same distance produces 1119 lux.



It runs on one 18650 battery which is included. The battery was totally discharged when I received and required a full recharge before it would work in the flashlight. The elastic band is adjustable.



Overall, I like the standalone flashlight more than when it was in the headband.



This headlamp is provided by Nitecore for testing and review. Getting a review product does not influence what I say. The review is based purely on my experience which had both positives and negatives.



You can find it on Amazon by following this link.





AshopZones review ★★★★☆

Product review: Prime Pro Spy camera hidden in Glasses

I have tried a couple of "spy" cameras before this one: a pen which has a camera built into the cap and a clip with a built in camera. The main issues with those cameras is aim. You don't know what the camera is aimed at exactly and if you are trying to take video in covert manner you can't be constantly checking it and aiming it. Putting the camera in the frame of the eyeglasses totally solves the problem! All you have to do is look in the right direction. The biggest problem is solved.



Now, how is the video quality? The clarify and color is excellent in good light, the sound is captured well, however the video is not smooth, it is rather jerky. Seems like it falls behind and then skips a few frames to catch up. It is fine for a convert video to document something but not something that would look good in an artistic documentary project. The camera did rather poorly in the dim light and the dark. I am including several video clips (good and bad) to give you a better idea of what this camera is capable of.



The glasses are designed well, it is impossible to tell they have a camera - there are no give away lights, noises, the frame does not get warm. The interface is pretty easy and the feedback via blinks is simple enough that you don't need to carry a manual with you to know what is happening. One long hold puts the glasses into stand-by mode, a second long hold starts the video. The confirmation that video has began is three blinks with a red LED after which the LED is turned off so there are no give away lights. To stop the video you need to press the button again, the confirmation is the blue light blink.



As the camera records the video is saved every 10 minutes. After I fully charged the camera, I was able to record four 10 minute segments (each one was 1.5G). The camera still had a little more power left and I was able to record another shorter segment, about 4-5 minutes.



The camera has no controls. The only thing you can control is setting the date to the current date, and this is done by creating a text file which contains the current date. A sample copy of this text file is present on the micro SD card. Just edit it with any text editor and modify sample time to current time. Save the file. The name of the file us Time.txt.



To charge the glasses from empty to full takes about 2 hours. The charging cable is unique - I don't have anything like it in vast collection of cords. It is smaller than mini USB, I believe it is USB-MINI4P. Bottom line - DO NOT LOSE THIS CABLE!!!!



Micro SD is slot is revealed when you bend the arm of the glasses, it took me a few minutes to find it (I show where it is in my video). When I plug in the USB cord into my computer the 8G drive is mounted and I can copy all files from it to my computer. 8G SD card is included in the package. The glasses can take a card up to 32G. The camera produces either jpg photos (1280x1024) or AVI videos (1280x720).



Finally, if something goes wrong it is nice to have an escape hatch. There is a reset to manufacturer's setting pin hole on the camera.



Overall, a very good combination of stealth and video.



This camera is provided by Prime Pro.





You can find it on Amazon by following this link.







AshopZones review ★★★★★

Product review: Flower Delivery - 25 PREMIUM FRESH ROSES by Spring in the Air

These are absolutely beautiful roses. Very long thick stems, big and full flowers. They are on par with best roses I got from a nice florist shop. They are better than other flowers I received when they were ordered through internet. The roses do not have a scent (the packaging was perfumed but the roses themselves do not have a scent). They looked good for 10 days. In attached video you see a "rose diary" where I took a photo of the roses every day for 11 days so you can see for yourself how they held up. The color of my roses is "Super Hot Pink".



The packaging of the roses was excellent, it kept the roses fresh and undamaged.



The package included two packs of cut flower food, enough to change water in 3 days. I changed the water 3 times.



The flowers came with a list of recommendations

1. Use a vase that is at least 12 inches tall and 7-8 inch wide. I did not have a vase that is that large

so I split them between two vases.

2. Remove the Guard Petal from the blooms. The Guard petals are the outer petals on each bloom. As I examined hte flower only 4 or 5 blooms had guard petals that required removal (i.e. they did not look as good as the rest of the flower).

3. Dissolve flower food in a vase with 1 quart of water. Change water in about 3 days.

4. Remove foliage below the water line.

5. Cut the stem diagonally.

6. Place the vase away from direct sunlight.

7. Change water every 2-3 days and recut diagonally to ensure the longest vase life.



These flowers are provided by Spring in the Air for review.



You can find these roses on Amazon by following this link.





AshopZones review ★★★★★

Product review: JENNIE LIU Men's 100% Cashmere Long Sleeve Pullover V Neck Sweater

This is a very nice v-neck sweater - soft and warm. But no matter how nice the garment is the most important thing when buying on line is the fit. I got two Jenny Lui sweaters for my husband crew neck in Xlarge and v-neck in Large as I was not sure how they will fit. Below are various measurements for reference, but the bottom line is that Jenny Lui sweaters are true to American sizes and Large was a good "athletic" fit, and XLarge was a looser casual fit.



Here are the measurements, in attached photos you can see where the measuring tape is:

Chest measurement 46" (L), 48" (XL)

Sleeve measurement 26" (L), 25.25 (XL)

Neck opening 6" (v-neck), 2.75" (crew neck)



Now the quality of the sweater. The quality is top notch. It is a light cashmere knit, not a thick sweater. The sweater feels soft (although it is not supremely soft as some thick cashmere sweaters), warm, looks nearly made inside and out. I show pictures of the garment inside out, which is the best way to see the quality of the workmanship and it is very well made.



Cleaning instructions: dry clean.



This sweater is provided by Jennie Liu as part of a new product introduction to evaluate the fit and quality. Overall, excellent sweater. Good fit, looks very nice. This is a high end product.



You can find it on Amazon by following this link.







AshopZones review ★★★★★

Product review: JENNIE LIU Men's 100% Cashmere Long Sleeve Pullover Crewneck Sweater

This is a very nice crew-neck sweater - soft and warm. But no matter how nice the garment is the most important thing when buying on line is the fit. I got two Jenny Liu sweaters for my husband crew neck in Xlarge and v-neck in Large as I was not sure how they will fit. Below are various measurements for reference, but the bottom line is that Jenny Liu sweaters are true to American sizes and Large was a good "athletic" fit, and XLarge was a looser casual fit.



Here are the measurements, in attached photos you can see where the measuring tape is:

Chest measurement 46" (L), 48" (XL)

Sleeve measurement 26" (L), 25.25 (XL)

Neck opening 6" (v-neck), 2.75" (crew neck)



Now the quality of the sweater. The quality is top notch. It is a light cashmere knit, not a thick sweater. The sweater feels soft (although it is not supremely soft as some thick cashmere sweaters), warm, looks nearly made inside and out. I show pictures of the garment inside out, which is the best way to see the quality of the workmanship and it is very well made.



Cleaning instructions: dry clean.



This sweater is provided by Jennie Liu as part of a new product introduction to evaluate the fit and quality. Overall, excellent sweater. Good fit, looks very nice. This is a high end product.





You can find it on Amazon by following this link.





AshopZones review ★★★★★

Product review: Eye-Fi Mobi Pro 16GB WiFi SDHC CARD

I am using this card in SONY-NEX5 phone and Android phone. The set up was incredibly smooth. All I had to do was install the the EyeFi app, it came up and told me "insert the SD card and take a picture". That's it! No hotspot to connect to, no need configuration of any kind. I took a picture a 1 minute and 5 seconds later it appeared on my phone. After the initial upload the images were uploaded a little fast, videos took a little longer.



EyeFi app also allows some basic operations such as deleting files, sharing, and a few other basic operations. It is easy to use.



Is it perfect? No. After using the card for a couple of weeks I ran into several practical issues. They are not deal breakers for me but prevent it from being a perfect experience:



1) It uploads ALL photos, so if you shoot a lot of photos in raw format this can fill up the phone memory.



2) It would be nice if there was an option to delete images from SD after a successful transfer. Such options does not exist and SD card needs to manually cleaned up - either periodically or when one runs out of space.



3) I wish it had is a switch that allows me to turn off WIFI on the card (at a hardware level). I have this feature on my old WIFI SD card and do use it when I do not want uploads to occur.



I received Eyefi sdcard for testing and review. It exceed my expectations for ease of use and set up. I have no problem using, although after several weeks of use some functionality that I would have found useful is not available.





You can find it on Amazon by following this link.





AshopZones review ★★★★☆

Product review: CHUWI HI8 8" inch Windows 10 + Android 4.4 Dual Boot

This is a good budget tablet. I rank my overall experience as good (i.e. pleased overall, but it does have some weak points). The strongest point points of this table is the high resolution screen (1920 x 1200 resolution). I can fit a lot on the screen while maintaining clarity. I set the font to large to make it easier to see the text. The weakest points are battery life, WI FI performance and the speaker.



In some low cost tablets the total memory is divided into two partitions restricting the amount of memory available for installing apps. I was happy to see that it is not the case with this tablet. I show the storage layout in my video, where this restriction appears if it exists. I show th storage after I installed about a dozen of the applications that I use all the time.



WI FI performance is not stellar. To test its wireless capabilities I run OOKLA speed test app. I ran the test 5 times and then repeated the test on my Samsung tablet. The old Samsung tablet performed significantly better. Chuwi tablet results ranged from 14 Mbps to 27 Mbps for download, and 10 Mbps to 19 Mbps for upload speed. By comparison, my Samsung tablet did 37.88 Mbps download and 33.67 Mbps upload.



Some budget tablets do not support bluetooth functionality. Chuwi tablet does support bluetooth. I am using a bluetooth speaker and a bluetooth keyboard with it, both work smoothly. In attached video I show pairing and using the bluetooth speaker.



The tablet is running Android 4.4.4 (Kit kat) operating system. I tested many of my favorte apps and so far have not found any that did not work. Here are example of the apps I am using on on Chuwi tablet: Battery widget, OOKLA speedtest, Tune-in Radio, iHeart radio, Nexflix, Firefox, YouTube, OI notepad, OI file manager, iPerf, OTG disk Explorer, Dropbox, Kindle, camera. I also tried a few of my favorite games and they all work.



This tablet also supports Windows 10. By default is starts as an Android tablet and under settings there is an options to "Switch OS". Windows comes up in a minute or two. To return back to Android OS there is an Android icon on the tool bar.



I found the touch screen to be very responsive. Using on-screen keyboard generates good feedback.



The built-in speaker is not great and cannot be made very loud. However, because the tablet has bluebooth capabilities when I want to make it loud I use a bluetooth speaker.



The battery life on the tablet is less than the other tablets I own. I can run my iPad Mini or Samsung tablets for more than I day without recharging. This tablet needs to be recharged every day even when it is not used constantly.



The tablet has an uncommon size (8 2/8" long and 4 7/8" wide). I am yet to find a case that fits it well.



Bottom line? A pretty a decent tablet. In attached video I included a variety of short snippets of running various apps such as Netflix, Tune in radio, Pandora and others.



This tablet is provided by Chuwi for testing and review as part of the new product introduction. Getting a free product does not influence what I say. I always cover pluses and minuses as I did in this review.





You can find it on Amazon by following this link.





AshopZones review ★★★★☆