Product review: Jsaron Vintage Flower Tea Coffee Cup with Spoon and Saucer Set

This is a very pretty cup. The edge of the cup feels very nice on my
lips, it is sculpted to be thinner at the edge. I often drink tea from
my coffee mug, so switching to this cup made me feel like it was a
special occasion - very delicate and festive.

The package
includes a teacup, a saucer, and tiny spoon. The spoon is also made out
of bone china, and it is much smaller than a regular tea spoon. I like
the spoon for scooping loose tea into a small tea bag, it is just right
size to deposit the content into a small baggy.

Attached photos
show the cup and the cup markings. The markings do not indicate where
the cup is made, but the seller is based in China.

I received this cup for evaluation and review. I like it - very pretty and delicate teacup.

AshopZones review

Product review: LightDims Black Out Edition

Many manufactures add unnecessary lights to various devices, I especially object to the bright LED lights on chargers I keep in the bedroom where I want total darkness. In the past I use electrical tape to cover up lights. LightDims are a neater (but more expensive) solution.



LightDims package is a single sheet of stickers that come in a variety of sizes, made out of thin dark material with a strong adhesive that covers even the brightest LED lights.



In attached video you see my one of my favorite chargers that has one of the brightest blue LEDs invented. I had that LED covered by a piece of electrical tape, but the electrical tape also covered the port labels. In the video I remove the electrical tape and replacing it with the light dims. The light coverage is the same, but the appearance is neater and the labels are visible.



Even though LightDims are more expensive to use than a piece of electrical tape if you trying to cover a light on a piece of equipment that you want to look neat or leave labels clearly visible LightDims will do a good job.



I received LightDim stickers for testing and review. I hope seeing the video helps you getting a better idea of what to expect.



You can find "LightDims Black Out Edition" on Amazon via this link





AshopZones review

Product review: UEB Portable 4 Ports USB Car Charger - used with Nexus 6p

  

We usually travel with a lot of gadgets so a 4 port car charger is very useful to us. However, the key question how well it performs with Nexus 6p which is used for navigation, so it needs to be able to charge at an optimal rate. Nexus 6p has a capability for rapid charging, which means it can draw up to 2.5A when the battery is low. Rapid charging is incredibly fast, it is such a nice feature that any charger that cannot support this rapid charging is disqualified.



Prior to testing the charger, I read the specs of the charger and I was disappointed to see that it has very rigid specs for each port (best chargers have a smart chip that allow each port of a charger to work equally well with different mobile devices).



The spec listed the following information:

iPhone port provides 1 A/5V

iPad port provides 2.1 A/5V

Samsung port provides 1.3 A/5V

Android port provides 0.6 A/5V



Fortunately, when I tested each port the spec information proved to be incorrect and each port is not limited to stated limits.

I tested Nexus 6p with both 3.1 compliant and 3.1 non-compliant charging cables.



What is 3.1 compliant cable? USB 3.1 spec specifies that the termination resistor that advertises the maximum available current should be set at 22K which advertises 1.5A of current. Benson Leung has a series of excellent reviews of Type C cables. Benson works for Google's Pixel group and has pointed out that many type-C cables violate the USB 3.1 specification that states that the termination resistor that advertises the maximum available current has been set incorrectly at 10K which advertises 3A of current rather than the correct value of 22K which advertises 1.5A of current. The "bug" in non-compliant cables can be used as a feature of allowing rapid charging for Nexus 6p. The phone does not draw more than 2.5A so it does not damage the phone. The non-compliant cable could be harmful to devices that are not limited to 2.5A such as the ones that Benson evaluated in his reviews.



Nexus 6p, charge level 46-51% keeping all other variables the same (at this level Nexus 6p uses rapid charging if possible)



* Using Tenswall USB 3.1 non-compliant cable

Android port_.._.._.._.._.._.._ 2430 mA (excellent)

iPhone port_.._.._.._.._.._..__ 2320 mA (excellent)

iPad port_.._.._.._.._.._.._.._ 2330 mA (excellent)

Samsung port_.._.._.._.._.._.._ 2310 mA (excellent)



* Using PECHAM USB 3.1 compliant cable

Android port_.._.._.._.._.._.._ 800 mA (bad)

iPhone port_.._.._.._.._.._..__ 1280 mA (ok)

iPad port_.._.._.._.._.._.._.._ 1330 mA (ok)

Samsung port_.._.._.._.._.._.._ 1320 mA (ok)



With a rapid charging non-compliant cable Nexus 6p is getting rapid charging on every port. With a compliant 3.1 USB cable I am not getting rapid charging, but it performs reasonably on every port but the port labeled "Android".



I received this car charger for evaluation and review. Getting a free product to review does not effect what I say. My review and opinions are purely my own based on testing and my experience with many different car chargers.



You can find UEB Car Charger on Amazon via this link.



AshopZones review ★★★★☆

Product review: Crustina 14" x 16" Pizza Stone Baking Stone (rectangular)

The pizza I cooked on the stone had a nice crispy crust. It tasted better than the pizzas I made on the metal sheet. The pizza you see in the video is 16", this the maximum size of the pizza that fits on the stone. We did not finish this pizza on the first day, and I reheated the pizza the next day using the stone, and again it was nice and crisp, as good as the first day.



Pizza stones are not made out of stone. They are made out of ceramic. These unglazed ceramic tiles absorb moisture and make the dough that rests of them crispier. Ceramic tiles are not good heat conductors and this is why the food is less likely to burn when using a baking stone compared to using metal or glass bakeware.



The down side of the ceramic tiles is that they are fragile. As I found first hand because my baking stone did not survive shipping in one piece. It was broken in two pieces as I opened the box. Replacement stone was in one piece. The benefit of having a broken stone is that I am able to include a photo of the cross section of the stone so everything can see exactly how it is made.



To prevent fracturing of the stone by thermal shock I place the stone in a cold oven and heat it over at least 30 min, 45 minutes is even better. The stone gets very hot, I use a cookie sheet without a lip to slide the pizza onto the stone. To prevent items from sticking to the stone and to make cleaning easier I sprinkle corn starch on the stone. Corn starch works better than flour because it does not turn into paste when wet. When the pizza is done, I slide off the stone onto the cookie sheet, and let the stone to cool down slowly inside the oven.



When I can I clean the stone I use a dry brush and plain water. I do not use detergent because it gets absorbed by the stone.



I received this pizza stone for testing and review as part of a new product introduction.



You can locate Crustina Pizza Stone on Amazon by following this link.



AshopZones review ★★★★★

Product review: LOPOO Key Chain Flashlight

This flashlight is 2 5/8" long and has three modes: bright, medium, and strobe. I like the mechanism for turning on the light and changing modes. It is a slide switch which is used not only to turn on the flash light but to change modes as well. It cycles through three modes with every slide. I can hold the flashlight and change the mode with one hand which sometimes is quite useful.



How bright is bright? To answer this question an easy way I used a lux meter which measures light intensity and compared the brightness of this flash light with a 60 watt bulb, because everyone has a good feel for how bright a 60 watt bulb is.



Flashlight bright mode at 19" = 1492 lux

Flashlight low mode at 19" = 392 lux

Fluorescent bulb at 19" = 613 lux



The flashlight runs on one AAA battery, the battery is included. The battery has a stopper in the flashlight to preserve the battery (a red disc which is easy to see if you open the flashlight). The weight of the flashlight with the battery installed is 0.9 oz.



I received this flashlight for testing and review. The flashlight produces pretty bright light, alhtough the beam of the light is not large. I am including a video to give you a better idea of what to expect.



You can find this LOPOO Key Chain Flashlight by following this link to Amazon.



AshopZones review ★★★★★

Product review: Bread Knife 8 Inch by Zelite Infinity

This is a very comfortable bread knife to work with. It has a slim handle that is ergonomically shaped. It feels great in my hand and makes the knife very easy to maneuver. The knife weighs 9.2 oz. The blade is very sharp! It works well on both soft bread and crusty breads.



It is ok for the dishwasher, but I always hand wash nice knives. They will last longer and there's no risk of them cutting the plastic coating on the appliance racks.



This knife has a beautiful finish, which looks like a marbled design. The higher quality of Japanese knives uses laminated steel which has this beautiful pattern. The use of laminated steel improves the strength and rust resistance of the blade (and it looks beautiful).



In attached video I use to cut two different breads, I've tried to show the clean cuts.



I was provided this knife for testing and review as part of new product introduction. Getting a free product does not effect what I say. I leave critical reviews when the product deserves it. However, I am very pleased with knife and it has become my go-to bread knife.



You can find this bread Knife on Amazon via this link.





AshopZones review ★★★★★

Product review: K&F Concept® Full HD 1080P Car Video Camera 2.0" Mini Car DVR Dash Cam

The video quality that KF concepts camera records is pretty decent especially at night, however I ran into several problems with it. First, the camera is shipped with the default language set to Chinese. The manual is not detailed and has no information on how to change the language. I had to manually select every option on the menus one by one remembering what I already looked at by position (I do not read Chinese) until I found a menu choice that allowed me to switch the menus to English. I show where that option is located in my video. The second problem was the mount does not stay on the windshield during cold weather. We had a cold stretch of weather (12°F in the morning) and the suction cup mount does not stay on the windshield at this temperature. In the afternoons when the weather warms up I am able to mount it and stays for as long as I need. So if you live in a cold weather this dash cam will not work well for you. The mount is custom made for this camera, so you cannot replace it with another better mount.



On the positive side I like that the dash cam's compact size (2.25" x 2.25" x 0.75"). It does not block much of the windshield. The video quality is fine. It is not as good as 4K cameras, but quite reasonable and it does quite well at night. My video includes snippets under various conditions - day and night. 170° wide angle lens gives a good view of the entire road.



It turns on as soon as it gets power so you don't have to remember to turn it on. It can be turned off manually if desired. It is powered by a regular mini USB cable. The package includes a 32GB Class 10 micro SD.



When the dash cam writes out files to disks it saves them every few minutes, this is good, because if there is a problem you lose just a small segment not the entire video. I have not had any corrupted files with camera, but from experience with other cameras I now it can happen. I should note that the camera does not write out files to a standard directories. It creates three directories: event, jpg, and video. It uses JPG directory instead of DCIM for photos.



I received this camera for testing and review as part of a new product introduction. Overall, the camera has its pros and con. Hopefully, the manufacturer will fix the default language in the future versions of the camera, and I provided some help in how to do it now. So the only serious issue here is for the folks in the cold climates is the issue with the mount.



YOu can find K&F Concept Dash Cam on Amazon via this link.





AshopZones review ★★★☆☆