Batlacit's stats
- Review count202
- Helpfulness votes911
- First reviewFebruary 13, 2016
- Last reviewSeptember 12, 2024
- Featured reviews0
- Average rating4.4
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- Answer count55
- Helpfulness votes97
- First answerSeptember 21, 2016
- Last answerJanuary 21, 2022
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Brew delicious coffee your way with this single-serve Ninja Coffee Bar system. It uses any ground coffee while bringing out the best flavor with advanced thermal flavor extraction technology. This versatile Ninja Coffee Bar system has a built-in frother that lets you brew, froth and drink out of one mug.
Customer Rating
4
What do you know, it works!
on September 28, 2016
Posted by: Batlacit
from Madison, WI
Okay, so first a disclaimer. I received this product for review purposes.
Which is probably a good thing, because when I first saw what it was, I really wasn't convinced that it was anything other than a coffee maker with a gimmick. There are just so many products these days that claim to vastly improve your food through some kind of culinary magic that, in the end, doesn't produce a perceptible difference.
But in this case, the gimmick (namely precise temperature control on the water) really does seem to have a noticeable impact on the coffee produced Not only that, it can be used to make a ton of coffeehouse style beverages that really do taste just as good as anything produced by a barista. What's more, I found that it actually requires less coffee to achieve the same relative strength, so there are some actual cost savings here that I never anticipated.
I also have to say I'm very pleased with the design ethic behind it. These days, single serve coffee makers all tend to rely on the k-cup, a horrifying invention from an ecological standpoint as it's managed to balloon our already absurd amount of plastic waste. This one, however, has none of it. The thing comes with a very nice and easily cleaned permanent filter, but if that's not to your taste it can be swapped out for another one or a paper filter.
As for ease of use, it supports a wide variety of containers, and really is just a question of pushing the right buttons to get it to work. All the parts are well labeled and straightforward. The integrated frother takes a little practice to learn how to avoid splattering liquid with it, but after a couple of accidents I learned it well enough.
That said, there are some downsides to this thing. The first is that this is definitely one of the bigger single-serving coffee makers I've seen. I don't really see any way around that, but the fact that they did their best doesn't change the fact that it takes up a lot more space than I expected on my counter. So if counter space is at a premium, you may need to take that into account.
The second has to do with one of the bigger features advertised for it - the ability to produce coffee house drinks. Sufficed to say, it provides the necessary parts (namely the concentrated coffee) but not much beyond that. The recipe book included has some great ones, but nothing about the device makes it any easier to actually prepare the drink. If that's what you're looking at this for, expect to have to practice a bit.
Which is probably a good thing, because when I first saw what it was, I really wasn't convinced that it was anything other than a coffee maker with a gimmick. There are just so many products these days that claim to vastly improve your food through some kind of culinary magic that, in the end, doesn't produce a perceptible difference.
But in this case, the gimmick (namely precise temperature control on the water) really does seem to have a noticeable impact on the coffee produced Not only that, it can be used to make a ton of coffeehouse style beverages that really do taste just as good as anything produced by a barista. What's more, I found that it actually requires less coffee to achieve the same relative strength, so there are some actual cost savings here that I never anticipated.
I also have to say I'm very pleased with the design ethic behind it. These days, single serve coffee makers all tend to rely on the k-cup, a horrifying invention from an ecological standpoint as it's managed to balloon our already absurd amount of plastic waste. This one, however, has none of it. The thing comes with a very nice and easily cleaned permanent filter, but if that's not to your taste it can be swapped out for another one or a paper filter.
As for ease of use, it supports a wide variety of containers, and really is just a question of pushing the right buttons to get it to work. All the parts are well labeled and straightforward. The integrated frother takes a little practice to learn how to avoid splattering liquid with it, but after a couple of accidents I learned it well enough.
That said, there are some downsides to this thing. The first is that this is definitely one of the bigger single-serving coffee makers I've seen. I don't really see any way around that, but the fact that they did their best doesn't change the fact that it takes up a lot more space than I expected on my counter. So if counter space is at a premium, you may need to take that into account.
The second has to do with one of the bigger features advertised for it - the ability to produce coffee house drinks. Sufficed to say, it provides the necessary parts (namely the concentrated coffee) but not much beyond that. The recipe book included has some great ones, but nothing about the device makes it any easier to actually prepare the drink. If that's what you're looking at this for, expect to have to practice a bit.
All in all though, I'm very happy with this thing, lost counter space notwithstanding. The size and skill requirement for doing anything more complex than basic coffee does mean it's probably best suited for serious coffee drinkers, but as someone who prefers tea (which this can also brew) I'm still quite pleased having it in my kitchen.
My Best Buy number: 2187428738
I would recommend this to a friend!
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Your household wants to play, stream and work online all at once. With this Linksys router, you can do it all without buffering or other interruptions. Use the Smart Wi-Fi app to get started, control, and monitor your home network from anywhere.
Customer Rating
5
Impressive speeds at a reasonable price point
on February 13, 2016
Posted by: Batlacit
from Madison, WI
I'd previously used a Linksys router that I'd been very happy with right up until it died of overheating. It was a very good router for everything I needed, but had a very poor design as far as heat dispersal went. It left me a little cautious with the brand ever since, so I was not expecting to be quite so impressed with this one!
First up, as you might imagine the first thing I was watching for with this thing was heat. I'm pleased to say that they obviously learned their lesson - the heat dispersal is vastly improved, and it's never gotten much more beyond "mildly warm" to the touch. The new case might not look as sleek as the previous designs, but it's far better in terms of performance.
The downside though is that this also means it's substantially larger. This occupies about twice the footprint of my old Linksys, and about 50% more than the router that replaced it. I'm more than willing to put up with that for something that gives me a substantial performance boost without making it prone to suicide, but it is something you might want to consider if desk space is at a premium for you.
Speaking of performance, WOW, the new AC standard is a step up in regards to speeds! Advertised rates go up to 1.3 gbps, but that's really just a measurement of burst speeds. In real world conditions you generally don't get anything near advertised rates, so once I'd set it up and made sure it was running cool I went and started running some benchmarks to see what I actually was getting. And it's very good indeed! On the 5ghz band I was easily maintaining speeds of about 900mbps. These routers really are to the point where they're comparable to a wired connection in terms of speed, and so far my attempts to get it to choke as far as reliability have been thwarted every time. The connection is fast and stable.
Going a little deeper, the router maintains networks on both 2.4 and 5 ghz bands. I'm liking this feature more than I thought, as it lets me separate out my devices into the networks best suited for them to make sure that routing speeds aren't negatively affected by a few older devices. This is made very easy through the highly customizable and very accessible router interface, which lets you be as technical or simple as your skill level requires. Some of my favorite features here include a prioritization system which lets rank the three most important devices on your network in terms of bandwidth priority, which is great if you've got a network under heavy load from a dozen bandwidth hungry devices but really just want to watch Netflix, and the very clever feature which gives you a dimmer switch for the onboard lights for the router, even letting you turn them off entirely! Were I still living in a place where my router was located in my bedroom this might have almost been a deciding factor alone in choosing this router.
The MuMIMO feature, of course, is a big selling point. I'm sorry to say I can't quite say for sure if it's all that it's made out to be based solely on my tests. Things were improved, yes, but not so much so that I can rule out the possibility that I'm just seeing the results of the higher bandwidth capacity. I give this feature a cautious thumbs up for now. It's probably not going to blow your mind on its own, but it certainly won't make your performance worse with multiple devices.
First up, as you might imagine the first thing I was watching for with this thing was heat. I'm pleased to say that they obviously learned their lesson - the heat dispersal is vastly improved, and it's never gotten much more beyond "mildly warm" to the touch. The new case might not look as sleek as the previous designs, but it's far better in terms of performance.
The downside though is that this also means it's substantially larger. This occupies about twice the footprint of my old Linksys, and about 50% more than the router that replaced it. I'm more than willing to put up with that for something that gives me a substantial performance boost without making it prone to suicide, but it is something you might want to consider if desk space is at a premium for you.
Speaking of performance, WOW, the new AC standard is a step up in regards to speeds! Advertised rates go up to 1.3 gbps, but that's really just a measurement of burst speeds. In real world conditions you generally don't get anything near advertised rates, so once I'd set it up and made sure it was running cool I went and started running some benchmarks to see what I actually was getting. And it's very good indeed! On the 5ghz band I was easily maintaining speeds of about 900mbps. These routers really are to the point where they're comparable to a wired connection in terms of speed, and so far my attempts to get it to choke as far as reliability have been thwarted every time. The connection is fast and stable.
Going a little deeper, the router maintains networks on both 2.4 and 5 ghz bands. I'm liking this feature more than I thought, as it lets me separate out my devices into the networks best suited for them to make sure that routing speeds aren't negatively affected by a few older devices. This is made very easy through the highly customizable and very accessible router interface, which lets you be as technical or simple as your skill level requires. Some of my favorite features here include a prioritization system which lets rank the three most important devices on your network in terms of bandwidth priority, which is great if you've got a network under heavy load from a dozen bandwidth hungry devices but really just want to watch Netflix, and the very clever feature which gives you a dimmer switch for the onboard lights for the router, even letting you turn them off entirely! Were I still living in a place where my router was located in my bedroom this might have almost been a deciding factor alone in choosing this router.
The MuMIMO feature, of course, is a big selling point. I'm sorry to say I can't quite say for sure if it's all that it's made out to be based solely on my tests. Things were improved, yes, but not so much so that I can rule out the possibility that I'm just seeing the results of the higher bandwidth capacity. I give this feature a cautious thumbs up for now. It's probably not going to blow your mind on its own, but it certainly won't make your performance worse with multiple devices.
There are really only a few nitpicks I can offer. While the case design is improved, there's still some niggling issues I noticed. First is the antennas. Like the rest of the router they're big, solid, and serviceable. But maybe a little too solid. There are pivot points allowing you to adjust the angle of the antennas for the best reception - but the resistance on them is pretty high. Higher, in fact, than the resistance of the screw holding them in their socket. The right antenna kept popping off on me when I was trying to make adjustments.
Second is that all of the link lights and status indicators are on the rear panel of the router, making them pretty much impossible to see. I understand this was probably to cut down on light pollution, but if you're already adding a dimmer switch, why not put them somewhere where they'll be visible without having to lift up the router?
And finally, there is the size issue. I don't think I've seen much in the way of small AC routers, and I think this is going to cause a lot of people some annoyance as we've all gotten used to being able to hide these things out of the way. There's really no hiding this thing. It's about the size of a lower end commercial grade access point. The performance you get in terms of speed over 802.11N is probably worth it in my view, but if you're looking for something you can hide behind a houseplant and don't have a lot of in-network traffic, you might want to stick with the N standard for now and wait for the AC tech to get a bit more mature.
Second is that all of the link lights and status indicators are on the rear panel of the router, making them pretty much impossible to see. I understand this was probably to cut down on light pollution, but if you're already adding a dimmer switch, why not put them somewhere where they'll be visible without having to lift up the router?
And finally, there is the size issue. I don't think I've seen much in the way of small AC routers, and I think this is going to cause a lot of people some annoyance as we've all gotten used to being able to hide these things out of the way. There's really no hiding this thing. It's about the size of a lower end commercial grade access point. The performance you get in terms of speed over 802.11N is probably worth it in my view, but if you're looking for something you can hide behind a houseplant and don't have a lot of in-network traffic, you might want to stick with the N standard for now and wait for the AC tech to get a bit more mature.
My Best Buy number: 2187428738
What's great about it: Accessible but still customizable, Great speeds, great range, decent price, light controls, USB 3.0 port
What's not so great: Larger than most routers, Antenna attachment points are too stiff,
I would recommend this to a friend!
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Explore realistic 3D audio with sound precisely projected from above, in front, behind and to the side of you with the latest acoustic technologies.
I am interested in this product to go with a new Samsung - 50" Class QN90A Neo QLED 4K UHD Smart Tizen TV however the TV is going to be on a swivel bracket from the wall. Is there any way to attached the sound-bar to the bottom of the TV?
Yes. It's got a pretty standard wall mount system, and there are VESA compatible brackets you can get to let you attach it to the TV instead. That said it does need a bit of clearance between the soundbar and the bottom of the TV set to make sure you don't block the upward firing speakers at all and the case is pretty deep compared to most sound bars, so you might want to keep in mind that it's not likely to be a very clean looking setup compared to some other options that are available.
3 years, 2 months ago
by
Batlacit
Explore realistic 3D audio with sound precisely projected from above, in front, behind and to the side of you with the latest acoustic technologies.
Do you have to use the rear speakers when purchasing this item, and will it effect the system with the rear speakers Not in use
The rear speakers are completely optional. If you don't pair anything with them, it just reports itself as a 3.1.2 channel soundbar.
3 years, 2 months ago
by
Batlacit
Unleash the power of the Samsung 980 PRO PCIe 4.0 NVMe Gen4 SSD for next-level computing. 980 PRO delivers 2x the data transfer rate of PCIe 3.0, while maintaining compatibility with PCIe 3.0.¹ ¹The NVM Express® design mark is a registered trademark of NVM Express, Inc.* Results are based on a comparison with Samsung PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSDs and SATA SSDs. PS5 compatible with heatsink as recommended by Sony; heatsink sold separately.
How about adding the endurance specification to your descriptions?
Endurance is rated at 1200tbw for the 2tb model, 600 for the 1tb, and 300 for the 500gb. All of them are warrantied for 5 years.
3 years, 3 months ago
by
Batlacit
Unleash the power of the Samsung 980 PRO PCIe 4.0 NVMe Gen4 SSD for next-level computing. 980 PRO delivers 2x the data transfer rate of PCIe 3.0, while maintaining compatibility with PCIe 3.0.¹ ¹The NVM Express® design mark is a registered trademark of NVM Express, Inc.* Results are based on a comparison with Samsung PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSDs and SATA SSDs. PS5 compatible with heatsink as recommended by Sony; heatsink sold separately.
Has anyone noticed it being hot? Not quite sure if it would be ok for my laptop.
Operating temps never even hit 70°c in the ASUS gaming ultrabook I tried it in, and that's not exactly a cool machine to begin with. I think it'd do fine in most laptops provided they have decent cooling, particularly since there's some onboard thermal management to help keep it from burning itself out.
3 years, 3 months ago
by
Batlacit
BISSELL SpinWave wet and dry robotic vacuum provides two ways to clean in a single revolutionary robot. The two tank system actively mops or powerfully vacuums with smart, structured cleaning paths. Use it in dry vacuuming mode to collect pet hair, dirt and other debris on carpet, area rugs and hard floors. When used in wet mopping mode, the mop pads and BISSELL cleaning solution work together to scrub floors clean. And, with the Soft Surface Avoidance Sensor, there's no need to worry about the robot going up on area rugs or carpets when in wet mopping mode. Plus, this product doesn't just clean up after pets, it helps save them, too. BISSELL proudly supports BISSELL Pet Foundation and its mission to help save homeless pets. When you buy a BISSELL product, you help save pets, too. We're proud to design products that help make pet messes, odors and pet homelessness disappear.
Hi, does this cleaner spray water and mop the floor?
It's not spraying water so much as it's excreting it, but yes. It's got one of the most effective mopping systems I've tried in a robot.
3 years, 5 months ago
by
Batlacit
BISSELL SpinWave wet and dry robotic vacuum provides two ways to clean in a single revolutionary robot. The two tank system actively mops or powerfully vacuums with smart, structured cleaning paths. Use it in dry vacuuming mode to collect pet hair, dirt and other debris on carpet, area rugs and hard floors. When used in wet mopping mode, the mop pads and BISSELL cleaning solution work together to scrub floors clean. And, with the Soft Surface Avoidance Sensor, there's no need to worry about the robot going up on area rugs or carpets when in wet mopping mode. Plus, this product doesn't just clean up after pets, it helps save them, too. BISSELL proudly supports BISSELL Pet Foundation and its mission to help save homeless pets. When you buy a BISSELL product, you help save pets, too. We're proud to design products that help make pet messes, odors and pet homelessness disappear.
Can you make a map for the robot in the app?
No. The robot really doesn't seem to have any awareness of the geometry of a room, it just follows a set pattern from its starting point until it hits something. It's less random than the old bumper vacuums which means it gets further on a charge, but it's also easier for it to miss spots.
3 years, 5 months ago
by
Batlacit
BISSELL SpinWave wet and dry robotic vacuum provides two ways to clean in a single revolutionary robot. The two tank system actively mops or powerfully vacuums with smart, structured cleaning paths. Use it in dry vacuuming mode to collect pet hair, dirt and other debris on carpet, area rugs and hard floors. When used in wet mopping mode, the mop pads and BISSELL cleaning solution work together to scrub floors clean. And, with the Soft Surface Avoidance Sensor, there's no need to worry about the robot going up on area rugs or carpets when in wet mopping mode. Plus, this product doesn't just clean up after pets, it helps save them, too. BISSELL proudly supports BISSELL Pet Foundation and its mission to help save homeless pets. When you buy a BISSELL product, you help save pets, too. We're proud to design products that help make pet messes, odors and pet homelessness disappear.
Does this Vacuum and mop at the same time? Or first vacuum, then mop?
In mop mode it can do a little vacuuming as the vacuum head still runs and there's a tiny (unfiltered) dustbin to hold any debris it sweeps up, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to do much to trap dust. And it can't do both carpet and hard flooring in one go, you need to swap out a module for the different floor types.
3 years, 5 months ago
by
Batlacit
BISSELL SpinWave wet and dry robotic vacuum provides two ways to clean in a single revolutionary robot. The two tank system actively mops or powerfully vacuums with smart, structured cleaning paths. Use it in dry vacuuming mode to collect pet hair, dirt and other debris on carpet, area rugs and hard floors. When used in wet mopping mode, the mop pads and BISSELL cleaning solution work together to scrub floors clean. And, with the Soft Surface Avoidance Sensor, there's no need to worry about the robot going up on area rugs or carpets when in wet mopping mode. Plus, this product doesn't just clean up after pets, it helps save them, too. BISSELL proudly supports BISSELL Pet Foundation and its mission to help save homeless pets. When you buy a BISSELL product, you help save pets, too. We're proud to design products that help make pet messes, odors and pet homelessness disappear.
I have tile and carpet throughout home. Will it mop tile then switch to vacuum carpet? Or do I have to tell it what to do? .
It can't do both simultaneously. You need to switch modes by swapping out the standard dustbin for a motorized mophead containing a tank for cleaning fluid. In this mode it will not run if it detects that it's on carpeting.
3 years, 5 months ago
by
Batlacit
Fly through the sky in ways that seem impossible. We never lost our passion for flying, and with DJI FPV, those passions have turned imagination into reality. With this immersive and intuitive aerial platform, get ready to go into the beyond. Sleek and aerodynamic, the DJI FPV aircraft delivers powerful propulsion, battery life, and wind resistance, making this system as capable as it is visually stunning.
Will this drone and all it's features work well with my Samsung Galaxy Note 10+?
The DJI Fly app will run fine on a Note 10, but it should be noted that it doesn't actually need to use the phone for nearly as much as some other drones DJI has released. Most of the vital functions are handled in the included FPV goggles.
3 years, 6 months ago
by
Batlacit
Fly through the sky in ways that seem impossible. We never lost our passion for flying, and with DJI FPV, those passions have turned imagination into reality. With this immersive and intuitive aerial platform, get ready to go into the beyond. Sleek and aerodynamic, the DJI FPV aircraft delivers powerful propulsion, battery life, and wind resistance, making this system as capable as it is visually stunning.
Does this fly more combo come with more than 1 battery?
This SKU is not for the fly more combo, and it does not come with extra batteries. The one that's included runs for about 15-20 minutes in N mode, and requires a little less than an hour to charge.
3 years, 6 months ago
by
Batlacit