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My Expectations Were Low but… OMG D:

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Have you ever wanted to show your team spirit by buying team-branded tech merch? Well you might want to re-think your game plan, because we caught sports leagues selling trash-tier AliExpress tech at unbelievable mark-ups.

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MUSIC CREDIT
—————————————————
Intro: Laszlo – Supernova
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iTunes Download Link:
Artist Link:

Outro: Approaching Nirvana – Sugar High
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Listen on Spotify:
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Intro animation by MBarek Abdelwassaa
Monitor And Keyboard by vadimmihalkevich / CC BY 4.0
Mechanical RGB Keyboard by BigBrotherECE / CC BY 4.0
Mouse Gamer free Model By Oscar Creativo / CC BY 4.0

CHAPTERS
—————————————————
0:00 Intro
1:06 Kansas City Headphones
4:00 Bengals Mouse Pad
4:35 Raptors Keyboard/Mouse
5:56 Hilarious.
6:53 Tearing apart the mousepad
7:40 Who's running this Store?
8:35 The worst earphones ever
9:09 what the Puck
9:54 Fanatics seems sketchy
11:27 THESE ARE FOR KIDS
12:27 it gets worse
12:52 The company who 'makes' these
14:15 a fricken LAVA LAMP?!
14:43 Better Alternatives
15:28 Rapid-fire of more fun stuff
16:45 My opinion on these practices
18:41 Outro

admin2

58 Comments

Sean

It’s infuriating to see these instant E-Waste products are getting sold for these prices. Just buy a good product that lasts and slap a team sticker on it.

Reply
    DaysofKnight

    @Blue Bandit And that’s the only one you respond to, an insult from Yesca. Lol. Speaks volumes, my guy. That’s Flerfer vibes

    Reply
    hiddendrifts

    @Blue Bandit >which creates more ewaste< he can't review an item without buying it first, and at that point it's going to be ewaste one way or another. why aren't you more upset by the people who make it a product to begin with rather than the people calling it out?

    Reply
    drandersjiang

    Hand egg fans are not known to be smart.

    Reply
    borja922

    @TwenOalley It is a waste of resources and energy but they are profitable so they dont care at all. The good old capitalism at its finest

    Reply
    Asain

    @Tripp’s Tech Journey
    Its called reviewing, bruh

    Reply
HUH?

At this point you should know basically any tech device that has a non tech related brand slapped on WILL be bad or at best a bad option 85% of the time 💀

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    Michel Smith

    I loved my rocketfish computer case from like 2007, since OEM was Lian Li and I got it for $50 when Lian Li counterpart was $200. So, ya, sometimes it happens… but not as often as before.

    Reply
    T. N.

    HUH? So you think that they’re THAT good of and option?

    Reply
    Michel Smith

    @T. N. rocketfish in 2008 for $50, was yes… full tower and quality built.

    Reply
    Xela Ander

    ​@Diesunddas Apple gets a pass because they dragged us kicking and screaming into using compact disks over floppy drives, USB 2.0, and WiFi on laptops. Not to forget that heir “stolen” GUI would become the basis for the way we interact with the modern PC. And they did push computational photography and made accessible (price wise) laptops in the beginning. These days not so much (M1 is a beast in a lot of ways and less so in others but still) but they are definitely by no means as crappy as these other OEMs

    Reply
    Kolzi

    @PannonCannon Yeah if I was making a high quality headphones pairing with Sennheiser or something, you’d better believe the promotion would be “NFL x Sennheiser” or whatever.

    Reply
LBGST zockt

The fact that bluetooth earbuds can be sold for $2 is downright insane.

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    maegnificant

    ​@Sipri M they are not “losing” dollars. Most people just wouldn’t buy at these artificially inflated prices. The US is not the entire World.

    Reply
    Jeez001

    @brain slag unf no they negotiated an agreement in the UN where US can set the rate but still it’s quite low and USPS doesn’t see any $$ from it.

    Reply
    PaintedAnarchy

    Yet at what cost. QC obviously was the first thing to go. 😂

    Reply
    DigitalToast

    There’s no bad products, only bad prices! I’ve bought a few of those $2 headphones before and they work great if you’re looking for disposable headphones!

    Reply
    PaintedAnarchy

    @Leon Certainly they are marked up, but that’s because the customer is paying for the billions in Research and development that keeps them on the cutting edge of industry and technology. Technology many of us have access to because of the developments they make, and manufacturing processes their billions have continually made cheaper. You’re not just paying for the product.
    Also you can get a rough Idea for how much of a markup their products are. Apple for example has a 20-30% profit margin. So that is how much of their income isnt eaten up by expenses. So the lowest they could sell their products on average and still stay in business is 15-25% less. Though could maintain a premium brand at those rates? Not likely.

    Reply
Christopher Smith

I’m a pretty huge sports fan, as well as an equally big tech fan, so this video was right up my alley. Fanatics is a complete disaster. The worst part is that their top executives have relationships with some of the biggest sports media personalities, and in exchange for mentioning the company repeatedly and in a positive light on a sports show, these personalities get whatever gear they want, whenever they might want it. It’s a great deal for Fanatics and, frankly, absolutely ridiculous for some of these media people to give them advertising at such low cost (like you said, the bill of materials for these items is so, so low, and the markup so high that Fanatics would need to spend 100 times on advertising compared to what it costs them to send free gear to these people in exchange for them repeatedly mentioning the company name). You would think at such high cost, you are getting a high quality item from something like the NFL shop. But the quality of their stuff is extremely poor. I made the mistake once of buying a $500 “leather” jacket of my favorite team. I’ve bought better quality “leather” and clothing at the most inexpensive street shop in (South) Korea.

Reply
    Agi

    @Nachoz Man > The worst part is that their top executives have relationships with some of the biggest sports media personalities

    Imagine my shock when I checked the early life section of wikipedia of the top executives.

    Reply
    KyriosDST

    i would just take dirty money for the advertisement, you want to give me some of that crap? nooo thank you.

    Reply
    First Name

    If their consumer base enjoys getting fleeced well… Enjoy lol

    Reply
rootbear75

Seeing tech in other categories from your guys perspective has always been interesting

Since Linus rides motorcycles, I would love to see tech for bike riders and/or what Linus uses. There’s a lot of techy comm units out there, so I would love to see labs test audio quality of comm systems/speakers with certain helmets to see how good of an audio experience you could get…. Or techy aftermarket mods for bikes.

edit: or Collab with another motorcycle focused channel like Fortnine even

Reply
    PrograError

    how bout those with Bluetooth or even the AR ones…

    Reply
DctrGizmo

This is the first time I’ve ever seen a mousepad made out of actual cardboard 🤣

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    PrograError

    that’s branded ghetto style.

    Reply
    Lalo

    $60 for this piece of crap. I want to shake the hand of whoever thought of changing those prices; the margins must be insane

    Reply
    Murkje

    ​@Lalo I have a 60 cent mousepad that’s legitimately better than this piece of crap

    Reply
    vava85

    You clearly never had a lan party in the 90s, hahaha

    Reply
BraveryTheBrony

I always love these in depth review style videos from you guys. Mainly so those who know nothing about tech can get a good idea on what not to spend their money on.

Reply
Alter

I’m ashamed to say the company I work for is apart of the deal that created the Tommy Hilfiger gaming kit. The fact it performs better than many of these products makes me feel a little less shame 😂

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    Jakub

    thats deep man.

    Reply
    Jürgen Erhard

    “apart from”, not “apart of”…

    Reply
    hiddendrifts

    @Jürgen Erhard “apart from” makes no sense and changes the meaning completely. they meant “a part of”

    Reply
    Oliver Vaa

    @Jürgen Erhard ive never seen someone correct someone else while being so wrong

    Reply
    blaster915

    Glad folks watch this who are called out.

    Reply
a_chr

At 16:24, I straight up laughed out loud at the audacity. Imagine *advertising* 1.5 hours of continuous playing time.

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    GripGuy

    1.5 hours of playtime and 1.5 hours of charging time. That’s a 1:1 ratio of charging to playtime

    Reply
    A Z

    i blinked, and paused just to reread that low play time was real…..e_e

    Reply
    Tanmaya Biswal

    but hey, they didnt lie. that counts for something right? unless they lied.

    Reply
    Hop-Skip-Ouch

    @GripGuy They mastered efficiency. So maybe they should sell that technology.

    Reply
Commodorefan64

As someone who is a lifelong tech head, and sports fan, that has family who are sports fans, I thank you for calling this kind of BS out, as I’ve had to warn my family from picking up this kind of crap in the past as gifts, and tell them just because it’s “officially licensed” does not mean it’s quality of any kind whatsoever!!

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    KontrolStyle

    hell ya C64 ftw

    Reply
    Khola

    Amiiiiiiiigaaaaaaaaa

    (I love all commodore!)

    Reply
Borhork

Your water bottle is a prime example of an excellent balance of quality versus price. I could go into Walmart and get an insulated water bottle for maybe like $5 less, but I’m really not saving that much money for the same function, and that one is bland and uninteresting. At least I get a cool design printed on and print it on really well. I got my first one about a year ago and while I did break the lid, the printing has held up very well despite daily use. I got the April fools one in and I’m very happy with it. It replaced my old one as my daily driver now

Reply
    Kolzi

    I’m definitely keen on getting the April fools one at some point. That and a desk mat (maybe 2) look appealing. Screwdriver would be nice eventually too. And if they ever release those magnetic cable managers, I’m sure I’ll grab a couple.

    Reply
T33K3SS3LCH3N

It is SO FRUSTRATING, because I am 100% sure that popular teams could easily collab with actual experts in the field and design really good gear that would actually sell and still be highly profitable…

It’s not that hard to find a fan who could design a good key cap set or a nice headphone based on models or components that are actually good…

Reply
    GrockleTD

    or even just mediocre products would be fine honestly

    Reply
Vinez

man why is Linus still getting better after all these years ?!?!?!

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ThePizzaDevourer

As a big tech nerd and sports fan, thank you for calling attention to this mess. The worst thing is that even if the team cares enough to want to produce good products, they have no control over what the NFL does with their image.

Reply
joekenorer

“The short answer is no. The long answer is noooooooo.” Best joke of the week. I also like that it prefaces the entire episode because there are no spoilers for the subject.

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    Alexandre Gonçalves

    Laughed soo hard on that one ahaha

    Reply
    Thurgosh

    It would be but it really wasn’t a joke. Unfortunately, it was advice.

    Reply
Tronmaker

The newer steel series headset now even have magnetic plates on the cups. With those you could swap them out for whichever one of your favorite teams is playing that week

Reply
Benefits

When I saw the video thumbnail I thought this was going to be a video reviewing the headsets and communication equipment that sports teams use to communicate. Like NFL coaches talking to their offensive line coaching team through the headsets they always wear. Or the communication system in quarterback’s helmets. I think a LTT video on that stuff would be super interesting.

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BunnLilah

Really awesome video! I love that you guys go above and beyond. This could have been a shorter video just laughing at the crap products, but the way you went into full investigative mode on the companies behind this junk is interesting and really informative.

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Zuski

Thank you for covering this!! Anyone who has ever bought or has looked into buying sports merchandise only to run into Fanatics is thankful. They’re downright shady with high prices and terrible quality. And they essentially have a monopoly on a lot of licensed sports merchandise. Bigger names in these sports scenes need to bring more attention to this and shame these leagues publicly. It’s unbelievable organizations as big as the NHL and NFL have ever worked with a company of such low quality. Let alone for this many years and into the future.

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Adeel Fareed

It’s a testament to Linus’s expertise that he can identify a product is cheap by listening to the sound it makes when he drops it. Years of experience dropping stuff. 😅

Reply

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