So, I’ve been wanting one of these keyless/keypad types of locks for quite some time, but to be quite honest, most of the options out on the market are either not that well priced, or not that great looking, or both. The Amcrest one, however, is priced just right and has a stylish, minimalistic look to it that works almost perfectly for my door (read below to see why I say “almost”). I know this is a minor detail to some, but I love the font/typeface that’s used on the touchscreen as well. Yes, I’m a bit of a font nerd, so this kind of detail stands out to me.“Well, the looks are great,” you say, “but what about functionality and ease of use?” Let me just say, that it can’t get any easier to use once you have it installed properly. I am using mine for my music studio so that I can have an additional layer of security for the room while I’m out of the house. Previously, I just had a standard deadbolt, which performed that job, but the issue was that I’d have to hide the key away every time I wanted to lock the room up, and that was a bit of a nuisance. And if someone else wanted to access the room when I wasn’t around, I’d have to either make a key for them or tell them where I hid my key. With this Amcrest keyless lock, that eliminates the physical key issue - I can just make several user codes, and everyone has easy access. Also, I love the fact that I can just press a few buttons to lock/unlock the door. Oh, I almost forgot about the Autolock feature: whaat?? This is so great! Not that it takes much effort to just click the lock button when you’re closing the door, but auto-lock still gives this Amcrest product much added value.I really can’t express how much of a joy it is to not have to deal with a key for this room!!! I’m seriously considering adding a few more of these around the house (along with a few more Amcrest security cameras) after we do our house renovation later this year. Honestly, their products are fantastic!Ok, so I also want to lightly touch upon the installation process. If you already have a door with a deadbolt on it, then taking that out to replace it with the Amcrest one should be fairly straightforward - take the old one out, make some minor adjustments to the new one for installation, and you’re done. What do I mean about the minor adjustments? Well, your old deadbolt fittings might be slightly different; in my case, I had to use a chisel to make a deeper inlay for the deadbolt latch plate so it was flush with the door (the previous deadbolt latch plate was not set in as deep). This took me about 20 minutes to do, as I was trying to be careful to not chisel too much into the door. That said, it’s worth noting that if you’re not handy with things like a chisel, either find someone who is or just find some scrap wood to practice on. It’s not hard at all, but if you haven’t done something like this before, practice a bit first. The rest of the install process was super simple once the deadbolt was installed. The instructions for the installation process are extremely easy to follow, so PLEASE READ THEM FIRST - doing so will make this part so much easier for you.Other musings:- Initially, I was a bit bummed that I couldn’t unlock this keypad from my phone, but then I realized that I kind of prefer that there aren’t security vulnerabilities attached to it with having Bluetooth or wifi access to the lock. I actually don’t want a wifi/bluetooth/“smart” unlock feature now. The code-only method works perfectly for me. IMO, it’s much more secure.- Earlier I mentioned that the look of the door lock was "almost" perfect. Let me explain why I said that: while I do like the dark bronze color of the keypad, and it does compliment the color of my dark charcoal-colored door, it doesn’t compliment my nickel-colored door handle. Again, a minor detail that most people don’t care about, but it would be nice if in the future Amcrest could offer a nickel color option or just pure black. I suppose for now I’ll just look for a new door handle to match. Or I'll just learn to live with the color. I know - this is such a non-issue, and I'm just being overly particular. LOL- The keypad is made of a sturdy metal material, and I love that. It would be nice to see the back panel (on the other side of the door where the batteries are stored) to be made of similar material for the sake of durability and consistency.To wrap up, and I know I’ve written a lot already (congrats if you made it down this far), I love this thing. I will probably purchase a few more. It’s well priced, easy to install, and very easy to use. Color me impressed, Amcrest! … hmm, maybe that could be their new slogan: “Amcrest … color me impressed!”

After some research, I settled on getting the Quest 2 as a headset. The successor of the Oculus Go (which itself was born from Samsung dropping their support of the Gear VR as far as I know), The Quest line is a standalone headset - that is, you can just put it on, turn on the unit, and go. This is opposite of the other type of headset you'll hear referenced - a "PCVR" headset, which requires a computer to use - and happens to be the type of headset I wanted.But first, some more information on the headset - the Quest 2 has some impressive specs for it's price point. Firstly, it has a 100 degree field of view. A bit more restrictive than some other headsets, but from my experience, it works. You can set one of three positions for spacing the eyepieces apart (push them together or pull them towards the edges of the headsets with your finger) - this depends on each individual's face structure. The default FPS (refresh rate) is 72Hz, but you can set experimental refresh rates - just as a heads up - it may not be compatible with some software, and your battery life will absolutely decrease a bit quicker, but that's the tradeoff. Lastly, unlike higher end units that use separate devices to track the unit, this headset - which lends itself to being standalone - has what is known as inside-out tracking. This means the device itself uses the small cameras scattered around the headset to determine where you are, and how you are facing. The only drawback is there should be sufficient lighting. The good news, however is that these cameras use IR light - similar to how the Wiimotes used two infared lights to track movement - so if you purchase an inexpensive IR flood light, you can easily use this headset in a dark room. As for why you might want to do this.... keep reading.Before I get onto my experience, let me also say this: the device, despite being standalone, supports being linked to your PC via a Wi-Fi connection or with a USB C to USB A cable, giving you a PCVR experience. This is a really good perk, because not only is this cheaper than the Oculus Rift S, which is a PCVR headset, but it just so happens that Meta backed out of the PCVR space - so it's not like you can just buy the Rift S (and if you did, it's not like you can get support if something breaks - something that apparently was common with that headset), and it's oculink cable is incredibly expensive. Once connected, the headset loads the Rift VR environment so you'll enjoy an experience not unlike the Rift S.Here's my experience with the headset:It's really solid. Many complain about the Facebook link, but it is what it is. If you're dead set against anything Facebook or Meta, don't use it. If you're heavily anti-data selling, don't use it.If you couldn't care less because you barely use facebook, or if you already have a facebook account? There's no real reason for you to not buy this if you want an affordable (and high quality) VR experience. Is there better? Absolutely. Is there anything as cheap while providing an equivalent (or even mostly equivalent) experience? No.Standalone mode runs a modified Android OS (then again, so does most anything these days that isn't a PC or Apple). It works great. It's butter smooth, and haven't had a single issue. Games that are made for this mode might be a bit lower quality than a PCVR title, but you aren't using a high end GPU - you're using an android device. Most games look good no matter what, and the loss in quality is probably not going to be noticeable unless you're eagle-eyed, or you just have a tendency to notice these things whether or not you want to (like I am... I hate it lol).Once you connect to the PC, the experience is mostly good. As you're no longer on a closed system, you're at the will of your PC. Is it an older system like mine, with a decent GPU, and a many-years old Intel Haswell i5 CPU? You're going to have an experience that reflects that. Sometimes I get stuttering. Sometimes not. I haven't tested Wifi streaming, but quality is spotty so I won't be testing it, just using the usb cable. I've only used one (already reviewed it), but your mileage might vary depending on the quality of said cable. Generally, it worked fine for me. Any apps for the standalone headset that I've used (Beat Saber, VRChat primarily) definitely look a bit better on PC, as one would expect - those titles need to be optimized for the weaker hardware if you aren't running off of a PC).The controllers are really good, and are decent at detecting when you are touching a button or the thumbstick, and detecting when you actually press them. The experience has been great. They aren't Valve Index controllers, but this isn't a $1000+ headset. This is a $300-$400 headset (depending on your bundle/capacity).Regarding my mention of how the device tracks movement/direction and the like... the reason I like using the headset in the dark, is due to the physical construction of the headset. To accommodate for any head shape, there are some gaps where light can come in. Depending on where you look within the headset, you can see outside of it - a bit. It's honestly minimal and I often don't notice it, but times when my brain wants to focus on any little detail, turning off the lights allow me to only see what's in front of me - think of it as you're watching a movie at home with the lights out, but there's a light coming from a room nearby - sometimes you can ignore it, but it might distract you - this is what I deal with at times. To sovle this, an IR flood light lets the camera still track the room without an issue, while you can enjoy the dark around you.All in all, if you're anti-Meta/anti-Facebook, this will be a terrible device and it'll be the worst thing ever. If you can look at the device on it's own or don't care about being linked to Facebook, it's a rock solid VR headset, especially for it's price. I'd love to see this broken out of the integration with Facebook, but it wasn't a deal breaker for me.

This tiny light is almost perfect. The newer model's diffuser layer produces a very smooth medium-wide wash of white light with good CRI (I haven't confirmed the spectrum, but it seems to render color well so far). The little cold shoe attaches easily and locks / unlocks with one finger. The buttons that control brightness and display battery level are an unusual design, but easy to figure out after a few minutes experimenting with them -- and they make good use of three widely spaced buttons that are workable with gloves on. [UPDATE: The CRI or color accuracy of this white light is surprisingly good. Much purer white than a lot of LED light bulbs and LED tube lights.]Run-time on one charge isn't really under the control of Ulanzi -- that much light from that many LEDs with that size Lithium battery is more or less predefined by the components, but the battery certainly has enough capacity to shoot for a length of time that fits well with the GoPro's own shooting time. The highest settings run for hours. With other cameras, of course, one might need to run the light with an external power source, and the unit does operate when plugged in. (I haven't confirmed whether it charges at the same time.)There's a cold shoe on the other 3 sides of the unit, so you can chain them together, but there's no coordination between them. I suppose a cool enhancement would be a daisy-chain USB-C cable and firmware that would allow any one unit to control the settings on the others, but I'm not even sure I'd use such a thing. There's a 1/4" x 20 tpi metal tripod socket inside the cold shoe, which is extremely handy for clamping and tripod mounts when you don't want the light on the camera, but this light is a perfect match for the GoPro, and is almost exactly the same size.The only downside is that the built-in battery must, of course, be charged after 2-4 hours of use, which could be a problem. But the alternative -- replaceable batteries -- would significantly increase the cost, and the very low price of this light, compared to most of the competition, is one of its main selling points. I'm very impressed, and it's becoming clear that Ulanzi is positioning itself to be a leader in clever, affordable, quality photo accessories. They even have a replacement flip-down GoPro replacement mount for the Hero9 that incorporates a threaded tripod mount between the two flip-down GoPro mounts.UPDATE:Since writing this review, I've used the ULANZI VL49 quite a bit. The run-time is rather amazing -- several hours at less than full brightness, and using it for Zoom lighting I never need anything close to full brightness, so it's going 4-5 hours without running out. But the main thing I want to point out is that the brightness settings are a little too coarse for my needs. As great as this light is for general use with GoPros and webcams, in my Zoom setup I wish I could dial it down to be LESS bright than level 1.Interestingly, the solution to this is the OTHER version of this -- the ULANZI VL49 RGB, which I also bought and reviewed. The RGB version is just as bright, but adjusts in 1% increments, so I can dial in much dimmer settings, or anything up to (at 3 feet) blindingly bright. Of course the RGB version is also a color unit, with 2 modes -- color temperature, from warm white to mid-day sunlight, and RGB, with many combinations of R, G, and B in varying proportions. This gives a wide range of colored light, but the available color mixes are not smoothly continuous from R through G to B -- there are steps. So you get lots of color choices, but not a full color spectrum of intermediate colors. Since RGB mode is generally for weirdness, or very subtle color washes, that's not really a problem, especially in such an inexpensive unit. The ULANZI VL49 RGB is just under $10 more expensive, but still seems like a terrific value. I've ordered a second one for Zooming, and the monochrome will make a nice green-screen illuminator.

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 I have this monitor as well as the infant optics DXR-8 and I can tell you that both of them are great monitors with pros and cons to each. If they combined them into one monitor it would be amazing. Overall we like the Eufy the best and let me tell you why.1) Picture quality is better. Sharper than the infant optics2) larger screen where you don’t have to move the monitor side to side if your baby rolls around and is out of camera view3) night vision is better and has a grey tint vs infant optics has a blue tint (at night even as dim as the infant optics goes it’s still so bright like a night light in my room when I’m trying to sleep) eufys can go dimmer and the light doesn’t bother me when I sleep4) it has a clock !! Having the time on the monitor is a necessity to know when your baby actually falls asleep or what time they wake up in the middle of the night withought having to get your phone. Infant optics doesn’t have the time5) I like the buttons better - they’re just easier to navigate in the dark than the infant optics mostly because they’re separate entities unlike the infant optics where they’re all conjoined next to each other6) VOX setting where you can put the monitor into sleep mode and depending on the noise level you see the monitor on will alert you and put the screen back on if your baby makes noises6) range is definitely better on eufy than infant optics . I have a split ranch and so many times infant optics tells me I’m out of range and I’m literally 100 ft away just in a diff room. They both do come with antennas but I’m not sure how helpful those actually areCons of eufy:1) they really should have a protective case that you could put on it to give it durability .. I mean I’ve dropped it a few times by accident and it’s still good but makes me nervous2) I feel like the volume buttons on top are backwards so that I had to get used to3) other reviews will talk about how in accurate the temp setting is and at first yes it was so inaccurate and kept saying the room was a lot hotter than it actually was but customer service was a gem and helped remedy that situation and now it’s perfect and actually the infant optics temp sensor is about 2 degrees off4) it doesn’t go bright enough so if your outside it’s very difficult to seeThey are both similar in daylight quality of the monitors, offer lullaby, night mode where you can shut the monitor off, non WiFi and a timer which we don’t use and battery life seems to be the samePros of infant optics1) seems more durable - the eufy feels like if I drop it too many times it might break . Equivalent to dropping an iPhone where you wince one eye as you pick it up to see if your screen is broken where infant optics feels like a Nokia2) it has a full 360 view so you can move the toggle left and right and literally go to any part of the room you want to look at even if it’s behind you (eufy can only go so far left and so far right but again the screen is huge)3) when you shut the monitor off for sleep mode the sound is still on so you can still hear if your baby cries (eufys sound shuts off when in sleep mode but offers a VOX setting where if you set the sound level to a certain setting the monitor will come on and alert you that your baby is awake)In a nutshell. We like eufy better . Their customer service is also outstanding although I’ve never dealt with infant optics customer service so they may be great too idk. Basically if Eufy made a case for their monitor I’d feel like it would protect it better and if they made it be able to pan 360 and make the screen brighter it would be the ultimate monitorTake a look at my video that I added to compare (the cameras are set up directly next to each other and the room is completely blacked out)I hope this review helps make your decisions !