 Hello, and welcome to Circle Breaker Live, the Verge's gadget show on YouTube. That's the platform you're watching. This is the show you're watching. You found it. I'm Neelai, that's Paul Miller. Hello. And we've, Sara Dietschy's here. What's up guys? We actually have a huge show today. Sara's gonna talk to us about vlogging gear. You just buy one of these cameras, instantly you're a successful vlogger. That's amazing. Our senior feature director, Michael Zlenko, is gonna talk to us about minimalist cell phones, which is a wild trend that's going on. Ashley's gonna join us. We're talking about more smart gardening tech. Spring, regardless of the snow in New York. Doesn't feel like spring right now. I'm trying to usher in that I'm gonna wear short sleeves. Yeah. Optimism. It's gonna happen. You're gonna grow some basil today, Paul. And then Jake is gonna do Ask Circle Breaker. You got a ton of questions about the new iPads. We're gonna answer all of those. But let's start. Sara, you're here. Welcome to Circle Breaker. Thank you, thank you. It's great to have you. It's great to be here. Like a real YouTuber. I'm real. I know, I don't just live in YouTube. Not one of these like fake YouTubers. I know, right? We're talking gear. We're talking gear. So much camera. So this is a true thing. Every like teenager I know wants to grow up to be a vlogger. It's a fact. I would like to grow up to be a vlogger. Me, that'd also be. It's writings for the birds. And I feel like it's pretty easy to start. You just start with a phone. A lot of people are doing that. Super easy. It's like one of my favorite things about technology. It's one of the things about your channel. Accessible. Right, like technology helps you make things. That's great. But everybody wants to know what to upgrade, what gear to get. So what's the first upgrade? If you are an aspiring vlogger, you've made some videos with your phone, you're feeling it, what's the first step? So I would say go for the point and shoot. So this is gonna be in the price range of 700 to 1000. The one that I use all the time, I started with the Mark III, I now have the Mark V, is the Sony RX100. So this is a point and shoot. You can fit it in your pocket. But it packs a lot of punch. So the price tag is $1000, but you can shoot slow motion. So you can actually go up to 960 frames per second in high frame rate mode. What do you shoot in 900? So you can get that slow-mo New York City people walking vibes, you know. But I would say it doesn't look the best. So you need to stay in about 240 or 480 to get footage that is usable. Of course, you need a lot of light. But you can shoot at 60 frames per second, 120 frames per second, and full 1080. That high frame rate mode, it does scale it up. But this can also shoot 4K. So of course, you're getting 4K in phones now. But you have to think about the sensor size. So this is a one-inch sensor, which you're not gonna get in any phones out there. So this would get better low light than a phone? Yeah, so when you think Sony, think low light. So a similar point and shoot that has the same swivel screen, it's great for vlogging, would be a Canon G7X. But that price is probably like $300 cheaper than an RX100 just because it's not as good in low light. It doesn't have that great of slow motion. So the Sony RX100 is kind of, you get everything in this tiny compact. There's one thing you don't get. But there's one thing. So when it comes to vlogging, you want good audio? Yes. You can't plug in a microphone into this. So there's no audio, Jack. There's no hot shoe or anything on this. There's nothing, no. But it is cool because you have a flash. And then you also have a viewfinder. So you have an electronic viewfinder. But yeah, so you do sacrifice a few things. But if you want that audio, Jack, you can go up to the next line of cameras, that A6000, A6500. So those are kind of in that beginner next step. Do you think Sony knew that vlogging, this camera came out a while ago, like 2012, 2013. Yeah, and they've been doing it, yeah, for a while. Yeah, they've released a new camera almost every single year from Mark I. Yeah. It's crazy. But do you think they knew that vlogging would be a trend when they designed this thing? Like you were telling earlier, if you're waiting for the Mark V, you gotta think they're gonna put an audio jack or something in the Mark V. And so, yeah, so I mean, this is the Mark V. Who knows when the Mark VI is gonna come out. But the audio jack thing, I do not think that they're gonna put a audio jack in the RX100, like ever. Really, too good? Exactly, because if they put an audio jack in the RX100, there would be no reason really to buy that like A6500 or to go that one step up. So what you're getting with that next step up is an audio jack, is interchangeable lenses, but it's just, it's those small things that will get you to upgrade to that next like $500 extra. And that is like the story of the camera industry, or like 5,000 models, and then it's like, which Venn diagram is featured. Yeah, and the confusing numbers, you know. But that's why we're here. Yeah, that's why you're here. I don't know, that's why you're here. All right, so that's the first step. And you maybe wanna think about an external microphone if you do that, too. What do you, there's like a software piece to this, too, right, you get off your phone, you no longer have Hero and iFoot, you no longer have iMovie. What software do you recommend people like start using? So usually it's in between two, Final Cut X, or Final Cut X, or Premiere Pro. So those are the big steps up. However, if you have a Mac, everyone has iMovie, I started an iMovie, there's nothing like shameful about iMovie. iMovie is confusing as hell, that's what shameful is. Okay, okay, so forget iMovie. It's funny you could use it. I like iMovie. I just don't, like, every time I use it, I think to myself, this is not teaching me how any other system is gonna work. Gotcha, yes, it's not going to translate well if you wanna go big. So you might as well go big or go home. Final Cut X, you buy it one time. So it's like one $200 fee, or $300. Premiere, you pay monthly, but you get that whole suite of products. You get Premiere, Photoshop, Lightroom, any of the products that Adobe makes, you get that for $50 a month. And so Premiere has a lot of things, and it has an ecosystem attached to Photoshop and things that I use that is really helpful. And Final Cut X, you have to think about the magnetic timeline, some of the things that are kind of just quirky about it, that it's going to be very weird if you know something before it. So if you're new, you wanna pay a one-time dollar amount. And it's faster if you have a Mac. And it's faster. So if you're on Apple, you're gonna export something that would take 15 minutes in Premiere on a Mac and like three minutes on Mac. Whereas with Premiere, you could buy a PC. And it will be like that. All right, we're not, no, no, no. A GPU. None of this, none of this. Okay, so first upgrade, point and shoot, maybe some editing software. Talk to us about the next upgrade. This is actually your rig, right? This is my rig. So it's bigger, right? So you have the Joby Gorilla Pod, which is kind of that tripod that all of these vloggers have. When I'm in my office and kind of doing more tech-related stuff, it gets to a point where it's like, let's just use a tripod. I mean, they're great. So this is my main setup. It's a Rode VideoMic Pro. This is the new version that if you see here, when I turn on my camera, the mic automatically turns on, which is very nice because previously, I would record a segment, forget to turn on my mic, and then lose all the audio, which is not good. So yeah, this is my main setup. I shoot in 24 frames per second. And then we were talking about earlier, this is a Verge exclusive, but something that I like about the Sony is you have a lot of picture profiles. So I shoot in the PP3 profile, which is basically just a flatter profile, but you get more contrast and saturation than in PP7. And what picture profiles are for people who are unaware is it's a flatter image that lends to a better editing experience when you're trying to add color, trying to color greater image to maybe a certain look that you want. This isn't like shooting raw or anything. No, no. So it's not a heavier process in your computer after, but it's basically saying you have a flatter image that you can then go and add saturation contrast at a lot to your will and make it look how you want to look. Do you color correct everything that you put on YouTube? I do, I do. Sometimes it's more heavy, sometimes it's lighter, but because I shoot with a little bit of a flatter profile, you have more diversity. The PP3. That PP3, you heard it here first, guys. I have to say, one, the chat loves that you're here. Oh, awesome. Christian says Peachy Fam in the house. Peachy Fam. And then there's just a full on Mac versus PC. Yeah. CPU versus Premiere. Fire, yeah. Or going on, one person says iMovie is a trash fire. So like, chat's doing great. So when you use this, just like show us like, okay, you're gonna film something today. Pick it up, what are your moves? Yeah, so it's basically- Show our garbage camera. Yes, oh, the dad, soccer dad camera. Don't wanna call it a dad camera. That's not true. It's true, you're gonna film your kids, right? So basically, the lens is pretty important. So this is a 16 to 35, it's a pretty wide lens. So that means when I turn it around myself, usually I have this Jobe, and I'm like, what's up guys, I'm a vlogger. This is happening. This is happening right now. Maybe this might be in a vlog of some sort. This is going to capture most of my surroundings without it being- Because you don't have a flip out screen or anything. Yeah, I don't, so you have to trust it, you know? And this is the thing with the Sony, is you can trust the autofocus system. I would say if you're looking for a camera with amazing autofocus, and that is number one priority, go with the Canon for sure. But Sony, it has good enough autofocus. So when it comes to a camera that maybe has more features and is more worth it in terms of specs, I would go with the GH5. Wow. Strong rack. Yes, but I- So it should be a little- Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so- This is a Panasonic GH5. Yeah, so these are the two I would put next to each other. So you have the Sony A7S II, and then you have the GH5. GH5 has a swivel screen, which is clutch. So when you're vlogging, you turn it around. We can see each other, see? Oh, that's amazing. Hey! But then when you do it, you're going to be constantly looking in that swivel screen. You got to pay attention to the audience, you know? But this, so it can shoot up to 180 frames per second. So it does super slow-mo. You have the swivel screen. You have the different picture profiles, and it doesn't have a record limit. So when you hit 30 minutes on this, it's going to shut off. You have to hit it again. It sounds like it's on, right? Well, it's technically a photo camera. It's like an import tax thing. Yes, it's an import tax thing. Oh, shit. So they can call this a photography camera and not get an extra video camera tax put on it. Crazy. So this, the GH5, is technically a video camera. So they can go past that 30-minute record limit. And so there's things like that, but then the autofocus in this, awful. So there's a lot of things out there on the internet that are like autofocus fix. If you film in like 30 frames per second, and you do this thing, it will be fixed, which is- Tricks that you, for how you use the camera or what you literally put in front of the frame? Tricks for settings in the camera. However, that's dependent on the, are we NTSC here? Is that US? So it's dependent on the PAL system and stuff, so it really doesn't help for shooting in 24 frames per second. So there's a lot of trade-offs, but this is also a micro four-thirds sensor. So- And this is full frame. And this is full frame. So maybe I'm just picky, but when I compared the footage of both of them, instantly you're like, oh, that full frame look. I miss that full frame look. So we have a couple minutes left, but we have some new Sony cameras here. So to walk us through the line, because you're saying you're waiting for the A7S III, A7 III S, but we have the new versions of the IIIs. And this is deeply confusing to me. Oh, it is so confusing. So let's put these next to each other. So this is the A7R III. So when it comes to the art, think photography. So this has almost double the amount of pixels as this. So when you're shooting uncompressed raw on an A7R III, you're gonna get like an 80 megabyte, almost 100 megabyte file to work with. So photography, A7S II video, but we're waiting for an A7S III. It might be around the corner, who knows? So A7S II video, A7R III photography. And then you have this like awkward, I mean, this lens is beautiful. I mean, like, look at this lens first of all. This is the 85 1.4. How much is a lens like this? This is a G series? Yeah, it's a G series. It's probably like 2,500. I should have looked before, but this isn't mine. I wish it was mine. Yeah. If you could. Oh, good. Sarah came on circuit, everybody. Do you monetize it, people? How do you ever do it? Sarah, well, she robbed us. I know. It was great. She told us about specs and then she robbed us. And then I robbed the 85, yeah. So these two are brand new, but you're saying for vlogging, you're waiting. Either buy this one now if you wanna get into it or wait for the- Or wait. Maybe go with an RX100. And this last one is the A73, which is a good middle ground. So it's not gonna be as expensive as the new A7R, but the A7, A6500, those are good middle grounds. And then lastly, so you've made the big upgrade. You're living in this world. Yes. And you, this is, Sarah actually showed up with this stuff with all these cases and all this tape. Yeah. Because managing these cameras is apparently very hard. Yes, and these are very basic things. Maybe it's like old school rule or things that people did, but with an A7S, you're gonna go through batteries like that. So I have 10 to 15 batteries. So it's, you wanna be able to manage and know what batteries are alive and what are dead. So basically if I number my batteries, this is just washi tape. And basically if it's on top, that means it's good to go. And when the battery is dead, I just stick the washi tape on the bottom. And so when it's at the bottom of my bag, I know that this is dead. Do not grab the battery. You already showed this to me in rehearsal. So I knew this was coming, but it's still pretty wide blown. And it's just- Cause these things burn through batteries, right? Yes, like crazy. So just tape, you know? And then these are basically two SD Pelican cases that I use just for SD cards. You only accidentally delete footage once, you know? That's only a problem that you happen, it happens once and then you try to fix it. So basically I keep all of my full SD cards in one case and all of my empty SD cards in another. Look at that. So I know, so the full, it's like, don't touch Sarah. You still need to load this onto the computer. What happened to these? Man. Were you chewing on them? Vlogging life is a rough one, guys. All right, so if you are, a lot of people are asking if they can just start with their phones. It's actually the most common comment we've gotten. People are arguing, a lot of people saying phones are fine. Yeah, totally. Just start with your phone. Yeah, the Note 8 I got to play with recently has a lot of great like slow-mo and stuff. And then I'm a user of the iPhone 10, which is good. Yeah, what's a good upgrade if you just have a phone? If you just wanna stick with your phone? Goodness, in terms of accessories, maybe, I would say check out Moment lenses. Really? Because they really help take your phone and bring it to that next level because you basically put a case on your phone. Yeah, we had tons of Moment lenses on the show last week. Oh, it's fantastic. You have telephoto, fisheye, wide. I would have 100% guessed you were gonna say a microphone. Yeah, sure. I love it. Okay, Sarah, tell the people where to find you, where to watch your channel. Yes, you can just Google Sarah Peachy, but also if you're on the internet, maybe my name's somewhere, you can just find me at youtube.com slash Sarah Deechy. It's a hard last name. That's all right, I feel your pain. Sarah Deechy Renz De Peachy. What's your last name? Patel. Oh, but you can spell that. My first name's Neelay. I know, I know. Let's go to another difficult last name. Jake Castronakis is here. He's gonna answer all your questions about that new iPad. Take away, Jake. We had a ton of questions about the new iPad last week. It just came out. We just posted our review of it today, but I still wanted to go over some of the most common questions that we got. And the really, really big one was about the screen. We got a ton of questions asking about how it compares to other iPad screens. And the reason this is coming up is because the screen on the iPad Pro is just so good. And the answer is this display is not as good. That's because the iPad is $300 cheaper than the iPad Pro. So what you're missing is the anti-reflective coating. You're missing the high refresh rate. You're missing the wider color gamut. And the one thing that people keep asking about is the air gap. There's gonna be a little tiny bit of a gap between the glass display and the actual LCD itself. And if you're just looking at the screen for the first time, if you're not looking at them side by side, it's still going to be a really nice screen. If you've seen any other iPad, you will know Apple makes very good screens for these tablets. They are one of the best you can get. But if you do put it side by side, it is clear that the iPad Pro still has a way better screen. And that is really the reason to get it. So if you're a designer or somebody who that really matters for, that's still gonna be the way to go. The second question we had was, is this iPad gonna be good for gaming? And I think it's gonna be about as good as any other iPad. I'm not necessarily huge on touchscreen controls, but I think it's fun for stuff like Hearthstone. We were just talking about PUBG and Battlegrounds the other day. You can definitely do those too. The specs are basically the same as the iPhone 7. So if you use that or any newer iPhone, you know what you're gonna get, should be good. And then our last question, again, just a whole sort of a short run of questions, which is how does this compare to other iPads? We already went over the screen. That's really the big differentiator. It now supports the pencil. So both of them are equal on that level. Really the big other difference is that the iPad Pro has the keyboard connector. And so I would say that unless you're really planning to use this for graphic design or to replace your laptop, that the cheaper iPad is probably gonna have everything that you need. And the thing I would really wanna point out is that you can basically buy two iPads for the price of an iPad Pro. So if you think you'd rather have two, you probably don't need the Pro. And the iPad probably has everything that you need since it is already one of the best tablets out there. So that's all for me. We now have a video from Phil who is gonna try to figure out how to use a Harmony remote. Hi, I consider myself to be a pretty technological person. I've wanted a Harmony remote for a long time. So I think this should be pretty simple. I don't really know what this thing does. I assume this plugs into the TV somehow. I don't think it's a touch screen because nothing works and it just says myharmony.com. So I'm gonna go to myharmony.com. Do, do, do, do, do. All right, welcome to Harmony. It says nothing about how to set this up. I'm kinda stuck. Oh, I found an instruction. I'm just kidding, I found a poster that I ripped. So I have to get my computer, which I don't really wanna do. This seems like a lot of setup to just get a remote working. One micro USB cable. I don't know where the micro USB port is on here. It's plugged in and nothing's happening. I'm gonna refer back to my poster. I just set up an account for the remote. Setup.myharmony and there's software to download. All right. Like 10 minutes deep and I haven't even gotten this remote off of the whatever splash screen that it's on. This app looks like it's from 1999. Oh man, this is rough. Do you see that? It looks horrible. I just got an email, the first of many. Your remote's ready in four simple steps. I've already done like seven steps. Okay, it's now giving me the option I can drag and drop like 30 different common inputs. I can't even find HDMI, which doesn't make sense to me. All right, it's not set up properly. I don't know what I did wrong. It's probably video eight instead of video nine, but I'm still on the splash screen and I now feel that I've wasted $250. Don't buy this. We're back. By the way, still trying to set up that remote. One of my favorite things of all time. That feels like everything I've ever tried to do with all technology. I know, Paul, you're on the show every week. All right, Michael Znago's here. Hello, Michael. Michael is our senior features editor. That's right. You recently underwent what sounds like a very painful experiment. You tried to live with one of these minimal cell phones for two weeks, actually all of them. All of them. So over the course of two weeks, I played with four phones in an effort to kind of disconnect a little bit and try out some minimal devices. And these are real hype right now. These are hype. There's a bit of a movement going on with people kind of disconnecting a little bit with their phones. So we got four of pretty minimal devices here, and people just kind of like, little fewer features, can't really text that well, no cameras, that kind of stuff. Were you exploring this life to see if it was for you or to see what the draw was for other people? I think a little bit of both. So I have an iPhone 6, which isn't the newest phone, but it's new enough. But I find it extremely distracting. I would find myself like scrolling through my feeds for hours on end. So I was curious to see what it'd be like to play with one of these and maybe spend a little bit less time on my phone. And you loved it, is what I heard. Wow. All right, let's start. What do we got? What are these things? I didn't love it. All right, so this is the unihertz Jelly. Let's get this going. So this is just an Android phone. I mean, it's extremely tiny. That's the first thing you'll notice about it. It runs Android 7. It has a front-facing and a back-facing camera. The specs on these cameras are not good. The specs on these cameras are not important. The specs on these cameras are not important and not that interesting. But what is interesting about it- It's just a tiny little Android phone. It's just a tiny little Android phone. It's a phone for babies. Sorry, this is hilarious. Oh, it's in Slack? Can I open your Snapchat? Yeah, I don't think I'm logged in, but you can open it. This is hilarious. Yeah. It's just a little, is it a slider? It doesn't slide. It looks like it slides. But you will break it if you try to slide it. What about the keyboard aspect? So the thing is, the problem with this phone is that the keyboard is very, very tiny. I mean, the entire thing is extremely tiny, but actually trying to use this is almost impossible. So like, I have normal size fingers, which most people do, and it makes everything hellish. Hellish. Hello? Hellid- Hello? Yeah, yeah. That's the drawback. I mean, the other drawback is this phone has about four hours of battery life. So I ended up having to carry on a battery pack with me, which defeated the whole purpose of having a minimal device. I felt very connected to the battery pack while I was using a very disconnected phone. All right, so that's, how much is this thing? This thing's 130. Okay. Which is pretty cheap. All right. Not bad. And then this is like big hype last year. This is big hype. 3310. That's right. So Nokia, they released the version last year. It is almost identical to the original, although it has a bigger screen. By the way, everyone in the chat is saying you should use glide typing on the little- On that? I think it would be hell. I still think it would be hell. So you open this up and it kind of looks like it's updated. It looks like a new phone. It's got Facebook. It's got Facebook. You think it has Facebook, but you'll actually open it and- Oh, it needs a SIM card. But it opens the WAP browser. Yeah, it opens a browser and you have to like, navigating this thing is like almost impossible. I tried to log in Facebook for like 10 minutes. I finally gave up. It's really not worth it. And same with the Twitter app. They're not real apps. It's got T9 typing? It's got T9, so you have to kind of like, brush off your T9 skills, and mine are not good. Yeah. But if you wanted- You find yourself using more abbreviations. You do, and you find yourself making a lot more typos, and your punctuation goes down the tubes. But if you want to text less, maybe it's not a bad thing, right? Like if you're trying to disconnect and be less in conversations, then maybe having T9 is a good way to go. What about Snake? What about Snake? It's got Snake. Snake's pretty good still. Oh no. It's Gableoft. Oh no. Has this been dressed up? Oh, it's been super dressed up. What a jam. Yeah. This is too much. This is not what you want from Snake. I don't know. This is kind of exactly what I want. I don't want these graphics. I want LCD blocks. All right, what is this one? All right, sorry. This one is my favorite one. It looks cool. Look at that. So this is the Punk'd MP-01. Punk'd is a Swiss company. They make a bunch of minimal products. They decided to make a phone. This phone costs more than you would expect. This phone costs $230. What? And this phone only does two things. So this phone only, you can only make calls and you can only text. Texting is T9. It has a couple of buttons on the front. This is your phone book. And this is where you can text. The big problem with this phone is that it breaks up text and it doesn't thread them. So you have an inbox, an outbox, drafts, templates. Why don't you build Outlook instead of just threaded texting? It's actually insane to have this phone in 2018. I don't want to embarrass you. I just want to help explain T9 for people that- Oh, you want me to create a message? Like I'll do it if you want. Like I- I mean, all right, here we go. I mean, explain T9. Oh, here's the other awful part about this phone is that this thing, which is supposed to capitalize the first letter in a sentence and then keep all the ones in lower caps, doesn't work. So it'll just cap all of them, which makes you sound like a lunatic or like you're really angry. Or excited about me. Yeah. That's supposed to be... Well, we got more cases. Point being, point being, I'm not very good at this. Well, that's T9. T9 is you push the number multiple times to get to one of the letters. In case someone, you know, so we've got a young audience. That's true. Yeah. Anyways, this is how, so it's very slow, but it kind of does like help you disconnect. If you want to text last- How much does that thing cost? $230. Look at that. And it only operates on a 2G network. And only T-Mobile has a 2G network. And only T-Mobile has a 2G network and they're going to phase out their network within the next two years. So if you're going to buy it, buy it now. Are they going to come out with a 3G version? This is definitely the world's most expensive burner. Yes. That's all that is. Okay. And it looks pretty good. It's very pretty. It's so pretty. It looks very nice. This is the hypest hype of all. This is the hypest hype. This is the light phone. This is $150. This does exactly one thing, which is make phone calls. So I'm going to turn it on. So this thing is actually really, really cool. Although it does hardly anything. All you can do is make phone calls. You can store 10 numbers in it, but you have to save the numbers when you connect the phone to your computer. And that's kind of all it does. So you can either tether it to your smartphone or you can have a 2G SIM in here. And it's kind of cool. Honestly, this looks like the most futuristic thing I've seen in a really long time. Even though it looks clunky and basic, there's something extremely futuristic about how light it is, how small it is. It's the size of a business card. Even like the crappiness of this display is like a little bit futuristic. Yeah. Like glowing. I have an idea. Just see here. Got my Metro card going. Is this going to work? Yeah. I wonder if you want to sit on it. Get up with a real Kostanza situation. Try not to show off my credit card. I hear you back. All right. Pretty good. You got a phone. Hang on. Let me make a phone call. Oh, yeah. Let's pull this out of my wallet. Wait, how's the audio quality on all these? Well, let's find out. Let's find out. I'll call my phone. I don't want to show the camera. Don't let anybody know. Someone's going to use like reflections in your eyeballs. Calling. Calling. Ready? Neal. Yo, what's up? I don't know. I was just hanging out. You sound terrible. You sound great. Like this takes, here. I do. It does have a great voice over here. Neal. Yeah. You sound awful. I mean, I will say that this makes, this speaker makes your voice sound deep and resonant, but when you talk through it, it takes all of the low end out of your voice. Yeah, this is extremely painful. How much is this thing? This thing is 150 bucks. They ship 10,000 units. What's exciting about this is that they're releasing a second version, or at least they say they will next year, and you're going to be able to text on it. It's kind of like an E Ink display now, right? Yeah, the next one's going to have an E Ink display. They say that it's even going to have some apps. They're going to have like some navigation stuff in it, some music stuff in it. This is like the thing, right? You start with a super minimal phone, and then the next version, you got to add features. I view it not as minimalism, but that we want to burn everything down and build from the ashes. Build from scotch. Yeah. This one isn't going to have, what they're not going to have is social media or news. Those are the two things that are like, we're definitely not having that. Everything else, they're like negotiable. So if you had to actually use one of these as your only phone for a while, which one would you go with? I would use this one. The smartphone. The smartphone. Because honestly, T9 is a little unbearable, and I do need to text. So this thing is really cool, but like honestly, nobody's going to pick up my calls. Like nobody picks up calls anymore. So even if you have this and you're like, well, I have a phone in case of emergency, nobody's going to pick up your call in case you're in an emergency. You'll be stuck by the side of the road and you'll die. This thing is cool because it's like, it does minimize the amount of time you spend on it because it's so uncomfortable and painful to use. This is my whole thing. On my desktop, I use a bad Twitter client because after a while I'm like, I got to stop using Twitter, it's horrible. So it limits my use. This is the keep it small theory. Slightly crappy technology if you want to know. Fahrenheit 451, the guy has a small TV instead of the big room sized TV. Yeah. You went straight to Fahrenheit 451. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, read Fahrenheit 451. It's a classic for a reason, people. Thank you, Michael. You're welcome. I'm sorry that you are required to use this time. That's fine from now on. For the rest of my life. All right, Paul. Yeah. I can't stop you from making these videos, man. Nobody can stop me. What'd you do? Well, I was so excited that we were going to see Sarah's vlogging setup. I wanted to talk to James, one of our photographers here at The Verge about his product photography setup. So I shadowed him for a photo shoot. Check it out. Hey, it's your friend, Paul Miller. I'm here at the office early Friday morning. It's probably around 7 a.m. Here to check out James Barum's photography process. He does all the photos for The Verge. Well, not all the photos. He does some of the cool photos for The Verge. I want to see how does he get that Verge look. Step one, find James. James. Yes. How's it going? It's going well, Paul. I know it's really early in the morning. It's half past 10. But I wanted to see your process. Well, thank you. Welcome to my process. Tip one, have a camera. Have a camera. So shooting on the 5D Mark III with a lovely, love this lens. What is it? 50 millimeter 1.2. So it's a standard lens. 50 millimeter lens is the closest to the focal length of the human eye. And then tip two. Have some light. Have some light so that you can see. And when you have your lights, so subsection of tip two, have a main light and a fill light. Tip three, always have access to reflectors, both dark shadow reflectors and bright. We've got white around here if we needed that. There are little tricks that you can do. Like have, you have a laptop, I believe. Most laptops, if they're like silver or bright, you can open them up and they make an awesome reflector. And if you have a coat, you can have a reflector in there and a coat put at the other side and that creates shadow. Just little things moving around. It's all simple. So what we have is we have the shadow coming this way, it's from this light. And the main light, I love to have all the main light in all of the shots we do or as many as possible when we do still life to come from the top. So it's like the light is coming from your eyeball as a viewer? No, it's like you're sitting in the same light as the subject we're shooting. Because if you're outside, the light is up here or you're in a room, the lights are in the ceiling. So when you're looking at, it kind of mimics the lighting around you. If we keep the lighting consistent across different products, if we have a phone and a laptop and a camera that we've all shot, and it's all on theverge.com, great website, check it out. Check it out. All of these images are consistent. Okay. They fit. So there's like a context almost. Exactly. We don't shoot things and then cut them out and put them on a color background. We shoot them for real. Real plus cycle. Real but better. He does actually call it real plus. I do. That is no lie. Then tip four is make sure you have little bits of gaffer tape or little bits of putty to make things level and stand up. Clean the products. But we don't want to clean it because real plus is, we want it to be real. We don't want it to look like an ad. We don't want it to look like it's a render. This is real Google Glass. And then tip, where are we up to tip four? I believe. Nobody knows. Always when you're shooting a picture, try and keep the camera level and square. You don't want to be coming in from one angle or another because it distorts things. And then I really like the fiddling aspect. So you basically have your variables, which are the two lights, the reflector and the shadower. Yes. And then you fiddle with all those variables. And you balance. And then obviously you get the subject of the frame and level and stuff like that. It's like recording music in a studio. It's all about the mix. You have all of the components and then you mix it. It's all about the mix. It's all about the mix. Thanks James. Thank you very much Paul. I learned so much. I've learned so much. I like saying these things because I make it up as I go along kind of. Yeah. We're back. Ashley's here. Hello. People were asking where you were at the beginning. Really? Yeah. Well I'm here. You're here. So real quick, I just want everybody to know, we're aware of the situation at YouTube headquarters. The team in our newsroom is covering it. You can go to theverge.com and check out more. We'll be covering it all day. It's very serious. We've just got one more segment of the show. So we're just gonna wrap up. And then we're gonna go check in on that. So hopefully everyone is, YouTube is okay. But we're just gonna wrap up and move on to that. So Ash. Yes. You brought us plants. Yes. Because you know what? It's miserable outside, Neely. And we need some spring. It is snowing in April in New York City. It's fine. We're all gonna. I'm trying to like usher, be the change I wanna see in the world by wearing a short sleeve shirt. I'm so proud of you. Thank you. So I brought us a new gadget that's on the market yet, but before we get to it, I wanted to kind of look back at smart planter attempts. So Neely, you are intimately familiar with Eden. I have, this is my Eden. Yeah, this is yours. So you can see how dirty it is. This is actually outside in our garden. So this is a smart planting system. So you have a regular garden outside, we had just regular dirt in the ground. This is a soil sensor. It's solar powered, connects to your wifi. It's actually really cool how it connects to wifi. It's a system called blink. So it flashes a light and you hold your phone up to it or your phone flashes at screen and a light sensor reads your wifi faster. Kind of like a QR code, but. With flashing lights. So this sticks in the ground. It measures your soil, moisture, and nutrients and all that. It tells what plants you have. It tells you if it's the soil is appropriate for plants, what you might need to do. And it pings dark sky, so it knows that it's gonna rain. And then this is the watering valve. So you plug your garden hose into this side, you plug your sprinkler into this side, and if it's not gonna rain, this thing opens up, starts watering your plants. So what's the catch? The catch is, this is all designed by Eve Behar. They sold them in Home Depot for a while, they're a big deal. It's a tiny little startup of a company and that is the catch. So it's a tiny little startup of a company. I wanted to show everybody the app. They're having server problems. I can't log in right now. I really like them, I met their CEO, he's a nice guy. I hope they survive. But with every cloud connected gadget, you just gotta make the bet. Is this company gonna survive? Are they still gonna sell pods for me? Here's my question, are your plants alive? The plants did great, because they were watered. That's what I've realized, is that people just don't water their plants. So all of these gadgets are just like, oh, we'll water the plant for you. Yeah, that's it. This thing seems ridiculous. So okay, so Eden. It does measure soil pH, but it's a whole thing. It's acidity and you never really did anything with that. We didn't need to. Okay, you just have great soil up there. That's true. So Parrot, the drone company, I do not know why, randomly, maybe back in 2015, they announced it. They announced this Parrot Pot, which the idea behind it is it's like a plant babysitter. It's supposed to keep your plants alive. It can go indoor or outdoor. And it has a light sensor, so it's looking at light. Has a temperature sensor, moisture sensor, and importantly, instead of a hose hookup, it has a reservoir, so you fill it up with water, double-lay batteries to power it, and it connects over Bluetooth to your phone. So I'm gonna show you guys this. We've planted something called a snake plant. It does look snakey. I don't trust it. Snake plant. I took a picture of our snake plant. I've seen these my whole life and never knew what they were called. So I'm connected to our planter right now. It tells me water level and also how moist the soil is. You can put it in automatic mode where it can last for a month, they say, so you can take a nice long vacation. Right now, it's pairing, which we know. So exciting. This has been a very slow pairing process. I will say, you called Parrot a drone company, but I've been covering Parrot long enough to know that Parrot will just hop on any trend. It's like they invented a Bluetooth chip, and they're like, what can we do with it? Is that what it is? Because they were a Bluetooth headset company. Oh, they did headsets. They did like car stereo stuff. We're really just vamping while this thing pairs. This is incredible. Connection in progress. I mean, this is really slow. So clearly their Bluetooth chip is not great. Well, it's designed for transit. No, I don't think they were building all of the seasons of their Bluetooth stack. But I will say that this was originally priced at, uh-oh, connection failed. Classic circuit breaker. This has never happened. This is so depressing. Please work. And there's no way to put it in a pairing mode. By the way, if you can see this message, it says please move closer to your pot. It's like, how much closer? We're here. We're basically in the pot. So it was originally priced at 150. You can find them online for like 50 bucks now. They don't make these anymore. Okay. I think I know why. Yeah. This is depressing because I really want to show you guys. Oh, there we go. Oh, wait. It's... Ooh. Ooh. It's like, got it, and then it's like, no. Man, please. All right, let's move on to the next thing, and I'll keep trying to pair them. This is so sad. I will tell you, this demo made me laugh and laugh and laugh really, so I want to do it. I know. It's really exciting. Okay, I'm going to move it really slowly. Maybe. Maybe. All right. All right. Bye. So in the past, we have talked about this gadget, the Click and Grow. I just brought it here for reference because Click and Grow is actually doing, I think, decently well. They're still in business, which is, at this point, a good thing. How about the soil pots? And their way to monetize. So with the pair pot, you could use your own plants. The Eden, it's your own garden, whatever you wanted. Click and Grow's like, you know what? We're going to monetize by selling you proprietary pots, which is why I love them. And this is not actually connected. It's a timer light. And the app, the idea originally, I think, was to try to teach people how they could garden at home and have their own indoor garden. But unfortunately, their app has been really bad about teaching people. That was one of my big gripes. All right, so with all of this in the background, Neelai's still working on this pair of pots. I'm going to try to figure it out. We have this massive thing. The Grow Duo. What is that? So it's from a company called Grow. They're in New York City. This is designed to go outside. You don't need proprietary pots. It's your own seeds. And it has sensors in the bottom. So for the soil, it's measuring the moisture and temperature. And outside, it has a light sensor, a temperature sensor. And you'll see inside, it hooks up to your hose, has a little sprinkler system. There's two of them. Because you want to know what to do. So when it detects that it needs water, the sprinkler's automatically trying to get your hose on. What's your involvement at this point? At this point, you would have to plant the seeds and harvest them. And they give you tasks. So they want you to feel like you're still part of the garden. So they're like, you should prune your basil. They give you tasks? Yeah, they're like, you should prune. Yeah. Farmville. Yeah, you're grinding for basil. Oh my god, is it connected? It is. I didn't want to tell you. I wanted to surprise you. I mean, wait, can we go back to this? No, finish this, and then we'll end with this. And we'll be excited. OK. So you can see this is my planter. I earlier planted beets, which I have. But OK, so you can see we have basil in there. There's other herbs. Their big idea, because clearly monetization is huge, they want to also sell people these seed sheets. At least they're not pods. They're not pods. That's a sheet of seeds. It's a sheet of seeds. So in the app, it would show you what you would do. Everything is pods. This flies in the face of everything I thought I knew about seeds. You would lay this in there, put this little sprinkler right through the middle. This will disintegrate. It would ask you to sprinkle a little soil on top. And then it is planted, and I can view it. What it'll do, and what they really like about this, is they suggest to you different vegetables and things that will work in your environment. So knows you're in New York City, you'll say, hey, it's winter. This is kind of your option. Is this beets and basil, essentially. So these are good to grow during winter. Right. They suggest things that are good for you. I mean, early spring. And it'll tell you when it's going to be able to harvest. So we just planted these now. It would be ready at the end of May. So I can look at my activities here. Oh my god. Here are my activities. I'm actually going to go with the prune. And it's going to teach me a little bit about how to prune them. So this is really trying to teach you how to be a farmer. It wants you to feel involved. Right. And then when the apocalypse comes, you're like, thank god this robot taught me how to farm. Yes. Where are my seed sheets? There. Shed sheets. I'm going to cut some basil. Because this is the one skill I did actually learn when I used the Click and Grow earlier this year. By the way, somebody in the chat said, I see Click and Grow at all my friends' houses. Seriously? And they're all dried up in the corner. Oh no. Oh, who is this person? I want to know them, actually. OK. I'm going to cut these guys. You always want to leave two basil plants. Maybe I should have picked one closer. Oh well. I think I'm screwing this up, guys. But you know what? Don't worry about it. It's fine. We got more basil. You can always get another seed sheet. All right. I have a cold, so I can't smell anything. But I will let Paul and Neely smell it to certify this is real basil. I feel like basil's the official plant of the Circuit Breaker show. Yeah. We've grown a lot of basil. It smells great. It's our mascot. Can we eat this? It smells really good. You can definitely eat it. I mean, go free. You can eat it. I'm not going to eat it. Is it good? Yeah. Tastes like basil? I'll try it later. It's like a very exciting toothpaste. Caleb says, I've seen a clicking grow at multiple friends' parents' houses. Oh. And they are dried up in the corner. It's a good Christmas present. Well, OK. My parents, I actually got them a clicking grow for the holidays. And my dad was so upset that the tomatoes really can't get very high up. And they're really small. So he planted them in his own planter. And now they are thriving. So he took them out of the clicking grow. All right, Ashley. All right. This is very exciting. So going back to the parent pot just for a second, because I want to show you how the water system works. So there's a reservoir. If I press water. No. Did you just bail out? No. Because I'm not connected. This is a lie. It's super lied to us. Dammit. Wait, let me try putting this app in. All right, well. I think when you close the app. Everybody just use your imagination. We're going to get this. Streams of water. By the way, if you want to know why this product is no longer on the market. OK, well, I will say about the move. OK, OK. You got it? All right, ready? Here we go. Water it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Technology makes everything easy. We did it. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. We did it, everybody. We watered that plant. OK, Ashley, thank you so much. Thank you. All of you, please grow plants. Oh, what's the price on this? $199. It's not available until July. That's actually not terrible. No. And it comes with all the seed sheets and things. All right. So here's what I learned on Secondary today. We're going to start gardens. We're going to become vloggers. We're going to vlog about our gardens. Absolutely. And we're going to call our friends on tiny phones. And they won't pick up. They won't pick up. And then we'll just go back to gardening. There we go. That's right. That was Circle Breaker, everybody. If you want to hear more about it, if you want to see more news about what's happening on YouTube, check this site. Again, I hope everybody is OK. Thank you for watching. We'll see you next week, 4 PM Eastern, at Circle Breaker Live. Enjoy gardening. You