Call Me Snek

I'm astounded you guys haven't done a video on bass shakers, or the more subtle "stealth subwoofer for people with roommates/families" Subpac S2. A lot of gamers would be seriously interested in this stuff if they only knew about it.

Replacing expensive phone plans with VOIP is something more nerds should be aware of as an option, as most of us don't really need data coverage. We're already basking in Wi-Fi the vast majority of the time, so a lot of people are paying a hundreds every year just for a phone number. VOIP costs maybe like $10 a year. Given the time we waste poring over hardware benchmarks for the sake of some tens of dollars, this seems like a no-brainer. The main barrier to entry is the unintuitive, somewhat complicated setup (maybe an hour?); but VOIP services usually come with extensive guides that hold your hand quite well for the most part (I use voip.ms). I do remember spending some extra time trying to figure out how to get voicemail to actually work the way one would expect though. If y'all LTT guys do a video on this, you can ping me and I'll give more deets. I'd also be interested in seeing the High-FPS Part 3, testing the gaming performance effects of monitor strobing, which drastically diminishes motion blur. This would have to be on a TN panel, of course. And strobing quality varies significantly, so probably check out Blur Busters to see their latest recommendation.

Super Mario World is actually one of the few SNES games with more than 1 frame of inherent input lag (2, specifically), which makes it perhaps not the best game to test input lag with. As others have mentioned though, you can use RetroArch's input lag reduction feature "Run-Ahead", which basically uses save states to send your input back in time, making input handling update in sync with the graphics and sound. Incidentally, PS1 era games often have something like 3-6 frames of input lag. I'd say 2 frames is where it starts to be definitely noticeable in tight platformers. It's an absolute game-changer; what all these years felt like built-in inertia was actually just sluggish input lag. Crazy.

I wish this video came out a couple weeks ago. I spent far too long trying to figure out how all the pieces come together, realizing I chose the wrong google apps package, twice, etc. Some notes: The Pocophone has unusually limited frequency band support. Compare with local carriers and see if you have adequate coverage.** You probably won't find the (128GB) Poco at $300. I got mine at eGlobal Central for $350 USD, with free shipping (I'm Canadian btw). You can get it something like $20 cheaper at AliExpress; but then you leave yourself open to waiting like a month for the thing to ship (common complaint apparently), and possible duty charges. There's more information about resellers (and more) on the Xiaomi subreddit wiki. EDIT: Whoops. Yes it is $300 actually! I forgot I got the more expensive 128GB version. Check the Xiaomi subreddit for information on resellers so you can get the best deal. I definitely saved money compared to the Amazon.ca price. The main problem with MIUI is that it aggressively shuts down apps running in the background. There's an option to make it somewhat less aggressive, but it doesn't change as much as you'd like. After that, it's mostly just little annoying things and bafflingly bad design decisions. For example, MIUI 10 by default interrupts your audio, for a whole second, every time you come in and out of range of available wifi. Terrible. Really, though, it's not all that bad; but LineageOS is still far better, once you manage to set it up. Getting that down, the phone completely ceases to feel cheap or annoying in any way. Wait, actually the phone is pretty gosh darned slippery without a case (Linus' "Kevlar" version isn't the normal one you'll be buying). I don't know if this is common for phones (my last was a Nexus 5). Mine came with a perfectly serviceable thin case though; so no real problem. MIUI's gestures are actually a great feature which LineageOS lacks; but you can get perfectly excellent and customizable gesture support with an app like 'Fluid Navigation Gestures'. (Needs root to disable the nav buttons though, and occasionally the buttons come back in some apps.) ** I can't say much else on this, as I don't bother with phone plans, opting instead to use wifi -- via voip.ms (with apps 'Bria Mobile' and 'voip.ms SMS') which gives you a phone number from whatever region you like to make/receive calls, and supports sms. Costs about a couple bucks a month. Even less if you don't use Bria. Like the Poco though you really do need some guidance to set it up (thankfully there's a wiki). Maybe Linus should do a video on this kind of ultra-cheap setup, perfect for nerdy folks who hardly leave home anyways.