Top Product Reviews

In attached video you see Gvode Pasta Roller & Cutter Attachments  with my Kitchen Aid mixer.  It fit well and feel sturdy while working. It has three attachments. Pasta Roller  rolls 5.5-inch sheets of pasta with 8 thickness settings to adjust to your desired sheet thickness. This helps me make different thickness of fresh pasta, Ravioli, Tortellini, Lasagna, and Noodles. Spaghetti Cutter cut pasta sheets into classic Spaghetti noodles. Fettuccine Cutter Cuts pasta sheets into  Fettuccine noodles or linguine.  In addition to the three attachments the package includes a cleaning brush to help clean the attachments In attached photos you see pictures of each of the attachment on the kitchen scale and they weigh between 25 oz and 26.25 oz.  Note that cleaning instruction say not to clean these attachments with water, only to brush them clean.  It explicitly says to wash the attachments in the dishwasher. Instead it instructs to clean attachments by h...

I purchased Portable Bidet after a surgery when I was not allowed to take showers for several weeks.  This portable bidet allowed me to feel clean without taking a shower and without getting the floor wet.  The best part of it is that it generates a good stream at the right angle without having to squeeze the bottle.  So if you are looking to use it while traveling (like an airport bathroom) rather than at home it makes no noise from escaping air or from squeezing.  It holds just enough water to give me a good rinse. What makes this bottle bidet work is a special valve on the bottom that lets the air escape as you turn the bidet upside down.  The angle of the nozzle generates a stream at a good angle that makes the water go only where it is needed. No drips on the floor. You can find it on Amazon by following this link. Product review ★★★★★

This is a very nice pearl necklace made out of natural pearls.  The pearls are well matched but they do have the tiny variations is shape and size which is typical of natural freshwater pearls.  What I really like about this necklace is that both ends of it have a clasp and they latch on to the hear shape piece.  It is much easier to clip that other clasps - I can do it without having to look at it.  It is also possible to remove the heart and insert a different piece of jewelry or just clasps two claws together. The size of the earring is rated as 7mm to 8mm and my digital caliper shows 8.83mm (measuring in the  direction) and 7.28 (measuring in the short direction). The silver heart has S925 stamp as well as VIKI LYNN logo. I think the necklace looks very classy. You can find it on Amazon by following this link. Product review ★★★★★

The is a super comfortable shoe, but it runs small. I normally wear size 7.5 and based on description recommendation to order 1/2 or 1 size larger I ordered 8.5 and it is a perfect fit. I can wear them with regular or hiking socks.  They weight 11.9 oz and feel pretty light. The shoe is a combination of suede and mesh. Suede is the dark and the medium grey, the mesh is the light grey color.  The sole is knobby and has good traction.   The shoe has slight arch support and the shape of the sole is very comfortable, it feels slightly cushy. The packaging was good, the shoes had paper inserts so they were not deformed in shipping. You can find it on Amazon by following this link. Product review ★★★★★

Zelite utility knife is midway in size between a Chef's knife and a Paring knife. in the past, I have not used utility knife as often as my chef knife or my pairing knife. But this knife is so sharp and maneuverable that I am using it quite a lot. My most common use for it is for cutting cheese and meats for making sandwiches. It also works well on cutting tomatoes for those sandwiches. I use it when a paring knife feels too short, and chef's an overkill. Zelite utility knife is very sharp, and its handle fits my hand very well. The knife feels sturdy but it is not heavy. The knife weighs 5.2 oz. It has a beautiful pattern on the blade. This is because the knife's blade is made out of laminated stainless steel. The higher quality of Japanese knives use laminated steel which has this beautiful pattern. The use of laminated steel improves the strength and rust resistance of the blade (and it looks beautiful). A note on packaging. I don't often comment on packaging unless ...

I really like this necklace. It has a very unique look. It is made out of irregular shaped pearls. No two are the same in shape or color. The only thing these irregular pearls have in common is that they have have non-spherical shapes. Each pearl has a lot of character: from almost round shape to curved, pinch, and lumpy. I have never seen pearls like that before and looked up to find that they have a name. They are called Baroque pearls. Both ends of the strand have a claw closure, so I can wear the necklace as a long strand (15" long) or clip it in the middle to form a different shape. The necklace has gold colored balls (made out of stainless steel) as spaces. They are small and set off the irregular shapes of the pears very well. The package include a box and a cleaning cloth. I measured a few random individual pearls with a digital caliper. I picked two what I thought were representative of the smaller and larger pearls in the necklace and got: 14.34mm mm and 12.84 mm in size...

I got the large ottoman. It is 30" wide x 15" long x 15" tall.  It is gray in color on the sides and top, and black on the bottom. What I did not realize that it folds together as accordion (see photos) and expands when you want to use it.  The sides are hard stiff cardboard. The top is stiff and padded.  The cover is actually heavier than the entire body of the storage.  The bottom is nylon material and is soft, however when you open it you place cardboard (covered in fabric) in the bottom of the box so it does not collapse. The cardboard is strong. How strong? I had my husband sit on the empty ottoman and even though he is close to 200 pounds in weight the ottoman did not have any problem holding him.  Since the ottoman was empty there was nothing else to help support his weight but the sides of the storage.  The description says that it supports up to 220 pounds and I believe it. I would not call this ottoman attractive, but it is sturdy and functional. ...

This Jasmine tea comes as pearls - tightly rolled pea size balls.  It has a very lovely Jasmine flavor.  I have tried a number of different Jasmine teas in the past and this one tasted a little different to me - the taste is more round and sligtly sweet.  It leaves a very pleasant taste in my mouse once I swallow. I like drinking it cold with lemon on hot days. It is probably not the traditional way to drink it, but it is very refreshing this way. There is no one world wide standard system for grading tea, the grading system used for this tea is called Cha Wu Grading and it ranges from D (lowest quality) to SS (highest quality).  This is the order from low to high: D, C, B, A, AA, S, SS.  I got the Grade A. This loose teas come in vacuum packed foil lined bag with a lock at the top (similar to coffee pack bags).  I use an electric kettle that lets me select the temperature and I use 90℃ (slight below boiling) and steep for several minutes. The resulting tea...

I originally purchased BlueDriver in 2015 and was not particularly happy with the app.  However by January 2016 the app had several revisions and have become excellent. The original review was fairly critical giving 5 stars to the hardware and 2 stars to the BlueDriver app. For a number of months I had to use an alternate free app (Torque) because BlueDriver just did not stay connected long enough to be useful. However, after a number of updates the app is now excellent and provides a lot of information that the free app does not. It provides clear readout for engine light on (I am including an example from EGR Valve problem). It also correctly showed a recall for the air bag before the manufacture notified me in a letter many months later. Because of the dramatic improves I felt compelled to replace the critical review with this 5 star review. The scanner is simple to install and simple to use. A lot simpler than I expected, frankly. All cars and light trucks built and sold in the...

The taste of Oolong ranges hugely among various sub-varieties.  It can be sweet and fruity, or woody and thick with roasted aromas, or green and fresh, all depending on the horticulture and style of production. I got Tie Guan Yin of two variety Grade A and Grade B. There is no one world wide standard system for grading tea, the grading system used for this tea is called Cha Wu Grading and it ranges from D (lowest quality) to SS (highest quality).  This is the order from low to high: D, C, B, A, AA, S, SS. I like both teas but definitely can taste the difference between the two teas, which is especially pronounced when I drink the tea cold. Both teas feel very refreshing.   Grade A has a sweet flavor, no bitter after taste.  I thought it tasted similar to the teas in a Chinese restaurants, but a little less astringent.  After I swallow there is a pleasant after glow taste in my mouth.  Grade B had a unique flavor, I have not been exposed to it before. I...

This is a terrific knife. This a general purpose knife for dicing, slicing and mincing. The name translates from Japanese to mean "well-balanced" and is designed with the weights of the blade and the handle to be equally balanced. This balance in combination with the rounded design of the handle makes cutting and dicing with it quick and easy. It is very sharp, everything I cut feels as easy as cutting soft butter. The Santoku has a limited "rocking" travel in comparison to a Western-style chef's knife. When the blade rests on the cutting plane there is very little clearance above the cutting plane from heel to the tip. The Santoku design is shorter, lighter, thinner, and more hardened (to compensate for thinness) than a traditional Western chef's knife. The "scalloped" sides that give this knife its unique look create small air pockets between the blade and the material being sliced and reduce cutting friction. The higher quality of Japanese knive...

This is a nice power supply with enough for any personal computer. Its capacity of 700w and a large number of connectors (total of 5 connectors plus 3 hard-wired plugs). This power supplies provides a lot of room for growth. Alens 700 is 5 5/8" x 3.5" x 6". It uses ribbon cables, which are more flexible than round cables. Connectors: --> One 20 +4 Main plug, hard-wired It can handle motherboards with both 20 pin or 24 pin connectors. --> One EPS12V CPU plug, hard-wired The power supply supports one CPUs. It is designed for desktop use only, as servers often have more than one CPU. --> One PCIe plug, hard-wired --> One PCIe plug, modular Supports two SLI graphics cards --> Three SATA or Molex plugs 2 SATA cables, each with 3 plugs, total of 6 SATA devices 1 Molex cable, four Molex plugs and one floppy plug I measured the power supply with a power supply tester and all votages are within tolerance. The attached video includes several screen shots that show t...

I bought the Flexzilla 3-foot lead-in house in the spring, so it had been in use for three months. It formed a water tight connection without teflon tape and I like the sleeves that protect the connection from kinking. As a lead-in hose into a four way switch it is always under pressure and has not any leaks so far. You can find it on Amazon by following this link. Product review ★★★★★

I have been using the Arlo security system for over 1 year without a jacket and now a couple of years with Wasserstein jacket.  Looking at the stock photo I was a bit worried that the jacket will make the magnetic hold weaker and I was not sure if I would like it. Turns out the jacket has three holes (stock photos do not show this, but my video does) - one for the camera lens, one for the magnetic hold, and one for the battery door. The camera jacket is easy to put on and it fits well. I selected the brown color that matches my trim and I think the camera is less noticeable and looks better in the jacket. The camera is waterproof so I don't think the jacket is needed to protect from rain, but it seems to provide a little bit of insulation for cold weather and prolongs the battery life in the winter. You can find it on Amazon by following this link. Product review ★★★★★

We have a large number of bird feeders including four different window bird feeders. This bird feeder one key feature that our feathered friends like. The birds love the little perch. In my video you can see how they use it to crack the seeds. We have another window bird feeder with a different style which does not have a perch and it was less popular until we glued a perch made out of a twig. As soon as we added this twig the bird feeder became more popular. This a pretty large (wide) bird feeder. Several birds can visit it at the same time. Many birds do not mind sharing. Some do, and it is fun to watch the bully birds that make other birds leave - I captured one of these episodes in the attached video. The big size of the bird feeder makes it very comfortable for squirrels to feed from it as well. As you see in attached video, it is big enough to hold two squirrels. The suction cups hold really well, as they are able to hold not only two birds but two squirrels. Squi...

 The E'YOBE trash bags are true size. I use 4 gallon Glad trash bags, the gold standard of small trash bags, to determine if this trash bags is sized appropriately. These bags are bigger then 4 gallon Glad bags by several inches in each direction. In attached photo you can see the yellow E'YOBE bag under the white Glad bag for size comparison. E'YOBE bags is thinner than Glad bags, they are good for soft light trash. In one of the photos I show my hand inside the bag, I think it gives a good idea of the bag thickness and transparency.  The yellow bag is transparent and you can see the trash inside the bag. Each bag length is 18" and the width of 22" when it is folded in half. The bag has the same width at the top and at the bottom.  The bag has a draw string, which works well to close the bag when it is ready to be thrown out. The package includes a total of four rolls, each roll has 60 trash bags. You can find it on Amazon by following this link. Product review ...

This wool scarf has a perfect size - not too long and not too short just under 71" and just under 12" wide.  The length is enough to wrap around the neck and have the ends hanging down in the front  below the waist. This scarf is wool so it is not fluffy like cashmere scarves but it is pretty soft for a wool scarf, it is not itchy and quite warm. You can find it on Amazon by following this link. Product review ★★★★★

These artificial peonies look very real. The blossoms are perfection, the leaves looks a little less so but still quite good.  Each stem has a fully open flower and a slightly open bud.  I ordered 5 stems and I like that the flowers are not identical, this makes them look even more real. The flowers were slightly squashed in shipping and as the instructions suggested I fluff them up by hand while blowing them with hair dryer. I found that low volume on the hair dryer worked best. To fit the vase I wanted to display them I needed to shorter the stems.  I was able to cut the stems  by this method:  using regular scissors I cut the skin and then fatigued the metal wire inside of the stem by bending it back and forth as you see in my video.  The flowers are lovely and look very real. You can find it on Amazon by following this link. Product review ★★★★★

I am a quilter so I have a number of rotary cutting mats in various sizes. The things that I like most about this mat are the markings.  The markings are on all four sides of the map and they well marked thick solid lines - yellow on one isde and white on the other side. The measurements are in inches and grid lines are every 1/2".  In addition on one side you also have centimeter markings, they are next to inches not instead on inches so this mat is trully aimed at US quilters and crafters. Most of my mats are self-healing Olfa mats. This mat is thicker than a typical Olfa mat. Olfa mats have marking on four edges as well, but only on one side. Self-healing properties of any cutting mats do not last for ever, so when both sides have markings it increases the useful life span of the mat. After using this mat on several projects I am pleased with how cutting feels on this mat. Overall, excellent mat, it covers practically my entire sewing table, I really like how well it marked...