It happens way too much ehh. China funds the ee enthusiast part of yt. With a plummeting gdp. I suspect all the willy nilly sponsorships they offer are paid for by the communist party propaganda fund. It sounds nuts brother but take a look around. I read books or watch lectures. Leo is great too.
You have such a wealth of knowledge, this channel is a gem. It got me enthusiastic about electronics again! Just finished a modified version of your continuity tester and it works a treat
Congrats on your 1st (and likely last, at least from Miniware) product review. The problem is that they expect their customers to have a certain level of "Kewl". As you eloquently pointed out, they expect customers to comply with their product vision, quirky design and features. It may have Bluetooth and even Wi-Fi, but no power button. They also make a cute soldering iron, which is too low powered to solder most things, and a power screwdriver, which is only usable with tiny screws, since it is also grossly underpowered. But they're "Kewl"(and likely wear pointy brown leather shoes, too). Your "binary" load resistors can probably be made for < $20, so 1/10 of this cute, but stupid dummy load. I love Tek and HP ("keyslight") stuff but they have priced themselves out of the market where only big $$$ government money can afford them. Rigol and Siglent make great stuff, for affordable prices and are intuitive to use.
Sometimes a review becomes a beta test instead, for a company - which is incredibly useful if they're going to act on the advice given. Appreciate the directness and honesty in this.
Miniware it is not cheap devices with a lot of children issues. They not robust, have proprietary firmware (you cant optimize plot presentation and text size on the screen), and electronics without enough level of robust. And seems like they didnt change their producst😢
Not sure if they have to consider older designs as much. They might be targeting newer/younger/less professional market so having a small device with a more portable form factor could work better for them since most cannot afford large spaces. My home lab is shared with my bedroom in a tiny rented apartment, and I'm not a professional, so I have no history with massive bench gear with lots of knobs and buttons. My current load tester is a bare PCB with a CPU cooler on it that I bought off Aliexpress for $25, so for me this would be an upgrade :) Hope your eye feels better!
I have a itech style dc load that is perfect for my needs testing DCDC supplies. AC powered, 120V/60A/300W unit and has been very reliable thus far. I wouldn't mess around with this tiny load. Although the mini-ware soldering irons are pretty neat.
I can't help but think of this as a metacritique of modern RU-vid product reviews instead of being a review itself. It's a great decision (and not just because you didn't get a working device).
@leosbagoftricks3732 keep it up buddy and they will come. Start a membership, no need for perks as your content speaks for itself. I'm 45 and taking ee this fall at school. I figure I'm retired and have been teaching myself for years so might as well get the paper.
Those are a lot of valid thoughts and critiques that I hope Miniware looks at for the second generation! I was struggling to see a use case for it for myself as well. From my experinece with their products it sounds like you would have been way better off with their Power module (P906, and it doesn't have any batteries inside to go bad) or either of the mini hot plates (mhp-30 or mhp-50, again no batteries to go bad). The MHP-50 is brand new and looks pretty fantastic for folks that need the larger capacity. Their bread and butter products were the soldering irons that gave them their start (TS-100 originally and now the TS-80P and newer cordless super capacitor based soldering iron) and was used heavilly in the RC/drone scene. I have been enjoying the newer stuff that focuses on being powered from USB type C for my compact and portable kit since I don't have space for a proper lab. I really hope they update the display unit and enable access to the wireless protocol the are using to communicate between the MDP stuff as they talked about. I would love to see a I bought the power module p906 when they came out with the second generation that could handle 300w rather than the previous 100w and have been well pleased with it for all sorts of random portable projects. Especially since it can be powered from USB battery banks or straight from LiPO cells. I ususally use power tool batteries as the have good enrgy density, are easy to charge, easy to swap and I don't need to manage a bunch of dispirate BMS systems. I am a fan of many of their products (I own TS-80p, MDP- P906, ES-15 and I love them) I also own a few of their products that I bought because I thought they would get more use from me (digital tweezers, mini hot plate). I'm sure they are perfect for people that can use them, but they don't fit into my workflow like the screwdriver, soldering iron, and power supply do.
At first, I thought that I am not interested in seeing yet another review video. Than I thought to myself: let's see how Leo is doing it. And I found it interesting, because you carefully examined the design reasoning and were not just complaining about the mistakes they did, but tried to understand *why* they did what they did (and thus being fair to the designers). Thank you for the review although I do not need this kind of product 😸
That form factor would be better utilised as mini speaker power amp. That nice little matrix display could be used for setting up the connectivity and equaliser options.
Very good job. A product review should be honest and constructive. Too many "reviews" is just advertising. And the selective few who are identifying issues tends to be a bit too destructive. Saying "bad" instead of "this does not fit well for the needs I see - but could fit someine elses needs. Or could be improved to better match if doing the following changes. I'm an engineer and has programming skills, so I can write my own battery testers. But a huge amount of people can't. But would have much use of a compact and automatic battery tester where you can select a test profile matching type of battery and then let it do the tests and produce a final report. Actual capacity. How much capacity above a certain voltage. Estimated inner resistance of the battery. The cost of a professional drone is very, very high. Losing it from a bad battery is expensive. Both because of the drone cost itself and the failure to deliver the video or whatever service some customer paid the drone owner to deliver.
Great review. In my opinion miniware products are not designed for the bench, or the ease of use. They design devices to throw into your field bag, and use it for quick n dirty troubleshooting without your normal lab equipment. Like on an RC airfield, or in a home automation setting where you don't want to break out the big guns. But on the other hand this power electronics line is a bit overpriced, and quirky - lets wait for the second generation :)
Boring? Refreshing is more like it. Good points. One thing you didn't get in to is price. Their gear can be expensive when compared to their competition. As a consumer, I don't need to spend more for a fancy grill on a load tester. Money needs to go to the core function of the product (including an ON/OFF switch and leads), not style. Just yesterday I was looking at their power supply (which needs a AC to DC power supply) that is part of that modular system and went "They want what for it??" It first caught my attention because you can put 2 in series or parallel and generate positive and negative voltages but by the time you buy 2 you have the cost of a bench power supply that actually does the power supply function and not just be a front end to 2 other power supplies. I did buy their 50mm hot plate, that's neat.
I get where you’re coming from with this review and agree with most of your points. But at the very least you could’ve tested the core functionality i.e. use it as a load for something
