Buying a Random Laptop from Amazon: A Cautionary Tale

As I recently discovered, buying a laptop from Amazon can be a great way to snag a high-quality device at an affordable price. My own experience with the Ecohero Delta was nothing short of astonishing - this laptop slash tablet is incredibly well-made and offers many impressive features for its low price point.

The specs on the Ecohero Delta are very solid, especially considering its $300 price tag. The 15.6-inch IPS display, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB NVMe SSD make it a formidable opponent in the budget laptop market. However, I did notice that the laptop is made primarily of plastic, which was a bit disappointing.

One feature that does stand out, however, is the keyboard. It's clear that the manufacturer has put a lot of thought into its design, as it feels solid and responsive. The trackpad is also surprisingly good, considering the laptop's budget price tag.

But what really caught my attention was when I discovered that the Ecohero Delta came with Windows 11 Pro installed - something that's not typically found on laptops at this price point. When I went through the setup process, I didn't have to create a Microsoft account or log in online, which is always a plus.

Of course, no laptop is perfect, and the Ecohero Delta has its drawbacks. The display, while decent, has some issues - it's matte finish can sometimes appear unevenly applied, and the color accuracy could be improved. Additionally, I was shocked to discover that the "Ryzen 7 3700U" processor listed on the specs sheet is actually a custom edition with Intel inside.

I decided to dig deeper and investigate further. It turns out that some laptop manufacturers will use a lower-end processor and then rebrand it as a higher-end model - this is known as a "salvaged chip." In my case, I believe that's exactly what happened here.

The final nail in the coffin came when I tried to activate the warranty on my laptop. The process was frustratingly simple, but also completely misleading. When I completed the required steps, which included leaving a review and confirming my email address, I received an offer for an $30 Amazon gift card - essentially, a bribe to leave a positive review.

Needless to say, I was not impressed. Instead of receiving a genuine warranty, I got a cleverly worded form email that seemed designed to manipulate me into leaving a positive review. When I left a one-star review expressing my disappointment and outrage, I was surprised to receive a follow-up email offering me the gift card once again - essentially, telling me that they had "scammed" me by not providing what they advertised.

In conclusion, while buying a laptop from Amazon can be a great way to find a good deal, it's essential to do your research and understand what you're getting. Don't be afraid to ask questions or dig deeper into the specs - sometimes, that's where the real savings are hiding. And most importantly, always read the fine print before making a purchase.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- Is it a good idea to buya random laptop from Amazon?Now this actually gotstarted a few weeks agowhen I took a look atthis, the Robo and Kala.Now this is a laptop slash tablet,very much like a surfacethat is way, way better than I expected.This is less than half the priceof the equivalent Surface andit's got a lot going for it.Now that's a keyboard.It's got a beautiful OLED display.Like, this thing is really, really nice.So the question is should you trusta no name brand laptop from Amazon?I mean, I always trust Amazonand that's never gotten me anywhere bador made me regret my life decisions.First up, we have the Ecohero Delta.Now looking at this boxI'm immediately struck by one thing.Can I direct your attention to the specs?It has a Ryzen 7 3700U custom edition.You know what makes it a custom edition?It's got Intel inside.(Austin laughing)They put an Intel stickeron their AMD laptop.There are some other thingsthat are kind of interesting.So it's got a 15.6 inthIPS display, 1080p,eight gigs of RAM, 256 gig NVMe SSD.It does support one SATA drive.Those specs are, I would sayvery, very solid for $300.All right, Ecohero, what you got for me?Well that's actually a cool C pattern.I got myself a VIP card.Activate your warranty one year.Hold on a minute.You try to tell me I don't have a warrantyunless I go to honorbonus.com.A lot of times what you'll findwhen you purchase items from Amazonis it like to activate the special offeryou go to the websiteand then they make youlike leave a good reviewwhich is oftentimes how you seea lot of bizarrely highreview products on Amazon.Let's take a look at our Ecohero.Oh, oh, that actually,that looks not like super cheap plastic.It feels bad though, do you hear this?Inside we have a, okay, that's fine.I will say very decent sized track pad.It is unfortunate plastic.I'm gonna say that every partof this laptop is plastic.The keyboard actuallylooks kind of decent.Let's do a little flex test here.That's fine.It definitely, the keyword deck flexesbut it's not as bad as someof those super cheap ones.And we do have the little camera cover.So it's just a physicalslider over the webcamwhich is always nice to see.This has Windows 11 Pro installed.So when I was going through the setup,it didn't make me get onlineto do a Microsoft accountand everything which is especially strangefor a $300 laptop.This trackpad I willsay is actually fine.Let's talk display.This is most certainly like B-stockso a lot of times they'llhave defects or issues.This one's actually pretty decent.The fact that it's matteis strange but nice.It does not look super uniform.I can tell it's a little darkerright here on the corner.First of all, what's inside this thing?It says it's a Ryzen 7 3700Ubut it says it's a dual core processorand that's just just not true.Like this is not a, wait, wait, what?And also it says it's got six gigs of RAM.So the way that these AMDprocessors will go oftentimesis they will actually like split your RAM.So it'll like have like likeone gig or something dedicated.With only eight gigs of RAM on board,I'm surprised that they carve out twopermanently for your graphics.I'm on the AMD website andit says that my Ryzen 7 3700Uhas four cores and eight threads.I open up task manager,two cores, four threads.I open up CPU Z, two cores, four threads.CPU Z just shows that as a Ryzen 7.Is the custom editionmaybe like a salvaged chiplike with maybe a couple of cores disabledor did they take like a Ryzen 3and just rebrand it andjust flash it as a Ryzen 7.Next I wanna try the actual warranty.Oh good lord, that's (hugs) in Comic Sans.I'm not gonna trust you ifyou ask for all my informationand using Comic Sans.Congratulations, yourwarranty is activatedbut then right beside it, it says,what you can get,amazon.com, $30 real money.The four steps to simply get it,generally less then five minutes.I wonder what happenswith my four simple steps.You wanna take a guessat what my four simple steps are gonna be?Leave a review.I knew it.I knew it, I knew it.This is not okay.All right, just straightup, this is bribery.What happens if I give a one star review?Okay, one star review.Next step, confirm my email address.Finished, congratulations,you've completed the steps.Amazon gift card will be emailed to youin two to five working days.So I guess in two to five working daysI will let you know ifI've gotten my gift cardfor telling them that they scammed meby giving me not the rightprocessor in any way whatsoever.What do you know?A few days after askingfor my free $30 gift card,I've received an email back.If you like our laptopand are willing to give a positive review,once we find that your greatreview has been displayedor you send me a review screenshot,we will send you the $30gift card as a thank you.I left a one star review sayingthat, hey, you scammed mebecause the processor that's in my laptopis not what you advertised.And I just got this form email saying,"Hey, we're glad that you enjoyedthe VIP one year warranty.Could we have like a $30gift card to give you?"Next up we have the Aocwei.This is the Laptop A2and it looks generic.CPU cores, dual core.What kind of dual core?Don't worry about it.1080p screen resolution,that's actually nice.14 inch, Windows 10 instead of 11.Six gigs of RAM and 64 gigs of ROMwhich I assume is gonna be eMMC.With the Aocwei,this is squarely in the kind of pricethat you expect for likean HP Stream or something.What the?Comprehensively protects your keyboard.They give you a keyboard cover in the box.Is that because thekeyboard feels so atrociousor because they threwthis in for 10 cents?Register your lifetimewarranty with 10, 10 days.Now hold on, hold on, hold on, lifetime.I don't trust any of these things man.No, I'm like, I'm on alert.(alarm blaring)I'm looking for scams, everywhere.The, the mouse?What the, what the, oh, thismeans the track pad's bad.This means the trackpad's bad.I'm onto you Aocwei.You just gimme a mouse for no reason.(Austin laughing)Alright, let's take a look atthe laptop which I will sayactually looks likeit's fairly well padded.That's plastic.So what's interesting about the Aocweiis that when I was purchasing it,it actually gave me alittle promo code discountso I could order myself a 256 gig M.2 SSDand I would get it for free.That actually did happen.The downside is that whilethis showed up in a couple daysbecause I have Prime shipping,the SSD said it'll be herein two to four months.Austin from two weeksin the future here.And we just got a packagewhich has our 256 gig SSD.So, turns out they weren't scamming us.It actually was included for free, cool.(tone beeping)Okay, wow, that's quite the texture.Well we've got a trackpad which is fine I guessand lots of plastic actually.You know, I will say thebezels are quite small.That actually is not aterrible looking laptopeven though it's a 14 inch,it is somewhat compact.It's not the worst I've ever seenbut there is a lot of flex.If you're typing, like you're definitely,like you feel that wholething sinking down.I actually will say when I saw the mouse,I immediately expectedthat this track pad was gonna be terrible.It's actually fine.Intel Celeron N4020C.Oh, ooh, that sounds like protection.So the problem with alot of these keyboardsis they're super plastickyand they kind of sound echoy.The rubber actually kind of damps it.Just notice the difference, right?So,(keys clicking)versus,(keys clicking softly)it legitimately sounds better.The screen is not bad.Let's actually listen to some music here.(upbeat music)You know what?Again, very quiet, actually not horrible.(upbeat music)Alright, so this is our Bitecool.Now I will give them props.This time around, there's an Intel stickeron an Intel processor.Yay, you did it.(Austin clapping)It's very clearly the samecompany from Ecohero.So this is using a 12th gen Intel N5095and it's paired with 12 gigs of fast RAMand it's already got a256 gig SSD installed.Although, it does say you canexpand it up to two terabytes.I will say, oh, oh, ha, ha, ha.We got another VIP card baby.Oh, that don't, that don't sound good.Oh, well I see vents here.This actually might have active cooling.I don't love the gray on gray.It would be nice if the bezels were black.It does have the same littlelike webcam cover thoughwhich that's nice.Let's try the keyboard deck.Oh, that's actually, that feels,that's the best one of them all.So just like the Ecohero,this is running Windows 11 Pro.It's showing eight gigs of RAM, what?12 gigs of Ram reported byWindows, available RAM, 7.8On the AMD side,I understand that it had less showing upbecause some of the RAMwas partitioned for the graphics, right?Like, it was in its own little zone,not available for like regular use.This is not like that, right?Wait, no, it is, what?What are you doing?Oh my god.They partitioned off fourgigs of RAM for the graphics.What are you thinking?The fact that we gotta dothe whole active the warrantyis annoying.Ah, it's the Comic Sans.It's the exact same website.It's a different URL, it'sthe exact same website.Look at this.I fill it out andimmediately says, congrats,you've completed thestep, the Amazon gift cardand it tells me, it linksto service at Ecohero.Now, it's definitely the same company.It's not letting me do this twice.I'll say I like this onethe most of the three.So next up is a brandthat is decidedly not arandom weirdo from Amazon.This is Gateway and the fun fact is,this was our cheapest laptop at only $143.Now the reason I was really drawn to this,well, first of all, I sawit was an Amazon's Choicewhich I thought was just funny.If you saw a recentvideo on Amazon's Choice,you'll know all about my thoughts on that.It's got the really terrible Celeron,the older version, the N4020.Does come with Windows 11 in S mode,64 gigs of storage, 4 gigs of RAM.And it does come with Microsoft 365.Let's see what we got.24, 24 watt?Wow, that's really skimpy.That's all you get.And then we have the laptop,that is literally all that's in the box.Joanna, do you wanna read this one?- Wait, what?(Joanna gasping)Thank Mooo!Oh, I get it.It's like thank you, but it's a cow.(song in foreign language)- The difference with thiscompared to the other onesis that this is justtelling me to leave a reviewand let everyone know howmuch you like it or whatever.Boy, it is just so small.It is such a little dude, wow.So inside, oh that's blue.Now, that's blue.I love the one finger open.That is a firm hinge.Oh, that's totally a touchscreen.Wow, look at the size of that bezel.Is this Windows 8 over here?Oh no, no, no, look at the keyboard.Why is it so small?No, why would you do that?Oh, it's not a full size keyboard.Something's really weird with this laptop.So I went to go and like fire it upand you know, it starts to dolike the Windows setup screen.It goes black, I have to like restart itand now it's bouncingin and outta the desktopand it's frozen.Also, this is the world'smost reflective screen.Like can you see how reflective this is?I can just talk to you through the screen.Oh, now it's going in.Oh, my God.After all that time, then Iget the Windows 11 set up.But it's like the color space is off'cause I'm seeing this insane banding.Maybe you can see a littlebit better on camera here.I can't change the brightness right now,but if you take a look at it,do you see all like the banding?So there's like all theselines here, and here, and here.Oh, my god, we got cow.- Cow.- He's just staring atme, like, why did you buythis really, really poorexcuse for a laptop?I think I've learnedeverything I need to knowabout these laptops forthe initial impressions.Why don't we open them all upand see what's lurkinginside some of these?'Cause I'm assuming thatthere are some surprises.Some might be promising.A lot of them I think are gonnabe deeply, deeply mediocre.Alright, so let's startout with the Gateway.Now, I'm assumingthat there's nothinguser upgradable in here,but even if it's nothingmore than just taking a lookat what the cooling solutionlooks like, I'm curious.Oh, well that's not good.I feel like I see glue in here, what?Hey, all right, I think we're free now.It is clear they don'treally want you to open thisand I'm assuming it's becausethere's nothing upgradable.Wow, that's empty.So we've got a 42 watt-hour battery.Actually, you know what?I will give them a little bit of props.That's the same size batteryas some of the much more powerful laptops.So the battery, that actuallymight not be terribleespecially consideringthe 11.6 inch display.So this is our motherboard right here.So it does actually havea fairly decent sizedcopper plate on the top.So this is passively cooled,like a couple of these other laptops.You see on the opposite sidethere's a little bit of copperand a couple of shims here.So that's all the cooling that you've gotwhich is actually kind of okay.This is super standardfor these kind of laptops.This all right here isall just empty, right?So that's empty.They have a little daughter board,which just has like ourUSB ports and whatnot,and that's it.Two speakers, battery.There is nothing to this.Soft thumbs up, but man,this Gateway's not good.Next up, let's take alook at the Bitecool.So this feels like it's the cheapest onebut there are a couple ofinteresting things here.First and foremost, we havethis little easy access doorfor what I'm assuminghas gotta be our M.2 slot.Oh, my God.(Austin laughing)Wow, alright, well, so we dohave access to our SSD here.Oh, sneaky, sneaky.There's a hidden screw here.You got a little warranty void stickeron one additional screw.All right, well, youknow, fair enough, huh?Okay, so this issignificantly more complex.So it has an active cooler,which I mean, to be fair, a basic fan.So, we have one heat pipe over the CPU,we have a single fan.Look at all of this empty space.There is nothing in here.I'm actually kind of surprised about thatbecause this seems like itwould be plenty of spaceif you wanted to installlike a 2.5 inch SSD,not that you're really gonnawanna take advantage of that.And you also do see theIntel Wifi card therewhich does look like it started downbut I mean at least it's, youknow, a proper Wifi solution.I'm gonna give this also a soft thumbs up.So with the Aocwei,we also have a M.2 slotexposed, and importantly,this is the laptop thatdid come with the free SSD.So theoretically,it is quite easy toupgrade the SSD yourself.This one's gonna be a painto open, I can already tell.Boy, it's so much flexing.That doesn't feel good.Ah, it's empty.This is the motherboard.This is our M.2 slot.This is our very smallbattery and this is all empty.Lord, I'm losing brain cells today.So I will say the Ecoheromuch like the Bitecool,is far easier to open.The difference though is thatthere's no external M.2 slot,so you have to open thisup, unlike the other ones,if you want to load uplike a fresh SSD in there.What's bad is that the speakersjust are dangling in here.I guess there's nothingholding the speakers downbut there are actualreasons to open this one up.So we have access to our SSD.Unlike the other one, whichhad just a huge empty chasmthis also has a huge empty chasmbut importantly it's got a SATA port.So if I wanna install anSSD, I plug that right inand I can instantly upgrade my storage.(Austin clapping)And it gets better.Look at this, behind allthis giant amount of stickersis not one, but two DIMMs.(cartoon speaking gibberish)I can upgrade the RAM too.I feel, so you feel better about this,although I will say that thebattery is still very small.Is it branded as a Ryzen 7 or not?Okay, the reveal is,it just says AMD, wait.Are you telling me itjust says AMD Ryzen on it?Wait, hold on, hold on, wait, let me,it's just a bunch of random numbers.No, it doesn't say anything.Wait, there's a little QR code.So I just, I guess, I don't know.I don't know what that chip is.It's not a full Ryzen 7,I know that for a fact.I don't think I've been impressedby any of these laptops.I don't think that there are,at least from what I found,any hidden gens lurking in the bestsellingor the ads of Amazon.There are a couple ofinteresting takeaways.Most notably, I will say the Bitecoolis actually the closest tosomething I could recommend.Certainly not perfect,but it's got decent specs,a decent screen, a pretty solid price.My big sort of reservation thereis how they sort of force youto sign up for the warrantyand give you a gift card.So, next time you see yourselfa suspicious looking Amazon listingfor a laptop brand you've never heard of,it's probably a good ideato look the other wayand buy Lenovo or an HPor a Dell or an ASUSor an Aceror a Surface.- Or a Gateway, with cows.- No, don't, the Gatewaywas the worst one.(Austin laughing)(sad music)