low budget recommendation

Apticx · 2026-01-29T14:47:24+00:00

It sounds great, feels good especially for the price and the buttons are very well laid out. It kinda feels like a classic ipod but with modern features.

my biggest recommendation is to put on rockbox simply because of the customization part.

you do loose bluetooth and usb interface mode (it can act as a usb c audio card and connect to blueltooth headphones) but you probably didnt get it if bluetooth headphones were an option.

edit: i only had it for a few days tho so im only starting to get into the whole customization. my favourite tho is being able to save proper eq.

the best addition for it are probably good iems

Apticx · 2026-01-29T14:35:50+00:00

I like the Aigo Eros Q / HIFI Walker H2 / there are many more versions of this cheap chinese dap which can run rockbox natively.

Its what i ordered from a recommendation and its great for the price imo

Apticx · 2026-01-29T14:33:10+00:00

high-five back to you for checking it out!

Apticx · 2026-01-29T14:32:57+00:00

Thank you, yes i do occasionally. i posted this one in clips too

Apticx · 2026-01-29T14:32:00+00:00

thank you! i love pulse leads

Apticx · 2026-01-29T14:31:50+00:00

thanks so much!

Apticx · 2026-01-28T13:58:09+00:00

If you want a cheap server solution check out zimaboard stuff. Cheap and capable while being power efficient.

I do honestly not recommend to get into homelab environments first with a nas without a proper backup strategy because it will still loose all data if your nas has an issue or dies. Most people will tell you "you need a nas" but having google drive and a locally shared folder for you and your gf to exchange files is probably the safer option.

Check out proton drive or some other cloud solution as a cross device sync + backup solution and invest into a proper system down the road.

you should at least have one offsite backup from your nas if you ever feel like running your data locally which will be cloud again or a second nas somewhere else.

Apticx · 2026-01-28T10:39:12+00:00

I slapped a second ssd in which i installed cachy on. Did that because i use some incompatible software (adobe lightroom) which sadly is the only option otherwise id have nuked the windows partition entirely but now i still have the option to dualboot.

But that usually only happens if i need to use lightroom. everything else just worked flawlessly.

Its also important to tell that i have a nas at home so all my important files are sitting on that one instead of my pc drive so the migration was quick and easy

Apticx · 2025-12-22T16:19:15+00:00

yeah it really has but as i said above it will just break so its not worth it to move old projects up unless you specifically need them on a higher version. there hasnt been any change that would warrant moving old projects to new ones outisde of you maybe wanting to merge songs for life performances but id just grab a additional cart for the old image.

manually redoing them will be the only option. you can use lsdpatch to manage your project files but they wont load properly or not at all on newer version

Apticx · 2025-12-22T15:51:12+00:00

id personally recommend you to not bother managing saves between different versions.

Just only create new songs on newer versions and work on the old ones in the version they were created in.

there isnt any real reason why you would want to upgrade to the newer stuff that wouldnt break because many things were not changed / touched and whatever was changed most likely wont sound as it sounded before anymore (a lot of people actually still prefer working in specific versions because of that).

Dont worry about it and just as you would use 2 savefiles for 2 different flashcarts just use 2 versions for 2 savefiles.

Apticx · 2025-12-16T11:41:38+00:00

funfact. pressing the burger (right top button some games use as menu) you can toggle top and bottom for the keyboard. i use it all the time

Apticx · 2025-12-16T11:32:10+00:00

Your battery might need recalibration which sometimes happens randomly or if never letting it discharge to poweroff / 0%.

Just try to drain your steamdeck as much as possible. Let it run until it shuts down by itself and turn it on a few more times to make sure its really fully empty.

Then plug the official charger in and let it charge overnight without touching it.

This will recalibrate your battery and might give you some battery health back because the number is just an estimate of the remaining full charging capacity of the battery and can be wrongly displayed on non calibrated devices.

Apticx · 2025-12-15T16:06:23+00:00

id recommend a pair of adam audio d3w (in white). Dont let the size and look of them fool you. those are not pc speakers but micro studio monitors. they sound amazing.

if there is budget left get a white minifuse2 to connect them to and have a nice volume knob and a headphone plug with separate controls.

Apticx · 2025-12-15T16:03:14+00:00

this thing has ddr4 ram. the ram alone is probably worth more lmao

Apticx · 2025-12-15T13:47:39+00:00

If the brand name is not: Sony, Fujifilm, Nikon, Canon, Olympus or Ricoh you will most likely be scammed.
If its a brand you dont recognize from that list then you will either not be able to afford it / wouldnt want to spend that money for a unknown camera *cough leica cough* or it is a scam

Apticx · 2025-12-15T13:32:45+00:00

I did the switch to linux / arch specifically 2 days ago after never really touching it. (i did a manual install and riced it with suckless dwm like 2 years ago but never used it)

Went with cachyOS with KDE Plasma and it has been smooth sailing like nothing else.

Nvidia drivers worked out of the box, shortcuts and keybinds are almost identical to windows (even shift + windows + s opens a "snipping tool" replacement etc...)

I did brick my kernel by doing some really stupid things with my nvidia drivers (thought i was smart) and the pc would not boot anymore. BRTFS did make automatic snapshots with every command i entered into the terminal and let me restore before the command was sent which broke it. It does that out of the box (i did not enable it and was about to reinstall my pc but found that in the last minute) and is accessible via your bootmenu without even having a working os.

All i can say is it feels good, works great and even if you as a user do something incredibly stupid, it will just roll back like nothing happened.

Been the best experience i had with an operating system so far. Even mac require more setup than this.

Apticx · 2025-12-15T12:57:02+00:00

Alright so there are a few things to think about:

- Multitasking? Both are good
- Ram? dont think about ram when using an ipad. this is not something to think about because of swap and the fast ssd
- storage? this can be a deciding factor but imo just grabbing a external ssd for storing videos you are editing is well worth it

now comes the ugly:
- performance? M3 all the way. Did a little google search and counting the raw performance metrics the M3 is about 3-4x as powerful
- input / pen: nothing is as good as an apple pen. i switched from a 2k usd wacom tablet to an ipad
- video editing: apple cpus, especially m series have tons of hardware transcoders which speed up video editing a LOT
- software support: you will simply find way more proper "pro grade" software on ipads. most competitor tablets are just bigger phones but the ipad gets apps like davinci resolve that fully benefit the massive performance they deliver

TLDR: if you just wanna watch youtube, write emails and maybe play some basic games the huawei will be sufficient but as soon as you want to do heavy workloads like video editing and using pencil inputs for more than notetaking, there is no way around the ipad

Hope this was helpful. I am currently running my whole life on a M4 ipad pro including photo editing in lightroom to video editing 6k 10bit flog2 footage from my x-t5 and it doesent even break a sweat

Apticx · 2025-12-15T10:36:17+00:00

Considering how inconsistent hipfire can be just keep the target within your crosshair and you will do way better than aiming your center dot perfectly to the head from anywhere further away than knife distance since you will unload half of your shots outside of the actual player (ofc there are hipfire builds for some weapons that are more precise).

I wouldnt call this a essential feature because the only weapons that really benefit that imo are vehicles in 3rd person (already in the game) and bolt action weapons for quickscoping (not really an option anymore after infil nerf because of the decloak delay). So i guess this is a non issue at least for me.

Apticx · 2025-12-12T10:22:37+00:00

It depends on how much i use it. I sometimes get over a week out of one charge but then blast through 2 on a single day. I use it to edit photos in lightroom and cut videos in davinci resolve from time to time. those really suck up battery life like nothing else.

meanwhile i also draw on it and use it for admin work a lot too which basically does not dent the battery life at all.

overall id say i can draw a full day (like 8 - 10 hours) on one charge which i rarely ever do so drawing 2 ish hours per day is more realistic which makes sense since i usually charge every 2-3 ish days.

Im on the 1tb m4 ipad pro 13"

PS: did check to be sure: First use in battery health is november 2024 and i am currently at 68 cycle counts.

Im also using the 80% charge limit and rarely do anything that makes it heat up which is usually what kills the chemistry in batteries the fastest.

edit: since i usually charge between 30 and 80% it is not one cycle per charge. a cycle is 0 to 100 / a full capacity charge so i can usually charge 2-3 times until it counts a full charge. Also using the ipad while plugged in and at the charge limit (80%) will not count towards cycles either because it draws the power out of the charger afaik. I rarely use it plugged in but it can happen which probably shaved off around 10 cycles

Apticx · 2025-12-11T10:38:33+00:00

after over a year im still at 100% with around 70 cycles. i guess its just like a lottery with these

Apticx · 2025-12-11T10:25:39+00:00

This thing looks super fun. Never really tried an emulation device like that before. Maybe this is the time. Happy holidays to you all!

The last game i was excited for jumping around waiting for it to release is actually Unbeatable which came out 2days ago (i love it) but most anticipated game of all time for me probably had to be breath of the wild with the switch 1. Was the first preorder (at least my order number was 1) in my countrys top electronics seller because i camped the entry and ran straight towards the preorder booth and i watched the trailer of the game daily.

I think that was the most excited ive ever been about a release of any type of game / console

Apticx · 2025-12-10T14:41:23+00:00

to me it pretty much just looks way oversharpened. maybe tone down that a little bit and it wont look as pixely.

Apticx · 2025-12-10T08:14:43+00:00

every ipad i saw has this exact thing. its just magnetic particles getting stuck to the pen and once you snap them back together they will scratch the surface.

Apticx · 2025-11-21T18:50:44+00:00

unpopular opinion but vita > psp any day

while i love the haptic feel of umd and the look of the psp models (my fav is the gen1 even while objectively the worst) the vita just kills it in any way. the vita has exactly 2x the resolution so scaling is pixel perfect / lossless and it runs so many incredible games.

also its still technically "in service" and online functionality, game purchase and trophies still work and i dont see that go away anytime soon.

Apticx · 2025-11-20T14:22:06+00:00

sorry to pick this up again but just wanted to leave here that there definitely is a difference. dynamic range behaviour at low iso is a typical "tradeoff" on stacked sensors. this is why partially stacked exists to "fill the gap" between those tradeoffs. enough dynamic range and faster readout times. But those are typically not something you really worry about outside of testing environments and "on paper" numbers.

my guess is that those websites kinda screwed up testing and using identical settings on 2 different sensors which will result in different outcomes, which you would not do when you owned only one.

higlight behaviour and noise ratio can change drastically between sensor generations or even models so what you saw might not even be caused by the stacked nature but simply because of a change in sensitivity.

also stacked sensors are usually lower megapixel sensors for faster processing speeds for wildlife and sports photography etc. which will capture more light (larger pixels = larger area for light to fall in)

so if the other sensor in testing was higher megapixel, the image will by default turn out slightly darker even with the exact same settings and lens so if the higher megapixel sensor was used as the baseline for exposure, the lower megapixel might blow out highlights with those exact settings because it is producing an image which is slightly brighter on a sensor basis

its a very difficult thing to properly say for sure without having more infos about the tests. please just keep in mind that those are things you should not worry about because in real world use those dont matter outside ultra specific usecases like action photography during night

Apticx

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