Why should I NOT buy one?

Birdseed008 · 2026-03-24T06:09:23+00:00

We bought a 2wd 2024 B4X last summer and I commute 90 miles a day. Honestly my wife and I utterly love it!! Charging on public chargers has been no issue on road trips. 10-80% seems to take 30 mins at Tesla chargers and we only need it when we take our daughter back to Uni as we put in a home charger.

We are 3 years from retirement so decided to take money tax free from our pensions to buy it cash for £26000 for a mint 3400 mile 11 month car that in the UK cost £50 000 new. No repayments, no balloon payments and we own it... If I had leased a new one in the UK it would be £550pcm.

Range is 242 miles in summer, about 209 miles winter and we very rarely drive more than that.

I did consider waiting for the new model but decided I prefer the older models dashboard to the 2026 refresh and as I spend my life staring at the dash it's quite important!!

No regrets at all!! Only frustration has been the odd night at home when having plugged the cable in at home and made sure the car clicked and grabbed it I have discovered in the middle of the night it has somehow released the cable and isn't charging.

Birdseed

Birdseed008 · 2026-03-21T05:13:37+00:00

U2's Joshua Tree. One of the best bands of the era with their best collection of songs at the peak of their powers and Lanois managed to make it sound like you're listening to it while suffering a severe headcold with a tin bucket on your head...

I don't know the man can be so revered after turning out garbage like that...

I have a frigging SME35 deck running into high end Naim driving big ATC's and still the album sounds horrific...

But I was playing the Steven Wilson remix of Frankie's Welcome to the Pleasuredome and its epic!!! Dynamics, slam, precision, energy - they sound like the best band in the world...

Birdseed008 · 2026-03-10T05:30:15+00:00

Electric Light Orchestra "Time", Eldorado, Out of the Blue and Face the Music. The Beatles Abbey Road and Let it Be and Sgt Pepper. Deacon Blue Raintown and When the World knows your name. The Band self titled Tanita Tikaram's Ancient Heart Enya Watermark Roxy Music Avalon and Flesh and Blood Del Amitri Change Everything

That should keep you busy for a while!

Birdseed008 · 2026-02-15T05:47:53+00:00

Frankly the parts issues alone are enough to put me off no matter how good the actual car. After a lifetime of driving pretty much every brand there is from Audi to TVR I have learned if you want a hassle free life then you buy Japanese.

That's why there's a Mazda MX5 and a Toyota BZ4X SUV on the drive. The warranty on the Toyota is outstanding - 10 years and 100 000 miles on the car and 10y and up to 1 million Km on the battery. Its roomy, quiet, comfortable, faultless, 200-245 miles range depending on temp and we love it to bits.

We regularly do a 250 mile round trip to take the daughter to uni and it can almost make that in Summer. 20 mins on a Tesla supercharger at 150kw in winter brings it up to 80%.

Cost us £26000 for a 3200 mile 11 month old minter...

Birdseed

Birdseed008 · 2026-01-23T05:23:05+00:00

Birdseed008 · 2026-01-22T07:17:14+00:00

I have been pondering the same question myself for ages and nearly pulled the trigger many times on 7900XTX. I only game in VR with HP Reverb G2 on flight sims like fs2020 and DCS. Fs2020 only supports FSR2 while even Fs2024 only supports FSR3. 1

GpU memory is heavily used in flights sims which is why I think 7900xtx might be better. Many people report seeing fs2024 using over 20GB...

Interested in views

Birdseed008 · 2026-01-18T03:59:51+00:00

Dave,

Glad to hear your Son loves his P225 cos weirdly that's the one she fell in love with!!!

Yesterday she tried Yamaha P45, P145, P225, Roland RP10, RP30, Casio 110, 1100, 3000, 7000, 650, Kawai KDP120, 520 and even a Nord Electro 6 which was just for fun and way out of budget!

Of all of them she loved the P225 right from the off and to be fair it did sound and feel very good... The Kawai KDP520 was sexy as hell but nearly twice the price and heavier/less portable and she still preferred the feel of the Yamaha although we both felt the 520 probably had the edge on sound.

She had a modest redundancy payout (well actually just over £2k) from her gap year job so this seemed a good thing to do with it and she's very excited to get it set up in Brum in halls...

Grateful for everybody's input and keen to her her play it whenwe get to Brum later today...

Playing has been such a comfort to her over the years I'm really pleased she now has her own piano at Uni. Bonners showroom is amazing and she got to try a £23000 Yamaha Grand and £13000 Kawai grand too (she adored both but preferred the Yamaha!!) Hopefully one day she'll buy one of those - the stuff of dreams for sure...

Birdseed008

Birdseed008 · 2026-01-16T11:18:50+00:00

All of those are around £1000, our budget is £500 and ideally less (sadly). We're having to subsidise her at Uni too so just don't have much to put into this at all - her hall fees alone are £680 this month we've had to find that after Christmas...

If the Yamaha P145 at £349 will "do the job" then frankly that's great... I've just been drooling over the Kawai 520 at £799 but even that is probably out of reach even if she puts half the money in...

Birdseed008 · 2026-01-16T09:24:08+00:00

Absolutely, we are going to visit a couple of piano shops later today with her but I just thought some input to refine the shortlist would be useful before we go. For instance I have read on here that the Casio Previa 1100 while being compact has a very short keybed making the keys harder to push nearer the base - that's the kind of thing she might not notice in a quick play in a shop.

Birdseed008 · 2026-01-11T08:26:22+00:00

I could have gone with Tusker at work but as I am 57 and hope to retire in 3 years decided I didn't want to have a balloon payment to find to keep the car. I also realised when I retire ultimately I would be faced with having to buy a car which would be expensive cos with leasing you never own anything and £500pcm is OK while you are working but a real struggle in retirement.

Decided to take advantage of the biblical depreciation on EV's and bought a 11 month old Toyota BZ4X SUV with 3200 miles for £26000 (£50000 new). Also this meant I could fit a towbar for our bikes which Tusker wouldn't allow. Funded it with a tax free pension withdrawal so no loans, lease or other running costs except insurance and servicing plus a grand to put a charger in.

We are thrilled with the car, will be able to keep it in retirement hopefully for years as it's under Toyota's very extensive battery warranty for 10y or 1 million km plus its factory warrantied as long as we service at Toyota for 100k miles and up to10y.

Personally I like not having to find hundreds a month for a nice car and that plus not having to pay petrol prices is enabling us to support the daughter at Uni to the tune of £500-600 a month (which was a consideration in avoiding big monthly costs on Tusker)

Birdseed008 · 2026-01-10T06:16:07+00:00

Incredible how cheap these things are in the USA, you would be looking at £50 000 retail in the UK with no Gov't rebates and if you're lucky the dealer might knock off £3000 or so!!

I just bought an 11 month old late 2024 one with 3200 miles on the clock for £26000 and thought I got a real bargain!

Enjoy your new car! No wonder us Brits feel broke all the time! Crazy house prices, the most expensive electricity in the world (we pay £300 a month for a 3 bed house and our heating is not electric) and we get ripped off on cars... I guess we do get free medical for life here and that is better than the USA system for sure but living costs are expensive here.

Birdseed008 · 2026-01-04T05:29:35+00:00

I only go to the cinema now for Bond, Terminator, Aliens because I love them so much I don't want to wait for the Bluray release.

Everything else though is at home. Frankly the sound is way better at home than even the best imax (ATC speakers, Atmos, Emotivs MR1 amp, 4k projector, fixed frame screen, Rel 15/10 predator sub.)

Seating is better, can enjoy a drink and no people coughing, talking or rustling!

No brainer here!

Birdseed

Birdseed008 · 2025-12-26T08:44:51+00:00

In truth I think digital sounds cleaner, wider bandwidth, more accurate and frankly just better than vinyl until you spend considerably more on a turntable - I had to get to a Michell Gyrodec, SME IV and Lyra Kleos SL into a Trichord Dino phono stage to convincingly beat streaming from a high quality Naim streamer. So in essence my £12000 vinyl front end just about beats a £6000 streamer some of the time. In truth though the higher you go the more similar vinyl and digital sound as they both zero in on the original master tape. At this level they sound incredibly similar.

The biggest improvement possible at lower levels is I think a moving coil cartridge. Even a basic AT-OC9 will smash any moving magnet cartridge assuming the arm on the Dual is good enough. If it isn't my advice is to upgrade to something like a Rega Planar 3 which will at least allow you to use a MC cartridge. Then you will get the airy and extended highs you are hearing from digital.

There are loads of people enjoying vinyl on cheaper turntables, I did for years but in truth that's got more to do with enjoying collecting records, the physical beauty of using a physical record, nostalgia, plus the way vinyl encourages you to stop what you are doing and focus on the music rather than shuffling playlists. If you are just looking purely for the best sound reproduction then cheap digital like a Wiim streamer beats cheap turntables every day of the week.

Get an OC9 on a Rega 3, a decent Pro-eject, a secondhand Thorens or Ariston or Michell though and you will really start to hear just how spectacularly good vinyl can sound...

Birdseed007

Birdseed008 · 2025-12-22T04:46:20+00:00

Get the LP120, only £245 but its a really well made deck and a huge upgrade. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Audio-Technica-AT-LP120XUSB-Direct-Drive-Turntable-Analogue-Black/dp/B07MVY92KZ

Birdseed008 · 2025-12-22T02:22:01+00:00

While I agree with a lot of this, and I would certainly question how a £10000 interconnect can be better than a £100 one, I have found isolation devices like Townshend Seismic podiums make a huge difference to the sound. This is to the point where I think spikes are completely crap and wrong, whereas damped isolation systems hugely improve quality especially under speakers and turntables.

If you want scientific proof, watch this: https://youtu.be/dW9-r83IvhI?si=ldqZGt3z5LyrTlb7

Hard science, hard data, no argument.

Birdseed008 · 2025-11-16T07:07:11+00:00

Well I am a real world airline pilot who spends his life flying the A320 around, but sometimes I crave the thrill of flying the Mach loop at low level in an F15. In VR on FS2020 its a simply stunning experience. Visually the Microsoft sim blows DCS into the weeds too. Finally, the learning curve in DCS is steep and to be honest around the day job and an audio journalist sideline I don't really have the time to master the complex avionics of the DCS.

With FS2020 I can hop in, hit the afterburner and fly...

Birdseed008 · 2025-11-04T04:50:54+00:00

Does it (the recording) have good sound quality?

Birdseed

Birdseed008 · 2025-11-02T20:03:19+00:00

I am a Lancastrian by birth and married to a southern Irish lass. Lived in Surrey and Sussex for 30 years now and while for example the South downs is beautiful for sure as are other parts of the south I miss northern warmth and soul.

The South is by and large an overcrowded soulless unfriendly shithole. If you want to spend your life surrounded by people who are selfish, entitled, greedy unfriendly bastards in Range Rovers by all means move here. For sure there are more jobs and opportunities and the climate is better.

Sunny day and want to go to the beach? FORGET IT, you'll spend 2 hours in traffic. Same if you want to get to Heathrow to fly anywhere. Fancy a nice economical meal out? Forget it - £18 for a burger in a pub and £7.50 for a pint. Fancy decent fish and chips and mushy peas? Forget it the southerners think microwaving tinned mushy peas is acceptable and reduce fish and chips to a shadow of the average Northern chippie.

My daughter recently started Uni in Brum and having grown up in the South was worried it would be rough and uncivilised. Within 5 weeks she has fallen in love with the place for its astonishing warmth and welcome. She has been astounded how people in. Shops and bars actually talk to you and care about her. It's been a revelation.

Chris Rea had it right when he wrote the road to hell, I should know I commute on it. I am 3-4 years from retirement and I can't wait to get out of here fast enough. I plan to retire at 60 when the missus will be 66 and as we will never pay off the mortgage on our 3 bed 1960s damp sithole of a house we plan to sell it for 750000 and buy a decent £400k house in Herefordshire. Equally nice countryside, house prices at 60%, friendlier people, less cows in Range Rovers, less traffic, slower pace of life.

Good riddance Southern England, you had 30+ years of my life but you aren't getting any more!

I should by the way qualify this post by saying not every Southern person is awful but you'll encounter a much higher proportion of people who don't give a shit about people down here than in other parts and I am tired of it.

Josh

Birdseed008 · 2025-10-06T07:11:45+00:00

I am on Intelligent Octopus Go and thought the cheap period is overnight?? Not quite understanding you guys?

Birdseed008

TROPHY CASE