Well I got this yesterday and just opened itā¦will get started on it tomorrow.
Iām taking a slightly different approach to this oneā¦.Itās a retailer evaluation (to see if they want to sell it) more than a full-blown review. The reviews take many 100s of hours. The little sandbox smart was so much work to review, especially as I had to use a different camera, not my phone one, and paste in the application roasting real-time data, matching the speed to the video on a separate camera
My thoughts to Bella Barista can be summarised as:
- Let people see what I am doing and my impressions
- Let me Vlog it if you like (now this isnāt for the likes and subscribes, my channel is not monetised to I donāt car)
- It saves me a lot of hours to do it this way, there still wonāt be production values
- Sandbox get to absolutely see my comments all over YouTube, and they can choose or choose not to take notice.
- If Bella Barista decide not to stock itā¦.you can draw your own conclusions from the videos and they donāt have to explain why, which just looks like sour grapes, or a retailer trying to turn you off a product, because they donāt sell it.
- I get a bit fed up with evaluating stuff thatās not great BB donāt stock it but other people do
- I am not sure if there have been other reviews on Youtube, but I want to make my own mind up forst
- I wouldnāt mind a manual, but I hope I will figure it out, or perhaps be able to download one
I and Bella Barista want you to go into this one eyes openā¦.even if they decide not to stock it. Itās always important to me that anything I review is worth buying. I donāt normally like to do a negative reviewā¦.those go to manufacturers and retailers. However, this one is on Kickstarter, itās a lot of money. So you deserve to see everything. My thoughts on the price from a UK stockis based on the Taiwan price (adding VAT and Import duties) is slightly north of Ā£2200, but that is a guess. Obviously if you go direct to the manufacturer you have shipping on topā¦.and for this babyā¦I would not recommend buying direct from Taiwan.
I think itās called the Sandbox Smart R2 and it has a 550g capacityā¦.the market has actually needed a small roaster with this sort of Capacity as 100g-150g is not enough for larger consumersā¦. So join me on this journey over the next few weeks and letās see what it can do!
My plans over the next few days are to:
- inspect it and understand the parts
- try and find a downloadable manual or some videos of basic use
- Find a 2 amp USB power supply for something I think will be useless
- See if my app can update to this model of roaster, apparently you can just select itā¦hopefully the app will hold both the Sandbox 1 and Sandbox 2
- Gird my loins and bung some beans in after a bit of study and see what happens on autopilot.
I will try it initially in the kitchen, but my extractor fan isnāt super brilliantā¦so will probably end up decanting it to the workshop. 550g of beans is going to produce a fair bit of smoke! I donāt want to roast in the kitchen as I suspect I know what will happenā¦but I will take one for the team!
