I thought I would document things here… so below is a copy of my post in the postman thread and I will continue to link to videos and post my thoughts here.
Well I got this yesterday and just opened it…will get started on it tomorrow.
I’m taking a slightly different approach to this one….It’s 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 isn’t for the likes and subscribes, my channel is not monetised to I don’t car)
- It saves me a lot of hours to do it this way, there still won’t 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 it….you can draw your own conclusions from the videos and they don’t have to explain why, which just looks like sour grapes, or a retailer trying to turn you off a product, because they don’t sell it.
- I get a bit fed up with evaluating stuff that’s not great BB don’t 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 wouldn’t 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 open….even if they decide not to stock it. It’s always important to me that anything I review is worth buying. I don’t normally like to do a negative review….those go to manufacturers and retailers. However, this one is on Kickstarter, it’s 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 £2200, but that is a guess. Obviously if you go direct to the manufacturer you have shipping on top….and for this baby…I would not recommend buying direct from Taiwan.
I think it’s called the Sandbox Smart R2 and it has a 550g capacity….the market has actually needed a small roaster with this sort of Capacity as 100g-150g is not enough for larger consumers…. So join me on this journey over the next few weeks and let’s 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 it…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 isn’t super brilliant…so will probably end up decanting it to the workshop. 550g of beans is going to produce a fair bit of smoke! I don’t want to roast in the kitchen as I suspect I know what will happen…but I will take one for the team!
