The guy who bought every speaker

Hi, I’m Kern. Friends used to call me Go Go Gadgets, because I always had the right device on hand.

The Gadget Buyer started with a problem you have probably had: I wanted the best Bluetooth speaker, and every review site said something different.

So I did something a little crazy. Over $3,000 worth of Bluetooth speakers showed up at my door from Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, and even Costco. My family thought I had lost my mind.

They were not entirely wrong.

Then I put every one of them through real life. I played them at the pool and on a boat. I washed the sand off after a day at the beach. I dunked one in a bucket of water just to see. I listened in the rain at a football tailgate. I left one in a hot truck bed for a week, turned it on, and it never missed a beat.

Here is the conclusion all that money bought me: there is no perfect speaker. The best one depends on your mission.

My personal favorite is the JBL Boombox, and it is massive. I love its bass. My wife hears it differently: she prefers the tighter, crisper bass of the Sonos and the Bose, and she has a point, because they sound flat out beautiful indoors where the weather cannot get to them. I grew up in the 90s with giant 12 inch subs in the trunk, which probably explains both my taste and my hearing.

The best all around pick is the JBL Charge: good size, good sound, and it survives almost anything, though it is never the single best at any one thing.

Even inside my own house, the best speaker depends on whose ears are voting. Keep that in mind when you read anyone’s reviews, including mine.

That became the whole idea of this site: buy it, use it, tell the truth about it.

The forum years

Here’s the part most gadget sites will not tell you about themselves.

In the early days, I noticed something. When your gadget breaks, the answer is usually buried in a support forum, somewhere around reply number 40, underneath three arguments and a guy insisting you buy a different brand.

So my team and I did the digging for you. We read the whole sprawling thread, tested what actually worked, and served up the fix on a silver platter. No digging. No jargon. One clear answer.

Readers loved it. It turns out nobody wants to read a forum. They want the fix.

That promise still runs every page on this site today.

Where the site is now, honestly

AI search changed this business. When answers started appearing above the search results, sites like mine lost a big piece of their traffic, and I had to let a great team of writers go.

I say that with zero bitterness and a lot of gratitude. Enough of you still come here, read the fixes, and trust the recommendations that I get to keep doing this. If you are one of those readers, thank you. You are the reason the lights are on.

And I adapted. The same AI that upended this business now helps me run it. I use it to research, to check facts against manufacturer documentation, and to keep 1,800 articles current, which one person could never do alone at a kitchen table. The standards, the real world experiences, and every recommendation are mine, and my name goes on all of it because I stand behind all of it.

What you’ll find here

Fixes. Over 1,800 step by step guides for the gadgets in your house. iPhones, iPads, AirPods, Fitbits, Rokus, routers, and the rest. The answer comes first, the reasons follow.

Honest buying advice. Which one to buy, which tier to pay for, and just as important, when NOT to buy. I would rather you keep your money than spend it wrong.

Deal Watch. I track prices myself, every single day, on the short list of products I actually vouch for. When the price is genuinely good, I say BUY. When it is bad, I say WAIT, even though I earn nothing when you wait.

How I test

When I own a device, I test it at my kitchen table and write the fix the way I would explain it to my own family.

I cannot buy everything, or I would go broke. For the gadgets I do not have, I research hard and give you the same factual, evidence based answer. I will never pretend I own something I do not.

The full testing process, step by step →

A lot of the testing happens whether I plan it or not. My wife and I are on video calls all day. Our two teenage daughters stream, scroll, and bring half the neighborhood’s devices onto our WiFi. This family stress tests more gadgets than most labs.

The honest take, and how this site makes money

Here is the deal, plainly.

If a brand wants to send a product to our mailing address, I’ll give it a look. I am never above trying something new. But there are no guarantees I will cover it, and no guarantees the review will be positive if I do.

Sometimes the best review I can provide is to not share my opinion.

So if your product never shows up on the site, it could mean a few things. Maybe it had no natural fit here. Maybe I ran out of bandwidth that month. Or maybe I tried it and decided silence was the kindest thing I had to say. You will never know which, and I like it that way.

My opinion stays my own, every time, and that part will never be for sale.

Almost every dollar this site makes comes from sharing our content for free. To keep it free, a firm called Mediavine manages the placement of ads on the site, and I do not control who advertises here. On top of that, if you buy something through one of our links to an affiliate like Amazon, we earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. That is how we afford to keep this website running.

If I ever publish sponsored content, it will be for a product I believe in, and it will say so right at the top.

Some people will disagree with my calls, and that’s okay. I call it like I see it. My WAIT calls cost me commissions every week, and I keep making them, because your trust is worth more than any of it.