I Switched to the CHEAPEST Samsung Setup

- Goodbye Apple. Today I'm switching to a Samsung setup that costs less than the price of a single iPhone. Now I tried this before with all Apple products, but with that video, I had to go with used stuff. This time around I was able to get everything brand new directly from Samsung. We're talking about phone, laptop, tablet, smart watch, headphones, you name it. Starting out with, we have the phone. Now Samsung makes some very cheap devices. So as far as I understand, the Galaxy A07 actually isn't largely sold in the United States. So I know when I bought this one... In fact, it actually has a little warning here. This one was actually, I think, a Latin American version, right? - [Alex] Yes, that is correct. - Now, if I would have spent more money, of course I would get better stuff, but considering that we spent less than $100 on this thing, - [Alex] Yeah, absolutely. We paid $97. - For a fully functional phone, that's pretty good. Now, 100 bucks you probably would want to consider buying a used phone, but if this thing is brand new, comes with a warranty, comes with- - [Alex] Ah, well, okay, so remember that little asterisk where you can't buy this in the US. So that does mean that you won't get warranty from Samsung on it, but you do still get like, you know, like six years of software updates. - Oh, I actually kind of like that green, man. I mean, obviously plastic, at less than 100 bucks, but it actually kinda looks nice. It's got a little bit of texture on it. It feels kind of similar to, like, an S26 Plus or something, like one of, like, the larger devices. It is unfortunately dead. So I'm gonna go ahead and plug it in, but that's fine. It's probably sitting in the box for a little while. Now, of course we've gotta get ourselves a laptop. Now I know what you're thinking. "Austin, you can't use a Chromebook for anything. What are you a fifth grader?" I was once, but here's the thing. - [Alex] Who's saying this stuff? - I'm watching you Wazowski. - I will say out of the items we got from this video, this Galaxy Chromebook is the one that I'm the least confident in. Alex, before I even open it, how much did we pay for the Galaxy Chromebook Go? - [Alex] We paid $191 for a brand new Chromebook. - So less than $200 for a laptop. Look, that's better than, like, an HP Stream or something. Oh, it's actually small. Oh, okay, so it's just a huge box and a small Chromebook. Okay, got it. Doesn't look terrible. It's an interesting two-tone kind of finish. Not a huge amount... Well, okay, this is a decent amount of deck flex. Again, less than 200 bucks. We'll see how it is. I have low expectations, but, I mean, we're in what, less than $300, we have a fully functioning phone and laptop at this point? So when I think about cheap Samsung stuff, my first instinct is always the tablets, right? So this is the Galaxy Tab A11. Now... - [Alex] Wait, A11? - Wait, the back of it says A9. The front of it says A11. - Sick. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. - [Adriana] A 911? - [Alex] I have an update that the A11, the non-plus, just regular A11, is an international model. They only sell it in Latin America. And the kicker is if you try to buy the A11, just this, whatever weird model on Amazon, it's cheaper than what we paid. - Okay, so we didn't get an upgrade. We got a downgrade. - [Alex] We did, yeah. So they're set for... Amazon is selling it for $136 when we paid $169. - So as you'd expect, it is a small tablet that is not that much bigger than our actual phone. But I will say I actually have slightly higher expectations. 'cause again, Walmart sell a pretty decent little tablet for less than 100 bucks. So this is a lot more. So this needs to not be garbage. Okay, that seems like metal I think. Oh my God. Well, Puerto Rico's here. This only lets you set up in a country or region in Latin America. (Alex laughing) Okay, while this restarts in Puerto Rican mode, we're gonna go ahead and take a look at our next item. So, again, we're trying to do a full complete setup, right? So we've got ourselves a phone, we've got ourselves a tablet, we've got ourselves a laptop. We also have to have a Galaxy Watch. Now I don't use Galaxy Watches very often, right? I've dabbled in them a bit. I'm not a huge smart watch guy, but this is the Galaxy Watch FE. I will say though, Alex. - Yes? - This has LTE. Did I buy an LTE Galaxy Watch? - [Alex] It didn't say it was LTE. - Why is that so confusing? I just bought stuff off of Amazon. - [Alex] On the listing itself, it does give you an option for Bluetooth or LTE. - Yep. I did not pick LTE though. - [Alex] That is correct. We didn't buy the LTE version, but they cost exactly the same. So I guess they figured they'll just give it to you. - What was the price that I paid versus what I was supposed to pay? 'Cause I know that the LTE was an upcharge, that's why I didn't choose it. - [Alex] Yeah, so we paid $170. - A lot of money compared to some of these other items, but for a smart watch, you know... Well, I look forward to putting this one also in Puerto Rican mode. It does have... Oh, I like the little band, the little, like, little pops of color on there. It looks nice. Nothing about this is immediately screaming, oh, it looks like a budget smartwatch. I got my whole fleet of devices here. I got my phone, my laptop, my tablet, my watch all charging, but we're still missing a crucial component. Now to round our setup out, we have the Galaxy Buds Core. Now I've never used the Cores, but I actually am a big fan of Galaxy Buds generally. Correct me if I'm wrong here, the Galaxy Buds Core are not a very popular or widely used device, right? - [Alex] So this one is the one that we knew that kind of was for other markets. - I will say, like, just at first glance the case looks very similar to the, like, more expensive ones. These Buds are kind like a lot of other Samsung products where they have that kind of distinctive little, like, earbud shape where they have the little wing tip. We paid how much for these? - [Alex] We paid $53. - For 53 bucks, you can still get some decent wireless earbuds for sure, but for Samsung stuff, that's pretty cheap. I gotta say, while this is probably not the best Samsung stuff you can get, obviously. For way less than the price of an iPhone, we've got an entire setup here. So lemme go ahead, get 'em all paired and synced and see what is it like to live with the cheapest Samsung setup. So it has been 24 hours since I switched over to my new Samsung gear and there's a lot to talk about. Some negative stuff for sure. But I would say largely positive, the number one word I would use is slow. These pieces of tech are generally pretty slow. Now, that shouldn't be a surprise considering how little I paid for them, but one area that's been less than stellar is the fingerprint sensor. So for most phones these days, you can tap to turn the phone on. That doesn't work. So I can click the button and it will turn on, and then I put my finger on it, and it will unlock. I'll say there's a couple of areas that have been impressive on the A07. The camera is one. It doesn't have any stabilization so you have to make sure you keep your hands steady, especially for video. But the photos, especially with that 48, or I think 50 megapixel sensor, it's pretty good. The screen is bright enough. It's a little bit low res. It's only 720p on a 6.7 inch display. So you can definitely see the pixels and especially, like, reading, like, black text on a white sort of background, it actually hurts my eyes a little bit. It actually looks straining 'cause it just looks very fuzzy and certain apps don't feel like they're being very well optimized for this kind of real estate. I knew what I was getting into with this video. Obviously this stuff is very cheap, right? So, I'm a spoiled tech YouTuber who likes to play with all kind of fancy stuff. So going to the very cheap stuff has been a little bit of an adjustment. Generally speaking as right now 24 hours in, the watch, I'm gonna make sure I fully charge again and see if maybe that battery gets a little bit better. That's my main concern there. The phone, I'm only really concerned about it from a speed perspective. Sometimes, it takes five seconds to open an app or it immediately kicks everything out of the background or whatever... It feels like there's something lurking in here that I need to figure out. I was also using the Galaxy Tab. I was actually kind of impressed with it. So the screen isn't amazing, right, as you kind of expect. But I was watching some YouTube and whatnot at home, and it's actually, like, the audio is pretty good. It does have actual real stereo speakers. The size is nice. I will say it's not that much bigger than my phone, which feels a little bit weird, but the audio is significantly better. The screen is fine. And for tablet stuff like watching video and browsing and stuff, it's actually all right. So far, I will say that I am finding this to be actually a better setup than I expected, but I'm already just 24 hours in thinking about some ways I would do things differently if I were able to restart from scratch or if I could wildly and blatantly cheat and swap some devices out before the end of the challenge. Okay, so I'm on day two with my Samsung setup, and a few thoughts. I was going to go and take everything to the gym yesterday. However, my watch was basically dead by the time I was done with work. So I figured instead of going home, waiting for it to charge, trying again, I just was gonna wait until today. Now that being said, today I did do things a little differently. I did turn off the always on display. It did make a big difference to the battery life. I will say it feels really silly to have a watch that doesn't actually have the time on it all the time. That kind of defeats the purpose 'cause it takes a solid second for you to, like, raise your wrist for it to show up. But regardless, in the gym, watch actually worked really well. All the Samsung Health stuff feels like it's actually pretty well designed. No real issues there. And I'll actually say that the Galaxy Buds Core are fantastic. So I've got them in now. They're really good for 50 bucks. I mean the active noise cancellation, not incredibly strong, but certainly enough for you know, a crowded environment like the gym. I feel like something like an airplane. Like, they're pretty good. I do have to say that the A07 is starting to grate on me a little bit. I have tried to do a little pass on it to you know, disable more apps and speed things up, and it's just slow. And what else is becoming a pain point is the Galaxy Chromebook. Holy. Like, it's fine if you stay on one tab at a time, but man, that thing is slow. So, I do have an idea on how to make some creative modifications to my setup. So I've used these things for long enough to know that I would like to make some different decisions. - [Alex] Well it's too late. You have the setup that you have. - [Adriana] You kind of already decided your decision. - Well, you say that, but this is YouTube after all, the platform where evolution of storytelling craft and Austin getting out of using the ultra cheap things is really part of the mission. So the reason why I'm bouncing off of this particular Chromebook is that it is so slow. It is a dual core one gigahertz processor, four gigs of RAM. And while at first, I thought the screen was okay, screen not okay. Screen is very, very bad. - Yeah. - So, I may have taken the liberty of ordering a replacement laptop. - [Alex] What do you mean replacement? That is the cheapest... That is the cheapest new laptop. - The return policy is still good. We don't have to worry about this one anymore. - [Alex] Yeah, but but that's still the cheapest new Samsung laptop. - Well you would think that that's true and yet I found an even better and even cheaper option, which is still within the theme of the video. - [Alex] Oh, okay. - If you, my friends at home are watching this and go, "Austin, tell me what I should buy", not this. - [Alex] Hey, we still have to return that. This, my friends, while it should look quite similar. In fact, I think actually the hardware is gonna be pretty much the same looking for the most part, in fact, actually very, very similar. This is, instead of a Chromebook, a Samsung Galaxy Book Go, How much did I pay for this Galaxy Chromebook? - [Alex] You paid $191. - $191. - [Alex] It's pretty cheap for a laptop. - [Austin] It's pretty cheap for a laptop. Sorry, my phone's a little slow. Lemme pull up the listing. Just gimme a second. This laptop costs me $65. - [Alex] Well, okay, you know what? - $65. That's crazy. That's like- - Yeah, so that was why when I saw this, was like, wait a minute, this is absolutely, even if, again, it's not as powerful as, like, an X Elite or something, but that's fine. It's gonna be leagues better than this. It runs full Windows, it has 5G. And while I hope the screen's better, I don't think it actually is, the fact that I can actually, you know, do stuff with it as opposed to wait for it to load one website for like 30 seconds. And if I may be so bold, Alex, what's 191 minus 65? How much is that again? - [Alex] 127. - $127. Why? How lovely is that? Because, also, I got another phone. - [Alex] Wait, wait, what? What? - I maybe decided to get a slightly higher-end phone because this functions, it's better than I expected initially. It is so slow. So I figured why not treat myself with my newfound riches of the $120 that I definitely got 'cause I'm returning this? The Galaxy A17. - [Alex] Oh, the actual cheapest phone that you can get in the US. - Correct. So, what is my grand total from before and after these swaps? Because I think I saved money, right? - [Alex] The old total was $680. - 680. - [Alex] The new total is $677. - I saved $3, got a way better phone and a way better laptop. So it looks pretty similar. And I do believe they share a lot. So if you put them side by side, you can see they both have, like, the little depth sensor which doesn't do anything. But this one has not only an ultra wide, but also, I think it has the same sensor but it has OIS, which is actually really quite nice. This also has 128 gigs of storage, which I believe this one has 64. The big one for me, though, is that this also has, while it doesn't have a headphone jack, it has an OLED. But come on, you gotta admit I did pretty good, right? - [Alex] I will give it to you on the phone. I think that's a totally reasonable upgrade. - We'll see. I think the laptop is bending the rules quite a bit. - I showed you the receipt, I bought it for 65 bucks. - [Alex] Yeah, but it wasn't new. - And what we've learned today is that don't buy a new $200 Chromebook. If you're going all Samsung, don't do that. All righty my friends, it has been over a week of using these Samsung products, and I have many, many, many thoughts. You want the good or the bad first? 'Cause I got a lot. I got a lot. You can't shut me up. - [Alex] Well, how about your overall experience? - I'm very happy I switched over to the Galaxy A17. It is so much better than the A07 in almost every regard. Performance is a bit better, but the OLED is so much better. It's higher resolution. The fact that it has 5G means I actually have service in a lot more areas. The camera is better. The ultra wide actually exists. It's not like a night and day difference, but I'll say that it is well worth the extra money because the A07 was so slow and that screen was so bad that it was driving me crazy. A17, solid. The Galaxy Book Go, not a perfect laptop. As you could probably see, the screen is (beep). However, that's the technical phrase. It's still bad. It's 1080p but it is like a very washed out sort of like LCD panel. It's quite bad. But performance wise, it's actually usable, right? Only eight gigs of RAM, but, again, this is a 5G enabled laptop I bought for like 60 something bucks, right? It is so much better than the Chromebook. So much more powerful, so much quicker. This is actually a laptop that the screen is really the only major downside with it. So, overall, for the core items, pretty good. If I was gonna rank them, I'd say that the Galaxy Buds Core and the Galaxy Book Go, especially considering what I paid for it, legitimately recommend. I would say that the A17 is decent. It's not my favorite way of spending $200, but it is a very usable phone. It's pretty solid. And I would say that would not recommend, pretty much at all, the Galaxy Watch FE or the Tab S11. These are both, to me, they're not amazing deals, and they're not really that usable, right? I mean the the buginess, the crashing really on both of these things has been a real sort of deal breaker for me. The watch, since I've gotten it, routinely disconnects from Bluetooth sometimes. I will not notice this until I look down at the watch and realize it's not been connected and I've been missing notifications the last few hours, right? Then there's stuff like the Tab, right? So my first impression of the Tab, even though it's not the one I wanted to order, was generally okay. Like, the speakers are pretty good, the screen's okay. But the problem is it's just been sort of buggy, is probably the best way to describe it. I didn't use it for a day and it drained the battery by itself, which fair enough. I recharged it last night. I went to go watch a video and it took like three or four minutes to boot. It landed on the home screen, crashed, and rebooted. I had to wait another three or four minutes to actually, like, light up. And when I went to go watch a beautiful Mr. Mobile video, the video was stuck playing at 10 FPS. Even though I, like, literally, I paused the video, I let it sit there and make sure it was fully booted, nothing's running in the background, and it was just choppy, right? Sometimes it would be smooth, sometimes it would be choppy, but, like, I couldn't watch the video for more than 30 seconds without it dropping a ton of frames, and it was bothering me. So I'm very curious, what do you think about the cheapest Samsung setup? And would you take this over the cheapest Apple setup that we recently did? And you can check that video out here. Make sure to let me know the comments below. Subscribe to channel and ring-a-ling that ding-a-ling button. Until next time, my friends. I miss my Z Fold. (Austin chuckling)