Product Review One

The next day, at five thirty in the morning, Ning Yifan woke from his sleep right on time.

"I learn well in my dreams!"

He shouted as he got out of bed, changed his clothes, and headed out, full of energy.

As usual, he went for his daily ten-kilometer run. After breakfast, he returned home, washed up, and got down to work.

Cool air flowed gently from the air-conditioning vent, bringing relief from the summer heat. In his study, Ning Yifan first browsed a freelance job site. He was in luck and managed to pick up a four-thousand-yuan contract.

It took him a little over half an hour to finish. By then, it was past eight in the morning.

He checked his phone. The content creators he had contacted the day before had been replying one after another. Under Ning Yifan's monetary assault, most of them didn't mind making a review video. After all, they'd get a product for free and have a video to pad their upload schedule—and there was an extra thousand yuan on top.

A few turned him down for various reasons, saying they were busy or didn't think the money was worth it. Ning Yifan didn't mind.

In the end, six of the ten creators he'd contacted agreed to review the projector.

He sent out six of the ten machines he'd prepared and didn't bother looking for any more reviewers.

"Let's leave it at that. Gold will shine wherever it is!"

Ning Yifan had great confidence in the projector he'd made. With reviews and recommendations from a few creators with two or three hundred thousand followers, he figured he could attract at least some buyers.

At ten in the morning, after replying to the last creator, Ning Yifan contacted an SF Express courier and arranged for a pickup.

The courier arrived in less than half an hour. Sending the six machines, including packaging and shipping insurance, cost Ning Yifan nearly three hundred yuan in total. He chose express air shipping; the fastest deliveries were expected that afternoon, while the slower ones would generally arrive the next day.

As the courier carefully picked up the well-packed parcels, Ning Yifan said, "Careful with those. Actually, never mind—I'll carry half for you!"

Seeing the six projectors, the SF Express employee, who had been planning to make two trips, thanked him. "Thanks!"

Carrying three projectors, Ning Yifan helped the courier load them onto his delivery tricycle. He watched him ride off before returning to his rented place to continue working.

He still had plenty of parts left over from the day before to assemble. On top of that, he had to keep taking freelance jobs online. Until he made a big pile of money, those contracts worth a few thousand yuan each were a pretty good deal. They didn't take much effort, and he could earn several thousand yuan. Why not?

Time flew by as Ning Yifan kept himself busy.

Night fell.

Ning Yifan had been fairly lucky that day, landing three freelance jobs in all. The first had paid four thousand yuan, the second three thousand, and the third was even better: a full eight thousand yuan. But it was expensive for a reason. He'd spent a full two hours completing that job.

That brought Ning Yifan's total income for the day to fifteen thousand yuan. The six projectors cost two thousand yuan apiece, for a total of twelve thousand yuan. Adding the three hundred yuan in shipping and other assorted expenses—food, delivery meals, rent, and so on—his total expenses came to about twelve thousand five hundred yuan. That left him with a net profit of two thousand five hundred yuan.

As for Ning Yifan's Taobao shop and JD.com flagship store, not a single customer had shown up all day, just as he'd expected. Nobody had even asked a question. The stores were completely dead.

But that was normal. No one could find a projector hidden so deep in the listings, and Ning Yifan's retail price of 4,999 yuan per unit was bound to drive away a large number of people.

A no-name projector from a tiny brand, with a fairly high price tag—those two points alone made it all but impossible for anyone to buy one. What was more, if someone searched for projectors directly, they'd have to scroll down the product listings for about ten minutes, past hundreds or even thousands of items, before finding his.

It was a real struggle for customers to find their way to him!

"Hopefully things will get better in a couple of days."

Hoping his projectors would sell well, Ning Yifan entered the system space. As before, he found the dim star on the Technology Tree that contained information on automated robotic arms, grasped it, and began to study.

At ten thirty that night, Ning Yifan had fallen asleep and begun studying in his dreams. For many people, though, the day was only half over. The late-night hours were their last chance to make progress, and Xue Lei was one of those who stayed up late.

As a content creator, Xue Lei often stayed up late editing videos. It had even become a habit.

Staying up until three or four in the morning and then sleeping until lunchtime was perfectly normal for him.

Tonight was another late night at work. He'd spent the whole day filming a review of a router that had recently been getting a lot of attention online. After taking a short break in the evening to play some games, it was already ten thirty.

Just as Xue Lei was about to start editing, he suddenly remembered that a special-delivery package from SF Express had arrived that evening.

Looking at the parcel sitting in his studio, Xue Lei thought for a moment. "Wasn't this a projector review?"

"I only talked to the operator from this company, Shenma Technology Company, last night. I didn't expect them to send the product over the very next day!" Xue Lei couldn't help admiring their efficiency.

He had, after all, received a thousand yuan to do this. Although he wasn't interested in the product from a tiny company whose name he'd never even heard of, and didn't expect much from it, he was still willing to prepare properly for the money.

"Let's get it over with. It's just a review video that nobody's going to watch anyway."

At the dedicated workstation, Xue Lei adjusted the camera angle and lighting. He picked up the parcel and got ready to begin, having already decided that if the product was really bad, he'd phone it in.

Besides, when the company had sent the product over, he'd made it clear that he would only give his honest assessment.

Video quality was what a content creator relied on to make a living!

Xue Lei wasn't about to ruin the reputation of the channel he'd worked so hard to build just for a little money.

After making sure the camera and lights were on and everything was ready, Xue Lei stood in front of the camera, waved, and said with a smile,

"Hello, everyone! Welcome to Thunderbolt Digital Channel. I'm your host, Little Lei."

"Today, I'm bringing you a projector from a small domestic brand. It's the Phantom Type One Projector, made by Shenma Technology Company. Honestly, I'm not particularly optimistic about this projector."

Facing the camera, Xue Lei was completely at ease, talking at length without even preparing a script beforehand.

"First, I've never even heard of this manufacturer, Shenma Technology Company. They have no experience making projectors. I looked up the company, too, and it was only established a few days ago."

"Second, the price is a little steep: 4,999 yuan. For just over four thousand nine hundred, or simply five thousand yuan, you can already buy a seventy-five-inch domestic LCD TV at current market prices. And if you really want a projector, there are plenty of established brands to choose from."

"Third, in terms of performance, projector technology still hasn't caught up with televisions. Especially for everyday use, problems like insufficient brightness and dull colors are still hard to solve."

"Honestly, if I had to choose, I would never buy a projector that costs 4,999 yuan."

"So why am I reviewing it today? Because they paid me, of course! Hahaha!"

"This product was also sent to me for review, so I didn't have to pay for it myself."

With a smile, Xue Lei continued,

"All right, enough chatter. Let's take a closer look at the product and see how it performs—and whether it's worth that 4,999-yuan price tag."

"Time for the unboxing!"

Xue Lei took out his dedicated box cutter and quickly sliced open the thickly packed parcel.

Inside the shipping box was the product, wrapped securely in layers of bubble wrap.

"SF Express really is one of the big names in the domestic courier business. They've used a ton of packing material for this express parcel." As he chatted to his imaginary audience, Xue Lei peeled away layer after layer of bubble wrap. At last, the star of today's video came into view.

"The Phantom Type One Projector, made by Shenma Technology Company. First impressions of the outer packaging? Pretty ordinary." Holding the projector's colorful cardboard box, Xue Lei spoke animatedly as he turned it in his hands, giving the camera a full view. He described what he could see from where he stood.

"The packaging design is very simple. It's a colorful cardboard box, with the name Shenma Technology Company and a cartoon horse logo in the top-left corner of the front. In the middle, it gives the product name and model number. Phantom Type One is the name of this projector. And that's it for the front."

"To put it nicely, it's simple. To put it less nicely, the packaging is crude."

"The side of the cardboard box lists some of the projector's specifications."

"First, brightness: six thousand lumens."

Seeing the brightness figure, Xue Lei froze for a moment, then continued, "This brightness level? Those who know, know. I can't say much to those who don't!" He raised his eyebrows and gave a mysterious smile.

"Looks like this is another one of those products whose specs are unbeatable, but whose performance isn't. Six thousand lumens of brightness—great, just great! That's already on par with projectors costing ten thousand, or even over a hundred thousand yuan."

"All right, let's look at the next spec: 8K resolution. That's a bit of an exaggeration, don't you think? With a price tag of 4,999 yuan, who's going to believe you when you claim it has 8K resolution?"

"Third spec: a maximum projected image size of two hundred inches. There's nothing wrong with that figure, I guess. As long as the projection distance is long enough, any projector can project an image two hundred inches or even larger. The picture will just turn into a mosaic, and the brightness will be so poor you can barely see anything."

"Next spec: one hundred percent RGB color gamut? What is this, a monitor? One hundred percent RGB color gamut!"

The more Xue Lei read, the more speechless he became. He couldn't stop criticizing it.

"Next spec: a maximum refresh rate of 144 Hz. What was this manufacturer thinking? Do they think there's no tax on bragging? Did they just look at some impressive specs and slap them onto their product?"

"That six-thousand-lumen brightness and 8K resolution from earlier are still projector specs, even if they're ridiculous. I guess the manufacturer saw those specs on other projectors and copied them, with a bit of extra exaggeration. But what's with this refresh rate and color gamut?"

Xue Lei gave a helpless smile. "Maybe they saw those specs on a monitor and thought they looked impressive, so they copied them too."

He shook his head. "The last spec: a one-millisecond response time, on par with professional esports equipment."

"Guys, just have fun looking at these specs. Don't take them seriously!"

"Even if these specs sound like a load of hot air, we've come this far, so let's take a look at the product itself."

The absurd specs had left Xue Lei speechless, so he stopped criticizing the numbers on the packaging and opened the box directly.