Last year I mentioned in a video that I might spend my Christmas bonus on the new 2018 Apple Mac mini and get a Panasonic Lumix G7 camera. Or I could get the camera but upgrade the processor, mainboard and memory on my video editing PC. If you watched my channel for the past year, you may already have a good idea how I spent my Christmas bonus. If not, keep reading to find out.
PANASONIC HC-V180K CAMCORDER
The camera that I ended up getting was the Panasonic HC-V180K camcorder. While the camcorder was half the price of the Panasonic Lumix G7, the video quality was also half that of the camera. The camcorder was a step up over the Apple iPhone 6S that I had to record videos in 2017 and 2018. The three main features that the camcorder has over the iPhone 6S are memory cards, battery packs and a 50X optical zoom.
One problem that I had with recording events with the iPhone 6S was the recording time being less than one hour of 1080p video at 60 frames per second. With the camcorder, I could record 2.5 hours of video with a 32GB memory card and a battery pack. With four memory cards and four battery packs, I could record ten hours of video at an all-day event. Something I wanted to do at Silicon Valley Comic Con 2019 this past August, but the organizers kept their ban on recording video at panels.
The 50X optical zoom has been great for events where I’m sitting far away from the stage.
AMD ATHLON 200GE
For the last two decades or so, my price point for upgrading the processor, mainboard and memory on my PCs has always been $150 USD or $50 USD per component. With the AMD Ryzen AM4 platform, you really need to spend at least $300 USD or $100 USD per component.
I watched the prices on Newegg for three months before I ordered my $150 USD combo in March: the Athlon 200GE (2C/4T) processor, the Asrock B450M Pro4 mainboard, and G.Skill 8GB (2 x 4GB) 2666MHz memory kit. All these items were Newegg specials at the exact same time.
I later picked up another memory kit for $50 USD to bring the total memory to 16GB. The extra memory allowed me to switch over from Movavi to Davinci Resolve for video editing.
On Thanksgiving Day, I ordered the Ryzen 7 2700 (8 cores/16 threads) processor for $140 USD from Amazon. That processor not only allows me to edit 1080p video faster, I can switch over to 4K video towards the end of 2020.
APPLE IPHONE XR
Last year I made a video on how I wasn’t going to pre-order the brand-new Apple iPhone XR to replace my three-year-old iPhone 6S. This year I made a video on how I wasn’t going to pre-order the brand-new iPhone 11 and got the iPhone XR to replace my four-year-old iPhone 6S.
How much of a difference does a year make for getting the iPhone XR? A $250 USD discount.
Apple offered $150 USD off the “older” iPhone XR and a $100 trade-in value on the iPhone 6S. That made the iPhone XR $500 USD. With four times the memory and better battery life than the iPhone 6S, I can record 1080p video at 60 frames per second for several hours.
It took a better part of a year to spend last year’s Christmas bonus. All the new tech made it possible for my channel to double in views, double in watch time and quadruple in subscribers while I made fewer videos than last year.