I came across this “new” gadget on Kickstarter that uses technology I’ve never heard of – Ultrasonic cleaning. It looked really impressive, but by now, it’s become a reflex for me to be suspicious of products on crowd funding platforms. True enough, this was one of those many products being launched on Kickstarter simply for exposure rather than to kickstart a built-from-scratch brand new idea. Indiegogo is much worse in this respect, they advertise products that have been around for a long time, and sell the products for many times more than what you could get them for on other retail websites.
Obviously, I go straight to Taobao to see if similar products exists, and it turns out that there are many Ultrasonic cleaning products. The price ranges from tens of Yuan to thousands! The products do cleaning of spectacles, clothes, vegetables and dishes. I wouldn’t be plonking down thousands, no not even hundreds of Yuan to buy an experimental product (to me at least), so I went with this one – a general purpose dongle, much like the one sold on Kickstarter. I managed to snag it for 88 Yuan (S$17.60) during a promotion (now back to 98 Yuan), which is quite cheap for what it promises to do for you. It is mainly suggested to be used for washing dishes. You just need to put all the dishes into the sink, fill it with water and add a little dish washing liquid, and just let the thing work its magic for 15 minutes. Afterwards, rinse with water and you’re done. I think a lot of people will want their dish washing job done so effortlessly!
I gave the Mini Wash a spin and here’s how it went:
I think the product really does what it claims to do, although, i won’t use it for washing dishes. Uses too much water. Instead, I will use it to wash vegetables. I will also bring it along on long holiday trips to wash clothes.
By the way, the Ultrasonic cleaner sold on Kickstarter costs a whopping US$95, which is more than six times what i paid for this Mini Wash device. The only advantage it has is having an LCD display, which is really unnecessary anyway, in my opinion.
Update: it worked only intermittently after using it for a few months, so i’m not so sure about the quality of the device and can’t really recommend it.
