@Tp: Moondrop LAN 2 REF Edition + MC2

• Reference price: Earphones ¥299, upgrade cable ¥139

Picking up from the previous post, when I went to buy the NiceBuds, I first noticed the ¥99 Bamboo 2 in the shop and felt a bit tempted. But after browsing around on Bilibili, I realized it didn’t really have anything that stood out to me. On top of that, many people mentioned issues like easily broken pins and inconsistent volume between the left and right earpieces, so I passed on it. While looking up related impressions, I discovered that the LAN 2—released in two versions—actually received quite decent reviews. After some comparison, I decided to pick one up to get a taste of what people call “Hi-Fi.”

Moondrop’s LAN 2 comes in a POP version and a REF version. The former has a moderate boost in the low frequencies and, according to the official description, is more suitable for pop music, while the latter is better suited for instrumental listening. Since I don’t like that kind of bass that pounds your head, I chose the REF version. In my personal experience, the REF version gives a very clean and transparent listening impression. Especially when listening to instrumental albums with no vocals, such as The Moonlight Zoo, or the orchestral sections in Sodagreen’s album Winter, Ended, each instrument is clearly distinguishable while still blending together harmoniously. Even with pop music, the REF version performs quite well to my ears.

What surprised me the most was how these earphones helped me notice small details in arrangements that I used to overlook. For example, at the beginning of Wu Qingfeng’s Outsider, there’s a faint “da-da” sound in the background. I first noticed this detail with the LAN 2 REF. When I went back to listen with other earphones, I found that the sound was actually there too—but it was easily masked by other melodies and hard to pick out.

In terms of comfort, the LAN 2 is quite comfortable for me. The stock cable in particular is soft and slim, making it much more comfortable than a similar in-ear model I tried before. After switching to the MC2, however, the cable became thicker, and the over-ear section no longer used the relatively rounded, wrapped design of the stock cable, making the cable feel much more noticeable on my ears.

As for why I bought the MC2 cable: on one hand, the stock cable uses a 4.4 mm connector. Although Moondrop includes a 4.4-to-3.5 mm adapter, having an extra dangling adapter never feels quite right. On the other hand, I wanted in-line controls to change tracks. While the three-stage volume buttons on the side of the iPod nano 7 can be used to skip tracks without waking the screen, I still have to take the device out, which is a bit inconvenient. As for sound quality, honestly, I can’t really tell any difference between the stock cable and the MC2.

For an ordinary listener like me, who isn’t a hardcore audiophile, the LAN 2 REF version does bring a somewhat different listening experience. At the very least, since getting it, I’ve switched my daily listening from EarPods to these.

@张奕源Nick: Snapmaker U1 Color 3D Printer

Note: We also produced a video hands-on of the Snapmaker U1 at the same time. The content differs from New Stuff and can be used as a supplement to the text version. Click to watch.

Friends, I’ve recently been wanting to properly organize both my home and office desks, which is what got me interested in 3D printing.

The 3D printing community strongly embraces the open-source spirit, and on various model platforms you can find all kinds of fun and practical storage box designs. For someone like me, with potentially large and ongoing needs, batch printing makes more sense than buying finished products—both economically and in terms of customization. With 3D printing, you can adjust dimensions and even iterate through trial and error, which fits my personalized needs much better.

As it happens, Snapmaker (Kuàizào Technology) recently launched their consumer-grade color 3D printer, the Snapmaker U1, on JD.com. Our office got one right away, and I kicked off my 3D printing journey by “borrowing the company machine.”

The biggest highlight of the Snapmaker U1 is a system called SnapSwap™—an independent four-head parallel setup. Put simply, this system allows four independent print heads to work on a single print job together, eliminating the need for mid-print filament swapping and purging, and enabling true one-pass multicolor printing.

The basic idea works like this: before a print job starts, the U1 preheats all four print heads. Once preheating is complete, all four heads remain on standby. During printing, when a specific head is needed, the machine switches to it directly. The U1 uses a steel-ball positioning coupling structure, ensuring precise alignment and secure locking when the print-head exchanger grabs a head—without relying on screws, magnets, or additional motors. The entire head-switching process can be completed in as little as five seconds.

This independent four-head system isn’t just for show—it delivers real efficiency gains. With traditional single-head printers, multicolor printing requires filament swapping and purging, which means stopping the print mid-job and manually changing materials. After each swap, the printer also has to purge the nozzle, producing a significant amount of waste. This back-and-forth costs both time and material, making it far from economical. With the U1, manual filament swapping and purging are eliminated. All four heads are prepared in advance, and automatic head switching during printing is so fast it’s practically negligible. In effect, you can complete multicolor prints in roughly the same time as single-color ones, dramatically boosting efficiency.

Thanks to this capability, there are plenty of time-saving workflows you can explore. I often print storage boxes of the same size in different colors, so when setting up a job I’ll place multiple models in different colors on the same build plate. That way, the printer can produce multiple components in one go, saving the time of repeatedly starting new jobs, reheating the machine, and reloading materials. If you want the finished product to look a bit more playful, you can also assign colors while arranging the layout. From my simple comparisons, as long as the base model is the same, there’s little difference in total print time between single-color and multicolor jobs. So the strongest impression the U1 left on me is that even multicolor printing remains highly efficient—you don’t have to worry about it slowing you down.

And because there’s no repeated mid-print filament swapping, the U1 only needs to purge the print heads once at the start of each job. The larger and more frequent your print batches, the more material cost you save. All waste material is neatly collected in the waste box, which only needs to be emptied about once a week.

Beyond its core four-head parallel system, the Snapmaker U1 performs well in other areas too.

First, print quality is solid. All my print jobs use the standard 0.4 mm nozzle and the default 0.2 mm layer height, yet the U1 still delivers sufficiently fine layers and detailed results.

Second, nearly all functions are automated—one-click filament unloading and loading, automatic multi-head calibration, automatic bed leveling, and more. Combined with parameter adjustment and camera monitoring via the mobile app, you can basically walk away once a print starts. Many of my prints are set up after work and left to run overnight in the office; I just pick up the finished parts the next day, which is incredibly convenient.

Snapmaker has a strong following overseas. While searching for tutorials and references, I came across many YouTube creators reviewing and sharing their experiences, and the maker community seems to really appreciate Snapmaker’s high value-for-money products with a distinct design ethos. Interestingly, before the U1 arrived, our office already had an older 3D printer, but few people paid much attention to it. Since getting the U1, however, many colleagues have started asking how to print their own items or proposing product ideas. It really shows that when a printer is efficient and easy to use, it can spark creativity.

The Snapmaker U1 is currently available in stock on JD.com. After national subsidies, prices start at RMB 4,504.15, making it highly competitive in its class. If you’re looking for a low-fuss, high-efficiency desktop color 3D printer, the Snapmaker U1 is definitely worth a look.

@鲸鱼鱼: Cookie Budget — Lifetime Membership

• Reference price: RMB 68

As a long-time SSPAI reader, I feel a certain obligation to tinker with budgeting apps—and to spend money on an app to track how I spend money. After using MoneyWiz and MOZE on and off for several years, I realized my needs are actually very basic: by the end of the month, I just want to know roughly where my money went. For me, these professional, feature-heavy budgeting apps feel a bit “over-specced.” So when I heard that MOZE’s subscription price was about to increase, even though I was reluctant to part with its polish and professionalism, the higher fee made me reconsider whether it was really necessary. That’s when I started looking for a new budgeting app.

After asking fellow editors and AI for recommendations, I downloaded several budgeting apps to try briefly. Cookie Budget stood out as the one that impressed me the most at first glance. First, its overall design is clean, and the little cookie icon—true to its name—adds a touch of cuteness. Second, Cookie offers a feature specifically for tracking software subscriptions, with support for multiple currencies and automatic entries upon renewal. Subscription management and expense tracking are unified in one place, so there’s no need to jump between apps—perfect for my lazy instincts. Third, in terms of functionality, it covers everything I need, including iCloud sync and basic reports.

Widgets, icons, and subscription management

However, as I explored more features, I also noticed some less intuitive design choices. Cookie’s accounting logic differs slightly from MoneyWiz and MOZE. For example, the latter apps use receivables and payables to cover scenarios like loans, reimbursements, and paying on someone else’s behalf. In Cookie, these are split into more specific entry points, such as lending assets, borrowing assets, reimbursement records, or initiating a bill refund to calculate split payments. Take splitting the cost of milk tea with colleagues as an example: in MOZE, one transaction plus a receivable does the job, but in Cookie, you need to record the total first and then handle the split as a refund-based AA collection. The receivable flow feels more roundabout. That said, laziness really is the primary productivity driver—I simply treat all AA receivables as reimbursements. While this sacrifices some statistical granularity, the steps align better with my thinking and feel smoother to use. There’s another limitation in Cookie’s categories as well: a single transaction can’t be assigned to multiple categories. If you buy groceries, household supplies, and toys in one supermarket trip, you have to record three separate transactions in Cookie.

In addition, Cookie feels a bit rough around the edges in some details:

• Expense categories support hierarchies, but all default categories are single-level. Some are very broad, like clothing, food, housing, and transportation, while others—such as water bills, electricity bills, or snacks—really belong at a second level. It takes quite a bit of effort to reorganize everything properly.
• Subscription information defaults to the “app subscriptions” category, but for convenience I deleted that category and replaced it with a broader “applications & software” category. When creating new subscriptions, however, they still default to the now-nonexistent “app subscriptions” category. I couldn’t find any way to change this default, so I have to manually adjust it every time.
• The feature hierarchy isn’t very clear, and some actions are hidden away. Subscriptions have auto-recording enabled by default, but there’s no option to toggle this when creating a new subscription. For subscriptions where I want to confirm renewal at expiration, I can only disable auto-recording afterward by going into the subscription details and using the menu in the top-right corner.

That said, Cookie overall meets my needs and simplifies my workflow for both subscription tracking and general expense logging. The development team has also maintained a steady cadence of one or two updates per month in recent years, continually refining the product. And considering that its lifetime membership price is relatively affordable among budgeting apps, it still feels like a worthwhile investment overall.

@路中南: Cat Slow Feeder

• Reference price: RMB 20

I have two cats at home. The pure-black older one was adopted years ago from a rescue shelter in Shenzhen with Lao Mai, and it’s of the same lineage as the office’s calico cat, Diandian. However, this creature has had one habit unchanged for years: eating far too fast. Perhaps that’s exactly why it’s overweight (7 kg+), and why it occasionally vomits piles of undigested kibble—something that’s become even more frequent in winter. If it happens when no one’s home and the robot vacuum blindly rolls over it, the trouble can be huge. And yes, that did happen to me last month.

Let’s just call it Black Pig. From its official name “Juanjian,” to the nickname “Little Black,” and finally to the moniker “Black Pig,” it only took about two years. Over those two years, I tried quite a few methods to ease its vomiting (it’s heartbreaking to watch your clumsy eldest vomit): switching to warm water in winter (helpful, but easily contaminated by dust), making a DIY rolling bottle feeder (which it completely ignored, only charging like a pig whenever the automatic feeder dispensed food), and so on. This time, Taobao recommended a cat slow feeder, and after using it for two weeks, here are my thoughts.

Why is it called a “slow feeder”? Because the cat has to “solve a puzzle” to earn its food reward. Before buying, I read a lot of reviews for similar products, and many negative ones complained that “my cat doesn’t know how to use it,” so the feeder ended up unused. I, however, was full of confidence—and that’s thanks to our second cat, Er Huang. The uniquely named second son, a mischievous spirit cat who purrs the moment you touch his haunches. His “intelligence fur length” (note: the fluffy fur at the tips of a cat’s ears—folklore says its length is directly proportional to a cat’s intelligence) should have no trouble with a level-three difficulty feeder. And sure enough:

The look a smart cat gives while watching a dumb cat eat

Comparing the two cats’ behavior, Er Huang uses his paws to flip and dig out the kibble underneath with ease. Black Pig, on the other hand, only knows how to push around with his head. Sometimes he even has to follow the second cat while eating just to get a few bites.

Either way, Black Pig’s eating speed has slowed down. And because I put more fragrant, tastier domestic cat food in the tray (ad space available here), Black Pig now refuses to eat the diet food from the automatic feeder. Instead, he either sneaks off alone to shove the puzzle tray in search of food, or tails along behind the second cat to eat some leftovers.

This tray is definitely a “I bought it and I’m OK with it, but I wouldn’t recommend you buy it” kind of product. First, it requires a certain level of feline intelligence. Second, it’s better suited for larger items like freeze-dried treats or snacks, rather than regular kibble. Kibble tends to get stuck in the narrow gaps of the mechanisms, making it hard for cats to retrieve, and over time it also goes stale.

@JIAJUN: Mickey Paw Mug

• Reference price: Mickey Paw Mug: ¥129, Pingu Money Tree: ¥79, Mushroom: ¥89

Sometime last autumn or winter, a gift suddenly appeared on my desk—air-dropped by a colleague. When I opened it and saw Mickey’s little paw, I could only think: wow, this is way too good a gift.

As a present, it’s a solid 120 out of 100. Perhaps to achieve that adorable paw shape, the mug itself is very large and very heavy. Although the official demo shows two different ways to use it, only after actually trying it did I realize how taxing it is to drink from something with a net weight of 780 g. With the first grip, holding hot water makes your hand feel scalded, and it also feels a bit unstable; with the second, hand-supporting grip, the feel is completely different from a normal mug and hard to get used to. I personally give its practicality a 60 at best, and had no choice but to give up on using it as a daily cup.

For a while, I couldn’t think of a better use for it, so I put it back in its box and let it lie quietly in a corner.

After N days, during a major cleanup at home, I felt it would be such a waste to leave something this cute unused. Looking around, I noticed that it fit perfectly with a Pingu money tree I already had at home—turns out it makes a pretty nice flower vase, and I was very satisfied. A few months later, the other unused paw finally found its own plant as well: a mushroom from Furry Forest.