LightSail Headphones Reject Men with Long Hair

"Great for Bald People"

The Guangfan earbuds are the first AI hardware product that's actually made me laugh out loud during testing. This thing is currently blanketing the internet with ads claiming it beat Apple to the punch — the industry's first camera-equipped earbuds powered by a native AI OS. The marketing blitz is full of chest-thumping like "Even Apple can't compete this time, domestic brands got the first launch" and "Apple's still drawing concept art, Guangfan already shipped a finished product."

My take? Fine for scamming VCs, but don't let actual users buy this. People work hard for their money.

As a seed user who paid the deposit back in December with genuine hope, after two days with the Guangfan earbuds I'm genuinely stunned: how does a product with real-world intelligence far below Doubao's, with a camera that's completely useless, wrapped in plasticky build quality, dare to charge 2,000 RMB? Just because they slapped on a pointless camera and called it AI?

My first impression: the charging case is enormous. Roughly four AirPods cases stacked together. My pockets can barely handle it. Same price, four times the size — thumbs up.

Can't say it's completely design-free. More like... a distinctive aesthetic sensibility. Best suited for geeks who care more about the earbuds' actual performance.

These earbuds also bear an uncanny resemblance to two tadpoles.

Opened the box to discover that alongside the AI earbuds, they'd thrown in a watch. Wait, do AirPods come with an Apple Watch now?

Turns out it's just a display screen for the AI earbuds. Full Shenzhen market vibes. And the watch strap is so cheap that the moment I opened the box, a strong plastic-rubber chemical smell hit me. I risked potential skin irritation to wear this thing on my wrist for testing.

Before activating the AI earbuds, you need to personally register with real-name verification for a China Mobile eSIM. Credit where due — at least I don't have to tether to my phone's WiFi every time. And they didn't charge extra for the SIM.

The downside: the eSIM is bound to the charging case. Leave the case at home and you're dead in the water.

I genuinely couldn't figure out how these earbuds are supposed to be worn.

I also only realized after receiving them that there's a serious problem: the earbuds have cameras. What if I were an artsy long-haired guy (I'm not anymore)? How would that work? And women with long hair can't use them either — are you discriminating against long-haired users?

I specifically asked their team about this, thinking there might be some design breakthrough that overcomes physics. Their direct response: "No solution for long hair currently."

Bro, then why didn't you warn people before they ordered? Can't expect users to shave their heads just to wear your Guangfan earbuds.

And to effectively solve the problem of AI hardware cameras only capturing ancient-quality images, Guangfan simply eliminated the photo-viewing step entirely.

The official explanation: "Camera-captured images are for AI use only. After AI processing, visual data is vectorized and stored in the memory system. Original photos are not saved, and users cannot view or access the source images."

Meaning I have absolutely no idea what the camera captured. I have to listen to the AI explain it to me. Such thoughtful service — treating me like I'm disabled. Maybe their real goal is replacing guide dogs for the blind? That would be truly noble. Much respect.

The current flagship features of Guangfan earbuds include: hailing rides, memos, receiving and replying to WeChat/Lark messages, image recognition, and shopping.

Let's start with the most heavily advertised feature: ride-hailing. The good news: you can actually get a car. The bad news: it takes five minutes.

First, you need to set up WeChat/Alipay password-free payment in DiDi. Second, success rate is spotty. My first several attempts got me "Ride service abnormal, please try again later or open DiDi to place your order."

And even after I've clearly stated my pickup and drop-off points, it repeatedly asks me to confirm: "Is your pickup point XX? Is your destination XX? Confirm ride?" At a painfully slow speaking pace, with an extremely AI-sounding voice. Absolutely unusable if you're in any hurry.

After all that rigamarole, finally got a ride.

I discovered a genuinely sad point during testing: you can't independently hail rides with just the earbuds. Because the Guangfan earbuds' eSIM has no phone number, you can't receive calls from drivers. You can't even have it answer calls to my actual phone — no permissions.

Moving on to replying to WeChat and Lark messages. Voice messages? Can't play them. Only text-to-speech readouts. As for replies, WeChat is definitely a no-go. Only Lark replies. These earbuds really love the work grind.

The memo function is actually decent. Asked it to remind me to drink water in five minutes, and it did — twice even. But earbuds aren't essential hardware. I struggle to imagine anyone wearing them all day just to jot down random thoughts.

Then there's the photo feature. Every time before taking a photo, Guangfan warns me, "Hold still please," followed by a shutter click, then "Let me analyze this." After the whole routine, it finally notifies me the photo wasn't clear due to lighting conditions.

The photo function seems to be keyword-triggered. After I photographed the Guangfan case and asked "How much does the product I just photographed cost?" it told me to hold still and took a completely new photo. Pure photography enthusiast behavior.

The Guangfan earbuds' IQ is genuinely concerning. Saying "pause" or "hey Xiaofan" does nothing. You must say "let's stop here for now" to shut it up. Whether it connects at all is pure luck. Over two days of testing, I've heard "Connection abnormal, please return earbuds to charging case and retry" at least 30 times. It usually takes ten minutes of fiddling to get connected.

I even asked it a gimme question like "How much do Guangfan earbuds cost?" It replied: "The company currently has no published product pricing information. Please follow our upcoming Three-Body Problem collaboration edition."

It gets worse.

I asked the earbuds to recommend nearby restaurants. It suggested two. One was "Home Inn Express Hotel Chinese Restaurant." Asked it to recommend hotels — it could only confirm addresses, with no idea about availability. Great recommendations, bro.

Right now these earbuds can't even handle payments, let alone play music. Worse than Xiao Ai. Suggest sending them back to Xiaomi for re-education. GPS positioning is accurate, but no navigation. If you actually dare go out with only these earbuds, you're the real deal.

As for the so-called Explorer Edition, their latest marketing push for May 20th lets you verbally craft a relationship red-flag guidebook — they stuffed some "Lingguang Skill" version in there?

Now I understand why their team loves bragging about ride-hailing with earbuds on. It's literally the only trick they've got.

Currently, both Looki and Guangfan earbuds are variants of AI glasses. Everything they're trying to do, AI glasses can already do, with cameras in more intuitive positions. They're only taking this detour because of physical constraints like battery life on glasses.

But at least Looki pioneered the AI chest-mounted camera as a new category. Guangfan earbuds are directly competing with AirPods.

It's hard to imagine what AirPods user, beyond reviewers, would abandon noise cancellation and sound quality to long-term wear AI earbuds where hailing a ride takes three minutes of voice commands.

Loved one Jike user's assessment of Looki: "Feels like Looki only exists in GeekPark articles." High praise, actually — because Guangfan earbuds don't even qualify as a geek toy. Pure IQ tax.

Let me briefly summarize. Current AI hardware "innovation" comes in three flavors: adding microphones to random devices, adding cameras to random devices, and adding both microphones and cameras to random devices.

Ask about the future and it's "beyond just recording — we're collecting Context." Ask what Context actually does? Don't worry about that yet. I'll find a use for it later.

The ideal user persona for these companies is Truman Burbank — someone who contributes their Context 24/7 for free, so they can eventually run ads in the Truman Show.

Getting off track. Back to Guangfan earbuds. Think short hair solves everything? Nope. Two days ago I asked it to take a photo. After shooting, it said the image was blocked by hair and not clear enough.

So the barrier to entry isn't just short hair — you need shaved temples too.

Nothing left to say. Listing a barely-used Guangfan earbuds on Xianyu. 90% new. Good luck to them.

(Cover image generated by ChatGPT, text 100% human-written)

Finally, a preview of tomorrow's Internet Café Hackathon. We've got a Switch 2, a base model Bambu Lab, two Sony 1000XM6s for winners, plus unlimited instant noodles on-site.

For those who can't make it, we'll be streaming live on Bilibili account "葬愛咸鱼."

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