Linus Tech Tips addresses big worry about tech being “thrown away” after reviews

Linus Tech Tips’ namesake Linus Sebastian has addressed a big worry about his review videos by explaining what happens with the products his team covers.

For almost two decades now, Linus Tech Tips has been the go-to YouTube channel for tech reviews and other related videos.

However, many have wondered what happens with the hundreds of products that Linus and his team review each year.

Linus Sebastian addressed these questions during an interview with Smosh’s Spencer Agnew and revealed that yes, sometimes tech does get destroyed.

Linus reveals why some tech products get destroyed

During the January 15 interview, Linus answered a series of assumptions made by fans with one of them being that the LTT star throws everything away after a review.

“Some people might assume that, but that would be a really silly thing to do,” he said. “There are certainly cases where we are obligated to throw it away, like if someone ships us an engineering sample that is not supposed to be out in the wild. It might be with the agreement that it gets shredded or sent back for shredding.”

He went on to explain that companies often run through dozens of prototype devices that get destroyed before the launch of the final product.

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One example he used was phone manufacturer OnePlus, who revealed to Linus and the team during a visit to their factory that over 100 devices are stress tested and “ran through a rock tumbler” and “beat the sh*t out of them for hours.”

“They will destroy hundreds and hundreds of phones before they ever ship one to a customer. So to send some of those early samples out for review, for example, is a pretty common practice… those would get destroyed,” he added.

However, Linus made it clear that he tries to avoid waste as much as possible and anything he’s allowed to keep goes into a warehouse for future giveaways to staff or other random uses.

This comes just days after Linus made his first-ever appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, where he left the host shocked with various new tech releases.