My advice to beginner speedcubers:
Get a Dayan Zhanchi. That's right, bandwaggon. they may not be THE best for everyone, but they are pretty unbefrickinglievable as far as Rubik's cubes go. If you get super obsessed, explore the other options, like Type A, Shengshou Aurora, etc.
Bestspeedcube.com (I think) is the place I went to for advice, and I almost got a Shengshou Aurora. My Zhanchi is still being shipped to me, but it'll be here soon and I'll do a full breakdown review of it.

I modded my cube with a dangerous, but effective mod. I don't remember where it is, but I might find it. I do happen to get pops extremely often because of it (at least once for every 3 or 4 solves!) but you couldn't tell my STOREBOUGHT modded, sanded, lubed (with bike lube! Works like a charm! Favorite lube: White Lightning, Epic Ride) Rubik's cube with Cubsmith Vinyl stickers.... apart from legit speedcube. I used a mod that enables extraordinary corner cutting at the cost of having loose corners, although I've NEVER had a corner pop on me.

But the cube is almost entirely irrelevant compared to the method and amount of practice you choose!! Speedcubing takes a lot of work. I've put easily 200 hours in over the course of a month just practicing and practicing and practicing. I know ZZ, Roux, Classic Pochmann (That's right; I'm a blindsolver), Petrus, CFOP (a.k.a. Fridrich), Heise, and many variations and partial methods. I want to know them all and choose the best one for me and combine those I think are most efficient. I started OH solving recently, and Petrus seems to be very effective, but Roux is starting to become effective too, as I improve at it.

My own original cube I did the Florian mod which enables slight corner cutting and also cut out the inside of the edge pieces to reduce friction. I still need to sand it and I'll probably take the Florian mod a bit further. I lubed it with motorbike chain lube and it's very smooth now. It also never pops.

zanchi is goos but they are a news 3x3x3 better....

So yeah, i bumped my personal record down to 29.96 seconds. That was the only timed solve i managed to do below 30s so far....

I use http://cubetimer.com/
The storage is local, though, but it is pretty helpful

Yeah I use my phone's stopwatch too.

Then get one.
Anyway I always give my results rounded to the nearest second because There's no way you can be more precise with self-timing. Maybe if someone starts and stop the stopwatch you can get a 1/10th second precision but not much more.

what is ryanheise?