What are the worst tech purchases you or your family have ever made?
I watched a video recently and wanted to know what other have bought over the years.
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I’m not sure if they count is a “tech purchase”, but I bought all new Samsung appliances in my previous home (washer, dryer, refrigerator, and dishwasher). The washer and dryer failed catastrophically within 6 months, the dryer drum cracked and shredded a whole load of clothing into confetti and the washing flooded my kitchen and ruined my cabinets (it was a weird house layout). The refrigerator just had random parts dying over and over (water dispenser, lights, sensors, ice maker) until it finally died at the year mark. The dishwasher made it nearly to year two before the control panel died and the replacement part was more expensive than an entire new unit. Never again Samsung!
A Samsung smartwatch, it’s almost useless.
Feel you
Any Razer product ever. Shit company, laptop battery fucked itself, keyboard doesn’t work, mouse falling apart
I never had a Razer mouse last longer than 6 months since they moved over to optical/laser mice (yeah, I’m old). Their products are flimsy crap for the most part.
Might sound weird but it was the PSP I imported at launch.
Great device but that was when I realized I don’t like handheld gaming.
This is exactly why I haven’t bought a steam deck, I’m not convinced I actually like handheld gaming still.
A Logitech MX Ergo trackball mouse.
I’ve used thumb ball mice since the 20th century. I replaced a Microsoft branded one with a Logitech M570, that started to get a little old in the tooth so I saw this “premium” mouse they were offering.
Worst HID I can think of. it really wasn’t that ergonomic, the ball was at such an angle that you don’t get much vertical throw, the Forward button is hard to reach, the customization software is insipid, the hole to push the ball out is too small, and then the coating started to perish. It has this rubberized coating that just…started failing. It’s disgusting to touch now. Only reason I don’t throw it out is there’s a lithium battery in it.
Oh, even techier: I bought a pair of ESP32CAM devices. Little ESP32 dev boards with a camera on them. That’s a surprisingly powerful yet low power microcontroller, with onboard Wi-Fi, attached to a microSD card slot and a 1080p camera. On paper that’s a cool idea. I think they both overheated and died.
A pager called MiniLink when I was 16 right before mobiles became common
The ASUS transformer with keyboard. As they did an update that made it super slow and clunky right before end of lifeing it.
As a fellow Asus Transformer survivor, I feel your pain! I’ve never actively hated a piece of tech as much and as fast as that pos. Pretty sure I downloaded that same update that basically made it so slow it transformed it into a paperweight. I have never purchased another tablet after that because it turned me off to the whole idea permanently.
Asus video cards.
I’ve owned 3 of them.
one caught fire, one failed in a spectacular flash of light, and one just quietly died.
Every single one of them managed to take rest of the system with them.
No I did not overclock/overvolt them, and yes I had good airflow/cooling.
Out of curiosity, where they newer nvidia cards, like 4 or 5 series, using 12VHPWR?
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Thinkpad L390 Yoga. They crammed a 4.6 GHz CPU into a cooling system that was not designed for it, so the machine ran hot and throttled all of the time. The keyboard keys rubbed off after a few months of use. The Thinkpad logo was just a sticker that one day decided to stick to my hand because Lenovo used really cheap glue. It had a MicroEthernet port with a passive adapter that did nothing but break it out to a regular ethernet jack. The adapter cost 30€ and its cable turned into oil after a year.
I was able to undervolt the CPU and make it barely passable, then Microsoft released a Windows update that prevented undervolting. Gave it to a friend afterwards and got myself a GPD Win Max 2.
~$800 headphone setup. My then-employer paid for more than half of it, so I splurged a bit. Got refurbished planar magnetic headphones for ~$500 and an amp for ~$300. I later bought a balanced audio cable (I don’t remember the price, maybe $20—50).
It sounds good, but I’ve also been down the Chi-Fi IEM rabbit hole before. I think I could get similar results from $150—250 Chinese IEMs.
There’s a LOT of snake oil in the audiophile world, and the matter of cost is almost universally a matter of diminishing returns. I say this as someone whose typical audio rig costs at least $250k: At home, I use basic Sennheiser monitor headphones.
You’ll notice a huge difference between $50 headphones and $100 headphones. But the difference between $100 headphones and $200 headphones will be much less noticeable, even though there is a much bigger price difference between the two.
Also, you probably got scammed on that balanced cable. I can guarantee that the recording studio used the cheapest $1/foot starquad cable, soldered by the intern using $3 Neutrik connectors.
The only reason I’ve ever been able to justify balanced headphones were if they were too power hungry and needed extra current.
As someone that owns headphones in that range and maybe higher, I’m very curious which headphones you picked up. Also, the idea of getting “similar results” from IEMs versus some over ear headphones is a bit wacky, they’re way different IMO.
the video version of the echo devices.
Raycons. Got suckered by the YouTubers. They were garbage right out of the box. They could barely maintain a connection with each other, and the sound quality was awful.
Yeah, general rule of thumb is to avoid anything being peddled by YouTubers. It’s a good sign that the company is putting a ton of money into trendy marketing instead of R&D or product quality.
The Outa console. It’s sitting in my shelf in my officefas a reminder of how dumb I can be.
Razer Diamond back gaming mouse, shit at clicking, shit quality, over priced
Bohmann air-conditioner, broke after few hours of usage at most. Well within warranty, the reseller(Mediamarkt), and manufacturers took me for a long long ride until I eventually gave up on getting my money back…
A plex lifetime pass. Was okay until the company went crazy. Now I use Jellyfin and I’m happy.
I remember when I started using Plex it was great. And then each update made it harder and harder to use, until I was struggling to find my own media. I still don’t understand what was wrong with them. Jellyfin just works. It’s infinitely better.
On the flip side, it was one of my best purchases. The sync feature has historically been great and I’ve had over a decade of use out of it for that single payment. I hate every update they make, but Jellyfin clients still don’t have as good of a sync feature and that’s what I use a ton of for traveling.
Yeah, there’s also the big issue with Jellyfin remote access. The TL;DR is that Jellyfin has a few critical “anyone can stream your media without a login” vulnerabilities that mean it should basically never be accessible outside of your LAN. Jellyfin’s devs have openly stated that they have no intentions of ever fixing these, because it would require completely divesting from the Emby fork that the entire project is built upon. And that makes sharing with friends/family really difficult.
Sure, you can use Tailscale (or whatever your preferred VPN is) for personal use. Maybe you’ll even get your immediate family on board. But good luck trying to get your tech-illiterate grandma (who lives 4 hours away) logged in over the phone. And unless she has a router that supports VPN connections, (not likely) she probably won’t be able to get her smart TV on your VPN. Which means she can’t securely access your server from her primary method of viewing media.
With Plex, you simply make the account, sign in, and get access. I even have a burner account that has access to a few of my libraries, so I can log it into my server at friends’ houses without them needing to make their own account.
Luckily, Plex and Jellyfin happily run side-by-side. If you prefer Jellyfin’s UI, then that’s great. You can continue to use it. But please don’t think that it’s secure just because you put it behind a reverse proxy.
Same. Jellyfin just isn’t there yet unfortunately. Maybe if a comparable plex4kodi existed. The jellyfin one isn’t aa good unfortunately.
