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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Anything Samsung. The appliances fail fast (TV & washing machine in my case), and the smartphones are constantly getting more and more enshittified (speaking as a long-time customer since the 1st Galaxy S all the way to S23).
Replaced my samsung phone with a unihertz Atom – Definitely not for everyone, but I love it. With samsung I’d gone from my phones never breaking to two phones that seemed to jump out of my hands and crack if you looked at them funny, so I gave up on the brand and looked for something small and rugged. I swear I could chuck the Atom off a building into concrete and it’d be fine. I do wish there was a newer version to update the software, but you get used to the older interface pretty quick. Hopefully Unihertz will go back to the atom series and make one with linux software, but I was thinking of just buying another and seeing if I can install linux.
I got a SG fe 20 last one. Moving to pixel.
An out of date, yet new, drawing tablet. Obsolete at the touch of a finger…
Mother bought a pair of “light therapy” glasses many years ago from a Russian quack site. It was basically a pair of blacked-out safety glasses with ~8 LEDs for each eye and a button cell to power it all. All circuitry and wires fully exposed and visible. You’d set your program and it would cycle through different colors for a predetermined time. Also came with a knock-off Chinese iPod and some gas-station headphones, preloaded with “relaxing sounds from nature.” You were expected to lay there for 30 minutes with your eyes closed as it did its thing. This cost around 600€ in 2019. What an absolute scam.
Tablet - it was a middle ground that I never found a use for
If I’m out and about, I’m not dragging the tablet with me and will just use my phone.
If I’m home, I’ll use the computer.
I’m not saying that tablets are bad or useless, they just aren’t for me.
Haha the running joke anytime my wife sees the tablet is she just goes “porn”? So now it’s embarrassing to even try to find a use for it lol. She doesn’t use it either.
Same. Got a tablet when i changed mobile operator.
Only good use i found for it was to look recepies when cooking.
I actually get a lot of use out of my tablet, mostly for reading manga and comics. Sometimes for books too
During Covid I ordered a little screen replacement kit from a cheap Chinese company, and they said it was delayed due to Covid, so I was trying to be patient, but then the company disappeared. Unfortunately, I was too patient and the six months went by so I couldn’t reverse the charge. Only time I’ve ever gotten scammed, and I was pissed because I had even looked them up before I ordered and they seemed to have decent reviews until after and everyone was calling them out. I don’t know if they were legit then collapsed during covid or they put a lot of effort into looking legit with fake reviews. Lesson learned I guess.
Zip drive
I bought a Wii U. It had some good games at the time, but Nintendo’s strategy over the last 10 years has just been to rerelease those games with better performance and new content. I wish I’d just waited.
Dude, a WiiU is worth it for Nintendoland alone. Throw in the Windwaker remaster and you’re set. I don’t think you lost out 😎
We just found and resurrected our Wii U, the kids play it more than the Switch now.
It’s also a Wii with HDMI.
It’s a fine retro game console especially when you mod it but it definitely didn’t live up to expectations
- First generation Samsung Android Watch (Just plain useless)
- Asus Transformer TF101 Tablet (Bloated UI)
- Acer C720 Chromebook (a bit better after installing Xfce over ChromeOS)
- Fiio M11 DAP (it’s chunky and I just never use it)
I bought an Xbox One to play D3. Nobody else did and then the rest of the episodes got cancelled.
I bought a System76 laptop once. Poop_OS! was fucking awful and when I owned it their updating application especially was and had been left buggy and broken for years. So I put Fedora on it instead which then stopped working shortly after. The kernel just wouldn’t load past a certain version and I gave up waiting for a fix and just e-wasted that miserable piece of shit with tinny speakers and bruise inflicting pointy metal casing. I have no faith these guys can make Cosmic not blow ass when they struggled to make a basic update GUI function for YEARS.
you had a bad time with two distros and you binned a machine? holy moly
When one of those distros is from the manufacturer that’s certainly not a good sign.
I only posted regret not timeline…could’ve written that better. It was 2020 (AMD 4700U) and was used until 2026 but spent the last two years in the garage running an OBD-1 diagnosis program for an old truck and playing music over bluetooth. It just stayed on outdated kernel until it got replaced. Steam Deck replaced its original purpose. A mini PC replaced it in the garage this year.
Not sure if it qualifies as tech, but a hybrid water heater. Was twice as expensive, sometimes provided only luke warm water and finally the compressor gave out prematurely. Should have just bought a normal one.
What makes it hybrid?
Gas and electric components
Actually, this is not the case at least with regards to the one I owned. The “hybrid” part was that it had a heatpump attached that was more efficient that standard electric heating in some circumstances. Mine worked OK, so I wouldn’t put in my worst buys, but the electricity savings were definitely exaggerated by the sales rep.
All three different aux to usb-c adaptors I have bought…
The “best” one was the cheapest aliexpress one.They are generally pretty terrible unless you get a full on expensive portable DAC.
This worst purchase but entirely my fault. I bought a thrust master t3000 kit off of a website I had found because it was like 200 bucks cheaper than anywhere else. I get the thing in the mail and it’s the EU plug so I had to order another servo motor that was for US outlets
nowadays the wise play would be to move to the EU instead
Working on that now actually.
…to ieuropeandre
sorry I just had to see this joke through. moving on…
you’ll have to change your name
I just realized what you were referring to, it’s Eric lol not American Andre. I can see where you got that tho
yea I got that… Perhaps I should leave joking to the professionals
Cheap chinese Android tablet that was supposedly 8-core 16Gb ram. It’s an absolute piece of shit, I think my S4 has more juice. It’s a paperweight now after the Ali seller disappeared.
Vr Headset.
Worth it to play Half Life Alyx and 3D Skyrim.
But was it worth $400?
Skyrim is terrible in 3D. I can barely hack and slash normally, and I’m supposed to do it while disoriented and facing the wrong direction. Even with my coward play style of sneaky mage with uncapped runes, it’s too much of a pain to do anything other than stare up at the sky.
I once bought one of these weird gaming ‘keyboards’ where you only have the keys around WASD on it. Used it once, thought it sucked and never looked at it again
