It's actually amazing how much you can get done without a phone distracting you, but it's expensive and rarely used, and paper is fine for occasional initial brainstorming.
Mechanical Keyboard. I tried one with no page up/page down/home/end keys and hated it. I also wasn't a fan of how separate keyboards keep your hands farther from your eyes on the screen compared to a laptop, but that probably just takes a few months to adjust.
Pickit3. I learned a lot... But why didn't I start with Arduino?
RFM non-LoRa Arduinos. Nobody uses these, it's like $5 of cost savings. My custom protocol I built to do error correction with them was incredibly time consuming and not that much fun.
A loft bed and mattress. I could have probably just found a more durable cot really. The extra storage space didn't help that much, I would have been better off just.. buying less stuff.
Any brushed motor tool when brushless is available used for the same price as the brushed one new and on sale.
Earbuds. I lost the charging case on one, and an earbud on another. Not doing that again, I'll just use normal Bluetooth headphones or else not do headphones at all.
12v gear. Everyone who starts with electronics will at some point think about having a single 12v transformer and running their whole workbench on it. They will pick a connector and start building around their new standard.
I chose XT60 which requires a bunch of handmade cables. Such a hassle. Just use USB-C and you can run on 12v easily if you ever need to.
Tons of random parts and pieces, to the point where I'm trying to put together an Awesome List in celebration of all the super common parts and materials which are all you need for 99% of stuff.
Any product containing lead. I'm sure the amount of exposure was trivial but really there was just no reason to be messing with it when there are alternatives.
A catalytic butane heat gun. The one I have is just kind of OK.
A Hakko soldering iron. Those FX-888 type ones are so expensive especially for the older tip format.
HP Spectre X360. The wifi card started failing less than 1 year in and there was no way of getting it fixed. It was touted as Linux compatible, but the stylus barely worked with the latest kernel. Sound NEVER worked from the integrated speakers (in Linux, Windows was OK). I digged through so many alsa and pulse-audio posts that it was probably 10% of that year's time wasted. It wouldn't go to sleep when closed (randomly, 8 times out of 10 it would) , so it kept overheating in my backpack.
A Surface Go 2. After a whole day of Windows Updates, I tried to use it to draw, as it was meant to replace my laptop and my notebook. I made a doodle and passed the tablet to my friend. When I was going through the file save dialog to save my drawing before closing the software, I decided to return it. I couldn’t imagine myself fiddling with that dialog again, nor using Windows Explorer to flip through my drawings. This device was everything I hate about computing made small enough to experience it everywhere. It gave me Windows Mobile flashbacks.
Now I have a MacBook Air and an iPad Mini. Two of my best hardware purchases. Procreate and Notability are genuine notebook replacements.
VR headset with Valve Index controllers (~$1200 total)
It was cool initially and Half Life Alyx was a great game, but overall it wasn’t worth the money with how little I use it and how many issues there are with VR and VR games.
iPhone 3g. Bought it new yet within a month of purchasing it Apple released iOS 4 which slowed it down so much it might as well have been bricked.
That, plus the lack of OTA updates, needing to plug into a PC/Mac with iTunes (horrible app) to load music, backup photos or update lead me to never purchase an Apple product again.
Going from that to an HTC Android phone was like going 10 years into the future.
Dell XPS 9440. Worst keyboard I've ever seen on a Dell laptop. I'm not a fan of the MacBook keyboard either, and this is worse. The touch-activated F row makes accidental activations of Delete / Insert too easy. The flat keys are harder to distinguish, making accidental activation of caps lock a common occurrence. It was a work laptop and so fortunately I didn't have to pay for it.
Personally I'd say my most regretted purchase was the Brand New Model F Keyboards "ortholinear" - It's modeled after an ErgoDox but critically both halves are not connected, so in reality it's two separate keyboards. I don't know how anyone could release something so useless for ~$700. I'm sure all of their other offerings are great, however.
Used apple 2015 apple imac. I bought it to use as a second monitor because the retina displays is the only monitor I’d used for extended periods without my eyes aching. I did very little research, bought a used one to find out, nope you can’t hook it up as a second monitor and the hardware is awful
Sonos speakers. I got a big system during COVID and it got me through isolation. But then they decided to redo the app and the new one is terrible (not that the old one was ever great; software is not their strength). It's still a buggy mess to this day. Some of the hardware died too, and they don't offer repairs. Their customer service sucks too. You can't email them anymore and you have to wait hours on the phone.
I went from loyal supporter to wanting to get rid of the whole system. Buyer beware. Company has really gone downhill. I wish they'd fire the CEO.
Samsung monitor. I decided to upgrade my WFH situation, and bought their 49" G9 Neo (5120 x 1440, 240 hz). I've always gone with Alienware/Dell in the past, but I assumed there were always better products out there. The Samsung display died on month 13 (one month out of warranty). The repair would've cost almost what I paid for the monitor outright. $1500 down the drain.
Are people really still mad about this?? In my country we switched to LED lights like… 10 years ago, maybe more? It’s not a big deal, we had light, we still have light. I don’t see what makes it "awful, ugly, unpleasant", is it really that bad? That just sounds like a gross overreaction to me but maybe I’m missing something?
My house is about 55 years old, originally it had 3 x 60W bulbs in the living area. So dark. Now it has LED downlights and 2 pendant lights - I added it up to just over 60W, and much brighter. I'll take the modern lighting thanks!
I doubt that is the reason I tend to hate being subjected to bright LED lights for more than about 20 minutes a day.
Most agree that the light from most LED light bulbs (i.e., having a pronounced spike in intensity in the blue wavelengths) is bad for you in the evening and in the night time, but I'm saying I don't even like it in the morning if my exposure is too long (and when I'm having a bady day "too long" might be as short as 10 minutes).
Windows gaming laptop from MSI. It's not bad at all, but the battery life is horrible and gaming performance is OK. I finally built a gaming PC which I like a lot more.
As for a portable machine, I should have just got a Macbook.
Hah, coincidentally I just made the switch from an Acer gaming laptop to a Macbook and couldn't be more pleased. All the games I actually play (nothing graphically intensive) still work on the M3 Macbook via Wine, and the performance is just fine. Meanwhile, the rest of the experience of actually using the laptop got massively upgraded. Better screen, better speakers, better touchpad and keyboard, way better battery life, and when I open the lid the Macbook wakes from sleep essentially instantly.
For more graphically intensive games, I still have a Windows desktop. I don't think I will ever buy another "gaming" laptop.
Funny enough, I inherited an MSI notebook that wasn't working to my parents' satisfaction (no idea why they bought it, their use case is pretty basic), installed Linux on it and it's actually a really great laptop (apart from the battery life lol). Great performance , lots of ram, nice screen, nice body, everything works (even touchscreen, stylus and fingerprint sensor). But free is free, for $3k of my own money I'd buy a Lunar Lake or Strix Point laptop and save some $$$.
A “gaming headset” with a built-in microphone. The sound quality was fine but the build quality was terrible. It broke apart while I was wearing it, after owning it for less than a year.
Now I just use a pair of Sennheiser studio headphones and a usb desktop microphone, and they’ve lasted for years with no issues.
There are also inline headset mics for sennhesier headphones that work reasonably well (they’re part of the cable that plugs into the headphones). More convenient than a desk mic imo.
Level smart lock. I have a handful of issues with it, but the big one is that it falls in the category of "tech product never tested outside of California" because the thing just does not work outside of the Goldilocks days where it's not too hot, cold, humid, or dry (for me, it works maybe half the time during the summer, and never during the winter). To hardware product designers: capacitive touch sensing is not reliable in the cold.
Yale Real Living electronic locks have been great for me down to -30ish F. I’ve never used any of the wireless smarthome bits tho - just standalone locks.
Their website doesn’t even list an operating temperature range. Huge red flag for a piece of equipment that is installed outdoors.
If you buy something that is installed outdoors, make sure it’s from a company that has previously manufactured things that are installed outdoors, or it will be a piece of shit.
I recommend the encode plus rather than the encode, since the former is matter over thread and not Wi-Fi, and will be more reliable with better battery life.
I had the nest lock for a long time and was really disappointed with battery life and reliability.
The Schlage encode plus smart lock is the only one that seems to work right at the moment (it also looks the worst). NFC is the way to go for most uses, and matter over thread beats WiFi anything by a long shot.
Not sure about capacitive buttons, but I can see real buttons wearing out or allowing moisture through.
There are a variety of outdoor rated pushbuttons you can buy that don't have their electrical properties change due to the moisture content of a user's fingertips, or lack thereof.
But just to be clear - the level doesn't have buttons. It has touch sensor on the enclosure to lock/unlock by just touching the lock, while it looks like a plain-old deadbolt. The problem is the sensor is garbage, so it's basically a plain-old-deadbolt but costs 5 times as much
After a few years and several doors/apts, the deadbolt itself seems to be showing some issues sometimes (have to pull the door close tightly for it to lock right)... I'm not sure if that's a door alignment issue or maybe a thermal freeze/thaw issue or something... need to debug it further... but it's a lot cheaper and more reliable (and uglier) than most smart locks I've tried, including the much fancier ones.
Level has a keypad as an extra, so I thought you were talking about that. They also support NFC, but that has nothing to do with capacitive sensors. Anyways, I never heard anything good about that lock and so never bothered trying it. The Schlage Encode Plus is pretty reliable (I researched a bunch of reviews before buying) for how up I use it, if only it weren’t so ugly.
I have spent thousands on the cool noise cancelling bluetooth headsets. Each of them is garbage. (I just kept buying them, hoping that at least one of them is not only hyped, but have some substance also)
Also, just broke a cheap Hama mouse into pieces, literally today. It was only like ~$5, but the worst piece of trash I have had: it turns off after 2 minutes of inactivity, and on top of that it can't wake up always... (well, couldn't wake up. It's in the mouse-heaven now)
Out of curiosity, what issues have you had with them? (I'm not at all involved with their development, just a fellow user of them).
I had the Bose and Sony ones. They were OK, just uncomfortable. Been using the in-ear Airpods Pro for a few years now, for everything from work to flights to trains to exercising, and I love them soooo much... they're probably my favorite tech purchase ever (and I don't even have an iPhone). Pairing is always a pain in the ass (I just manually pair again with every device I want to switch to) but other than that, they've been so nice.
Personally, I'm not an audiophile, but I find the audio quality incredible (vs my Sonos speakers, wired Koss PortaPros, generic soundbars, Sony XM3 and Bose QC35s, etc.) and the comfort unbeatable. But some people hate the in-ear kind.
Anyway, not trying to convince you of anything, just wondering what made your experiences so different and bad?
My problems were very varied, depending on the specific model. Trying not to make it a full rant. While I have many types of music on my player, primarily I listen to rock/metal.
Common problem: ANC changes the music too. It messes with the mids and highs, regardless of the model. Some are better than the others... but of course ANC can be turned off, which I did frequently in the past years. Oh, and the low battery warning: "ATTENTION - battery will be empty in 4 hours, let me disrupt your music every 60-120 seconds till the end of time!".
Bose QC35, QC45: They are pretty much the same, both inside and outside. Very comfortable, can't argue with that. They randomly they cut off the first/last 2 seconds of the tracks (how did they even release them like that is a mystery for me). Also, no bass, no highs, just a pile of mids. Almost 0 dynamics - you will never hear any other instruments else during a bass-guitar heavy track...
Sennheiser PCX-550 ii: It sometimes sounded fairly decent, even with ANC, however rather uncomfortable. The touch interface is catastrophic (in humid weather all the controls activate at the same time. Literally: volume up-down, play-forward-pause-call, all at the once). It had the worst bug I saw so far: about once every 2 weeks it made some extra loud shrilling noise that made me shit my pants (I'd guess the ANC got into some self-amplifying feedback loop). After it came back from "warranty-repair", it did it again within 3 days.
Marshall Monitor II ANC: mushy pile of mids, sounds actually bad, especially for its price. I really thought that it was made for rock music, but no. It is mostly made for audible books. Controls look cool (5-way joystick), but hard to use in practice: if the button press is even half a degree off, it doesn't register. Especially unusable while walking. Used two different sets of this model (after a warranty exchange). Earpads break after 6 months (for both sets). The second set it literally a pain to wear: it makes the top of my head hurt after 20 minutes.
Sony 1000XM2: Very bad touch interface, it feels like the gestures are randomly changing function. Keep disconnecting and stuttering. Sometimes after 20 minutes, sometimes after 2 hours. The only guaranteed thing is that one of them happens sooner or later. If I apply a ton of EQ on each track one by one as they are played, it is possible to get decent sound of it. But usually I just want to listen to music, without messing with EQ every few minutes.
Airpods pro: Keeps disconnecting. ANC keeps turning on and off, living its own life. Sometimes only one side has sound. But it doesn't sound bad, when it works. It doesn't happen very often though. Too bad Apple ran out of SW developers.
I have only one BT headset that I keep using still, though exclusively for workouts: Sony MDR-ZX770: I got it like 8 years ago. It sounds crap, but very robust and reliable at what it does. If you want a bad sounding cheap headset, I recommend this one lol.
I had some random headsets from Amazon also, Chinese garden variety, but I won't even say anything about them.
But in a nutshell, that's why I have had enough. Now I'm just back to oldschool headsets, and hear every instrument without bugs.
This is hilarious. The Devil's been urging me to buy one of high-end ones for the past year -- I specifically clicked on this post hoping to see someone regretting buying one of these things so I could use it as fuel against my utopian fantasies.
Have had great luck with my Soundcore by Anker Space Q45 Adaptive Active Noise Cancelling Headphones. They are cost competitive, but not perfect. Recommend.
Thanks, but the truth is, a few months ago I "accidentally" tried a good old cabled Audio Technica, and suddenly I realized that I haven't really enjoyed music for a good part of the past decade. I'm back in the middle-ages, when it comes to music listening, and there is no way I'm switching.
There's no better noise cancelling than as much bulk around your ears and as thick a wall around your room as possible! I too have a wired Audio-Technica (ATH-M40x) and can highly recommend it. I got immeasurable pleasure out of discovering that many of my favourite pieces of music had entire lines that I never knew existed when still using lesser audio equipment!
Another suggestion of mine is to listen to CDs from the late 80s, when record labels considered 'digital' a mark of quality and actually followed through with the marketing. They tend to be the best, in my opinion - they have good dynamic range which nowadays is usually compressed out of the recordings to maximise loudness, and they had just started using 192kbs bitrates, which I consider to be at the upper level of my hearing ability. No help for new albums, of course, but hopefully those will have FLAC downloads available as some consolation!
I don't understand your "192kbps" remark. It seems to be a reference to some sort of lossy compression, but the context was audio CDs (from the 80s, even!). Audio CDs are all uncompressed PCM at 1411kbps, nothing else is possible - especially in the 80s! Lossy audio compression was in its infancy, and mp3 was not defined until 1991.
Have you ever tried the Tidal streams (https://tidal.com/sound-quality) in FLAC? Are those at all comparable to these high-quality recordings you mentioned?
As someone who grew up later in the MP3 era (90s), I guess I never knew what "good" audio ever sounded like. I'd love to do a back-to-back comparison of the same song, one in "modern" shitty no-dynamic-range and the other in a higher-fidelity version to see if I can notice any difference at all. Between my consumer equipment and my aging ears, I dunno if I'll be able to at all...?
Apple MacBook Air 2020, intel edition. Such a piece of junk and shame on Apple for releasing it knowing that they’d have launched the M1 in just a few months. Maximum corporate greed.
8 months (though I imagine sales may have tanked in June when they announced the transition to Apple Silicon, so Apple probably only got 3 months of sales.)
But it was in fact the fastest intel MacBook Air - and it still is.
What few people outside Apple (or even inside given Apple's notorious secrecy) probably realized in early to mid 2020, even after the WWDC announcement, was how great the Apple Silicon/M1 MacBook Air was actually going to be, and how it would transform expectations for performance and battery life in a fanless laptop.
Perhaps Apple should have offered a trade-in scheme like they did for the Lisa/Macintosh XL. I wonder if they offered upgrades to the buyers of the October 1999 Power Mac G4 (PCI Graphics) which was replaced by a better model only two months later.
A touchscreen laptop, I thought it would be incredibly useful and fun back when they were getting popular, but when I got one, I completely stopped using the touchscreen after a few months. I just didn't find it useful.
My first and last experience with an Android based TV device.
Since 2018 or so, I've been using a small Windows PC with a Hauppauge WinTV Dual USB tuner (ATSC, watch as you record a different channel in the backgroud) and DVBViewer software. Use a web browser for streaming.
Those throwback re-releases of Sega or Atari consoles with a bunch of games built into them. They're fun for the first few hours and they work well, but they end up collecting dust. Turns out those games aren't as fun as they were when I was a kid and didn't have many options for gaming.
I played for a few minutes, listened to Hell March (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3YzmjmAGoI) for nostalgia, and then remembered why I moved on. Games sure have changed a lot in the intervening decades, lol.
Counter point I have a harbor-freight drill that has lasted almost a decade. I recently replaced it because I needed more torque.
If you're careful there are so, so many harbor freight tools that likely come off the back of the same Chinese factory name brands do. Their "professional" line is about 50-70% less expensive and performs as well. The impact wrench is better than a Milwaukee, and their professional torque wrench comes within tolerance to a Snap-On.
For someone who doesn't need a QA cert for insurance/licensing reasons harbor freight is a miracle. Likely because it's the EXACT same stuff. Nothing is made in America anymore.
I don't have the floorspace to walk around, there's only one app I even use (Wander) and it gives me a headache after a few minutes. And now both of them are obsolete. Even the default environments are disappointing.
Smart Pen and analog writing tablet.
It's actually amazing how much you can get done without a phone distracting you, but it's expensive and rarely used, and paper is fine for occasional initial brainstorming.
Mechanical Keyboard. I tried one with no page up/page down/home/end keys and hated it. I also wasn't a fan of how separate keyboards keep your hands farther from your eyes on the screen compared to a laptop, but that probably just takes a few months to adjust.
Pickit3. I learned a lot... But why didn't I start with Arduino?
RFM non-LoRa Arduinos. Nobody uses these, it's like $5 of cost savings. My custom protocol I built to do error correction with them was incredibly time consuming and not that much fun.
A loft bed and mattress. I could have probably just found a more durable cot really. The extra storage space didn't help that much, I would have been better off just.. buying less stuff.
Any brushed motor tool when brushless is available used for the same price as the brushed one new and on sale.
Earbuds. I lost the charging case on one, and an earbud on another. Not doing that again, I'll just use normal Bluetooth headphones or else not do headphones at all.
12v gear. Everyone who starts with electronics will at some point think about having a single 12v transformer and running their whole workbench on it. They will pick a connector and start building around their new standard.
I chose XT60 which requires a bunch of handmade cables. Such a hassle. Just use USB-C and you can run on 12v easily if you ever need to.
Tons of random parts and pieces, to the point where I'm trying to put together an Awesome List in celebration of all the super common parts and materials which are all you need for 99% of stuff.
Any product containing lead. I'm sure the amount of exposure was trivial but really there was just no reason to be messing with it when there are alternatives.
A catalytic butane heat gun. The one I have is just kind of OK.
A Hakko soldering iron. Those FX-888 type ones are so expensive especially for the older tip format.
HP Spectre X360. The wifi card started failing less than 1 year in and there was no way of getting it fixed. It was touted as Linux compatible, but the stylus barely worked with the latest kernel. Sound NEVER worked from the integrated speakers (in Linux, Windows was OK). I digged through so many alsa and pulse-audio posts that it was probably 10% of that year's time wasted. It wouldn't go to sleep when closed (randomly, 8 times out of 10 it would) , so it kept overheating in my backpack.
HP + Linux, never again.
A Surface Go 2. After a whole day of Windows Updates, I tried to use it to draw, as it was meant to replace my laptop and my notebook. I made a doodle and passed the tablet to my friend. When I was going through the file save dialog to save my drawing before closing the software, I decided to return it. I couldn’t imagine myself fiddling with that dialog again, nor using Windows Explorer to flip through my drawings. This device was everything I hate about computing made small enough to experience it everywhere. It gave me Windows Mobile flashbacks.
Now I have a MacBook Air and an iPad Mini. Two of my best hardware purchases. Procreate and Notability are genuine notebook replacements.
VR headset with Valve Index controllers (~$1200 total) It was cool initially and Half Life Alyx was a great game, but overall it wasn’t worth the money with how little I use it and how many issues there are with VR and VR games.
My Lenovo Legion 5i. It freezes while playing CS2 and takes up 15 minutes to wake from sleep. It's literally a regret.
My Macbook Air M2 is the exact opposite of that. Best purchase of the past few years, without a doubt.
iPhone 3g. Bought it new yet within a month of purchasing it Apple released iOS 4 which slowed it down so much it might as well have been bricked.
That, plus the lack of OTA updates, needing to plug into a PC/Mac with iTunes (horrible app) to load music, backup photos or update lead me to never purchase an Apple product again.
Going from that to an HTC Android phone was like going 10 years into the future.
Dell XPS 9440. Worst keyboard I've ever seen on a Dell laptop. I'm not a fan of the MacBook keyboard either, and this is worse. The touch-activated F row makes accidental activations of Delete / Insert too easy. The flat keys are harder to distinguish, making accidental activation of caps lock a common occurrence. It was a work laptop and so fortunately I didn't have to pay for it.
Personally I'd say my most regretted purchase was the Brand New Model F Keyboards "ortholinear" - It's modeled after an ErgoDox but critically both halves are not connected, so in reality it's two separate keyboards. I don't know how anyone could release something so useless for ~$700. I'm sure all of their other offerings are great, however.
Used apple 2015 apple imac. I bought it to use as a second monitor because the retina displays is the only monitor I’d used for extended periods without my eyes aching. I did very little research, bought a used one to find out, nope you can’t hook it up as a second monitor and the hardware is awful
Sonos speakers. I got a big system during COVID and it got me through isolation. But then they decided to redo the app and the new one is terrible (not that the old one was ever great; software is not their strength). It's still a buggy mess to this day. Some of the hardware died too, and they don't offer repairs. Their customer service sucks too. You can't email them anymore and you have to wait hours on the phone.
I went from loyal supporter to wanting to get rid of the whole system. Buyer beware. Company has really gone downhill. I wish they'd fire the CEO.
Samsung monitor. I decided to upgrade my WFH situation, and bought their 49" G9 Neo (5120 x 1440, 240 hz). I've always gone with Alienware/Dell in the past, but I assumed there were always better products out there. The Samsung display died on month 13 (one month out of warranty). The repair would've cost almost what I paid for the monitor outright. $1500 down the drain.
LED light bulbs. They are better than they used to be, but they are still awful compared to incandescent bulbs.
They are also inescapable, which means we are cursed with ugly, unpleasant lighting basically everywhere.
Are people really still mad about this?? In my country we switched to LED lights like… 10 years ago, maybe more? It’s not a big deal, we had light, we still have light. I don’t see what makes it "awful, ugly, unpleasant", is it really that bad? That just sounds like a gross overreaction to me but maybe I’m missing something?
My house is about 55 years old, originally it had 3 x 60W bulbs in the living area. So dark. Now it has LED downlights and 2 pendant lights - I added it up to just over 60W, and much brighter. I'll take the modern lighting thanks!
Low color rendering index (CRI) is often the culprit. Quality LEDs absolutely exist, one must simply do a bit of research in enthusiast forums.
https://budgetlightforum.com/c/other-light-types/led-light-b...
I doubt that is the reason I tend to hate being subjected to bright LED lights for more than about 20 minutes a day.
Most agree that the light from most LED light bulbs (i.e., having a pronounced spike in intensity in the blue wavelengths) is bad for you in the evening and in the night time, but I'm saying I don't even like it in the morning if my exposure is too long (and when I'm having a bady day "too long" might be as short as 10 minutes).
Windows gaming laptop from MSI. It's not bad at all, but the battery life is horrible and gaming performance is OK. I finally built a gaming PC which I like a lot more. As for a portable machine, I should have just got a Macbook.
Hah, coincidentally I just made the switch from an Acer gaming laptop to a Macbook and couldn't be more pleased. All the games I actually play (nothing graphically intensive) still work on the M3 Macbook via Wine, and the performance is just fine. Meanwhile, the rest of the experience of actually using the laptop got massively upgraded. Better screen, better speakers, better touchpad and keyboard, way better battery life, and when I open the lid the Macbook wakes from sleep essentially instantly.
For more graphically intensive games, I still have a Windows desktop. I don't think I will ever buy another "gaming" laptop.
Funny enough, I inherited an MSI notebook that wasn't working to my parents' satisfaction (no idea why they bought it, their use case is pretty basic), installed Linux on it and it's actually a really great laptop (apart from the battery life lol). Great performance , lots of ram, nice screen, nice body, everything works (even touchscreen, stylus and fingerprint sensor). But free is free, for $3k of my own money I'd buy a Lunar Lake or Strix Point laptop and save some $$$.
A “gaming headset” with a built-in microphone. The sound quality was fine but the build quality was terrible. It broke apart while I was wearing it, after owning it for less than a year.
Now I just use a pair of Sennheiser studio headphones and a usb desktop microphone, and they’ve lasted for years with no issues.
There are also inline headset mics for sennhesier headphones that work reasonably well (they’re part of the cable that plugs into the headphones). More convenient than a desk mic imo.
Level smart lock. I have a handful of issues with it, but the big one is that it falls in the category of "tech product never tested outside of California" because the thing just does not work outside of the Goldilocks days where it's not too hot, cold, humid, or dry (for me, it works maybe half the time during the summer, and never during the winter). To hardware product designers: capacitive touch sensing is not reliable in the cold.
Yale Real Living electronic locks have been great for me down to -30ish F. I’ve never used any of the wireless smarthome bits tho - just standalone locks.
Their website doesn’t even list an operating temperature range. Huge red flag for a piece of equipment that is installed outdoors.
If you buy something that is installed outdoors, make sure it’s from a company that has previously manufactured things that are installed outdoors, or it will be a piece of shit.
This Schlage model has a listed operating temperature range, because Schlage has been manufacturing things that are installed outside for over 100 years: https://www.schlage.com/en/home/products/BE489WBCENFFF.html
I recommend the encode plus rather than the encode, since the former is matter over thread and not Wi-Fi, and will be more reliable with better battery life.
I had the nest lock for a long time and was really disappointed with battery life and reliability.
The Schlage encode plus smart lock is the only one that seems to work right at the moment (it also looks the worst). NFC is the way to go for most uses, and matter over thread beats WiFi anything by a long shot.
Not sure about capacitive buttons, but I can see real buttons wearing out or allowing moisture through.
There are a variety of outdoor rated pushbuttons you can buy that don't have their electrical properties change due to the moisture content of a user's fingertips, or lack thereof.
But just to be clear - the level doesn't have buttons. It has touch sensor on the enclosure to lock/unlock by just touching the lock, while it looks like a plain-old deadbolt. The problem is the sensor is garbage, so it's basically a plain-old-deadbolt but costs 5 times as much
I've used the cheapo Wyze Lock (https://www.wyze.com/products/wyze-lock?variant=423027510806...), which is a deadbolt-only replacement with the $20 keypad (https://www.wyze.com/products/wyze-lock-keypad?srsltid=AfmBO...) and it's worked well for a few years. The buttons never gave me any issues, and indeed I use that instead of the app to unlock.
After a few years and several doors/apts, the deadbolt itself seems to be showing some issues sometimes (have to pull the door close tightly for it to lock right)... I'm not sure if that's a door alignment issue or maybe a thermal freeze/thaw issue or something... need to debug it further... but it's a lot cheaper and more reliable (and uglier) than most smart locks I've tried, including the much fancier ones.
Level has a keypad as an extra, so I thought you were talking about that. They also support NFC, but that has nothing to do with capacitive sensors. Anyways, I never heard anything good about that lock and so never bothered trying it. The Schlage Encode Plus is pretty reliable (I researched a bunch of reviews before buying) for how up I use it, if only it weren’t so ugly.
The Siacoin miner that I purchased for 3 bitcoins.
I have spent thousands on the cool noise cancelling bluetooth headsets. Each of them is garbage. (I just kept buying them, hoping that at least one of them is not only hyped, but have some substance also)
Also, just broke a cheap Hama mouse into pieces, literally today. It was only like ~$5, but the worst piece of trash I have had: it turns off after 2 minutes of inactivity, and on top of that it can't wake up always... (well, couldn't wake up. It's in the mouse-heaven now)
Out of curiosity, what issues have you had with them? (I'm not at all involved with their development, just a fellow user of them).
I had the Bose and Sony ones. They were OK, just uncomfortable. Been using the in-ear Airpods Pro for a few years now, for everything from work to flights to trains to exercising, and I love them soooo much... they're probably my favorite tech purchase ever (and I don't even have an iPhone). Pairing is always a pain in the ass (I just manually pair again with every device I want to switch to) but other than that, they've been so nice.
Personally, I'm not an audiophile, but I find the audio quality incredible (vs my Sonos speakers, wired Koss PortaPros, generic soundbars, Sony XM3 and Bose QC35s, etc.) and the comfort unbeatable. But some people hate the in-ear kind.
Anyway, not trying to convince you of anything, just wondering what made your experiences so different and bad?
My problems were very varied, depending on the specific model. Trying not to make it a full rant. While I have many types of music on my player, primarily I listen to rock/metal.
Common problem: ANC changes the music too. It messes with the mids and highs, regardless of the model. Some are better than the others... but of course ANC can be turned off, which I did frequently in the past years. Oh, and the low battery warning: "ATTENTION - battery will be empty in 4 hours, let me disrupt your music every 60-120 seconds till the end of time!".
Bose QC35, QC45: They are pretty much the same, both inside and outside. Very comfortable, can't argue with that. They randomly they cut off the first/last 2 seconds of the tracks (how did they even release them like that is a mystery for me). Also, no bass, no highs, just a pile of mids. Almost 0 dynamics - you will never hear any other instruments else during a bass-guitar heavy track...
Sennheiser PCX-550 ii: It sometimes sounded fairly decent, even with ANC, however rather uncomfortable. The touch interface is catastrophic (in humid weather all the controls activate at the same time. Literally: volume up-down, play-forward-pause-call, all at the once). It had the worst bug I saw so far: about once every 2 weeks it made some extra loud shrilling noise that made me shit my pants (I'd guess the ANC got into some self-amplifying feedback loop). After it came back from "warranty-repair", it did it again within 3 days.
Marshall Monitor II ANC: mushy pile of mids, sounds actually bad, especially for its price. I really thought that it was made for rock music, but no. It is mostly made for audible books. Controls look cool (5-way joystick), but hard to use in practice: if the button press is even half a degree off, it doesn't register. Especially unusable while walking. Used two different sets of this model (after a warranty exchange). Earpads break after 6 months (for both sets). The second set it literally a pain to wear: it makes the top of my head hurt after 20 minutes.
Sony 1000XM2: Very bad touch interface, it feels like the gestures are randomly changing function. Keep disconnecting and stuttering. Sometimes after 20 minutes, sometimes after 2 hours. The only guaranteed thing is that one of them happens sooner or later. If I apply a ton of EQ on each track one by one as they are played, it is possible to get decent sound of it. But usually I just want to listen to music, without messing with EQ every few minutes.
Airpods pro: Keeps disconnecting. ANC keeps turning on and off, living its own life. Sometimes only one side has sound. But it doesn't sound bad, when it works. It doesn't happen very often though. Too bad Apple ran out of SW developers.
I have only one BT headset that I keep using still, though exclusively for workouts: Sony MDR-ZX770: I got it like 8 years ago. It sounds crap, but very robust and reliable at what it does. If you want a bad sounding cheap headset, I recommend this one lol.
I had some random headsets from Amazon also, Chinese garden variety, but I won't even say anything about them.
But in a nutshell, that's why I have had enough. Now I'm just back to oldschool headsets, and hear every instrument without bugs.
This is hilarious. The Devil's been urging me to buy one of high-end ones for the past year -- I specifically clicked on this post hoping to see someone regretting buying one of these things so I could use it as fuel against my utopian fantasies.
Have had great luck with my Soundcore by Anker Space Q45 Adaptive Active Noise Cancelling Headphones. They are cost competitive, but not perfect. Recommend.
Thanks, but the truth is, a few months ago I "accidentally" tried a good old cabled Audio Technica, and suddenly I realized that I haven't really enjoyed music for a good part of the past decade. I'm back in the middle-ages, when it comes to music listening, and there is no way I'm switching.
There's no better noise cancelling than as much bulk around your ears and as thick a wall around your room as possible! I too have a wired Audio-Technica (ATH-M40x) and can highly recommend it. I got immeasurable pleasure out of discovering that many of my favourite pieces of music had entire lines that I never knew existed when still using lesser audio equipment!
Another suggestion of mine is to listen to CDs from the late 80s, when record labels considered 'digital' a mark of quality and actually followed through with the marketing. They tend to be the best, in my opinion - they have good dynamic range which nowadays is usually compressed out of the recordings to maximise loudness, and they had just started using 192kbs bitrates, which I consider to be at the upper level of my hearing ability. No help for new albums, of course, but hopefully those will have FLAC downloads available as some consolation!
I don't understand your "192kbps" remark. It seems to be a reference to some sort of lossy compression, but the context was audio CDs (from the 80s, even!). Audio CDs are all uncompressed PCM at 1411kbps, nothing else is possible - especially in the 80s! Lossy audio compression was in its infancy, and mp3 was not defined until 1991.
Have you ever tried the Tidal streams (https://tidal.com/sound-quality) in FLAC? Are those at all comparable to these high-quality recordings you mentioned?
As someone who grew up later in the MP3 era (90s), I guess I never knew what "good" audio ever sounded like. I'd love to do a back-to-back comparison of the same song, one in "modern" shitty no-dynamic-range and the other in a higher-fidelity version to see if I can notice any difference at all. Between my consumer equipment and my aging ears, I dunno if I'll be able to at all...?
Apple MacBook Air 2020, intel edition. Such a piece of junk and shame on Apple for releasing it knowing that they’d have launched the M1 in just a few months. Maximum corporate greed.
8 months (though I imagine sales may have tanked in June when they announced the transition to Apple Silicon, so Apple probably only got 3 months of sales.)
But it was in fact the fastest intel MacBook Air - and it still is.
What few people outside Apple (or even inside given Apple's notorious secrecy) probably realized in early to mid 2020, even after the WWDC announcement, was how great the Apple Silicon/M1 MacBook Air was actually going to be, and how it would transform expectations for performance and battery life in a fanless laptop.
Perhaps Apple should have offered a trade-in scheme like they did for the Lisa/Macintosh XL. I wonder if they offered upgrades to the buyers of the October 1999 Power Mac G4 (PCI Graphics) which was replaced by a better model only two months later.
https://512pixels.net/2020/01/some-short-lived-macs/
"gaming" chair. Should have gotten a normal office chair
A touchscreen laptop, I thought it would be incredibly useful and fun back when they were getting popular, but when I got one, I completely stopped using the touchscreen after a few months. I just didn't find it useful.
Anything with touch interfaces.
So far aside from cell phones and tablets nothing has worked right.
Wetek Play2 Android based TV box.
My first and last experience with an Android based TV device.
Since 2018 or so, I've been using a small Windows PC with a Hauppauge WinTV Dual USB tuner (ATSC, watch as you record a different channel in the backgroud) and DVBViewer software. Use a web browser for streaming.
https://www.dvbviewer.com/en/index.php
Those throwback re-releases of Sega or Atari consoles with a bunch of games built into them. They're fun for the first few hours and they work well, but they end up collecting dust. Turns out those games aren't as fun as they were when I was a kid and didn't have many options for gaming.
Heh, similarly, I bought the C&C Remastered Collection (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1213210/Command__Conquer_...) because it was such a large part of my childhood.
I played for a few minutes, listened to Hell March (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3YzmjmAGoI) for nostalgia, and then remembered why I moved on. Games sure have changed a lot in the intervening decades, lol.
Bought a cheap power drill, like "I can't believe how cheap this thing is". It broke after 15 minute of usage.
Never go cheap on tools.
Always go cheap on tools you are trying out.
If 6 months pass and you are still using it, and notice it not being enough for your use, then get a quality one.
I've seen many quality tools that have been used once or twice after years, bought out of impulse.
Counter point I have a harbor-freight drill that has lasted almost a decade. I recently replaced it because I needed more torque.
If you're careful there are so, so many harbor freight tools that likely come off the back of the same Chinese factory name brands do. Their "professional" line is about 50-70% less expensive and performs as well. The impact wrench is better than a Milwaukee, and their professional torque wrench comes within tolerance to a Snap-On.
For someone who doesn't need a QA cert for insurance/licensing reasons harbor freight is a miracle. Likely because it's the EXACT same stuff. Nothing is made in America anymore.
An Oculus Go and Oculus Quest.
I don't have the floorspace to walk around, there's only one app I even use (Wander) and it gives me a headache after a few minutes. And now both of them are obsolete. Even the default environments are disappointing.
For me, just playing Half-Life Alyx through the link cable alone was worth it.
Most of the headphones I've bought have broken within a few years. It's not a "huge" regret though.