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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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.
the video version of the echo devices.
I bought an after-market touchscreen entertainment/navigation unit for my 2008 car from some online place selling cheap Chinese gear.
It was so slow it was nigh on useless. I’d be halfway home before the maps would finally start, and Spotify would just crash. I pulled it out after a few weeks and went back to the stock unit.
How the fuck.
I got a used one for 100 eur and it’s better than that, damn
Hey I did the same! Thought hey I know tech, I know car audio, this will be great. It wasn’t. Some bottom of the barrel android tablet that barely run a music player let alone navigation. Ended up putting back the stock and getting a 15 dollar phone mount instead. Worked way better.
I bought one of these. It’s a bit clunky, but it was the best option for my application because it uses the stock touchscreen from the infotainment system instead of the aftermarket stereo which would have 2 screens on top of each other and look shitty. It’s not cheap, and I wish it was a little more polished, but it does everything I need it to.
https://gromaudio.com/vline/?srsltid=AfmBOopqUVGKB-ToRqCqMa_JIbd041ZytmLBTFd-ZbM2vYJWTRPl3xm3
Thanks, but I’m fine with my Quadlock phone mount and an aux jack. (I still have a phone with a 3.5mm headphone jack.)
Nice. R.i.p the 3.5 mm. Miss that shit
I got a cheap dash cam off Temu a few years ago. I’m sure I don’t have to explain beyond that.
Yes. I’m an idiot. I know. I’ve always known.
So just out of curiosity, did the dash cam not work for dash cam purposes?
As in, did you end up getting into an accident and have no usable footage?
Or was it just a piece of shit that didn’t work?
My guess is the quality is so bad they can’t see shit or it overheats from the sun very easily and shuts down
Pretty much anything that was “a really good deal”.
I read this as “a really good idea” and still kind of agreed.
I bought a fucking Xioami Poco F4 GT near the launch date because I wanted a gaming phone and back in the time I was naive to think mobile games were a thing. It came with a top of the line chipset from the time I bought it (Snapdragon 8 Gen 1), and this shit overheats as fuck and eats your battery even on average use.
I was able to unlock the bootloader around 2023 and so far used only LineageOS, but this year I had to relock the bootloader for a specific usage, and guess what Xiaomi is making nearly impossible to unlock the bootloader again, I didn’t know about that and now I’m stuck on Xiaomi stock ROM with 24/7 spyware (I know because I can see the requests log with an app, the fucking package installer app is reaching the facebook domain every few hours).
Such regret OMG. Suck unfortunate series of events. I’m not even using my phone, just basic stuff.
Good thing: I just bought a second hand Redmi Note 10 Pro in a pretty reasonable state and cheap, there are dozens of ROMs to this phone and easy to unlock the bootloader (actually I already started the process just need to wait more 160h). Not just that but the phone supports jack connector and micro SD. A truly piece of technology.
Learned a lesson don’t buy any phone launched after 2022. Unless it’s Linux phone or pro-consumer brands like Murena and Fairphone.
What app are you using to log the requests?
RethinkDNS
And it’s on F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.celzero.bravedns/
Awesome, thank you!
I bought the Poco F1, which i think was the first with a internal heatpipe back then? Well, geared at gamers. Still was fairly powerful 7 years later when it broke. So, there’s that at least.
I used to go for Xiaomi phones but I stopped because I had too many issues with the OS. The amount of times it would close an app almost as soon as it leaves the screen was too much, tried every setting ever to fix until I just starting doing 2FA with a floating/split screen.
8 years ago the OS was one of the best, 3 years ago it was one of the worst, not sure how it is now.
It’s worse every day, I also had good experience like 8 years ago, if I’m not wrong it was MIUI 12. Xiaomi renamed it to HyperOS a few years ago and it’s terrible.
I already knew it was garbage but after I put my hands on a OneUI smartphone I got sure that Xiaomi OS is probably the worst.
What happened about the bootloader? Afaik there’s “only” a 7 days waiting time but that is to be done only once, if the serial number is tied to the Xiaomi account that makes the request, the next bootloader unlock has no waiting time.
And devices that run a ROM for the Chinese market only accept a bootloader unlock request from a Chinese IP address
No, devices from China region are gone completely locked forever I guess. Chinese government made a new law that make Chinese manufacturers enforce locking any system modification.
For non-Chinese using recent OS (HyperOS) you need to apply for unlock and it has a global quota of 2000 devices per day. People need to time it exactly 00:00 Benjin time to sent a request to server to MAYBE get permission for unlocking. Some people made scripts that send requests automatically and still very few people are able to unlock it. Most of the time you’ll get “quota limit reached”, and it’s only possible to try once a day.
I tried for 4 days and gave up.
Chinese government decision:
- Manufacturers should improve the authority management mechanism for mobile smart terminals, improve the security of the operating system, and take technical and management measures to prevent the replacement of the operating system and the installation of application software in the product circulation link.
https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/zhengceku/2022-12/15/content_5732079.htm
This is the main thread about it: https://xdaforums.com/t/how-to-unlock-bootloader-on-xiaomi-hyperos-all-devices-except-cn.4654009/
The 7 days unlock process (which I did) is only valid for old OS versions like MIUI 14 (Not HyperOS). My second hand phone comes with MIUI 14 so it was simple to be done.
Wow good to know, that means Xiaomi is dead for me now.
2000 devices globally is a ridiculously low number
Easily 1000% my Samsung TV.
Each update somehow makes it slower, it always loads up whatever the Samsung TV app thing is before it will do anything with a menu so you can get out of it, I believe it requires a Samsung account before it will allows you to do anything, and every now and then it locks up so hard that I have to factory reset it to get it to work again.
I refuse to buy anything from Samsung ever again.
This is standard Samsung TV behaviour.
I had one and never again. Friend only just got one a few months ago and already loathes it.
Not a shill, but I honestly love my Samsung TV. I took it out of the box, plugged in an HDMI cable to connect it to my PC, and use it as a monitor. I’ve never connected it to my wifi, so it has no internet access. I’ve never had to enter my Samsung account info to use it.
Similar experience here. Good panel, solid colours, good angles and handles sunny rooms well. However, TV OS’s are one of the most asinine things to exist though. Never connect that thing to the internet if you can help it and it’ll work great.
Same, no account, no internet connects to my steamdeck and works perfectly
I love my Sony. Iirc, it wanted Internet for initial setup, but I unplugged the Ethernet cable soon after. It just works and displays what I want without issue.
My girlfriend brought a tcl roku special when she moved in. That blinked a very bright white LED unless it was connected to the internet. And now whenever I turn it on, it screams and displayed a fucked up picture from my media device until I go and use the “restart tv” option.
Fucking POS.
Ah, there’s the problem — you connected it to the internet. I’ve had decent experiences with Samsung TVs, but I just plug them into an apple tv and let the box do the work. I’ve had to see their UI on a couple occasions though and yeah it’s trash.
same with my LG. I never connected it to the internet directly. I chose instead to plug in an rpi
Last TV I had (besides my current CRT for retro games) I used an RPi 4 (later upgraded to the 5) for a media center and a steam link (purchased for $1 during a bundle sale) so I could game off of it from my desktop. I did also have a Chromecast but honestly with a wireless keyboard I would have been fine with just the steam link.
Every consumer TV is subsidized by the advertisements they (plan to) put on it and your data they’ll sell. I bought a mid-range Samsung TV last year, used it for TV, movies, gaming, and I love it. But I haven’t connected it to the internet, I use a separate device I can easily discard if need be. Not blaming you because it’s counter-intuitive, but you can’t update consumer TVs. They know it will live in your… living… room for several years and want to make money off displaying ads. Do you really think they’ll update it to be less intrusive and show fewer ads so they make less money!?? Obviously, I just guessed right; I’m not a genius, nor do I have precognition. I’ve even heard stories about TVs connecting themselves to open networks, but I’m not sure sure I believe them…
Why oh why is your Samsung TV still connected to the WiFi? I kicked mine off WiFi within three months of getting the device and I’ve used it for four years now and it works like a charm!
I heard turning off Samsung live tv and removing the app helps the performance tremendously, I have yet to try it as my wife for some reason is willing to tolerate a menu that takes over a minute to navigate one click at a time so she can keep the live tv feature, it is unusable to me
We have one of the Samsung frame TVs, it’s a nice TV, it fits a specific need for us in a bit of a weird spot in a bedroom where a regular TV would look out of place.
But man is the software trash. It’s laggy, a lot of the apps seem really poorly-optimized, and half the settings are just randomly unavailable for no apparent reason.
And since I had to install a box in the wall to hide the one connect box behind it, I kind of don’t want to use it with another streaming device, something about putting too much stuff in that box kind of rubs me the wrong way.
If you haven’t already done this: wipe all the apps and run the cache-cleaning or whatever it is in the system menu. That should get it back down to where the memory and storage aren’t at 100% and fixes most of the problems. I’ve kept my 2017 Samsung usable that way. Also, if you have a pi-hole you can set it to use that as the DNS and block the advertising domains, retaining most of the smart functionality without all the crap.
I got a Google TV box and disconnected my Samsung TV from the internet. A week later I got an email about how connecting them helps me because it sends the data and my preferences back to Samsung.
… It sends thousands of information pings each day.
That’s a software issue and user error. Don’t use the “smart” features is rule one for a consumer television.
I bought a Samsung for the display not the interface. I’m not sure if I’ve ever really even seen the built in interface, maybe when I initially set it up.
I think I’d have to go with the HDMI switch I bought for work. There were some limitations, like it couldn’t do more than 1080p, but otherwise it worked quite well for what I needed it for. The reason it was my worst purchase is because when I was illegally fired from that job, I wasn’t allowed to collect my things from my desk. They assumed it was theirs and they never returned it. I got the better deal though, they didn’t keep track of KVMs so I never returned mine
A Kodak luma mini projector. Absolute dog shit ui and the worst speaker I’ve ever heard completely ruin the entire experience.
I snagged a 30USD Chinese mini projector. The speaker is trash but it has an aux/Composite audio out and the image quality is shockingly good. I expected complete trash for that cost but I was shocked.
I got an ouya.
The controllers keys stuck.
You had to give them your credit card in order to get an account.
The games were ok if you could get over the 1/2 second of lag between button press and game.
I’m one of the few.people.that really liked tbe Ouya. At the time it was the best living room retro gaming system out there. I bought 3 of them. And I had no problem with the controllers.
Same, I thought it was awesome. The game library sucked though, and it just never took off. After awhile I used it for Kodi 99% of the time.
I played the duck tales remastered on it though and that was fantastic
Oh yeah I forgot I also had a Plex client for it
One of my gaming buddies is in Thailand, but plays on the American server with us. His ping is regularly 2000-3000ms. When he hits a button, he doesn’t actually “do the thing” for 2-3 seconds. But dude is a fucking genius, and he’s mastered the timing. He regularly outperforms folks with a 28ms ping (It’s me, I’m “folks”).
I bought a couple Ouya controllers for cheap on eBay a few years ago. Mine work fine. I’ll just connect my phone to the TV if I want to play Android games on a big screen, though.
I supported them on kickstarter unfortunately
So did I. What a fucking waste. I played it twice and into the attic it went.
Lenovo Daydream VR camera. Worked ok at first, but was soon after abandoned by Google and Android dropped support for it as well. These days an expensive brick. Oh and the battery became a spicy pillow as well 🤦
I had the daydream headset. It’s sad it was abandoned, it had potential and it would be cool if instead of selling expensive whole other systems for VR, we could just use our phone. I got mine on Super sale, not realizing Google was planning to abandon it. I thought they were just going to roll out a new one soon. Instead, all the apps were abandoned and it’s more or less useless now. Still works okish as a vehicle for porn I guess.
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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
The Outa console. It’s sitting in my shelf in my officefas a reminder of how dumb I can be.
Microvision ShowWX+ pico projector. They’d been advertising their laser-based VR tech for almost a decade but still had zero products on the market, so when they advertised a portable, battery-powered 640x480 laser projector with adapters for cell phones (this was 2010 so fairly unusual) I ordered one. I hoped I’d get something fun for travel/work use, and maybe help kickstart Microvision finally selling what was supposed to be a revolutionary VR display. Supposedly it required no focusing and would produce a bright image from 1’ to 6’ wide.
It was $400, arrived months late, didn’t work out of the box, and even when I finally had everything updated, it was so dim you could only see it in a pitch-black room or when the projector was inches from a reflective surface. To top it all off, the “low power, highly efficient” laser module constantly overheated.
Just a complete disaster. I think in the following 16 years they’ve sold maybe a dozen monochrome HMDs to the Air Force… for analyzing skin cracks in grounded planes.
