What piece of hardware do you regret buying?

Jos

Posts: 3,073   +97

We look at a lot of hardware and gadgets here at TechSpot and hopefully over the years our reviews have helped you buy some great gear and avoid the lemons. Inevitably though there will be some times when you end up getting something you don’t really need or can’t really afford, courtesy of an impulse purchase and lured by what appeared to be a good deal.

With the busy holiday season almost upon us, it’s a good time to look back at some of those “regret purchases” as a reminder to shop smart and plan ahead before lining up at a retail store or firing up your computer for Black Friday bargains next week. So with that said, what are some of the purchases that you most regret? We’re looking for tech related stuff but feel free to share otherwise.

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Normally if I buy something that just doesn't make sense, I take it right back.

I never keep stuff long enough to regret it.

I make it a point to buy the best I can afford and put it on my credit card and then pay it off as soon as the statement is posted. I bought a GTX 980ti and took it home. Before I opened it, I gave it some thought...

Took it right back and bought the Titan X for a little bit more money.

I love my Xbox One Day One edition, but I'm upset the internal drive wasn't upgradable. The controllers SUCK and are terribly cheap compared to Xbox 360's.

The new Xbox One S looks better, but I'm not spending that money again.
 
Normally if I buy something that just doesn't make sense, I take it right back.

I never keep stuff long enough to regret it.

I make it a point to buy the best I can afford and put it on my credit card and then pay it off as soon as the statement is posted. I bought a GTX 980ti and took it home. Before I opened it, I gave it some thought...

Took it right back and bought the Titan X for a little bit more money.

I love my Xbox One Day One edition, but I'm upset the internal drive wasn't upgradable. The controllers SUCK and are terribly cheap compared to Xbox 360's.

The new Xbox One S looks better, but I'm not spending that money again.
Glad to hear others were turned off by the sealed HDD. The one S still cant have the HDD replaced. It's total BS
 
Dual AMD Radeon 6950's. The microstutter was insane.

Honorable mentions (software):
Nintendo Deluxe Edition that came with Super Mario/Duck Hunt and Gyromite. Omg... Gyromite. I personally went to the mall with my mom and said "I want that".
Sword of Sodan for Sega Genesis
Crysis 2 on PC.
Black Ops III on PC. Got it for $33 and played it a total of 4 hours online.
 
Only one and that was a loooong time back. I bought a hand scanner. Frustrating and maddening trying to do a good scan. Makes me laugh now
 
For those posting video games... might I comment that those are SOFTWARE, not hardware...

For me, while I absolutely love my PC, buying triple Titan X's like a week before the 980Ti came out as well as the Intel 750 right before the Samsung SSD lineup came out was a bit of an annoyance...

Don't exactly regret it - but kind of wishing I'd waited a few weeks before purchasing...
 
Corsair Gaming Audio Series SP2500 speakers.

Sounded like tin cans compared to the Klipsch speakers I had before and only lasted a year before crapping out. Bought a new set of Klipsch speakers and happy as hell with them.

Game-wise, the two games I most regret were pre-orders that had a ton of hype and turned out to be total dogs: Evolve and Silent Hunter V.
 
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One of those "advanced" hot switchers that was supposed to allow me to run 4 systems on a single monitor, keyboard, etc, etc. On it worked, but the lag time was nearly a minute between jumps, could only drive a single monitor, and was anything but easy ..... but it was back in the day when Amazon really worked toward customer satisfaction and they took it back after a few weeks ....... sigh, back in the "good old days" .....
 
A backup tape unit which ran off a parallel port...restorations were buggy....which I learned later. Went to recordable CDs and never looked back.
 
I was gonna buy PS3 just to play Contra: Shattered Soldier and Gradius V. I never could bring myself to pull the trigger on it.

I was digusted with Sony after singletrac went down and Warhawk didn't get a sequel on the PS2.

Where'r my Konami favorites?

Where's Warhawk and Twisted Metal?
 
I was gonna buy PS3 just to play Contra: Shattered Soldier and Gradius V. I never could bring myself to pull the trigger on it.

I was digusted with Sony after singletrac went down and Warhawk didn't get a sequel on the PS2.

Where'r my Konami favorites?

Where's Warhawk and Twisted Metal?
I love my PS3... but I've never actually played a game on it... it exists solely for Netflix and as a BluRay player...
 
Back when mp3 players were coming out I bought a 64MB one... got home and realized that you could only load 100 songs to it if you used their compression software that wrecked the audio quality down to the level of a kids tape player. that went back to the store...

I've found buying hardware right when it comes out gives you problems. I bought the HTC M7 when it came out, and the camera got funky. And I bought the LG G4 - and it completely died after about 9 months. It's why I get insurance even though I'm careful with my phones.
 
I bought a newer sound card in 2006 because I thought it give me better FPS. Turns out I didn't have the correct audio codecs installed for whatever reason so I spent $130 on a card for nothing. My dad is an audiophile so I have it to him and he is still enjoying it as far as I'm aware.
 
I seriously regret getting a Lenova Z50 laptop for my daughter 2 years ago on black Friday. It seemed to be a good deal but it didn't take long for a dozen little problems to occur. Since it never completely quit and has gone back in for warranty work, it is still in use. She hates it though. Thought it would be as tough as the old thinkpad was and found out the hard way that it wasn't. An inexpensive laptop is only a bargain if it works regardless of how much you are supposed to be getting.

Only other regrets are really not waiting until the price settles for lots of new hardware (and some software) and ending up paying way to much. I also used to upgrade way too frequently and that got stupid expensive especially for 10 and 13 more fps. Going from 30fps to 40 was great. From 65 fps to 78 or so - not so much.
 
Two hard drives, IBM Deskstars aka the drive that became known as the Deathstars. They were hyped as being great by all the media, both of mine died rather quickly as apparently did most of them. Successful class action lawsuit followed, blah, blah, blah
 
Add-on USB 3.0 and SATA host adapters.
Always buggy and not properly supported

... and most the Seagate drives I've ever purchased.
 
I've got a couple of items I never should have bought.

A Cyrix 6x86-166+ CPU. Thought I upgraded my Pentium 133 but noooo, the Cyrix was slower...

An XFX Radeon R7-240. Whatta piece of.... Slow as hell and the tiny 40mm fan had an annoying high pitched whine constantly.

Sony Playstation 2. Miserable graphics and lousy controllers. Overpriced and overhyped.

A Toshiba Netbook with first generation Intel Atom 900 Mhz CPU and Intel Graphics (Same as the Eee Pc config). It was small, yes, portable yes, long batterylife, yes, but tiny keys, it took 5 minutes to load XP SP3, and a screen resolution of 1024x600 was too tiny for webbrowsing and writing documents and spreadsheets.

I should also mention the S3 Virge 3D. Was released as a Full bore graphics card with acceleration. Not.
 
Iiyama LCD monitor. Their quality control is appalling and their warranty service suck huge rooster. Driven by their zero dead pixel policy I bought one and after receiving it with dead and stuck pixels I replaced it twice. When I finally got one working OK, it turned out it was a refurb, as on closer inspection it had dust between backlight and LCD. Of course just out of warranty, one of the backlight lamps started glowing weaker. That's what service been replacing I believe, before shipping it as new. I suppose instead of sending dead pixel units to factory, Iiyama just had them send as replacements, hoping buyers like Me get tired of resending them. And it worked. 6 weeks without PC was tiring and I stuck with it. Today I would prefer one dead pixel instead of half the screen being slightly darker. Beware of that ripoff of a "Japanese Quality". And I'm from Eastern Europe, don't mention refund. It hardly exist today, and is more tiring than buying a new stuff and selling the old one as defective on eBay or so.
 
No real regrets, Sure I might do things differently on hindsight but we work with the knowledge we have at the time.

But if I had to pick my most frustrating purchase it would be the Dell XPS M1730 "laptop" which was too big, too noisy and far too unreliable for the cost. I ended up swapping the PSU, GFX card and DVD drive and even now part of the keyboard has failed.

I built a desktop the next year and that's been fantastic but I did initially cheap out on the PSU which lasted maybe a week. Once I spent the cash on a good one I never had a single hardware fault in what ? 4 years so far and counting...

Just ordered a Razer Blade Stealth and later will get the external graphics box, I do hope I don't have to come back here and update this :)
 
ZUS Smart Car Finder by Nonda. Apparently won many design awards. tested for over a year with different phones, never works reliably. Usually indicates my car is parked for months a few hundred kilometers away - when it is sitting in front of my house. Good charging part, useless as a GPS based car locator. But looks nice, black, metal.
 
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