Ask Lemmy

Steam Deck, hands down. It rules being able to play PC games in bed with my partner by my side.

Noise cancelling headphones are incredible, using them in a noisy airport eliminated 80% of the discomfort of travelling

The most recent, best tech purchase was the Nintendo Switch 2, and not for the reasons you think.

So, this is Denmark. A Switch 2 with Mario Kart World goes for 4000 DKK (€535, $630). With my budget there isn't a chance in hell I could afford that. Even if I could, the Switch 2 simply isn't worth it, especially considering I have a Steam Deck.

So what's the story?

Well, last year a telecommunications company rebranded themselves into "Norlys" ("Northern Lights") and started making some deals to attract costumers. One such deal was a 20% discount on a Switch 2 with Mario Kart World bundled, if you subscribed to their most expensive service. Yeah whatever, that's still 3200 DKK (€428, $504) and then you're stuck paying 300 DKK (€40, $47) every month for six months.

But...

I have a friend who works for Telenor, and he has a friend who works for Norlys, and my friend of a friend called my friend with a real hot insider tip; someone royaly fucked up somewhere, and anyone buying the Switch 2 and the six month subscription lock-in will get it for 99 DKK (€13, $16) and no subscription lock-in!

So yeah, me and my friends all got a Switch 2 and a game for a tiny fraction of the cost.

Soundpeats Wireless Airbuds. They are just really good wireless headphones for the price point. Pre tariffs I got them for like $40. I like that I don't have to stress about losing them.

My Fairphone 5, because it has allowed me to break free from Google and other big tech companies by letting me install whatever I want on it.

And my good old Thinkpad.

Not a purchase, but Home Assistant is easily the most enjoyable gadget and piece of tech I've had in years. It's ridiculously flexible and can do just about anything you can imagine.

I've been able to automate dumb devices (like an old top-of-the-line receiver) and give them smart features rather than spending thousands to replace them. Occupancy detection saves energy by changing thermostat settings when people aren't home, and lights come on when we're 60' from the front door after a walk. Multiple leak detectors and a temperature sensor in the fridge let us know when something's wrong before damage occurs. We get notifications when the dryer and washer cycles are complete allowing us to complete the laundry in one day instead of two.

The system is configured to change change interior light brightness and hue based on time of day so at 7PM we have bright room lighting and at 2AM it's very dim. We get immediate notifications of package deliveries with the integrated Frigate NVR and a $15 camera. Firewall settings are dynamically changed so devices that require Internet access only have it when they are actually in use. Integrations exist for VLC, Spotify, Jellyfin, Paperless, Apple, TVs, alarm systems, solar power systems, routers, automobiles, and hundreds of other brands and devices.

Yes, much of the same can be done with connected appliances, lights, and other smart devices using separate apps and control interfaces for everything, but what's different about Home Assistant is it's all integrated and all control and storage can be local. We have no cloud or corporate services involved for any of this. Google, Apple, Amazon and Samsung can't one day decide to pull the plug on things we've already paid for.

The big problem with Home Assistant is there are so many uses you can easily end up spending way too much time tinkering and never get anything else done.

My Hansker Performance mouse. No wrist pain anymore and I can switch it between desktop and my laptop using the switch on the bottom

Steam Deck OLED has been pretty great. Also the HTC Vive VR headset, back in 2016.

• Steam Deck (I spend 90% of my time gaming on my couch than at my desk)
• Minidisc Players (There was some MD hate in the other thread but community-made software has come a long way)
• Kobo (Freeing myself from Amazon's DRM)
• DAS (Creating my own media collection on Jellyfin)

Not a purchase per-se, but Linux - investing time in learning it has paid for itself hundreds of times over. A MacBook Air with apple silicon - it hurts to use anything else. ESP8266s / ESP32s with ESPHome - being able to craft real world solutions with very limited electronics skills is amazing.

Two right now. One is a Kobo e-reader. The other is a bone conduction headset. The latter allows me to ride my bike with my tunes but allows me to hear traffic and other environmental hazards. Very comfortable to wear too.

My old casio watch works after a decade of use.

My old kindle just got a new battery but its over 14+ years old.

And my CPAP is probably the thing that does the most work for me.

My ebook reader. In the German speaking area, there are even some DRM free ebooks available that I can buy.

For me the best tech purchases aren't really the ones that bring me joy. They're the ones that become invisible because they take away points of friction.

So I would say my Brother printer is one. It's been incredibly reliable for more than a decade now.

Switching over to Ubiquiti Unifi access points for wifi has been worth it too. It's a pain to run wires for them, but having a solid signal everywhere in the house in all kinds of weather is just amazing. They've been running for a decade too, though I did just replace one so I can have a 6GHz connection in one room. Not really sure that particular upgrade was actually worth it, but the system as a whole has been so nice. There's just never anything to fix about the wifi anymore. (Well, okay, occasionally there's something to fix with the Internet, but it's usually just "Comcast is down," and we have to wait until they fix it, and sometimes also reboot the modem. The wifi itself is pretty bulletproof.)

So yeah. Tech that works reliably and invisibly for years on end is what I find really valuable. Gadgets can certainly be fun, but great tech is just there in the background making things easier.

Framework laptop - they took the best parts of the MacBook, made it repairable and fully support Linux. Priced fairly, with the option to separately purchase RAM and SSD. And they've even provided free replacement parts years after the warranty expired!

Another one for the Steamdeck pile. Honorary mention to the SNES mini I got my hands on years before that, which is what got me back into gaming.

Formerly steam deck, now unseated by my AYN Thor. It can play 70-80% of the games the deck can in a package that fits in your pocket.

My breville coffee maker and bratza burr grinder. It makes the best coffee and doesn’t complain.

Also, my dolphin pool cleaning robot. Vacuuming a pool manually is such a hassle. Outsourcing that to a bot is truly amazing.

Anything that buys me back my time.

My favorite tech buy is a good 3D printer.

The ability to imagine something, model it in 3D, and then send it to a box and have it “magically” become real via 3D printing will never not amaze me and stop being cool.

Plenty of other useful tech toys like a jellyfin PC or a 3D scanner, but the printer is the thing I enjoy the most.

Strix Halo laptop.

After a little over a year with a Framework 16, which I had multiple problems with (garbage build quality and tolerances, multiple USB A and C expansion modules all utterly unreliable in any slot), I sold it and instead got an HP ZBook Ultra G1A. Really feeling vindicated getting a laptop with 64gb of 8000mt/s RAM last year given the RAMpocalypse.

Still wasn't cheap but the thing is insanely powerful for its size, especially the GPU which is crazy good for "integrated"

My 2012 MacBook Pro is still going strong, still my primary home computer, still does everything I need. Maxed out the memory and upgraded to a SSD hard drive years ago and it runs great.

an ereader (a decent, 3rd party software compatible one, not amazons ewaste)

Switching to macOS as my daily driver years ago. Seeing the enshittification of Windows in the last ten years has been pretty breathtaking.

Side note, switching to Linux (hell yeah CachyOS!) for gaming has been a pretty rewarding endeavor. It has plenty of pitfalls, but I work in tech, and that's half the fun. The other half was that I re-imaged my Windows 10 gaming PC to be a CachyOS gaming PC, for free, and CachyOS wasn't all like "your hardware is too old, create e-waste and buy a new one with a Copilot button on it".

My Nintendo 3DS. I don't use it often or regularly but when I do I'm glad I have it.

Macbook Air probably (Apple silicon)

Apart from the repairability it’s just THE perfect laptop

Number 2 is an electric vehicle.

Number 1 is a non-smart TV

Honorable mention; The Apple Watch SE 2 I bought for my wife so she stops thinking she's going tachy or having a heart attack 9 times a year. Considering the cost of an average ER trip, and the hit to my sanity when these things only happen at like 3 AM, I'll gladly upgrade her to the pro version or whatever when the SE kicks the bucket.

The Dirtywave M8 handheld music tracker. It’s a studio in your pocket. It looks like a goth Game Boy, using only 8 keys to create entire songs. It has multiple synth engines, a sampler, built in limiter, compressor, and effects, an amazing sequencer, and it just sounds awesome. It can be an audio interface, it can control other hardware synths, and you can use it anywhere.

Once you learn the basic controls and navigation, the user interface is easy and consistent. I suck at making music, but I can do it so fast on the M8 because it’s always with me and I can grab random chunks of downtime to work on songs instead of wasting time doomscrolling on Lemmy.

….wait

My Framework 13.

I got a hacked SNES mini on eBay that was fully loaded with every ROM from Atari to the 32 bit systems.

steamdeck and the skin and cover I bought. ironically the official dock is one of the worst.

Portable battery powered bidet.

My Moza direct drive wheel, pedals, shifter, handbrake and multi-function stalk. They have transformed my sim driving experience. And hate Meta all you like, but my Quest2 has likewise made sim driving all the more awesome. I'm looking forward to the Steam Frame, though, so I can ditch Meta altogether.

I can think of a few that I can't decide between:

My IBM Model M that came with my childhood PC was my primary keyboard into my 30s until a coworker sabotaged it (it was a bit loud I suppose). Not technically my purchase, but damn was it solid.

I bought a used 21" Sony Trinitron CRT monitor crazy cheap back in the mid 90s when typical monitors were 14". I felt like a king, that thing never stopped working, but I was pressured to part ways with it two decades later by my wife.

Edit: I'll add on my Beyerdynamic DT 770 headphones. My current pair are 20 years old and I have just replaced the pads a few times as well as some cheap support part (was less than $3 from the manufacturer). These things are basically invincible and they are still my travel headphones as they can take a beating on the road.

A Logitech speakers system. Got it about 20y ago when the brand was still awesome (and actually called Logitech). 100% analog and it works to this day. I dread the day it dies.

As an avid Clone Hero player (Guitar Hero but for PC, essentially) this was such a huge upgrade to me from the Wii guitars I had been using for years.

Dreamcast and CRT PC monitor 🥲

Kinesis Advantage360 Pro

Why? Because it saves my wrists but the real reason is because it makes me feel smarter. The same way using neovim makes me feel smarter. I use vim btw.

Sorry I know I’m not special for using neovim on a Advatage360, but also you gotta try it

A portable power supply.

Enjoy the looks of envy when the people fighting over an outlet notice you're plugged into your tiny, little power supply.

Either my Kobo or my 55" LG OLED.

I've owned a bunch of TVs over the years, starting with a 12" Panasonic "portable" that just about fit on a shelf in my bedroom. But none of them can hold a candle in just how impressive they look to that LG. Even my first LCD, a 32" Sony (which I still have) impressed me to begin with, but ultimately it just became a TV to look at. But I've had this LG for a year and it still blows me away when I watch something that's letterboxed and the black bars are so black that you can't tell where they end and the (extremely thin) bezel begins. And it only cost me £800.

The software updates piss me off though, so I've revoked its internet privileges.

But I don't think a bit of tech has brought me quite as much joy as my Kobo Clara HD still does, some six years after I bought it.

A had a Kindle for a year before, and while it was fine, it annoyed me how much I felt I owed to Amazon with it. Loading books from not-Amazon was a pain in the arse. Calibre could do it, but only certain formats were allowed to have cover art. Then it went tits up, so I replaced it with my Kobo and it was like breathing clean air for the first time in my life.

The Kobo couldn't give a shit where the books came from, it treats them all equally. The battery still lasts for weeks, even after six years, and just a couple of weeks ago I worked out how to sync it with Grimmory, running on my home server, so I don't even need to plug it in to copy books to it anymore. Just upload them to Grimmory, which automatically puts them onto the Kobo shelf, so when it syncs overnight it downloads them. And it has Instapaper built in now, so I can save articles to read on that nice, clear screen.

And all in something that cost me about £90.

Yeah, if you enjoy reading and are on the fence about an e-reader, get a Kobo. The old Clara HD is perfectly good, and probably quite cheap now.