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Ask HN: What tech purchase did you regret even though reviews were great?

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Re: Ask HN: What tech purchase did you regret even though reviews were great?

#111

Post by brailsafe »

xethos wrote: post #91
reaperducer wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matias Sculpted keyboard… Although it was a decent effort, their overall build quality is pretty cheap, and it's not good enough to recommend I concur. I thought I'd save a few bucks by buying the Matias keyboard that looks like the Apple Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad. After all, there are thousands of people on the internet who swear that Apple's prices are disconnected from build quality. It turns out the chat…

Maybe I got lucky - my Matias Quiet Pro has been fine (though I did have to replace one failing switch >10 years in) since ~2013 - possibly earlier, but at least since 2013.

Maybe, or they did. The switches on my Matias Sculpted only detract from the design imo. They feel crunchy and don't align well with their cutouts. I'm fully willing to believe that their reputation comes from not investing heavily in reducing the variability in their manufacturing process. Once a viable but far from imperfect product gets shipped, they might stop improving it, idk tho.

Re: Ask HN: What tech purchase did you regret even though reviews were great?

#112

Post by zarify »

lesuorac wrote: post #40
SoftTalker wrote: post #20

Any home tech gadgets. Robot vacuums, smart lights, smart thermostats, internet connected TVs and appliances, most kitchen gadgets especially if they require power. None of it lives up to the hype and it's all e-waste in a couple of years if not sooner.

Can't speak to most of those but smart lights are pretty nice. I made sure to buy zigbee ones so that I'm just tied to home assistant which even if it goes out of business will still work with whatever binaries I've downloaded already (as well as it works locally so I can control them during internet outages). I'm sure somebody else can explain why you should get Thread or Matter nowendays but I never bothered to lea…

This is the sort of thing that makes me worry about my solar inverter, battery etc. so much remote management stuffed into these things.

Re: Ask HN: What tech purchase did you regret even though reviews were great?

#113

Post by instagib »

Google home, nest thermostat, Alexa, roomba, Apple Watch, iPad.

GHome consistently gets worse voice recognition or usability.

Nest has many notifications to enable eco modes making me uncomfortable in own home.

Alexa terrible voice recognition.

Roomba kept getting stuck, errors.

Apple Watch useless versus oura ring even if steps aren’t as accurate.

iPad usage not worth the cost. Either get a laptop full featured or a small tv and android shield box.

Re: Ask HN: What tech purchase did you regret even though reviews were great?

#114

Post by [deleted] »

reaperducer wrote: post #85
lesuorac wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't speak to most of those but smart lights are pretty nice. I made sure to buy zigbee ones so that I'm just tied to home assistant which even if it goes out of business will still work with whatever binaries I've downloaded already (as well as it works locally so I can control them during internet outages). I'm sure somebody else can explain why you should get Thread or Matter nowendays but I never bothered to lea…

smart lights are pretty nice… I made sure to buy zigbee ones The connectivity doesn't matter when it's the actual filaments/LEDs that burn out after only a year or two. Even buying a big name like Sylvania doesn't help. I had eight Sylvania smart bulbs burn out or go into endless flicker fits in under a year. They're all in a landfill now. Of course, that's better than when Feit Electric sent out a firmware update th…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What tech purchase did you regret even though reviews were great?

#115

Post by jameswestgate »

Aperocky wrote: post #12
ben_w wrote: post #3

Apple Watch. I'm not even sure when I last wore it, but it was at least 18 months ago. Slighly laggy remote control for my phone, with widgets a little too small for my finger to reliably hit. When I do proper long walks, the battery reliably dies on me during the walk.

I solved the battery problem with an ultra, but I couldn't solve what is consistently off heart rate monitoring. It now feels almost unusual for it to get the heart rate correct. And I'm not talking about off by a few or feeling off. I'm talking about full on max heart rate when I'm doing a easy run or 1/2 and 1/3 off which is impossible to miss.

Try setting it a bit further back away from the wrist bones that stick up so that the sensors are in constant contact with the skin, and can illuminate the blood pulses in the vessels under the skin.

Re: Ask HN: What tech purchase did you regret even though reviews were great?

#116

Post by lesuorac »

QuiEgo wrote: post #97
reaperducer wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

smart lights are pretty nice… I made sure to buy zigbee ones The connectivity doesn't matter when it's the actual filaments/LEDs that burn out after only a year or two. Even buying a big name like Sylvania doesn't help. I had eight Sylvania smart bulbs burn out or go into endless flicker fits in under a year. They're all in a landfill now. Of course, that's better than when Feit Electric sent out a firmware update th…

Smart switches > smart bulbs

Isn't switches just more brittle and less control?

I can set individual colors and intensity on the lights as well as with a dumb switch I can also have the lights just come on so if I were to sell the house or whatever the next person wouldn't need to have home assistant to work anything in the house.

Re: Ask HN: What tech purchase did you regret even though reviews were great?

#117

Post by xela79 »

darreld wrote: post #67

Synology 923+. Turns out I’m the only one that connects to it in the house. I don’t actually need it. I’m now retired and really only need some external drives or some HDD’s in a hard drive docking station. I just got a docking station. I’ll grab a couple HDD’s and be done with it. Sell the Synology

> Synology 923+

supports running dockers, running adguard DNS filtering, youtube-dl container and adblocker is such a time saver self hosted image hosting etc

so much potential lost... if you just use it as a "HDD on the network"

Re: Ask HN: What tech purchase did you regret even though reviews were great?

#118

Post by etrautmann »

BewareTheYiga wrote: post #59

The Loupedeck S. Its been nothing but a pain. Should have gotten a Stream Deck

+1 Loupedeck is so annoying. The software is insane and heavyweight and takes forever to start, wants to run all the times etc.

Re: Ask HN: What tech purchase did you regret even though reviews were great?

#119

Post by kcplate »

eudamoniac wrote: post #86
kcplate wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood the appeal of these. Last time I went chair shopping I sat in a ton of different chairs including these and they were middle of the road in comfort and at the top end in price.

The appeal is that they are highly adjustable across a bunch of dimensions. Did you fiddle with all of the controls when you tried it?

So are a lot of chairs at a fifth of the price.

I gave them a quality evaluation and have had occasion to sit in them for long periods at client sites.

I am all for spending for quality and generally am a BIFL type consumer, but these chairs just don’t carry the value for me.

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