Ask HN: What's a Purchase You Regret?

Hello there!

I was thinking... In an era where we're constantly into buying this and that, why don't we have a thread where we just talk about stuff we bought but regret buying?

I'll start:

- I got a 34" ultrawide curved display. Philips, 34B2U5600C (3440x1440, 120Hz, USB-c and a lot of bells and whistles). It's just enormous, it takes half of my desk in depth and ~90% of my desk (130 cm) in width. Paid 400 Euros for that (new, off Amazon). It was cool at first but after a while it was feeling "heavy" on my desk. I kinda put it away and now I'm doing most of my work on "just" my 16-inches laptop display. It didn't really improve my life. Maybe I should have avoided the curved display. I'm torn between selling it and getting another one or selling it and keeping using just my laptop display.

- My ThinkPad X13G1. It just doesn't feel right. I bought it to replace my rusty X270. Supposedly it's much better (8c/16t+32GB ram vs 2c/8t+16gb ram on the X270) but it doesn't feel much snappier (same OS/Software) and battery life isn't that great either (the battery was in very good conditions when I received it). Also, when suspended the battery will drain incredibly quickly, sometimes overnight. Compared to my work macbook, it really feels like an inferior machine. Paid 400 Euros for that as well (used).

I bought an XP-pen drawing tablet. I had it on my Amazon wishlist for years and had never pulled the trigger because I feared I wouldn’t use it. Well, I was right…

Also, pretty much any board game expansion. They usually add complexity without improving the fun of a board game.

All computer devices on Amazon. My hot take is this is where all the high failure rate electronics are sold that could never be sold in a brick and mortar computer store given the customers would return irate and the store would eventually go out of business whereas Amazon is too big to fail. A partial exception are some mini PC's. Many are pre-loaded with old malware but I throw away the 1TB NVME they come with and I add supplemental cooling which they all benefit from.

I avoid all apps that overload me with notifications in the first place.

I'm also currently experimenting with no credit on my phone, so I can recieve calls and SMSes only, not send any message or browse unless I'm near WiFi.