What Tech or Gadget Purchase Have You Made Recently That You Regret

[Sienna74]

The boards here cover a lot of aspirational technology discussion. What to build, what to buy, what to upgrade. This is the other thread: the thing you bought that turned out to be worse than expected, unnecessary, or just not what you needed.

No brands required if you would rather not name them. Just what went wrong and what you learned, if anything.

[Dom_24]

A smart home hub that required me to replace or upgrade every other smart device I had because it did not support the protocols they used. The ecosystem trap is real and I walked into it fully aware that it was a trap

[MickFoley]

A premium mechanical keyboard that I convinced myself I needed for productivity reasons. It is objectively better in every measurable way than what I had before and I am no more productive. The keyboard was not the variable

[Amy96]

A second monitor that I thought would change how I work. It sits at an angle I never quite got right and most days I do not use it. My laptop screen would have been fine

[Mark7]

A portable SSD that is genuinely excellent and that I have used exactly twice because it turns out I was not carrying files around in the way I thought I was

[Violet_47]

Smart plugs for everything, which led to an app I check for no reason and a slightly increased anxiety about whether devices are on or off that did not exist before the smart plugs

[Skibidi98]

An expensive pair of noise-cancelling headphones that are so good at noise cancellation that I feel mildly panicked wearing them in public. The technical achievement is real and personally incompatible with how I actually live

[Brandon18]

A dashcam that requires me to format the memory card every three months or it corrupts. I discovered this after the incident where I most needed the footage. The footage was not there

[NightHarbour30]

A cable management solution that required more effort to implement than the cable mess it was supposed to solve. Now I have the original mess plus the failed solution in the drawer beneath it