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

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.

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.

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

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.

• 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)

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

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

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.

A robot vacuum still brings me joy every day

And my shockz bone conducting headset is great

And replacing windows with cachyos

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”.

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.

Macbook Air probably (Apple silicon)

Apart from the repairability it’s just THE perfect laptop