I often hear, “You should never cheap out on a good office chair, shoes, underpants, backpack etc…” but what are some items that you would feel OK to cheap out on?
This can by anything from items such as: expensive clothing brands to general groceries.
Smartphones. Most people don’t need to buy the latest and greatest iPhone every year.
It is the one device most people use literally all day everyday. Having a great one is worth the money. But it does not need replaced every year. Mine is 4 years old and still works like new (one battery replacement). I will likely replace it next year.
I usually try to stay about 3–5 years behind whatever the newest one is. It’s good enough for what I need and helluvalot cheaper than current phone prices.
Another way to do that is one year old manufacturer refurbished phones. I generally spend $250-$300 for a year old phone that will last me 4-5 years
Lemmy hates Apple, but my five year old iPhone XS Max is still beastly fast, and I have like 40k pictures and all of my texts back nine years on it.
Better make a backup of those pics sooner than later
The beauty of iTunes (and the ONLY good thing about iTunes) is that I can make an encrypted incremental backup image of exactly what’s on my phone with one click.
Those pics have always been backed up.
The oldest pics are from my previous iPhone, so maybe eight years ago?
When I get a new phone (maybe soon, now that USB-C) I just plug into my computer and now my new phone is the same exact phone and layout as this phone, with all pictures and texts and files and everything.
What phones would you consider worthwhile in terms of price, i.e. those you can cheap out on, but not suffer the consequences of it being slow even in the simplest tasks?
One Android phone I had, Nokia 5.1, had to be replaced in less than 5 years because it often froze and lagged when I had to make or receive a phone call, open a single tab in some light-weight browser, etc.
I’m not a big fan of the smartphone industry and especially the reviewers because they seem to have a very twisted idea of a budget device. Or maybe I’m a cheapskate.
To combat this generally, you can buy one with more RAM. Also, right now there is a bit of a “race to the top” for longest phone support with Google announcing 7 years of support in November. Repairability is coming around too, which is great for replacing old batteries and broken charging ports.
Don’t tell people that!
I always get a refurbished phone which are last years model that someone traded in when they got the newest and greatest thing. If people stopped doing this I might have to actually shell out for a new phone!
There’s a reason my phone has no trouble with the Roku, works immediately when I use microHDMI, and gets updates for games on time and my roommate’s does not. Hardly a day passes where I’m not convinced he’s relegated to a worse quality of life because his phone just isn’t allowed to do things right. His phone doesn’t even run the transit app properly.
Now I’m not saying but a new phone every year for the incremental improvement, but don’t get something from a crap factory pushing high volume for small margins. Get something good.
I’m on my phone 8 hours a day. Quality counts. Slow is bad. Lacking features is bad. Crappy cameras are bad. Get a good phone. Use it until one of the following happens:
- It no longer gets security updates
- There is a new built-in hardware feature that will actually improve the quality of your life because you’ve been wanting it forever
- You break it or the battery performance starts to suck too much.
Just for my personal understanding. How often have you heard about security issues from missing updates in older phones? In real life, I mean, not in some blog or video? I’m having a hard time finding any information about real cases. There are hundreds of articles from tech-sites and security companies.
To me it feels like selling pick-proof locks, a market without actual use-cases. You can pick them all anyway, but nobody actually does it.
I used to do phone security for a living. I’ve seen a handful of cases in person. The bigger issue is that most of the time you don’t know it was the phone that caused your problems. One day your bank is drained and you don’t know why.
There have been several zero days that gave anyone that wanted to the ability to own your phone with a text that you never even saw because the phone doesn’t show you command texts.
Unlike the good ol’ malwares that let you know that you’re infected by deleting your files or messing up your system, modern malware authors are profit-oriented and will do everything they can to make you unaware that your devices are infected. Then they’ll exfiltrate your data and sell them on various underground marketplace such as this one.
Definitely. If you know your device is infected then someone drastically messed up. The new stuff isn’t like the old stuff.
For me it’s just the last one that counts.
I’m on my phone 8 hours a day.
That is generally not good and shouldn’t be common. I’d argue folks should consider whether a nice phone will lead to overuse, and if so, buying a cheaper phone.
Before I had a phone I was on a computer for all that time. And before that I was reading in bed for all that time. And before that I was watching TV for all of that time. This is so much healthier than anything else I’ve done in 5 decades.
Just to be clear, I wasn’t trying to be critical of you. I know some people can’t actually reduce their screen time due to their job or way of life. I’m curious though, could you elaborate on what you mean by this being healthier for you?
I used to sit, or lay, for all those hours. Now I’m up moving around. Talking to my geese, trimming trees, painting rooms, figuring out what some idiot electrician did 60 years ago that’s causing me a problem today (stupid loopbacks and hot neutrals, aluminum wiring optional), going someplace to hike and get the physical therapy I need after breaking my back falling off a ladder, etc. Living life while managing my ADHD and still consuming massive info dumps while also having one of the 200 podcasts I listen to play in my ear at 2.5x speed.
Going to respectfully disagree here. Outside of my glasses, my phone is the tool I use most often, many times daily. It’s worth getting a quality device, and if there’s an issue with the current one (battery, cracked screen etc) it’s worth replacing. But you’re right, it doesn’t need replacing just for the sake of newness.
Gonna respectfully disagree back at you. You don’t have to get a $100 crapsung, but most people whose work depends on a good phone still don’t need a $2000 top of the line phone.
An iPhone SE or Pixel ?a phone is more than sufficient for almost anyone anything more I’m probably going to call opulence.
Well the prompt was what are things you should cheap out on. I have a pixel 6, I think it was $600 or something like that? But to me cheaping out on a phone would be like a $100 device.
Because of how often I use it, it’s worth it to me to not have bloatware, to have a good camera, for the battery to last, resistant to water, etc.
Pixel 7a is currently $500 new, so good mid tier device. https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_7a
But really what you should do is get a used mid or top tier phone that’s one or two generations behind. Depreciation on phones is so great that you get a lot of bang for your buck.
For example mint condition Pixel 7 is $300
https://swappa.com/listings/google-pixel-7?carrier=&color=&storage=&modeln=&condition=mint&sort=
Think outside the box. Get a previous generation. Pixel 8 was about to be released. To move inventory, Google discounted the 7 series by like 30-40%. I got the 256GB 7 Pro for $600. Without the sale, $600 is the same price as the 128GB 7. I got a top of the range flagship phone for the cost of a midrange. My mom did something similar with a Samsung phone. She got an S20 when the S22 released. Huge discount when Verizon offered it for $449.
Yes and no. For apple you can use their phones for quite a long time securely. For Android that is a very different story. As far as I know only Google with their new pixel phones and Samsung have offered more than 2 years of updates. After that time your phone becomes a security risk. So make sure your devices receives updates or can be used with a custom ROM (though that can be insecure as well).
What a load of crap. My phone is 5 years old and the only security risk is me blindly installing questionable APKs off the Internet or clicking pop-up ads or something. It’s not like I’m walking around with a time bomb or anything when all I do is browse a few apps and text and call.
Also the new pixel 8 supposedly is supposed to come with 7 years of updates. It’s entirely possible Google abandons that plan though, given their track record.
yeah, are y’all just rawdogging the Internet? i like Blokada (the free one) + Hypatia for my adblocker/antivirus combo, and it works just fine. i practice good Internet “hygiene” and have never had a problem. idk how all that works with Apple stuff, though.
Your phone is rawdogging all it’s connections. It can receive SMS and Phone calls without your intervention. There have been several zero-click bugs in the past that allowed injecting malicious code into your phone without any interaction.
There have been a few bugs in the past years that let you take over a phone without user interaction. There was one where you only need to receive an SMS (it was invisible even) and your phone is infected. Another one was a vulnerability in wifi calling and voice over lte.
A phone is not a passive device that only gets something when you request it. You take also it with you to public places, use it in open wifi networks and you get calls. All that while being used for security critical stuff like 2FA, banking and payment.
You shouldn’t use a phone without current security updates for much more than calling. It is a time bomb. If you want to educate yourself further you should look at “zero click vulnerabilities”.
It’s 2 years of FEATURE updates, usually longer for security.
Sometimes. It depends on the manufacturer. Some do more some don’t promise anything. You have to know what you have. Also the support time starts usually at the start of sale not at the time of purchase. That means if you buy a new phone that was released a year ago on clearance or something you might have only half the time.
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Excuse my ignorance, why would I need to worry about security updates on a camera?
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Chinese end.
anticapitalist freedom
This is odd to see in the same comment.
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Yeah, but Chinese private companies are still that, private companies that are profit driven. There’s exciting and even cheap to buy stuff coming out of China, like IEMs for example, but it’s still a good ideia to keep expectations in check for the motivation of these companies.
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I agree with you, I was just giving a simple example of more simple product, I didn’t mean to imply that the relations are exactly the same to the ones in a capitalist country, neither that China isn’t responsible for basically all the production in the world and affordable access to said production.
Still, while most private companies can’t just do whatever they want like in the rest of the world, the fact of the matter is that profit is still the primary concern for a lot of consumer products made in China, and it’s something worth to keep in mind. The existence of gacha games like Genshin are a perfect example of this.
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Again, I agree and I’m aware of the stuff you talk in the first paragraph. I’m from Lemmygrad, I defend China as an AES country.
Now for the second paragraph, I’m not trying to blame China for gacha, I’m just pointing it out as an issue that also exists there. That comes with their acceptance of capital, and is something they can be criticized for. My criticism is not to belittle them, but because I believe they can do better.
There was recent news of China clamping down on lootboxes and predatory monetization in gaming, which would be great and would set a precedent for the rest of the world, but last I saw they walked back on it.
I don’t play Genshin, I only used it as an example, but I play League Of Legends, which is owned by Riot Games that is owned by Tencent and recently there has been the inclusion of gacha mechanics for skins that heavily relies on fomo for people to spend money on, and it’s really expensive. Meanwhile Riot also just fired 530 people worldwide and killed multiple projects and iniciatives inside the company, while starving other projects too. This is a billion dollar worth company owned by Tencent, and it all deserves criticism like any other games and companies.
Tools you’re not sure you’ll need. Harbor Freight tools are super cheap and flimsy, but may be the right choice if you’re not using them often.
If you find yourself using a cheap tool all the time and hating the quality of it, then it’s time to buy something better.
I go by: If you are not sure you need a good one, buy the first one for cheap. Of you break it, buy a quality one. You obviously need it.
I would say if you’re not sure if you’ll use it, borrow it first. If you keep borrowing something, then buy a nice one.
If I break it, I buy a better tool. If I lose it, buy a cheap one.
Buying previous generation products. I got something like a Braun series 5 instead of the newest series 9, as there isn’t that much difference.
First date. If you just want to get laid, go lavish, no problem.
But if you want to find a long-term partner, take her on a cheap first date. Like, coffee and a walk through the park.
Kind of a “duh” thing but, only buy used cars.
Always have a trusted mechanic who doesn’t work for the dealer look it over before you buy. Usually new car dealerships are reputable and are looking to move their trade-in inventory, especially at the end of the year when they need to clear the lot for the next year’s models. You can even find deals on vehicles that are only a year or two old like a returned lease, with a moderate number of miles on them and little to no wear and tear. Those are usually just as good as new but so much cheaper.
Be super cautious of the used car dealer chains, like Drivetime and Carvana, they have loads of customer complaints and legal problems in a couple of states (basically, if it seems too good to be true, it is). Do not ever buy a former rental car, unless it’s true love at first sight or you’re desperate… even then think about how people, who’ve only paid like $10-20 for rental insurance, have probably treated that vehicle and reconsider.
The newest and most expensive car I ever bought was a previous model year’s dealer demo. A dealer demo is what it sounds like, it’s the car the dealership displayed in the show room, used for test drives with unsure buyers, running office errands, and showing off at the mall or in parades. Cons: There’s only a few of them, they’ll have a couple hundred miles on the odometer, and you don’t get to pick the color or options. Pros: They’re usually at a decent trim level, in an agreeable color, and well maintained… for thousands less than brand new because they’ve already left the lot a whole bunch.
Cell phone. A $200 android is extremely fast these days
Replying to you from a cheap fast Android phone.
Based and pilled bro, based and pilled
Why have people downvoted you?
Unknown, but it seems like many people enjoy their low-cost mobiles so I am happy.
Their fear response is triggered by the use of “pill” as a verb.
And, of course, that their moral philosophy operates at the level of reflex.
Depends. That’s about what I paid for my previous phone second hand and it lasted me 7 years and I loved it to bits. But I was pretty broke and only could afford that. New phone, I decided to buy a brand new fairphone, because i think that the moment I get enough disposable income, I have a moral responsibility to use it in ways that encourage more ethical practices, for all the people who can’t. Doing that is bloody expensive, but if it somehow helps make this dystopian hellscape a little more bearable, I’ll invest.
Indeed. And that’s a great point, I would love a fairphone (or idealy a true linux handheld) for my next mobile device.
The key to my post is that purchasing $1500 sansungs and ios devices is ludicrous in this market, unless you are developing on the cutting edge or are a luxury tech enthusiast
Absolutely, currently in the purchase of a Pixel 7a (second hand) for 300euros, looking forwards to getting that in hand and install Graphene 👍👍
Or tablets. I’m using a tab s6 for browsing news sites occasionally. Best tab that runs lineage and was 200$ new (bought it late 2023)
Have any recommendations for cheap foldables?
You can get a Z Flip 3 for like $300 on eBay.
That’s only cheap if you don’t consider how long it will survive and the replacement/repair cost. A slab phone with no moving parts will last much longer than a foldable making the $/year cost much lower.
napkin
People who want a foldable are at peace with it randomly becoming unusable. People who buy cheap phones are not.
You can either have cheap or foldable. Both won’t work.
Free computer operating systems are great these days.
I regularly spend hours designing electronics to be cheaper. Not worse – just cheaper. Electronic components sometimes vary in price by two orders of magnitude for the same performance, so it’s worth cramming datasheets in your head as a professional or hobbyist.
For tools, I’ve found good midrange Chinese brands, and stuck to them. I could never afford things like Tektronix and so on.
I don’t strictly require clothing to be cheap, but I do require it to be fungible – this works out similarly though. When I find something that’s good value for money and looks good, I buy a bunch and rotate them. That way I don’t have to think about what to wear, and it always looks decent.
I also prefer cheap laptops. I don’t need a supercomputer to work. When I do need a supercomputer, I rent one from google cloud for a few dollars an hour.
If you want a good printer, look for an ex-lease laser printer. It may not be suitable for a whole department to use any more, but good enough for an individual.
That’s a neat tip, thanks 🌻
Ex lease laptops and monitors are also often very good deals!
The monitors often come with very well adjustable stands that are much more ergonomic. The laptops are often very high build quality and perfect for regular home office use.
I don’t think that off-ease laptops are very good as they are sold. The batteries are often on their way out and so that’s an additional expense (and some, like Macs, are very expensive to replace).
There are some incredible deals on off-lease desktops, though. Most modern computers are way overpowered for what the average user needs. You can get a perfectly serviceable machine for doing email, serving the web, and office work, for $100 or less. Just don’t expect to play any games released within the last five or more years.
What’s “ex lease” mean here?
Mascara. I’ve spent $20+ dollars a few times for some high-end Sephora brands, but I’ve never thought they were any better than the $8 Maybelline I can get at the grocery store.
Alcohol that you are supplying at an event. You should always have a good case of beer or wine, or spirits, or the appropriate refreshment for your honored guests, but anything beyond 1st/2nd round should be the cheapest hooch on the planet and it should run out fast. Every social gathering seems to attract booze hounds that will suck you dry, no need to pay premium dollar for their habit.
If you live in an area with a store like a dollar store/tree/general, getting snack foods from there is cheaper than going to a normal grocery store like Walmart. At least it is where I live.
I don’t know if it’s changed prices in other places with these types of stores, but at $1.25 for generic thin mint cookies, that isn’t a terrible deal at all if you ask me.
I’m not sure I’d call this “cheaping out” but unless you can’t even afford that or you have a specific reason you need a more expensive one, you should buy mid-range ($200 - $400) phones. The early '10s are over and mid-range is more than adequate for the average phone user. Plus quite a few mid-ranges still have expandable storage and/or headphone jacks.
Soap of any kind. It’s fine if you want a certain smell, but at the end of the day it all works the same. Goes for hand soap, shampoo, detergent, body wash, etc.
I recently tried the cheapest dishwasher tablets and my dishes come out dirty
Agreed on all soaps… except shampoo. My hair gets crazy damaged by the cheap stuff.
I agree with all of that, but shampoo. A bad shampoo will absolutely destroy your hair, particularly if you have long hair.
Not true. Most soap series my skin, and the nice soap I buy doubles as shampoo. Normal shampoo destroys my scalp and I get crazy flaking. And I love the texture on my skin from this soap. Definitely worth the 5 bucks a bar
Mr. Clean Magic Erasers.
The “generic” name is melamine sponge. These work exactly the same and cost a fraction of the brand name.
In my experience, the Mr. Clean ones hold up much better. Generic melamine sponges tear too easily.
But maybe I’m just getting the wrong generic ones. I’ve tried two or three different generic brands and they all sucked
This matches my experience, as well.
I bought 100 on AliExpress 8 years ago, for like $5. Will take a few years yet to use them all.
There is something similar in germany for removing oil and stuff. Its basically just gasoline in a bottle. Lol.
