Budget friendly tech isn't what it used to be

Apple and affordability

A €700 laptop is not cheap, a €700 phone is not cheap. My iPhone SE from 2022 cost €500 and it wasn't cheap either given what it had to offer. The price may be lower in comparison with other products from the brand and the prices of modern technology—which are madness. They may offer a good value for the money. That seems to be the case for this laptop. But it is not cheap.

Read the Full Post by Adrián Perales on adrianperales.com

I saw this post (originally in Spanish, title and quote translated by me) which dealt with something that I used to think a lot more, but sort of accepted given my current situation, but the more I thought about it, I kind of hate it.

Back in the day, I used to watch phone reviews that recommended budget friendly devices. Stuff like the Redmi 4A and 5A were the kings of low-budget gadgets, at a price around $100 bucks. That was the first phone I ever paid for, and 18-year-old me only had half of that money, my dad to paid the rest, and even that was too much for him. He wasn’t being greedy, but my previous phone still worked, so it was not a necessary purchase.

The flagship smartphones at the time? $500 bucks or so, the base iPhone 7? $650 USD, the one with 256 GB of storage? $969 USD. We both know storage wasn’t worth that much, but even then the Apple markup was acting up. The high tier was expensive, and it still is. Like Adrian, I am extremely surprised when I see people saying the Macbook Neo is “budget-friendly.”

I’ve said before how I am often disconnected from my own culture, as a Latino who mostly interacts with American/English-speaking communities online and watches video reviews from people living there.

The people in my country who buy a Macbook Neo are either part of the upper class—or in debt. After all, owning an Apple device is a status symbol, for some reason, and even those who can’t afford it what those bragging rights.

The average person where I live has a two or three year old device that they got used from Facebook Marketplace, a chinese device from Oppo, Poco, Honor, Xiaomi or maybe Motorola. People will buy the flagship devices from these brands and think they are expensive and great quality. And yeah, they often have much better feature than Apple or Samsung products, even if riddled with tracking and advertising.

Alas, such brands are at a price people are actually willing to pay, as much as I don’t like it.

I’ve bought devices and things from China and chinese websites. Let’s talk the Miyoo Mini Plus, the Anbernic RG35XX SP, The Miyoo Mini Flip and the XTEINK X4, and all of them have been at under $70 USD. All of them are extremely affordable and found for even cheaper during sales.

Some of that price may be lowered because Chinese companies overwork people or do shady business practices, but reality is that the markup of most modern tech sold from more popular brands on this side of the globe are simply off the charts. A clear middle ground with a sensible approach can’t be that hardcan right? But no, just look at the “minimalist” devices out there, all above 300, 400, 600 bucks and they are hardly worth that much, the marketing is more expensive than the hardware itself, I suspect.

I guess most big tech review channels seem to just take this for granted, 700 bucks for an Apple laptop? Very cheap, sure.

The worst is that they barely mention actually cheap stuff. Personally, I think they realized that people who watch phone reviews for a living like to see expensive stuff—that they won’t buy—more than cheap stuff—that they won’t buy anyway, so they go and make that kind of content to appease the algorithm and get more revenue. Also cheap stuff has compromises which are often negative, so brands don’t like those to be brought up, even if at the price they are justified.

The people who genuinely look for reviews for actually budget devices are usually confined to content from smaller channels or from creators from India where those devices are more popular. Nothing wrong with that, of course, it’s a similar situation to Latin America, the concept of “budget friendly” is more akin to reality, and those reviews tend to be more honest anyway.

Right now I’m thankful for my current situation, which is rather privileged—single and without any debts—allowing me the purchasing power to consider expensive tech (as long as it isn’t Apple) among my options (although I would still probably go for whatever is cheaper or has better design). Still, I’d love if we recalibrated what “value for money” actually means, and what sort of hardware is actually enough, so we can stop allowing these companies to raise prices for no reason.

This is day 56 of #100DaysToOffload