Mine killed the bottom 40% of the screen, so it was very quickly unusable.

There are actually extremely silent mechanical keyboards now, much quieter than reds/blacks/browns. The silenced Realforce Topre keyboards (if you consider Topre “mechanical”) are much quieter than typical dome keyboards.

I truly love my SNES mini. Mine is still going strong, but the NES mini is starting to have issues.

I loved my lg g2, but a tiny scratch ruined the touchscreen sensor after a couple of years. My literal “perfect phone” would be the lg g2 form factor with a newer SoC and GrapheneOS on it.

Nice, I also mentioned my DT770s. They’re basically invincible.

Edit: I also had the original ergodox with mx clears, sadly I never could get used to the layout so I passed them on to a friend.

I can think of a few that I can’t decide between:

My IBM Model M that came with my childhood PC was my primary keyboard into my 30s until a coworker sabotaged it (it was a bit loud I suppose). Not technically my purchase, but damn was it solid.

I bought a used 21" Sony Trinitron CRT monitor crazy cheap back in the mid 90s when typical monitors were 14". I felt like a king, that thing never stopped working, but I was pressured to part ways with it two decades later by my wife.

Edit: I’ll add on my Beyerdynamic DT 770 headphones. My current pair are 20 years old and I have just replaced the pads a few times as well as some cheap support part (was less than $3 from the manufacturer). These things are basically invincible and they are still my travel headphones as they can take a beating on the road.

I was wondering if they were Hifiman because while they make many excellent headphones, and I’d almost never recommend someone pay full price as they tend to have really strong deals a little while after product launch. I actually owned the original Arya and it is one of the few Hifiman that I have do have buyers remorse for as they just do not fit my head well. That obviously applies to all of the models with that shape (Ananda, Arya, Edition, Susvana, HE1000). My favorite headphones are actually very old Hifiman, the HE-6. They are stupidly demanding on power, but I like their sound more than any other headphone I have ever listened to.

I’m not sure if they count is a “tech purchase”, but I bought all new Samsung appliances in my previous home (washer, dryer, refrigerator, and dishwasher). The washer and dryer failed catastrophically within 6 months, the dryer drum cracked and shredded a whole load of clothing into confetti and the washing flooded my kitchen and ruined my cabinets (it was a weird house layout). The refrigerator just had random parts dying over and over (water dispenser, lights, sensors, ice maker) until it finally died at the year mark. The dishwasher made it nearly to year two before the control panel died and the replacement part was more expensive than an entire new unit. Never again Samsung!

The virtual boy is a good contender here. My friend got one at launch and it was laughably bad. I myself couldn’t use it for more than ten minutes without getting a headache.

The only reason I’ve ever been able to justify balanced headphones were if they were too power hungry and needed extra current.

As someone that owns headphones in that range and maybe higher, I’m very curious which headphones you picked up. Also, the idea of getting “similar results” from IEMs versus some over ear headphones is a bit wacky, they’re way different IMO.

I never had a Razer mouse last longer than 6 months since they moved over to optical/laser mice (yeah, I’m old). Their products are flimsy crap for the most part.

Fully agreed.

Shout out to Vegas, it is consistently excellent through the entire album. As a bonus, there was a PS1 game N2O that had the entire album on disc using redbook audio (essentially, you could pop the game disc in a CD player and listen to the tracks). It really worked for that games too.

You’re in the selfhosted community, surely you know what sort of answer you’re going to get. If you just need to hear it, selfhost!