We live in a world where many don’t shy away from spending over S$1000 on the iPhone. While taking into account that due to inflation technology is more affordable today than ever before, expensive tech exists. Most of these justify their price tag, either because of the hours you get out of it or the savings they entail. There are others though that have no reason being this expensive. Some don’t even really need to exist. Here are the five worst offenders of expensive useless technology.
1.FitBit Charge HR – S$275
Image courtesy: fitbit.com
This is partly fueled by my horror stories about this device. Quite simply, FitBit has no business charging what they do for their products. Over the course of ten months, I have gone through three bands, all of which have failed the same way. Discounting anecdotal problems, there have been numerous issues relating to sync problems, battery issues and just burning people. If you want to get a fitness band, just shell out a little bit more and go for Garmin. Needless to say, stay away from the Apple watch.
2. Casio Exilim EX-TR70 (selfie camera) – S$1139
Image courtesy: Straitstimes.com
Depending on your viewpoint, selfies are either the height of narcissism and a damning indictment on modern society, or harmless fun. Casio’s gadget designed around taking the perfect selfie would suggest the former. Seriously, who is spending that amount of money on getting a good selfie? Just about every smartphone these days has a decent camera, and Instagram has various filters to help mask their limitations. Anyone who purchases this device had better run out of sensible things to buy. At least smartphones have other uses.
3. Vertu Phones (all of them) – S$15,000 plus for high end
Image courtesy: luxury volt.com
People love to joke about how iPhones are overpriced, and there is merit to this. However, there is expensive, and then there is ridiculous. Que the Vertu line of phones, definitely aimed at people who desperately want to show off how much money they have to waste. I had a look at their design your own feature, and all it is is making your own case and getting an engraving. All well and good, but the specifications are sub-par at best. A 13MP camera, only 64GB of storage, all for the highest line. If you wanted to rub it in how rich you are, you might as well burn money at this point.
If you can’t read it, the engraving says: ‘Screw you, I’m rich’
4. Ferrolic (ferrofluid clock) – over S$10,000
So ferrofluid is awesome, I’m not going to argue against that. It makes for some very awesome gifs; that’s for sure. Ferrolic has decided to try and make a clock using the liquid. Badass the clock may well be, but with a five digit price tag it is already on the crazy side. Making it worse is that the frame only lasts a few months, which pushes it into the plain stupid. Yes, it is still a prototype, but rest assured someone is spending absurd amounts of money on this clock. Stick to Reddit and YouTube for your ferrofluid fix.
5. Kohler Numi (a toilet) – S$8900
Look, having a good toilet at home is important. However, when you are paying more for it than most people spend on a television, priorities have gone out of whack somewhat. I don’t care what features are included; this is just too much to be spending on something that serves the most basic human function.
