Are we owning too much audio products

Given every product you buy has:

  • carbon footprint in manufacturing
  • carbon footprint in shipping
  • eventually becomes toxic non-recyclable landfill

Are we owning too much? Should we ration ourselves to just one or two essential audio products?

I have not bought anything for ages, a year ago I bought the Q30 and use them regularly but not bought any speakers. When I am gifted a speaker I give one away.

I am using a 7 year old laptop, and a 3 year old tablet and my phone is over 3 years old, I am waiting for them to break before replacing, having repaired laptop twice. I am using my 3 year old earbuds waiting for them to break.

Are we doing enough to reduce our waste?

Heard of greenwashing - buy products from countries with high coal usage for energy production.

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I own some speakers I need and like.
I have two old LENOVO laptops from 2010.
An Ipad (1. generation) and an elder Samsung tablet.
This Samsung I need for ḿy COVID-19 vacc certificate.

I got an ANKER 6 ports charger, a nano which I use for my pb 20000 essential.
That’s all.
I am sure you own many more technical equipment, though you are a minimalist.:rofl:

Globalist, minimalist, or whatever the name, I think people forget what they have and just consume more than they should. I was one of seven growing up so it was a waste not want not. So I try to teach the kids to respect what they have. When my son broke his beats, I gave him mine (as those hurt my ears) but made him give me like 20 (they cost like 200). I used that to buy the parts to an old pair of beats and gave to father in law.

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Same is me.
Growing up after WWII, my family was really poor.
So I know how to care about things, know how to repair things if possible.
There was never any waste of food in our house.
So we taught our kids in a similar way.
Not a new “phone” ever year etc.
Of course they got all things they needed and even more.
But we discussed about the “need” before we bought.

Many of yours here know me as a fan of flea markets.
There are so many things to get there, not only antiquities.

Wasn’t it you at ANKER’s forum who created a report how you fixed a hole in a wall? :smile:
Those are our private “insights” I like so much.

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It was here before the purge of the off topic section and gallery section.

I have been able to do a few repairs on some game systems (non soldering issues that is).

I know my dad goes to a lot of them where he lives and he always tells me of so of his finds. I think he interacts with them enough that they sort of will give him deals as well knowing that he does buy stuff at different times. When I get chances to go see him, he will a few tools ,gloves or other stuff he has extras of. I then will forward that to my son when I get to many extra myself. I already got him a car tool kit set up for his car. (Hammer, ratchet wrenches, channel locks, vice grips as well as a ratchet set)

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The answer is probably. I gift away a lot for me it’s mostly cables since that’s what I have the most of and I have friends that buy cheap five dollar cables that break again in a month or two and then continually buy so they often get gifted a more rugged Anker cable since mine seem to last forever

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I’m the same way here, I run PCs/cars/home networking equipment/whatever for far longer than a normal person should. What is unfortunate, is that serviceability is not built into more products. For my Linksys routers, I had to go to third party (DDWRT/FreshTomato/etc) for firmware/security updates after the manufacturer stopped supporting it and once that started getting too flaky is when I decided to seek out new hardware.

It’s a bigger problem any devices that contain a battery, which is a lot of Anker/Soundcore’s product line. I’m sure the day will come when my otherwise workable Q30 or Bose earbuds will be destined to the e-cycler because the battery died and they can no longer fulfill their purpose. The best we can do at that point is bring it to a reputable electronics recycling service, but I’m sure that much of the material will be wasted since the devices are so small that it’s hard to get meaningful return from the effort to extract what can be recycled.

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The Q30 battery is replaceable. But yes in general it’s hard to replace batteries. All the Soundcore buds are glued tight and replaceable.

I have a tablet I love and it’s so well constructed I think I’ll ruin it replacing the battery.

All the speakers can be opened to replace the battery.
But be careful , there are some horrible stupid tear down videos to be found.
I call such " tear downs" simply vandalism.
Regarding earbuds:
These are really glued.
But before trashing I would try to open them.
Tablets and phones can be also opened with special tools and some skills.
Have done that often.
In some elder Iphones the battery was glued .
But this is … (censored) Apple.
I don’t know if that’s the same in newer models as well.

I’m getting tired of everything being built as not replaceable. Its a waste of resources.

I run a 11 year desktop as my media server. I do need to upgrade the video so it can more than just a home network media server. This computer was a high end production/gaming machine. Its still faster than some of the budget computers out there. I will use this computer until it dies.

I run an old ASUS ROG 17 Laptop that 9 years. I love this computer. I use this for playing older games and some basic photo editing when I travel by car (I need an extra laptop bag to carry this beast) and need an extra high speed computer.

I used a 2017 Dell 13 inch business professional Notebook for writing documents emails, surfing the internet when my tablet or cell phone is not wanted. It normally travels with me and if it were a little smaller it be with me most days.

2 years ago I purchased a new Alienware 15 inch laptop because my image editing software made some upgrades and requires a huge amount of processing power to edit the images (uses A.I. to repair bad parts of the image). If my software didn’t require the upgrade I’d still be using the ASUS for editing.

I recently retired an iPad 2nd gen because it stop working all my apps.

Still use my older Samsung Note 8 an upgrade later this year. I normally keep my phones every 4 to 5 years.

I’ve only bought 3 pairs of Audio (speaker, earbuds, and over the ear) in the last 3 years. The rest of them were gifts from family or request for reviews for a free product.

I try and keep my tech purchases limited and only purchase when something is needed and use it until its not useful or fails.

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Nothing to add!
Apple!

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I like this post / thread, and I agree, I own a lot of these, and been giving away, still left with few more.

Have not bought audio products for last 1 year now and returned office headsets when I no longer needed them. No new laptops / phones / RPis…

New audio products don’t interest me anymore (of course, unless if its a gift :smiley: )

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I’ve gotten to the point that I’m not buying new tech unless its needed. I’ve picked up a couple of security cameras to replace low end models, purchased a new Chromebook because my wife needed a small cheap notebook to use during lunch hour for personal stuff, and a new UPS.

With that being said, I haven’t done much tech reviewing in the last few months and will have to expand my reviews into more topics.

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