I love new technology as much as the next person. Naturally I get to play with a lot of technology and have access that a 13-year-old Marty could only have dreamed of. One of the biggest challenges of running a tech review website is keeping in touch with pricing when products are sent in so willingly for me to test. But following a spate of expensive device launches in recent months and the soaring cost of hardware for PC gamers, I’m left asking: where does it end?
The iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo
I recently saw an article which described the iPhone Duo coming with a €4,000. It was certainly an irresistible headline; however it was relating to the most expensive iPhone duo with the most amount of memory. But I realise this also may not be a hill to die on.
The reason I’m being picky with my hills is because the iPhone Duo 256GB will still cost €2,369. Still making it one of the most expensive smartphones on the market, and just over €300 more expensive than Samsung’s comparative device.
I’ve already gone through in great detail how to get the iPhone 18 Pro as cheap as possible but still it’s not a cheap phone to buy at €1,489. Ultimately I’m left asking: how significant an improvement is the iPhone 18 Pro over the iPhone 17 Pro? The fact that Apple has decided to discontinue the iPhone 17 Pro suggests that they realise the two devices would have been in competition with each other.
So that’s the first point towards not buying the latest tech and perhaps looking for either new devices from resellers like Harvey Norman or going to the secondhand market.
GTA 6 and the soaring cost of consoles
The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are 6 years old, yet the consoles are more expensive today than it was at launch. For example when Sony launched the PlayStation 5 in Ireland, the console without a disc drive would cost you €399.99. Today the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition Slim, which is pound-for-pound the same console, will cost you €599.99 with a small amount of storage.
If you jump up to the PlayStation 5 Pro edition, which does come with 2 TB of storage and a little bit more oomph, it will cost you €899.99. And plenty of people are considering this ahead of the GTA 6 launch even though base-level PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X will be able to play the game, albeit without some graphical benefits.
But again you have to ask yourself: is it all worth it for a computer game which itself costs €100 for the Ultimate Edition this year? An entire games package costing nearly €1,000 is wild compared to PC gaming. Coming out of lockdown I built myself a gaming PC for over €3,000 but it’s an incredibly powerful machine that would leave a PlayStation 5 in the dust. I think I’ll wait for GTA 6 to come out on PC and maybe buy it twice instead of bumping up my PS5.
I admit this may sound like first-world problems. Especially in a world where anybody trying to build a gaming PC now is likely quitting before they even start once they see the cost of parts.
PC parts are more expensive than ever
When I built my PC I went for top-of-the-range parts. Purchasing in Ireland can be difficult at the best of times but in hindsight I realize I somewhat stole some of the parts that I got. That’s because just a couple of months after I finished building, the AI revolution kicked it up a gear and made every single part of a PC more expensive.
AI needs graphics cards and AI needs RAM: two parts for PCs which have become extortionately expensive and also just very difficult to get. Some companies have even decided to stop playing in the consumer space completely, focusing only on business with big AI companies.
I’ve watched with great envy as some YouTubers enjoy Frankensteining some computer together with lots of old secondhand parts. It looks incredibly fun and might be a little bit easier if you’re in the United States or Canada. Unfortunately if you’re in Ireland, when buying new you have to deal with shipping costs, customs, and also just a lack of secondhand parts too.
The result is that building your own gaming PC is now also incredibly expensive unless you make some serious sacrifices and compromises on your parts list. Chances are this will just knock you back down into place where PlayStation 5 becomes an option again.
The Steam Frame
Last year I made the choice to sell my Quest 2 VR headset. I had gotten the PSVR2 to review and figured that would be enough for me. I went on to discover that Sony, inexplicably and quite nicely, started to support connecting the PSVR2 to your gaming PC. As such I had now had the relatively inexpensive PSVR2 as my primary VR headset. Now I fully understand that a VR headset is a novelty to a certain extent, if not completely a novelty.
However my point is that with a PSVR2 headset I want for nothing. So when the until now only leaked Steam Frame VR headset finally appears on the market at €1,049, I realize that this is yet another gadget that I don’t think I’d part with money out of my own pocket.
Added to the list of technology that has become unobtainably expensive.
Ask yourself: Do you need the latest technology?
And that’s why I arrive at the point where you should always ask yourself: “Do you need the latest technology? Do you need the newest thing that’s on the market at the highest price?” Pretty much targeting the people who feel they have to without thinking. Now don’t get me wrong. There’ll always be a good reason for getting the latest version of anything, including mitigating for depreciation.
However we’ve reached the tipping point of diminishing returns, where every purchase should really be thought about before you part with your hard-earned money (to make sure that you’re getting something back that’s actually worth it), before shopping around and picking an older model, a second-hand model, or an alternative model that can do the job just as well.
