Slighly laggy remote control for my phone, with widgets a little too small for my finger to reliably hit.
When I do proper long walks, the battery reliably dies on me during the walk.
Disc games are cheaper on sales + has actual resale value.
Not necessarily regret but the Apple Watches have such crap battery.
Every item meant to "solve a problem" rather than "do something" never solved my problems and rarely worked well. Be it fitness or personal productivity or learning etc.
I've had to learn the hard way that reviews are mostly marketing, and very few (if any) reviewers will actually say something isn't great. And grassroots reviews are too often shills or some hivemind and not worth much either (even on HN).
Tech specs aren't worth much either, it's how it's actually in use that counts.
Examples from tech:
Sony WF 1000 (1st gen): good on paper (before Airpods with NC) but then lost charge every day in the charging case, making them useless.
remarkable 1: went back to real paper.
Fitbit, Garmin watches: Playing Spotify offline during a run never worked reliably with any of these and every one dies in 1h. The Apple watch can sort of do it but only on cellular, offline doesn't work either. And of course dies after 30mins.
Mighty player: likewise, also never worked reliably
Early Samsung note tablet for note taking at uni - even though technically superior to an iPad, the software support was lacking.
That said, some things mentioned in this thread have been genuinely great and useful for me, so not everything is universal.
Every Samsung phone I've ever owned - great hardware, but the software is a mess, especially with all of the Samsung apps that duplicate the Google apps.
Sony smart TV - was excited about running Android TV apps, but the onboard hardware is so bad that everything lags, and I actually ran out of space after installing 10-20 apps (it only has 4GB of flash storage). Also, its Ethernet adapter has a hardware bug that occasionally freezes up my entire network by spamming it with flow control frames.
They dropped access to the API for new developers.
Their air quality sensor is horribly inaccurate.
Their UI is actually very confusing.
The app is merely a way to shove ads in your face.
I wish I just got a new Honeywell.
It was a cheap piece of shit though and all the plastic pieces rapidly came apart. The rubber coating on the handle disintegrated too.
In contrast my iPod survived 10+ years in a glove box and was still immaculate.
Now, to their credit: The keyboard itself is of a reasonable build quality, aside from the fact that it will just occasionally completely die on me until I unplug it for a few minutes and try again.
On the other hand, their customer service was not only unhelpful but actively antagonistic and rude towards me. I gave basic feedback once or twice, and asked for an updated technical manual on the keyboard I purchased and I was treated like I shit on their cat.
---
"Hello, I can only find (this) and (that) manual regarding the 360 SmartSet. One document appears to be an outdated version of the other, and the more up-to-date version is no longer accurate. Do you have an up-to-date manual I can work off of? I was able to parse out some other functions like XYZ by looking at manuals for (devices that are no longer for sale) but I think I'm still missing some crucial information."
"It's on the site, but since you can't find it yourself, here you go." (It's the more outdated manual that I already referenced by name and included already.)
---
"Hello, I noticed it occasionally has issues when I use it with my KVM. Is this a known problem, or should I perform an RMA?"
"Well, that's why we say don't use a KVM!" (Take a wild guess at what information was not listed on any page of their website in regards to the 360 SmartSet.)
---
"Hi, some of the marketing material on your site on (this page) is inaccurate. It would be good to update it to reflect how this thing work now. I've provided a few points to consider updating. (Two or so changes)"
"Too many people have complained about this! This issue is closed now!!" (The entire page is subsequently deleted, making it even less clear how things are intended to work, what future customers will be paying for, giving even less information about their products.)
---
To be clear, I know that some times people will overstate things and make it sound much worse than it actually are, but I really am just trying to tell things as they were. If anything, I've probably understated how rude some of their responses have been. I have never had a positive experience interacting with any person at that company.
Moral of the story is: Never buy from Kinesis, even if it causes you physical pain.
Microphone/audio input sucks over BT. So many glazing reviews. I don't get it.
I have several smart power strips that stopped responding; I have had better luck with individual smart outlets.
Digital audio players with Wi-Fi radios that support AirPlay. I've purchased three, two from Hiby and one from FiiO. The idea was to stream AirPlay to the DAP from one of my PCs, getting quality audio over wired headphones, while I walked around the house. The Hiby models would drop the stream occasionally and both had batteries that died in a year or less. The FiiO would accept streams from Apple devices, but not third-party AirPlay streams. I ended up listening to my phone.
I found bone conduction headphones don't come anywhere close to audiophile quality.
Wi-Fi in general, living in a row home in a neighborhood crowded with 2.4 GHz transceivers.
I bought and stored away a large drawer full of microphones, headphones, mice, and keyboards before I settled on the models I like.
I've never used a Windows trackpad that was worth spit. I can't use a Mac without a trackpad next to my keyboard and mouse. The difference on Windows is maddening.
I was getting frustrated with the battery in my old Apple watch as it got older, but now that I have two watches and can switch between them, I wear one or the other 24 hours a day.
Really not getting much value out of it, despite being all-in on Apple otherwise (iPhone, Mac, AppleTV, Homepods).
I really feel like it absolutely should be more integrated into the other devices. Set a timer on the phone? Can’t see on watch. Stuff like this bugs me like hell. And I think there’s too much of it.
Never be an early adopter of hardware.
In fairness, it was not as bad as a desktop computer running Windows Me.
Microsoft was evil then, and Google has been evil since then.
I used the Steam deck extensively,I thought she would do the same,but she prefers to read when waiting for stuff.
I loved the form factor but was disappointed at the level of hostility toward user control, which only increased over time
Although it was a decent effort, their overall build quality is pretty cheap, and it's not good enough to recommend. I took a chance on their 2nd revision and it was at least good enough to keep for periodic use, but it really isn't worth buying atm. Half of the spacebar stops working nearly every day and I need to reset it
Oh wait, reviews were not great, never mind.
GHome consistently gets worse voice recognition or usability.
Nest has many notifications to enable eco modes making me uncomfortable in own home.
Alexa terrible voice recognition.
Roomba kept getting stuck, errors.
Apple Watch useless versus oura ring even if steps aren’t as accurate.
iPad usage not worth the cost. Either get a laptop full featured or a small tv and android shield box.