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Subscribe to RSSWhen coming up with my list for the most overpriced tech products, I had to set some ground rules. Simply slapping some diamonds and platinum on an iPad wouldn‘t count — anyone could do that. The product had to be designed by the company selling it and the product price needed to far exceed the intrinsic value of the materials. I also selected products where the overpricing is made even more obvious by having much cheaper options available that are just as functional (or in some cases more so).
In the end, I came up with six products that are so outrageously overpriced they just had to make the list. Here they are:
Vertu
#6. Vertu Constellation Quest Smartphone ($8,299)
Vertu, a division of Nokia, has built a brand around super-luxury cell phones for the Hollywood glitterati and Russian oligarchs of the world. The Vertu Constellation Quest is a beautiful phone, with hand-tooled leather, sapphire keys and other luxury features. But at the end of the day, it’s still just a phone, and not a very advanced one, either. Running Nokia’s dated Symbian operating system and with a tiny 2.5-inch display, it’s decidedly behind the times. For $8,299 you should expect more, and you get more with practically any iPhone or Android phone on the market — most of which are under $600, even without a contract.
#5. Bang & Olufsen BeoVision 4 —85-inch 3-D TV ($85,000)
Bang & Olufsen
Bang & Olufsen has always been a premium-priced brand, but they’ve outdone themselves with the BeoVision 4 85-inch plasma TV. With its whopping $85,000 price tag, the BeoVision 4 clocks in at mind-blowing $1,000 per inch. Sure it has some cool features, like a screen that automatically lowers when you’re not watching it, but who really needs that? Instead, pick up Sharp’s new Aquos 80” LED LCD for a mere $4,500.
#4. Leica M9 Titanium Digital Camera ($28,000)
What happens when you take an already pricey $7,000 Leica M9 camera and put it the hands of automobile designer Walter de'Silva from Audi? You get the even more pricey $28,000 M9 Titanium version made from titanium, sapphire crystal and leather typically used on Audi cars. While I appreciate that the “Leica logo has been restyled and is elaborately hand-engraved in pure resin, inlaid with white enamel, sealed with clear varnish and then polished and positioned centrally — directly above the lens“, I think I’ll save 21 grand and go with the base model.
AudioQuest
#3. AudioQuest Diamond HDMI Cable ($1,495)
There is no shortage of overpriced HDMI cables on the market, but AudioQuest takes the cake with its Diamond line, charging a jaw-dropping $1,495 for a 6-foot cable. What do you get for that price? A lot of marketing hooey, mostly, about solid silver connectors and proprietary insulation. Digital signals aren’t prone to interference over short lengths, and there is scant evidence that higher-quality cables make any difference. Instead, get a 6-foot cable from highly regarded Monoprice.com for $3.50.
Goldmund
#2. Goldmund Eidos Reference Blue Blu-ray Player ($170,000)
How can the Eidos Reference Blue Blu-ray player possibly cost as much as a house? According to Goldmund, ”It is because our specialists made absolutely no compromise between the quality and refinement of the finish, the exceptional mechanical construction and the cost.” For those of us that have to make compromises, we will likely be better off with the Samsung BD-D6500 (well under $200 retail), which offers many useful features not available in the Eidos Reference Blue, such as 3-D output, built-in Wi-Fi and hundreds of apps. And don’t worry about compromising the picture; "Avatar" is going to look just as good on the Samsung player, and you’ll have enough money left over to buy a house to watch it in.
#1. Text messaging from AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon (20 cents a message)
With all the high-priced gizmos out there, how does a 20-cent text message make my #1 spot? Let’s do a little math. AT&T charges 20 cents per text message. A single text message is limited to 160 characters, which is at most 160 bytes in size. So, 1 GB of bandwidth can handle about 6.25 million text messages. Multiply 6.25 million by 20 cents and you find that the cell phone companies are charging $1.25 million per GB of data for text messaging. If you’re a heavy texter, texting plans from the carriers can drive cost per gigabyte down into the tens-of-thousands of dollars. Or use that old standby, email, instead.
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Funny? I pay $20 per month for unlimited texting (with my corporate discount) --With AT&T mind you.
Even if you're a huger texter, at $20 per month you're still probably paying the equivalent of $50,000 or more per gigabyte. Do the math and let us know what your number is!
Even if I had more money than sense, I wouldn't buy any of those items.
Deleted by user.
The really sad thing is, there are people who will buy these products and not even think about what chumps they are.
I just purchased the B&O Beovision TV set for my guest bathroom and I must say that it was worth every penny! Although, I was noticing some granularity in the picture coming from my home theatre system so cheers for writing this article; I will be picking up a Diamond HDMI cable this afternoon! There really is no compromise for quality!
isto321
Are you travelling in the Benz, or the new Roll’s?
No matter, have your man pull in to the covered area.
Thanks for stopping over,
Theodora is christening our newest wing and the caviar is astounding!
Hey Amigo, I need you to pay more attention to your trophy wife and daughter. I can't keep doing them everytime you go on "busyness trips". I can only help so much.... Jose Juan Garcia de la Torre Puente San Jose Rogriguez Martinez.
Isto,
What it be, blood? I haven't talked to you since E-Z EEE's par-tay in '89. I thought you was "dropped in that drop top into that 6 foot plot." You dig? I completely agree on the quality of the Diamond HDMI. I use them all over my crib. Matter of fact, I been using them in my son's science experimence at skool. Like I like to say, "Nothing carries the power of a 6-volt parallel stack like these kwality Diamond cabelz!" You definitely dig that! Oh, you do for realz!
Just pass the Grey Poupon please.
A fool and his money are soon parted...
And to add the cherry on top for texting: text messages are sent on the carrier wave the phones/cell towers use...meaning it's at NO COST to the company to provide this service--they are making money hand over fist for a service we already pay for when we sign up for cell phone access.
Actually there is a cost to the company, not all companies own their cell towers.
This might be true for companies like Metro PCS and the like, but the big carriers do own their towers and they are priced at an average 500,000$ each.
Even carriers that own their own towers have the expense of building them and maintaining them. Just because you build one does not mean it lasts forever.
I pay $30 a month or $1 a day for unlimited text across my family plan with At&t. In one month my teenager proved the value of paying $30 a month by sending and receiving 12,000 text messages. I personally average around 1500 a month but it still justifies the cost. Do the math and the average 1500 a moderate texting adult does in a month is $300 when paying per text.
Um, wow...who has this kind of money?
I paid 1,000$ for my 50" 3D TV. To think I could have bought one 35" bigger for 850% more...
Actually, it would be 8500% more. But what's an order of magitude among rich friends?
If I pay $8,000 for a phone, it better have $7,950 in cash tucked inside it.
If I paid $8K for a phone, I used someone else's money.
Hey here's an idea-instead of spending $170,000 on a freakin blu-ray player, buy two Samsungs and build a modest house for a homeless family with the rest-then give them the extra one. It's called Pay-It-Forward. You should try it sometime...
Blue ray is almost obsolete with digital download or streamimg...If I were a corporate restructure specialist I'd fire a bunch of the idiots in the company who spent valuable time making a $170,000 blue ray player
These kind of things prevent the poor 1%'ers from having to just sit and look at their piles of cash, Scrooge MacDuck style. Of course, the top execs of the companies that make this crap take most of the money so it goes to... some other 1%'er.
Most people completely miss the point of why a person would buy any of these items. What matters to a person who has almost everything or could buy almost anything & everything is exclusivity. They've bought all the things you & I have to wait years to purchase & they've bought them multiple times over. If you have money still accumulating what do you buy? Crazy & ridiculous items like the above. Exclusivity brings the fact that they're not going to see every Tom, Dick & Harry with what they have. You have to remember there are people out there that no matter how much they may spend in a year, at the end of the year their bank accounts probably didn't decrease...........in fact it probably increased!!!! Personally I'd love to have that problem & you'd be a LIAR if you wouldn't want it either.
Abousutly right. All of the Sultans of the world buy these type of things. I remember when I was in Burnei, and the Sultan bought a 17 million dollar Gulfstream jet for his 13 year old nephew. The kid arrived in his Turbo Charged Bentley stationwagon, and went inside of his new jet and ate birthday cake. After shaking hands with all of the guests, he didn't come back until 2 weeks later. Ho-hum, just another toy.
$1500 for an hdmi cable and I thought that Monster cable was out of there nut.
They charge $500 hdmi cable "With gold plated connectors"
ooooh aaaaah.. Are people really this stupid? Why yes they are.
for the price of 2 of these gadgets, you could have bought a nice middle class home in a small town 60 years ago...with a porch and a yard with flowers out front....and a mature tree... and garage with driveway. OY!
Wow, silly! Talk about a waste of money! A lot of people could be helped with that money.
Well, they sort of are, since I'm sure the companies that make these products actually pay workers and buy parts etc. from other companies that pay workers and on and on and on. Someone who buys some stupid expensive luxury item is probably doing more for the economy than people who buy cheap crap from China at Walmart.
Totally agree on the text messages. I miss living in asia where I sent 100s of text messages a day, had excellent reception almost anywhere, and never paid more then $30/month for my bill - not to mention my phones were usually more advanced. It helps that receiving calls, messages, mail, etc are free - you only pay half the time. If I used my phone here like I did in asia, my bill would be well over $100/month. The internet and phone technology is primitive and bills are astronomical here.
I'd rather see an article on the best of the best in each category regardless of price. These are just spending money for the sake of spending money - and most, as the author points out, are inferior to products a fraction of their costs. At least the title is accurate.
The only one that this article claims is inferior to cheaper ones is the cell phone.
Definitely #1! I use HeyWire- it's free texting (and twitter and Facebook chat) world wide. It's awesome!
Oh geez...the same old bulls*** about text messages...who CARES what it costs? Since when does cost to produce dictate price by itself? Texts are NOT necessities. In fact, many people get along just fine without them. So, if you want to use them, you pay what the market has determined is the right price. If the market determined it was too high at 20 cents, usage would decrease and the price would drop.
This list was a decent list until you turned it into your pathetic bi*chfest.