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  • This was a few years back, before I knew this was even possible, but a portable hard drive off of Amazon. Not only was it sharp on all edges, it was only programed to show the storage without actually having it. I spent an evening "moving" docs from a dying laptop, only to plug it in the next day two find a fraction of what I thought I moved over.

    Also, a yoga mat that disintegrated when I went to do a plank. Just pressing my hands into it was enough for it to flake apart.

  • Microsoft Surface.

    In no particular order:

    The Alcantara keyboard cover stated delaminating and the top layer started peeling off just from the friction of resting your hands on it. Started happening within months of getting it.

    Battery failed after just a few years of daily use, I'm talking completely refused to charge, you unplug the charger even after leaving it in overnight and the screen goes black instantly. And while most laptops can run just fine with a dead battery as long as you keep it plugged in at all times, not the Surface. The little magnetic connector supplies so little power that the device is forced to down clock to below 1 GHz to keep from shutting down due to undercurrent. And sometimes it shuts down anyway because fuck you.

    It's also glued so tight, and the front glass is so thin, that you basically can't open it without destroying the screen in the process.

    Also, the magnetic charge connector started having contact issues around the same time the battery was starting to fail, so the moment you bump it, it disconnects and causes the device to turn off. It also just refuses to connect half the time when you plug it in. Gotta jiggle it, blow into it, shake and hit it a bunch of times, and pray. I'm pretty sure it's the tablet's side that's the problem because changing chargers did nothing, and the charger that came with the problem tablet worked fine on another Surface. Gotta love when companies make the fragile part of the connector apart of the $2000 device that's sealed shut with glue and put the more robust part on the cheap and easily replaceable charger.

    It's also really bad at going to sleep. Way too many times I've closed it, put it in my bag, and when I take it out it's scalding hot and the battery is nearly drained. It's your own device Microsoft, running 100% your own software. How the hell do you fuck it up?!

    Worst. Tablet. EVER. And probably ruined any potential that laptop-replacement tablets once had, which is a shame because I still like the tablet form factor.

  • 1985 Pontiac Sunbird and my parents had a 1986 Buick Skyhawk. Both were exactly the same car, just different front fascia. Same crappy 1.8L SOHC engine and terrible build quality.

    Both cars blew head gaskets at 50,000 miles and my Sunbird blew it again at 65,000miles. Neither car were ever overheated. The A/C on both cars died at 60K. Various parts of the exterior and interior were just plain falling apart. The cars' performance was absolutely abysmal.

    The cars were so bad that I haven't purchased another GM product since, nor will I ever buy another product from GM. My Dad had bought a mid-90's Oldmobile 88 and it was actually OK for the most part. It just ate alternators, until I convinced him to put an upgraded aftermarket unit on and that problem was solved. Later he bought a Chevy Traverse and that thing was an absolute piece of trash. He had to put timing chains on it at 70k and that was a $2500 bill. The power steering also went out on it multiple times. He had the steering rack and power steering pump replaced multiple times.

    I traded my old Sunbird in on a 1985 Toyota Corolla GT-S and THAT was my absolute favorite car of all time. I autocrossed it for several years and it never broke. I'd love to find one to restore. I have owned multiple Toyotas in my 39 years of driving. My current car is a Camry Hybrid.

  • I did buy a number of fake flash drives, so they're definitely up there. Luckily I've always won the disputes and got my money back from every one of them.

    There were also a number of headphones whose sound was so fucking bad, listening to stuff off my phone's speakers was better

  • Edit: I misread the question. I thought it was "lowest quality product that you still use" (I was distracted)

    Original comment: Harbor freight calipers. Surprisingly still accurate and undamaged through years of abuse. Kind of amazing, and shockingly useful.

  • Cheap mini Bluetooth keyboard. It kept disconnecting and missing keystrokes. Input latency was awful too. 2010s Bluetooth was so bad

  • A can opener from a convenience store. It was barely sharp enough to puncture the metal of the can and exploded the moment I turned the crank.

  • A friend of mine made an online store and he started selling e-waste ahem… various affordable electronics. He wanted me to test a Chinese tablet, and I said yes. This was back in the day when Android Honeycomb was a thing and iPad 2 was a reasonable option, so even the best tablets weren’t that great.

    I got the tablet, charged the battery, booted it up, and it was just barely ok. It worked, but it was really slow. I mean, like slower than my first Android phone. This was not even last gen hardware. It was clear that some all corners were cut. The storage, CPU, RAM, bandwidth etc. Every component was the slowest one available.

    Anyway, the testing went slowly, as you would expect. It ran out of battery very quickly, because of course it did. Why put large cells or even mediocre quality cells in a cash grab like this. So, I charged it up and continued testing later until it ran out of battery again. Rinse and repeat.

    After a few days of testing, It just didn’t boot up any more. Apparently some of those cheap components just couldn’t take the heat that comes with using a battery powered device. Rust in pieces! I hope this abomination gets ground to shreads and drowned in sulfuric acid.

    I returned the tablet to my friend and I never heard from it again.

  • A set of darts from Temu. They were 23g and the barrel was like, slippery feeling to where you had almost no grip to barely grip. It was hard at times throwing them, you had to fling them to get them on the board.

    Cream Soda from Best Choice, a brand that's from those not-so-well known grocery stores that charge 10% on top of the total amount you pay groceries for. This is somehow a step below Great Value brand which arguably is better in comparison.

101 comments