If you don’t know anything about E ink devices it will be on your radar after reading this and I hope this helps to make them more mainstream. They are no longer just E readers like a kindle where you can only read books, they have evolved and are getting better. Like the Avengers in their next movie we also have to fight doom (scrolling) but unlike them we sadly don’t have any special powers but E ink devices could be the key weapon in winning this battle and be the solution to your doom scrolling syndrome.

You are probably like me, who on more occasions than I like to admit end up doom scrolling, then after the session it’s like woah where did the time go and how did I end up here getting pulled in? Then we forget about it and it happens again because the modern day smart phone has hacked our dopamine reward pathways. This will keep happening until you make a real conscious effort to break the cycle by either removing the distracting apps or keeping the phone away. Then you might start thinking you need to switch to an old dumb phone or maybe you will silence all notifications or just turn off WiFi and mobile data on your phone so nothing comes in. All these are solutions to be fair that can work. It does require resistance though and regulation to wean yourself off it. Like an addiction the dopamine reward pathways are set and your brain will still associate your phone with it, this explains the sudden impulse to just pick up and look at your phone! All of this especially isn’t easy to resist if you’ve grown up with this tech and haven’t lived in a world without it i.e our kid’s generation.

What must be acknowledged though is this isn’t all down to a lack of discipline and human weakness because the way apps especially ‘social’ media ones are designed, it is to keep you glued to the screen, they know how the human brain works and how to ‘hack’ into it to keep us occupied. It’s no longer even ‘social’ media, attention media is the right term; keeping you on the app longer by grabbing your attention leads to more ad revenue and profits. A phone is just a tool at the end of the day, a very good one at that and I am a fan of them and what they can do but addictive scrolling apps in a bright colorful screen in a pocket-able device that you can carry anywhere so conveniently.. the current modern day smart phone has become the perfect vehicle to grab your attention away from what matters. Is it a surprise we lose ourselves and lose so much time in the loud noisy place that is our phones these days so much so that we can’t focus fully on longer form quality content anymore?

I mean how many of you clicking into this blog will have got to this part to begin with then actually be able to read to the end is what I’m curious about. I sense the dopamine filled distractions on the phone will be trying to pull you away if your kids already aren’t!

So what’s changed in the modern smartphone

1. Older phones had smaller and worse quality screens so it wasn’t as pleasing to look at, the modern smartphones screens are bigger, way more clearer, eye catching and feel smoother to operate. Compare it an E ink screen which is static for example, it has 4096 colours whereas a smartphone LCD screen has 16 million colours.

2. Screen flicker, linking to the above smart phone LCD/OLED screens have screen flicker. The lights turn on/off so fast we don’t notice it but it strains our eyes because it’s a lot to process, ever tried taking a picture of a phone screen and noticed the camera picks up the flickering or have you noticed why it becomes difficult to read a long article? It’s that screen flickering strain. E ink doesn’t have that so it is a lot easier on the eyes.

3. Older phones were slower in terms of processors and RAM so they had limitations in functionality that would create some friction but that no longer exists.

4. Apps have also become more attention optimised and don’t feed you content from people you follow (remember old social media?) but rather what the algorithm clocks you are interested in, it might explain why one of my friends keeps talking about the small boats… negativity gets more attention so it is no surprise, maybe we will all be happier if we snap out of this.

Workarounds

Put a biscuit in front of a little child, tell them to hold it but to not have a bite, they will crumble because they know that dopamine hit is good and right there! Now try snatching the biscuit off that child and you will see the withdrawal symptoms in a second! It’s the same with this somewhat - you are welcome to suggest a better analogy in the comments section - if you suddenly take away the phone you will likely struggle. It is a wonderfully powerful tool that can do so much to the point it is almost impractical now to not have one. This isn’t a post to suggest to dump your phones although I’d happily accept if you wanted to donate your latest fold phone to me. They definitely have their place but you must be able to control the tool before it controls you, the tactics mentioned in the opening can help but what I think is also needed is some compartmentalisation i.e set some boundaries and embrace limitations.

In previous decades you’d have an MP3/iPod for music, a dedicated camera to take pictures/videos, devices that have a clearly defined purpose, somewhat limited but manageable because you knew it’s function and boundaries, perhaps not surprising that I was reading some article talking about young people wanting to own CD players to get some control back from their distracting phones and their own music again.

E ink devices - a solution?

Seeing as this blog title is about e-ink devices I should probably talk about it now. They are on the up and getting better but a typical smart phone is still more powerful and better in many respects. I’m not going to pretend E ink is a full substitute right now but they can still be a solution to help you get back your focus and control again.

The form factor varies in size but you can say it is more similar now to a standard tablet or more recently like a phone e.g boox palma. The screens are way easier on your eyes, it is like you’re reading off a paper. Most have black and white screens but you have colour E ink devices now too, the screen refresh rates and colors are way more toned down compared to your typical phone. It’s not as pleasing to look at, it’s slower to operate and basically makes doom scrolling especially with video content like tiktok and shorts a lot less addictive because the videos especially on the black and white screens look crap compared to a normal phone. On the up side it is set up to make reading content like ebooks, PDFs, articles way more enjoyable and manageable. I’ve found it difficult to focus on reading on a typical smart phone, even tablets, the eye strain kicks in but I can’t be surprised because it is more optimised for media consumption and varied multi tasking. However on an E ink device I’ve had no difficulties. If you want a device that could lend itself to educating your kids and nourishing their brains more I think E ink is the way to go.

They are still niche at the moment and currently there are 4 types of devices you can get that come to mind:

1. The standard e-reader: like a kindle, what you’d typically associate when you hear E ink. Main use to just read books, super effective at it but not much else to it.

2. Tablet form: e.g Onyx Boox Note 2, this is the one I personally own, it’s an older one that came out in 2019, runs on android 9 but I love it still. It is like a kindle and a digital notebook combined and with android running I can download various apps and still use it for stuff like web browsing, spreadsheets, hand writing notes, journaling, annotating PDFs and reading books is a genuine joy. If you want your child to have a device that can support revision or learning I think the boox devices are ones to consider. You have others like kindle scribe and remarkable but I can speak for Boox from my own experience and it running on android gives it versatility and more utility.

3. Phone form (but not a phone): Example the Boox Palma or HiBreak Bigme which I have been trying for the last few weeks, it is in the shape of a phone but you can’t make calls or texts on it because it doesn’t take a sim, it also doesn’t have GPS or NFC but you can do everything else on it. I would say it’s like having an iPod Touch except it’s E ink and android based. It makes a better companion device where you still have your modern smartphone, for example if you’re out commuting and want something easy to carry to do your reading this works or when you come home you can put away your phone or turn off WiFi/data and use this instead. What I appreciate about this form is it can really help come off the phone addiction because you can still use apps like Whatsapp on it and like a phone it is pocket-able and portable. This can help with compartmentalising i.e separating from your phone without any anxiety by gradually becoming less dependent on it by not using it at home or in your bedroom with this as a substitute device. This method means you won’t be losing connection to your phone or become unreachable. It can also help with your night time routine as there is little to no blue light to effect your sleep so if you did need to do some reading or web browsing at night this would be better and a lot kinder to your eyes.

4. An actual E ink phone: yes finally, a device that does whatever a modern smart phone can (just how spider-man can do whatever a spider can) but it has an E ink screen which you can get in black and white or a colour version. I think we will be seeing more of these became mainstream now as the demand increases and it wouldn’t surprise me if the big brands get in on it. The current standout model is a Hibreak Bigme Pro. Yeah a weird name but it’s got all the key specs on paper, a good RAM, processor, memory and comes in either a colour or black and white screen version. I think this could be a game changer. I will try getting hold of one soon and report back on to what extent can it do whatever a modern smart phone can.. and maybe even replace it entirely.

It doesn’t help that they are hard to buy used and aren’t the most cheapest but if you implement my tactics suggested in this post I’m sure you will find a good deal. I think in time with more devices coming out the used market will increase in supply and prices will start to drop. I will write separate posts focusing on each type to highlight pros and cons and give you more insight into their use cases. With E ink, black and white screens are the standard but can feel limiting, the colour e ink option are more versatile and more likely to replace a modern smartphone. The specs on paper are also behind typical smartphones and tablets but that is because the e ink screen requires a lot less processing power so they still function as good.

For my kids who are currently too small for anything my future thinking is to keep them off a modern smartphone for as long as possible. They could even have a tablet at managed times/places but without access to addicting scrolling apps. If they wanted something handheld like a phone and they break my resistance then they can have either a dumb phone which I’m sure they will hate or an E ink screen phone which is what I’d be more comfortable giving them simply because I know it is a lot less likely they will become dopamine doom scrolling addicts with an attention span of an excited puppy! Instead they might become book nerds, I’d be all for that, I might even consider making the tablet I get them to be a colour e ink one as I want to nurture smart well rounded nerds humans.

That’s it for now, I hope you didn’t doom scroll your way through this one but if you did manage to read this on your modern smartphone, respect. Either my writing is pretty good or you have amazing will power to get through it all.

First things first though - do your research, even just a bit of googling goes a long way to understand what it is your buying. It shocks me that people don’t do this and just listen to what the sales people or influencers tell them, they get paid to sell, they won’t ever give you the real picture (unless they are in a deep moral and identity crisis like I was back when I worked in sales for a short time, but hey that is rare to find!) so do a bit of googling, understand what you’re looking for, what good specs look like and compare prices for both new and used.

Be proactive with your purchasing - if you think soon enough you’re going to need to look into this stuff then start doing your research on products now rather than later, this will get you informed sooner because if a good deal does pop up you’ll know it and can cash in sooner! If you are ever buying from retailers it is always worth checking and using cashback websites like TopCashBack, (excuse the shameless plug of my referral link )I’ve got back almost £800 from them now and it is especially useful for things like broadband and car insurance!

Understand the baseline price - googling definitely helps with this, you’ll quickly grasp how much things are selling for at brand new prices and if there any sales. I sometimes search HotUK deals to see if there are any active offers or how much something has sold for before. I then search for the same model and look at places like eBay, Gumtree, FB market place, CeX and sometimes AliExpress to understand how much a product goes for in a used market and if it’s significantly cheaper and in good condition I usually go for the second hand option.

In the above mentioned my preferences are eBay and CeX because they offer buyer protection in case things go wrong:

eBay

You can make offers to get a cheaper deal and sometimes there might be a random promo code you can use that gives you an extra 5-20% off. An example I bought a brand new Meta Rayban Wayfarers Gen 2 for £217. The sellers feedback was good and it was legit, they had multiple in stock (I know they go for over £400 retail price so don’t quite know how it was priced that well!). I used eBay as well to buy used but good condition HDDs for my NAS storage and I also used CeX for this. Just be wary of those listings where the seller has low to no feedback score, those listings are often priced where it is too good to be true so avoid that.

CeX

If I know I am definitely going to buy something there and there is more than one item in stock for what I’m after (if there isn’t I will contact customer service to make sure it’s in stock) I will go to cardyard.co.uk and buy vouchers to save an extra 10%, e.g if something costs £300 at CeX I will buy £300 worth of vouchers at CardYard for £270, £30 easily saved. The risk of CeX is their ads don’t really show the product you’re buying, they just grade it A B or C and that can be subjective so just be wary of that. My experiences with them have mainly been good, the NAS HDD I bought from them was almost brand new. They also offer a 5 year warranty on most products.

Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace

I am a bit more cautious when it comes to buying phones even though I used to buy, sell and even swap phones on Gumtree A LOT in my teen years but tablets and consoles I am more comfortable with now as they are easier to test without the fear of them getting blocked. You can definitely get some really good deals on these platforms and there many good people on there but ask the seller a few questions, how quick and how professional and reasonable they are in their responses can help to quickly differentiate between a good and bad seller. Be wary a lot of people write bad ads with vague details and if they are short with their responses I avoid them. If in any doubt do ask if the seller is willing to bring ID when you meet, that definitely scares the dodgy ones away. I usually get really good deals on furniture and kids stuff here and I did also buy a car listed on Gumtree which is still running fine..

AliExpress

I mentioned in my last post about how I got a Lenovo idea tab pro 256gb model for £175, the Chinese version called Xiaoxin which is the same thing (global version retails today at Amazon still at £350) and then a friend of mine did one better and got the 128gb model weeks later for about £105. For certain Chinese manufactured products checking AliExpress is the way to go, yes it might take a bit longer to receive but the savings can be significant. How did that friend strike gold here for the 128gb model? They timed the purchase right, better than I did. There were multiple promos running at once and it’s not a one off thing as I saw them running again recently. They purchased when:

1. It was ‘brand day’ promo they run for official brands, they also had the get £24 off if you spend £180 or more promo (or something like that)

2. TopCashBack had a 20% cashback offer on top of that

3. Paypal also had this AliExpress promo where if you use it to pay you’d save £12

4. Finally when any items are over £135 the customs cost is taken off and has to be paid when the item reaches the country except on this occasions that didn’t happen for them so they saved that cost (well that’s what they told me, I’ve seen Reddit forum discussions on these where people request for item values to be lowered to avoid paying - don’t shoot the messenger!).

   From 195.99 it went down to approx £105, I think it would’ve cost about £140 anyway if it went through properly which is still a very good deal. Here is the screenshot if you don’t believe me! The 20% cashback was paid a while after the purchase. This was around November last year.

Other places you may have missed

Lastly here are places where I’ve found some really good deals and for things I’ve struggled to find elsewhere. Not many people know about these online webstores like cashconverters or cashgenerators. They can have the occasional bargain, the webstore is essentially a bunch of stores who put their products on the website themselves, it isn’t centrally coordinated so prices, condition and description won’t always be consistent which can be frustrating at times. You do have to read the description carefully and double check the condition is all fine and you can email or call the store to ask questions if needed. There prices at first might seem average but there is the bargain to be had, some examples:

1. Meta Quest 3 VR Headset 512gb - I found one for £220 in very good condition

2. Dell Latitude Laptop 5440 - £187

3. Redmi Note 14 Pro 5G Phone - £140

4. Oppo X5 Lite Phone - £80

5. TP-Link AV1000 (it is a Powerline WiFi Connector in case you are wondering what the heck this is) - £20

These were purchased earlier this year, all in excellent condition, prices included delivery and overall significantly cheaper than places like eBay, Gumtree etc. They do other stuff like gaming accessories, laptops and more. What is especially useful is you have the 14 day return window and offer a 6 to 12 month warranty which gives you peace of mind. Even better you can email your offer to the store or ask for free delivery if possible (worst they can do is say no or not respond), I’ve had good success here where I’ve saved an extra 10-15% from the listed price.

Ok that is all for now, that was a nice knowledge dump to get off my head. Go now and become eagle eyed power purchasers my friends!

Who is this post for?

For the dad who has to answer the nagging demands of their kids wanting a new tablet but doesn’t want to go broke in the process, or the friend of mine who said he needs to buy a good cheap tablet for his niece but wants to keep the cost as low as possible because there’s two of them! Or just somebody who wants to get a tablet for themselves and wants to know what to look for. This isn’t for those who are looking to buy the latest iPad or the latest top spec android tablet for their kid. A moment of silence for your expenses. Lastly random tip - tablet cameras aren’t usually great and don’t really need to be, they aren’t really that practical for doing photography or making videos.

What to keep in mind?

Tablets as we all know are good for media consumption, playing games, watching videos and browsing on a bigger screen. It is I think the lesser of the two evils vs a phone because the size makes it impractical to carry around everywhere and it is easier to manage and to spot when it’s being used by your kids. I think there’s two directions you can go when buying a good value tablet, there is the upper mid range which is the level below top spec but the price point tend to be a lot better or the super good value budget range where you just need a cheap tablet good enough to run the basic games and functions for a few years. I recommend use GSMArena.com if you want to find full specs or ask any decent AI like Gemini is ‘X’ tablet (one you are considering) better or as good as ‘Y’ tablet ( I’ve listed below)

The cheap and cheerful benchmarks minimum benchmarks

RAM memory - it should be a minimum of 6gb to operate multiple apps smoothly, you can get away with 4gb RAM if you’re certain the usage won’t be moderately heavy but 6gb will reduce the likelihood of your kid complaining the tablet is too slow in the future or maybe you get a 4gb one because you want their experience to be limited, now that could be a genius power move.

Android - minimum version should be Android 12, I think a lot of affordable tablets now go above this.

Processor - the engine that completes the tasks. All phones and should have an octa-core processor, don’t be getting quad core, it will be either super slow or super old.

Chipset - Snapdragon 685 or Mediatek Helio G99 (6 nm)

An example and one I’ve experienced as I’ve sourced it for my nephew/nieces: Honor Pad X9a. The Redmi Pad is an alternative and there are newer models now.

Price: around £100 - potentially below if you can find a good used deal (my next post will focus on that)

The upper mid range end minimum benchmarks

All of the above

Chipset - Snapdragon 860

Device example - Xiaomi pad 5 to 7 models

Price range £120-240

If you're interested in an iPad only I'm convinced a used one from 3 years ago will do a solid job today. You’ll find a lot of tablets from 2022 onwards have reasonably good specs, be cautious to not buy the absolute cheapest ones from retail shops though as those specs tend to be rubbish. Anyway I think if you follow the above advice, do a bit of research you'll know what's good or not.

My own usage and what's coming next

I have personally owned a Xiaomi Pad 5 quite a few years back but still think it would do a good job today, I now have the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro 256gb version (Chinese version), I'll leave you to research the specs. It is a good size with a 12.7 inch screen, ot takes a memory card so I added a 512gb card and my main use case for it is essentially a portable digital album gallery to store, view pictures and videos and to edit vlogs (when I eventually get around to it!) so I made sure the processor was a good one for that purpose. More impressively I got this tablet brand new last year for about £175 from AliExpress, the Amazon price today is £350 and then a fried of mine did one better and got the 128gb version for about £105! I say about because it came about via various discounts timed to perfection.

That is all for now, I will be publishing the next blog shortly after this one. You should now have a good idea about what specs a good older phone or tablet should reach. You might be wondering ok great you’ve hyped me up well enough but now where do I find these older gen devices?? I’ve got you, don’t worry! The next post though will be about where and how to shop for good deals to bag some bargains!

Who is this post for?

This post is focused on lower cost and slightly older phones and how exactly to identify if a phone is actually good or not so if you're looking to save and get more for your money (as all Dads do) this is for you. This post will focus on some key specs to look out for to make sure you don't waste your money buying a crap phone, nobody wants that. I will be following up with a post on the same topic but for tablets followed by a post on where and how to shop around to find good deals.

So this is for you if are needing to buy yourself a good cost effective phone or a phone for your teenage kid or younger sibling or any relative who is a standard user, by that I mean they are your typical casual users i.e. use a phone for your usual shopping apps, WhatsApp, YouTube, standard photos and games etc and that they aren't specialist or power users needing a phone to do some high level photography or for super heavy usage.

This post might not be for you if you’re a tech whizz who knows all this and more or if your teenage kid wants you to buy them the latest iPhone Pro Max… Good luck with that one! Although I will do a later post on the Xiaomi Poco X8 Pro Max which essentially is a ~£300 phone that punches well above it's weight and competes with the latest top flagship phones.

Let's get started

First things first where do you find the specs for phones? Is there an information source that breaks it all down and lets you compare? Yes my friends there is one - GSMArena.com this is the website I have been using for over a decade and has every little spec detailed, very helpful. Secondly with AI advancing, LLMs like Google Gemini or ChatGPT can help you to get quick answers and comparisons too so feel free to use that to help e.g. you can ask is ‘X’ processor on this phone as good as ‘Y’ processor or is ‘X’ phone better than ‘Y’ phone that I will list below. If you can understand the specs it will help you figure out what phone is good and what phone to avoid to get more for your money.

What Specs to look out for? Here are my basic benchmarks, anything above this is better.

RAM memory - this is like a phones brain capacity to multitask. (As a father I feel like I need a RAM memory upgrade - the tasks never stop!)

It should be a minimum of 6gb to operate multiple apps smoothly. Anything less and the phone will struggle, an example is the redmi note 10 I once tried had a 3gb RAM and whenever you loaded up a few apps it would go so slow and crash, ironically the previous version redmi note 9 had 4gb RAM and was a lot smoother, talk about a downgrade!

Android version if shopping for an android phone - minimum version should be Android 12.

Processor - the engine that completes the tasks. All phones and should have an octa-core processor (pretty much all of them do now), but you definitely should NOT be using a phone that operates on a quad core processor.

Chipset - for simplicity I will focus on 2 popular android chipsets, the Snapdragon and MediaTek Dimensity processors. If you're inclined to go for a google pixel go for G2 or above. If you're an iPhone user A15 or above should do you good.

Snapdragon

For Snapdragon - the 765G - 5G was an early midrange chipset from around 2021 that included 5G compatibility so this should be your baseline minimum. It will still perform solidly today for your typical use case.

Device example - Oppo X3 Lite and Xiaomi Poco F2 Pro

If you're going for the higher range chipsets then the lowest one you'd want is the Snapdragon - 865 - 5G again the first higher range with 5G compatibility and came out around 2021. It will still perform very smoothly today.

Device examples - Oppo X3 Neo and Samsung galaxy S20 FE

MediaTek Dimensity Chipsets*

Mid range that has 5G compatibility:

Dimensity 900 - example Oppo X5 Lite

Higher range which will inevitably have 5G compatibility

Dimensity 1200 - example OnePlus Nord 2 and Xiaomi 11T

*The ones listed above are chipsets from around 2021, MediaTek from 2023 changed how they name their newer chipsets which can sound confusing but to simplify it, anything that is in the 7000 series or above is typically good enough e.g. Xiaomi Redmi Note 14 Pro 5G has a dimensity 7300 ultra processor, their most premium processors is the 9000 series.

Internal storage memory - if it's for a very simple user who won't be taking lots of photos 64gb could suffice but I think 128gb should be the minimum memory you look for unless the phone has a memory card slot.

Battery - 4000MaH should be the minimum for android.

Camera - This one is subjective as higher megapixels doesn't necessarily mean better quality images, phone cameras also have multiple cameras. Most phones have decent enough cameras now for ordinary photography which you can edit and enhance if needed on photo editor apps. On GSMArena they have reviews for most phones where you can look at camera quality. If camera quality and photography is an absolute top priority then I will say the Pixel 7 should be a benchmark as the quality of its camera is pretty good. I'd ask Google Gemini a question like Is ‘X phone’ camera as good as the Pixel 7’s? That will give you an answer or a starting point to research.

You may stop here now and go do some research with this new knowledge you now have. Any questions or comments or if you just want to criticise what I wrote, feel free to post below!

Otherwise my final thoughts below if you care to know:

I appreciate some of you might be thinking this is too much to figure out but I think it's worthwhile given you will buying a phone multiple times in your life and especially if you're a dad, you will be buying more than one. Getting clued up will increase your purchasing power and save you money. Phones are more reliable these days too so it's not usually a case you buy a used phone and suddenly it dies a few months later. I will also caveat this and say when I say used phones I don't mean ones scratched up in bad condition, I mean ones that are still in good condition and there are plenty out there.

For the average casual user phones haven't changed a lot in terms of new features that make a big difference, I mean aside from the folding screens but they still don't add much dad practicality for me, they are heavier and more fragile, I'd be worried if my kid grabbed that off me especially considering how much they cost.

For me it has mainly been refined improvements that's been happening over the years, things like the camera, processors and screen quality have advanced and become more optimised which is useful but it’s all predictable and hardly groundbreaking. Some useful physical things have been removed in newer phones if anything such as removable batteries, 3.5mm headphone jack and memory card slots to expand storage. Maybe bringing back removable or swappable batteries could be a new feature again on these phones? Or some of those advanced health monitoring features you can get on smartwatches could be embedded but perhaps that's a bit too much as phones are very powerful tools now we all rely on heavily, having some separation might actually be a good thing although I would like to see some style variation return. Around 2010 you’d have slide phones, flip phones, walkman phones and phones with keyboards! Styles would be different and each year you'd actually look forward to something new and different.

Back to today the flagships and even mid range phones from up to 3-5 years ago will still perform very well today (and for years to come) and those can be snapped up for good prices in the £100-250 price range; good value for your money.

The marketing and ads today makes you believe they will be inadequate but I guess it’s no surprise that's how they make sales. I think the new phones are very overpowered for the casual user. Does your teenage kid really need a £1200 iPhone 17 pro max to see their acne clearly on the selfie camera or to mask it with the beautify feature? Older phones can do that at a fraction of the price!

Hello Friend, are you there or am I just talking to myself?

Ok really I just wanted to open this blog with a Mr Robot reference and I am most likely talking to myself because this is the first post and I have no subscribers yet.

DadsShopTech - what is the why? To help dads buy the right tech at the right price, to give them one less thing to worry about or one less thing to figure out.

As chief problem solvers, chief fixers of everything, chief technology officers, chief finance officers and chief binmen of the household we have a lot of roles to carry alongside our day jobs. There is a lot to figure out when it comes to buying tech, is this model any good? Is this a good deal? How do I know I’m getting a good deal to begin with? A lot of questions not withstanding that there is enough weight we already carry on our minds as we worry and think about many things to be the guardian protectors that provide a warm home and a safe space for our family’s to thrive.

Things are getting more and more expensive and that includes most of tech. What the earlier iPhones used to cost brand new Vs what they cost now illustrates that, and their battery life is still crap! The pressure to buy the latest tech doesn’t serve anyone well either especially when you consider the price depreciation. I am an advocate for buying good value tech and 2nd hand tech. There is a lot of good quality stuff out there and the amount you can save can be significant. If you’re having to buy for yourself and household members the costs adds up! It is a more sustainable practise in what is a hyper consumerist world that not only tells you to keep buying the latest and ‘greatest’ but tries to attach a sense of status and identity to it at the cost of your wallet!

How do I aim to help?

By sharing tips on what things to look out for in a phone for example, things like the processors, the chipsets, RAM etc. I will also share my purchase experiences of various different pieces of tech and the practical the value they have added to dad life, this includes where I’ve purchased things and where I have got some really good deals and saved money. The type of tech will include phones, tablets, smartwatches, smart glasses and things like setting up a podcast, a NAS system and my family vlogging kit.

The values I will keep in mind: practicality, cost effectiveness and elegance are the way my priorities are ordered when it comes to purchasing tech and my recommendations will be shared with that in mind. Honesty too, I will aim to mention the drawbacks.

You can stop reading here as the above is the essential read, the rest of this will be about my expertise and experience in this area which you are welcome to read on.

My main speciality is phones and tablets. I used to flip second hand phones as a teenager, I would analyse prices on various sites like eBay, CeX, Gumtree to find good deals, sometimes I’d trade devices for multiple older devices and then sell those on. I would use the profits to fund my driving lessons and terrible fashion choices. It got to a point where I could predict the depreciation of iPhones myself. (until they completely inflated their prices up!)

I also went on to work at a phone shop EE, I felt like I’d be a natural here, all that technical knowledge and experience selling phones I thought yeah I could absolutely smash it here… but reality hit me quickly and I discovered sales wasn’t about having all the technical knowledge but rather how you package and sell to people, most of whom were the uninitiated here, I thought they would be able to spot some of these terrible deals a mile away but no, to my shock they were none the wiser, they were just simple buyers who didn’t have the technical knowledge I did. If it was any consolation my customer service was pretty good, I would often fix issues and even scored the highest on the mystery shop score in the region so I was good at something at least. Perhaps my consideration and level of customer service was too high, I only liked selling good tech, I couldn’t morally sell a phone or tablet to people that I thought was crap!

I ended up leaving shortly after as there were some unethical practises I saw among commission hungry colleagues that would take advantage of simple buyers who didn’t know better. It actually got to a point where I would advise people to not buy certain contracts that were being pushed which sucked for my commission and sales numbers but I guess that sets me up well for this blog. I’m aware most dads are simple buyers I can try to help when it comes to tech and considering as dads we often have to foot the bill for most things, the cost of getting it wrong can impact us more so I feel more strongly about serving dads here.

The buying of tech continued quietly over the years, it was just for myself or my family where I would find good deals for things like phones, laptops and tablets. I also went into podcasting, vlogging and trying wearable tech for myself through various trial and error. Recently feeling a bit bored of corporate life I thought why not start the buying and selling again and see where it goes? Perhaps I can combine my reflective insights with my customer service skills and technical knowledge again to sell good quality stuff and make Dads more informed about buying tech. I changed my eBay name in that excitement to DadsShopTech and then thought let me go even further and explore my creative outlet and start a blog to see if this resonates with anybody and try to add some value.

Where will this lead?

Well this will either die in a few months time or hopefully lead to a community of fathers that might share their own hacks, advice and even contribute to this blog with their own posts. It might lead to me reviewing more things down the line if there is demand. At the very least it will be a therapeutic creative outlet for me which could help a few people.

If you’re still here reading this, I salute you friend, thank you.