Final Thoughts on Tech Longevity

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And increasingly, it's going to be very difficult for a broad category of people to afford I'm Rosie Garin, and you're listening to the Wirecutter Show Hey, it's Rosie Several months ago, my colleagues on the tech team here at Wirecutter began reporting on the rising costs of consumer tech products like laptops, phones, and gaming consoles By January, we had published an article on the wirecutter site called The Death of the Cheap Laptop is comoming Well, we're just a few months later, and the tech team is confidently ringing the alarm and saying that the death of the cheap laptop isn't coming. It's here It's about to get worse, and the reason behind it has a lot to do with AI I want to get a better understanding of what factors are at play, whether there's hope on the horizon and if not, whether we all need to rush out to buy the devices we need or think we may need now before prices climb higher and higher How bad is it and what can we do about it? After the break, I'll put those questions in more to my colleagues who haveve been closely tracking this. some members of Wirecutter's tech team, Caitlin McGary, Arthur Gese, and Kimber Streams. I hope you'll stick around. We'll be right back Mortgage refinancing might sound complicated. SopFI makes it easier. With refinancing options designed to fit your goals, you can explore lowering your mortgage rate, accessing cash from your home's equity with your cash out refi, or shortening your lo term. Whatever your next move, SopFI can help you find the right fit. Ready to explore refi? Visit soopFI dot com slash power Mortgages originated by SFi Bank in a member FDIC, N MLS six nine six eight hundred nine one. Terms and conditions apply. Equal housing lender This podcast is supported by MIDI Health. Are you in midlife feeling dismissed and unheard by the healthcare system? You're not alone For too long, women's midlife health issues have been trivialized and ignored. 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Visit Cella.edu to learn more Welcome back Today, we're talking about the end of the era of affordable consumer tech products. Are we there And what, if anything, can we do about it Now, as you'll hear, part of the answer is about AI, and because of that, we should note that we work for the New York Times compompany, which is suing several companies, Open AI, Microsoft, and Perplexity over alleged copyright violations. With that said, joining me to break it down are three of my colleagues who have written and reported extensively on the subject Caitlin McGarary Senior editor on our tech team. Hi, thanks for having us. Arthur Geese, supervising editor on the tech team who also covers video games and hardware. Nice to be back. And Kimber Streams, senior staff writer, covering laptops. Welcome. Hello, hello This might be a slightly sad, a conversation tinged with sadness might be fair to say. But let's just jump right in. what we try and do on the show is service. And so I want to make sure that they're in addition to sort of talking about what's happening. We're also talking about what if any recourse there is for folks listening. So Caitlin, I want to start with you. What's the headline and how should the average person be thinking about these price increases that you're already seeing U the headline is bad Everything is pretty bad. So How about that? I wish I could be more optimistic about it, honestly, but if I needed a new computer right now, I would be I'm pretty stressed out. I just bought a new computer about a year and a half ago and I'm planning to use it Forever, if I can. It's not good prrices are increasing, what are the components that are contributing to these hefty? price tags before we talk about where we're headed, let's talk about where we are and where we've been. Yeah. I mean, technology has never been affordable or even cheap really. likeike this is probably the cheapest technology has ever been. I mean, if you think about the earliest personal computers, Portable telephones incredibly expensive and that's because there's a lot that goes into them. I mean, you have The chip sets, the screens cameras, RAM, storage, the research and development that goes into all of that, that's just crazy expensive. Prices have been coming down a lot in recent years, and now we are seeing a reversal of that trend. And I think that's where we're getting concerned because we were hopeful that they would decrease forever. I think the sort of decrease in price over time towards tech has corresponded with this idea of indispensability technology that There was a time where cell phones were a luxury and then cell phones felt importance And now cell phones are an absolute necessity. L we can't function in most of our modern lives without them And so the democratization of tech has made them a bigger part of our lives. And I think One of the things we're most concerned about with the direction and trajectory that we're seeing on prices is that We have built a world that makes people need this stuff. And increasingly it's going to be very difficult for a broad category of people to afford Arthur, you wrote this great piece that folks should check out on the Wirecutter site called The Death of the Cheap Laptop is comoming I'm curious when this story started to pique your interest This is a question for you in regards to the show, but I'm also curious Caitlin and Kimber, when you started to see herear signs that made you concerned. I got a little worried last October as the prices of memory for PCs started to jump up And that happened concurrently with this sort of agreement that was signed between OpenAI and two of the largest manufacturers of RAM and storage that they were essentially committing up to forty percent of all RAM output for the foreseeable future As that happened, we saw just this two then three then four alarm fire in the price of certain kinds of components, specifically with RAM at first and then By the end of the year, storage prices had started to jump I was concerned and then analysts started predicting that this would have a sort of cascading effect through the entire electronics chain. By the end of the year, as we were starting to get briefed on things that would happen in twenty twenty six, companies like Dell, Lenovo and HP were're pointing very explicitly to memory pricing in a way that I'd never seen before and being more forthright than I'd ever seen that everything was going to be more expensive and buy a lot more than I'd ever seen them discuss. And I think Kimber probably has a lot more transparency on that given how much they focus on laptops. Yeah. Watching the same things that Arthur was watching last year, I bought myself a new hard drive SSD for my computer because I saw that those prices were going in that direction. And I was like, okay, I'm going to get ahead of that for myself. And then during CES in January, we started asking companies like what does the year look like? What does pricing look like? how are you thinking about For example, five hundred dollars laptops. And Kimber CES is the consumer electronics show. It happens every year in Vegas. I know you and your team are Always in attendance looking at well you tell me, what are you looking for when you all go to the conference every year? Yes, It's one of the biggest waves of tech announcements in the year where companies are announcing a bunch of products that will come out throughout the whole year. It's also a good spot to talk to companies directly and kind of find out what the trends are are in tech for the year. And I spoke to some laptop makers there and I was like, what are budget laptops going to look like this year? They effectively told me that they're not going to look this year. They were not planning to launch many, if any of them. And then since then, we've actually started seeing significant price increases on specific laptop models across whole laptop lines. For example, our former upgrade pick for Chromebooks, the Lenovo Chromebook plus fourteen was seven hundred and fifty dollars, which sounds like a lot for a Chromebook, but it's actually a pretty decent price for something that's about as nice as a MacBook air But then Lenova raised the price on that to a thousand dollars and now we're demoting it from being a pick because one thousand dollars is a lot of money to spend on a chromebook We've also seen Prices across the board from all of the laptop makers. HP increased the price of our budget Windows laptop pick from eight hundred and fifty dollars to nine hundred and fifty dollars, which makes it not really something I would consider a budget option anymore at that price Microsoft increased the prices on their surface laptops, Samsung increased the prices on their galaxy books. AsSIS launched their whole Zen book lineup and then immediately changed the prices upward on all of them by several hundred dollars Wild. I've never seen anything like that in my career. Unheard of Yeah, late last year, like the component prices started going up and from there, it was like, okay, this will affect everything that we buy this year. So when you say everything, what are we talking about? Because obviously we're talking about laptops. What else is going to be under the umbrella of things that are going to be affected by these price increases We've already seen it start to happen with phones like Samsung has raised the prices on several of their flagship phones. Video game consoles are being hit especially hard right now. Every video game console costs significantly more than it did when it launched Last time we spoke, we talked about the switch two and how the price probably go up and there was some concern that I might look stupid if it didn't. And then almost immediately after that episode went live, they announced that it would You know, it's nice to not feel like chicken Little before the sky actually falls Yeah, basically anything that has RAM in it, the priceices going up. And storage as well. storage is Yeah, we're seeing like microSD card, like little cards you put in your devices for storage. Those are increasing significantly. Oh I just bought a new camera as well, and I need a Mic or SD card for that. and I went to buy one and I was like, I guess I'm just not buying one right now. I'm just gonna rely on the internal storage because I think it was like forty bucks a couple of months ago, and now it's like one hundred fifty. And I was like, well, I'm not buying that. Yeah. These are like wild price increases. It's not just like ten do or twenty bucks Storage and RAM, Th these are important. terms that I want to just take a quick pause and make sure we explain defeine what RAM is How is it increasing? why is it increasing in price and why is that significant specifically? So RAM stands for Random excess memory, which is an album that was released by DefPunk in twenty thirteen. J justust kidding, it does stand for that though. So think of it like the short term memory of your computer, whereas the hard drive or the SSD is kind of the long term memory where you keep Documents and screenshots and videos and all of that So all of the programs and tabs you have open at a given time are using that RAM, kind of like you know just in your everyday life when you're on the phone, you're also reading a text and then your kid comes into the room because they need something. and then you're also trying to plan what's for dinner, but you're also daydreaming about a beach vacation all at once The more you're multitasking on your computer, the more RAM you need to do that effectively. So eight gigs is about enough to get by for simple everyday tasks, like maybe your doing half of those things in that list of many brain activities. But typically we recommend sixteen to be able to do all of that stuff comfortably. And also whenever you buy a new computer, you want it to last at least five years, especially right now. So eight gigs, sixteen gigs for computers specifically or this is also phones? like how do you think about RAM in relationship to different items? So this is for like everyday computers specifically. If you're doing heavier tasks like gaming or like video editing and stuff, even on a laptop, you will want more than that. And then phones, we have different recommendations for. Yeah, you don't need quite as much RAM on a phone Kimber RAM is getting more expensive. Why? Because the companies that make that and also storage are prioritizing selling the stuff that they're making to companies that are setting up AI servers instead of the companies who are making personal computers and phones for regular people It's a prioritization thing where the focus is on AI, not just in this country, but globally. And so that's sort of where the energy and the money is going right now versus to personersonal Consumer tech. Yes. So what does it mean? What's the impification here beyond Pices are going up. Yeah. So for regular people, it kind of means that laptops specifically, but kind of tech generally is going backwards. So talking about laptops specifically, in the past couple years, it was possible to find a passible Windows laptop under five hundred dollars with sixteen gigs of RAM. So like fast enough, comfortable enough to be doing all of the things you need to be doing on it It wasn't likely most of the laptops in that price range were still awful, but it was technically possible with a lot of time and effort to find decent laptops there Now In twenty twenty six, I'm seeing companies announce laptops with eight gigs of RAM that are starting at seven hundred dollars. That means that's the lowest price they're selling it for. and then it will be more expensive from there Decent laptops on a budget are getting real scarce. Moving to storage, what is there to say about why we're seeing pricing increases there specifically So RAM and Storage are essentially made by the same companies. and the entire market of RAM and Storage is owned primarily by three companies. There's Samsung, which many people know and SK HeynX, which are both located in South Korea And then there's Micron, which is located here in America. And that accounts for about ninety percent of both RAM and storage How how How is it that so few companies control the manufacturing of these requisite components It's really hard and really expensive to make modern storage in RAM. Like when we're talking about modern manufacturing for things like phones and computers, we're on the nanometer scale of transistor. like every chip has millions of transistors and they're nanometers wide So essentially that's real.'s real. It's so small It's just really, really expensive to build these factories and It's really expensive to maintain them. They take a lot of power, they take a lot of water And they take a lot of access to resources that are not necessarily in ready supply. companies that make this stuff We're making it at a relatively affordable pace and honestly, RAM and storage until late last year were about as affordable as we'd ever seen it And in October when openAI signed this agreement with Samsung and SK Heinix It created a sort of arms race between these huge companies to also secure their source of storage and memory. has led to more demand than there is the ability to manufacture and responding to that is something that people are trying to do to a degree, but it takes a lot of time. It's just an unprecedented change in the demand structure for this kind of stuff I imagine supply chain is an issue here tariffs We talked a lot about tariffs last year, another issue. So I'm curious, Caitlin, how do you think about tariffs playing into these across the board price increases for these tech products I mean, last year, we saw companies largely avoid raising prices the way that we have seen them raise prices this year because they had stockpiles of stuff that they had already imported. The tariffs were telegraphed months and months in advance. We basically knew they were going to happen. I personally bought a laptop because I was expecting them to happen And they just had a bunch of stuff sitting around like to be sold at current prices. So that's not actually what we're seeing here. Like this is entirely because of this explosion in demand for components that companies just weren't prepared for Are there still stockpiles that people can take advantage of or we're running low here Yeah, we're pretty much out. So every year, products are refreshed, they get new features, they become more powerful doesn't have a long shelf life. You can obviously buy like an older device that might be kicking around a Bby or on Amazon, but those devices aren't supported with software for as long as new ones. Yeah, in some ways, tariffs actually cushioned us more this year than we had hoped. When I wrote the piece back in February and March The name of the article was that the death of the cheap laptop is coming because it wasn't quite here yet. because people weret selling the tariff stock that they'd amassed last year, but that stock is mostly gone. and now what we're left with is what Kimber is describing, which are these Things that started off more expensive than they were last year and now are more expensive than they were like three months ago. And it's because The AI uptake of components is increasing, it's not reducing. it's going up Prices are definitely rising by concerning amounts, and the reason has to do with competition for the RAM and storage being manufactured now and in the future. We're going to take just a quick break and when we come back, we'll talk about the elephant in the room the factor that's most aggressively driving up the prices of our devices He I. If're listening to the wirecutter shows, stick around Funny thing about your mortgage, it kind of runs on autopilot Same payment, same rate month after month, but SfFI can help make it work harder for you. Explore refinancing options like lowering your monthly payment or tapping into your home equity for cash, so your mortgage is a better fit for your lifestyle. Take your mortgage off autopilot today. Visit SopFi d. com slash powerower Move Mortgages originated by SopFi Bank in a member FDIC N MLS six nine six eight nine one. Terms and conditions apply. equal housing lender You've never been one to settle. Stand down or stand still. You're a lifelong learner, ennergized by excellence. There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. You've got competition to outrun, momentum to build on. and your own high standards to meet Stop now? Not a chance. At Capeella University, we help you catch what you're chasing because you've always had the drive. Now, go earn the degree. Capeella University. What can't you do? Visit Cpeella.edu to learn more Reading your piece, Arthur, AI is obviously a huge factor here. Let's zoom in on AI. What role is AI playing in this b issue The way that AI responsible for this is that All memory all storage is basically made from the same same bits in the same places. and every piece of AI storage and RAM that's made is a piece of consumer AI and storage that is not made Until these companies are able to make more AI companies are just willing to pay a lot more. like they have these almost infinite while it's They're spending hundreds of billions of dollars. They're approaching more than that in some cases on buying up this stuff and not just buying it up, but buying up agreements in the future for things that aren't even manufactured yet. and that creates a really dangerous and difficult to predict supply chain situation for companies that are making stuff to sell to us. I'm thinking of the greater than less than sign you know, when you're learning algebra or whatever in elementary school, where what these AI companies is are able to offer the manufacturers is greater than even our combined wallets in terms of how much money we as consumers are able to spend on the products. You know, I would almost compare it to housing market of the last several years where people would talk about trying to find a house and someone would come in and offer double asking price and cash. And how do you compete with that? Yeah. Now imagine someone offering like triple that asking price and then saying in every house you build for the next two years, we want that. It's extremely difficult for these companies to compete and also to plan Planning is how companies like Apple, how companies like Dell are able to be competitive, how they've been able to lower prices is by leveraging these supply chain relationships with the companies that make memory, with the companies that make storage to buy a lot of their stuff for less money than they would if they were buying less of it. And thoseose relationships mean anything when companies are offering as much money as they are for their AI purposes And so it's driven prices up And the thing that worries me is that we really haven't seen bad this is going to get I think that we are staring down a very long tunnel before we see the end of it Who are some of the players in terms of companies on the AI side who are coming in and infusing all of this capital. into these manufacturing companies There's NvIidia the most valuable company on Eth. They are buying an enormous amount of RAM for their server hardware. OpenAI obviously is spending an enormous amount of money. Anthropic is another company. And then you have the more traditional tech players like Google is spending a fortune, Microsoft, Meta These companies are what are referred to as hyperscalers, which means that they are becoming much bigger than everyone else could ever conceivably try to be in order to get to a place where they can't fail. Meanwhile, companies like Apple who are a very powerful company are honestly kind of being left behind in this conversation because they're just not trying to compete in the same space And Dell, HP, all these companies that are big consumer laptop companies and consumer electronics companies just can't compete with the amounts of money that these other hyperscalers are spending. The companies that make the tech that we use are kind of making d with a much smaller slice of the pie. as far as like supply of raay and storage than they have in the past, which is Why we're seeing them launch devices with less because they're trying to make do with less in more devices in a way that people can still have any kind of computer For phones, we're seeing actually companies discontinue the lowest starting storage option So that effectively raises the price. know, if the phone used to be nine dollars ninety nine cents for the entry level storage, now it's closer to one thousandleven hundred dollars with more storage which isn't actually quite as good of a deal as it sounds when it's just the price has gone up. Soon there will be no computers. So there will be no computers and we'll be free and we'll just all go outside Ierest scp one wass a little bit liberating on the show The irony is that we're often telling folks not to buy things and if you do need to buy things, wait for a sale. And so I'm curious There are these sales events, Labor Day Prime Day for Amazon, I think is coming up Should people expect to see tech sales or deals that we can take advantage of? I hope so. I mean, frankly, we don't know in advance what the sales are going to be, but I would love to see some. Over Memorial Day, we did see a few sales on the MacBook Air. So those are kind of good everyday laptops if people need them Our deals experts did not see any significant sales during that event for Windows laptops or Chromeooks though So we're hoping to see some more of those And is that unusual? Ordinarily we would see deals on PC Yes, yes. historically, we've seen lots of price dips there and usually more aggressive ones actually than book sales. We' seen Lenovo get really aggressive with sales around holiday periods in particular They've also been some of the most aggressive price increases we've seen this year. So I wouldn't necessarily hold my breath on that But we are seeing companies like announce products and not announce the prices that will go along with them because they don't know. Because they don't know. Kimber's been dealing with this a lot. Yeah, Kimber, what does that look like in practice? It's super, super frustrating in practice. For example, I'm trying to research laptops that are inexpensive for back to school season right now. So I'm trying to figure out what Laptops are going to be around for back to school season and so far I don't have a lot of information on that front. Dell says that it's launching a new budget focused XPS thirteen and that that's launching in June. It's starting at seven hundred dollars, which is not as budget focused as I want it to be. And then Qualcom has also announced new Snapdragon C processors that the company claims is going to be in the three hundred dollars range So I'm very interested in what those are going to feel like to use We have no information on when they're going to be available right now. Right. so it's you don't know when they're going to be available. You don't know the cost of them. You don't know performance because you aren't able to get your hands on them. So there's a lot of fog around this, it seems. Yes. A lot of companies, I think, are afraid to have to announce one thing right now and then have to raise prices again, given how the first half of this year has gone where they announced some prices at the Consumer Electronics S showow in January, and then they've had to change them in the intervening months as everything has shifted. So I think that they're just choosing to be very coy and not tell anybody anything until they have to, Which makes it kind of difficult as a person who's shopping for a laptop or a person who's trying to help people shop for laptops figure out what the heck is going on and whether you're going to be able to use the word affordable in these guides or not. what are we calling affordable? Yes. so we used to recommend laptops under five hundred dollars as budget because that's what people were looking for. I don't think that exists anymore. So we've talked about shifting the kind of cap on that guide to match the MacBook No at six hundred dollars because that's a great budget laptop at a price point that we're kind of comparing everything else to. I'm just not sure what's going to exist even at six hundred dollars and below if all of these PC makers are launching things that are starting at seven hundred do. Kimber, thinking about laptops specifically, you know back to school is a huge moment Given our conversation today, would you recommend folks do their back to school tech shopping now rather than waiting Kind of depends on what you need. So if you need like a cheap MacBook, then yes, like grab the MacBook No right now. Stock is pretty good. The price is solid and there's not like huge shipping delays on it, but we also don't know if that's going to change going forward And then if you need like a higher end thing for college and you want to spend like one thousand dollars for something like Thin and Light or the MacBook Air, now is also a pretty decent time to buy something in that like thousand dollars like great battery life price range. But if you need something super cheap that's like a Chromebook or a Windows laptop under hundred dollars, there's actually not a lot of options available right now. so you might be stuck looking for something used, trying to find like a good reurb or just having to wait it out and hope that something changes between now and August Do we have recourse at all as consumers, people wanting needing to buy tech products push back against these increases? Or is it really is it the sisyphus thing where we're trying to push against the the boulder of AI and we're always going to be smaller and weaker Unfortunately that thing. The only options you really have as a consumer are if you need a computer, buy one now, especially if you can find it on sale. If there's any way that you can squeeze more life out of the thing you already have, Do that, uppdate all of your operating system and apps, clean up your storage, uninstall apps you're not using. try and make your computer that you have last as long as humanly possible you might be able to find something used. Yeah, what are your recommendations for buying used? If you need a used computer I would say avoid Craigslist, eBay, or Reddit I would kind of be a little bit softer on that stance now, given that it's kind of a getway you can get situation out there. It is possible to get a good deal on those sites if you know what you're doing, but there are a lot of ways to get scammed or tripped up by misleading listings, or end up with a PC that's just preloaded with malware if you're shopping on those sites. The best options are actually manufacturer refurbished computers. The computer maker themselves takes the laptop that someone has returned to them or is used in some kind of way They make sure that it's up to snuff, they do all of the repairs on it, and then they'll sell it to you Apple offers the same warranties that they offer on new computers. So those are going to be your best bets Lenovo and HP also offer refurbs, but they have a shorter one year warranty. And then if you can't find anything in those places, you can also shop for refurbished PCs on retailers like Best Buy, New Egg, or OWC. But in this case, refurbished is more just a fancy word for used because it's not the maker itself doing the refurb If you're shopping one of those sites, you want to look for the longest warranty you can find and you should stick to items that are in excellent, like new or very good condition. Definitely double check to make sure that you're avoiding any sketchy third party sellers on those sites and that you're purchasing directly from the retailer. so it'll say like ships from and sold by Best Buy or ships from and sold by New Egg rather than having another third party in there Okay, last words. And ideally, they will only be accepted if they are optimistic Arthur, you go first. Oh, that's me. I grew up in California, which, you know, went through like a lot of droughts And a sort of common conversation in California was sort of drought prevention and drought preparedness. and That was a discussion about how do you modify your habits and behavior to account for something that people take for granted being in short supply. And in a lot of ways, I think that that is kind of what we're looking at. and I do think that that will have plenty of negatives, but it is also an opportunity to sort of ree evvaluate your relationship to technology and how you use it and how you spend your time on it and like whether or not there are better ways for you to spend your time or more sort of efficient ways to use tech and make it last longer. And so I think