The packaging of consumer electronics products often sports impressively long lists of the devices’ features and functions. Product makers would like us to believe that it’s worth paying extra for each of these. In reality, while some of the add-ons and abilities ballyhooed on electronics boxes are worth a higher price, others are just gimmicks that are worth next to nothing.
Here’s how to spend your money wisely when shopping for five common consumer electronics products…
Pay extra for a high-quality lens…but not for more megapixels. Digital camera ads and packaging often trumpet a camera’s impressively high number of megapixels. More megapixels means higher resolution, but unless you blow your pictures up to poster size, 10 megapixels is all the resolution that you really need—and the vast majority of cameras offer at least 10 megapixels these days.
Rather than put your money into additional resolution that you don’t need, spend extra for a camera that features a faster lens, as measured by lens aperture, or “f-stop.” The lower a lens’ aperture, the better it gathers light, which means sharper and more natural pictures indoors and in low light.
Helpful: A camera’s lens aperture often is expressed as a range, such as f/2.0–f/22. The number to compare is the lowest one mentioned, here f/2.0. That’s the lens’ largest, or “maximum,” aperture, and remember, lower is better.
Pay extra for the smartphone with longer battery life…but not for the smartphone plan offering additional or unlimited data. Smartphones can do lots of great things, but they can’t do anything at all after their batteries die. And smartphones consume so much power that some can’t even make it through a single day of heavy use, unlike conventional cell phones, which typically have enough battery life to last for a few days or longer on a single charge. The longer your smartphone’s batteries last, the happier you are likely to be with your phone.
Examples: Smartphones that fared well in CNET’s battery-life tests…
Warning: As a rule of thumb, the battery-life estimate on a smartphone’s packaging will overestimate its actual life by around three hours.
On the other hand, the vast majority of smartphone users find that their cellular-service provider’s basic data plan—typically two gigabytes per month—more than meets their needs. You should pay extra for a data plan only if you intend to use your smartphone for large amounts of video streaming.
Pay extra for a larger HDTV or for one with a 120-hertz (Hz) refresh rate…but not for one too large for the room or for a refresh rate above 120 Hz. Bigger definitely is better when you’re buying an HDTV—but only up to a point. A larger screen creates a more immersive viewing experience, but a large HDTV can be hard to watch in a small space.
To know how large a TV to buy: Measure the distance in inches from where the HDTV will be placed to where you will sit when watching. Divide this distance by 1.5 to find the largest diagonal screen size that you can comfortably watch there. (Divide by three, as well, to find the minimum screen size that will provide something approaching an immersive viewing experience.)
Also, consider an HDTV’s refresh rate before buying. That’s the number of times per second that the image on the screen is updated. It’s worth paying extra to get a 120-Hz HDTV rather than a 60-Hz model, particularly if you watch sports. But don’t pay any extra for a refresh rate above 120 Hz. Though manufacturers often trumpet higher figures, any improvement above 120 Hz is virtually imperceptible to human sight.
Pay extra for audio and video components…not for the cables that connect them. A $400 audio or video component often is truly superior to a $200 one. But those $20 to $50 cables sold by electronics stores are no better than the cables available for $2 to $4 at Web sites such as Monoprice.com and Amazon.com.
These days, most audio and video components are connected by High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) cables—those cables that have flat metal ends that are inserted into slots on components. HDMI cables transmit digital signals. With digital, either the signal is transmitted or it isn’t. There’s no such thing as a staticky or low-quality connection, no matter what a salesperson might claim.
In other words, one HDMI cable essentially is just as good as the next regardless of the price you pay or where you buy it.
Pay extra for additional memory…but not for an upgraded graphics or audio card. More storage memory will let you save more digital content such as photos and video on your computer, but another kind of memory—random access memory (RAM)—will boost the computer’s speed and allow it to run more applications at the same time. How much RAM you need depends on how the computer will be used, but at the very least, upgrading from four to perhaps six or eight gigabytes of RAM is money very well-spent for most computer buyers.
The computer’s performance will be significantly better, and the added cost is often as little as $20 to $30 for each gigabyte that you choose to add.
Another cheaper option is to buy aftermarket RAM from an independent Internet company, such as Crucial (www.Crucial.com). You then can install it yourself (or ask a tech-savvy friend or family member to help you with it).
On the other hand, the graphics and audio that come standard in computers these days usually are sufficient for most uses. Unless you play lots of graphically intense video games, it’s probably not worth investing the $50 to $200 or more that upgrades tend to cost.
