Look, I'm not going to lie to you: a lot of low-end gadgets aren't exactly built to last. I'm sure everyone out there in Gizmodoland has a tale to share about the $9 faux Discman that shattered within 48 hours, or the drugstore digicam with the exploding flash. As I've written before, you're always gambling when you go the discount route—with shoddy warranties and non-existent support the rule among low-end purveyors, today's $15 MP3 player is tomorrow's paperweight.

But far be it from me to add to your blues in the dark, frigid depths of February. This week's column isn't about those myriad times the Lords of Guangdong have given me the scroogie, but rather about the low-end products that have proven stunningly resilient over the years—starting with my beloved Apex AT1302 (pictured at right). Call this my own personal Low-End Hall of Fame, a pantheon of electronics that provided me with far more bang for the buck than I ever thought possible. Read on for four favorites, and start thinking about some of your own to share.

Apex AT1302 13-inch Color TV
Date of Purchase Fall of 1999
Price $79
Backgrounder My second TV in New York, replacing an antiquated Emerson that I'd found on the street (and that only showed hues of green, rather than a full color palette). Bought it at the Circuit City on Union Square, and distinctly remember the salesman's crestfallen expression when I told him where he could shove his extended warranty (though in much nicer language, I assure you). It's been with me every since.
Bound to Happen The remote control was made out of the cheapest plastic I've encountered in all my years on Spaceship Earth; it cracked badly within a few months, and is currently occupying a few square inches worth of space at Fresh Kills Landfill. The paint's worn off the channel buttons as a result.
Why It Deserves Adulation By far the most solid 13-inch TV I've ever encountered. Yes, it weighs only slightly less than Aaron Gibson, but that means it's been great at taking punishment. It's currently wedged between my stove and my toaster, a position in which it gets spattered with grease, broiled with waves of heat, and pounded by crashing plates (though only when I'm high off the Special Brew). Still displays the same craptacular picture as back in '99; just wipe a little Windex on the screen 'round Christmastime, and this puppy should be part of the inheritance I leave the grandkids.

RCA Lyra Headphones
Date of Purchase Sometime in 2002
Price Free (see below; list price surely <$5, though)
Backgrounder Given to me by a pal who'd just purchased an ultra-cheap 64MB RCA Lyra MP3 player—can't remember how much he paid for it, but I'm willing to bet he had money left over from his $20 bill. He assumed that any headphones that would accompany such a cheap digimusic player were bound to be awful, so he bestowed them upon me, knowing that I lap up freebies like a dog just returned from the Mojave Desert.
Bound to Happen The logo paint is gone, but otherwise these earpad-style 'phones are in excellent shape—which is a lot more than I can say for the five or so Apple earbuds I've blown out listening to Raekwon with the bass kicked way the hellheck up.
Why It Deserves Adulation As indicated above, the mere fact that these headphones haven't blown is a testament to their superior craftsmanship. Also, the little plastic hooks that latch 'em onto your ears are still going strong, despite getting drenched in sweat, frozen in the New York cold, and otherwise abused over the past four-plus years. Oh, and they provide surprisingly rich sound, given that they came packaged with a decidedly low-end MP3 player in the first place.

Acomdata 80GB External Hard Drive (Firewire Compatible)
Date of Purchase April 2003
Price $49.95 (a bargain then, a possible rip-off now)
Backgrounder Bought this drive after a previous backup drive whirred, screeched, then gave up the ghost at one of the worst times possible (i.e. just as I was experiencing a rather nasty laptop meltdown). I remember being a bit skeeved out by the Acomdata brand, which has its share of haters on various e-commerce sites. But the low-end gods were looking out for me on this one.
Bound to Happen The drive's starting to make some chimp-like yelps in its old age, and I'm wondering whether it's going to flare out sooner rather than later.
Why It Deserves Adulation External hard drives are so cheap nowadays that this doesn't seem like a particularly great steal in retrospect. But at the time it was a good price and, more importantly, Firewire compatible; I was using a Sony Vaio PGC-GR390 at the time, which oddly had Firewire but no USB 2.0. The Acomdata drive is hefty and not much to look at, but it's save my hide on multiple occasions. The only question now is whether I buy another one, so I can have a backup for my backup. Or is that overly paranoid?

Sony ICF-C120 "Dream Machine" Clock Radio
Date of Purchase Can't Even Remember—1997, perhaps? Earlier?
Price Under $10, for sure
Backgrounder Purchased at a "variety store" in Washington D.C.'s Mt. Pleasant neighborhood. I was a newly minted adult at the time, with a job I had to get to—showered and dressed—by 9 a.m. I had a travel alarm clock from my days in Ireland, but wanted to wake up to the soothing sounds of WPGC ("The People's Station"). The Dream Machine seemed like the way to go.
Bound to Happen The slider on the top that toggles between off, radio, and buzzer is pretty loose, and it'll come off if you jiggle it to hard. There are also lots of crevices that have become a might dirty. Suffice to say, this isn't the sort of alarm clock you'll see showing up in too many Wallpaper spreads.
Why It Deserves Adulation This white cube's survived some seriously rough handling over the years. I'm the farthest thing from a morning person, and I've often taken my wrath out on the poor Dream Machine. But it keeps on pumping out the ear-piercing tunes every morning and, as a special bonus, it's broken in a very beneficial way—if you put the slider in just the right position, it'll buzz and radio at the same time. If that doesn't get you up, you don't deserve to be a functional member of society.

I've got others, but I'm going to end here and throw it over to y'all: got a low-end gadget that's lasted you for years, and without which your life wouldn't be complete? Mention it in comments, or better yet, send me a brief description and a picture. You're dream of seeing your $5 knock-off/off-brand gadget on Gizmodo can come true! But nothing too racy, please—this is definitely a family site.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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Essentially the same as a regular battery charger, this thing plugs into your USB port instead of the wall, which means the only people who have more USB ports free than wall sockets will want this. And if you combine it with the Battery Box, you have a stupid and inefficient way of transferring power from one set of rechargeable batteries to the other. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Thinkgeek via PopGadget]

Skin Deep

There's a classic moment early in John Carpenter's They Live in which the protagonist (ably played by "Rowdy" Roddy Piper) first obtains the Ray-Bans that reveal the aliens among us. He notices one such E.T., disguised as a dowdy fiftysomething women, applying lipstick to her lizard-like visage. "Lady," the Rowdster contemptuously snorts, "that's like putting perfume on a pig."

Little did everyone's favorite kilted wrestler know that he was neatly summarizing the decades-long design trend in low-end TV antennas, which have become ever-more impressive looking while still providing the same craptacular benefits. Come on, you know what I'm talking about—the humble rabbit ears of yore have given way to contraptions that resemble CIA listening posts from the 1960s. The skin-deep evolution of TV antennas provides an invaluable—nay, indispensable—object lesson on the psychology of low-end consumers. For those latter-day Icaruses who dare challenge the gods, that lesson is haphazardly described after the jump. PLUS: Disgruntled Brazilians sound off about the nimble-fingered Taxman!

I'm not exactly sure when set-top antennas started to take their design cues from the Hoth Planet energy cannons, but I vividly recall my own first experience with this particular segment of the low-end market. I was a freshman in college, Bill Clinton had just won the White House, and people were actually paying good money to see Home Alone 2 in the theater. Most importantly, my roommates and I couldn't get cable in our dorm room, and the factory antenna couldn't pick up much more than the local NBC affiliate. So a Radio Shack run is organized, and there we come across a set-top antenna featuring a knob-adjusted dish in lieu of a simple wire coil. It looked cool as all get out, and even worked a smidge—though you could hardly call the effects miraculous. If memory serves, we were able to get Fox and maybe one other VHF channel, but UHF was hopeless. So much for us watching Nova, like all good college students of the day.

Since then, I've had occasion to try at least half-a-dozen other futuristic-looking antennas. The vogue for radar dishes has since given way to sleeker designs, with the Jensen TV-631 being the best example. Another favorite, design-wise, is the RCA/Thompson ANT-145, which replaces the dish with a disc, one that closely resembles the naked woofer of a 1980s cabinet speaker. To the untrained eye, all of these antennas look as if they should perform a billion times better than a barebones loop-and-ears setup.

But that's really not the case, now, is it? In fact, I'd dare say that you're not going to find much better performance in a sub-$20 antenna than what's offered by the GE TV24731. Yes, there may be differences in durability, especially if you're the sort who likes to get all hopped up on Yukon Jack and throw bricks at your set. And I'll concede that I've been impressed by antenna hype sheets that make note of HDTV compatibility. But come on, if you went through the trouble of getting yourself an HDTV set, aren't you almost certainly the sort of bloke who will also spring for cable? Antennas are for those of us who are still stuck with 13-inch Apex boxes, and remain criminally deprived of access to the likes of Animal Planet.

Yet some pretty solid companies continue revamping their set-top antenna designs every few years, to make them seem increasingly fit for our Jetsons future—though they also manage the neat trick of keeping prices consistently under $20. (Good rule of thumb: If you can afford an over-$20 set-top antenna, get yourself frickin' cable, man.) So what does it all mean? Well, the obvious lesson is that, because the low-end market is largely devoid of reviews (an oversight I hope to be changing soon), us budget consumers can only judge a book by its cover. I hunted a looooooong time for an article that benchmarks rival sub-$20 TV antennas, but came up with nil. (Then again, benchmarking TV antennas is pretty hard to do, because the uncontrollable factors that affect reception—such as weather—change so suddenly, and without warning.)

But I also think the evolution of low-end TV antenna designs shows that low-end consumers are, in fact, a lot more status conscious than we're willing to admit. It may be a misguided consciousness, akin to that displayed by folks who brag about the really cool spoiler they just added to the rear of their 1989 Honda Civic. But even us cheap bastards don't enjoy being perceived as such—on some level, we're ashamed of our cheapness, whether because it indicates that we're losing in the game of life, or we're just hopeless misers. (In my case, a little from Column A, a little from Column B.) So if buying the $19 Jensen antenna will help cover up that shame a bit better than the $8 GE unit, then it's money well spent. We'll just save up the difference by eating unseasoned spaghetti for a few days.

Don't misunderstand me, though. Us low-enders remain a fiercely proud lot on oh-so-many levels. In fact, I can honestly say that I live by some of the Mr. Piper's other immortal words from They Live: "I've come here to chew bubblegum, and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum."

THE TAXMAN COMETH: Big response from south of the Equator to last week's column on Brazilian low-end electronics. Turns out I was onto something, in terms of explaining why TV sets aren't suitably cheap in Salvador de Bahia. The nation's sales taxes, I've been informers, are totally out of control—one correspondent said that they can add up to 40 percent to the street price of a product. Super ouch.

Additionally, protectionist laws preclude the importation of TVs. The native brands are instead manufactured in the Amazonian city of Manaus, which is a special economic zone in the middle of frickin' nowhere. Meanwhile, boomboxes and other small pieces of audio equipment are cheaper because so many of them are smuggled across the border from Paraguay. Let's hear it for black-market competition, the truest friend the low-end consumer will ever know.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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