What do you think of retro styled tech?

[ivo]

You know, stuff designed to look vintage but are actually made recently and usually come with modern features like USB, HDMI, Bluetooth, Micro SD card slot. I don't know if there's a name for stuff like that but I think you get what I mean. I've been seeing them alot when looking to buy vintage tech online and the tech store I usually go to has a dedicated shelf for them.

I don't really like them. For me the modern features makes it way less periodically accurate and makes it lose it's retro charm.

I also just treat modern electronics with skepticism in general because alot of them are designed to break easily, have bullshit such as installing a app, or are actually dangerous if they're exported by a factory with poor safety regulations.

I can't really think of anything else because my brain gets so foggy whenever I try to talk about this stuff.

[solinus]

When it comes to audio, a lot of retro products are cheaply and poorly made. This thing tries to be an 6 in one system and selling it within the $100 range.

However, each analog component such as speakers, record players and cassette decks must cost at least $50-$75 to be decent, (although digital parts such as the CD player and Bluetooth receiver can be made cheaply and still be fine), and by selling it to be $100, you can't expect good quality components to be used, resulting in a product that tries to do everything, but doesn't do one function particularly well. The turntable mechanism for example costs about $30.


A lot of "retro" items in general are built and sold cheap since they're basically using retro looks and nostalgia to make a quick buck (sk*uoss, anyone?) Even if they're single purpose items such as camcorders, they often use poor quality parts, and sometimes they overprice the item heavily for large profit margins and create the illusion of quality.


A note on audio product quality: Many consumer brands are more focused on profits than quality (hence the spread of poor quality Beats and Raycon products), but if you look at specialized brands for serious audio equipment such as Audio Technica, Sennheiser, FiiO, KZ, and Moondrop, they still have quality within their interest. I have had a set of cheap $20something KZ earphones that managed to last 4 years due to the replaceable cable, as cables are the part that fails first on earphones. I only stopped using them when the actual earphone connector broke on one of the earphones. I did buy Moondrop earphones (also $20 range) because they had a better earphone connector that was less fragile than KZ and sounded better, but after I lost them, I found my sister's old KZ set, replaced the broken earphone, and it's ready to work for years.


Left: KZ ZSN Pro X, Right: Moondrop Chu II

Update: Now the left side of the KZs are dying in my arms thanks to the fragile connectors. Getting the Moondrops for Xmas.

[Daniele63]

When it comes to audio, a lot of retro products are cheaply and poorly made. This thing tries to be an 6 in one system and selling it within the $100 range.

I actually considered buying one of these at some point but after some research I found out about the low quality record player that could scratch your records so I got an actual old turntable instead.
It's the same for radios you often have retro styled radios but they are actually way inferior to old radios in their build quality and performance.

[solinus]

I actually considered buying one of these at some point but after some research I found out about the low quality record player that could scratch your records so I got an actual old turntable instead.
It's the same for radios you often have retro styled radios but they are actually way inferior to old radios in their build quality and performance.

there's a huge market opportunity for high quality retro designed products!! When companies do make quality radios, they don't bother advertising the better quality parts or performance! Sangean as an example seems to make good quality radios as shown at www.reddit.com/r/Sangean_Owners/comment ... _me_radio/ and www.reddit.com/r/radio/comments/1ju3o8h ... y_a_radio/

However, this listing www.amazon.com/Sangean-WR-15WL-Table-Wo ... B00U3HH2F6 only vaguely describes the quality such as "soft and precise tuning", while this one www.amazon.com/Sangean-WR-7WL-Cabinet-B ... VY2HH?th=1 does mention technical details such as "Vernier Tuning" and "automatic switching dual mode amplifier"... technical indeed.
But at the same time, they do cost more than a common and cheap retro radio.

[lakes]

My family has a broadcast tv antenna that's like that. The thing that makes it more modern is that the signal it gets from local tv stations is digital instead of analog. Supposedly this is so that it's higher video quality. But it causes the footage to sometimes lag, randomly decease in video quality to the point where it's just pixels, & not get the video signal especially when it's bad weather.

[Daniele63]

there's a huge market opportunity for high quality retro designed products!! When companies do make quality radios, they don't bother advertising the better quality parts or performance! Sangean as an example seems to make good quality radios as shown at www.reddit.com/r/Sangean_Owners/comment ... _me_radio/ and www.reddit.com/r/radio/comments/1ju3o8h ... y_a_radio/

Yep Sangean make good radios but personally I'm more a fan of shortwave-capable radios and stuff that can listen to HAM radio but I might be getting off-topic lol. Anyways I know of a store in town that will put new radios components and put them in actual old vintage radios but he wasn't cheap.

[glaciation_trilogy]

I don't really like them. For me the modern features makes it way less periodically accurate and makes it lose it's retro charm.

I would go as far as to extend this to most 'retro' revivals in general, especially for time periods where you can go back and look at old things that are still around or archived.

[lakes]

I don't really like them. For me the modern features makes it way less periodically accurate and makes it lose it's retro charm.

I would go as far as to extend this to most 'retro' revivals in general, especially for time periods where you can go back and look at old things that are still around or archived.

Yeah i get what you're saying. I don't mind it as much with DIY web "revival" stuff though, since part of the charm for me is the creator customizing things the way they want. Granted I could see why it'd be bothersome, especially if you're using older hardware/browsers/operating systems.

[rnottelovesowls]

it goes one of two ways for me. let’s use cameras as an example. many “retro style” cameras are just cheap toys from aliexpress; in this context, “retro” is a cute way to say “bad on purpose”. however, polaroid still make their classic instant film cameras, refitted with modern tech systems, and i think that’s awesome. they’ve earned the right to be truly deemed “retro-style”

having said that, if you want retro tech, just get real retro tech from the thrift store or something. nothing wrong with that

[xrossmediabar]

Most of retro themed stuff focuses too much on the 'low-res quality' aspect. Like way too much. I have a Finepix S2980 from June 2012 (Im considering updating to something from 2013 or 15) and its probably much better then a crummy retro digicam from Kmart