Would You Still Want It in Three Years? Six Questions That Sort Good Tech From Gadget Tat
Black Friday lands on 27 November 2026, and the run-up has already begun: fake countdown timers, 'was £249, now £149' badges that have been that price since August, and an inbox full of urgency. None of that is the real problem. The real problem is the ninety seconds before you tap Buy, when a feature list does the thinking for you.
Here is a shorter way to decide. Six questions, each scored 0, 1 or 2, for a maximum of 12. We call it the purity test — partly because the site is called TechyPure, mostly because it strips a purchase back to what actually matters once the unboxing glow has worn off.
Twelve points is a good buy. Ten or eleven is a sensible buy. Seven to nine means sleep on it and see whether you still care on Tuesday. Six or below, and the discount is doing the deciding, not you.
1. Can it be repaired — and who does the fixing?
Score 2 if a screen or battery can be swapped at a sensible price by a shop on your high street, 1 if it needs a manufacturer-approved repairer, 0 if it is glued shut with a battery you cannot source.
This is where cheap tech quietly stops being cheap. A £35 pair of wireless earbuds with a sealed battery is a disposable item wearing a gadget costume; if it survives two years you have spent £17.50 a year on something you will eventually bin. A phone with a replaceable battery and a published parts list can run for five or six years, which is why the per-year maths often flips in favour of the pricier box.
Check before you buy: does the manufacturer sell spares to the public? Is there a published teardown score? You also have rights under the Consumer Rights Act — goods must be of satisfactory quality and last a reasonable time — but a repair you can actually get done beats a right you have to argue about on the phone.
2. How long will it get security updates?
Score 2 for five years or more, 1 for three or four, 0 if the answer is not published anywhere.
This is the most overlooked number in technology. A £180 Android tablet that stops receiving patches after 18 months is not a bargain, it is a security liability with a screen. The better end of the market has shifted: several big Android makers now promise seven years of updates on mid-range and flagship phones, and Apple still supports handsets well past their fifth birthday.
Where it falls apart is the cheap end of the smart home — video doorbells, baby monitors, budget cameras, cut-price streaming sticks. Brands discontinue apps without warning and the hardware becomes an ornament. If a manufacturer will not say how long it will support the product, that silence is the answer.
3. What does it want from me?
Score 2 if it works fully without an account, 1 if an account is required but the data appetite is modest, 0 if the app is compulsory and the cloud is the only place your footage or files can live.
Read that again as a question about ownership. If the feed from your doorbell can only be viewed through someone else's server, you do not own a doorbell — you rent access to one. Local recording, from a memory card to a home hub, is usually worth paying a little extra for.
Then skim the privacy policy for the phrase 'third parties'. You do not need to read the whole thing. You just need to know whether you are the business model.
4. What does it cost to keep running after month one?
Score 2 if there are no ongoing costs, 1 if consumables are cheap and optional, 0 if a subscription is needed for the features printed on the box.
This trap is everywhere in smart home kit. A £49 camera with a £4.99 monthly cloud plan costs about £109 in year one and £169 by year three. Add a second camera and it doubles. Suddenly the 'cheap' system costs more than the one you nearly bought, the one with proper local storage.
The same maths applies to printers and their ink, robot vacuums and their bags and filters, water filters, and cloud storage tiers that creep upwards as your photo library grows. Work out the three-year total, not the shelf price.
5. What will it be worth when you are bored of it?
Score 2 if there is a healthy second-hand market, 1 if trade-in values are modest, 0 if nobody wants it.
This is not about flipping gadgets for profit. It is about the exit cost. Popular phones hold value well enough that a trade-in covers a chunk of the next one; obscure tablets and own-brand doorbells are worth close to nothing the moment the box is opened. Two minutes on a sold-listings search, or a quick trade-in quote, tells you how the rest of the country rates the thing.
6. Would you buy it at full price next Tuesday?
Score 2 if yes, 1 if you would wait for a sale, 0 if the only reason you are looking is the timer reading 00:14:59.
This is the anti-deal question, and it saves the most money of the six. A discount on something you did not want is not a saving. If the honest answer is that you would not look twice at £199, then £129 has not changed the product — it has changed your judgement.
The whole test on one screen
Open your notes app and write six lines, scoring each as you go. Total it. That is it — no spreadsheet, no comparison site, no forty-minute video review. If you want to be thorough, jot the three-year running cost beside the score, because that number tends to end arguments with yourself.
Two worked examples
A mid-range Android phone with seven years of updates, a sensibly priced battery replacement, no compulsory subscription and a strong second-hand market scores 10 or 11. It is not exciting. It is the correct buy.
A £39 smart doorbell with a mandatory £4.99 cloud plan, no local storage, an unpublished update policy and no resale value scores 2 at best. Over three years it costs roughly £219 — more than a mid-range alternative with local recording — and it will likely be e-waste before the decade is out.
Where the test is too much
Do not run this over a £15 charging cable. The purity test is for purchases where getting it wrong stings: phones, laptops, tellies, robot vacuums, anything that plugs in and phones home. For the small stuff, buy the cheap one and get on with your day.
The Black Friday version
Note the price today, before the banners go up. Check a price-history tool rather than trusting the 'was' figure on the badge. And if a deal nudges a gadget over your line, ask question six once more. The nice thing about a 45-second checklist is that it works just as well in a queue at 11pm as it does on a quiet Sunday morning.
