15 Of The Worst Tech Gadgets We’ve Ever Seen

We are really spoiled for wonderful tech. In 2025 alone, we had the next-generation RingConn Gen 2 to begin off the 12 months, Nintendo’s long-awaited Switch 2 in the summertime, and the AirPods Pro 3 earlier than Christmas. But we additionally had some stinkers. Remember the iPhone Air? The tech {industry} has to hedge its bets to innovate, so it is value remembering the occasions when it obtained issues mistaken.

When utilizing the phrase “worst,” we imply false guarantees, lies in advertising and marketing, and profoundly underwhelming releases; merchandise that do such a poor job at fixing the “problem” they had been after that you simply’re higher off with out them; and, in fact, poorly designed merchandise which are both deeply problematic or just dangerous. We’re additionally contemplating something that had horrendous long-term help, repairability, or worth for cash.

This record is under no circumstances complete or authoritative. Take it with a grain of salt. These are 15 of the worst tech devices the tech {industry} has ever produced.

Theranos is textbook tech fraud that landed its founder Elizabeth Holmes an 11-year jail sentence. Blood laboratory assessments did (and do) famously require vials of blood and take ages to conduct. Theranos promised to vary that with the Edison machine, a tool that may run the entire gamut in file time whereas requiring solely a finger prick as an alternative of a scary needle. A really sci-fi pitch that, if it hadn’t been a top-to-bottom swindle, would have utterly shifted the medical panorama.

What’s fascinating about Theranos is how lengthy Holmes stored it going. Things kicked off in 2003, however even a decade later, it was securing tens of millions of {dollars} in investor cash and signing offers with big-name corporations. Circa 2014, the sharks had been already circling. A mix of investigative reporting, cancelled enterprise offers, FDA investigations, and SEC fees proved the Edison machine may blow loads of smoke, however not magically take a look at blood. Even after an ungodly quantity of dangerous press and literal medical license bans, Holmes stored at it. Fraud fees got here in 2018, and by then, the jig was nicely and really up.

Even at present, Theranos is a reminder of how simply we now have been (and may be) fooled by lofty tech-industry guarantees. You’d suppose we would study. But wanting on the present AI bubble, maybe not.

If Marques Brownlee dubs your system “the worst product I’ve ever reviewed,” you’re in for it, my pal. In the unique video demonstration, the Humane AI Pin was seemingly a breakthrough within the human-device interface. Put the camera-enabled pin in your shirt, and have one of the best of a smartphone with out breaking real-world immersion. On the floor, it isn’t a nasty idea. The execution in 2024, nevertheless, confirmed in any other case.

Reviews eviscerated the Humane AI Pin upon launch. Effectively no side of the Pin saved it; not the user-voice assistant interplay, not the gesture-first projector display, not the digicam, not even the battery life. Heck, even iFixit could not discover a saving grace on the repairability entrance. Perhaps probably the most damning personal objective was the CEO testing the Pin in individual with YouTuber Mrwhosetheboss. The CEO appears to be struggling because the Pin fails to carry out even in splendid circumstances.

Even if Humane had one way or the other resolved its points, it was superfluous in a world the place everybody has a smartphone. People returned their Pins quicker than Humane may promote them, and Humane unceremoniously kiboshed the entire thing in 2025 earlier than HP made the head-scratching choice to amass it. To Humane’s credit score, it is seemingly we’ll sometime attain a way forward for screenless AI assistants, however not at present.

The Rabbit R1 inhabits roughly the identical market because the Humane AI Pin: secondary, AI-first gadgets meant to simplify digital actions. The Rabbit R1’s large promoting level was doing something you wished in your apps, subscription-free, plus AI options like transcription, picture recognition, and so forth. For instance, slightly than opening up the Walmart app and manually ordering groceries, Rabbit would intelligently determine learn how to do it for you.

Rabbit R1 launch critiques sank the ship quick. Across the board, early customers slammed the system for falling far in need of the mark. It wasn’t as dangerous because the Humane AI Pin, however its use circumstances had been extra gimmicks than game-changers. Marques Brownlee’s assessment, titled “Barely Reviewable,” ought to be sufficient.

Interestingly, the Rabbit R1 did not vanish right into a puff of chapter. Year-after-yearreviews vindicated it, with caveats. You can nonetheless purchase one. While Rabbit OS 2 is a night-and-day enchancment that may really do issues, we as soon as once more have a state of affairs the place your smartphone does principally all the pieces the Rabbit R1 can.

The pitch for Juicero was a one-button juicer. You’d purchase it for $699 (later discounted to $399), “subscribe” to common deliveries of the corporate’s proprietary cold-press packs (costing $5-8 a chunk), and whammo, contemporary juice. Expensive, nevertheless it’s a tool that would not be far-fetched amongst area of interest well being lovers who already spend a whole lot on powders. Then Bloomberg dropped a bombshell one-minute video.

In the video titled “Do You Need a $400 Juicer?“, Bloomberg reveals how a Juicero transforms pulp into drinkable fluid by — look forward to it — squeezing the packs. Slowly. Something you possibly can do quicker by hand and get the literal very same outcome.

It will come as no shock that Juicero joined the dinosaurs in 2017 after a whirlwind of dangerous press. In retrospect, Juicero seems like a sci-fi writer’s satirical dystopian plot system, and but, it was very actual and other people did really purchase it. We’d like to suppose that after Juicero, we would all be resistant to such blatantly sham gadgets, however we would most likely need to eat these phrases.

Remember the Amazon Dash buttons? These had been actually simply digital buttons that, when pressed, would instantly reorder a product needing common substitute. Think bathroom paper. In reality, this was an entire lineup of “intelligent” gadgets to facilitate reordering, just like the Amazon Dash Smart Shelf or the Amazon Dash Wand.

Right off the bat, there’s one thing distinctly dystopian a few large company having a button inside your personal residence that provides it cash. BBC’s Dave Lee initially thought Amazon was pulling his leg with an April Fool’s gag when the product launched in 2015.

It’s not arduous to see the issues with this. For starters, it is wasteful. Why replenish our landfills with Amazon Dash buttons if our smartphones (or Alexas) can order issues? What in case your child unintentionally presses the button? Some regulators focused the buttons for his or her misleading potential; the buttons price cash slightly than being free; however most of all, Amazon customers who had a Dash barely touched them. Amazon already makes it very simple to order from it, so we would argue nothing was misplaced.

Game streaming is commonplace, a handy method to play video video games if you do not have a console or rig. Nvidia, Xbox, Amazon, and PlayStation all supply it. At one level, Google did too with Google Stadia in 2019. It failed spectacularly. The rocky launch was plagued with technical points, a poor sport library, and a pricing technique that didn’t endear itself to customers, amongst different issues.

Google continued to make baffling choices with Stadia, reminiscent of shutting down the studios making its exclusives that may have drawn folks to the platform. A dwindling consumer base put the writing on the wall, and Stadia shut down in 2023. Perhaps it isn’t shocking, since Google’s graveyard of merchandise is filled with stuff the enormous put little effort into or appeared to neglect about.

Another lesser-known fail of Google Stadia was the controller. While the controller itself may need been tremendous to play with, repairability was a “disassembly nightmare,” within the phrases of YouTube channel Gamers Nexus. They wanted an angle grinder simply to get the controller open within the first place.

Spotify’s 2021 Car Thing was a tool meant to retrofit an older automobile for contemporary music streaming. Basically, a single-app infotainment middle to stay on the sprint, with a minimal interface for music management — touchscreen, scroll wheel, voice management, and so forth. Already you possibly can see the issue. If you may have a smartphone, why purchase this? Car Thing was rudderless with out one and did not even work nicely moreover. Pile on the truth that head models working phone-based infotainment programs like CarPlay had been rising in recognition, and you’ve got, successfully, a DOA product. Spotify stopped making Car Thing in 2022 and pulled the plug totally in 2024.

Perhaps the worst half about Car Thing was how Spotify bricked the system. It fairly actually informed clients to chuck it within the bin, slightly than simply unlocking the bootloader with one remaining replace. People had been understandably a little bit miffed. Fortunately, some enterprising customers found out learn how to repurpose it anyway. Check r/carthinghax for jailbreak guides and customized Car Thing software program.

If you solely have a look at the assessment headlines for Meta’s AI glasses, they often look optimistic. Dig a little bit deeper, although, and you will find extra nuance. Closer analyses of the Meta AI glasses (significantly the top-end $799 Ray-Ban Display) admit that, regardless of a technologically spectacular slim physique, waveguide show, and pinch-and-swipe finger-controlled neural wristband, their usefulness is … restricted.

What you get is a reminder of why VR continues to fail: an costly gimmick. The single-sided show is extremely small, may be simply washed out in brighter environments, and induces eye fatigue. There’s additionally a lot left to be desired with the promised options, and what options can be found are a traditional case of “you’re better off just doing this on your smartphone.” It general looks as if a promising step ahead for the know-how, however a beta product that is years away from changing into essential companion system, and years extra from changing your smartphone.

But that is not even what makes it one of many “worst” merchandise. What does is how all of those eyeglasses have change into the go-to for creeps who wish to movie folks in public with out their information or consent. This is Meta we’re speaking about, so it seemingly will not make any significant effort to cease this from occurring till the dangerous press and lawsuits pile up excessive sufficient.

Yet one other instance of the tech {industry} promising you the celebrities however solely delivering shiny pebbles is (we predict) Tesla Optimus. We’re not ganging up on Tesla particularly, simply utilizing it as a major instance of humanoid robots and the issues with them, significantly these with near-human proportions meant to assist or exchange us.

There is credible proof that Tesla has used deceptive data on a number of events to make these robots appear extra superior than they’re. They had been tele-operated (an individual behind-the-scenes VR controlling the bot) at a Tesla robo-taxi occasion. At the now-famous Miami occasion, a Tesla robotic collapsed after suspiciously reaching for its head, as if the VR operator was taking off their helmet. Regardless of what is going on on right here, it is arduous to place confidence in humanoids when Honda’s ASIMO got here out in 2000 and but in 2025, they will nonetheless fall over whereas simply standing nonetheless, with human help.

Even the tangible wins for humanoids, just like the one which raced in a Beijing half marathon, proceed to have a really slender scope and require loads of human help. We have to begin asking the query: Did the sci-fi authors who imagined widespread humanoids merely get their predictions mistaken? Some specialists within the discipline argue that general-purpose humanoids should not the way forward for robotics. Situation-specific, non-humanoid machines are.

In 2014, Amazon determined to take a swing on the smartphone market with the Amazon Fire Phone. Reviews discovered it to be an honest cellphone with acceptable specs for the time, and it may very well be had for under $199 with an AT&T contract. So why was the Fire Phone a whole flop? A few causes. One, its flagship characteristic — the 3D phantasm referred to as Dynamic Perspective — was a gimmick that didn’t impress or present any significant profit. Two, Fire OS was downright horrible. Reviews agreed, and Amazon misplaced large cash on it.

I can attest to why it failed as a result of once I was a poor school scholar who wanted a smartphone, I nabbed a brand-new, boxed Fire Phone off somebody for lower than $100. Both Dynamic Perspective and Fire OS had been so horrible that I leaped to void my guarantee and flash correct Android throughout the first week of proudly owning it. Even with Android, even with that steal of a value, the cellphone underwhelmed. It obtained sizzling doing nothing, the battery life was a joke, and no side redeemed it for me. Color me shocked that Amazon remains to be smarting from the failure and unwilling to strive once more.

Apple’s half-hearted foray into macOS gaming has been so lackluster that you simply actually should not purchase a MacBook for gaming. It might be content material with its 30% minimize of “Candy Crush” and “Clash of Clans” on iOS. One time, although, Apple tried console gaming. The Apple Pippin (in collaboration with Bandai) in 1996 was principally a Macintosh pc optimized to run video games off CDs. It would not final lengthy.

Pippin failed for various causes. The {hardware} was unimpressive, as was its dated working system, and its controller used a really unconventional trackball as an alternative of a thumbstick. In true Apple trend, it was Apple-taxed to a ridiculous stage earlier than the “Apple Tax” was an idea, and it did not have any video games to make the acquisition value it. In addition to those powerful promoting factors, the console was revolutionary with its web connectivity — to its detriment, since on the time the typical individual most likely did not know what the “internet” was. Apple formally dropped it the subsequent 12 months, in 1997.

The HTC First launched in 2013 for $350 was a “Facebook phone.” This wasn’t the primary or solely Facebook cellphone. Others got here earlier than it, just like the 2011 HTC Status. The cellphone ran Facebook Home, principally a Facebook UI. By default, the lock display included your Facebook notifications, and Facebook Messenger bubbles had been an integral a part of the working system, as only a few examples.

For the time, the {hardware} wasn’t dangerous. It was a decently constructed 4.3-inch cellphone that ran Android, other than a weak digicam. The most important motive it was dangerous is (you guessed it) Facebook. People had been involved about Facebook’s affect on folks by then, with research in 2013 already suggesting it was dangerous to psychological well being. Regardless, reviewers on the time discovered the Android expertise to be objectively higher when you turned Facebook Home off. Terrible gross sales sealed the deal, making this Facebook Home’s remaining, gasping breath.

Hoverboards had been an fascinating 2010s cultural phenomenon that we predict is finest left in historical past’s trash bin. The identify is a little bit of a misnomer; these had been (usually) two-wheeled micromobility stability gadgets someplace between a skateboard and a Segway. The primary motive they’re horrible and need to put on “worst” like a pink letter A is due to how harmful they’re. Unless you had a cat’s stability, you had been liable to fall off headfirst and critically injure your self. Data from CPSC confirmed a disturbing rise in accidents and fatalities as much as 2023 thanks, in no small half, to hoverboards.

Then there was hoverboards’ eagerness to catch on hearth when charging. E-scooters are simply as responsible of torching houses, however no less than (we would argue) e-scooters make it considerably more durable to unintentionally merge your head with the asphalt. Luckily, we did not have to attend for frequent sense or regulation to do away with hoverboards. It was litigious company America that did them in; Segway and Razor’s starvation for market dominance now makes it powerful to seek out one.

Google Glass was one of many extra hilarious failures from Google. The augmented actuality system appeared like one thing from Star Trek, a small, touch-and-voice-activated pc mounted on a glasses body with a teeny HUD meant to overlay messages, reminders, maps, and all that in your FOV. Perhaps a cool thought, however the parodies from the time provide you with a good suggestion of how folks felt. An SNL routine reveals how Google Glass succeeded finest in ostracizing you as a dork; a 25-second Tom Scott parody predicted the tech would make everybody run into issues.

Aside from maybe being forward of its time culturally, it was additionally forward of its time technology-wise. The real-life utilization left lots to be desired, and the corporate could not discover success for on a regular basis customers or enterprise options. But if the Meta AI Glasses are any indication, possibly we’ll see tech corporations bang their heads eternally in opposition to this explicit wall; Google is undeterred, attempting once more with Google Glass in 2026.

There have to be one thing within the water in Silicon Valley, primarily based on the tech {industry}’s obsession with camera-enabled sensible glasses. Snapchat Spectacles had been launched in 2016 at $130, meant for filming snaps hands-free. They had been bought in a novel means by way of merchandising machines referred to as Snapbot that allow you to just about “try on” the glasses earlier than shopping for.

Snapchat’s Spectacles suffered a rocky street. A poorly thought-out launch meant that for an extended whereas, you needed to be fortunate sufficient to be close to considered one of its shock pop-up sale areas to get one, and on-line gross sales began as soon as the hype was over. Hardware-wise, the glasses had poor image and video high quality, and being solely sun shades, you would be postpone utilizing them in low-light circumstances anyway. Even the reviewers that originally gushed over them admitted their enchantment was fleeting.

We’d argue that the ridiculous design most likely did not assist, and there was the perennial concern of — once more — creeps misusing Spectacles to file folks unawares. One commenter beneath Austin Evans’ impressions assessment summed it up: “If one of my male friends shows up wearing one of those, I will never speak to them again.” Spectacles had been a business failure, however Snapchat did not hand over. It tried Spectacles once more in 2024.