5 things to consider before buying new electronics in 2025

It’s easy to be swept up in the allure of new things. A large part of the job of writing about consumer technology is anticipating the future: looking at upcoming releases, checking in on in-development products, and figuring out what’s worth your time. But that also makes it easy to miss how good we have it right now.

You can already have a great experience with an older smartphone, tablet, or laptop — possibly even the one you own right now. And both the last few years of hardware advancements and the current uncertainty around how much any electronics are going to cost in a few weeks, let alone months or years, have made things clear. You don’t need to buy them new. In fact, here are five reasons you’re better off not buying a new smartphone, tablet, or laptop.

1 Tariffs will make everything more expensive

Some devices just won’t be offered anymore

Pocket-lint / Nintendo

Electronics are inherently global products. They don’t exist without people and companies around the world working together to build them, and they rely on materials from just as many places. As publications like 404 Media have explained, you can’t just build an iPhone in the US because you want to. Manufacturing just doesn’t work like that. The reality that your smartphone “takes a village” comes bundled with the fact that they’re highly dependent on imports, made in one place and shipped to another to be sold.

Imports are also the exact thing the Trump administration has decided to punish in the US, by placing exorbitant tariffs (fees to import something) on products from all over the world. At the time of writing, some of those tariffs have been paused, but China, one of the countries that manufactures a large quantity of tech products, is still severely impacted. There have already been immediate impacts, like DIY laptop-maker Framework pausing sales on some of its cheapest computers, Razer ending direct sales of its laptops in the US, and Nintendo delaying pre-orders of the Switch 2.

Not every company will stop sales; some will choose to pass on the extra cost to their customers by implementing higher prices. For that reason alone, it’s safer and cheaper to buy something you can already get without importing, which usually means used electronics.

2 Support for DIY repair continues to grow

It’s getting easier to hold on to devices for longer

The last decade of consumer technology has been defined by beautiful, powerful devices that, because of their designs, are much harder to repair than they should be. Most smartphone, tablet, and laptop makers would prefer to strip your broken device for parts and get you to buy an entirely new one whenever you need a replacement. At least until people started to push back.

Successful campaigns in California and Minnesota have gotten laws passed that require companies to provide ways for products to be repaired by their owners, rather than the company that sold the product in the first place. This “right to repair” movement only becomes more important when it seems like your ability to buy new things might change. Because of these laws, companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Google support one form or another of official self-repair programs. The process is far from perfect, but it’s vastly better than it was before. That makes it a lot easier to recommend keeping the laptop you have now, in the hopes that you can keep it working for a little bit longer.

Related

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3 Most new features are software-based

The best apps are in your browser

Apple