I was clearing out old tech and realized some gadgets that used to feel essential now seem totally outdated and ignored by buyers. I want help figuring out which gadget category is effectively dead, why people stopped caring, and whether any of these devices still have real value before I sell or toss them.
Standalone GPS units.
Phones killed them for most people. Google Maps, Apple Maps, Waze. Free updates, live traffic, voice search, offline maps on some apps. A $150 Garmin has to beat a thing you already carry. It doesnt.
Sales tell the story. Personal navigation devices peaked years ago, then fell off hard once smartphones took over. The category still exists, but mostly for niches. Truckers need route rules. Hikers need rugged offline gear. Boat owners use marine units.
For regular buyers, dead. Same shelf energy as compact cameras and MP3 players. Stores keep a few around, but demand is thin.
If you’re clearing old tech, I’d put dedicated sat-nav near the top of the “dead but pretending” pile. E-readers survived. Smartwatches found a lane. Standalone GPS never got back up.
I’d nominate the portable DVD player before standalone GPS, honestly.
@suenodelbosque is right that sat-nav is basically niche-only now, but portable DVD players feel even more undead to me. They still show up in stores like somebody’s aunt is keeping the whole category alive by herself. Why they died is pretty obvious:
- Tablets got cheap
- Phones got bigger
- Streaming happened
- Even for road trips, people just download stuff now
They used to be the king of ‘keep the kids quiet in the back seat’ tech. Now a beat-up iPad does that job plus ten others. The only people I still see buying DVD players are dealing with bad internet, old disc collections, or very specific travel setups.
Runner-up for me is the basic point-and-shoot camera. Not dead-dead, but spiritually? yeah. Phones ate that market alive. Not talking fancy mirrorless stuff, just the sad little compact cams collecting dust at Walmart.
So my list is:
- Portable DVD players: dead
- Cheap point-and-shoot cameras: mostly dead
- Standalone GPS: niche zombie
- MP3 players: ultra dead unless you are weirdly committed
Some gadgets didnt get replaced by a better version of themselves. They got replaced by ‘the phone, but easier.’ That usually means game over.
I’d actually push back a little on @suenodelbosque and say the most dead category is the dedicated e-reader with no ecosystem advantage.
Not all e-readers, obviously. Kindle and Kobo still have a pulse because they solve a specific problem well. But the generic “reading tablet that only does books” category feels like it’s surviving on inertia. For most buyers, a phone already handles casual reading, audiobooks, comics, and subscriptions. If a gadget only wins by being slightly easier on the eyes, that is a rough place to be.
Why it flatlined:
- phones got better screens
- tablets got lighter
- people shifted from owning files to renting access
- single-purpose gadgets lost their charm unless they are exceptional
That’s the pattern here. A category dies when convenience beats specialization.
So my dead-or-near-dead list:
- Generic e-readers: quietly dead
- Camcorders: very dead
- Portable DVD players: undead, agreed
- Basic GPS units: fleet and niche only
- Cheap point-and-shoots: hanging by a thread
Pros for ':
- simple
- focused use
- often cheaper than premium alternatives
Cons for ':
- easy to replace with a phone
- weak upgrade story
- hard to justify unless you already want that exact use case
To me, the real graveyard is full of gadgets that are not bad, just unnecessary.