Ask HN: What $500-2500 product improved your 2022

I&#x27;m not the only person saying this: getting an espresso machine was the biggest QoL improvement from one purchase I&#x27;ve ever had. Although you do have to enjoy and be excited about manually making espresso. For me I specifically wanted to go through the process (grinding, tamping, etc) since being able to vary the result, pick the coffee, etc is part of the enjoyment, so a machine that uses Nespresso pods or the like was never a consideration.<p>You don&#x27;t have to spend a lot of money really, but it is recommended to get a standalone grinder rather than a grinder+espresso combo because it means you can upgrade&#x2F;replace the parts separately. Also most of your budget should go to the grinder, not the espresso machine, since that&#x27;s the part where money gets quick returns on quality.<p>I bought a Gaggia Classic Pro machine (~425$), which is perfectly adequate if not the most attractive one, and a Sette 270wi grinder (~450$). They have been completely successful so I have no intention of upgrading.

I spent ~$2700 on a new mattress. I no longer wake up with hip or lower back pain. My sleeps are an order of magnitude better.<p>I ended up with a Tempurpedic. I spent about 2 hours trying every mattress at the store and bought the one that felt best. There’s probably a million hacks to get that mattress cheaper, but I regret nothing. One of the best purchases I’ve ever made. It also came with 2 “free” memory foam pillows, and my random neck pains are also gone.

40&quot; Dell U4021QW UltraSharp Curved Monitor. It&#x27;s a great monitor, but what really makes it amazing is the built in KVM. My personal machine is a Linux desktop with displayport, but my employer gave me a Mac laptop which I have to use for work - lovely machine, just not my preference.<p>The keyboard and mouse plug in to the monitor, the Mac plugs into the monitor by USB-C (which changes it, drives the display, and routes the keyboard and mouse there), and the desktop plugs in to the monitor&#x27;s USB and displayport connections. I can switch the full screen between machines, with keyboard and mouse following, or do picture-in-picture or split screen stuff with the input routing switchable through a reasonably decent on screen menu. It works really well.

Here&#x27;s a non-standard answer. I bought a pair of boots&#x2F;trail hikers that I like a lot. I wore them for about a week and bought 2 more pairs. (total around $600). I alternate the pairs every day so they are always dry, and they stay in the &quot;good&quot; range of broken in and useful about 3x as long. I walk trails with a baby in a backpack or pushing a stroller about 3 miles &#x2F; day and was in the habit of replacing shoes after 300-400miles, with the last hundred miles being noticeably worse than the first 300. By alternating shoes, it stays comfortable for a lot longer. it doesn&#x27;t result in longer lasting per-pair life, but does mean I can go longer between getting to the part where it sucks, and can retire individual pairs that go bad sooner. (even identical pairs seems to have dissimilar life spans)

Powerful computer, good large monitor, quiet wireless mouse and keyboard.<p>We spend so much time in front of a screen, but it’s easy to stay with old tech as it still work and do the same thing, but quality and speed matter. An improvement of a few percent pay for itself many times.<p>Choosing the best with what you work with will push you to also be the best at what you do, it serve as a yardstick to measure your work.

Some of the hobbies<p>Some of the basic (power)tools, drill, driver, saws, clamps. It&#x27;s increadible how cheaply you can start a woodworking, metalworking fabrication projects. Trick is to dedicate some time and have a big enough garage&#x2F;basement&#x2F;room. For woodworking dust is the largest limiting factor in having fun for hobby shop. For metal, its the fumes, smell. Getting into machining, with lathe&#x2F;mill requires a bit more space&#x2F;dedication but is suprisingly clean(er), so people have done it even in their apartments.<p>Also for folks in the apartment, a 3D printer (full frame based ones that could be upgraded over time) and&#x2F;or laser engraver-cutter (one of the latest diode 20-30w range) assuming you can ventilate the fumes, would get you and your kids endless fun.<p>Other than the above, for me personally, getting a good bicycle (a cyclo-cross-road type) with good all weather gear allowed me to ride anytime, anywhere and really use free time to the max (a honest recommendation, don&#x27;t bother with performanse spec and weight too much, get a wider tire bike that can go anywhere with a widest range of gears, it&#x27;s so much more rewarding). No other activity you can burn calories for 3-5 hours straight, and it helps away from a screen.

I&#x27;m going to cheat because I actually bought this in late 2021, but: my own ski equipment and a weekday season pass. I used to go maybe two or three times a year with rented equipment, which was a whole production that required extra hours to go rent and return it, and I had to plan ahead. Now I can just decide last minute to head up to the mountain for the day, so last year I went about 15 times, on track for 15-20 times this year. It&#x27;s great exercise and tons of fun.

A professional-grade musical instrument caused me to want to get better at craft, and increased my reward curve in a way previous instruments had not. In my case it was a Fender Johnny Marr Jaguar ($1900 nowadays).

Honestly a good espresso machine. Obviously it&#x27;s not the best of the best, I&#x27;m not a coffee snob&#x2F;expert, but spending $800 on a mid-tier breville espresso machine is miles ahead of the $100 espresso machine I tried a couple years ago. It&#x27;s just so much more convenient to be able to make a decent tasting hot or iced latte at home vs. going to get one.<p>Maybe some day I will really get into espresso and get $3000 machines and $1000 grinders, but who knows.

I spent a few hundreds dollars lining 2&#x2F;4 of my office’s walls with tabletops to make one huge L-shaped desk. Lovingly deemed “mega-desk,” it greatly improves my ability to work on multiple and&#x2F;or large projects. It is also the envy of every WFH person or crafter who enters my house.

The Steam Deck 512GB. It gave me a realistic pathway to replay classic games I love, while bringing AAA titles to a playable state on the go. As someone who travels pretty regularly both for work and personally, having a portable way to play games like Cyberpunk 2077, Stray, etc. as well as run emulators for Skies of Arcadia, Chrono Trigger, et al was a huge step up. The ergonomics are great, it gets fair battery life, and it works exceptionally well docked in Desktop Mode. The Steam Deck made it possible for me to reasonably game again after having missed having a proper gaming PC for a number of years.<p>M1 Macbook Pro 14&quot;. I don&#x27;t know how to entirely put it into words, but this recaptured what I loved about my MBP from 2015, and did it better in every way. I&#x27;m truly impressed with the engineering and the form factor, it just &quot;feels right&quot;, in a way that my 2017 and 2019 MBPs do not. A big piece of this is a return to the prior keyboard design, getting rid of the unnecessary touch bar, and bringing back useful features like the SD card slot (this replaced my 2015 MBP as my carry along during travel for photography). And, maybe the surprise for me above all else, is it has EXCELLENT battery life. Realistically using it for 11-14 hours on a single charge, and it&#x27;s been great at playing Mac games off Steam.<p>IV-Works AV3 Custom Ergonomic Keyboard (AV4 is now available). Getting ergonomics right for my home office has been literally life changing. On the previous thread I mentioned the Evoluent vertical mouse, and with this keyboard and that mouse, I was able to pretty much solve my thumb and wrist pain without requiring surgery. I bought into both after finally going to see a specialist about my hands and wrists, and after an adjustment period my typing speed is back to what it was beforehand, and I was able to avoid the recommended surgery. I essentially have no pain anymore, and I still get to use the heavy mechanical switches I&#x27;m used to.

A weight set.<p>I browsed Facebook Marketplace for a bit and was able to piece together a set consisting of a power rack, bench, and a couple hundred pounds of free weights for probably $600. We&#x27;re in a post-pandemic glut of home fitness equipment, so with some patience you can find gently used equipment for a fraction of the new cost.<p>I run pretty regularly, and used to swim pretty regularly, but since having kids the latter has fallen by the wayside because it&#x27;s just too difficult to coordinate between the pool&#x27;s schedule, my work schedule, and my kid&#x27;s daycare schedule.<p>While I&#x27;ve done a good job avoiding any parental and pandemic weight gain, I definitely noticed my body composition changing without regularly swimming anymore. It&#x27;s been great to start reversing that, and I forgot how much I enjoyed the post-weight lifting endorphin rush.<p>It&#x27;s been a bit humbling, though - I used to weight lift pretty regularly when I was in high school&#x2F;college and I&#x27;m a lot weaker now than I was then!

My Miele canister vacuum. I appreciate engineering perfection even in disciplines that are not my own and this is it. There’s an inexplicable joy in using a tool that flawlessly executes its job.

A Kinesis Advantage2 (almost 500 dollar in the EU, but read on). I had a flare up of wrist pain again. Decided to invest in a good ergo keyboard. Started with a Kinesis Freestyle Edge RGB (pretty good), then Kyria, Ferris Sweep (meh), and then I did what I should have done in the first place: buy a Kinesis Advantage2. It immediately felt great and after some weeks my wrist pain was gone. Concave key wells are just fantastic!<p>Since then, I also got an Advantage360 Pro (&gt; 500 in the EU) and replaced the controller of the Advantage2 with a KinT [1], so that I can program it with QMK. I can now keep similar configurations between the 2 and the 360 Pro (which uses ZMK).<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;kinx-project&#x2F;kint">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;kinx-project&#x2F;kint</a>

Ubiquiti Dream Router and a couple of WiFi 6 Access Points. Excellent WiFi is so underrated and not as common as we might think. It has allowed me to work comfortably in all corners of the house as well as outside when the weather is nice, all without skipping a beat during calls. Highly recommend setting up a proper WiFi network and looking into this more prosumer level hardware which has been rock-solid for me.

A Litter Robot 4. Automated litter boxes are easy more expensive than I thought they would be, but you just can&#x27;t put a price on not having to scoop

a hit-air motorcycle airbag vest. Cervical collar on demand, 90-100ms lag!<p>getting closer and closer to having the tech my HN username had by the day.

12kg direct drive LG washer. 2nd biggest you can get. Washing for the house has gone from an unmanageable 7-9 loads a day to 3 tops. Life changing.<p>Hercules 500 mixer and an Omni turntable. Been flogging myself as a one man band MSP the last 2 years. Got this for a self bday prez last year. Been using it to wind down and have some hangouts w my stepkids. Music is great for breaking barriers and DJing im finding is a way to keep kids in touch w music as their peers fall out of the early childhood learn X instrument phase.<p>Simple stuff but huge returns. Next up is plumbing in and getting a dishwasher.

I bought an Ecovacs DEEBOT X1 Omni. I no longer have to care about vacuuming or mopping. It auto cleans, auto water refills and has hot air drying. It runs on a schedule and I only have to clean the dirty water tank about once a week. It never gets stuck and does a good job so overall it has been a huge time saver.

I&#x27;m an avid runner and take recovery seriously, but was always skeptical of the price tag of compression therapy like the Normatec Legs recovery boots and similar products. Finally pulled the trigger last year during a sale ($700), and wow, I can&#x27;t believe I didn&#x27;t buy these much, much sooner. I use them multiple times a week. They&#x27;re surprisingly super relaxing to wear while working or watching something, and definitely feel like they help with sleep and recovery.

Sooo many folks here geeking out on their &gt; $1k espresso machines and I&#x27;m just sitting here with a burr grinder and a pour over setup for coffee. What am I missing by not drinking espresso?

A Festool dust extractor and Mirka sander.<p>Coupled with Abranet, I can now sand indoors virtually dust free. It makes doing DIY so much more pleasant. Expensive but I wish I&#x27;d bought them both earlier.

Planar magnetic headphones with large drivers, specifically Audeze LCD-2 with denser foam embouchures (ear pads). They wrap my ears in a very comfortable and isolating way; they are formidable in terms of delivering sound the way I want for the music I like; they are very responsive to EQ, hence tuneable to a lot of ears. And their downside of being heavy surprisingly aligns with pomodoro timings: if my neck is getting tired from headphones then it’s time to have a break.<p>(Another downdisde: these headphones are “open”, meaning they have no hard enclosed outer shell, so your coworkers will hear what you hear, but if you work from home and&#x2F;or buy a closed back version then they might work for you.)<p>As for all the espresso machines comments, I totally get it, but folks, might I suggest you just get an Aeropress and give it a try :)

A new bike! And while I got it on sale for 40% off, it&#x27;s sold today for ~$500. It&#x27;s obviously not a high end bike, but to be able to just jump on and ride, without adjusting, tinkering, or worrying about worn parts, is a very pleasant experience.

M1 Macbook Air. I&#x27;ve been using a 2017 MBP that heats up easily, especially when plugged to an external monitor (apparently this requires use of the discrete GPU). The new MBA is always cool and the battery life is of course tremendous. I took it on a week-long vacation and charged it twice. It also has more ports (my MBP was a base model because I didn&#x27;t want a TouchBar), which is very helpful.<p>I know the new MBPs are more powerful, and they have better connectivity. I&#x27;d love to have HDMI and SD slots, to be sure. But picked up my wife&#x27;s new MBP, I&#x27;m happy to make the feature&#x2F;weight tradeoff (and she&#x27;s jealous of my featherlight MBA!).

A bit off topic, but I bought a Burmese kitten for around $600 and now I have a best mate with me all day and apparently I’m going to live longer now xD<p>Pretty awesome breed for someone looking for a house cat. Lots of meme worthy quirks too

Huge 900mm induction cooktop. Having lots of space for pans and 400V&#x2F;16A induction was a real change from my old cooktop.

Sony ZV-1, Elgato Cam Link 4K, and a few other minor accessories (eg. lighting).<p>A huge amount of time is spent on video calls these days, and although there are more advanced webcams out there these days - a camera which is geared towards video (the ZV-1 is aimed at vlogging) will produce significantly better video for any calls you&#x27;re on.<p>Spending a little bit of time optimising your setup so that you&#x27;re the one in the call with good quality video&#x2F;audio is worth it. Get a decent camera, get a good microphone, improve your background lighting.

An AXS wireless derailleur for my mountain bike. A $600 outlay to get rid of a cable doesn’t make too much sense on its face, but I wasn’t prepared for how much it improved shifting performance.

For me there are a couple of ~1-1.5k purchases that stand out.<p>- Apple Watch: I now walk and exercise a LOT more<p>- Canon mirrorless camera. I now enjoy walking outdoors because I&#x27;m taking photos<p>- M1 - switching from a Windows desktop to a super-snappy macbook removed so many pain points I didn&#x27;t even know I had. Huge performance, mostly cool to the touch, days-long battery life means that I&#x27;m now truly <i>working</i> anywhere, for the first time ever, despite owning laptops for a long time.

Without question, the Grilla Silverbac pellet smoker. With my spouse and I at home during the day, being able to slow-smoke proteins and veggies for dinner without much hassle has resulted in a remarkable increase in the quality of my cooking. In addition, with the intense recent price increases surrounding restaurants or takeaway due to inflation, being able to cook more inexpensive foods with better results has been a huge benefit to our budget.

A really, really good coffee machine for home. Price: about $1k. You can spend more but the coffee doesn’t get better - you just get more automation.

(I just purchased the Roborock S7+ as well. It does a very good job in our home.)<p>I love my Nuobell adjustable dumbbells ($745)!<p>There are cheaper adjustable dumbbells out there, but these ones look and feel <i>so good</i>: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B0BB8D5VTW" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B0BB8D5VTW</a>

Do $150 products count? If so: an air fryer. It really cut this household&#x27;s &quot;stove time&quot; and electricity consumption down. They&#x27;re more versatile than one may think at first glance. It&#x27;s worth spending a little bit extra for one with decent capacity (e.g. 5 litres &#x2F; 1.5 kg).

Coming under 500(as I don&#x27;t think there is need for 3rd thread) but:<p>Nice big refurbished sturdy motorized desk. Nice improvement. Now I have more room to pile junk and it doesn&#x27;t wobble like slightly cheaper Ikea one. Should go get an other one as my home office is too small to have any hardware or multiple laptops and screens.<p>Anova Precision Oven, got it under 500€, but now it is certainly more than 500. Have to get more use out of it, but the steam is interesting and having app even if I hate idea of IoT is nice to see when it is at temp or even could do some programming.<p>Anova Chamber Vacuum sealer. So much better than side sealers, ordered some meat from online and packing it for freezing was a breeze. Probably also need to get around to toy with bit more things.<p>Steam Deck, nice bathroom gaming PC. Not really changed my life, but still fun toy occasionally.

~$1,500 spent on a bike, bikepacking bags, and camping equipment.<p>Going on 2-3 day bike camping trips in the summer is a blast!

A large Smart TV to replace a projector.<p>We replaced a projector in our conference room with a 65&quot; TCL Roku 4K TV. Meetings have never been better, and text is really crisp. Even in Zoom and Google Meet Meetings, it is so much easier to see and read what&#x27;s on shared screens by participants.

Electric Unicycle. For short trips and errands, it&#x27;s a super fast and effective way to zip around my area. For more recreational trips, off-roading on local trails and ravines is super fun. It feels like snowboarding around the city, and has a learning curve of a few days (like skiing). Initially, I borrowed an old one from a friend and decided to stick with it by getting my own (a fairly good one). Next up was the various safety equipment. You could spend anywhere from $1500-4000 on the unit + safety gear depending on how fancy you want to go. Even a minimal base model that&#x27;s a few years old would be totally fine.

A good shed for about £1000 from Power Sheds (UK).<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.powersheds.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.powersheds.com&#x2F;</a><p>It was a very disheartening experience looking at shed reviews from all the typical garden&#x2F;DIY suppliers in the UK and seeing all the negative reviews - really bad quality - bad materials, not fitting together etc.<p>Powersheds however had great reviews on Amazon and they proved true. A nice modular selection to get the size&#x2F;door&#x2F;roof&#x2F;window combination that you want. Putting it together was very satisfying, looks great and the extra storage space has been wonderful.

I bought a Benjamin Marauder.177 with a Lothar Walther barrel, and some paper targets. I now have a ten meter air rifle range in the basement. I like how meditative it feels, focusing on a small point in the distance.

I made two larger purchases this year that have had significant use and brought me enjoyment:<p>- A good stereo (Wharfedale Linton&#x2F;NAD Amp) - A simracing setup (Fanatec DD&#x2F;8020 Rig&#x2F;Triples)<p>I listen to music probably 60+ hours a month and watch a movie every couple days, and it&#x27;s a lot nicer not using headphones or a soundbar.<p>After using an entry-level sim wheel and pedals, I decided it would be cheaper and almost as fun to build a good rig compared to going to the track. Not to mention that I can race throughout the winter and in cars I otherwise wouldn&#x27;t be able to experience.

I have a similar experience as the OP. I got a vacuum robot (Roborock) and it does work like advertised. Vacuum and mop works so well that I almost never to mob my house manually anymore.

I bought a Sony A7R IV full frame mirrorless camera for around the top end of that range, though MSRP is higher. Completely worth it (for me) to dive deeper into photography. I absolutely love it, despite the high cost, seemed a worthwhile investment that I use frequently to provide value for myself, friends, and family. Aside from artistic expression, it&#x27;s useful to create headshots for others, photograph friend&#x27;s weddings, etc.

This was technically the end of 2021, but I got a new gaming&#x2F;workstation desktop. I have an RTX 3080 which I can make AI images with, as well as learn more about deep learning since I have a GPU handy. It also has 16 cores that come in very handy for compiling programs, I don&#x27;t have to wait anymore. Along with that, I bought an LG OLED 48 inch TV that I use as a monitor, the screen space is amazing.<p>Along with that, I paid for a solo 401k service as well as an accountant that saved me enormous amounts of money. Did you know that you can save ~$62,000 per year <i>per company</i> you work for, tax free (or deferred)? I did not, until I looked into it. That along with all my business purchases allowed me to pay a mere ~3% in taxable income from my overall income in 2021. Insane.

Sony 200-600mm f&#x2F;5.6-6.3 G OSS lens for my camera. Mostly solves the issue of being too far from whatever bird I want to take a picture of. Isn&#x27;t fixed at 600mm, so it can be used for closer subjects as well (when available). Since the main area I hike in is a bunch of ponds with trails in between, I often can&#x27;t back up without swimming, so being able to zoom out comes in handy.

Steam Deck, I can play videogames (my hobby) way more and I feel relaxed after work, instead of sitting on the same chair to play.

I really like having a lot of screen real-estate. So, I bought a LG 34WK95U-W, which is a 34&quot; 21:9 monitor with a 5120x2160 resolution. It was about $1100. I also bought a very sturdy monitor arm ($100). The monitor floats above my laptop (the two screens form a squat &quot;T&quot; shape) and I get a lot of screen space and it looks very crisp.

I bought OneWheel XR (superseded by GT model) and my quality of life and happiness level increased tenfold.<p>Very good electric mobility device in-around town and on trails<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;onewheel.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;onewheel.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;</a>

More like a 400€ product, but wife is really happy about her Oura ring. Apparently it&#x27;s quite helpful, how the ring (via phone app) nags at you to sleep more. Or tells you to take it easy on some days when you have failed to get a proper sleep last night.

Water bottle with time markers on it. It gamifies my water drinking habit. I am always eager to beat-the-bottle by trying to catch up to the time markers on the bottle. As a result I am not dehydrated and not perpetually hungry anymore.

I got rid of cable and the Xfinity platform. Replaced it with a Xbox series X and the streaming apps work 10x better.<p>I don’t watch a lot of shows, bit when I do there is almost no technology friction.

Not $500, more like $50, but a vacuum canister for oil changes. Just sucks the oil out of the dipstick tube. Great for environment and my back. Best $50 spent this year.

Smart radiator valves, hands down.

Aerostich R3 riding suit for touring Upstate NY :)

GE Opal ice maker. Has single handedly made it fun and yummy for the entire family to stay sufficiently hydrated throughout the day. Single best $600 spent in 2022.

1) Roborock S6 MaxV Ultra 2) Sony wh-1000xm4

apple macbook air m1