Buy the right thing once
Honest guidance on the equipment people ask us about most — what actually matters, what's an upsell, and what we'd do in your position.
How we make money on equipment
Worth saying plainly, because it tells you how much to trust everything below.
🏠 For homes
We don't sell you hardware. We tell you what to buy, you buy it yourself, and we set it up. We earn nothing on the box — which means we have no reason to talk you into a bigger one. Often the honest answer is that you don't need to buy anything at all.
The exception is installation materials — cable, wall plates, mounts, patch panels, and the like. Nobody wants to source 500 feet of network cable, so we supply those and they're quoted as part of the job.
And if you'd rather not shop at all, we'll buy it for you at cost when we're doing the work — you approve the item and price, pay for it up front, and we add nothing on top. It's a convenience, not a markup.
🏢 For businesses
On business projects we can source and supply equipment so you get one invoice and one point of accountability. When we resell hardware, we tell you up front — and you're always free to buy it yourself and just have us install it.
We don't run affiliate links on this site, and nothing here earns us a commission. If that ever changes, it'll say so right here.
What actually matters
We've kept this about what to look for rather than specific models — products change every year, but the things that make them worth buying don't. Ask us and we'll name current picks for your situation.
TVs & displays
The specs on the box are mostly noise. Two things actually decide whether you'll like a TV: how bright your room is, and how far away you sit.
What to look for
- A panel matched to your room. Bright rooms with lots of windows want a very bright LED/QLED; dark, controlled rooms are where OLED earns its money.
- Screen size matched to seating distance — in most living rooms people under-buy, but in small rooms they over-buy.
- 120Hz and HDMI 2.1 inputs if anyone games on a current console. Otherwise it's money you won't notice.
- Enough HDMI inputs for everything you own, plus one. They fill up faster than you expect.
- A matte or anti-glare screen if you're fighting a window you can't cover.
What to skip
- 8K. There's still essentially nothing to watch on it, and you can't see the difference at normal seating distances.
- Extended store warranties. Modern panels either fail early under manufacturer warranty or last for years.
- Buying a TV for its built-in apps — a cheap streaming box will be faster and stay updated longer.
- Judging a TV under showroom lighting. Every set is cranked to torch mode on the sales floor; none of them look like that at home.
- Assuming the built-in speakers are fine. On thin modern sets, they aren't.
Our take: Match the panel to your room's light, then spend what's left on sound.
Sound & home theater
The biggest upgrade available to most living rooms, and the one people put off longest. It's also where setup matters more than price.
What to look for
- A soundbar with a separate subwoofer for most homes — it's the best value in home audio and a night-and-day change from TV speakers.
- A real receiver and speakers if you genuinely care about sound or want surround done properly.
- A center channel. It's what makes dialogue intelligible, which is the actual complaint most people have.
- eARC support on both TV and receiver/soundbar if you want the better audio formats to reach your speakers at all.
- Height speakers or ceiling speakers if you want Atmos to mean anything.
What to skip
- Expecting bounce-off-the-ceiling “virtual Atmos” to sound like real height speakers. It doesn't, especially with vaulted ceilings.
- Big tower speakers in a small room. Placement beats size, every time.
- Hiding the subwoofer wherever it fits — a sub in the wrong corner sounds boomy or disappears entirely.
- Buying more speakers before configuring the ones you have. Most surround systems we see are wired right and set up wrong.
Our take: A center channel and a well-placed sub do more than doubling your speaker count.
Streaming devices & services
Where a lot of households quietly leak money every month — and where a $50 box can make an old TV feel new.
What to look for
- An external streaming box or stick. It'll be faster than your TV's built-in apps, and it'll still get updates in three years when the TV won't.
- One platform everyone in the house can actually operate.
- An honest look at what you subscribe to versus what you watch. Most homes are paying for two or three services nobody opens.
- Services you may already have bundled with your phone plan, shopping membership, or internet.
What to skip
- Relying on a smart TV's built-in OS long-term — they get slower, more ad-filled, and abandoned.
- Stacking subscriptions permanently. Rotating them by what you're actually watching costs a fraction.
- Paying for 4K tiers on a TV or plan that can't deliver 4K anyway.
Our take: Add a good streaming box, then audit the subscriptions. It usually pays for itself in a month.
Remotes & control
The difference between a system your family uses and one only you can operate. Usually the last thing anyone thinks about, and the first thing they complain about.
What to look for
- One remote that runs everything through activities — “Watch TV” should turn on the right gear, in the right order, on the right input.
- HDMI-CEC enabled and configured; it does much of this for free and almost nobody turns it on.
- Something anyone in the household can pick up and use without a lesson.
What to skip
- A coffee table with four remotes and a handwritten note explaining the order to press them.
- Assuming universal remotes are what they were — Logitech discontinued the Harmony line, so this market changed. Ask us what's current before buying.
- Phone apps as the only control. They're fine as a backup and miserable as the primary.
Our take: If your family can't turn it on without you, the system isn't finished.
Mounting & cables
The unglamorous half of a good install — and the half that fails loudly when it's done wrong.
What to look for
- A mount rated well above the actual weight of your TV, anchored into studs.
- In-wall rated (CL2/CL3) cable for anything running inside a wall. Ordinary HDMI cable in a wall is a code and fire issue.
- Certified high-speed HDMI cable for 4K120 or long runs — this is the one place cable quality genuinely matters.
- A plan for power before mounting. A recessed outlet behind the TV is the difference between clean and a dangling cord.
What to skip
- Drywall anchors for a television. They hold until they don't.
- Mounting above a fireplace when there's any alternative — the heat is bad for the set and the angle is bad for your neck.
- Expensive “premium” HDMI cables for normal runs. Past a certain point the signal is identical or it isn't; there's no in-between.
- Running an extension cord up inside the wall. It's a fire hazard and it fails inspection.
Our take: Budget for the mount and the wiring before the last inch of screen.
Wi-Fi & mesh networks
The single most common source of “my internet is bad” — and it's usually the equipment or its placement, not the internet plan.
What to look for
- Coverage matched to your home's layout and construction, not the square-footage number on the box.
- A wired connection between mesh units wherever it's possible — it's dramatically better than units relaying wirelessly.
- Your own router instead of the ISP's rental, which often pays for itself within a year or two.
- Enough capacity for how many devices you actually have, not the theoretical top speed.
What to skip
- Paying for a faster internet plan when the real bottleneck is the router or where it's sitting.
- “Gaming” routers with antennas and lighting — the price is in the styling, not the performance.
- Mesh units placed at the far corners of the house, which is the most common self-inflicted Wi-Fi problem.
- Wi-Fi extenders as a fix for a big house; they typically halve throughput.
Our take: Most Wi-Fi complaints are solved by placement and a decent router — not by spending more.
Laptops & desktops
Buying more computer than you need is the most common way people waste money on technology — and buying too little is the fastest way to hate it.
What to look for
- An SSD, always. It matters more for everyday speed than the processor does.
- 16 GB of memory for most people in 2026; 8 GB is a machine you'll be frustrated by sooner than you think.
- A screen you'll be looking at for years — brightness and resolution are worth more than a spec bump.
- Business lines from the major makers: better keyboards, better repairability, better warranties.
What to skip
- Bargain laptops with eMMC storage and 4 GB of memory. They're slow the day you buy them.
- Paying for a high-end processor for email and the web — you'll never see the difference.
- Extended store warranties, which usually cost more than the eventual repair.
- Buying based on the sticker price alone when the machine can't be upgraded later.
Our take: Spend on memory, storage, and the screen. Save on the processor.
Printers
Cheap to buy, expensive to own, and the single most infuriating device in most houses. Almost all of that is avoidable by buying the right kind in the first place.
What to look for
- A mono laser if you print occasionally. This is the most useful printer advice there is: toner doesn't dry out, so it still works after sitting untouched for four months. Ink doesn't.
- An ink tank printer — Epson EcoTank, Canon MegaTank, HP Smart Tank — if you print a lot and want colour at everyday quality. You pay more up front, then refill from bottles for pennies a page instead of buying cartridges forever.
- The cost per page and the price of refills — not the price of the printer. That's where the real money is, and it's why the cheapest printer on the shelf is usually the most expensive one to own.
- Ethernet if it can reach; it's the difference between a printer that always works and one that vanishes weekly.
- Plain, boring, well-supported models. Printer drivers are where cheap brands quietly fail.
What to skip
- Cheap cartridge inkjets. The printer is cheap because the ink isn't — and if you print twice a year, the heads clog and you'll buy cartridges just to unclog them.
- A tank printer if you barely print. It's still an inkjet, and the heads still dry out when it sits — the savings only arrive if you actually use it.
- Ink subscription plans, unless you've done the maths on your real page count. They can disable cartridges you've already paid for if you stop paying.
- Printers whose firmware updates block third-party cartridges. It's a real practice, and it can turn working supplies into scrap overnight.
- All-in-one units bought for a fax and scanner nobody will ever use.
- Connecting by USB to one computer when everyone in the house needs to print.
Our take: Print rarely? Mono laser. Print constantly, especially in colour? Tank printer. The expensive mistake is the cheap cartridge inkjet in between.
Backup & storage
The one category where being cheap eventually costs the most. Drives fail — the question is only whether it matters when yours does.
What to look for
- Three copies of anything irreplaceable, on two kinds of media, with one copy off-site. It's the old rule because it works.
- Backups that run automatically. Any backup depending on you remembering isn't a backup.
- A backup you have actually restored from once. Untested backups fail exactly when you need them.
- For business: something that survives the building — fire, theft, and flood don't care about your RAID.
What to skip
- One external drive sitting next to the computer, called a backup. Same house, same lightning strike, same burglar.
- Believing RAID is a backup. It protects against a drive dying, not against deletion, ransomware, or fire.
- Assuming your photos are “in the cloud” without knowing which cloud, or what happens if that account is lost.
- Free plans holding the only copy of something you'd grieve losing.
Our take: If losing it would hurt, it needs a copy somewhere else. That's the whole rule.
Cameras & doorbells
Easy to install badly and easy to overbuy. The important decisions are about where footage lives and what it costs you every month.
What to look for
- Clarity on where recordings are stored — on the device, on your network, or on someone else's servers.
- The real monthly cost. Subscription fees usually outrun the hardware price within a couple of years.
- Wired power or PoE for anything you're depending on; batteries die at inconvenient times.
- Placement that covers approaches and doors, rather than more cameras covering the same driveway.
What to skip
- Very cheap cloud cameras from brands that won't say clearly where your video goes or who can see it.
- Pointing cameras at a neighbor's property or into their windows — that's a real legal problem, not just an awkward one.
- Systems that become useless the moment the company ends the service.
- More cameras than you'll ever review. Four good angles beat twelve bad ones.
Our take: Decide where the footage lives before you decide which camera to buy.
Power protection
Cheap insurance for expensive equipment, and widely misunderstood.
What to look for
- A UPS — battery backup — for anything that shouldn't lose power abruptly: desktops, network gear, NAS units.
- Enough runtime to shut down cleanly, not to keep working through an outage.
- Surge protection on the entertainment center and the office, replaced every few years.
- For business: a UPS on the network stack, so the internet survives a flicker.
What to skip
- Mistaking a power strip for a surge protector. Most strips protect nothing.
- Assuming surge protectors last forever — they wear out absorbing surges, silently.
- Leaving a NAS or desktop on unprotected power. Sudden loss is how filesystems get corrupted.
Our take: A UPS costs less than one data-recovery attempt.
Not sure what you need?
Tell us what's frustrating you and we'll tell you what would fix it — including when the answer is "nothing, keep what you have." 64 Technologies covers the Louisville Metro Area.
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