This is when to upgrade your tech (and when not to bother)

The tech giants’ attempts to persuade people to upgrade to new gadgets every two years are proving less and less effective. According to YouGov polling, Brits are increasingly deciding to stick with the devices they have for longer, and it isn’t altogether surprising. As well as the inherent wastefulness of the bi-annual upgrade cycle, year-on-year improvements are less dramatic than they used to be, and tech prices are sky-rocketing thanks to the growing needs of AI data centres. Inevitably, however, there will come a time when you need to bite the bullet and buy a new model. These are the questions to ask yourself to decide whether that should be today, or whether you can kick the can a little further down the road. How’s the performance? A good place to start is to evaluate how your device functions day-to-day versus the day you bought it. Tech inevitably slows down over time, but the drop isn’t equal among devices: a five-year-old flagship smartphone may still outperform a budget model from last year. If it’s still running smoothly enough, and isn’t broken in an unfixable way, then it probably pays to wait until it no longer passes this test. The longer you wait, the more appealing the upgrade choices will be. The exception to this is if you’re bumping up against storage problems. If there’s no way to add more, and cloud storage isn’t cutting it, then you may need to upgrade early.