Sorry, Big Tech: 73% of People Don't Care About Fancy Upgrades. Here's What They Really Want
A recent survey indicates that consumers are becoming more selective about upgrading their technology. 76% of respondents prefer to wait for clear benefits before purchasing new devices, with 73% holding onto their current devices as long as they function. This trend reflects a shift towards valuing durability and practicality over novelty in tech purchases.
- ▪76% of people wait to upgrade until newer devices feel clearly worth it.
- ▪73% of consumers keep their devices as long as they still work.
- ▪81% of US adults would not buy a new tech device without checking a trusted human review.
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| Original publisher | PCMag |
| Canonical URL | https://www.pcmag.com/articles/survey-shows-73-percent-stick-with-old-tech-over-fancy-upgrades |
| Publication time | Tue, 19 May 26 15:36:07 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-19T15:59:57.717Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-19T15:59:57.717Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | ek4iUZtJzxLN |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
There was once a time when having the latest technology was the ultimate status symbol, but our recent survey shows those days are fading fast. These days, 76% of people wait to upgrade until the newer devices feel "clearly worth it," and 73% keep their devices as long as they still work. That means tech buyers are discerning and hard to sway unless the latest features offer a clear and tangible benefit, according to the 3,715 US tech consumers polled for the 2026 CNET Group TechPulse Research Study, conducted by PCMag parent company Ziff Davis. (Credit: 2026 CNET Group TechPulse Research Study/Cole Kan/PCMag/Getty) "Consumers are still spending on tech, but upgrades are now more intentional," the study says.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at PCMag.
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