Are Computer Expensive, or Actually Really Cheap?

I’ve seen the sentiment online that computer hardware is just too expensive these days, but is that actually true, or are we just looking at it the wrong way? If you ask me, it’s mostly the latter!

The Sky’s the Limit for Computer Prices

When I’m not writing for illustrious outlets like How-To Geek, I do some copywriting for a high-end workstation system builder. Which means I know exactly how expensive computers can get. With just a few clicks, you can get the asking price for a workstation or server up to a quarter of a million dollars! So yes, computers can be extremely expensive.

Bringing it back down to earth a little more, it’s not uncommon for high-end gaming PCs to cost somewhere between $5K and $10K! Likewise, you can create a $7K MacBook with a slip of the mouse on Apple’s system configuration web page. So it’s possible to spend a fortune on a computer that goes in your home.

But, Price-to-Performance Has Never Been Better

We got our first home computer around the year 1990. An IBM clone sporting an 80286 CPU and a whopping 2MB of RAM. At least if I recall correctly. After all, I was only four years old at the time!

This was a respectable computer at the time, but it was also quite expensive. You could probably have bought a decent used car for the same money as that computer. Today, I can get a computer that is tens of thousands of times more powerful than that 80286 IBM clone for just a few hundred dollars. So not only is it much cheaper in absolute dollar value adjusted for inflation, if you look at the price-to-performance improvement, it’s practically a vertical line.

You Can Get a “Good Enough’ PC for Almost Any Budget

One of my favorite computers of all time, the M1 MacBook Air, cost $1000 at launch, and soon dropped to around $700 when newer models were released. For the vast majority of people, the performance locked inside this little fanless laptop computer is more than they’d ever need. Even four years after its launch, the M1 Air is more than adequate: it’s downright fast.

You don’t even have to spend MacBook money either. Any random $500 Windows laptop will have enough performance for most things, and on the gaming side of the equation a $1000 gaming desktop will run every game on the market adequately.

Used Computers Depreciate in Price Much Faster Than Performance

Then we haven’t even considered the used and refurbished market yet. Not too long before I wrote this, I bought a refurbished Mini PC for $100, which now acts as my Plex Server. Used gaming PCs that were cutting edge two or three years ago will sell for half of their original price. However, the rapid performance improvements promised by Moore’s Law have been slowing down recently, so those three-year-old used computers have gained in price-to-performance, rather than lost it.

Computers Are Cheaper Than Ever

So, from my point of view, computers have never been cheaper than they are right now. If you don’t fall for the allure of halo hardware and focus on the cost of hardware that will do a “good enough” job for what you need, it’s never been possible to get a better deal.

The problem is that we tend to look at the very best that’s possible, and then use that as the reference point for everything else. So, of course, the very best computer hardware we can make will carry an enormous price penalty, but for anything viewed from a more realistic perspective, this is the golden age for computer geeks.