Gadgets are created by using the technological ingenuity, which enables us to perform daily tasks efficiently. Sometimes though, these devices want to marry luxury and the outcome is ridiculously expensive price tags. The sole purpose then is, well, to flaunt the hordes of money one doesn’t know how to spend. Here we bring five insanely expensive gadgets you can still buy in 2016 that are either luxurious in the eyes of few, or pure snake-oil.

Vertu Signature Touch
Talk about luxury mobile phones and Vertu is the first name that pops-up in anyone’s mind. From a hardware and software point of view, these phones offer nothing out of the ordinary. For instance, the Signature touch series is powered by the Snapdragon (not a typo) 810 chipset, 5.2-inch Full HD screen protected by sapphire crystal, 64 GB internal storage, 4 GB RAM, and Qi wireless charging running. The phone runs Android 5.1 Lollipop operating system. However, it costs between € 9000 to € 18 000 depending on what materials you choose. Luxury is subjective, hard to quantify. According to Vertu’s perspective, luxurious means a choice between calf, lizard and alligator leather accents with titanium or red gold metal construction in various finishes. Owning the phone gets you access to Vertu’s dedicated concierge who promise to make your every wish come true. You would also get privileged access to exceptional events and personal dining experiences especially handpicked for you. At the end of your experience you still foot the bill though. That is not all, you would also get their limited access to a global Wi-Fi network – because even international roaming data-connection charges are beyond stupidly expensive.



Solid Platinum iPad 1st gen
Stuart Hughes is an English man who in started with the simple idea of letting technology embrace luxury. So simple that, one of his company’s product includes a solid platinum iPad 1st gen that has diamonds encrusted on the Apple logo. The price of this rare earth iPad is £300000! Basically we could include every item from his company’s catalogue in this article as each one of them costs a fortune. They also made most expensive phone in the world by modifying iPhone 4S with the most rare gem and metal they could lay their hands on. If you wonder whether it made the iPhone scratch resistance, then the answer is no. You might want to consider buying their alligator skin luxury mobile phone case.



AudioQuest Diamond HDMI cable
For a change, this product is not build out of gold. It does have a diamond though, but only in its name. Audioquest, the company behind this $1500 HDMI cable claims it has a bunch of tech to make your audio-video experience better than all other cables. However, the brand also mention that its other 30$ HDMI cables also transfer 100% of the video. Therefore, going by the trend so far, simply using the word ‘diamond’ in a product name can make it costly.



Pono player
Pono player was launched on Kickstarter by raising millions with one promise for music lovers – enjoy music exactly as the artist created it, at the recording resolution they chose in the studio. This Toblerone shaped music player now retains around $330 on Amazon.com. It supports FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, AAC and DSD music formats and also lossless playback up to 192/24 bit resolution via an Ayre DAC. You can store songs on its 64 GB internal memory. Unfortunately, this music player failed to impress anyone considering the price-point.



Apple Watch Edition
More and more companies are beginning to believe that luxury comes with exquisite design and materials. Apple is no exception. If you have around $1300 to spare, then you can buy their Apple Watch Edition made from white ceramic case.



Durgesh Kawale is a wannabe scientist completing his PhD at the Delft University of Technology, Netherlands. You can reach out to him on twitter: @durgeshkawale

Tags : vertu, Apple