20 Supposedly Obsolete Products That Still Work Surprisingly Well

If you could travel through time, would you go forward or backward? If you said “backward,” you’re lying, both to us and to yourself. First of all, if you’re any kind of minority, any day in the past is going to be worse for you, and that includes, like, yesterday. But also, unless you’re one of those off-the-grid weirdos, life would be unbearable without modern technology. If you wanted to learn something, you’d have to go to a physical building full of books. If you wanted to see a movie, you’d have to go to a physical building full of movies. If you needed to talk to someone, you’d have to call them, without warning. They’d be forced to do the same to you.

But planned obsolescence is a thing, and so is enshittification. That means a lot of products that supposedly no one needs anymore often still work great and might even have advantages over their allegedly “improved” versions. So when user Casca_In_Red asked r/AskReddit, “What ‘obsolete’ technology is still surprisingly useful?” there was no shortage of examples in the comments.