If someone gave us $200 to spend there, here’s what we’d buy.
In 2021, Spinoff editor Mad Chapman wrote ‘I love what PB Tech stands for and so should you.’
“All this time I thought PB Tech stood for some sort of computer jargon, or was a unit of measurement (MB, KB, GB etc) that I had never heard before. Sometimes I would think of it as Personal Best Tech. Other times I simply enjoyed the flow of the sounds as they’re uttered. Pee Bee Tech. It’s a great phonetic name. But no, it’s Pat and Brenda Tech.”
Pat and Brenda are the founders and owners of PB Tech. If you’ve ever been to one of their stores, you’d know they’re a bit more “discount warehouse” than “high street showroom”. They’ve gone for a functional, unadorned vibe with a focus on online – which means lower prices and a fairly flash website that has an almost unknowable number of listings. If someone gave us $200 bucks to spend there, this is what we’d buy.
Wireless printer
Everyone is returning to physical mediums and I’m ready to jump right back to 2004 with this home printer/scanner. This summer I’ll be on a long break and will need a creative outlet, and I am already envisaging myself printing my own magazine complete with scanned images, funky collages and who knows what else. Yes, there are a zillion apps that can technically make better designs and a lot faster too, but those apps don’t allow you to hold a finished product in your hands while never leaving the house. The Cloud was fun and exciting but it’s time to return to the real world, and that real world is mostly made up of yelling at the printer. / Mad Chapman
Printed media, bring it back.
Microphone
I’ve been flirting with audio as a medium (it’s so… intimate) and with everyone saying it’s the future of media, I’m almost tempted to join everyone and their dog in the podcast world. What’s stopping me? Fear and gear. The latter could at least be addressed with this rather stylish USB microphone for a cool $169, not bank-breaking, but not el cheapo either, so if you tried and gave up it wouldn’t be a huge loss. With my change left over, I’d also be buying some swish-looking earbuds for the fun of it. They have a 5-star rating and 41 reviews (a feature to love about the PB Tech site) so I feel confident that these ones would deliver. / Emma Gleason
Robotic vacuum mop
A dog, four cats, four adults and a toddler is enough to ensure our house needs a vacuum almost daily. By the time I’ve finished doing the first floor, I’m close to breaking a sweat and questioning why – in the age of AI – I don’t have a robot doing this for me. This robotic vacuum could be the answer to my prayers, inconspicuously cleaning the house while the family is away. When we get home, our carpet is vacuumed spotless, and the bathrooms and kitchen are mopped to polished perfection. You can even control it with your smart phone. Dreamy. / Liam Rātana
A second laptop stand
After asking my partner for the 600th time if he thinks I’m getting hunched over from so much desk work, he replied, “You should just get a laptop stand.” An easy solution, I thought, a simple purchase decision I won’t need to fixate on or research to the hilt. Wrong. There are thousands of laptop stands, millions of features and many are very expensive. I rapidly fell down the product research rabbit hole and landed in a heap of analysis paralysis. A singular, shining product listing from Pat and Brenda cut through the noise though and told me everything I needed to know: this sleek stand weighs less than a block of butter. There were even a bunch of images showing me how it worked and diagrams depicting how it would fix my slouch. When my laptop stand arrived I set it up in my home office at the front of our house. One day later a friend texted me: “I was just driving by… and I saw u in the window, I think. Very good posture!” So yes, my PB Tech pick is another one of these laptop stands to use at work. It does everything I dreamed it would for under $100. And folds down almost flat. / Liv Sisson
Walkie talkies
With $200 to spend at PB Tech I’m obviously getting walkie talkies.“They’re for school holidays, to get the kids off their screens,” I say to my wife. The truth though is that these mini walkie talkies are for me. They’re a tool for reenacting my favourite movies with unwitting family members. I strategically place them across the house (kitchen, lounge and toilet) and immediately set the tone with extremely well rehearsed lines such as “Yippee ki yay, motherf****r!” and “Houston, we have a problem.” This will inevitably lead to other creative offshoots, and for at least 10 days Bane will become a persona in our household: “You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by it.” Should any issues with our family tech arise, I’d know where to go: PB does repairs! / Guy Annan
“Houston, we have a problem.”
Pet camera
I went through a phase of setting up the iPad to film our rescue dog Maggie every time we left the house. She has a lot of separation anxiety when left alone, which manifested in the early days as upturning the entire house like a vengeful poltergeist and chewing up absolutely everything in her sight. Reviewing the footage with a furrowed brow like a MAFS expert watching a dinner party, one session featured her dragging a bag of chips into the lounge, sitting down in front of The Tipping Point and chowing down like any regular human would. I eventually stopped filming because it took up too much space on the iPad and I was limited with my angles, but with the Enabot SE Wireless Camera Robot I could capture these wonderful moments once more. Remote-controlled and capable of whizzing around the whole whare, I could follow her every move and figure out once and for all how she has learned to open drawers, and confirm my long-held suspicions that her and our cat Link speak to each other in plain English. And then, activating the two-way voice mode, I could talk back. / Alex Casey
Alex Casey and Maggie (at right).
A third massage gun
I carry a huge amount of stress in my neck and shoulders, and it really bloody hurts. I remember talking to my 27-year-old sister a while ago, and she happily announced that she lives “pain free”. A flash of rage flickered across my face as I muttered: “Time is a cruel witch and your pain-free life won’t last long.”
My wonderful, caring husband has listened to me complain for some time now, honestly, what an incredibly lucky man he is. One day he came home with a box wrapped up with a red ribbon etc (flash) and announced, “This is kind of a weird gift.” I unwrapped it and at first glance thought it was a dildo, but then let out a screech of delight. My dream of living pain free like my skinnier, prettier sister was in reach.
I have loved my Beurer massage gun. I have even gifted one to my brother who experiences the same affliction of neck and shoulder pain as me. It lives in a little pouch on our couch and friends and family that visit all use it. I recommend this thing to so many people. I would not be without it. Bravo to my husband and bravo to PB Tech for a sick ass deal that has made this 47-year-old a very happy lady. / Bec Murphy