Five useful gadgets for $5? Yes it's possible

Gadgets like this microSD card reader are still significantly cheaper overseas than locally.

It’s increasingly being called the Apple Tax — the answer to why, despite a strong Australian dollar, we seem to pay more for our technology in real terms than other countries. While it might be a touch unfair to solely blame Apple, it’s increasingly one of the chief reasons why we’re fast becoming a nation of international shoppers. In fact, the shopping is so good that fresh from my success in buying a $3.29 HDMI cable, which I tested and pulled apart previously, I decided on a stiffer challenge: to buy as much technology as I could for A$5.

In Australia, that would get you a takeaway coffee, a mouse mat or a USB cable. I wanted five useful technology devices — no gimmicks or trinkets, but useful devices.

The sheer volume of manufacturing in China is just extraordinary. It’s hard to imagine all of it is legal (heard about the counterfeit Apple stores?), but its scale is massive. Take a look on eBay and you’ll get a sense of the scale by the prices of gear coming out of China and Hong Kong. Even things we’d expect to pay $10 or $15 for here go for just $1 on eBay, often including shipping. It’s as impressive as it is insane.

There’s a lot of talk about town at the moment that the government should institute a GST on online sales. I say bring it on. My purchases here would go from $5.81 to a massive $6.39. I’d have spent $20 locally on the same gear before even thinking about postage. A GST might slow down overseas online sales a fraction, but with such a price disparity, it’s not really going to make any difference.

In the end, I got my five gadgets, but I blew my budget by 81c. I’ll probably live. Here’s what I bought. Note that as well as the actual cost that I paid (from overseas), I've included the best Australian price, excluding postage, that I could find online at the time of writing. Obviously, pricing may have changed by the time you read this.

My five new gadgets

Bluetooth 2.0 EDR dongle ($1.29; $3 best Australian price). Bluetooth is a low-power network technology that allows devices to send data to each other wirelessly. This tiny dongle fits snugly into a USB port and allows you to communicate with an array of gadgets including Android phones. You can even transmit audio to Bluetooth speakers. If your laptop doesn’t already have Bluetooth, this is the cheapest way to get it.

USB sound stick ($1.34; $5 best Australian price). About the size of a USB flash drive, this tiny sound card plugs into a USB port and gives you a microphone input and stereo headphone out. It came with no driver disc and no manual, but all you do is plug it in and your Windows XP, Vista or 7 operating system will find it and set it up automatically. I now use this to record my cover disc video tutorials.

microSD card reader ($1; $3 best Australian price). Those tiny microSD cards are popping up everywhere: smartphones, tablets, MP3 players even new digital cameras. This card reader is a better alternative to using an SD card adapter — you just slot the microSD card in and plug the reader into a USB port. Ours had no trouble being recognised by any Windows 7 computer we tried.

USB car charger ($1; $3.32 best Australian price). Plug this into your car’s cigarette lighter and you get USB power to charge your phone, tablet or anything that charges an internal battery via USB. It’ll charge your iPad, but with only 500mA of current output, it’s not as fast as the genuine charger and only works if you leave the iPad switched off. Think of this as a charging USB port for your car and it’s cheap enough to leave it there.

USB AC charger ($1.18; $6.60 best Australian price). This unit features Australia’s two-pin angled plug and delivers a charging USB port on the back. At this price, you can take it to work, leave it there and keep your genuine charger at home. Does it meet Australian electrical standards? Who knows. Our unit worked perfectly well, but just to be safe, I wouldn’t leave it plugged in unattended.