Britons 'waste' £52bn a year on gadgets

Do you need high definition eyes to see the HD TV? Some Brits seem to think so...
Do you need high definition eyes to see the HD TV? Some Brits seem to think so...

Another day, another survey. This time one that says we Brits waste £52 billion on gadgets that they cannot operate every year.

Somewhat ironically, the survey was commissioned by Sky HD.

UK consumers spend an average of £3,065 each year on electronics, but Sky HD has highlighted a major gap between spending and usage.

Idle functionality

The nationwide poll of 3,000 people revealed that over half the functions on Brits' high-tech gadgets are left idle.

The gadget gap figure of £52 billion was calculated by the average annual spend divided by the average number of unused features and multiplied by the number of households in the UK.

An amazing (and worrying) 47 per cent of those surveyed were unaware that an HD TV needs to be connected to an HD source to get a high def picture.

Two per cent of those surveyed also believed you needed to be born with HD Ready eyesight to view high def TV and movies!

The least tech-savvy city in the UK was Glasgow, with Glaswegians using just 42 per cent of the functions available on their gadgets.

Wolverhampton was the most tech-savvy city in the UK, with residents using almost 80 per cent of their gadgets' abilities.

63 per cent of women read the instruction manuals for their kit compared with just 54 per cent of men.

Via Press Association

Adam Hartley