Gadget Repairs At Home: Analyzing The Benefits And Drawbacks

DIY, aka Do It Yourself, is trending nowadays. Social media platforms show that there is nothing that you cannot do by yourself. On your mobile screen, you can see people repairing everything themselves. Such DIY videos are becoming common from your Instagram reels to your Youtube feed. This certainly makes you think that you can repair your own gadgets even if you don’t know much about them.

Many videos that will give you step-by-step guidance can also be found online. You might not want to leave the comfort of your home and can also save more. But there are chances that the information that you got from the video might not be true or you understood that in a different way, which will lead to total damage to your gadget. 

Positive And Negative Aspects Of Tackling Gadget Repairs On Your Own

Yet, we can’t just let the gadget stay damaged. It is important to have a well-functioning gadget as in this modern everything is carried out by technology. From making payments using e-payment systems to getting the details to reach a location, our lives have become so dependent on mobile phones, and smartwatches. 

This article details the benefits that you can have when you repair your own gadgets. It talks about the negatives that you may come across when you do this.  

Pros Of Repairing Your Own Gadgets

By now you know there are many advantages if you repair your gadget. Let it be a mobile phone, or a laptop, by yourself. This section is entirely about the positive sides. The key factors that you should consider are given here with a brief description. 

• You can learn new skills

Gadget repairing is not something that you get to learn in high school. You learn nothing about it when you are at the uni for your graduation. By fixing your damaged mobile phone you can learn some new sets of skills. 

Also, you can know what exactly went wrong. Usually, when your device stops working or fails to respond you usually take it to a repair shop. They will ask you to come back after some hours or the next day. You just go back and collect your device. You never really know what went wrong. That won’t be an issue again when you are doing the job yourself. You can also prevent the same thing from happening again. 

• Money left in your wallet

When you take the gadget to a repair shop they might tell you that some parts need to be replaced and you have to cover all of that cost. Plus, you have to pay the service charge, too. These expenses might get out of your budget. 

What if you repair the gadget at home? Then yes, you will have to spend the parts. But the service charge, the consultation charge, and all such charges remain back in your wallet. And you can use this amount of money for anything you want or simply save it for the future for a bigger expense. 

• You can save time 

You obviously don’t have the time to wait days for the gadget to be alright again. If you are a student who needs a laptop or a work-from-home professional who can’t function without the PC you really can’t wait for multiple days. Even missing one single day can put you behind schedule.

When you take up the job of repairing you don’t have to worry about this. When you go to a repair shop they might have other products to repair before yours. But when you do it yourself you just have to focus on a single gadget. 

• You end up becoming a gadget pro

Repairing your gadget by yourself can earn you a lot of experience. You will learn a lot of the skills needed for this. The first time you will have to do a lot of research but by the fifteenth time, you just know what went wrong. And you also know what to do when one specific feature does not work properly. 

Also, this can be made a side hustle to make more money. You can start by repairing the gadgets of your friends and family. The news might spread around slowly and suddenly you are the gadget guru that everyone wants to meet. 

• You can reduce your carbon footprint 

All the parts needed to make gadgets are mass-produced creating carbon footprints, that is the whole amount of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane released into the air. When you opt to buy an entirely new gadget you are adding your carbon footprint. 

So when you decide to repair the device, only one or two parts need to be changed. That means you don’t add to the emission of greenhouse gases. Also less heat emission and atmosphere pollution. You can become an environmentally responsible citizen. 

Cons Of Repairing Your Own Gadgets

Now you know how to benefit yourself from repairing your devices, right? Although when you newly start to try this you might end up doing things wrongly. Mostly because you are not experienced in this. This section is about the downsides that you might come across when repairing your own gadgets. 

• You might accidentally add more damage

You might know what actually went wrong. All you want to do will be to find out what happened and the way to fix it. Upon doing this, you might do the wrong thing. All you wanted to do was to fix the gadget, but not knowing what to do and where to begin can be quite a big problem. 

For instance, you want to open a non-functioning laptop, and what if you open it the wrong way and are not able to put it back together? This will add further damage to that device, which it never had in the first place, to begin with. 

• You will have to spend more if you do the wrong repair 

Just as we said above, you just did the wrong repair. Now you have more damage. And all of it has to be repaired. You might want to go to a mobile repair shop. 

More damages mean more money to be spent on the repair. You will have to pay for what actually happened to the device plus what you did to the device. Sometimes you might have purchased new tools to do the job. In addition to all of this, you will have to pay for the service changes to the technician who repairs your device. That costs you a lot of money. 

• The entire gadget might get corrupted

You have to remember that you are not a professional. You have not received the proper training to repair the malfunctioning gadget. Yet you tried to do the things by watching a video. Sometimes that YouTube video that you referred to might not be addressing the issue that your device is having. 

Or you got the wrong idea from your source of reference. You might do something that was never needed in the first place. What might happen is that the entire device goes corrupted. It might be totally unintentional, but your device won’t be of use anymore. 

• You might not easily get the gadget parts that you want to replace

When you are repairing yourself and all the above-mentioned complications did not happen. You got the right reference, you have the right tools to open the device up, you understood the video in the right way, and you detected the problem. And one or two parts have to be changed. 

But you don’t know where to buy these parts. If it is a repair shop they will have all the parts stored up, in a large quantity. Some parts will not be easily available and some items cannot be bought as a single piece. You just need one piece for your device. This is a real challenge that can happen to many. 

• You can’t be sure whether the complication has been rectified

All of these never happened and you successfully repaired your damaged gadget. You even got access to the parts that you wanted to repair. And when you start to use the mobile or the laptop or whatever gadget that you repaired it functions very well. 

One risk is that you never really know whether the issues have been completely solved. It might occur again and you might repair it again. Change the part again, and use it again. Maybe there was something else that a professional would have done. This is because they are more experienced than you. They see similar cases every day so they just know what to do. 

Conclusion

This article was drafted after a detailed study of the real-life cases of people who repaired their own gadgets. Some ended up being gadget pros while some ended up losing their entire devices.

Whether you will be able to be scheduled solely depends on the resources that you use, the tools that you have, and your ability to understand the science behind the tools and mechanism behind the functioning of the parts. 

The advantages can be overlooked as you can save money and time and at the same time learn new skills and even generate revenue out of this. You can also become a citizen who cares about the environment and future generations.

The disadvantages may happen when you do a wrong repair or when you get a wrong impression. It is up to you to choose to repair yourself or to get help from a professional.