How much tech gear can you get for the price of a Galaxy S4?

How much tech gear can you get for the price of a Galaxy S4?:
Samsung’s new Galaxy S4 has a good camera, a good display, thousands of apps, and the ability to keep you connected to the weather, sports, news, and all of the people you care about. It’ll also cost you a cool $750 if you buy one off contract.
The new Nokia Lumia 521 also has a good camera, a good display, thousands of apps, and the ability to keep you connected to the weather, sports, news, and all of the people you care about (and because it’s a Windows Phone, it does so arguably better than Android). And you can get it for $150 off-contract.
That’s a $600 price difference. So we started thinking…what could that $600 buy you? We hit the Microsoft Store in Los Angeles, CA to find out:

As you can see, $600 can buy you a LOT of great stuff at the Microsoft Store. Here’s what we picked up:

• A 16GB Kingston microSD card, which upped the 521’s total storage to 24GB…more than enough for most users.
• A 3-month Xbox Music pass, which gets you unlimited downloads and streaming of millions of tracks.
• A set of Nokia Purity earbuds by Monster. These are the buds I use every day – they rock (no pun intended).
• An ASUS VivoBook X202E touchscreen laptop. This thing is a REALLY great value at $449. Beautiful, powerful, and light.

And for the record, here’s the side-by-side of the receipts. Note that we got all of this stuff for $4 less than the GS4 – enough to buy me an Americano at the Starbucks across from the Microsoft Store:


Which would you rather have if you’re looking for a smartphone that rocks the basics? A Lumia 521 plus a laptop, earbuds, memory card and tons of music (and a coffee!)…or a Galaxy S4?

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