[blizarre]

That's not my experience at all. A few years ago I would have been looking for the unknown chinese brands that could provide me with a gear that was "good enough". Now I will not even consider buying anything that is not from the top 5 brands for each thing. I have been burned too many time by products that were _almost_ as good, but not quite, and broke quickly. My branded gear is usually lasting forever (lenovo laptop, bose headset, roomba cleaner, instapot) as long as I buy on the medium/high-end end of the spectrum.

The thing is that as it is said over and over in this thread, you cannot trust reviews, and I would add that you cannot trust most of the smaller blogs/review websites because most would say anything about a product as long as they are paid.

If I buy the new Sony noise cancelling headsets, I know I will not get disappointed: it is a reputable brand, and it is the high-end of the range. This strategy is not perfect, far from it, and some brand are taking advantage of it. In that case, vote with your wallet. You can't really do that with no-name brands.

[BiteCode_dev]

I'm not saying brands are not an indicator. Indeed, if I'm going to buy a USB-C cable, I'm going to use it as a filter.

I'm saying brand loyalty has lost its power now.

Sony is a good example. You say it's a reputable brand, yet sometimes they just lose it do something absolutely terrible. The first one that comes to mind is infecting willingly their customers with a rootkit in 2005 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...), but it's just because I don't follow up on those things as much. I'm sure there are ones in the last 5 years, although with PR firms doing their job as well as they do now, a quick google search will seldom return anything.

Companies don't have a customer first mentality anymore.

Loyalty doesn't mean anything for them, and so you being loyal to them makes no sense.

And it does mean a more complicated world, because you constantly have to reassess where to buy from.

[aguyfromnb]

>Sony is a good example.

The fact that you're bringing up a 15 year old incident proves that doing bad things can sting, perhaps scar permanently.

It's foolish to think there's a company that will always "do right". They are run by humans.

[mixmastamyk]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sony-stoldendata-idUSTRE7...

[KozmoNau7]

I've found a lot of value in niche brands. For instance the Finnish outdoor/military/surplus store Varusteleka have some quite good own-brand products.

Their Särmä-brand "common jeans" are just that; classic straight cut jeans with a medium waist, no stone-washing or other artificial wear, and a little bit of stretch for comfort. For someone like me who has large thighs from lifting weights, there are many otherwise nice pants I just can't wear, but these are perfect. Most brands these days have 5 different kinds of slim/skinny fit, and 1 straight fit if you're lucky.

Their "tactical jeans" are even better, with roughly the same cut and the addition of a crotch gusset for mobility and discreet extra pockets. There's a bit of polyester in the fabric for durability and a bit more stretch too. They're literally as comfortable as sweat pants, it's uncanny. If they last as long as promised, I doubt I will ever buy other jeans again.

Overall, I would say don't trust brands, trust quality, and don't trust reviews on big sites like Amazon.