It's been an interesting evolution as I have aged to observe myself going from one end of the spectrum to the other (mainly, as I've accumulated more wealth).
I'm now at the point where I crave quality at just about any cost because it's abundantly clear to me that buying crap is bad value. Many of the few high quality things I bought early on in life are still with me and I love them. But so is a huge amount of the garbage I bought earlier and I hate it.
So where I used to go into shops and look at all the expensive items with scorn and think "what idiots must there be who buy all these things that are twice the price!", now I go in and actively try to find out "but is there an even more expensive one I could get with higher quality?"
It's not always the price too, often enough the higher quality item can be cheaper, just less of a fancy package maybe. A lot of companies blow all their budget on advertising and packaging instead of product quality and research. Knowledge is key. Especially be careful in stores like TJ Maxx, Home-sense and such -- lots of lowest quality fancy packaged junk to be had there.
One example I'm aware of is headphones. A while back everyone thought Beats are the best because they were expensive and had good marketing but really they were shit and you could get much better quality for less price
At the same time, in keeping with the theme of the article -- spend the $75 for a good (i.e. well-regarded for your use case) pair of headphones if you enjoy music. It is absolutely night and day compared to $10 crap.
I've swung towards the cheap end and am currently wearing some basic Sony over-ears.
I have more expensive gear. The value here is not really in the audio quality - which, apart from the most strenuous audio engineering flat-response-and-detailed-image-needed cases, is fine, really - but in being light and cheap and embracing that quality. It rattles a little when you hold it, but it's made to withstand a few drops, and it won't pressure your skull or force your neck out of posture with hours of use. The cable is soldered in but sturdy.
The $75 ones I've used always tend to end up with issues because they don't have these qualities. The cables are still soldered but of a lower thickness, and the rigidity of the frame makes them disconnect more readily. They pinch your ears and crush your skull. The quality is better but not enough to matter in everyday use - a good DAC and a low-noise environment makes more difference.
This is mainly because Beats headphones are just terrible at any price and a perfect example of all their budget going on marketing. Other headphones in the same price range or even below can be very good.
Beats/Bose were always like this. Selling the branding I mean, at least Beats had lineage of Monster producing a few decent units before they nudged them out of the picture.
Better example in the headphone world were high-end IEM's (Shure/Westone/Etymotics). Most of them were in the many hundreds of dollar range for good multi-driver units. In the past few years though Chinese manufacturers (KZ is one I can think of off the top of my head) sell their own lines on aliexpress/taobab using the same drivers for 10% of the cost.
I can't justify recommending the old names now to people, the value just isn't there (and most of the old big names stopped producing in US/EU since China turned out to have better QC). Why pay $200 for a double-driver Westone when I can recommend a 5-driver KZ unit for $60? I just don't get it.
Honestly I've gone in the other direction. Quality for its own sake is not a virtue; all that matters is whether the item meets the needs you have. An item that breaks and needs replacement is waste, but an item that is overbuilt and never used to its potential is a different kind of waste.
I don't need the best tools in the world for my home toolbox. I use each tool maybe a couple of times a year and even the cheap ones don't break at that level of use. I bought a $250 RC car and a $10 one, and while the $250 one is awesome I've gotten more use out of the $10 one. Sometimes you need quality but sometimes you don't.
I disagree so much with this. I don't pay 250 to 1000 euros for each of my tools because i use them a lot (even though during the lockdowns i did). I got them because professional tools are:
- easier to store
- easier to use
- pack more power (thus less time spend)
- more precise (i'm annoyed if my angles are one millimeter off)
- less brittle (its not that cheap ones are breaking, its that even a small, almost invisble chip of metal off your torx head will make your life harder)
- less dusty
- safer
- easier to clean
- Combine themselves (transformers for woordworking smh)
- Have complete accessories (angle transmission being the most usefull, also the protractor going directly on the radial saw gives you perfect results)
If you want to replace a door with cheap tools, be my guest, i did it once with a friend, i'm not doing it ever again. I'm now bringing my tools every single time.
> I disagree so much with this. I don't pay 250 to 1000 euros for each of my tools because i use them a lot (even though during the lockdowns i did). I got them because professional tools are:
I've got both professional tools and el-cheapos so I'm familiar with all your plus points, but I still think that parent has a point.
IME, "buying cheap" does not mean "a tool that breaks on the second use", or "makes your life harder". It means "I don't use this tool frequently enough to care enough to pay more".
I've got a cheapo cordless screwdriver that works well enough to do battery replacement on children's toys and similar. When I want to drive self-tappers into wood I use an expensive driver in the garage.
I have a rule for buying tools. The first one I buy, I buy the cheaper version (Harbor Freight house brand for instance). If I use it enough to break it within3 years, or become frustrated with its shortcomings, then I go buy a "pro" version.
Yes, it does mean I have spent more money than absolutely necessary, but on the other hand I have a lot of cheap tools that are perfectly serviceable for the two times a year I actually need to use them.
Yeah, I think that is the best approach especially if the price difference is like tenfold for the high quality product.
However there are some exceptions to the rule, for example I would never buy a low quality notebook or a low quality car.
If the price of the high quality product is too high for me, then I don't try to look for a cheaper model immediately, but try to go second hand first.
There is nothing worse than a weekend and sudden urgent repair to be done. Then you take out your tools and it breaks... It's so frustrating. On the other hand if you pull out a good quality tool, not only you'll fix the problem, but you'll feel good from even looking at it (or at least me).
That's fair. There is also a category (I'm thinking musical instruments, sports equipment, vim) that grows with you. You might miss out (or worse, quit guitar) because you were too cheap to ever figure out what you were missing.
I have been feeling exactly like you for the past couple of years but I've noticed that sometimes items that are known to be "buy it for life" kind of quality level have disappointed me a bit. My most recent example of that is the Herman Miller Embody chair I got just two months ago. Sure, it's very comfy and it worked really well during the first month. And then came the second month and it started to creak, squeak, pop and all kinds of other weird noises. I've researched the issue online and it turns out Herman Miller consider this perfectly normal because apparently it's a "complex product with a lot of parts". I'm not sure how that makes any sense for a product that costs this much. My IKEA Markus is 5 years old by now - it makes zero noise, it has 80% of the comfort of the Embody and it cost literally 1/10th of the price.
So yes, I also want the best of the best and "buy it for life" but I'm starting to think that sometimes this classification is a bit overrated and you need to find a very good balance between price and quality.
For me the issue is figuring out what is even quality. It feels like a lot of the time all options are meh or the feature set I want just doesn't exist.
My hobbies and interests are more established. I know which tools I use a lot, how I use them, and where spending more makes a difference. I've owned and outgrown my entry level gear.
That, and I have more disposable income. I can afford long term investments because they don't incur short term deprivation.
On the other hand, when trying something new, I still go with the cheaper option until I can appreciate what a better tool would do. In most cases, I find that the cheap tool is enough.
I like BIFL-type items for some categories of products, but not others.
Some of the recommended items are great. I love high-quality skillets, knives, rice cookers, etc.
For other items, I've seen an overly high focus on "specs" in the BIFL community, where the durability comes at the price of being uncomfortable and bulky. With shoes, it would be using X leather here, using Y sole stitching there, etc. By comparison, I want light-weight shoes with soft / no heel counter, that weigh less than the recommended leather bricks. The bloody blisters I got from "quality construction" forced me to figure out what I personally need in a shoe.
I'm a video game guy, so I tend to see things in video game terms. Some things are consumables and some things are permanent upgrades.
Some clothes are consumable, underwear, t-shirts. jeans. I buy conformable, well fitting and cheap, with no expectation that it will last. I don't think too much about it. (A $5 t-shirt will not last as long as a $50 t-shirt, but there is not _that_much difference)
Other clothes, I now know, if I choose carefully can last 20-30 years. My winter jacket that I only wear 2 months of the year is at least 20 years old. My belt that I wear almost every day is at least 15 years old.
Sometimes I find myself doing an insane amount of research trying to find the perfect product, but its a kind of procrastination because I don't actually really need any more stuff. The backpack I take to work everyday is a little ratty, and I have spend a lot of time looking at backpacks on the web while watching TV.
One thing I have found, is that buying stuff that is supposed to last for life, ends up making the possessions own me, instead of me own the possessions.
Especially with kids, when I have disposable objects, I don't have to worry if they trash it, or get it dirty. I don't have to worry about losing it(I can order a replacement on Amazon that will be here in 2 days). With long-lasting products that are for life, I find I worry about cleaning them, organizing them, and protecting them.
Maybe to total cost of ownership is less for the more durable product, but you only have to lose it once or damage it once for the savings to go away.
With no disrespect (especially with children, I know their destructive tendencies well enough), this sounds like a shunning of responsibility, and irks me. Our cheap, disposable consumer goods are ending up in landfills, our plastic waste has permeated every square inch of the earth, and we continue to justify these destructive habits.
If you need something, you should care for it, you should maintain it, and you should commit to a certain level of care. Not caring about your possessions and seeing them as disposable validates the business models of shelling out crap quality products and the further destruction of our environment.
Tax everything the amount it costs to clean up the pollution it causes, from electricity to food. 2 side effects: people will make things that produce less pollution, and people will make cleaning up pollution cheaper
On the other hand, crappy knock-off products aren't going to be the right tool for most jobs and will fail when you need them most. The trick to not being owned by your possessions is to only own what you really, truly need.
Further, buying low-quality throw-away type products ends up supporting the greedy, lazy low-quality manufacturers. We all end up with only junk for choice.
And as @desine already commented: all this junk ends up in the landfills, oceans, etc.
> The trick to not being owned by your things is to only own what you really, truly need.
I don't think that is quite right. Let's say you need a button down shirt for work. So you only buy 5, custom tailored shirts out of high quality materials. You have bought a minimal amount, and you really do need those shirts.
When you are eating, are you not worried about getting ketchup on your shirt. If kids come up to you, are you not worried about them getting your shirt dirty. Are you worried that your washer and dryer are being too harsh for your shirts.
If on the other hand, you just get a bunch of ok shirts on Amazon or WalMart. You just throw them in the washer and dryer without thinking about it. You eat and play with your kids, knowing if your shirt gets dirty, stained, or ripped, it is not a big deal, you will just get another one.
I think the true key to not having your possessions own you is easy replacability. If you can easily replace them, then you can use them without worrying about them.
Shirts are more of a disposable product, they normally don't last very long. So the difference between the cheap knock off and proper quality isn't that significant. Although you probably don't want to be wearing the cheapest alibaba shirt to an important business meeting.
yeah, there should be some products where "buy it for life" might be... just don't buy one.
Do you really need a cast iron frying pan? They seem to be over-represented in this category because they don't break. But iron in your diet is not that good for you if you're male because it accumulates.
Another thing to be wary of is "buy this best stuff" lists are easy money, people will curate your lists for you, then you just link to amazon and hoarding behavior does the rest.
Some of the product listings are not great. I see non stick skillets that I know won’t last than a year or two with moderate use. Otherwise I like the concept.
I was surprised to spot apple's "magic mouse" there too. I'm fairly close to an apple fanboy, but even I'd admit non-replaceable batteries isn't compatible with "buy it for life"
I agree with you. It looks like it made it onto the site because it has a lifetime warranty. Still, I’m not keen on eating flakes of PFAS aka Teflon as these types of products wear out
It’s always amazed me that high carbon steel / cast iron / stainless steel pans aren’t more commonly used.
You literally are buying it for life. They cook the food way better. And a small amount of oil is all that’s needed for eggs and other non stick applications
I’ve bought into the cast iron hype a few years ago, and I have found it a little overhyped. There are several reasons why cast iron is not a common component of the average kitchen today. Here are mine:
- The non-stickiness of cast iron has probably been best in class in its age. Today, we have Teflon. Teflon is so non-stick we have trouble having it stick to the pan when making pans. My understanding is that nothing, especially nothing you’re likely to have in your kitchen, beats Teflon, ever. (Kenji Lopez-Alt, a well known chef and/or food scientist alongside being a cast iron fan, also attests to this: https://www.seriouseats.com/2014/11/the-truth-about-cast-iro...)
- I’ve found that it does go against some of my (potentially hypochondriac) cleaning tendencies. Essentially, you can wash it and I think you can use soft soaps, but you can’t really actually scrub it with a hard sponge if you want to get the food out fully. It seems that the carbonisation of food and polymerisation of oil in a layer cake is in fact the thing gives the cast iron its nonstick properties. To someone used to the convivial shine of stainless steel, that’s a tough pill to swallow.
Cast iron is cool, and I’m sure it has its uses, but as someone who only dabbles in kitchen stuff, I’ve found it very inconvenient and frustrating to use.
You can wash with soap and water and your favorite sponge. It's fine and will make your cast iron much more pleasant to use.
If you really need nonstick (frying eggs, basically), that's what you have to use, but cast iron and carbon steel are incredibly versatile and a better buy if you're space-limited than nonstick
I find it has massive merit on account of the underpowered ranges most home cooks have. You simply can keep a cast iron pan hotter than you can other types of pan. This makes it ideal for high temperature cooking like when searing.
Keep in mind that carbonized and polymerized layer is getting scorched every time you cook with cast iron so it's not the most hospitable environment for bacteria.
My concern was less about hospitability to pathogens (indeed, half the point of cooking is to render things safe to eat), and more about the fact that neither polymerised fat nor carbonised food is good for you in terms of free radicals. It’s essentially burnt oil stuck to the pan, that is not a good thing to eat even in trace quantities.
I do realise that polymerisation is conversion of burnt oil into polymer at which point it is largely inert, but it’s very hard to get an oil to fully polymerise 100% outside of lab conditions.
I learned a really handy trick for cleaning my cast iron. Heat the pan pretty hot (like the temp you'd use for searing a steak). Run your tap water as hot as the faucet will deliver, then (carefully) fill your cast iron pan with the hot water. It will boil off 99% of the gunk in the pan, and you can clean it out with a wet sponge.
Properly seasoned it will be as non-stick as Teflon or better. Especially carbon steel, which is also lighter - the main down side of cast iron is weight. Teflon flakes are much worse for you than a bit of iron ever will be (not really an issue in these amounts).
I've spent an incredible amount of time trying to season my cast iron, and it just never works right. You'll hear various tips. Cook lots of bacon on it. Do this. Do that. "old cast iron is better than the new stuff". Etc. But, so far, that advice hasn't really gotten me anywhere.
I've seasoned my cast iron pan many times. I don't think it ever beats teflon, though it gets to a point where things wash off of it pretty easy with just water and a chainmail ringer.
I tried a cast iron skillet and could not for the life of me get it to heat evenly. I'm talking like French toast burnt near the middle and uncooked at the edges.
Stainless steel triple-ply (copper + aluminum) pans though have been fantastic. Even heating and nothing sticks with a bit of oil.
I haven't figured out how to cook pancakes on them yet though, without relying on the Leidenfrost effect, at which point they just kinda burn and don't cook right.
What kind of range do you have? Resistive heating can be a bit tricky with cast iron, but I’ve found that preheating the pan in the oven can help. Cast iron has really high thermal mass compared to clad cookware, and lower thermal conductivity
They cook the best too - a good carbon steel pan is worth its weight in gold. Non-stick is utter garbage in comparison - and you're cooking on plastic and eating pieces of the coating.
Food cooked on carbon steel or iron tastes so much better.
I've not seen our cast iron or carbon steel pans flaking off into food like I have seen with Teflon. I doubt there is much of anything harmful coming off during cooking -- not any more harmful than the cooked food itself likely.
I too see a lot of sensible awareness towards PFAS, but often wonder how many (if any) good ol' PAHs get thrown into your food from the fat seasoning of non-coated pans.
Non-stick pans do not last. The ceramic coating option is terrible and everything will stick to it with a vengeance within about 6-8 months or so if you use it regularly - our experience with Cuisinart.
We got two ceramic coated pans 6 years ago and they're almost as good as new even though we used one of them for almost every cooked meal and the other like at least once every week. They're a pleasure to work with and I wouldn't want to miss them.
Non-stick pans require a bit of care as well. The trick is to ensure no sudden temperature changes to the pan, which will differentially expand/contract the cooking surface. Differential expansion/contraction between the top and bottom surface will crack the non-stick coating in no time ( think expansion cracks in concrete and sidewalks ).
What that usually comes down to is to let your non-stick pan cool to room temperature before you run water over it, even if you like seeing all that steam. Also, you weren't expecting to sear meat with your nonstick anyway so don't slap a massive cold slab of meat on your unoiled non-stick either.
I'm an avid user of carbon steel pans, but I bought one of the hexclad pans just to try it out. It's actually really nice. I've used it about 50% of the time for over a year now, and it has held up really well. It's not as pretty as it was brand new, but it is still non-stick and there is no noticeable degradation.
I’ve found a wonderful exception for clothing: https://www.woolx.com/pages/about-woolx. You aren’t replacing your entire wardrobe with them, but I wear their shirts 50% of the time and their boxers 100% of the time.
Interestingly enough, RAM seems to have a lifetime warranty, as discussed on other places on the web [1]. Of course, lifetime warranty does not mean the lifetime of the buyer [2].
I love quality tools and products, especially when you have taken the time to find what works for your specific use case or body type. That being said, I started slowly shifting to an attitude that, to paraphrase an over quoted movie, "on a long enough timeline, everything is a consumable". The biggest factor isn't so much buying something for life, but buying a product that 1) matches the lifespan of my usage 2) won't frustrate me with its quality 3) will last a length of time somewhat in line with the improvement cycle of that type of product.
Instead of BFL, I only buy products that I'm ok with getting destroyed or products I have a laid out upgrade plan for. Example: All of my pants are Levi's 501s. I can get them for 50-60 bucks, which is nothing. They last a really long time, but they're not made in America nor do they have a lifetime warranty. BUT I don't have to worry about spilling stuff on my pants or going through the tedious process of filing warranty claims every time a button breaks. I just get on the app and order a new pair.
What's more important to me is narrowing down the list of brands I buy from so I spend less time thinking about shopping and more time being productive.
It hurts me a little to see “50-60 bucks” for jeans referred to as nothing. I now grudgingly buy similar $50-60 Levis or Eddie Bauers because my wife likes them better than jeans that cost half as much. Looks some common basic jeans at Walmart are still ~$15 which is amazing since that’s what I remember paying for them like 15 years ago.
In my experience, Levi's and other "quality" jeans last long enough to go out of style (5+ years, much to my wife's chagrin), whereas cheap jeans fail in the crotch and/or pockets in under a year. For a few years I switched to cheap jeans and just repaired them when they ripped, but you can only sew up a pocket so many times on really cheap fabric before they are so thin they won't even hold a stitch.
I had a pair of White Oak 501's, and honestly they were inferior to just about every other pair of Levi's I've owned. The denim was rough and coarse, and they ripped fairly quick.
Some cheapo Harbor Freight tools last a lifetime if you only use them a couple times a year. No sense in buying something very heavy duty when it won't see much duty.
I feel like "buy it for life" is just a different kind of (hipster?) snobbery.
And the tools they’re listing, Milwaukee Hammer Drill, for example, offers no warranty at all and wouldn’t be what I would consider to be “high end” either. Just seems like a purposely placed product rather than a legitimate BIFL item.
Milwaukee does offer a warranty and will repair out of warranty but any battery tool is by definition not a buy-it-for-life as the battery will wear out (and better tools will come).
My rule is buy so that when it dies I’m not sad. That varies for different pieces of equipment.
The thing to remember with battery powered tools is that you are not just buying a tool. You are buying into a battery ecosystem. Plan accordingly.
Fortunately, you can buy batteries for most popular tool brands long after the brand stops supporting them, and in a pinch you can buy adapters to make brand a batteries work on brand b tools
one brand (rigid) offers a lifetime warranty on batteries, but in practice from what I've seen on the 'net, they try to do everything possible to deny warranty claims.
There are tools for weekend warriors, and then there's tools for the "professional" built for daily use.
I often repeat the phrase "buy it nice, or buy it twice if not thrice". I've done the buy it cheap to get 'er done type of thing, and I've also bought the good item because it was going to make a shitty job that much easier.
One really nice thing about safety-critical activities is that the equipment tends to be made to extremely high standards and usually lasts a very long time.
If you buy equipment for climbing, shooting, scuba diving, etc. you can reasonably expect that it's made to a very exacting standard (almost certainly in the US, Japan, or Europe) and will last many years (with well-defined consumable components and maintenance requirements).
You probably just have a decent budget for guns and haven't seen the dodgy ones. The market is flooded with garbage that I would not even consider firing.
I genuinely dont understand the reason behind hijacking right-click (long press on phone). I'm using a slow internet, and I'm used to open multiple tabs so I can only wait for one and then go through all of them. So I'm eager to understand if this is done to stop people from copying from the site or there's another reason behind it.
I don't think right click is disabled? It's just that a bunch of the "links" aren't semantic <a> tags so you can't open them in a new window. (they're just <div> tags with onclick handlers)
I think this happens often in single-page-apps just because developer don't care or don't think about this use case. It's frustratingly common.
Works if you click the name of the case. I'm on Mac Safari FWIW.
Doesn't work on the image because they want that to click through the carousel. I think they are wrong (a regular clic can do that, plus they have navigation arrows).
But at least you can shop in the normal fashion, if you click on the text
>So I'm eager to understand if this is done to stop people from copying from the site
Disabling right-click for this purpose is like a lock on the front door to your house. It only keeps the honest person at bay. If I want to see the details of the site, there's no stopping DevTools. Hiding images div backgrounds or under click blocking divs is just a mere inconvenience. If the browser is displaying it, it can be gotten to in DevTools
I'm now at the point where I crave quality at just about any cost because it's abundantly clear to me that buying crap is bad value. Many of the few high quality things I bought early on in life are still with me and I love them. But so is a huge amount of the garbage I bought earlier and I hate it.
So where I used to go into shops and look at all the expensive items with scorn and think "what idiots must there be who buy all these things that are twice the price!", now I go in and actively try to find out "but is there an even more expensive one I could get with higher quality?"