[mschild]

For some products, I agree, but realistically its about as good as it gets unless you do thorough research on a given product and are actually able to find a somewhat unbiased review.

Take washing machines for example. How do you know which ones are good and which ones are not? Public reviews from any website tend to only be a good indicator if there a lots of bad ones. I have 0 faith in the average consumer to accurately rate a product. Overwhelmingly negative reviews will clearly show a deficiency but positive ones are unfortunately more and more a gamble.

Stiftung Warentest isn't perfect, but they do, on most occasions, put in a high amount of effort to test products to the best of their abilities without any personal opinions. I don't know of a single other person/organization/website where that is the case.

[petra]

Most washing machines offer quit similar features. The key difference is reliability.

Testing for reliability is expensive, so most likely Stiftung Warentest and similar companies don't do that.

[onli]

No, that's exactly what they do test and test well. Their model mostly breaks down for computer technology and peripherals in that space. When testing a mouse they would test how often it can click before breaking down, and that's only slight hyperbole. Might be a bit better now in that area than back then when I read their tests regularly.

[turbinerneiter]

I bought their test of basmati rice and these monsters had an intern court the broken vs. whole rice grains in a 500g package.

I assume they only counted a sample of the the 500g, but it's funnier to imagine otherwise.

[aitchnyu]

Wonder if Count Things can do that https://countthings.com/

But then Basmati rice is judged on grain length too. Wonder if they report like "22 cm of broken pieces per km of grains".

[saimiam]

s/court/count/.

It took me a while to understand what you meant.

[turbinerneiter]

I mean that would be even funnier. Sorry for the typo.

[14]

My brand new LG turbowasher model lasted 3 months before one morning sounded like a hammer smashing something. I ran to the machine and a support bracket inside had broken. It took 2 months for them to replace it I was not impressed. It has since lasted 3 more years no issues but I doubt I would go with LG in the future since it was a horrible customer service experience getting my first one repairs under warranty. Had they helped me better after it breaking I may have said it was just a fluke and still recommended them.

[brnt]

I base those sorts of purchases on duration of warranty. Recently bought a dryer, and apart from a brand that cost significantly more, they all came with 2 year warranties. One reasonably priced machine had 4, so I picked that one.

[pooper]

Counterexample: Korean auto manufacturers Hyundai and Kia offer longer warranties than Japanese manufacturers Honda and Toyota because that’s the only way people will buy Korean cars.

[aitchnyu]

Wonder if they are taking advantage of bath tub curve and 8 years is slightly costlier than 5 years to a manufacturer. In India, Toyota is selling rebadged Suzuki cars offering lower cost and more warranty.

[usr1106]

Warranty is ridiculous. Of course it's good to have if something breaks early. But normally I want my stuff to last much longer. Our fridge broke last summer: 30 years old. It had one repair 18 years ago. Our washing machine is 22, zero repairs. I hope it still makes it while. Well, none of them were the cheapest ones. From central European factories which might no longer exist...

Some would claim these old appliances waste energy. I am not convinced. We need to heat our buildings here from September to May. Whatever a very modern appliance warms the building less the heating has to substitute. It's all energy and losses produce heat.

[ddingus]

There is also all the energy required to churn out newer appliances that break and get recycled.

Getting one great one that will last for a few decades isn't a bad call. That's what I do personally.

And there are still ways to save, reduce energy impact. Moderation is a big one. Just be frugal and prudent with the appliances. That has a major impact and everyone could do more and capture those gains right away.

[mschild]

They ran 3 machines of each model 1840 times and always exactly recorded the statistics (is the 60C program really using 60C water, etc) and results to test for reliability.