[ethbr0]

So much this. Find someone who does a lot of residential repairs of X. Ask a few of them for recommendations, specifically on what not to buy.

As the Farmer's Insurance jingle goes, "They know a thing, because they've seen a thing."

Every service tech I've ever asked has immediately had a "Never buy {popular brand}, because they all {have shoddy part | catastrophic design error}."

And it's night and day between what service techs all know vs what even the most detailed internet sleuthing would give you, because they actually see a representative sample size.

[danachow]

The flip side of this - is that service techs are by their nature biased to failures. They don't come out to the machines that are working. This is an issue for top-selling items where they may see a lot of service calls but the overall rate is lower than something they see less frequently. In my experience I have known few technicians that have the statistical smarts to account for this.