[azza2110]

I'd happily pay 5x the price of the cheapest product available, if I knew I was getting a higher quality product with a longer lifetime.

However, I can never tell if this 5x premium actually gets me a better core product, or just gets me better branding, advertising, aesthetics, and/or superfluous features.

So I usually just buy the cheapest and hope for the best.

[ygra]

In Germany there's an independent organisation, Stiftung Warentest [−4], that anonymously buys various products in stores and tests them quite rigorously. Some may say perhaps a bit too well (including things like the manual, how easy it is to set up a large appliance, or whether toxic chemicals are used in parts that are handled), but overall they seem to do a very good job. Testing and scoring methodology is published as well. I trust them a lot more than Amazon or YouTube reviews or some random blog that got the product sent by its manufacturer.

[−4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiftung_Warentest – the article also has a few pointers to international, similar organisations near the bottom.

[Gurgler]

There is a similar organization in the USA: Consumer Reports. It used to be a magazine, now I believe it's just a website. Entirely funded by subscription - and not advertisement or other sponsorship - they tackle entire categories of consumer goods in the USA, rigorously testing and ranking competing products across many metrics.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

They are also incorruptible.

If they give your product good marks, you are not allowed to mention it in your marketing (Not sure how they enforce it; maybe they stop reviewing your stuff).

I worked at a company that regularly got top marks from them, and our Marketing folks would have fits, because they couldn't mention it.

[alamortsubite]

Sounds great, but Consumer Reports definitely has a checkered past. Read about the Suzuki Samurai debacle, in which they methodically manipulated their tests (strictly for that vehicle, and not any of the others in its class that they were simultaneously evaluating), with the goal of destroying the vehicle's reputation.

https://www.aim.org/aim-report/aim-report-a-black-eye-for-co...

[mapt]

I'm not sure what the point is of linking to a reference that also features pieces titled:

'The media lied to you about COVID-19 – TAKE ACTION NOW'

'Critical Race Theory in schools, take action now!'

'Gender activists are politicizing the dictionary: TAKE ACTION NOW'

'Stand up for Rush – TAKE ACTION NOW'

'VOX buries the truth'

'CNN admits Hunter Biden ‘a real problem’ for Joe Biden, not ‘a right-wing media story’'

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Accuracy_in_Media

I am less confident about either your contention or about the position you are attacking than about the idea that this particular website is going to lie to me about it.

[midoridensha]

Why does anyone need to stand up for Rush? It was a great band and not really controversial, plus they disbanded years ago because the drummer died. They don't exist any more, just like Led Zeppelin no longer really exists (also because the drummer died, coincidentally).

[switchbak]

I'm still not sure why I'm standing up for Rush, I don't even like the band, but I took action. Immediately!

[ConceptJunkie]

Hey, I love Rush! "Hemispheres" is my favorite album by them!

[dijonman2]

All sound like accurate headlines in today’s political landscape.

[safety1st]

So the website also publishes right wing propaganda. Does that invalidate the claims in the article he linked? Did you read the article before formulating your opinion?

This is basic critical thinking, you don't have to be as shallow as many readers of that website probably are, you're just choosing to be.

[hn_go_brrrrr]

I hadn't heard about this, thanks for the link. I did a little digging and it doesn't appear be quite as clean cut as that article says. For instance, check out https://www.theautochannel.com/news/press/date/19970422/pres... (a CR press release), where they mention internal Suzuki documents acknowledging the rollover issue.

[alamortsubite]

I've read the text of the lawsuit. As you mention, this is a press release, so I'm highly skeptical of it. Video documentation of CR's manipulation of the tests is on YouTube. It's wild stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2Bv9WL3vpY

[Spooky23]

I think Consumer Reports has an opinionated editorial voice. But I think that’s inevitable in that line of work.

SUVs evolved to address the risks pointed out by CR and other entities. They mostly have wider wheelbases and lower centers of gravity.

[crotchrocketeer]

Well, at least this wasn’t in the “pretend it’s better direction” so it’s a at least still reliable in helping pick good quality.

[alamortsubite]

Not if you were trying to decide between the Samurai and the other vehicles CR was "evaluating" (a Wrangler and the Bronco II). Internally, CR's testers praised the Samurai as having the best handling of the bunch, but their editor made sure the public never heard this.

[TheRealDunkirk]

They might be ethical, but they don't "live" with appliances to really figure out what they're dealing with, either. I used Consumer Reports' recommendation to buy a full set of appliances for a new house about 18 years ago. I bought "GE Gold" washer, dryer, fridge, stove, microwave, and dishwasher.

Within 2 years, every single one had failures. For instance, the oven's convection fan failed in a month. The washer AND dryer completely failed within 3 years. I bought refurbished units from a local guy, and when I told him what I had, he didn't even want them to flip again.

I, too, resigned myself to the fact that, unless you pay for commercial-grade appliances, it's all crap, and you may as well just buy the cheapest thing at Lowe's, and replace it when it fails. The industry deserves all the loss of trust they have earned.

[grepfru_it]

I’ve had great success with them, my vacuum is going strong after 13+ years, washer and dryer great after 9 years. But I’m still harboring negative feelings about their car reviews. They marked the 2013 Ford Edge as a great vehicle with minimal flaws, but when they reviewed the 2014 Ford Edge they found an array of problems and lowered the score. While I was researching and shopping for my Ford Edge I found the 2013 and 2014 were exactly the same cars. I think they enhanced the weld points for ANCHOR points to support 60lbs instead of 45lbs, but that was the extent of changes.. small and incremental. Yet CR faulted them for excess road noise, stiff suspension, and reliability. I test drove both mode years and they both performed and sounded exactly the same. Major parts including suspension were interchangeable as well. We went with the 2013 to save money before the CR reviews for 2014 came out. It made me realize their reviews are not consistent, especially when Tesla Model S went from having top marks to all of a sudden being scored very low. These are not cars that drastically changed between the years, so just buyer beware YMMV

FWIW, I do love my Ford Edge and it is still the daily driver for our household

[Tagbert]

You do need to distinguish between their reviews (which are done by CR internal people and reflect their values and judgement) and the ratings which are done by surveying CR subscribers who are owners of the products.

[tomohawk]

I'm a member of CR, but they obviously have their biases and blind spots.

Sometimes they start with a premise they want to prove instead of just providing a straight review of the products. They may do this by selecting the criteria (key performance metrics), for example.

Sometimes, they just don't competently evaluate the products because they fail to take into account real world consumer needs.

The quality of reviews in CR these days doesn't hold a candle to what CR used to provide, but I remain a member because even a weak signal is better than the other random stuff out there like Amazon reviews.

[nobodyofnote]

They actually do allow you to mention it in marketing; I've worked with them for a consumer product. What you can't do is use it in "paid" marketing.

Emails, social media posts, website landing pages, collateral in-store/retail is all fully acceptable. You can also pay additional fees to them for additional materials to use in communications.

[pandaman]

It is apparently allowed to put a link to the review, saying "Check out how CR reviewed us" e.g. https://www.lg.com/us/laundry

[game-of-throws]

Another similar site is https://www.rtings.com/. They do very scientific, thorough quality tests. I've only used them to buy monitors so far, but it looks like they're starting to branch out from tech -- they have new categories for blenders and vacuums.

[ghostpepper]

Hopefully they don't go the same path as the Wirecutter. Started out great and small and independent and slowly started watering down reviews as they branched into more and more areas. They are now owned by the NYTimes and the quality of the reviews is much more hit and miss.

[squeaky-clean]

rtings is trying to push a subscription now. I was looking up wireless mice latency, and after looking at 5 mice, I had used up all my free views of "advanced metrics" like click latency.

rtings does good work, I'd pay a flat fee for it. But a subscription for a website I check every 2-3 years when I'm upgrading some tech? I'll just clear my cookies.

[nordsieck]

> I was looking up wireless mice latency, and after looking at 5 mice, I had used up all my free views of "advanced metrics" like click latency.

If you're specifically looking at mice, you might want to check out RocketJumpNinja. The reviews are pretty biased towards suitability for FPS, but they are quite in depth, and the reviewer is pretty knowledgeable.

[driverdan]

Wirecutter has always been hit or miss.

[TylerE]

Their conclusions are somewhat suspect sometimes though… with weird qualifications for “best” that often barely effect actual functioning. Like, heavily weighting quietness over power.

[wtallis]

Are you referring specifically to their car reviews? Those seem to regularly attract criticism for not being more like traditional car enthusiast-oriented reviews.

I think that's largely due to car enthusiasts having insufficient self-awareness about the degree to which their priorities differ from those of mainstream consumers. PC gamers and PC building enthusiasts are also frustratingly prone to this kind of thing. (I spent several years reviewing PC hardware for a living, which included constantly fielding comments from readers who seemed to be genuinely unable to understand how their could be a market for low-end components.)

[throwaway09223]

I remember reading their computer reviews a few decades ago and being gobsmacked at how ignorant their process and conclusions were.

I assume that other articles have similar issues, and that I'm just unaware because they're not within my area of expertise.

[thaeli]

CR's core failing is, on the surface, their greatest strength: they refuse to have any "special" contact with any manufacturers. Unfortunately, this also means that they don't ask, or listen, when their test procedures are nonsensical.

[41b696ef1113]

Last year, I was looking to upgrade my desktop. Found a review that was bemoaning a motherboard because it only had two M.2 slots. How many consumers use two, let alone would benefit from a third?

[fomine3]

I have opposite bemoaning for recent motherboards: only one PCIe slot (x16) is directly connected to CPU (not via chipset). It's useless to have PCIe 5.0 x16 slot even for average consumer because 4.0 x8 is still enough for modern GPU for gaming and even if it become not enough, 5.0 x8 should be enough for foreseeable future. Lack of high bandwidth dedicated PCIe slots for other than GPU makes the PC less expandable, e.g. video capture, another GPU (not for SLI), 10GbE, HBA, etc...

[NathanielK]

Since the only thing consumers use full size PCIe slots for now is for a single GPU, extra M.2 slots isn't that big of an ask. One M.2 keyed for an interchangeable wifi card, one for NVMe storage, and then an extra one if you want to upgrade to more storage later. If you only have one keyed for storage, you're SoL when you buy a bigger one later and it's very inconvenient to move data over.

[linkdink]

At least they're open about how they weighed their values. And they give you enough information to draw your own conclusions from your own values. Some people want to be told what's "best", and they've found a way to make everyone (minus one) happy.

[abawany]

Consumers Report still has a magazine - I subscribe to it for a lower cost than the online access.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

I had a problem with them where their rating methodology for carpet cleaners was not adequate. So the cleaner with strongest cleaning capability was like 10th in the list, instead of first

[cptnapalm]

It's still a magazine. Source: I work at a library and put the September 2022 issue on the shelf last week.

[mcphage]

My dad always used Consumer Reports to pick products, and... I dunno, they didn't seem to be super great.

[switchbak]

I've seen some reviews for which I know a fair amount, and often the testing and rating rubric are ... Bewildering and unsophisticated. I love the idea of Consumer Reports a lot more than the actual thing itself.

[mcphage]

> I love the idea of Consumer Reports a lot more than the actual thing itself

Yeah, exactly. I really love the idea, but not the results.

[Semaphor]

My issue with them is twofold: a) The "testing too much" part, specifically things like how well translated the manual is, for example. I don’t care. And b), it’s a blackbox. There are no real details for how they arrived at the rating of some subsection.

ETM [0] is subscription funded and their tests are far more detailed, and they even show the data (e. g. power usage curves for a toaster, measured air replacement curves for a fan, etc.).

[0]: https://etm-testmagazin.de/

[ant6n]

Perhaps the magazine is good, but the website doesn’t leave a good impression: I search for dehumidifier, and all I get is the info about one particular model being released, an article that reads more like an ad, without any testing done.

[Semaphor]

They recently (about a year ago) redesigned their website, and it’s a disaster. I have absolutely NO idea what they were thinking. Links aren’t working properly, and as usual for an SPA, it’s slower now. It’s even hard to actually navigate anywhere now.

Anyway, in this case, they simply have not tested any dehumidifiers.

[grog454]

Do they do tear-downs and rate the engineering? That's pretty much the only way to determine how likey something is to last without using it for ten years.

[mschild]

I don't think they do tear-downs but they do stress test them extensively. Their reports also include their testing methods in detail. For washing machine testing, for example, they independently bought 3 of each model and ran each through 1840 cycles. That's equivalent to 3.5 cycles per week for 10 years. They checked how the machine held up in comparison to the beginning and if any repairs were needed.

[sneak]

AvE does this on his YT channel, though only for hand tools and adjacent stuff (he did a Juicero once and it was utterly hilarious).

[somewhat_drunk]

Juicero teardown is one of the best youtube videos ever made.

[stevage]

The Australia Choice magazine does pretty hefty stress tests. No tear downs though.

[Cthulhu_]

> I trust them a lot more than Amazon or YouTube reviews or some random blog that got the product sent by its manufacturer.

Yeah same, those reviews are either bought, or made on a whim by people who aren't critical of what they buy - especially if the company or seller goad them into reviewing with giveaways or whatever. There will be good reviews, but they will be buried in the thousand+ mediocre ones.

[drekipus]

We have the same in australia too, called choice magazine. https://www.choice.com.au/

[nuker]

And even better, OzBargain.com.au crowdsourced one liner reviews, surprisingly valid :)

[floydnoel]

Thanks for sharing, this is great information. I definitely think that independent testing organizations are important for quality so it’s always great to hear of more of them

[foobiekr]

In the US, the closest example is Consumer Reports ( https://www.consumerreports.org/ ); there actually are a lot of these orgs worldwide. It's pretty cool.

They often are somewhat marginal at the edges - e.g., for computers. But otherwise they are useful for consumer products.

[rahen]

It seems common all across Europe, maybe the whole western world.

Here for France: https://www.60millions-mag.com/tests-comparatifs

(I just laughed as I see they even review fries brands, and sex toys...)

[dopidopHN]

Same stuff in France : 60 million de consommateurs.

They also provide help to launch class action. ( that exists differently than a US class action )

[initplus]

This is the core issue that prevents reliable consumer products from becoming more widespread. Even if demand exists for more reliable consumer goods, consumers don't have the ability to actually evaluate reliability at the time of purchase.

Manufacturers can't justify producing a more reliable product at a higher price point, because there isn't really a way to get consumers to trust that it really is a more reliable product worthy of the price.

[ericd]

There is a way, it’s the reputation that builds over time and is associated with your brand. It’s why many people buy Toyota by default. It’s why we paid 5x the price for a Miele vacuum (which are awesome, by the way). It’s just that most people either can’t or just won’t pay a significant premium for it, so those products tend to be niche.

Of course, many execs look at brand value as something to be harvested for short term gains to the value of their options, but that’s a different problem.

[lazide]

PE buying a brand to ‘harvest the brand value’ has become extremely common in tools, and has ruined a lot of things.

[tshaddox]

They have more techniques too, like having store- or region-specific models that probably are all essentially the same but have different model numbers and slightly different feature sets just to make searching for reviews and price comparisons more difficult.

[NathanielK]

Sometimes they aren't essentially the same, but instead different in invisible ways. DeWalt grinders at Canadian Tire used to use plastic parts where metal was typically used. Outside of the different SKU it was difficult to tell the difference.

[lazide]

Walmart is notorious for this - they push really hard on suppliers to reduce prices, and suppliers usually do so by cutting quality. However everyone still pretends it’s the same (including identical outside appearance).

[jabl]

This so much. At least over here it's completely impossible to find reviews of whiteware (refrigerators, washing machines etc.), at most a handful on the local reseller homepage.

[saiya-jin]

even TVs suffer from this - tons of european models have different numbering/code, and unless you are die hard fan who understands various manufacturers product lines year by year, looking for products in Europe based on ie US reviews can get tricky.

[phpisthebest]

That is more to allow big box stores to advertise "price match" when they know no one else as the "exact same model"

See this Drill is DW345, we sell DW350, it is 5 better

[jabl]

Absolutely, it's everywhere, not just in tools. Brand X known for quality decides to, well like you said, drop production cost and 'harvest the brand value'. Then after a while when the reputation is sullied, the same conglomerate / holding company launches another 'upscale' brand. Rinse and repeat.

[dllthomas]

I almost feel like it should be deemed fraud or false advertising, although I have no idea how we should draw the line and ultimately we probably shouldn't.

[jamiek88]

That was liking riding along in your mind as you constructed your thought! :)

[benj111]

The problem then is if the brand cashes in on the reputation while moving production to China and using cheaper parts whilst charging the premium price still.

[eru]

In some sense, the longer the brand has been around, the less likely they are to pull an exit scam.

[lazide]

It’s the opposite in my experience - older brands have a hard time keeping up with newer trends and are more likely to be bought out by PE to ‘harvest value’, as they’re not as profitable right now.

[eru]

In order for something to become old, it has to have resisted attempts on its life so far.

[ericd]

Yeah, that's the exec short term gain thing. But it doesn't take too much research to check if that's happened before pulling the trigger, people are pretty vocal when that happens to their favorite brands.

[stevage]

Yeah just look at the recent reviews of Dyson vacuum cleaners. People buying the reputation but the quality has gone to shit.

[hgomersall]

I used to work with a mechanical engineer that was formerly at Dyson and he was rather scathing of their design policies, the tolerances being calculated badly and so on. The effect is everything feels "a bit loose".

[wizofaus]

Yep, I wouldn't buy Dyson again. If a manufacturer wants to preserve its reputation it shouldn't be making cordless vacuums with batteries that run out within 10-15 minutes.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

Not being able to trust brand reputation is the same problem, not a different problem.

[nuker]

Many execs have short term personal incentives, so short term gains suit fine.

[twoWhlsGud]

Re Miele - my sample size of one dates to 1987 and still is my main vac. So at some point in the past they were probably quite good (or I got really really lucky). FWIW

[ericd]

Ha awesome. Before I bought, I did some reading about vacuums that repair shops thought were good, Miele seemed to top the list at the time. It’s been great, despite suffering a decent amount of clumsiness-related abuse.

[slowmovintarget]

It's not easy, but it can be done.

We found Miele for dishwashers. Zwilling for our toaster, JennAir for microwave...

We explicitly avoided "smart" anything. I shouldn't need to connect my refrigerator to wi-fi.

But we've watched the crap curve take hold on a bunch of product categories, especially U.S. brands. Hannah Anderson used to make good quality, reliable children's clothes that didn't wear out when you looked at them funny. Not any more. Other brands that used to make clothing that lasted 20+ years now makes thin garbage that might last a season. Many of these transitions were to "Made in China" manufacturing.

We went to replace a ten-year old electric coffee grinder and couldn't find one for less than $1700 that wasn't garbage. We switched to a hand grinder as the only reasonable alternative.

It is very frustrating to try to find things that will last. My parents bought one refrigerator, and it lasted for more than 30 years. Most of their stuff they were able to get once. Not every two or three years.

[switchbak]

I must disagree on the coffee grinder front. There's a great number of decent options well under your given price (I just took the plunge recently).

Brands like Ceado and Eureka make a bunch at various price ranges. 600 gets you a decent one, 1200 and you're well into very nice grinder territory (unless you wanna go all audiophile here).

There's not a ton to go wrong: good motor, bearings, a well designed adjustment mechanism and a good hopper design. Of those I'd really only expect the bearings and motor to die in any reasonable time frame.

If you're that concerned you could always get a commercial model. There's no way home use will kill one of those, but it'll just be big and impractical.

[slowmovintarget]

We landed on commercial coffee grinders for any with motors. The hand mill we ended up with does much better for pour-over coffee than any of the electrics at roughly a tenth of the price and counter space. Only requires elbow-grease and some good hand-torque.

[chiefalchemist]

Can I leverage your research for myself...Which hand grinder did you go with?

[yladiz]

I'm not sure what the parent uses but I really enjoy using my Comandante Mark IV (which solves some issues with Mark III had, namely around body design). It's high quality, reliable, and consistent, and also easy to maintain since there's only a few parts that need cleaning. There are also a range of colors if you want something more eye popping. For me the only downside (besides price, it's around €275) is that I find the large logo on the side a little gaudy, but in practice it's not that bad.

[slowmovintarget]

The Kinu m47 was unavailable (fire in the factory, pandemic...).

Went with the BPlus Apollo. See my response below to yaldiz.

[switchbak]

I do like a good hand grinder, used one for years (Commandante) until I got lazy and wanted a machine to do the work.

[claaams]

The 20$ coffee grinder I got at target years ago still runs great...

[winrid]

I have one of those, newer than that, and the bearings are going out.

[matthewmcg]

Has there been a change in Baratzza? The Virtuoso I bought a decade ago is built like a tank and has replacement parts available for consumables.

The one weakness it has is the plastic ring that holds the upper burr set. This appears to be intentionally designed to break as a sacrificial part if anything jams. Replacements are a few bucks.

[lutorm]

I don't agree with that. There is a way to clearly signal that you're standing behind the quality of your products: offer an outstanding warranty.

If I was choosing between brand A and twice as expensive brand B, and brand B said "we trust that our stuff will last so we offer a 10-year, no questions asked warranty", I would go for B in a heartbeat. (As long as it was a brand with some history so I can trust they don't just go out of business.)

[ornornor]

Some brands have gotten around this by offering a 10 years warranty*

* insert terms so onerous you’re very unlikely to claim, you have to ship the item on your own dime halfway across the world, if defect is deemed not covered (and you bet it won’t be) disposal at your expense or return as is at your expense, extended warranty void if you didn’t do $frivolousThing at time of purchase and not a day later, extended warranty doesn’t transfer to new owner, etc.

[fomine3]

The problem is that the confident is just a confident by brand B, and possibly the warranty term is not decided from confident but from competitor's warranty term. Personally I don't want very long warranty term for some products (I came up with PC PSU 12yr warranty). Warranty increases product cost that I should pay finally, but some products never be used so long by me.

[ouid]

warranty has been replaced with AAS.

[mellavora]

Don't know that acronym, is is "a-hat as a service?"

like help lines which charge 80 cents/minute to not help you?

[ouid]

as a service already has 2 'a's.

[krisoft]

> because there isn't really a way to get consumers to trust that it really is a more reliable product worthy of the price

That is what warranties are for. You say it is reliable? Put it in writing how long you think it will keep working and what will you owe the customer if it ain’t so.

[salawat]

MTBF. The Engineer's secret way of measuring relative Quality.

MTBF is exec poison. Too high, and the customer doesn't come back, you see, or worse, it's too expensive to build! (According to finance).

[wizofaus]

Warranties? If you're gonna charge 3 times more for a product, then you should be able to offer a warranty that's much better than that for lower spec equivalents. Yet that rarely seems to happen.

[switchbak]

I think there's a growing level of knowledge in some niches that's leading to higher quality items in some circumstances.

In power tools for instance, there's a number of YouTube channels that do high quality testing. In some cases some identified faults appear to have caught the eye of the manufacturer. Hopefully over time this feedback loop will result in higher quality products that still hit their price target.

[gnicholas]

I've had a blendtec blender for nearly a decade, and recently the gasket at the bottom started leaking. When I looked up pricing for replacing the container, I found it was nearly half the cost of the whole unit.

The motor doesn't sound as good these days, so I considered replacing the whole thing. Fortunately after I wiggled the gasket it seemed to stop leaking!

[sgtnoodle]

That gasket melted on mine after 1.5 years. I bought an Alterna-jar to replace it. It's a third-party jar with a significantly more robust bearing block.

[cudgy]

Get a Vitamix. 5x the price and seems to last forever. In fact, there are even very old (decades old) used Vitamix’s on eBay that are still running and usually just need a new canister.

[Ma8ee]

But that only says anything about the units that were sold decades ago. It's very common that quality brands with very good reputation are bought by some investors, and then they start selling the same crap as everyone else, but to the premium price that their brand and reputation allow them to. And it works surprisingly long before the new crap they sell destroys their reputation. (I know nothing about Vitamix, they may still be great.)

[palijer]

Vitamix is a private, family owned company.

Your statement would be correct for the majority of companies however, but Vitamix is actually distinct in that regard (currently)

[robotnikman]

It seems like private family owned companies are the way to go when you want something with decent quality that will last.

[cudgy]

You are absolutely correct. This happens far too often, but I don’t think that is the case with Vitamix … yet.

[bilegeek]

Anecdotally, new units are about the same quality for a higher price than 10-15 years ago. Nothing objective, could be wrong; in my late-2000's case, it was from Costco, so maybe it was higher priced elsewhere.

[rlaabs]

Modern Vitamix benders (roughly within the last 8 years) have the same declining quality issues.

Newer models are typically much lighter. This means they now have far less internal material to reduce noise. I can't use mine without ear protection since it's about chainsaw level of noise. The reduced weight means I also need to hold onto it during use otherwise it will vibrate itself off the counter.

The company seems to be most interested in selling smoothie recipe subscriptions for their blender companion phone app. Aside from subscription selling the app is pretty much useless -- who wants a phone app to remotely control a blender?

[geodel]

Seems like common problem. Some retarded React App developer gets hired. And now business is no longer making some solid, long lasting blenders but "Connected Healthy Solutions"®

I am sure some next generation developers are already demanding to install VSCode on fridges so one can code on Samsung Smart refrigerators screens.

Wouldn't it be great that while fridge telling about running short on Kale green also download a gigabyte of NPM garbage to display image of Kale green in a bag?

[rodgerd]

> Some retarded

Do better.

[kikokikokiko]

Retarded is a fine word to describe a person that is acting like he/she has a mental handcap. Americans are sooo annoying with the language policing mania, tou guys really need to chill.

[phpisthebest]

Baseball used to be America's favorite pastime, Now it seems taking offense is the most common pastime...

[arkadiytehgraet]

I believe the parent was imploring GP to use stronger words more accurately depicting the aforementioned React App developer, such as "braindead" or similar.

[rrix2]

Nah, you sound like a school kid when you write like that.

[cinntaile]

People seem to use braindead nowadays. A clinical condition resulting from an accident, a stroke, ... such an improvement.

[nuker]

Some rodgerd

[gnicholas]

> who wants a phone app to remotely control a blender?

Here's an idea: if you find the blender to be too loud, go into a different room, close the door, and remotely trigger the blender with your smartphone app.

We put our blender in our pantry because we can close the door and blend without waking up the baby. Otherwise it (Blendtec) is too loud!

EDIT: to the downvoters, this was tongue in cheek. It would obviously be better for them to spend more money on soundproofing and less on a useless app!

[2muchcoffeeman]

This is the worst part about all this smart phone junk and cooking. It's normalising leaving the room and then cooking something remotely a bit too much.

[mlyle]

It all depends. Getting notified for time consuming things is great.

Having my smoker self-manage its temperature and graph the amount of heat it's dumped in is nice. Checking on the temperature ramp of the sous vide is nice, too.

[gnicholas]

Is blending time-consuming? I guess peanut butter takes a couple minutes, most blending is < 40s IME.

[xahrepap]

For Christmas we replaced my moms vitamix. She had her last one for well over 20 years.

We’ve had ours for 8 years and it works like new and doesn’t smell like the motor is burning out like so many cheap blenders do.

[hansvm]

I can second this motion. I've used a lot of blender-like products of various advertised levels of quality, and Vitamix is the only thing I've seen that can take massive levels of abuse for ages.

[christophilus]

I can’t speak to the quality of the new ones, but mine is a decade old and still going strong.

[slowmovintarget]

Breville seemed to be the better one to go with, but that was a while ago, too.

[jghn]

Worse yet, even some of the traditional "expensive, but built like a tank" companies are starting to shift to being "better branding, advertising" from your list.

[lutorm]

When investors put short-term profit ahead of long term brand viability...

[sneak]

Blendtec, KitchenAid

[ConceptJunkie]

Is it more sturdy and long-lasting? Or does it just have wifi capabilities that put your computer network at risk for no increase in value whatsoever?

[palijer]

This is why I love the genre of teardown videos on YouTube. There is a while world of engineering minded folks tearing down basically everything on YouTube, and saying "what a piece of crap" or "such a brilliant engineered design"

[xnx]

For 5x price, you can probably get commercial grade.

[yourapostasy]

> However, I can never tell if this 5x premium actually gets me a better core product, or just gets me better branding, advertising, aesthetics, and/or superfluous features.

For a wide range of consumables and gear that hackers of the physical world would probably like, check out Project Farm, protoolreviews, ToolGuyd, and of course AvE on YouTube.

For kitchen gear, check out America's Test Kitchen.

I hang out in r/bifl but it isn't as good as it used to be for my personal tastes, as there isn't as much of an emphasis on repairability as I'd prefer.

I wish there was a trend of someone like AvE doing a teardown of junk-quality consumer gear, then by replacing certain parts like bad capacitors, plastic gears, etc., turning it into much higher-quality equipment, and open-sourcing those small parts' design and manufacturing specs.

One hack I employ is I go straight to the servicing departments and find the service technicians, and lately I only go to commercial B2B offerings. They are usually more than happy to tell you which manufacturers and product lines are easiest to diagnose and service (and whether that conjunction of characteristics leads to reliability), have a reliable supply of parts, maintain that parts supply the longest, and have retained all those characteristics the most years. It is no more than a 10-15 minute conversation most service technicians are happy to have.

They will be especially happy to talk with you if you ask them how you can plan to accommodate their service visits more pleasant and efficient to work in. HVAC techs in particular will trade around site porn of customers who planned ahead, put in a proper-sized and sited pad easy to roll up to with all their equipment in their work van, with provisions for ample shade that doesn't obstruct the equipment airflow. They will <squee> over that more than tween girls over the heartthrob du jour.

Then I talk up staff at businesses who have to use the equipment every day to find out the most annoying aspects of using that equipment to determine whether I can put up with those idiosyncracies myself.

There are some manufacturers I will absolutely not even consider in the US for some equipment, for example. Samsung refrigerators; they are not designed to last past the warranty, not designed to be easily diagnosed and serviced, and their parts supply network reflects that. There are some categories of equipment I have absolute requirements no matter where I am in the world. Rigging gear where a failure puts life and safety at risk I will outright refuse to purchase and use from anywhere but Japan, Germany, and the US from long-standing manufacturers making it in those nations. I will pay the price to import it to where I am and wait for as long as it takes to get through customs. I'm beginning to stop using Amazon and switching to direct from manufacturer, distributors, or retailers listed on the manufacturer's web site; the SKU commingling issue has gotten out of hand, and Amazon's poor inventory control has robbed whatever unique value proposition their logistics arm painstakingly built up.