[CWuestefeld]

That's a worthwhile observation.

It's good that there are lower-quality alternatives available. It means that people who couldn't in the past afford something at all, are now more likely to have some path to getting it.

And even if you could afford the higher quality, you may not need it anyway. I've got a number of tools in my workshop that I'll probably use less than 10 times ever. I have no need of a high-quality product in these cases. I'd rather pay a fraction of that price to have something that'll survive the light duty that I put it to because I won't demand anything greater.

But you're right, when you do need the higher quality, it can be tough to differentiate.

[bluGill]

> I've got a number of tools in my workshop that I'll probably use less than 10 times ever. I have no need of a high-quality product in these cases. I'd rather pay a fraction of that price to have something that'll survive the light duty that I put it to because I won't demand anything greater.

I've been burned too often with this thinking. All too often the cheap tool isn't just light duty so it breaks, it is not good enough to do the job at all. If the motor is too weak the tool won't do the job. If the wrench isn't precise enough it will round the bolt - this is worse than breaking: you can't fix the thing at all anymore with any quality of tool.

I don't need the best tools, but I need one that is enough quality to do the job, and the cheap tools generally fail.

[SoftTalker]

Anecdotally my experience is the opposite. I bought an angle grinder from Harbor Freight for something like $10 on sale. It's not something a pro could use every day but it has absolutely been fine for what I do with it: cutting the occasional piece of metal stock, sharpening the lawn mower blade once a year, etc.

[convolvatron]

be careful in promoting that strategy. HF is pretty bad, I had a friend go through 3 them in a day because he didn't have one on the job site and HF wasn't too far away.

the next step up is about 2x the price and will last a good year with professional use and maybe more if you can be bothered to replace the brushes.

so I'm glad that's working out for you, but there is more bottom to be found. I bought an attachment that came with a grinder that was so dinky and toy-like that it didn't last 20 minutes of light use.

this thread is covered with discussion about the problem of information asymmetry and rapidly decaying brands. to me the real issue is economic efficiency. the low end tool gets a double economic win, lower material and production costs, and increased frequency of purchase. every one of those purchases involves shipping, potential retail space, people's time spent shopping and returning crap. leading to a lot of outright waste. to me this really undermines the promise of capitalistic efficiency, since it prioritizes local optimization to an extreme over global optimization.

[phil21]

Your friend was heavily using a cheap tool at a job site. After the first one broke, the course of action is to go to home depot and buy the prosumer Milwaukee or Dewalt and return the harbor freight as time allows.

The point is you only need the expensive stuff rarely. You don’t triple down on cheap crap you actually use and abuse.

I’ve yet to see anyone lose money (including accounting for time) with this strategy. Going for stuff that costs 4-12x more right off the bat - unless for professional “mission critical” work - is going to average out to be a poor use of money for the vast majority of tool buyers.

There is of course an absolute floor here. No name brand tools on Amazon are going to perhaps be zero use, but they seem rather trivial to spot to me most of the time. Buying that Gearwrench socket set vs the Snap-on is almost always going to be a win for 99% of people unless you are a professional mechanic that relies on 100% uptime to make a living.

[ChoGGi]

This guy gets it, always start out with the cheap tool if you use it enough that it breaks than you spend more money.

I know guys with garages full of expensive tools they barely use because they don't want to be seen with a can tire tool.

[hadlock]

Harbor freight sells three tiers of many of their more popular tools and they're not shy about it. Most of their signage says "ok/better/best" and they're very transparent about what you're buying. I can buy a $9 angle grinder and on the same shelf I an also buy a $85 angle grinder, with the "better" model running ~$25-40. Harbor Freight used to have exclusively cheap junk but their "better" tier stuff is more than adequate for home DIYers

It probably helps that the founder is still the owner. Once that guy or his son dies (he's getting up there) it would not suprise me if the brand spirals into decay.

[queenkjuul]

HF sells levels that aren't level lol. Squares that aren't square.

I love them for junk like zip ties and bungee cords and moving blankets; they sell the same cheap rack shelves as Menards, and honestly their free gift multimeter has served my guitar bench well for all over a decade. But their $20 jigsaw made like five cuts before it stopped cutting straight lol.

I love HF is what I'm saying, i just don't trust every item in the building

[pixl97]

>and the cheap tools generally fail.

Honestly I've not found that to be the case unless you're buying the bottom of the barrel most pot metal tools possible. I've bought numerous wrenches for 5x-10x less than the professional sets that don't slip and I could hang a 5 foot cheater bar off of and nothing broke.

I have a $35 dollar battery powered angle grinder that I've used and abused viciously and it's keeping up with the ones that cost $200+.

[phil21]

The best rule of thumb for tools, at least if you have a decent collection of them for diverse but hobby/homeowner level projects is buy the cheapest to do the immediate job and then replace it with an expensive one if it breaks or you use it often and the better version improves efficiency or quality of life.

Once in a while you get “burned” and immediately end up buying two tools for the same job, but if that happens typically you can return it under retail warranty.

This is definitely the best advice I got way back in the day. I have a small collection of very high end tools I use quite often and abuse at least weekly. Or get use out of having the best quality available to me. But the vast majority of them get used a few times over a decade and sit in storage the rest of the time. I have zero use for a $1500 impact socket set. The $150 one does just fine, and I replace the two commonly used sizes I snap apart with expensive high quality versions while the others I may never use even once.

My power drill and impact driver? Best quality I could find and worth every penny. They bring me value just in the joy I get using them over the cheap stuff.

[bluGill]

I find it is better to find the middle ground. There are often some "mid grade tools" that are plenty good for me and high quality. And I don't have the worry about something breaking or failing to perform.

I always figure if I was hiring a pro to do a task they would have good tools, so the first time I can get the good tool and be even money - the second time I have the tool and so I'm saving. (I also rent some tools, but that is for tasks that need an expensive tool I rarely use)

[kalleboo]

Buying the cheapest one initially also often teaches me what attributes I should value when I buy the more expensive version. Will I actually use this feature or that feature, or what ergonomic design choice works better for me?

[njarboe]

Agreed. My brother is a painter and has commented, "At least in the past cheap tools were one-time-use, now they are usually zero-time-use. Built so poorly they don't even work out of the box."

[x0x0]

I disagree. It's great that you can get a Wen track saw with 100 in of track for $200 with tax and a Makita with 100 in for $800. People who just want to cut a sheet of plywood aren't stuck paying $800, or more likely, using an inferior tool because the cost doesn't match value to them.

[eesmith]

There are a lot of products which are nowhere near my Pareto frontier, but for the most part I lack the information needed to make that judgement.

The result is that I, like others, spend too much on crappy products.

[rangerelf]

The problem isn't the availability of lower quality versions of a high-quality product, it's the transformation of a formerly high-quality product into a shitty-quality version, meanwhile, maintaining the same price, or worse, a higher price, than the former high-quality version of itself.

The price tags on tools don't go down with time, but the quality of the tools certainly does.

I'm all for tiering product lines, harbor freight is doing it right by offering their top-of-the-line in the Hercules brand, a "pretty good for non contractor" line with Bauer, and then there's lower tiers for one-offs. But if I look for, and buy, a Porter Cable tool, I'm buying it because I expect a certain performance and quality, but it's in fact a rug pull right now. That should be fraud.

[II2II]

I agree that it is nice to have the option when you don't need the quality. It is also nice to have the option when you are trying something new and don't know if you want to invest in quality. Yet the article goes further than that. They are suggesting that companies are capturing a significant fraction of the market, so there is less pressure to produce quality goods. Whether this is resulting in lower quality goods overall, people are debating over. On the other hand, it does seem to be making it difficult to determine what goods are higher quality.

[adgjlsfhk1]

> It's good that there are lower-quality alternatives available.

The problem is that there is no way for consumers to know whether they are getting the good version or the shit version. This creates a structural incentive to not produce good versions since consumers will assume that the good version is just an over-priced shit version (because the expensive version is often just an over-priced shit version)

[tshaddox]

How much of the price reduction is directly attributable to externalities, for example the fact that to replace the lifetime of one expensive item there are going to be 10 cheap versions of the item tossed in the trash?