[avhception]

Well, of course there is the "buy cheap, get trash, duh!" talking point. But if I pay more, who's to say I'll get a better product? The OEM or some middleman or whoever might just pocket the difference and push crap anyway. Well-known brands have done this as well, either intentionally or because they got shafted by their supplier as well.

[muvlon]

I've definitely realized this in a couple of markets: Buy cheap, get trash. Buy expensive, get expensive trash with better marketing. Working with power tools from various brands has made me realize they all cheap out in the same ways. Plastic gears where there used to be metal, undersized motor drivers that fry themselves under sustained load, trigger switches that start misbehaving or die completely after a few months.

Also, all of the brands (cheap or expensive) will sometimes mess up the cost-cutting and make something reliable by accident. Buying cheap gives me more chances to get lucky in this way.

[mixermachine]

Channels like project farm https://youtube.com/@projectfarm or other reviewers that are not sponsored are truly my main source of information in this age.

Some direct reviews between 2 and 4 stars are also sometimes useful. Always discard the 5 star ones...

[vizzier]

https://www.youtube.com/@arduinoversusevil2025 also great for teardowns of specific tools. Seeing a few really put into perspective how many companies were transitioning to trading on their brand goodwill instead of making good stuff.

[equake]

projectfarm is simply amazing!

[slipperybeluga]

This wasn't the case 20 years ago. There was actually a good article on HN a few months ago showing how most of the brands are owned by one company that has ruined them all. Still a few good brands. Need to research https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48147665

[pseudohadamard]

Don't know the HN article but here's my own list:

AEG = TTI

Black and Decker = Stanley (Stanley Black&Decker, SBD)

Bosch = {}

Craftsman = Stanley

Dewalt = Stanley

Hikoki = Hitachi

Irwin = Stanley

Kango = TTI

Klein = {}

Lenox = Stanley

Makita = {}

Metabo = Hitachi

Milwaukee = TTI

Porter-Cable = Stanley

Ryobi = TTI

The empty-set ownership symbol {} means not owned by anyone else.

[pjc50]

This has been a problem for a while. It's Akerloff "market for lemons" applied to technology. Sometimes however you gamble and win, discovering that the Chinese device actually is really good for the price. Occasionally even better, when you discover that some anti-feature like DRM is either not implemented or trivially turned off.

[avhception]

This is my favorite version of this dynamic, intentionally buying the crap because they cheaped out on the antifeatures.

[inigyou]

It used to be that cheap android junk devices would just give you a root shell with "adb shell" - no need for root exploits or reflashing - while expensive devices would give you a locked down shell.

[Tade0]

The other day my bicycle light gave out, so I took it apart - was not the most expensive option, but also not the cheapest.

It was advertised as having a 2600mAh battery, but when I opened it up, inside there was a 1700mAh cell. Also no sign of purported weatherproofing, as the lens was not even glued in.

I have a 2000mAh cell in the same form factor (approximately 500Wh/l, so believable) on its way from China, which makes me wonder how did they come up with that 2600mAh figure.

[namero999]

Because more is better. Seriously, the game they play is at this point ludicrous. I saw 18650 cell being advertised through the years as 2500mAh, to 3500mAh (still reasonable/credible), then suppliers started to one-up each other and you could see 5000mAh, 9000mAh, 9999mAh up to, I kid you not, 1.000.000mAh. If I had no clue, of course I would by the 1KAh single cell XD

[pixl97]

Flashlights are a good example of this too. "1 million lumens", like is that mini flashlight filled with plutonium?

[Hackbraten]

I wonder when they're finally going to one-up each other with the 18650 model number itself? Make it 18660, 19650 or 18650000!

Anecdote: back in 2004, a friend brought home a cheap digital audio player from her vacation to China. IIRC, it said on the front panel that it could play back MP3, MP4, and MP5.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

That's a real thing, there: https://docs.fileformat.com/video/mp5/

[Hackbraten]

It’s still bogus and not a real file format. Just MP4 files renamed into MP5.

[Rebelgecko]

For whatever reason, the lies about specs are particularly egregious for lights. Slopmarts like Amazon and AliExpress happily advertise 50,000 lumen flashlights (which would probably melt after a few seconds if they actually operated at that level)

[Tade0]

Indeed. This light is advertised as having a:

-2600mAh battery (9Wh)

-500 lumen light intensity

-5W LED

-4h battery life at constant illumination setting and this is the shortest time listed.

I now know that the battery is much smaller (6Wh) and 500lm is believable for a 5W LED but it's most certainly not this bright at any appreciable duty cycle. During those 4h it has to be pulling 1.5W at most.

It's funny how most of those parameters are not false per se, but at the same time create a false image of the device's capabilities.

[layer8]

> how did they come up with that 2600mAh figure.

The same capacity corresponds to different mAh at different voltages, maybe they are playing games with that.

[antisthenes]

AKA lying. No need to steelman dishonest small-time crooks and marketers from China.

Also, it's not the voltage, but over-current that reduces overall produced energy.

Typically the mAh is listed at some standard discharge rate, unless the cell is specifically advertised as a high-current draw cell. But either way an honest supplier will provide the draw/capacity table for you, rather than cherry pick the best one.

[kasabali]

Whenever I get the same device from AliExpress and the local white label importers, even though the outside casing is identical, AliExpress option has always had more quality. Locally sold ones has always the crappier internals albeit they come in a box (versus AE ones come in a bag)

[Aurornis]

> But if I pay more, who's to say I'll get a better product?

Price isn’t the only axis by which products are evaluated.

Aliexpress eBay and even Amazon are full of listings that have high prices, just waiting for someone naive enough to mistake them for quality products. They don’t sell much or at all.

When people find a cheap product from a known brand they jump on it because they know there’s a higher chance of it being okay, and if not there’s a higher chance that they can return it or get warranty support.

When people buy a JUPQRKBOT branded Amazon special for a too good to be true price, they know they’re playing a different and much riskier game.

[lostlogin]

The stance ‘all hubs are trash’ has served me well.

[kube-system]

It's easy to get that impression when you're buying stuff from the big box store, because it's all race to the bottom type stuff.

When I run into this issue in any product category, I can solve it by searching for a solution from an "industrial" or "commercial" supplier. It'll cost 10x, but it'll usually work, and if it doesn't you'll at least be able to talk to someone who knows what they're doing.

In just about any product category, there is very little quality difference within the same order of magnitude in cost.

[J_Shelby_J]

I recently built a usb hub.

I got a box, some usb cables that have a female end and are fitted to mate to the box. If you are curious, it’s a box made for pro-audio equipment with precut holes. The holes are made for xlr ports, and the usb cables are terminated with xlr ports.

Now I have a usb hub where all four ports are wired directly to my motherboard’s ports. I probably should write a blog post with a parts list.

[cl3misch]

So it's not a "hub", but a box around extension cables?

[bayindirh]

I managed to get a couple of good ones. While they're more like docking stations, Kingston's, now discontinued, Nucleum and UGreen's wares are all good.

If you go higher level, of course there's Thunderbolt docks, but you can't make them cheaply, so they're generally good.

[mrngld]

I've yet to come across truly reliable Thunderbolt 3 and above stations. Seems like every brand has, like this 7 port wonder in the article, lots of 5 star reviews. When you dig deep into the weeds of the reviews, Reddit, user forums, etc., you find the undercurrent of people who actually bother to check the stats reported by their OS, or have disconnect issues, etc, etc.

I'm somewhat sympathetic because from what I can tell engineering something capable of pushing that much data requires some exquisite engineering for every part of the process (chips on your computer, your computers port, your cables, the dock, the cable into the end device and the device and its port and chip). But still, they present these products like they're bulletproof.

It's possible I've had bad luck. A Caldigit TS3 had issues with dropping external drives and becoming unresponsive, then died after 2 years. Caldigit TS4 bricked itself after about a year. Got an OWC Thunderbolt Dock now and it just decides sometimes to stop communicating to anything new plugged in until you power cycle it.

[wildzzz]

I use Dell Thunderbolt docks because that's what my employer gives us and as such I've collected a few of them. I've had zero issues with them. The only complaint is that the power button on the dock only seems to work with Dell laptops, not a huge issue since I don't think that's a typical feature anyway.

[vel0city]

I've got a Dell USB4 dock on my desk right now. It has generally had pretty good compatibility. The only complaint I really have about it is that it gatekeeps higher PD options behind proprietary signaling so while it can technically output higher than 60W nothing but a Dell device will properly unlock it.

This isn't usually a problem for most of my devices. My Thinkpads just alert me and say they're not charging at full speed, ending up negotiating something like 58W or so. Similar things with other devices. However, I've got one machine that will not even attempt to charge unless it definitely gets 20V/3.25A, which this dock just will not negotiate to for non-Dell devices.

[PaulHoule]

I don't know about yours but anything I've seen that works has a limited number of plugs on it. Keyboard and mouse and a USB hard drive and the occasional thumb drive... You are fine. The 7-port hub is a bad smell, like you can't plug 7 devices into a USB 3.0 bus due to undocumented limits.

But if you have that AND a USB bluetooth dongle, a USB ethernet adapter, USB DAC with SPDIF output you run into the "USB-C is best effort at best when you plug in a lot of devices" problem... Which never gets talked about, though if you talk to Copilot or Gemini about it they will tell you don't waste your time with USB 3.

[matthewowen]

I was about to say caldigit and then you called them out. I have had a TS3 for six years and it still going strong and I have had basically zero compatibility issues across a range of (Mac) devices and peripherals.

[askvictor]

I've generally found that the more expensive, branded USB C hubs are more trash than the cheap generics

[fnoff]

I came to that conclusion when buying electric milk frothers. Several, because there is no difference between cheap and expensive. At all. They're all crap :')

[sdsdssweew213]

If you live in Europe, I recommend trying one from Lidl. It was cheap and so far I've been quite satisfied with it.