8 ms·

Eh, something to be said for mid-range too. I have a 12v cordless drill. Ended up saving me tons of work over the years but by no means either the best or the

Eh, something to be said for mid-range too. I have a 12v cordless drill. Ended up saving me tons of work over the years but by no means either the best or the worst. Musical instruments. The low-end ones tend to be true disasters. Mid-range CPUs and GPUs are wonderful. Kitchen mixers, knives, screwdrivers, soldering irons, drill presses, etc. Plenty of times the worst tool is so obviously terrible that you probably shouldn’t consider it. Sometimes the worst tool is dangerous, damages what you’re working on, or has bad ergonomics. Bicycles. All those $100 bike-shaped objects out there. You don’t need to spend much more to get something comfortable that fits you and lasts a while.

kerkeslager 6y ago
Well one caveat: at some point, you reach a level of expertise such that you can evaluate tools for yourself, and don't need rules of thumb like this. At that point a mid-grade tool might make sense. I do have some expertise in some of the areas you mentioned, and disagree with you: Musical instruments: if you're starting off on guitar, get a used Yamaha for $80 and spend as much money as you can on lessons. It's better to be a virtuoso with a Yamaha than to have a high-end Martin you can't play collecting dust in your attic. I have been given more than one expensive guitar because people heard me play and thought I'd get more out of the guitar than they were getting out of it. Bikes: I got a fixed-gear bike for $90 to use as a daily commuter. A month in, I was tired of getting flats, so I replaced the tires with Continental Gatorskins which cost more than the bike originally did. After that, the bike lasted me >5 years without modification, only occasional tune-ups. I got rid of the bike because I was bored with it, not because there was anything wrong with it, and paid $250 for a system that was functionally the same but looked a bit nicer--the only real upgrade was a Brooks Leather saddle. Tons of bike messengers are running similar systems far harder than I am. Both music and biking have somewhat snobby subcultures that will talk crap on cheap gear to justify their own lavish purchases, but ultimately nobody can say anything about what guitar you're playing when you bust out Paranoid Android or what bike you're riding when you zip past them. Skills beat gear every time.
- klodolph 6y ago
  $80 guitar and spending money on lessons—this goes against every piece of advice I’ve ever heard from a guitar teacher about buying your first guitar. That is, buy something good enough that it doesn’t make you miserable when you’re just starting out. A lot of $80 guitars are absolutely miserable, or will be miserable shortly after you take them home. > It's better to be a virtuoso with a Yamaha than to have a high-end Martin you can't play collecting dust in your attic. Yamaha guitars start around $160, and they’re fantastic beginner instruments. They’re also not the cheapest guitars you can get. The cheapest guitars you can get are around $80, have high action, don’t stay in tune, and my experience is that you have good odds of getting cut by the fret wire or seeing the neck warp at some point after you take the guitar home. That’s all I’m talking about—between “made as cheaply as possible” and “no expenses spared” there is this vast middle ground of “decent price/quality tradeoff”. I’m by no means an expert on guitars—but I do have a small guitar maintenance kit, and I help out friends or colleagues set up their guitars to make them a bit more comfortable and playable. I’ve seen too many “cheap as possible” guitars where my conclusion is that the guitar is unplayable and it’s just beyond my ability to make it playable.
  - hanche 6y ago
    Totally agree. What’s more, if you discover that guitar playing isn’t for you, you can always sell it if it is a decent one. It may not cost you more in the end than if you bought a cheap one and threw it away or let it rot in the attic.
  - kerkeslager 6y ago
    > $80 guitar and spending money on lessons—this goes against every piece of advice I’ve ever heard from a guitar teacher about buying your first guitar. Sure, if you're already taking lessons... > Yamaha guitars start around $160, and they’re fantastic beginner instruments. Yamaha guitars start around $160 new. If you go to a local guitar shop they almost always have playable used guitars in the <$100 range. Even Guitar Center will often have a Yamaha that's discounted because it was returned opened, or because it has a manufacturer blemish that doesn't affect play. Guitar shops will almost never sell an unusable guitar in my experience (this is not true of consignment stores, thrift shops, or pawn shops).
Kinrany 6y ago
> I have a 12v cordless drill. Ended up saving me tons of work over the years but by no means either the best or the worst But are there cheaper drills that do the same?
- jabroni_salad 6y ago
  corded drills, and if you are an infrequent user you dont have to worry about the battery going flat.
  - tln 6y ago
    Most corded drills are pretty large though. I have 12v, 18v and corded drills and would never use the corded drill for small things because it's too clumsy. 12v for small things and 18v for small-medium, corded for large only. I often use both, 18v for drilling and 12v to put in the screws. I'd say buy an 18v as your only tool first, but if you ever start on a project where it's struggling even a little, get a corded drill. They're good bang for the buck at ~$30.
- klodolph 6y ago
  The cheaper drills I’ve seen have motors that burn out or run out of torque. At least, that’s my experience with them. One of the ways you save money on a motor is by making the windings with thinner copper wires. The higher-end drills are 18V or 20V models with enough power to, you know, hang sheetrock for eight hours a day. Something that I don’t need. So I bought a mid-range drill, a relatively inexpensive 12V model.
  - jacobr1 6y ago
    Also cheap drills seem to have poor batteries or electrical setups that are rough on battery life. Even 6 months of a casual usage (pulling it out every other week for some small job) might be enough to basically brick the thing.
- mturmon 6y ago
  Even tradespeople (like union electricians) have this same dispute. In the US, one of the favored brands in the trade is Milwaukee Fuel 18v. Many electrical pros swear by these tools, even to the point of mildly judging people who use consumer gear on paid jobs. But: other electrical pros will in turn mildly judge the Milwaukee-loving contingent as paying way too much for the logo. Tales will be told of Makita or Ridgid (the latter, a Home Depot house brand) 18v rigs that have outperformed more expensive gear in real conditions. So, it's fun to talk about, but it seems fundamentally undecidable, at this level of granularity. At lower levels of granularity -- specific tools -- there are a few legendary products that have been made consistently high-quality for so long that they're almost universally acknowledged to be worth the money, and also that there's little point in paying more. One example that comes to mind is Klein linesman's pliers.
itsoktocry 6y ago
>Musical instruments. The low-end ones tend to be true disasters. For "hobby" items, it's mostly about developing habits. You don't need top-of-the-line equipment to "make music". Once you enjoying the art of making music, you can easily move on to bigger and better equipment.
- klodolph 6y ago
  You don’t need top-of-the line equipment to make music, but if you get the cheapest instruments you can find, they might be physically painful to play, fail to stay in tune, etc.
eezurr 6y ago
On Bicycles: I've ridden cheap bikes ( $<= 750 ) all my life. When you buy cheap, you probably aren't purchasing something that is designed for your height and width. They also begin to fall apart after a year (handle bar wrap unwinding, beauty parts pop off, gears start to slip, chain derails). Tuneups dont last long. Yesterday I went to my local Trek store and rode a $2500 bike for the first time, and it was a joy to ride. I didn't know gear changes could be so accurate/seamless/instant. First time I rode with disc brakes: I feel way more in control when I need to stop at high speed. The frame fit my body perfectly. Obviously the bike will wear down like cheaper bikes, but the difference is night and day.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dmurray 6y ago
  The bike will wear down more than cheaper bikes, unfortunately. Chainrings, derailleurs, cassettes on mid-range bikes are made of lighter metals and to tighter tolerances than those on cheaper bikes. You'll replace them 3x as often and pay 3x as much for the parts, so maintenance is an order of magnitude more expensive per kilometre. There are some exceptions: higher-quality bottom brackets seem to last longer, and on a cheap bike it may not be worth replacing them at all. Maybe wheel bearings too. And some basic services like chain lube are going to cost the same (whether you do it yourself or take it to a bike shop). But overall, the cost of maintenance goes up faster than the initial price of the bike.
  - eezurr 6y ago
    Thanks for the info! Could you give me an idea of the yearly cost to maintain a mid-range bike?
    - dmurray 6y ago
      Depends on so many things - principally the distance you ride, but also the riding conditions, how you store it, whether you keep it clean, whether you can do minor/moderate service yourself. Personally I budget about €200/year for my €1200 road bike for 2000 km/year. I store it indoors, ride it 20% in the rain, don't take great care of it otherwise, and take it to the shop for anything more than changing tubes/tyres.
jmilloy 6y ago
I think the second-cheapest is usually the best starter product. The cheapest product requires every possible sacrifice to quality, but the second-cheapest only made the tradeoffs that make sense. You can buy the second-cheapest and still get most of the benefits mentioned in the article without having to become a mini-expert evaluating whether the cheapest option is at least safe and functional. And I think a second-tier product is often the right high-end product to choose. The most expensive product made the highest-quality choice at every step, but the next-tier down just made as many improvements that really make sense. Luckily, once you are deciding to purchase high-end, you are more capable of evaluating the different products.
- paozac 6y ago
  The second cheapest is often where the seller makes the most profit. There is a pricing strategy around this idea - people will rarely buy the cheapest or the most expensive item of the list. Their function is to shift up all prices and set the bar
  - Spivak 6y ago
    That only usually holds within a given brand. Second or third cheapest on the market probably doesn’t suffer the same problem.
  - pc86 6y ago
    You're saying that as if someone else profiting off of providing you a product you want is a bad thing.
    - pinusc 6y ago
      Paying more for something that you think is higher quality hile beeing just as bad as the cheapest product is a bad thing. Assuming parent comment is right that this is the case.
kemiller2002 6y ago
Musical instruments. The low-end ones tend to be true disasters. Funny story about that one. My ex-wife's family are professionals in the music industry: playing, repairing, etc. Her dad plays, repairs, and sells trumpets. A mom and her kid come into the store and he hates playing the trumpet. I mean hates it, he's not good at it, can't stand practicing and begs to just leave it broken. They come into the get a valve replaced one the kids plays, and while they are doing the paperwork and looking around her dad looks at the trumpet he needs to repair. It's horrible. I mean garbage. She bought it for him, because "she didn't know if he would like it, " and got him one from an ebay store. My ex-father in law goes over and picks up a mid-range one for students, and just says, "Try this out. See what you think." The kid plays it realizes that it's 100 times easier to make a decent sound and loves it. He hated playing because of the instrument, not because he didn't like it. My ex agreed to sell her the new trumpet on one condition, that she giver her the old one so it will never be played again.
- snvzz 6y ago
  Definitely. ~$200 midi keyboard vs ~$700 electric piano with weighted keys. It's even more dramatic than going from a spectrum keyboard to a mechanical one. Torture vs Pleasure to use.
- ubercow13 6y ago
  Yep! Playing cheap brass instruments is really difficult. When I first got an expensive horn it was the most sublime feeling, instead of working hard to make a sound it was like effortlessly singing through the instrument. You just breathe and everything resonates the way it should and all is in tune. It feels so natural.
  - dr_zoidberg 6y ago
    Had a moment like that back when I was a teenager taking violin lessons. One day my teacher was berating me for not having practiced enough (she was right) but I insisted it was because my violin was giving me a hard time. So she challenged me: "use my violin and show me". The thing was beautiful to play, and I managed to play the whole piece in a go. She still knew I hadn't been practicing, but I got a chance to play a great instrument. However, my cheap violin did have a good thing: the bare D string would make its box resonate when tuned correctly. And from there the rest of the instrument could be tuned pretty well. I still have that cheap violin, however I stopped playing a long time ago. I should pick it up again some time.
Lammy 6y ago
Everyone in this thread seems to assume buying a brand-new item. My preferred route is to buy the high-end of one generation prior, used, from somebody who is upgrading to the latest and greatest. They can pay the early-adopter tax for me.
- ubercow13 6y ago
  And if you decide to sell it, it probably won’t have depreciated any further anyway.
- lmm 6y ago
  If you're experienced enough to be able to tell (or have a trusted friend) then that's a good route. But if you're a beginner buying used then it's a lemon market and you can very easily get ripped off.
the_cat_kittles 6y ago
yep- entirely application specific. for machine tools, expensive is pretty much the only way to go for metrology and bits and mills etc. for instruments you are totally right- the cheapest professional grade instruments are almost always the best value. great comment
guerrilla 6y ago
If you think about it, the text editor for diagrams actually is mid range because you could alternatively do the using "echo", enter it in binary, even on punch cards or pen and paper.
- analog31 6y ago
  I do all of my diagrams by drawing them with a pencil and taking a picture with my cell phone. Often, some engineer takes offense and enters it into a drawing or CAD program -- problem solved!

kerkeslager 6y ago

Well one caveat: at some point, you reach a level of expertise such that you can evaluate tools for yourself, and don't need rules of thumb like this. At that point a mid-grade tool might make sense. I do have some expertise in some of the areas you mentioned, and disagree with you: Musical instruments: if you're starting off on guitar, get a used Yamaha for $80 and spend as much money as you can on lessons. It's better to be a virtuoso with a Yamaha than to have a high-end Martin you can't play collecting dust in your attic. I have been given more than one expensive guitar because people heard me play and thought I'd get more out of the guitar than they were getting out of it. Bikes: I got a fixed-gear bike for $90 to use as a daily commuter. A month in, I was tired of getting flats, so I replaced the tires with Continental Gatorskins which cost more than the bike originally did. After that, the bike lasted me >5 years without modification, only occasional tune-ups. I got rid of the bike because I was bored with it, not because there was anything wrong with it, and paid $250 for a system that was functionally the same but looked a bit nicer--the only real upgrade was a Brooks Leather saddle. Tons of bike messengers are running similar systems far harder than I am. Both music and biking have somewhat snobby subcultures that will talk crap on cheap gear to justify their own lavish purchases, but ultimately nobody can say anything about what guitar you're playing when you bust out Paranoid Android or what bike you're riding when you zip past them. Skills beat gear every time.

klodolph 6y ago
$80 guitar and spending money on lessons—this goes against every piece of advice I’ve ever heard from a guitar teacher about buying your first guitar. That is, buy something good enough that it doesn’t make you miserable when you’re just starting out. A lot of $80 guitars are absolutely miserable, or will be miserable shortly after you take them home. > It's better to be a virtuoso with a Yamaha than to have a high-end Martin you can't play collecting dust in your attic. Yamaha guitars start around $160, and they’re fantastic beginner instruments. They’re also not the cheapest guitars you can get. The cheapest guitars you can get are around $80, have high action, don’t stay in tune, and my experience is that you have good odds of getting cut by the fret wire or seeing the neck warp at some point after you take the guitar home. That’s all I’m talking about—between “made as cheaply as possible” and “no expenses spared” there is this vast middle ground of “decent price/quality tradeoff”. I’m by no means an expert on guitars—but I do have a small guitar maintenance kit, and I help out friends or colleagues set up their guitars to make them a bit more comfortable and playable. I’ve seen too many “cheap as possible” guitars where my conclusion is that the guitar is unplayable and it’s just beyond my ability to make it playable.
- hanche 6y ago
  Totally agree. What’s more, if you discover that guitar playing isn’t for you, you can always sell it if it is a decent one. It may not cost you more in the end than if you bought a cheap one and threw it away or let it rot in the attic.
- kerkeslager 6y ago
  > $80 guitar and spending money on lessons—this goes against every piece of advice I’ve ever heard from a guitar teacher about buying your first guitar. Sure, if you're already taking lessons... > Yamaha guitars start around $160, and they’re fantastic beginner instruments. Yamaha guitars start around $160 new. If you go to a local guitar shop they almost always have playable used guitars in the <$100 range. Even Guitar Center will often have a Yamaha that's discounted because it was returned opened, or because it has a manufacturer blemish that doesn't affect play. Guitar shops will almost never sell an unusable guitar in my experience (this is not true of consignment stores, thrift shops, or pawn shops).

Kinrany 6y ago

> I have a 12v cordless drill. Ended up saving me tons of work over the years but by no means either the best or the worst But are there cheaper drills that do the same?

jabroni_salad 6y ago
corded drills, and if you are an infrequent user you dont have to worry about the battery going flat.
- tln 6y ago
  Most corded drills are pretty large though. I have 12v, 18v and corded drills and would never use the corded drill for small things because it's too clumsy. 12v for small things and 18v for small-medium, corded for large only. I often use both, 18v for drilling and 12v to put in the screws. I'd say buy an 18v as your only tool first, but if you ever start on a project where it's struggling even a little, get a corded drill. They're good bang for the buck at ~$30.
klodolph 6y ago
The cheaper drills I’ve seen have motors that burn out or run out of torque. At least, that’s my experience with them. One of the ways you save money on a motor is by making the windings with thinner copper wires. The higher-end drills are 18V or 20V models with enough power to, you know, hang sheetrock for eight hours a day. Something that I don’t need. So I bought a mid-range drill, a relatively inexpensive 12V model.
- jacobr1 6y ago
  Also cheap drills seem to have poor batteries or electrical setups that are rough on battery life. Even 6 months of a casual usage (pulling it out every other week for some small job) might be enough to basically brick the thing.
mturmon 6y ago
Even tradespeople (like union electricians) have this same dispute. In the US, one of the favored brands in the trade is Milwaukee Fuel 18v. Many electrical pros swear by these tools, even to the point of mildly judging people who use consumer gear on paid jobs. But: other electrical pros will in turn mildly judge the Milwaukee-loving contingent as paying way too much for the logo. Tales will be told of Makita or Ridgid (the latter, a Home Depot house brand) 18v rigs that have outperformed more expensive gear in real conditions. So, it's fun to talk about, but it seems fundamentally undecidable, at this level of granularity. At lower levels of granularity -- specific tools -- there are a few legendary products that have been made consistently high-quality for so long that they're almost universally acknowledged to be worth the money, and also that there's little point in paying more. One example that comes to mind is Klein linesman's pliers.

itsoktocry 6y ago

>Musical instruments. The low-end ones tend to be true disasters. For "hobby" items, it's mostly about developing habits. You don't need top-of-the-line equipment to "make music". Once you enjoying the art of making music, you can easily move on to bigger and better equipment.

klodolph 6y ago
You don’t need top-of-the line equipment to make music, but if you get the cheapest instruments you can find, they might be physically painful to play, fail to stay in tune, etc.

eezurr 6y ago

On Bicycles: I've ridden cheap bikes ( $<= 750 ) all my life. When you buy cheap, you probably aren't purchasing something that is designed for your height and width. They also begin to fall apart after a year (handle bar wrap unwinding, beauty parts pop off, gears start to slip, chain derails). Tuneups dont last long. Yesterday I went to my local Trek store and rode a $2500 bike for the first time, and it was a joy to ride. I didn't know gear changes could be so accurate/seamless/instant. First time I rode with disc brakes: I feel way more in control when I need to stop at high speed. The frame fit my body perfectly. Obviously the bike will wear down like cheaper bikes, but the difference is night and day.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dmurray 6y ago
The bike will wear down more than cheaper bikes, unfortunately. Chainrings, derailleurs, cassettes on mid-range bikes are made of lighter metals and to tighter tolerances than those on cheaper bikes. You'll replace them 3x as often and pay 3x as much for the parts, so maintenance is an order of magnitude more expensive per kilometre. There are some exceptions: higher-quality bottom brackets seem to last longer, and on a cheap bike it may not be worth replacing them at all. Maybe wheel bearings too. And some basic services like chain lube are going to cost the same (whether you do it yourself or take it to a bike shop). But overall, the cost of maintenance goes up faster than the initial price of the bike.
- eezurr 6y ago
  Thanks for the info! Could you give me an idea of the yearly cost to maintain a mid-range bike?
  - dmurray 6y ago
    Depends on so many things - principally the distance you ride, but also the riding conditions, how you store it, whether you keep it clean, whether you can do minor/moderate service yourself. Personally I budget about €200/year for my €1200 road bike for 2000 km/year. I store it indoors, ride it 20% in the rain, don't take great care of it otherwise, and take it to the shop for anything more than changing tubes/tyres.

jmilloy 6y ago

I think the second-cheapest is usually the best starter product. The cheapest product requires every possible sacrifice to quality, but the second-cheapest only made the tradeoffs that make sense. You can buy the second-cheapest and still get most of the benefits mentioned in the article without having to become a mini-expert evaluating whether the cheapest option is at least safe and functional. And I think a second-tier product is often the right high-end product to choose. The most expensive product made the highest-quality choice at every step, but the next-tier down just made as many improvements that really make sense. Luckily, once you are deciding to purchase high-end, you are more capable of evaluating the different products.

paozac 6y ago
The second cheapest is often where the seller makes the most profit. There is a pricing strategy around this idea - people will rarely buy the cheapest or the most expensive item of the list. Their function is to shift up all prices and set the bar
- Spivak 6y ago
  That only usually holds within a given brand. Second or third cheapest on the market probably doesn’t suffer the same problem.
- pc86 6y ago
  You're saying that as if someone else profiting off of providing you a product you want is a bad thing.
  - pinusc 6y ago
    Paying more for something that you think is higher quality hile beeing just as bad as the cheapest product is a bad thing. Assuming parent comment is right that this is the case.

kemiller2002 6y ago

Musical instruments. The low-end ones tend to be true disasters. Funny story about that one. My ex-wife's family are professionals in the music industry: playing, repairing, etc. Her dad plays, repairs, and sells trumpets. A mom and her kid come into the store and he hates playing the trumpet. I mean hates it, he's not good at it, can't stand practicing and begs to just leave it broken. They come into the get a valve replaced one the kids plays, and while they are doing the paperwork and looking around her dad looks at the trumpet he needs to repair. It's horrible. I mean garbage. She bought it for him, because "she didn't know if he would like it, " and got him one from an ebay store. My ex-father in law goes over and picks up a mid-range one for students, and just says, "Try this out. See what you think." The kid plays it realizes that it's 100 times easier to make a decent sound and loves it. He hated playing because of the instrument, not because he didn't like it. My ex agreed to sell her the new trumpet on one condition, that she giver her the old one so it will never be played again.

snvzz 6y ago
Definitely. ~$200 midi keyboard vs ~$700 electric piano with weighted keys. It's even more dramatic than going from a spectrum keyboard to a mechanical one. Torture vs Pleasure to use.
ubercow13 6y ago
Yep! Playing cheap brass instruments is really difficult. When I first got an expensive horn it was the most sublime feeling, instead of working hard to make a sound it was like effortlessly singing through the instrument. You just breathe and everything resonates the way it should and all is in tune. It feels so natural.
- dr_zoidberg 6y ago
  Had a moment like that back when I was a teenager taking violin lessons. One day my teacher was berating me for not having practiced enough (she was right) but I insisted it was because my violin was giving me a hard time. So she challenged me: "use my violin and show me". The thing was beautiful to play, and I managed to play the whole piece in a go. She still knew I hadn't been practicing, but I got a chance to play a great instrument. However, my cheap violin did have a good thing: the bare D string would make its box resonate when tuned correctly. And from there the rest of the instrument could be tuned pretty well. I still have that cheap violin, however I stopped playing a long time ago. I should pick it up again some time.

Lammy 6y ago

Everyone in this thread seems to assume buying a brand-new item. My preferred route is to buy the high-end of one generation prior, used, from somebody who is upgrading to the latest and greatest. They can pay the early-adopter tax for me.

ubercow13 6y ago
And if you decide to sell it, it probably won’t have depreciated any further anyway.
lmm 6y ago
If you're experienced enough to be able to tell (or have a trusted friend) then that's a good route. But if you're a beginner buying used then it's a lemon market and you can very easily get ripped off.

the_cat_kittles 6y ago

yep- entirely application specific. for machine tools, expensive is pretty much the only way to go for metrology and bits and mills etc. for instruments you are totally right- the cheapest professional grade instruments are almost always the best value. great comment

guerrilla 6y ago

If you think about it, the text editor for diagrams actually is mid range because you could alternatively do the using "echo", enter it in binary, even on punch cards or pen and paper.

analog31 6y ago
I do all of my diagrams by drawing them with a pencil and taking a picture with my cell phone. Often, some engineer takes offense and enters it into a drawing or CAD program -- problem solved!