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These are the brands Ive had good success with, almost everything Ive bought has met or exceeded my expectations: Apple, Levis, Patagonia/LL Bean/North Face, G

These are the brands Ive had good success with, almost everything Ive bought has met or exceeded my expectations: Apple, Levis, Patagonia/LL Bean/North Face, Garmin smartwatch, Goruck, Toyota, Bosch or Milwaukee tools, Fender, Sonicare, Thule, Yakima, Ankur cables, weather tech floormats. Well designed websites: Google, Old reddit, and HN, can't believe they've stayed true all these years. Brands, I or a friend, has had extremely poor success with, enough to call out: Dell (their quality control dropped off, I think, they used to be great), Amazon Basics, Mini Cooper, Fitbit, Beats by Dre, Goal Zero Yeti, new Reddit.

WorldPeas 5y ago
Just to be the contrarian I am, I'll say that dell is still actually pretty good. You just have to buy the business models like the precision to get the best experience now
- edmcnulty101 5y ago
  Maybe that's the issue. I bought consumer XPS's. One had a fan go out after 1 year. One had a keyboard failure out of the box. My co-worker had hardware issues on theirs. It was too many issues in too short of a span. All consumer grade though. Maybe business is the way to go.
  - papertokyo 5y ago
    I had an XPS laptop from 2008 which constantly overheated. I ended up having to remove the bottom of the case and put it on a stand to make it usable. One day a bolt of lightning struck the house across the street and it died instantly. Used the insurance money to buy a macbook pro and never looked back.
    - edmcnulty101 5y ago
      >> Used the insurance money to buy a macbook pro and never looked back. And that MacBook will probably outlast 3 Dells. When my new Dell failed out of the box, I switched to my 6 year old MacBook pro I had waiting in the wings and was able to keep on working. It worked great until the new work MacBook arrived. When I have to turn my work MacBook in, buying myself another MacBook. And still have the trusty 6+ year old one in the wings.
spacelamb 5y ago
Thanks for the recs, though Google has caused unexpected design problems in my usage. Sometimes it unpredictably switches to dark mode, then light mode on Firefox and Safari. Google's answer box also sometimes displays wrong information (infamously, "Google turned me into a serial killer" on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27622100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27622100). I'm curious about Amazon Basics and Beats. For the former, they sell so many products that the ones I buy are pretty good (e.g. office supplies), but I have run into other products with middling reviews. For Beats, I would expect them to be good because Apple acquired them, so it's interesting to hear they have problems.
- edmcnulty101 5y ago
  Google: I just appreciate sticking with the design simplicity after all these years and not going full New Reddit with the front page. That serial killer thing is hilarious and scary. Their draconian customer service may be the worst ever. Amazon Basics: is the ultimate cheap product. Everything I've bought has just failed alot faster than if I bought a more name brand. Beats: I thought the same thing about Beats. I bought the power beats pro and one of the buds wouldn't charge unless you fiddled with it and checked the phone to make sure there was a connection , which doesn't sound like a big deal but it's a hassle to do every day. And if the base was jarred accidentally while charging it could lose that connection. It was just a hassle. The amount of times I went running with only one earbud working was too many. I mailed them back and the new set they sent had the exact same issue. I have cheapo 30 dollar bids now and they don't have that issue. This was like immediately after it was purchased by Apple so maybe the Apple QA hadn't kicked in yet.
nradov 5y ago
I'm also a fan of Garmin smartwatches, they have some amazing functionality and are serious tools for athletes and outdoorsmen. But they are handicapped by glitchy software. https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/06/competitor-software-instability.html https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/06/competitor-software-inst...
- edmcnulty101 5y ago
  Interesting article. I haven't used any of the features in that article. I do have a glitchy connectivity issue with a temp sensor so I cant disagree there. They just have less pain points than any other option possibly?

WorldPeas 5y ago

Just to be the contrarian I am, I'll say that dell is still actually pretty good. You just have to buy the business models like the precision to get the best experience now

edmcnulty101 5y ago
Maybe that's the issue. I bought consumer XPS's. One had a fan go out after 1 year. One had a keyboard failure out of the box. My co-worker had hardware issues on theirs. It was too many issues in too short of a span. All consumer grade though. Maybe business is the way to go.
- papertokyo 5y ago
  I had an XPS laptop from 2008 which constantly overheated. I ended up having to remove the bottom of the case and put it on a stand to make it usable. One day a bolt of lightning struck the house across the street and it died instantly. Used the insurance money to buy a macbook pro and never looked back.
  - edmcnulty101 5y ago
    >> Used the insurance money to buy a macbook pro and never looked back. And that MacBook will probably outlast 3 Dells. When my new Dell failed out of the box, I switched to my 6 year old MacBook pro I had waiting in the wings and was able to keep on working. It worked great until the new work MacBook arrived. When I have to turn my work MacBook in, buying myself another MacBook. And still have the trusty 6+ year old one in the wings.

spacelamb 5y ago

Thanks for the recs, though Google has caused unexpected design problems in my usage. Sometimes it unpredictably switches to dark mode, then light mode on Firefox and Safari. Google's answer box also sometimes displays wrong information (infamously, "Google turned me into a serial killer" on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27622100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27622100). I'm curious about Amazon Basics and Beats. For the former, they sell so many products that the ones I buy are pretty good (e.g. office supplies), but I have run into other products with middling reviews. For Beats, I would expect them to be good because Apple acquired them, so it's interesting to hear they have problems.

edmcnulty101 5y ago
Google: I just appreciate sticking with the design simplicity after all these years and not going full New Reddit with the front page. That serial killer thing is hilarious and scary. Their draconian customer service may be the worst ever. Amazon Basics: is the ultimate cheap product. Everything I've bought has just failed alot faster than if I bought a more name brand. Beats: I thought the same thing about Beats. I bought the power beats pro and one of the buds wouldn't charge unless you fiddled with it and checked the phone to make sure there was a connection , which doesn't sound like a big deal but it's a hassle to do every day. And if the base was jarred accidentally while charging it could lose that connection. It was just a hassle. The amount of times I went running with only one earbud working was too many. I mailed them back and the new set they sent had the exact same issue. I have cheapo 30 dollar bids now and they don't have that issue. This was like immediately after it was purchased by Apple so maybe the Apple QA hadn't kicked in yet.

nradov 5y ago

I'm also a fan of Garmin smartwatches, they have some amazing functionality and are serious tools for athletes and outdoorsmen. But they are handicapped by glitchy software. https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/06/competitor-software-instability.html https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/06/competitor-software-inst...

edmcnulty101 5y ago
Interesting article. I haven't used any of the features in that article. I do have a glitchy connectivity issue with a temp sensor so I cant disagree there. They just have less pain points than any other option possibly?