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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 t

• ygra 4y ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiftung_Warentest – the article also has a few pointers to international, similar organisations near the bottom.
  • floydnoel 4y ago
    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
  • drekipus 4y ago
    We have the same in australia too, called choice magazine. https://www.choice.com.au/ https://www.choice.com.au/
    • nuker 4y ago
      And even better, OzBargain.com.au crowdsourced one liner reviews, surprisingly valid :)
  • Gurgler 4y ago
    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.
    • TylerE 4y ago
      Their conclusions are somewhat suspect sometimes though… with weird qualifications for “best” that often barely effect actual functioning. Like, heavily weighting quietness over power.
      • linkdink 4y ago
        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.
      • wtallis 4y ago
        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 4y ago
          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.
  • rahen 4y ago
    It seems common all across Europe, maybe the whole western world. Here for France: https://www.60millions-mag.com/tests-comparatifs https://www.60millions-mag.com/tests-comparatifs (I just laughed as I see they even review fries brands, and sex toys...)
  • grog454 4y ago
    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.
    • sneak 4y ago
      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 4y ago
        Juicero teardown is one of the best youtube videos ever made.
    • stevage 4y ago
      The Australia Choice magazine does pretty hefty stress tests. No tear downs though.
    • mschild 4y ago
      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.
  • Semaphor 4y ago
    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/ https://etm-testmagazin.de/
    • ant6n 4y ago
      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 4y ago
        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.
  • dopidopHN 4y ago
    Same stuff in France : 60 million de consommateurs. They also provide help to launch class action. ( that exists differently than a US class action )
  • Cthulhu_ 4y ago
    > 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.
  • foobiekr 4y ago
    In the US, the closest example is Consumer Reports ( https://www.consumerreports.org/ 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.
• cudgy 4y ago
  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.
  • xahrepap 4y ago
    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 4y ago
    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.
  • Ma8ee 4y ago
    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.)
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • cudgy 4y ago
      You are absolutely correct. This happens far too often, but I don’t think that is the case with Vitamix … yet.
      • bilegeek 4y ago
        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.
• initplus 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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.
    • benj111 4y ago
      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.
      • ericd 4y ago
        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.
      • eru 4y ago
        In some sense, the longer the brand has been around, the less likely they are to pull an exit scam.
        • lazide 4y ago
• gnicholas 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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.
• jghn 4y ago
  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.
  • sneak 4y ago
    Blendtec, KitchenAid
  • lutorm 4y ago
    When investors put short-term profit ahead of long term brand viability...
• palijer 4y ago
  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 4y ago
  For 5x price, you can probably get commercial grade.
• ConceptJunkie 4y ago
  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?
• yourapostasy 4y ago
  > 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.