7 ms·

I mean, in general, things we buy today are a lot more "affordable" while being lower quality. Googling says the average cost of a refrigerator in 1950 was $2

• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• masklinn 3y ago
  > If you pay $3K to $5K for a fridge today (for a fridge 2-3x as big as the 1950 fridge), do you get a better longer-lasting one? I'm not sure. One of the difficulties is it's become very hard to know if an item is more expensive because: - it's better quality - it's full of bullshit - it's marketing However 3-5k for a fridge is well into "professional kitchen commercial refrigerator / refrigerated cabinet" range. At that price you can get a triple glass-door adjustable shelves wheeled model e.g. https://www.saro-kitchenequipment.com/refrigerators-commercial-refrigerators/refrigerator-with-glass-doors-model-gtk-1530-s-pro/62/3716 https://www.saro-kitchenequipment.com/refrigerators-commerci...
  • maccard 3y ago
    You don't need to go to anywhere near that price to get before you hit a sweet spot. For like $600 including tax one of the biggest retailers in the UK will sell you the most energy efficient fridge on the market with a 5 year guarantee. Like most products, you're reaching diminishing returns at a certain point and that seems to be it as far as I can tell.
    • ska 3y ago
      Isn’t the point of the OP that this “top of the line” fridge has poor ergonomics and features relative to the 70 year old one? If true, that is at least interesting.
    • klyrs 3y ago
      Frankly, a 5 year guarantee is pathetic. Appliances lasting 25 years was once unremarkable.
      • lotsofpulp 3y ago
        Without proof of 25 year warranties, I call bullshit. If a seller had a product good enough to offer a 25 year warranty, and they could sell it for 5x cheaper than a product with a 5 year warranty, they would not have stopped selling it, because people would not have stopped buying it.
        • potta_coffee 3y ago
          It's not bullshit, my parents had the same fridge from when I was born until I graduated from college.
          • lotsofpulp 3y ago
            The claim was not that your parents’ fridge lasted 25 years, it was that appliances in general lasted 25 years. If that was true, manufacturers would have been advertising 25, or least 10, 15, 20 year warranties to win customers. Nobody putting their money where their mouth is is a better signal than anecdotal data.
            • potta_coffee 3y ago
              I understand the claim. I know my experience is anecdotal but I think it's common enough that many people can relate. I don't really need empirical evidence for this one. I also think it's common sense that companies go out of business when there's no repeat buyers because their products last a lifetime.
              • lotsofpulp 3y ago
                >I also think it's common sense that companies go out of business when there's no repeat buyers because their products last a lifetime. I had not considered this, but I guess it would be a deterrent to offering long warranties.
  • mrob 3y ago
    Professional appliances aren't strictly better, because they're rarely designed to be quiet. Your example: >Sound pressure level: approximately 65 dB [presumably dBA] That's much louder than domestic fridges. I would find it unacceptably annoying.
  • Qwertious 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
• lb1lf 3y ago
  I'll recycle a comment I made in another thread a few years ago: When clearing out my grandmother's house a few years ago, my uncle and I almost broke our backs trying to get the freezer out. It felt like it weighed a ton, even empty. My grandmother told us it had been a wedding present, and that they had been totally awestruck at the time at the generous present from her parents-in-law. After all, a decent freezer cost at least 2,000 kroner! (At this time, the average yearly gross pay was just in excess of 7,000 kroner.) My grandparents married in 1950. Since then, monetary value has been reduced twenty-fold. You can still buy a top-loading freezer for 2,000 kroner; I just checked. So - in 1950, you had to work for five months to earn money for a freezer (after taxes.) In 2023, I have to work five hours for a freezer (after taxes.) (2,000kr is slightly less than US$200)
  • thomasahle 3y ago
    2,000kr is $300. If you earn that in five hours, you make around $10,000/month after taxes. So more than double the median of $4,632/month. But okay, even at that median, I guess it's just two days of work. Are you sure you had to work 5 months for a freezer at median work in 1950? Seems nobody would buy them then.
    • tomtom1337 3y ago
      Some context - I’m assuming that OP is Norwegian: 2000 Norwegian kr (NOK) = 198 USD 2000 Swedish kr (SEK) = 191 USD 2000 Danish kr (DKK) = 296 USD 2000 Icelandic kr (ISK) = 15 USD
    • lb1lf 3y ago
      I am Norwegian, our kroner are somewhat less sought after than the Danish krone. As for the cost in 1950, I have no idea except what my grandmother told me - but the 7,000kr average annual pay I looked up at the bureau of statistics. My paternal grandmother, though, upon hearing my maternal grandmother had a freezer already in 1950, was green with envy - they had not got one until the end of that decade. I guess being an early adopter came at a price back then, too.
      • 3y ago
• dragontamer 3y ago
  Refrigerators might be a bad example because we got rid of highly effective refrigerants on purpose to patch a hole in the ozone layer. Or perhaps more accurately, to stop poking a giant hole in the ozone layer.
  • pfdietz 3y ago
    Today's refrigerators are much more efficient.
    • indymike 3y ago
      Old lock handle fridges are surprisingly efficient. I have a 1949 Hotpoint and a 2022 LG. They both draw about the same amount of power when running, the difference is the Hotpoint runs less because it has four inches of insulation and a lock handle that seals much better than the drawer on the LG freezer. The only complaint with the Hotpoint is that it stays around 32.5°F which is too cold for veggies, but fantastic for beer.
      • pixl97 3y ago
        And a lock handle that kills your kid in an hour or your money back.
        • skyyler 3y ago
          Simply do not have children. Issue closed.
      • pfdietz 3y ago
        They were efficient because they weren't self-defrosting.
  • rsynnott 3y ago
    I don't think freon fridges were inherently mechanically any more reliable than fridges using modern refrigerants. If anything slightly less so all else being equal, I'd have thought.
• markus_zhang 3y ago
  Nowadays it's difficult to just pay premium and trust things to last for decades. A more likely event is that you pay premium, get more features, and the appliance breaks down if one of which breaks.
  • lopis 3y ago
    Specially since companies are moving to selling you the service of repairs. It's well know that fridges with water coolers and ice makers are very prone to breaking. I like the features in the video though, as those are just fancy shelves that are unlikely to break. Nowadays, most fridge special features come in the form of complex electronics, IoT and other tech that is likely to break within a couple years.
    • markus_zhang 3y ago
      Yup what I really need is a sturdy, large volume fridge with basic functionalities and last for decades. I don't need ice makers or a touchscreen that can play Quake on. On the other side, I'm really itchy to get into IoT security if I had more time. I'm sure security is not the first concern of fridge makers (or whatever "modernized" appliances) so it might not be difficult for an amateur to break into them.
  • mrguyorama 3y ago
    And the real kicker: It cannot be fixed. I DGAF if my expensive appliance breaks, but I can buy a ten dollar part and get it running again by the end of the week (maybe less for fridges)
• picadores 3y ago
  With the service per lifetime measurment stick, its still increddibly cheap. We are definatly poorer if you take the Terry Pratchet boot economics yardstick.
  • ffhhttt 3y ago
    How? 5-10 years for 5-10x less seems like a better deal cost (if not environment..) wise. Even if you ignore energy usage.
• onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  Is there really a correlation between price and durability in appliances?
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • rsynnott 3y ago
    Yes. It's far from perfect, of course, but there are high-end appliance manufacturers who do make very reliable appliances.
    • onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
      But aren't their also mid-end appliance manufacturers that make very reliable appliances? Who are the high-end ones that are really that much more reliable??
    • bluGill 3y ago
      There is a curve. High end appliances don't have enough volume to shake out all the problems and fix them in the next design. Mid range does.
      • rsynnott 3y ago
        Possibly we're thinking of different degrees of high-end. I'm thinking Miele and similar; definitely very expensive, but relatively high volume. There's certainly a tier above who make stoves that cost more than a car, and your concern would certainly apply there.
• photochemsyn 3y ago
  $4K will get you a nice solid-state (thermoelectric Peltier-effect refrigerant-free) research-grade fridge from Fischer Scientific, only 5.5 cubic feet though. Five-year warranty.
  • LorenPechtel 3y ago
    Peltier is very inefficient cooling. Nice for reliability and lack of vibration, not nice for your electric bill.
• api 3y ago
  They're only more affordable if you don't amortize the cost over a long period of time. You either buy high quality once or buy low quality multiple times. I've found that you usually have to go to high-end brands and/or "commercial grade" to get quality anything in the appliance space. A decent heuristic is also where it's made. For high-end brands some have certain models made in places like the USA and Germany and others made in China. The ones not made in China are usually the good models that will last. Things like Wifi and especially anything with a 'cloud' component are massive anti-features that should be avoided. Not only are these things privacy problems or ways for them to push ads at you, but they're also often indicative of cheap gimmick-encrusted crap.
  • dublin 3y ago
    There is no product from China that I can name that is viewed as "quality" or "reliable" There is a reason that "Chinese shit" has effectively become a single word - it's a well-earned association. And despite being a leading IoT innovator for decades, myself (I designed and manufactured the world's first embedded web-enabled wireless and PoE sensors), there is almost nothing useful in having WiFi/Net-connected appliances, especially if they require an app or cloud services of any kind. (Seriously, what kind of state do you really care about even for monitoring, much less control, in your appliances? Unless you're a wack job, pretty much zero...)
    • bluGill 3y ago
      "back in my day kid"... Japan and Taiwan used to have a well earned reputation for being the source of cheap junk. They both have cleaned up and now deserve a reputation of quality. Only time will tell if China does better in the future (they have proven they can make quality, but they still are the source of cheap junk overall). Someone else may take over as the source of cheap junk next.
    • callalex 3y ago
      Ever heard of iPhones? MacBook Pros?
    • api 3y ago
• sameerds 3y ago
  To use a very imprecise comparison, the fridge that my parents purchased way back when, cost them three months of savings, while the fridge that I purchased would cost half a month's savings for a similar job.
• jancsika 3y ago
  The best low-end Frigidaire you can get today is around $750. For $5k you could buy 6.7 of them. Lowe's extended warranty appears to be 5 years, so I'm guessing these things are designed to last 6 years. 6 * 6.7 = 40.2 years. My own estimation is that a $5k fridge today will last perhaps 10. And most of that money is going toward smart features that add complexity, which adds to the risk of having to pay for repairs. And it's not like those companies stop using cheapo plastic and styrofoam in their more expensive fridges. Still, I'd like to know how much it would cost per year in electricity to run one of the old models like in the ad.
  • dublin 3y ago
    Not as much as you think - the people selling them want you to think the old ones were awful and need replacing, but they were designed for both reasonable efficiency and decades-long life. (You really need to factor in a literal 6-10x lifespan difference into efficiency and environmental impact figures, too...) I have a large 60s/70s vintage chest freezer I bought on Craigslist a few years ago. I worried that it was power-hungry, so I got a Kill-A-Watt and monitored it. I don't remember the exact figures I came up with, but it was pretty negligible: Even in my non air conditioned (but attached) garage in Austin (with the highest electric rates in the state, by far), it costs me only about a dollar a month to run. So we're saving a ton of money by being able to buy and store as much frozen food as we want, at a cost of $45 up front to buy the freezer, plus a buck a month to run it - that's a deal to me. All appliances, back when they were made here in the USA, lasted for decades. I have a cousin who had a (admitttedly expensive at the time) KitchenAid dishwasher from circa 1960! (In very cool copper color!) It still ran perfectly when she sold her ranch house several years ago.
    • secabeen 3y ago
      Chest freezers are a little special, as they don't need much actual cooling power if the insulation is functional and they aren't opened. Vertical freezers and fridges lose all their cold air when opened, chests don't.
    • magicalist 3y ago
      I mean, it's a cooler packed with a bunch of frozen stuff. Of course it's cheap to maintain its cool, that's why it's designed the way it was. > in Austin (with the highest electric rates in the state, by far) This is tangential to your point, but this isn't remotely true
• missedthecue 3y ago
  I paid $400 for my current fridge, new. It's 320 liters which is 11 cubic feet. That's actually insane how manufacturing and technological innovation has kept the price of fridges at the same price as they were in 1950, even after inflation!
• SoftTalker 3y ago
  A basic, white, 18-20 cu ft refrigerator/freezer can still be purchased new for under $400 in 2023 dollars. In the 1950s, a TV or refrigerator was a major purchase for most families. Therefore there was more concern over quality of materials, repairability, and longevity. Today, a TV is basically a throwaway item. Nobody really repairs them, if you have a problem under warranty you exchange it, or if it's out of warranty you replace it. Refrigerators, laundry machines, are not far behind. If you wanted a repairable appliance built solidly enough to last a couple of decades, you'd be paying the inflation-adjusted 1950s price. Instead you're paying much less, for something that you will probably want to replace anyway due to changing standards, changing styles, better efficency, more features, etc. (Who would still be interested in using their 19" CRT television in a heavy wood console cabinet in 2023?)
  • justsomehnguy 3y ago
    It doesn't helps what there is only the panel itself, circuit board and power cord, basically.
    • SoftTalker 3y ago
      There's still some repairable stuff in most refrigerators. I have a GE side-by-side refrigerator that's probably 10 years old. It still works, at least as a refrigerator/freezer. The icemaker and water dispenser never worked well and don't work at all now, and at one point started leaking which ruined the laminate floor in the hallway behind the kitchen before it was noticed. I have replaced the control circuit board, and the freezer defrost heating element. These parts are available and pretty easy to install if you are even slightly skilled as a home handyman, and in the time I've owned it, the need for these repairs doesn't seem unreasonable. The board likely got fried due to a power surge in a thunderstorm, a reminder that most modern appliances should get power through a surge supressor. The defrost heater failure is typical of any frost-free freezer. I think putting water and icemaker in the freezer is a mistake and won't buy another one like that. If you need more ice than you can make with ice trays, get a standalone ice maker.