5 ms·

Everything is bad these days, not just the sofas. 1. The new switches I bought broke before the old ones, which are over 20 years old. 2. LED bulbs last less th

Everything is bad these days, not just the sofas. 1. The new switches I bought broke before the old ones, which are over 20 years old. 2. LED bulbs last less than incandescent bulbs, even with a 20-year warranty. 3. The new cell phone's screen breaks very easily, it's not like the old Nokia's. And nowadays something expensive is no longer guaranteed to last. This is why I value old things so much: I have an old chair to work with, it's not a good chair, but it's better than anything new. I did a restoration instead of buying a new one because the new one might not last long. I have a 10 year old car, I'm scared to buy a new one with the bizarre stories about new 3 cylinder engines breaking (throwaway engines?) I try to use old things as much as possible. I stopped using an old Android when SSL stopped working. It's not a matter of lack of money, it's a lack of confidence in new things. The last brand that I gave some value to was Sansumg. My last cell phone... THEY FORGOT to add a piece to fix the flat cable for the on/off button. And twice the on/off button stopped working, and twice I sent it to technical assistance. The third time I opened the phone and repaired the button myself. My two Sansumg TVs break a few days after the warranty ends. My sofa broke in less than two years.

katbyte 3y ago
I think there are still quality products out there, but they are rare and expensive and you have to spend forever researching to figure out which products are :/ still are as so many see to be purchased and then running the ground for short term profits
- runeb 3y ago
  There should be a market for a Wirecutter type site for buy-it-for-life products
lowlevel 3y ago
I fully agree that new is very often worse than old. I've had to return 3 new iPhones in a row for manufacturing defects and out of box software errors. A TV lasts me maybe 4 years before it's 'broken' and needs to be replaced.' Home appliance longevity is laughable now.. (especially Samsung, my gosh.) I've purchased 5 new cars over the past 15 years or so, only one of which didn't have serious problems from new that had to be dealt with.. or could not be resolved/etc. We're just hitting bottom here, the next 10 years are going to be pretty rough.
- trogdor 3y ago
  > I've had to return 3 new iPhones in a row for manufacturing defects and out of box software errors That is very surprising. Mind explaining what the issues were?
  - ineedaj0b 3y ago
    Other issues may be affecting the parent commenter if 3 iPhones were unusable in a row. Perhaps not. But I worked retail and some people could find a problem with anything
- ieee2 3y ago
  My experience: Our last two washer lasted for 20 years each. We have only third one now and first one did not break :) I have bought many (6) smartphones and non has broken during my usage and also after I passed them to others. We have 4th TV at home and each one was fully working when we replaced it after ~ 10 years. Current one (Sony), our first LCD is from 2012 and works perfectly (with just new set top box). I have bought/got many laptops and any of them has broken. I have laptop from 1996 or 1998 which still works. There were software issues there, but they are fixable by update. (I have never bought Acer or Asus though)
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    > Our last two washer lasted for 20 years each. We quit repairing washers when we bought a 20yo Whirlpool. Same story for dryer except it's a 1988 Maytag.
onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
I think when they try to hedonically adjust for inflation - they do a terrible job. The quality of everything is trash. And if you want something that has the type of quality you used to get 30 years ago - you're going to pay close to 4-10x as much. Everyone is selling trash for cheap. We live in a mall of garbage.
- thfuran 3y ago
  They're also selling trash for expensive, as stated in the article.
abraxas 3y ago
On the electronics front I'd beg to differ. Apple has raised the quality bar on electronics by a mile in the last couple of decades. The gadgetry I remember from the eighties and nineties was very cheaply made with plastics that warped or cracked (or both) and cheap switches made of molded plastic and a ballpen spring. Casette player gears were mostly made of that white plastic that always wore down with not much usage. I went through many "high end" walkmans that did not last more than a couple of years each. It's all too easy to see the past through rose tinted glasses. Also remember that the "built to last" stuff from the past is often an example of survivorship bias.
- zac23or 3y ago
  Of course, there have been many bad things in the past. Floppy disks, cassettes and VHS were horrible technologies. Did you use tube radios? They broke all the time. The difference is that they weren't intentionally horrible, they were limitations of an era. But at some point, devices start to last a long time. My parents' first refrigerator ran without problems for over 10 years. I've had far fewer problems with CDS and CD players than with cassette players. And we used to have a lot of low quality items, but now it's much harder to find good quality items. And brand means almost nothing. Even Apple has been selling notebooks with horrible keyboards for years. I'm just using an Apple Notebook now, I've been waiting for years for them to change the keyboard.... The Nitendo Switch Joystick has a drift problem and Nintendo ignores it... There is no reason for a new Samsung TV to break after a year of use. Or LEDs. Or power switches. It's not a technical limitation, it's a choice.
  - rossjudson 3y ago
    You made me laugh with "refrigerator ran without problems for over 10 years". My family cottage has a still-running refrigerator that's been there for close to 40 years. Third or fourth handle, though ;)
    - MrDresden 3y ago
      My family cottage has an electric stove/oven that was manufactured in the 1930's. Works flawlessly.
itsoktocry 3y ago
>Everything is bad these days, not just the sofas. When these conversations happens, I always wonder why people want some of these items to last forever. Are you going to stick with that 10 year old plasma TV? Great. I want new tech, and this stuff moves fast. Furniture is a bit different, but my parents had all kinds of good, long-lasting stuff that no one wants because it's out of style.
- navane 3y ago
  Would you prefer a Sofa As A Service? Our cheap ikea couch keeps lasting, preventing us from buying a nice, new one. We can't throw it out of it's not broken. It is long known that companies who sell good quality products go out of business after a couple decades at most, they saturate their market and because no one needs to renew, the company dies. Ironically ikea HAS to sell quality (for price) because they are such a big brand. Their stuff is great quality for price, so people keep coming back for upgrades, when they can afford it.
  - pictureofabear 3y ago
    Life's about "experiences" not owning property!
    - snoman 3y ago
      There’s a psychological safety in knowing that something is yours and it can’t be taken away; that you’re not beholden to someone else for it. I think the proliferation of subscriptions in modern life has contributed to quite a bit of anxiety.
    - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
      > Life's about "experiences" not owning property! Life is about being happy.
    - digging 3y ago
      So one should not own a sofa? Sitting on a sofa is a near-daily experience I'd like to be able to keep having, which is why I buy quality.
jiveturkey 3y ago
The LED bulbs are a particular travesty. At least they are better than how we polluted everything with CF bulbs. Only buy CRI 95+ (99 if you can find them). Not because of the color rendering quality (although that is a great benefit), but because they will tend to have appropriately derated other parts of the circuit, which are the elements that fail. They can do this for that product because at the more upmarket price, they can afford the additional 0.02 in COGS. As to Nokia phones, well yeah. I understand there is a real market for them now, since they found they are very effective black box flight recorders.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
The worst part of it for me is how I can't really trust anything. Cheap, expensive, brand, generic, it doesn't matter, I can't trust it. I feel like I can only trust stuff I've made myself. If only I had infinite time to learn how to make everything.
arbitrage 3y ago
You're exaggerating about light-bulbs. There is no way LEDs last less than incandescents. If you are experiencing this, its possible your wiring is bad. You should call an electrician and have them check that out.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > There is no way LEDs last less than incandescents. Sure there is. I bought a case of Sylvania LEDs in 2019. They're used a few hours a week and I've tossed 5 of the 15 I've installed.
  - TillE 3y ago
    I've been using a Philips 100W equivalent bulb for about 12 hours a day for almost 9 years now. Companies can always manufacture garbage if they don't care, but LED technology is fantastic.
    - ieee2 3y ago
      Exactly
  - ejb999 3y ago
    Same here - I am constantly replacing my LED lights whereas parts of my house still have 25 year old incandescents that have never been replaced since I moved in.
    - ryandrake 3y ago
      Same here. I keep a big box of LED lights hanging around in a box and am constantly replacing them. I had to replace incandescent lights too, but not nearly as often. Everything is designed to fail.
  - Little_Kitty 3y ago
    Phillips master ultra efficient, similar to their Dubai lamp, may be what you need. Running much less power per led is more efficient, so there's less heat and the lifetime is massively increased. Big Clive put a good video out about Dubai lamps a few years back.
mmcnl 3y ago
My experience is completely the opposite. Nokia phones weren't as durable as you remember. A Nokia phone would hardy last 2 years with limited use, either the battery or power connector would die quickly. iPhones get way more usage than Nokias and they easily last 3 years. Also I've literally never had a LED bulb die on me.
- tomxor 3y ago
  I don't know what kind of nokia your talking about but I use a 12 year old nokia feature phone, works fine, very robust, had countless drops, onto countless surfaces, often gets smushed when I go rock climbing and forget it's in my pocket. The battery is barely working but I still get 4 or 5 days charge on it. I will have to upgrade soon to a 4G version because the 3G bands are getting repurposed in the UK over the next few years. Otherwise I would have kept going with it. Thankfully HMD still make the ones that run the S3 OS... which is immediately obvious when they actually bother quoting standby time in the specs; the KaiOS ones are basically just a worse android phone with all the same power drain issues and not enough compute or utility to justify it.
  - mmcnl 3y ago
    I'm talking about the Nokia 3310.
    - tomxor 3y ago
      If you mean the original one I wouldn't argue, I had one of those and remember how heavy and chonky they were, and how they would instantly explode whenever dropped... The modern ones aren't like that and I suspect are actually far more robust despite the myths of old, because the density of modern feature phones are generally so low and the electronics are so much smaller with more room for casing that it's very hard for them to damage themselves. That's probably true of all feature phones, but the problem is most of them are painful to use because of terrible software, nokia's S30+ is far from ideal, but it's not absolute crap for basic functionality either. That said, I wouldn't recommend the new 3310, because it's only 2G which isn't going to give you very good call quality or network coverage globally, better to go with any of the 4G S30+ based phones for longevity. Just avoid KaiOS because it defeats the purpose of a feature phone by trashing battery and giving you smartphone features, and apparently it's like the worst android preloaded dumpster fire you can imagine. I'm probably going to replace mine with this one eventually: https://www.hmd.com/en_gb/nokia-225-4g/specs?sku=16QENB01A06 https://www.hmd.com/en_gb/nokia-225-4g/specs?sku=16QENB01A06
SergeAx 3y ago
I recently switched from my 5.5 yrs old Xiaomi Mi 8 to Google Pixel 8. The new phone is 20% more expensive (inflation adjusted!) and at almost all metrics a bit worse than the old one. The only thing better is a camera (and I suspect it is because of the software, not the hardware). There are other departments where Pixel is better (CPU, wireless charging, newer OS version, eSIM support), but I don't use it.
ncr100 3y ago
No, in my experience there's is "cheaper then ever" , these days and cheaper can be worse quality, naturally.

katbyte 3y ago

I think there are still quality products out there, but they are rare and expensive and you have to spend forever researching to figure out which products are :/ still are as so many see to be purchased and then running the ground for short term profits

runeb 3y ago
There should be a market for a Wirecutter type site for buy-it-for-life products

lowlevel 3y ago

I fully agree that new is very often worse than old. I've had to return 3 new iPhones in a row for manufacturing defects and out of box software errors. A TV lasts me maybe 4 years before it's 'broken' and needs to be replaced.' Home appliance longevity is laughable now.. (especially Samsung, my gosh.) I've purchased 5 new cars over the past 15 years or so, only one of which didn't have serious problems from new that had to be dealt with.. or could not be resolved/etc. We're just hitting bottom here, the next 10 years are going to be pretty rough.

trogdor 3y ago
> I've had to return 3 new iPhones in a row for manufacturing defects and out of box software errors That is very surprising. Mind explaining what the issues were?
- ineedaj0b 3y ago
  Other issues may be affecting the parent commenter if 3 iPhones were unusable in a row. Perhaps not. But I worked retail and some people could find a problem with anything
ieee2 3y ago
My experience: Our last two washer lasted for 20 years each. We have only third one now and first one did not break :) I have bought many (6) smartphones and non has broken during my usage and also after I passed them to others. We have 4th TV at home and each one was fully working when we replaced it after ~ 10 years. Current one (Sony), our first LCD is from 2012 and works perfectly (with just new set top box). I have bought/got many laptops and any of them has broken. I have laptop from 1996 or 1998 which still works. There were software issues there, but they are fixable by update. (I have never bought Acer or Asus though)
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > Our last two washer lasted for 20 years each. We quit repairing washers when we bought a 20yo Whirlpool. Same story for dryer except it's a 1988 Maytag.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago

I think when they try to hedonically adjust for inflation - they do a terrible job. The quality of everything is trash. And if you want something that has the type of quality you used to get 30 years ago - you're going to pay close to 4-10x as much. Everyone is selling trash for cheap. We live in a mall of garbage.

thfuran 3y ago
They're also selling trash for expensive, as stated in the article.

abraxas 3y ago

On the electronics front I'd beg to differ. Apple has raised the quality bar on electronics by a mile in the last couple of decades. The gadgetry I remember from the eighties and nineties was very cheaply made with plastics that warped or cracked (or both) and cheap switches made of molded plastic and a ballpen spring. Casette player gears were mostly made of that white plastic that always wore down with not much usage. I went through many "high end" walkmans that did not last more than a couple of years each. It's all too easy to see the past through rose tinted glasses. Also remember that the "built to last" stuff from the past is often an example of survivorship bias.

zac23or 3y ago
Of course, there have been many bad things in the past. Floppy disks, cassettes and VHS were horrible technologies. Did you use tube radios? They broke all the time. The difference is that they weren't intentionally horrible, they were limitations of an era. But at some point, devices start to last a long time. My parents' first refrigerator ran without problems for over 10 years. I've had far fewer problems with CDS and CD players than with cassette players. And we used to have a lot of low quality items, but now it's much harder to find good quality items. And brand means almost nothing. Even Apple has been selling notebooks with horrible keyboards for years. I'm just using an Apple Notebook now, I've been waiting for years for them to change the keyboard.... The Nitendo Switch Joystick has a drift problem and Nintendo ignores it... There is no reason for a new Samsung TV to break after a year of use. Or LEDs. Or power switches. It's not a technical limitation, it's a choice.
- rossjudson 3y ago
  You made me laugh with "refrigerator ran without problems for over 10 years". My family cottage has a still-running refrigerator that's been there for close to 40 years. Third or fourth handle, though ;)
  - MrDresden 3y ago
    My family cottage has an electric stove/oven that was manufactured in the 1930's. Works flawlessly.

itsoktocry 3y ago

>Everything is bad these days, not just the sofas. When these conversations happens, I always wonder why people want some of these items to last forever. Are you going to stick with that 10 year old plasma TV? Great. I want new tech, and this stuff moves fast. Furniture is a bit different, but my parents had all kinds of good, long-lasting stuff that no one wants because it's out of style.

navane 3y ago
Would you prefer a Sofa As A Service? Our cheap ikea couch keeps lasting, preventing us from buying a nice, new one. We can't throw it out of it's not broken. It is long known that companies who sell good quality products go out of business after a couple decades at most, they saturate their market and because no one needs to renew, the company dies. Ironically ikea HAS to sell quality (for price) because they are such a big brand. Their stuff is great quality for price, so people keep coming back for upgrades, when they can afford it.
- pictureofabear 3y ago
  Life's about "experiences" not owning property!
  - snoman 3y ago
    There’s a psychological safety in knowing that something is yours and it can’t be taken away; that you’re not beholden to someone else for it. I think the proliferation of subscriptions in modern life has contributed to quite a bit of anxiety.
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    > Life's about "experiences" not owning property! Life is about being happy.
  - digging 3y ago
    So one should not own a sofa? Sitting on a sofa is a near-daily experience I'd like to be able to keep having, which is why I buy quality.

jiveturkey 3y ago

The LED bulbs are a particular travesty. At least they are better than how we polluted everything with CF bulbs. Only buy CRI 95+ (99 if you can find them). Not because of the color rendering quality (although that is a great benefit), but because they will tend to have appropriately derated other parts of the circuit, which are the elements that fail. They can do this for that product because at the more upmarket price, they can afford the additional 0.02 in COGS. As to Nokia phones, well yeah. I understand there is a real market for them now, since they found they are very effective black box flight recorders.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

The worst part of it for me is how I can't really trust anything. Cheap, expensive, brand, generic, it doesn't matter, I can't trust it. I feel like I can only trust stuff I've made myself. If only I had infinite time to learn how to make everything.

arbitrage 3y ago

You're exaggerating about light-bulbs. There is no way LEDs last less than incandescents. If you are experiencing this, its possible your wiring is bad. You should call an electrician and have them check that out.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> There is no way LEDs last less than incandescents. Sure there is. I bought a case of Sylvania LEDs in 2019. They're used a few hours a week and I've tossed 5 of the 15 I've installed.
- TillE 3y ago
  I've been using a Philips 100W equivalent bulb for about 12 hours a day for almost 9 years now. Companies can always manufacture garbage if they don't care, but LED technology is fantastic.
  - ieee2 3y ago
    Exactly
- ejb999 3y ago
  Same here - I am constantly replacing my LED lights whereas parts of my house still have 25 year old incandescents that have never been replaced since I moved in.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    Same here. I keep a big box of LED lights hanging around in a box and am constantly replacing them. I had to replace incandescent lights too, but not nearly as often. Everything is designed to fail.
- Little_Kitty 3y ago
  Phillips master ultra efficient, similar to their Dubai lamp, may be what you need. Running much less power per led is more efficient, so there's less heat and the lifetime is massively increased. Big Clive put a good video out about Dubai lamps a few years back.

mmcnl 3y ago

My experience is completely the opposite. Nokia phones weren't as durable as you remember. A Nokia phone would hardy last 2 years with limited use, either the battery or power connector would die quickly. iPhones get way more usage than Nokias and they easily last 3 years. Also I've literally never had a LED bulb die on me.

tomxor 3y ago
I don't know what kind of nokia your talking about but I use a 12 year old nokia feature phone, works fine, very robust, had countless drops, onto countless surfaces, often gets smushed when I go rock climbing and forget it's in my pocket. The battery is barely working but I still get 4 or 5 days charge on it. I will have to upgrade soon to a 4G version because the 3G bands are getting repurposed in the UK over the next few years. Otherwise I would have kept going with it. Thankfully HMD still make the ones that run the S3 OS... which is immediately obvious when they actually bother quoting standby time in the specs; the KaiOS ones are basically just a worse android phone with all the same power drain issues and not enough compute or utility to justify it.
- mmcnl 3y ago
  I'm talking about the Nokia 3310.
  - tomxor 3y ago
    If you mean the original one I wouldn't argue, I had one of those and remember how heavy and chonky they were, and how they would instantly explode whenever dropped... The modern ones aren't like that and I suspect are actually far more robust despite the myths of old, because the density of modern feature phones are generally so low and the electronics are so much smaller with more room for casing that it's very hard for them to damage themselves. That's probably true of all feature phones, but the problem is most of them are painful to use because of terrible software, nokia's S30+ is far from ideal, but it's not absolute crap for basic functionality either. That said, I wouldn't recommend the new 3310, because it's only 2G which isn't going to give you very good call quality or network coverage globally, better to go with any of the 4G S30+ based phones for longevity. Just avoid KaiOS because it defeats the purpose of a feature phone by trashing battery and giving you smartphone features, and apparently it's like the worst android preloaded dumpster fire you can imagine. I'm probably going to replace mine with this one eventually: https://www.hmd.com/en_gb/nokia-225-4g/specs?sku=16QENB01A06 https://www.hmd.com/en_gb/nokia-225-4g/specs?sku=16QENB01A06

SergeAx 3y ago

I recently switched from my 5.5 yrs old Xiaomi Mi 8 to Google Pixel 8. The new phone is 20% more expensive (inflation adjusted!) and at almost all metrics a bit worse than the old one. The only thing better is a camera (and I suspect it is because of the software, not the hardware). There are other departments where Pixel is better (CPU, wireless charging, newer OS version, eSIM support), but I don't use it.

ncr100 3y ago

No, in my experience there's is "cheaper then ever" , these days and cheaper can be worse quality, naturally.