The only thing Ikea doesn't do superbly (for the price) is padded furniture. Their chairs and couches are terrible, in my opinion. Their cabinets, though? Their desks? Great look, and reliable for years. I am proud of my Billy bookshelf and the books on it in the living room.
Some personal anecdotes:
Lack coffee tables: utter trash, fell apart quickly (in a way reminiscent of what the grandparent post described)
Galant desk: still going strong after 12 years and 3 moves.
Aneboda dresser(s): Got three, 100% track failure after a few years and no longer suitable for daily use.
Billy bookcase: re-shelving books pushed the backing loose, and the thing looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa until emergency repairs were undertaken. Will be junked in the next move.
But perfect width between the legs to mount 19" rack gear.
If you want something to last you aren't going to get it for $8 no matter where you buy it.
I use it for eating, writing, etc. Maybe others have other plans to use a coffee table in a way that requires tougher structures.
They discontinued it in the US or I would buy it again and take a loss on the resale of my fancier couch.
Maybe I have just gotten unlucky, and fallen in the tail end of their defects.
> the bottom of the drawers is made from something
In British, we call this "hardboard". I've always assumed it's "hard" in comparison to cardboard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardboard
There are (from searching) several supplies of cheap, flatpack furniture for landlords, which probably explains why half the properties I rented as a student had the same furniture, made of 5mm thick hardboard and bits of plastic. That stuff didn't even hold together properly when it was new, let alone a couple of years old.
Habitat should be decent quality. MFI used to be a major retailer of flat-pack stuff, but they went bankrupt in 2015. My parents bought almost everything for the kids' rooms from MFI. None of it is broken, 15-25 years later.
The electric standing desks in Sweden are far superior quality to any IKEA futurnature I've ever seen down here.