The beauty of cheap products
elazzabi.com
elazzabi.com
I think software developers (especially US-based ones) are kind of the secret "nouveau riche". They make a lot more than people realize, and I think they themselves don't often realize how much more money they make than most people.
I never imagined how much I would be earning in relation to consumer products and travel, nor how little in relation to housing.
Like literally tell them before hand the food is on me. Or find some stupid reason to pay for them.
Even if it's just two pizzas, but it's at my place, I'll just pay and say it's our home and its on us. But if I bring the pizzas to someone's place I'll say it's their place so it's on me, lol.
I used to be poor, and always saw people pay for my stuff without second thought. I really love being able to do that now.
Fast forward a few years, extensive bodywork, and a whole lot of cash and the car had show car quality paint.
But there were certainly days that I missed driving around my old, beaten up paint job car. I would leave my coffee mug on the roof as I got in, would park wherever I wanted, and I generally didn’t worry about the car much. Now I fret over parking it and have to walk from the back of any lot.
I’m not complaining… I certainly love driving around shiny car. But it’s an interesting observation that the cheap/beaten up version had virtues that I miss - to the article’s point.
Music gear, machine tools and well loved laptops are great for this.
A 1960's car (survivorship bias!) has this quality in a way that cheap electronic crap tends not to. The connectors wear out. The battery dies. It just kaputs for no discernable reason and it's not economic to fix.
You want stuff early in its lifecycle where the manufacturers accidentally over-engineer it because they're not confident about the lifespan yet - or that kind of "Toyota" stage in the lifecycle where they got making it good cheaply fully down.
I reckon you'd have to go through a lot of cheap smart watches to find a proper "beater", and the whole function of the devices tend to fight against this with interface standard and apps that render them quickly obsolete.
He doesn't. His last paragraph literally starts "If buying an expensive product makes you a hostage of it"
Also keep in mind he's in Morocco. A $150 smart watch breaking is absolutely devastating when you earn $800 a month[1] and don't have access to the same warranty and support that people in the US do.
[1] This number is based a sample size of 1: a telecoms engineer who I was talking to (in fluent English) back in 2019 about hardware startups. It may not be indicative of the average salary in the region and is almost certainly above average.
But… I could easily have read into the article wrong.
(PS I agree with your “buy nice” sentiment. And Webers are fantastic grills.)
But there's an almost ironic fun in taking good care of it, handling it well, cleaning it carefully, making it last.
And of course you can often be more rough and careless with expensive and heavily built products - it's one of their benefits. But they're often more clunky, with an unnecessary leather carrying case, 3x the weight, etc. Not always a clear win.
For example with electronics, it's possible to use two common-valued (=> cheap) resistors in series, rather than a more obscure resistor of twice the value. This both reduces cost, and shrinks the list of unique parts.
Of course the idea of cost-engineering is to reduce the cost, while maintaining adequate function and quality. It loses it's charm beyond that, as evidenced by so much of the garbage flowing from certain places these days.
I bought a pair of Sennheiser HD-25 Mk. II headphones specifically because I appreciated that they're high quality (and I preferred the sound signature to previous Sennheisers I've owned), designed to withstand being knocked about and every single part is replaceable. The company has been producing virtually the same headphone and making its parts available for more than 30 years.
By purchasing such a product I'm getting something that I likely don't have to worry about finding a replacement part or the entire product in 10-20 years (already owned them for over 10 years).
If you earn x and could not worry about $20 item, then $200 item for the people who earn 10x.
Also, thinking like “it’s cheap, I’ll buy another” generates overconsumption.
People often imply "long lifespan" when they buying expansive products, which is not always the case. Take phones for example, a well-made "cheap (inexpensive)" phone now days could last as long as the expensive one under the same usage.
(Heck, the cheap/boring phones lasts way longer than some crazy expensive ones such as Galaxy Fold/Flip)
I have a bluetooth bracelet myself, made by Garmin. And my friend got a similar product from Xiaomi at around half the price compare to how much I paid for mine Garmin. We all brought the device around the same time, around 2 years ago, and both device are still functional today.
However, due to how Garmin designed the product, the glass surface on my bracelet can be scratched really easily. While in the case of Xiaomi, they designed their product in such way that the robber fringe around the glass will protect it from been damaged. The result is, after 2 years of use, my friend's Xiaomi looked almost new, while my Garmin is telling the others that it been abused by a barbarian.
So I think the author has underestimated the "worst-case scenario". No, the real "the worst-case scenario" wasn't "the cheap one breaks", instead, it's "the expansive one breaks".
Shop smart, I guess :)
With exception of classic monobloc chairs, I really appreciate industrial, mass produced, value engineered products that brought affordability to the masses. Including relatively high-margin Apple products. Most cheap products are still developed by competent designers with adequate production oversign. But ecommerce and cheap global shipping started flooding markets with subpar products or knock offs designed for developing markets (i.e. Chinesium). So one has to be more vigilent with with purchases these days. That said design and quality for indigenous PRC brands has largely caught up with modernization, I wouldn't hesisitate to fill my life with Xiaomi/Mijia products for 1/2 the cost if they were more accessible. No more tier level distinction of same MD player between Japanese / Korean / Taiwan / PRC factories.
What tool do you need for what purpose, is the right question to ask.
Are you using it as a professional, as a hobbyist or out of curiosity ?
Then choose the product from your real needs.
I tried a cheap bracelet for many years then I felt frustrated because of the inherent limits of a 30$ electronic bracelet. It wasn’t very nice as well and in some situations plain ugly and because I didn’t want to have a nice watch + an ugly cheap 30$ bracelet at the same time it was annoying … then I found that it wasn’t precise enough with sports.
Since I bought a more expensive smartwatch, I can use it even when I’m going out, it’s really better with sports and synchronisation, and I just take the best care I can and I put it away if I do some kinds of manual work.
I don’t think of the price anymore after some months to a year it’s just sunken cost. But I enjoy it every day for it’s aesthetics and features.
People used to buy 500$+ watches for decades and the watches were just giving time (and the current day). They could’ve just bought a 15$ watch isn’t it ? It’s the same time on it.
Nothing changed, we have a choice and buy to invest for utility, pleasure or both.
Usually more expensive tools last longer than cheap ones based on the same use. That is by design, more expensive materials vs cheap materials. So cheap stuff is usually made for occasional and not really heavy use. Every time I used heavily or often a cheap product, it broke.
I do this with all the technology I own - be it cars, phones, computers, audio gear, motorcycles, sports equipment... you get the best of both worlds.
Of course, in order for this to be possible, these products have to be repairable, and that's why we have to fight for it.
There is obvious value in choosing less expensive products from an environmental standpoint, I suppose. Where it gets tricky is obsolescence, safety, durability, supporting local manufacturing, sustainable sourcing, etc.
I always end up buying twice. I can’t re-sell the cheap gear, and renting equipment is too time constrained to make up my mind.
That seems the right way to do it, though—buy cheap because you don’t know if you’ll need the good version (and because you don’t yet know enough to distinguish what you want out of an expensive tool)… and if you stick with it, you buy good tools, and if not you’re only out a fraction of the cost. The hardware equivalent of “build one to throw away”.
Décathlon worldwide makes it convenient, but wasteful.
I think the trick is to not make it free. Maybe sell it, well below market price but just enough to where they'll care.
Easy come easy go.
"The worst-case scenario is I’ll get a new one if it stopped working for some reason." Sure, just chuck it in the trash and let it end up in the ocean—or dispose of it properly and it ends up in an e-waste pile halfway around the world.
All sorts of things (both supply and demand side) are misaligned with respect to minimizing wastage as a whole.
And that all being said, there really is something valuable about the 'cheap product' thinking - and that's specifically the mindset of decoupling your enjoyment and utility of a product from its up-front cost. And this is valuable, because the very thing that we need to do to minimize waste is to increase the up-front cost of like... everything.
The primary reason this happens is that companies don't want you to repair their products because that hurts their revenue. It's only natural in a system that rewards profits above all else and has little to no mechanisms to enforce compensation for the externalities.
Yes, it seems like it's in the company's best interest to make something unrepairable, but the reality is that repairing a cheap electronic item simply doesn't even occur to most consumers.
Also in video after video of electronic repairs: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfOrKQtC1tDfGf_fFVb8pYw
The primary reasons for why he can't repair something are:
- lack of documentation
- can't find the components for sale
- design choices (like using glue instead of sealing rings)
I think at least some of these things can be easily provided at little to no cost to the companies.
Lack of documentation: some components are provided with docs under NDA, so you can't get them anyway.
Can't find the components for sale: many components are only sold through approved representatives and their MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity) may be in the thousands.
Design choices: are you planning on legislating how a device is designed?
Look, I'm all in favor of Right To Repair: I'm a cheapass who still uses a 35 year old snowblower (that I've had for 15 years) because fixing it is cheaper than a new one and I Hate Waste. I repair everything. I'm practically on a first-name basis with the guys at eReplacementParts.com but still even I accept that there's a limit to what's reasonably practical. When a watch uses a COB (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_on_board) part with the only documentation available in Chinese, you have to accept that it's probably not going to be repairable. And the reality is that that's a common state of consumer products these days.
When you prioritize, e.g., reliability or ease of service, that problem goes away, but now stuff costs more. Worth it for commercial/industrial products, but it tanks the consumer market.
My Kitchen-Aid mixer has had its sacrificial plastic gear replaced a few times because I keep overloading it with bread dough. It was designed to be repairable. My cheap Walmart TV, OTOH, is in the garage awaiting the annual electronics scrap pickup because although I know what the problem is, for $200 (about what I paid for the mixer 20 years ago) it simply isn't worth my time fixing it when I can buy a better one for the same price.
Markets/companies care about whatever their customers care, and the way customers vote/express themselves is with their dollars.
We can talk all we want about how wrong this is or not, but that doesn't change the underlying reality.
I think regulation should be a last resort, but in this case, some kind of taxation or regulation is necessary, because there is absolutely no incentive to be good stewards of the Earth within our current version of capitalism.
Maybe some form of labelling could have a greater real impact: let the customer know what the real impact/cost of the product is, and let the customer made an informed decision.
We can't dance around with bullshit and tell people that right to repair (depending on the flavor), and sustainable pricing, and proper pricing of disposal will just result in the same or cheaper upfront costs - it won't - and we need the right answers for the obvious questions like "won't this just screw over the poorest people"?
A product you don't use is waste all along. Maybe it will sit in a drawer for a decade or two before it becomes obsolete and you trash it. But it doesn't mean it lasted for decades, it means you kept your waste for decades.
A cheap product you use to its fullest because you are not scared of breaking it is less of a waste than an expensive product you hesitate to use.