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Comment by cortesoft | Hacker News Reader

The US has Consumer Reports, which is similar I think... but yeah, only works for major product categories.

For kitchen tools, there's America's Test Kitchen reviews (from Cooking magazine, IIRC). It's a limited segment but high quality.

On the other hand, it has the same problem as Consumer Reports: they only test and review a single model which will probably be out of production before you need one. On the third hand, if one manufacturer consistently gets good reviews (OXO Goodgrips, for example)...

Cooks Illustrated is the name of the magazine, and I recommend it to anyone who ever spends time in a kitchen.

Some of the purchases I have made with their guidance have been (trivially) life-changing.

You are absolutely right! Sorry about that --- I zoned out on the magazine's name.

There’s also the NYT WireCutter which tried to do a good job isolating it away as an independent review source that you can trust.

Some of the WireCutter’s picks were fairly terrible, which makes sense: testing diverse categories of products is too expensive for affiliate links to cover. I’ve gifted dashcams on their recommendation that shot beautiful QHD but had MTBF measured in single digit months. The TP-Link C7 Archer was kind of a turd and within a stone’s throw of a decent router price-wise.

I’ve written extensively about this recently, but these days with $300+ “gaming” routers using crappy sweatshop software on whatever Atheros router SoC, many users would be much better served with legit SMB routing / switching / wifi systems that are available for around the same price.

I've always found anything tagged as "gaming" to be lower quality and more expensive than the business machines.

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This message sent from a Thinkpad business machine that I use for gaming (and ML, theoretically).

I mean this is a known thing in general; the best kitchen supply stuff you can buy is often stuff intended for commercial use, because it quite literally goes through the wringer with near-constant usage over long periods of time.

The problem is finding a place that sells commercial things to individual buyers. That, and sometimes what a commercial kitchen needs is vastly oversized for a regular house; you're probably going to set off your residential fire alarm very often with a massive commercial range designed for woks, for example, unless you also upgrade the ventilation, etc.

I didn’t know what good Wifi until I switched to using some TP-Link Omada equipment.

If you run your own controller, you can set up a small network (router, PoE switch, and AP) for less than $300. Hardware controller is ~$90. A controller isn’t strictly necessary, but I don’t recommend doing a standalone setup.

Downside? It’s business class equipment and you need some idea what you’re doing. It’s not plug-n-play. Also, it’s layer 2 only. If you want mDNS across vlans, you’ll need to run a reflector. (Not difficult. It’s built into avahi.)

I switched to Unifi access points and a wired router and switch and am much happier with the result.

The consolidation of router, switch and access point means you can't upgrade individual parts. It's the modern equivalent of the TV-VCR combo and most consumers don't realize they actually can be separated.

I'd love to read what you've written. So far, my research into commercial Access points hasn't really been that fruitful. I refuse any cloud based management interface. For the router, I use mikrotik which has been great but I returned the access points from them that I tried. In the end, my access points are Asus home routers because they were the best I found.

To be fair, MTBF is not something you can measure in a reasonable time for these kinds of review sites. Far better for this kind of thing is niche-specific youtube channels.

But in any case, what you're asking for here is a prediction of your future satisfaction with a product. It's a non-trivial problem even for the most innocuous purchases.

Will I like Lysol or Clorox wipes more? Who knows, and the reviews aren't going to beat first-hand experience in any circumstances.

> The TP-Link C7 Archer was kind of a turd and within a stone’s throw of a decent router price-wise.

Can attest. I finally ditched mine, got tired of it falling over multiple times each week.

Maybe you got a lemon I've been using mine for a while now. Not as nice as my old one with customer firmware but still consistent.

I've got the A7, which I believe is the same thing except it has some sort of ability to enable Alexa control for something or other.

Mine has worked great. The only issues I've seen are (1) the traffic stats don't count IPv6 traffic, and (2) there is something odd that sometimes goes on when a connection ends that can result in packets from the LAN side showing up on the WAN side without the LAN-side IP address being replaced with the WAN-side IP address.

The first is a bit of annoyance, and the second as far as I saw didn't actually cause any problems.

wirecutter's picks are definitely bad, more like products to avoid.

The C7 is a good router if you put OpenWRT on it.

That fell to complete shit a while back. They are not wrong but I would ignore their rankings and focus on the review aspects

I find Wirecutter and Consumer Reports are pretty reasonable for product categories where I just want a reasonable choice and don't necessarily have deep knowledge and preferences myself. And, yes, it's worth reading why they picked something. But if I were buying an interchangeable lens camera or a computer I might read their recommendation but I'd look elsewhere also. For a sprayer for a hose? I'm sure their recommendation is fine.

No, for hoses they recommend ones with the archaic brass threaded fittings common in the US instead of the far superior Gardena type.

Bought a pair of audio-technica headphones based on their review. Sound quality was as described but it was so uncomfortable I returned it 5 minutes after picking it up. It was described as comfortable for long wear but it had a hard band with little padding and was uncomfortable for any duration.

Comfort is a pretty subjective thing. Your experience, while valid, is merely a single data point and it would be quite premature to disregard the review or even the whole outlet based on it.

My experience with NYT product reviews is pretty awful. I wish I could be more concrete. Tried to look in my history but I could have sworn at least one article was just effectively, "top 10 most popular on Amazon", with quotes from user reviews. Maybe I'm getting my sites mixed up.

Yes, you are definitely confusing something. And someone.

I believe you're thinking of The Strategist, which is through New York Magazine. That's basically their thing, to summarize Amazon reviews for you and filter through a product category based on that. I also don't really see much of the value in it, but I suppose I can see how someone might.

Rtings is my go-to for most things. Been satisfied with several purchases researched there.

I’m a subscriber to consumer reports, but as it put Tesla Model 3, the most successful car in the past few years on the back as the least reliable, I feel that I can’t trust its results to be 100% independent reviews. I don’t have a Tesla, but if something grows so fast where people pay a significant amount for it, it can’t be that bad.

I don't know anything about how reliable or not Model 3 is, but surely reliability != popularity?

It’s the growth that’s staggering. What I read is that older car companies changed the rating to include small software bugs in the entertainment system. As Tesla has much more non-essential features, these while these small bugs are not that important for the end user, can bring the ratings down vs other cars that don’t even offer the feature.

Tesla is well known to whip cars with sometimes dozens of minor issues. It’s a new company and these processes need time and experience.

The reliability data also is likely sourced from outside, such as the AAA, insurers, or any other place where car trouble data naturally accumulates.

I see...it's interesting that they can get away with it while growing so fast

Tesla got it's fair share of issues, but they fix them and detect them fast. They adamant about security. Only Tesla and Volvo got their own testing facilities. Last recall of backup camera is actually a positive call. On a very small group of cars they got this issue. They called it a defect and recalled an entire batch ( 500k cars) to fix a potential issue.

Are you thinking of the Model Y? CR gives the Model 3 average reliability, and gives it the highest overall score in the electric car $45-55k category. The only other car with average reliability in the category is the BMW i3. The Ford Mustang Mach-E and Polestar 2 get the next tier down for reliability, and then the Model Y brings up the rear getting the bottom tier reliability score.

In the electric cars over $75k category, everything except the Audi E-Tron gets the tier between worse and average, including the Tesla Models S and X. The Audi gets the bottom tier.

This article talks about why the Teslas other than the Model 3 get low reliability ratings [1]:

> Commonly reported issues from Model Y owners included defective sensors that had to be replaced, problems with heat pumps, air conditioning, body panels that didn’t line up and water leaks in the trunk due to missing seals, according to Fisher. Owners also reported a variety of electrical and hardware issues with the higher-priced, and less-popular, Model S sedan and Model X falcon-wing SUV.

> Older models typically fare better in reliability, as companies tend to make tweaks and redesigns to solve known problems, while sticking with the same parts and suppliers.

> But Tesla deviates from this approach, Fisher explained. “At almost random times during the year Tesla will switch major components, suppliers or sensors and other units. The more you change, the greater the chances you’re going to have some problems.”

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/18/consumer-reports-2021-auto-r...

Ford recalled almost all their mach-e cars build until first half of 2021 with unglued roof, so that there was two different risks to roof fly away. As of december 2021 they still didn't fix the keys. Software glitch and a security recall of seatbelt issues. And yet, it is more reliable compares to tesla lol :)

Well, there was just a recall of 500000 Tesla vehicles, including Model 3s, for safety issues:

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-recall-model-3-s-fr...

Yeah, I was also frustrated. Tesla always been in the top. And boom, suddenly it stoped been there. I don't believe in reincarnation. All my peers who owns tesla are the most happy customers every, including me. For 2 years owning Model Y I asked for service twice. Once i damaged the car, they came to my backyard, I found it super convenient.

Second time I request a retrofit a speaker from a newer models and hardware + work cost me $100 usd. Engineers did all the job at my home while i was working. I only clicked from the App open the car . Oh well, consumer report doesn't count this things that makes consumers happy.

Consumer reports also doesn't count that after two years of ownership i received tons of new features and my car still feels fresh. I can put here a huge list. Since I bought the car :

- my range improved

- winter regenerative brakes improved

- automatic blindspot cameras after turn

- improved climate control, especially automatic seat heat

- more music/video sources

- dramatically improved autopilot

- view cameras from phone

- updated for free hardware for temperature measurements during one of the unrelated visits

- improved charging time ( faster)

- charging network doubled

- automatically synced profiles to my second tesla

- better charging scheduling, that works well with my local electricity provider incentives, saved me ~600 usd already

- far better navigation included way points

- better security when backing up ( sound)

- improved auto wipers, that become 100% reliable( more a fix)

- i don't include tons of fun stuff like games, easter eggs etc...

This are only improvements that are useful to me. The actual list is waay bigger.

Oh well... someone paid this journalists to portrait it in a bad way. But that basically shows how vulnerable is the system. You pay 10-20 journalists and boom, you got your marketshare of people who trust to some bs like consumer reports.

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