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Comment by wgd | Hacker News Reader

Regarding "reviews written by people who have actually touched the thing they're reviewing", I'm not sure Consumer Reports deserves to be listed these days either.

I bought a subscription a few months ago because I needed to buy several large appliances for my home, but all I found behind that paywall curtain was computer-generated tables of star ratings and statistics about mechanical reliability. Which is probably useful to somebody, but isn't something I found valuable.

I ended up ignoring CR's data tables, cancelling my subscription, and buying the same models of appliances my parents have because at least I could try those out in person and verify that they worked decently well without any glaring flaws.

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I have a service tech for appliances. I just ask him what I should buy. He usually has suggestions from all the cost-ranges. Sometimes, I buy used through him (built-in fridge); sometimes I buy new. Since I had the opportunity to buy a bunch of equipment this year (a huge power surge from my HVAC fried appliances, and bad luck):

Built in fridge: GE monogram;

Dish washer: anything that is quiet (below 42 dB);

Dryer: anything with turn-timers; and,

HVAC: American Standard.

So much this. Find someone who does a lot of residential repairs of X. Ask a few of them for recommendations, specifically on what not to buy.

As the Farmer's Insurance jingle goes, "They know a thing, because they've seen a thing."

Every service tech I've ever asked has immediately had a "Never buy {popular brand}, because they all {have shoddy part | catastrophic design error}."

And it's night and day between what service techs all know vs what even the most detailed internet sleuthing would give you, because they actually see a representative sample size.

The flip side of this - is that service techs are by their nature biased to failures. They don't come out to the machines that are working. This is an issue for top-selling items where they may see a lot of service calls but the overall rate is lower than something they see less frequently. In my experience I have known few technicians that have the statistical smarts to account for this.

Clothes washer: Staber

My repair guy would bring other techs over to my house to see our Staber washing machine. Nothing else comes close.

https://www.staber.com

I can't believe I've never heard of this brand. How do they compare to Maytag and Speed Queen of new and old?

They are meant to be user-serviceable, with common hand tools. You can take it apart and put it back together.

It's a cage-like drum that rotates on horizontal axis, much like any front-loader. But it's a top loader; the cage has a door that you open to load or unload. The drum is supported like a wheel, both front and back of the washer.

A neighbor told us that this style is seen in Germany, but I'd never seen a setup like this. It's very simple and quite durable.

I don't have any connection to Staber. Just after ten years of in home daycare, 200 miles from anything resembling a city, I was quite thrilled to finally be able to check off the clothes washer as a problem solved.

I found similar at the UK take, Which. Everything is boiled down to star ratings and then Mail Merge creates the review text.

Apparently, each air purifier which can handle a large room is big, heavy and loud. And the air purifiers that score highly on being quiet have the downside that they can only handle small rooms. Oh, and they did measure the CADR, and will tell you that "this air purifier scored five stars on our CADR test".

For air purifiers, if cost is no constraint, my IQAir GC has worked like a champ. The lower three speeds are reasonably quiet, and speed 6 cleans out the room in no time when my partner burns the cooking. Comes with a 10 year warranty.

Keep in mind air purifiers are just a fan with filters in front of it. A box fan with a furnace filter strapped to it, while ugly, will do similarly for reducing the amount of particles in the room.

What you're paying for is basically three things: a design that looks acceptable in a room, a fan that's reasonably quiet, and ability to source filters in the future.

Check, check and check. And also a filter quality and seal design that's been tested and proven to work (they do a QA particulate test on each individual unit before it ships https://imgur.com/a/exTrjU7).

IQAir are really good. My only complaint is that they are expensive and that their fan uses too much energy.

I wish they would release a smaller machine that was a bit cheaper and could compete in price and energy usage with mid-sized Coway models.

I have a few, just wish I could link them with an air quality sensor.

I've noticed a tendency for them to review spec sheets; the whole point of a reviewer should be to do the in-depth checking and verification that I cannot do. I want someone to speak to how long the model has been sold, parts availability, repairability, etc.

Some of this can't be entirely determined until years after the product is released but you can check the company.

As for me, I went with SpeedQueen for the washer/dryer and wish I could find an equivalent company for refrigerators, but I basically consider those disposable.

My library has a subscription to consumer reports, don't have to pay for it. I only bring this up because you said you paid for it. Worth checking if you have some local resource that has a subscription already.

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