However, I can never tell if this 5x premium actually gets me a better core product, or just gets me better branding, advertising, aesthetics, and/or superfluous features.
So I usually just buy the cheapest and hope for the best.
[−4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiftung_Warentest – the article also has a few pointers to international, similar organisations near the bottom.
I think that's largely due to car enthusiasts having insufficient self-awareness about the degree to which their priorities differ from those of mainstream consumers. PC gamers and PC building enthusiasts are also frustratingly prone to this kind of thing. (I spent several years reviewing PC hardware for a living, which included constantly fielding comments from readers who seemed to be genuinely unable to understand how their could be a market for low-end components.)
I assume that other articles have similar issues, and that I'm just unaware because they're not within my area of expertise.
If they give your product good marks, you are not allowed to mention it in your marketing (Not sure how they enforce it; maybe they stop reviewing your stuff).
I worked at a company that regularly got top marks from them, and our Marketing folks would have fits, because they couldn't mention it.
https://www.aim.org/aim-report/aim-report-a-black-eye-for-co...
Tell me again how it was some cover up. They literally published your argument along with the review.
The ruling on an appeal makes the argument better than i could.
> [The] først theory is that CU know it was probably lying because its employees tries to make the samurai flip and we're happy when they suceeded. The second is that CU purposely avoided the truth by failing to address a potential source of experimental error. Neither of these theories withstands serious scrutiny
The opinion end up concluding that the entire reason for changing the test setup, along with a description of the changes, was present in the article.
What a non-story.
'The media lied to you about COVID-19 – TAKE ACTION NOW'
'Critical Race Theory in schools, take action now!'
'Gender activists are politicizing the dictionary: TAKE ACTION NOW'
'Stand up for Rush – TAKE ACTION NOW'
'VOX buries the truth'
'CNN admits Hunter Biden ‘a real problem’ for Joe Biden, not ‘a right-wing media story’'
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Accuracy_in_Media
I am less confident about either your contention or about the position you are attacking than about the idea that this particular website is going to lie to me about it.
Kirk: Send some red shirts.
Spock: They're all in Agile training today.
Kirk: Do we have any rock drummers?
RIP Neil Peart
That's kind of how it worked when Zep was one of the recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors a few years back, with Ann and Nancy Wilson + Jason Bonham, son of John, + others doing Stairway to Heaven.
This is basic critical thinking, you don't have to be as shallow as many readers of that website probably are, you're just choosing to be.
Please list one of those that are false, so you can be educated.
It did not get little media attention. Indeed, the lawsuit got rather a lot.
> AIM has submitted an amicus brief in the case, arguing that Suzuki should be allowed to present its evidence to a jury. It is hard to understand how any judge could honestly rule that the evidence in this case does not prove that the defendant knew that its claim that the Samurai “rolled over easily” was false.
The source definitely has a dog in this hunt.
Who are we to believe, a partisan in the lawsuit, or the trial judge? And why?
It's very likely that AIM's goal is to present the best facts in their argument, and ignore or minimize other factors. Or as CU put it (quoting https://www.theautochannel.com/news/press/date/19970422/pres... ): "First it was the cigarette makers, now it's an automobile manufacturer. Different industries, same desperate tactics. Throw up a smoke screen, hurl ludicrous charges, and falsely claim (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary) that their product is safe -- all to avoid liability for defective and dangerous products." ...
> "We welcome and invite NHTSA to evaluate our honesty and integrity. Courts have done so and found unanimously that our methodology was beyond reproach. For example, the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York -- one of the nation's most highly respected courts -- has said that our work 'exemplifies the very highest order of responsible journalism.'"" ...
> "On the other hand, Dr. Pittle said, in a decision that the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review, a Federal Court of Appeals stated that Suzuki and its attorneys "engaged in an unrelenting campaign to obfuscate the truth."
> "The truth that was revealed despite Suzuki's cover-up is that Suzuki knew -- prior to first selling the car in the U.S. -- that the vehicle had a 'rollover problem' and that General Motors refused to sell the car because its evaluation demonstrated the danger of rollover," Dr. Pittle said.
Do you really expect HN readers to act like trial court judges and decide which of these two partisans are correct, and dig through decades old material to offer a point-by-point rebuttal?
If the evidence is so clear-cut, why did Suzuki and CU end up with a rather mundane settlement?
The opportunity they have to lie to somebody who is unfamiliar with the subject is immense. Falsehood could be hiding in any of a thousand places, and it could easily require you to hire a team of experts for weeks to find it and conclusively debunk it, line by line. It may well require decompiling what is functionally or literally the source code behind the piece to dismiss one's suspicions. "Basic critical thinking" is not trivial against a determined adversary.
Whether to take the claims within on face value depends on your purpose and on what you know of the writer. In this case, it is very easy to become quite familiar with this motivation and ethics of the writer in under a minute by clicking around the website, and come to the reasonable conclusion that this is a place that generally attempts to deceive their reader to secure material gain for their patrons & movement, and there are likely deliberate lies somewhere in the body of the piece. You don't even need to read the body.
Indeed, the real story would appear to be rather more nuanced: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuki_Motor_Corp._v._Consumer....
Critical thinking does not require you to carefully parse every bit of garbage on the planet.
SUVs evolved to address the risks pointed out by CR and other entities. They mostly have wider wheelbases and lower centers of gravity.
Emails, social media posts, website landing pages, collateral in-store/retail is all fully acceptable. You can also pay additional fees to them for additional materials to use in communications.
Sometimes they start with a premise they want to prove instead of just providing a straight review of the products. They may do this by selecting the criteria (key performance metrics), for example.
Sometimes, they just don't competently evaluate the products because they fail to take into account real world consumer needs.
The quality of reviews in CR these days doesn't hold a candle to what CR used to provide, but I remain a member because even a weak signal is better than the other random stuff out there like Amazon reviews.
FWIW, I do love my Ford Edge and it is still the daily driver for our household
Within 2 years, every single one had failures. For instance, the oven's convection fan failed in a month. The washer AND dryer completely failed within 3 years. I bought refurbished units from a local guy, and when I told him what I had, he didn't even want them to flip again.
I, too, resigned myself to the fact that, unless you pay for commercial-grade appliances, it's all crap, and you may as well just buy the cheapest thing at Lowe's, and replace it when it fails. The industry deserves all the loss of trust they have earned.
rtings does good work, I'd pay a flat fee for it. But a subscription for a website I check every 2-3 years when I'm upgrading some tech? I'll just clear my cookies.
If you're specifically looking at mice, you might want to check out RocketJumpNinja. The reviews are pretty biased towards suitability for FPS, but they are quite in depth, and the reviewer is pretty knowledgeable.
Yeah, exactly. I really love the idea, but not the results.
Here for France: https://www.60millions-mag.com/tests-comparatifs
(I just laughed as I see they even review fries brands, and sex toys...)
ETM [0] is subscription funded and their tests are far more detailed, and they even show the data (e. g. power usage curves for a toaster, measured air replacement curves for a fan, etc.).
Anyway, in this case, they simply have not tested any dehumidifiers.
They also provide help to launch class action. ( that exists differently than a US class action )
Yeah same, those reviews are either bought, or made on a whim by people who aren't critical of what they buy - especially if the company or seller goad them into reviewing with giveaways or whatever. There will be good reviews, but they will be buried in the thousand+ mediocre ones.
They often are somewhat marginal at the edges - e.g., for computers. But otherwise they are useful for consumer products.
Manufacturers can't justify producing a more reliable product at a higher price point, because there isn't really a way to get consumers to trust that it really is a more reliable product worthy of the price.
Of course, many execs look at brand value as something to be harvested for short term gains to the value of their options, but that’s a different problem.
Craftsman, Portal Cable, Bosch, Stanley, the list goes on and on, of once independent brands that have been bought out by mass marketers to sell lower quality tools under those names
From a PE/market perspective, the sweet spot seems to be the 95 year old with a good reputation that still carries weight.
I imagine it's because of the good spread between current price and expected returns, as the 'old' brands this is done with aren't usually very profitable, if at all.
See this Drill is DW345, we sell DW350, it is 5 better
If I was choosing between brand A and twice as expensive brand B, and brand B said "we trust that our stuff will last so we offer a 10-year, no questions asked warranty", I would go for B in a heartbeat. (As long as it was a brand with some history so I can trust they don't just go out of business.)
like help lines which charge 80 cents/minute to not help you?
* insert terms so onerous you’re very unlikely to claim, you have to ship the item on your own dime halfway across the world, if defect is deemed not covered (and you bet it won’t be) disposal at your expense or return as is at your expense, extended warranty void if you didn’t do $frivolousThing at time of purchase and not a day later, extended warranty doesn’t transfer to new owner, etc.
We found Miele for dishwashers. Zwilling for our toaster, JennAir for microwave...
We explicitly avoided "smart" anything. I shouldn't need to connect my refrigerator to wi-fi.
But we've watched the crap curve take hold on a bunch of product categories, especially U.S. brands. Hannah Anderson used to make good quality, reliable children's clothes that didn't wear out when you looked at them funny. Not any more. Other brands that used to make clothing that lasted 20+ years now makes thin garbage that might last a season. Many of these transitions were to "Made in China" manufacturing.
We went to replace a ten-year old electric coffee grinder and couldn't find one for less than $1700 that wasn't garbage. We switched to a hand grinder as the only reasonable alternative.
It is very frustrating to try to find things that will last. My parents bought one refrigerator, and it lasted for more than 30 years. Most of their stuff they were able to get once. Not every two or three years.
Brands like Ceado and Eureka make a bunch at various price ranges. 600 gets you a decent one, 1200 and you're well into very nice grinder territory (unless you wanna go all audiophile here).
There's not a ton to go wrong: good motor, bearings, a well designed adjustment mechanism and a good hopper design. Of those I'd really only expect the bearings and motor to die in any reasonable time frame.
If you're that concerned you could always get a commercial model. There's no way home use will kill one of those, but it'll just be big and impractical.
Very sturdy, easy to use, easy to clean, and surprisingly quiet.
Random review: https://www.home-barista.com/blog/bplus-apollo-hand-grinder-...
Went with the BPlus Apollo. See my response below to yaldiz.
The one weakness it has is the plastic ring that holds the upper burr set. This appears to be intentionally designed to break as a sacrificial part if anything jams. Replacements are a few bucks.
In power tools for instance, there's a number of YouTube channels that do high quality testing. In some cases some identified faults appear to have caught the eye of the manufacturer. Hopefully over time this feedback loop will result in higher quality products that still hit their price target.
That is what warranties are for. You say it is reliable? Put it in writing how long you think it will keep working and what will you owe the customer if it ain’t so.
MTBF is exec poison. Too high, and the customer doesn't come back, you see, or worse, it's too expensive to build! (According to finance).
The motor doesn't sound as good these days, so I considered replacing the whole thing. Fortunately after I wiggled the gasket it seemed to stop leaking!
We’ve had ours for 8 years and it works like new and doesn’t smell like the motor is burning out like so many cheap blenders do.
Your statement would be correct for the majority of companies however, but Vitamix is actually distinct in that regard (currently)
Newer models are typically much lighter. This means they now have far less internal material to reduce noise. I can't use mine without ear protection since it's about chainsaw level of noise. The reduced weight means I also need to hold onto it during use otherwise it will vibrate itself off the counter.
The company seems to be most interested in selling smoothie recipe subscriptions for their blender companion phone app. Aside from subscription selling the app is pretty much useless -- who wants a phone app to remotely control a blender?
Here's an idea: if you find the blender to be too loud, go into a different room, close the door, and remotely trigger the blender with your smartphone app.
We put our blender in our pantry because we can close the door and blend without waking up the baby. Otherwise it (Blendtec) is too loud!
EDIT: to the downvoters, this was tongue in cheek. It would obviously be better for them to spend more money on soundproofing and less on a useless app!
Having my smoker self-manage its temperature and graph the amount of heat it's dumped in is nice. Checking on the temperature ramp of the sous vide is nice, too.
I am sure some next generation developers are already demanding to install VSCode on fridges so one can code on Samsung Smart refrigerators screens.
Wouldn't it be great that while fridge telling about running short on Kale green also download a gigabyte of NPM garbage to display image of Kale green in a bag?
Do better.
For a wide range of consumables and gear that hackers of the physical world would probably like, check out Project Farm, protoolreviews, ToolGuyd, and of course AvE on YouTube.
For kitchen gear, check out America's Test Kitchen.
I hang out in r/bifl but it isn't as good as it used to be for my personal tastes, as there isn't as much of an emphasis on repairability as I'd prefer.
I wish there was a trend of someone like AvE doing a teardown of junk-quality consumer gear, then by replacing certain parts like bad capacitors, plastic gears, etc., turning it into much higher-quality equipment, and open-sourcing those small parts' design and manufacturing specs.
One hack I employ is I go straight to the servicing departments and find the service technicians, and lately I only go to commercial B2B offerings. They are usually more than happy to tell you which manufacturers and product lines are easiest to diagnose and service (and whether that conjunction of characteristics leads to reliability), have a reliable supply of parts, maintain that parts supply the longest, and have retained all those characteristics the most years. It is no more than a 10-15 minute conversation most service technicians are happy to have.
They will be especially happy to talk with you if you ask them how you can plan to accommodate their service visits more pleasant and efficient to work in. HVAC techs in particular will trade around site porn of customers who planned ahead, put in a proper-sized and sited pad easy to roll up to with all their equipment in their work van, with provisions for ample shade that doesn't obstruct the equipment airflow. They will <squee> over that more than tween girls over the heartthrob du jour.
Then I talk up staff at businesses who have to use the equipment every day to find out the most annoying aspects of using that equipment to determine whether I can put up with those idiosyncracies myself.
There are some manufacturers I will absolutely not even consider in the US for some equipment, for example. Samsung refrigerators; they are not designed to last past the warranty, not designed to be easily diagnosed and serviced, and their parts supply network reflects that. There are some categories of equipment I have absolute requirements no matter where I am in the world. Rigging gear where a failure puts life and safety at risk I will outright refuse to purchase and use from anywhere but Japan, Germany, and the US from long-standing manufacturers making it in those nations. I will pay the price to import it to where I am and wait for as long as it takes to get through customs. I'm beginning to stop using Amazon and switching to direct from manufacturer, distributors, or retailers listed on the manufacturer's web site; the SKU commingling issue has gotten out of hand, and Amazon's poor inventory control has robbed whatever unique value proposition their logistics arm painstakingly built up.