> Thing is, producing crappy, cookie-cutter, uninspired, overpriced junk that falls apart within 5 years (generously speaking) pays more to the shareholders. That's how we got from there to here.
This summarizes it quite well for me.
This summarizes it quite well for me.
* Strong regulation on energy use by appliances (modern fridges are much, much more efficient than ones from 70 years ago)
* Extreme competition from companies all over the world
* Consumers who care more about convenience and cost above all else, and reliability basically not at all
These 3 are why modern appliances are not as reliable. It is not a conspiracy. It is not lazy manufacturers. It is pressure from consumers and government that made things this way.
Take HVAC, which is a great example. Regulations have required far greater efficiency. So what happens? You get things like variable-frequency drives. These can slow down the fans in low-load scenarios. However, they also add another failure point. And speaking of fans, many evaporators now use plastic fans instead of metal ones. And guess what? They crack a lot more than the metal ones ever did. But they're lighter and thus more efficient.
It's like that with everything. Just take a look at modern clothes washer agitators compared to the old ones.
The other problem is really with consumers. All (the vast majority of) consumers care about is convenience, cost, and looks. They want a fridge that has the ice maker and the water dispenser, stainless steel, french double door, etc. They don't care about the reputation of the brand - they just buy the cheapest one that fits those checkboxes. That leads manufacturers to cut cost as much as possible - especially since they now have to compete with companies all over the world with cheap labor, which 70 years ago was not nearly as true.
Don't blame the consumer for this. It's just The Market For Lemons at work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
If you really need someone to blame, then blame the MBAs who buy up quality brands and then sell junk until the reputation is all ground up.
An airline which I can't recall, found the same: people say the want more leg room or other comfort, but when it's the time to pay, most end up choosing the cheapest ticket.
That's unfair for many people. Not only do robust appliances cost significantly more, you also need to figure out which significantly more expensive model is also robust. You can't easily sample and replace a fridge when it's not the ideal one.
> found the same: people say the want more leg room or other comfort, but when it's the time to pay, most end up choosing the cheapest ticket.
There's nothing weird about it. Premium economy on the flight to my family is 2-3x the price on an already expensive flight. For my parents that's effectively equivalent to choosing: "visit once a year, or every 3 years".
This view of customers are the problem, they don't spend enough feels really bad - a disconnect of what people can realistically spend money on. There's many who need to consciously save for a few months to buy the $199 appliance.
I remember buying a washer-dryer a while back and the sales person was like, "this is kind of the Cadillac model." To which I responded, "what do you have in a Buick?"
It just sucks pretty much knowing that the "X-year" warranty won't actually cover the control board that changes every model year that is the most likely thing to break just outside of warranty anyway, or even if sooner, you won't be able to get replaced.
The main burner went out in my range (top cracked) and I'm pulling my hair out on picking a replacement oven/range... There are too many options, and quality is all over the map, even in the same brand/model from year to year. These things should have lifetimes measured in decades.
If you want a fridge that lasts 50 years, go to the commercial segment instead. It'll cost a lot and likely isn't great for day-to-day use, but that's the best you'll get.
Voters do not know that politician X worked for company Y before getting into politics and do not know that politician X will work again for Y or for Z after his mandate is over.
Consumers can only buy what is available. And quality is gone for good in military industrially capitalism.
One can be happy if the product lives the live it was designed to.
There's a lot of effort in the grassroots of both major parties, and in third parties to displace the establishment. It takes effort and local involvement. Most simply aren't and don't care.
It's not, really. Information about brand reliability is widely available. People just value different things.
I too see this information everywhere but I have no idea what to trust on this anymore and what information is paid for and gamed by the companies themselves. Brand reputation is its own business these days with its own products and markets.
I'm halfway convinced that selling a brand is just sort of illegitimate - a brand is just a reputation (ie. built-up trust), and selling out your reputation for money on your way out the door is cleanly, obviously immoral.
I'm sure there are arguments for it (like "well surely my son can inherit the family business" and "well surely I can sell the business to someone who I trust to maintain reputation"), but overall those arguments don't change what actually happens: the business is sold to someone who wants the profit from abusing the trust that's been built up.
Information from reputable sources on large appliance purchases is incredibly hard to find since most people don’t buy appliances often, so even consumers used to doing online research will be hard pressed to know which sites to trust. I know that I wouldn’t have a clue.
If there is a place besides consumer reports, which is a paid service, where you can. Heck these things I would be very interested in hearing about it.
Modern fridges are pretty terrible as an entire category, at all price points.
Information that you can trust, however, is harder to find.
Where? If you Google for it, you're only ging to find SEO'd info-free sites. If I take a look at what people tall about in only forums, they haven't a clue either.
I just see no evidence of this.
What you can do is read as much as possible, and make a guess. Most of what you have read will probably have been indirectly sponsored by the manufacturer, or one of its competitors. None of it will be rigorous - in fact, the most honest information you get will be anecdotes from people whose purchases have failed, and who are as likely as not outliers.
Nope. The information made available is usually laughably sparse. And often you only learn about the model’s reliability when it isn’t in the market anymore. Models change faster than reliability can be assessed.
Beyond this, is the brand white labelling and the same or differing parts for varying lines of appliances from different brands even.
Nobody ever wants to admit that they make bad choices, but this is the most important explanation for why a lot of stuff sucks. If people were willing to pay more for a reliable refrigerator, that's what would get made. In empirical fact, their actual priority is cheapness, so that's what they get.
You can use price as some kind of signal, but it's only loosely correlated. Manufacturers use a dizzying array of different model numbers that change constantly, so it's impossible to buy a model that's been in the field long enough to have a meaningful track record.
You can probably figure out that some brands are basically always junk, but even the brands that do make higher quality products also sometimes make junk, so good luck...
The fact that basically all manufacturers offer the same fairly pathetic warranties (and that extended ones cost absurd amounts) should give you some idea that basically all products out there are made with similar expectations as to how long they'll last before something breaks.
This has long been the case for cars, where Japanese brands focused on reliability and were able to outcompete less reliable brands when new, and command higher prices in the used car market. Many Japanese brands are now no more reliable than their domestic counterparts, but that doesn't mean they're unreliable, and consumers are still voting with their wallets based on their past experience.
Bringing this back to home appliances, when my parents purchased their home, it came with a fancy-looking Samsung fridge, which broke shortly after the warranty period. That meant that when it came time to purchase my own fridge, I wrote off Samsung completely. Additionally, my parents purchased a nice LG washing machine, which has been running great for well over a decade now, and again when it came time to purchase my own, I went with LG. None of these were the cheapest, and I as a consumer voted with my wallet.
Plus choosing a $1000 for a 10-year warranty would be a very bad deal, since $500 guarantees you 5-year product, additional working time or ability to sell and repurchase of an improved version of a product. Minus could be inflation or less reliable product in the future.
Huh? Good modern clothes washers don’t have agitators. Agitators clean well, but they are terrible for clothing. A good modern front loader cleans almost as well and damages your clothing much less in the process.
Part of that is it's also more efficient, iirc.
https://www.consumerreports.org/top-load-he-washer/things-to...
I'd happily pay more for something well made, but, unless it's like commercial kitchen quality, it's still not "great"
This thread makes it clear most people think all models are unreliable or that a consumer can’t search based on reliability.
If you accept everything is equally unreliable or unreliability is equally unknown, what else but price and features would you use to make a decision?
If not, spend weeks researching. Cross reference text and video reviews from many sources, look into the technologies manufacturers use, look at feedback from people working in the repair industry, etc.
Then, maybe you can get something a bit better than average. At the very least you'll avoid the true lemons.
You kinda proved my point too - your suggested steps to follow take weeks, and end in a “maybe you’ll get something a bit better than average”. That truly sounds like “don’t bother even if you want it”.
I don't think you're wrong, but I think the why is the crux of the issue, as in why are consumers so cheap? IMO, it's the same reason businesses are happy to cut corners to make them as cheap as possible as well. Turns out it's a negative feedback cycle.
Some consumers pay less, so businesses charge less, so businesses pay less, so their employees (customers by another name) have less to spend, etc.
Because consumers have limited time and effort available. I enjoy spending some time getting good products, but even I admit it takes a lot of time and effort to really research and understand what makes a product good. Looking at a multitude of reviews (avoiding the ones that are bought out), looking over recommendations from repair people with many years in the field, looking at online discussion forums for people really interested in X product, etc. Really starting to understand the different parts and pieces, and manufacturing approaches. You need to actually learn how the product works internally to an extent.
It can take weeks of back and forth discussion and research.
Most people have very busy lives with children and work and sports and whatever else. They don't have the time or energy to spend weeks finding the PERFECT refrigerator. They just buy one that works and move on with their lives.
Price is easy. Smaller number better. Don't need to think about that one much.
I found a bland-looking Liebherr at a discount (still pricey compared to mentioned brands), and I'm happy for now. It looks like reliability and serviceability are considered a premium these days.
In that scenario, there's little reason to make the flying experience great.
Googling says the average cost of a refrigerator in 1950 was $250 to $400 (for 10 cubic feet -- a fridge today is 20 to 30 ft^3), which would be $3K to $5K in 2023 dollars.
If you pay $3K to $5K for a fridge today (for a fridge 2-3x as big as the 1950 fridge), do you get a better longer-lasting one? I'm not sure.
One of the difficulties is it's become very hard to know if an item is more expensive because:
- it's better quality
- it's full of bullshit
- it's marketing
However 3-5k for a fridge is well into "professional kitchen commercial refrigerator / refrigerated cabinet" range. At that price you can get a triple glass-door adjustable shelves wheeled model e.g. https://www.saro-kitchenequipment.com/refrigerators-commerci...
>Sound pressure level: approximately 65 dB [presumably dBA]
That's much louder than domestic fridges. I would find it unacceptably annoying.
If a seller had a product good enough to offer a 25 year warranty, and they could sell it for 5x cheaper than a product with a 5 year warranty, they would not have stopped selling it, because people would not have stopped buying it.
If that was true, manufacturers would have been advertising 25, or least 10, 15, 20 year warranties to win customers.
Nobody putting their money where their mouth is is a better signal than anecdotal data.
As rule my Grandparents had stuff that was out of warranty, but having repairs done was cheaper than replacement. By my parents time things got replaced every 5-10 years.
In that time, I've replaced the dishwasher in 2014, a spring on the door of the dishwasher in 2022, and a heating element in the defrost circuit of the 1993 fridge. That's an oven, a cooktop, a fridge, a trash compactor, and a garbage disposal that all have 30 years of service, with only the dishwasher having failed and two repairs. Their older fridge in the basement is still chugging along as well. That's 5/7 perfect, 1/7 with one minor repair, and 1/7 failed inside of 30 years. My parents built their place in 1999; of the kitchen appliances, only the microwave has been repaired. Their place before that, built in 1974, only the dishwasher replaced between 1974 and 1998 when they moved.
My conclusion is that dishwashers sucked and still suck, but that old appliances generally chug along for decades.
I also think it's common sense that companies go out of business when there's no repeat buyers because their products last a lifetime.
I had not considered this, but I guess it would be a deterrent to offering long warranties.
If true, that is at least interesting.
When clearing out my grandmother's house a few years ago, my uncle and I almost broke our backs trying to get the freezer out. It felt like it weighed a ton, even empty.
My grandmother told us it had been a wedding present, and that they had been totally awestruck at the time at the generous present from her parents-in-law.
After all, a decent freezer cost at least 2,000 kroner! (At this time, the average yearly gross pay was just in excess of 7,000 kroner.)
My grandparents married in 1950. Since then, monetary value has been reduced twenty-fold. You can still buy a top-loading freezer for 2,000 kroner; I just checked.
So - in 1950, you had to work for five months to earn money for a freezer (after taxes.)
In 2023, I have to work five hours for a freezer (after taxes.)
(2,000kr is slightly less than US$200)
Are you sure you had to work 5 months for a freezer at median work in 1950? Seems nobody would buy them then.
Domestic appliances really have gotten dramatically cheaper relative to earning power, pretty much everywhere. Have a look at some old prices and compare to median wages; it's really fairly dramatic for most stuff.
As for the cost in 1950, I have no idea except what my grandmother told me - but the 7,000kr average annual pay I looked up at the bureau of statistics.
My paternal grandmother, though, upon hearing my maternal grandmother had a freezer already in 1950, was green with envy - they had not got one until the end of that decade.
I guess being an early adopter came at a price back then, too.
Interestingly, I found another couple of historical prices on consumer electronics:
A 21" black-and-white TV set in 1960: NOK 2,200 (two months' gross wages)
Tandberg 1/4" reel-to-reel tape deck (Also 1960): NOK 880 (Just shy of a month's wages)
'Cheap' 26" colour TV, 1993: Three weeks' wages
VHS recorder, also 1993: Another three weeks' wages.
Sony Walkman, also 1993: A week and a half of wages.
It is ridiculous how prices have come down in later decades.
[0] https://forskning.no/forbruk-hus-og-hjem-moderne-historie/dy...
2000 Norwegian kr (NOK) = 198 USD
2000 Swedish kr (SEK) = 191 USD
2000 Danish kr (DKK) = 296 USD
2000 Icelandic kr (ISK) = 15 USD
On the other side, I'm really itchy to get into IoT security if I had more time. I'm sure security is not the first concern of fridge makers (or whatever "modernized" appliances) so it might not be difficult for an amateur to break into them.
Or perhaps more accurately, to stop poking a giant hole in the ozone layer.
Issue closed.
They can be easily fixed, and parts are still available - unlike my Mom's 5-8 year-old Samsung and LG appliances, which will have to be thrown away and replaced soon, because parts are NOT available. As for efficiency - they're not really much less efficient than new ones, especially when you figure that each of them has outlasted a half-dozen or more modern appliances.
When the washing machine tub cracked a couple of years ago, I asked the local parts shop if it was worth getting our old Kenmore(Whirlpool) machine fixed, and when he found out it was from 1987, the manager said, "Don't ever get rid of it! You can't buy anything made that well today at any price!" So I spent $80 on a new tub (plus $75 for labor, since installing it is a pain). That's one of only two major repairs it's ever needed (I swapped out the synchronous clock driven cycle controller myself 15 years ago) - it still runs just like it did when new.
It's certainly possible that all my appliances could outlive me...
You had to manually defrost it for it to keep working. Modern ones have automatic defrosters and other such features.
Yes, the old one "kept working", but at worse-and-worse reliability as the frost built up, until you manually removed everything from the freezer and ran a proper defrost cycle (aka: turn it off, wait for everything to melt, sponge out the water).
I think I'll stick with my "less reliable" heater-inside-a-freezer with an escape hole to automatically siphon + pump the water out. More moving parts means less reliability, but these features are absolutely worth the loss in reliability.
My current kitchen has a microwave that's from the early 2000s, it works fine and has exceptional even heating and top notch auto sensor modes. The 1980s one we had was a total hunk of junk that constantly had failures, wasn't as powerful, didn't have any sensor cooking modes, and performed very poorly at cooking evenly. The other microwave from the 90s ate fuses for breakfast and had massively unreliable sensor cooking modes.
So for me, practically all my newer appliances are way better than the old ones and have still often lasted >10yrs. Anecdotes are anecdotes.
Sure, if you only consider all the older appliances that have survived this long.
But "they don't clean as well" is a bit of a myth. More water requires more soap, and as it turns out, shuffling clothes around with *proportionally more soap* and *less water* leads to better cleanliness for the vast majority of stains.
------------
Think about it: if my washer only uses 1 gallon of water, but yours uses 5 gallons of water, your soap is 5x less effective than my same soap.
Its not the "water" that cleans, its the soap after all. With one exception: caked on mud prefers water over all other solvents.
But with regards to blood, sweat, grapes, tomatoes, and "typical" stains, its not the "water" that does anything. Its the soap. See ConsumerReports.org testing (ketchup tests and whatnot), as well as efficiency numbers that they've tested.
And #2 and #3 are the oils in food (chocolate, grease, wine, and other food products) and then the oils from grass / outdoors.
Literally the only thing that water helps with is soil / dirt. Outside of that, the washing machine should be designed to use the minimum amount of water needed to activate the soap, the actual cleaner.
For $5k you could buy 6.7 of them.
Lowe's extended warranty appears to be 5 years, so I'm guessing these things are designed to last 6 years.
6 * 6.7 = 40.2 years.
My own estimation is that a $5k fridge today will last perhaps 10. And most of that money is going toward smart features that add complexity, which adds to the risk of having to pay for repairs. And it's not like those companies stop using cheapo plastic and styrofoam in their more expensive fridges.
Still, I'd like to know how much it would cost per year in electricity to run one of the old models like in the ad.
I have a large 60s/70s vintage chest freezer I bought on Craigslist a few years ago. I worried that it was power-hungry, so I got a Kill-A-Watt and monitored it. I don't remember the exact figures I came up with, but it was pretty negligible: Even in my non air conditioned (but attached) garage in Austin (with the highest electric rates in the state, by far), it costs me only about a dollar a month to run. So we're saving a ton of money by being able to buy and store as much frozen food as we want, at a cost of $45 up front to buy the freezer, plus a buck a month to run it - that's a deal to me.
All appliances, back when they were made here in the USA, lasted for decades. I have a cousin who had a (admitttedly expensive at the time) KitchenAid dishwasher from circa 1960! (In very cool copper color!) It still ran perfectly when she sold her ranch house several years ago.
The low end Frigidaires are estimated at $56 a year, perhaps $8 less per year for an Energy Star one.
I don't know anything about chest freezers, but there's no way a general purpose 1960s/70s fridge that one opens multiple times a day gets anything close to that.
How much energy is used by upright 60s/70s vintage fridges? If anyone has data I'd like to know it.
I would love to see energy efficiency regulations take the item's expected lifespan into consideration instead of being a mere "energy per hour" measurement.
One simple/naive way to do it would be to divide (energy per hour) by the number of years on the warranty. Your warranty is for twice as long as the other guy? Then your device can use 2x the energy.
Obv, this would require the warranty to be a "full" warranty, and not something manufacturers can too easily weasel out of.
The only way I see it working is to hold some large portion of the revenue in a trust and relinquish it to the company over the warrantied lifespan. The company would have to operate at a loss for a while to books those reserves, so there would have top be something like a zero interest government loan to cover the cost, which can't be escaped through bankruptcy.
Or maybe a contract like the shitty cell phone plans in the US. Buyer agrees to pay for the full price of the appliance over the warrantied lifetime in installments. If you want to sell it or trade it in early, you either have to finish off the payment or transfer the contract. The company would have to service the product (within reason), or the contract is voided, releasing the buyer from payment obligations. Again, this system can be easily gamed, too, in today's market, but I just can't imagine a scenario that doesn't require a major paradigm shift.
I do a decent amount of 3d printing and I cannot count the number of random letter Amazon brands for filament that have popped up over the last year. Most are simply rebranded waste from larger manufacturers. Once the product gets below 3.5 stars, the brand disappears and a suspiciously similar new brand pops up with the same spool design and 20 5-star reviews overnight.
> in Austin (with the highest electric rates in the state, by far)
This is tangential to your point, but this isn't remotely true
Today, a TV is basically a throwaway item. Nobody really repairs them, if you have a problem under warranty you exchange it, or if it's out of warranty you replace it. Refrigerators, laundry machines, are not far behind.
If you wanted a repairable appliance built solidly enough to last a couple of decades, you'd be paying the inflation-adjusted 1950s price. Instead you're paying much less, for something that you will probably want to replace anyway due to changing standards, changing styles, better efficency, more features, etc. (Who would still be interested in using their 19" CRT television in a heavy wood console cabinet in 2023?)
I have a GE side-by-side refrigerator that's probably 10 years old. It still works, at least as a refrigerator/freezer. The icemaker and water dispenser never worked well and don't work at all now, and at one point started leaking which ruined the laminate floor in the hallway behind the kitchen before it was noticed.
I have replaced the control circuit board, and the freezer defrost heating element. These parts are available and pretty easy to install if you are even slightly skilled as a home handyman, and in the time I've owned it, the need for these repairs doesn't seem unreasonable. The board likely got fried due to a power surge in a thunderstorm, a reminder that most modern appliances should get power through a surge supressor. The defrost heater failure is typical of any frost-free freezer.
I think putting water and icemaker in the freezer is a mistake and won't buy another one like that. If you need more ice than you can make with ice trays, get a standalone ice maker.
I've found that you usually have to go to high-end brands and/or "commercial grade" to get quality anything in the appliance space. A decent heuristic is also where it's made. For high-end brands some have certain models made in places like the USA and Germany and others made in China. The ones not made in China are usually the good models that will last.
Things like Wifi and especially anything with a 'cloud' component are massive anti-features that should be avoided. Not only are these things privacy problems or ways for them to push ads at you, but they're also often indicative of cheap gimmick-encrusted crap.
And despite being a leading IoT innovator for decades, myself (I designed and manufactured the world's first embedded web-enabled wireless and PoE sensors), there is almost nothing useful in having WiFi/Net-connected appliances, especially if they require an app or cloud services of any kind. (Seriously, what kind of state do you really care about even for monitoring, much less control, in your appliances? Unless you're a wack job, pretty much zero...)
The problem isn't China intrinsically but the fact that a lot of companies in the US and EU outsource to China purely to save money. That's usually done on lower-end models or when pivoting from a quality product to a low-quality product sold on marketing.
Apple makes quality stuff in China because they're trying to make quality stuff. They work closely with their Chinese manufacturers. Of course they're also trying to move some things away from China but that's for geopolitical diversification reasons not quality reasons.
Who are the high-end ones that are really that much more reliable??
For example, commercial equipment is often bullet-proof and long-lived, but it can be louder than you'd want in a home kitchen. Commercial dish washers have no noise insulation, get hot, but can wash dishes so fast they can crack them from the temperature changes.
Commercial ovens have no or minimal heat insulation, so when you fire them up you can really warm up a room fast, and they have to be installed away from flammable materials.
And people need to be honest about it, too - whenever you buy an appliance new, write the purchase date in indelible ink or spray paint on the back of the unit, because I've had appliances I was sure "lasted barely more than the warranty" and then I realized I'd purchased it 15 years ago.
This seems counter intuitive to me. Why would I not want more insulation in an oven that's going to be used a lot more? Seems like the cost of the insulation would be amortized more quickly than in a home kitchen, since a commercial oven is presumably being used a lot more?
Houses aren't built for that.
See https://deqonline.com/blog/post/7-reasons-not-to-use-a-comme... for some example issues that you might not be aware of if you blindly ran in with "commercial better".
If you fully understand them (you worked as a line cook for awhile, etc) and compensate for them, it might be a fine option.
If you need 500,000 BTU.
Insulation is only effective with intermittent use.
Insulation slows heat flow and thus means the hot side rises to closer to the temperature of the heat source and thus there is less energy transfer.
Water heaters are not running 24/7.
The entire point of water heater insulation is that you run them to heat up the water in the tank, then the water sits there at temperature, and when needed it has a fast response time (and also actually provides hot water as the heating loops generally don't have the heating capacity to bring the water up from ambient or sometimes just above freezing to sanitary at the flow rates users ask for).
Hey, if your taps are emitting a stream of hot water 24/7 then you should call a plumber. Expect your water bill to drop massively.
Primarily different regulations. Everyone interacting with a commercial oven is a trained professional getting paid to be there and the space is designed to a certified standard. This means you can focus more on pure performance and less on liability stuff.
And commercial equipment, because it needs to last long, is optimized for maintenance. I imagine insulation makes it harder to access and clean (or fix) the internals of an oven. Not to mention how often you’d have to change the insulation to keep your kitchen up to health standards.
A commercial oven runs all day when it is being used, so it will eventually get hot no matter how much insulation you have unless it's somehow cooled or can send waste heat elsewhere.
One can also actively cool the exterior surface by forcing air through a gap in a double wall oven. Many residential ovens do this.
As far as I know, the actual material difference with residential ovens is that most of them are mean to be installed in cabinets, which severely restricts the amount of heat that can be safely dissipated through the walls.
A well insulated oven cools much more slowly with the door closed, so a control algorithm can’t recover as quickly if it overshoots the set temperature.
Admittedly, the ducted exhaust fan is not nearly as useful in a commercial setting where the oven is under a hood.
Whereas home dishwashers are designed to run all night slowly recirculating water and removing caked-on grime (with more or less success).
There are at least 7 different simple top freezers at Costco, and at least 3 French door freezers without even water dispensers.
Not sure what else people want, other than to complain.
And without any of those features, it has the most internal space too. All that add-on crap takes up space that could be used for food.
Decompose is probably not the right word, but it loses whatever property makes plastic usually last a long time.
I have 2 of these in my home and after 6 years, there is zero noise, zero complaints. Just have to vacuum behind it every now and then to make sure air flow is happening.
They still make models that aren't like that[1]. In fact last time I bought a fridge I specifically looked for a model without those features because they're known points of failure and I don't use them.
[1] https://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-25-cu-ft-33-3-door-fren...
Now, my Bosch dishwasher has been solid. No issues.
Seconded, and also confirmed by an appliance repair tech when I asked him about his opinion of the reliability of our various kitchen appliances.
I've found using the recommended rinse agent and putting them away within an hour of the wash cycle finishing helps tremendously. Since the thing runs at only 41dB, I don't mind running it any time of day.
EDIT: typos
The Panasonic microwave/combo ovens, though, last about 3 years before expiring.
But he doesn't care because he thinks they are really quiet (so what) and he often gets them cheap and "it's a cheap part and an easy fix" (for you it is)
We can make appliances that last for 20 years or more, sure, but then when 20 years pass you have an appliance that is 20 years old and doesn't have any of that new stuff that came out in the last 20 years.
Sure it could be slightly more efficient but even 20 years old ones are pretty efficient, and I'd rather just slap an extra solar panel or two on the roof rather than replace whole fridge and junk the old one.
It looks like all of the major manufacturers have a "sealed system" warranty for five years:
A refrigerator’s sealed system typically refers to the compressor, evaporator, condenser, dryer, and connection tubing. Most companies cover both parts and labor for this system for five years. Miele and KitchenAid extend this sealed system warranty for an extra five years. Note that years six through 10 cover parts only.
The entire premise of TFA is essentially that you're wrong.
That amusing typo sounds absolutely disgusting.
boxes with different humidity levels.
shelves: slideout, adjustable height, rotating
humidity control/air circulation
lighting
door panel-only opening (saves energy)
utility of door-back shelf space
It's a lot more than "a box full of cold stuff".
There isn’t really that much of this. Let’s consider an oven:
Good temperature control: accurate, precise and reliable temperature sensors (e.g. thermocouples) have been around for a long time, as have switching devices that are plenty high speed to make an excellent oven. PID control would be easy with 1980 technology or current technology. Ovens with good temperature control are nonetheless rare.
Forced convection (aka a fan): no new technology required. And they’ve been around for years.
Direct outdoor exhaust: this was available in the 80s and 90s. Not sure where it went.
Good insulation: nothing fancy here. Mineral wool and fiberglass have been around for a long time. Even silicone rubber gaskets that tolerate oven temperature are not particularly new.
Touch screens: most of them are still worse than the old analogue controls.
Steam with good controls: this is pretty new and very rare.
I suspect most of what’s going on is that fancy appliance makers try to keep BOM cost very low and that helps and whistles sell appliances. (Compare a $1500 induction cooktop to a $7k fancy brand gas cooktop. I suspect the BOM cost on the induction unit is rather higher. The gas unit has some cheap brass or bronze castings (I think I read somewhere that those burners cost under $20), a potentially shiny piece of stainless steel sheet, and really cheap controls. The obvious safety mechanism to turn off the gas if the burner isn’t lit? Nonexistent. The only thing $7k buys you is a nice brand name and maybe slightly more solid construction than a much cheaper unit.)
> The obvious safety mechanism to turn off the gas if the burner isn’t lit? Nonexistent.
... Wait, surely these are mandatory ~everywhere by now?
EDIT: Huh. Apparently they are _not_ required in the US (except maybe in apartment buildings) and are not common there. Weird; they're not very expensive.
Maybe it's an American Rugged Individualism thing. While I find the flame failure devices in my gas stove extremely irritating (they're particularly conservative, and won't reliably acknowledge that there's a flame until about 5 seconds after it's lit) I recognise that they are for my own good; this is probably very European thinking, though :)
I’ve seen them on gas fired ovens with pilot lights. (Don’t get a gas fired oven with a pilot light. As far as I can tell, they have no redeeming features unless you like the broiler hidden under some of them. They make for pretty bad ovens, and they suck for indoor air quality.)
Didn't realise they were still a thing in the US, though it makes _sense_, I suppose; on a 110V system an electric oven is going to be a more expensive wiring job than on a 230V one.
Over a long enough period of time, a sufficiently sensitive raw temperature sensor is probably good enough, but that's not likely to be cheap nor reliable/long-lasting.
Typically you also get: more BTUs, better simmer control, easier repairability (due to construction design).
I'm not arguing it's worth the money (which is why I got my $15k stove from craigslist for $2k :)
better simmer control: even a lot of expensive gas stoves have fairly bad simmer
repairability: I regrettably own a fancy Thermador stove that is hard to repair — extracting the crappy ignition units requires a special tool that has been discontinued.
If you want excellent temperature control, get a Breville Control Freak. It outperforms everything else (generally by far), it’s offensively expensive at $1500, and it’s also cheap at $1500 if you think of it as the best stove that just happens to have only one burner.
You’ll also discover that 1800W (~6100 BTU/hr) is about right for most purposes with pans up to 12-14" at near 100% efficiency. You do not want 15000 BTU/hr delivered to your pan for any purpose other than boiling water or maybe reducing a big stock if you are stirring actively.
Wok afficionados may differ with you here. I get by on 10k BTU/hr.
For an oven and hob, the basics haven't changed, but my previous flat had a $600 oven that was silent, leaked practically no heat, preheated in a couple of minutes and came with nest features like an auto switch off. My new home has a range from about 15 years ago that cost 3x that, takes 20 minutes to preheat, has massive cool spots in the oven, and is noisier than my dishwasher.
For TV's, 20 years ago we were using CRT's to drive 480 vertical lines for the most part. Nowadays, you can get a 1080p HDR led TV for $200 that used 1/3 of the power of the CRT.
I'm sure my 35 y.o. Freon refrigerator is pretty much identically efficient to a modern one. The biggest difference is that mine is still running beautifully halfway through its 4th decade, while all the latest Chinese-sht-tech refrigerators will be unfixably dead in about five years at the outside. People should consider that* environmental and efficiency advantage!
15-20 year old fridges are about 35% less energy efficient than the best modern fridges, not 100x. We just haven't made that much progress in refrigerants, compressors, nor insulation.
It looks like very efficient fridges today use about 400kWh per year. Those are the best (not the average).
In the late 90s, the overall average (not best) figure was ~850 kWh/yr and from the early 2000s (20 years ago), it was ~550kWh/yr.
A 15-20 year old average fridge is about 35% less energy efficient (550/400 - 1) than the best modern fridges.
I apologise that you took orders of magnitude literally. I'll settle for an entire order of magnitude really. I think it's _way_ more than 35%, though.
> It looks like very efficient fridges today use about 400kWh per year. Those are the best (not the average).
Where did you get that number from? Here's [0] a $220 fridge that advertises at 90 kWh. I found another that claims 61 kWh, but it's $1800 so I left it. 20 years ago is a very specific timeframe, if you go back 25 years you're also likely talking about removing a bunch of horriffic CFC's which were widespread at the time. I'm finding it hard to find numbers for that time frame though, the only ones I can find are early 90's claims of 1700+kWh/year.
But yes, I concede, we have not had a 100x improvement in energy efficiency in 20 years. The entire rest of my post stands, and I think we've seen a 10x improvement in efficiency. At today's electricity price in the UK, the savings from a 550 kWh fridge to the one I linked above would pay for the fridge in a little over a year. Said fridge is under guarantee for 2 years in the EU/UK, so it's a _guaranteed_ cost saving over that time period.
[0] https://ao.com/product/rl170d4bwe-hisense-fridge-white-80358...
I then Googled "refrigerator annual energy consumption 2000" and landed on https://blog.arcadia.com/much-electricity-refrigerator-uses/
BTW, your link [0] is to a mini-fridge (without a freezer section), not a full-size fridge. It claims 132 liter capacity, while a full-size fridge tends to be 550 to 700 liters (4 to 5 times the size). If you're going to compare a mini-fridge to a full-size fridge/freezer in order to try to win an internet argument, enjoy your trophy.
[0] - https://ao.com/product/rl170d4bwe-hisense-fridge-white-80358...
You watch network TV ??? In 2023 ???