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Comment by CobaltFire | Hacker News Reader

There are brands built to super high standards, but no-one wants to pay for them or deal with their compromises.

We have been buying Miele appliances, and have nothing but excellent experiences. They aren't cheap, but the general opinion I've seen online is that they are one of the few brands that build quality modern appliances. My experiences would tend to back that up.

Specific to the Miele washer and dryer, we hang dry most things and live in a very dry area, so having a heat pump dryer that doesn't get things crisp and dry is perfectly fine with us. We hardly use the dryer at all actually; clothes last longer if you don't use the dryer and we do spend the money on quality clothes (also hard to find and expensive).

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> There are brands built to super high standards, but no-one wants to pay for them or deal with their compromises

I'm willing to pay. The money is not the only problem though.

1) These brands are hard to find. I've never heard of Miele until I rented an apartment that had one. The owner built the place for himself but then had to put it for rent.

2) Most of the brands that pretend to be high-quality are the same crap but shiny and expensive. You don't know that until you buy them. Makes the point about "hard to find" even worse.

3) Some of the reliable brands sometimes experience the change in strategy (probably caused by change in ownership) and start to produce crap while maintaining the same outlook. The most disturbing betrayal.

As a result out of hundreds of appliances I use I was only able to find quality staff in a handful of categories. The rest is either cheap crap or expensive crap. Maybe I lack some generational knowledge on the topic.

It's exhausting trying to find these brands. You have to do a ton of research, most of which is sifting through ads and the worst google results you've ever seen. If your already in the space you might be so lucky to already know a good reviewer. You also have to update your knowledge constantly, as lots of brands start to decline in quality once they get popular or change ownership.

Miele and Bosch are the only brands I'll rely on for "white goods". As far as I can tell, most other (european) brands are owned by Electrolux, and all built to fail the day after the warranty expires.

My toaster is a Dualit - pricey, but very reliable, and very repairable.

My coffee grinder is a manually-cranked burr grinder made of aluminium. There's nothing to fail (and I don't mind cranking for a minute in the morning).

My flat-screen is a Panasonic that used to belong to my father; it must be 15 years old. It's never failed.

I don't own a food processor; that would be me with a chef's knife, a grater, and a pestle-and-mortar.

The presence of an LCD display on a product is a big warning sign.

That's my metric. A VF display is OK but an LCD, especially on kitchen appliances or white goods, is just about a guarantee of a short life span - never mind a touchscreen.

I forgot to say that we bought a Bosch refrigerator, for exactly that reason.

Speedqueen is that brand, and their stuff isn't even all that expensive. The issue is that its washers destroy your clothes by being rough on them.

Miele for most stuff is unfortunately no longer better than the competition. They only come with 2 year warranties and the you can find lots of complaints on the internet of their appliances failing within a few years.

Additionally, some of Miele's lower-end stuff is made in China, not Germany, and has been reported to be less reliable.

In Europe heat-pump-dryers are the normal way dryers work and the clothes coming out of them are also crisp and dry. Are you sure there is nothing defective with your dryer?

No, there isn’t. Miele even has notes for its US models to make sure buyers understand they work differently. I just won’t run my dryer long enough to get them that crisp and dry; as I said we mostly hang dry. I can run the dryer half as long and they are 80-90% dry, then hang for the finish.

Miele vacuum cleaners are great. Our Dysons and other newfangled bagless crap came and went, but the Miele is still here, and still rocking.

I forgot to say we have a Miele vacuum as well. Great machine.

Yes because for the same "quality" today you're likely to have to pay double the historic equivalent due to corporate profiteering. It's a rigged game and people just lap it up and simp for brands like they aren't parasites. It's pretty disgusting.

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