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Comment by Dig1t | Hacker News Reader

>washing machines

Among your examples I think this one is interesting.

Speed Queen is regarded as among the best washing machines + dryers and they are made in the US. They are extremely well built, they feel really sturdy to use and also are known for being extremely reliable.

I guess what I'm imagining is the Speed Queen of toasters..

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They’re also known to use a ton of water, be extremely inefficient, and destroy your clothing much faster than a modern washer. Fetishizing “the good old simple times” isn’t going to get us to better products.

Those are two sides of the same coin though. More durable machines (solid, thick components for example) will be heavier and in the example of a washing machine will require more energy to move. Washing machines have also become much cheaper than 40 years ago, making them more of a disposable item.

citation?

I never heard of Speed Queen, or even seen one, but someone recommended them on here a few weeks ago

I'm in Europe so we don't have these, but I got interested in what are speed queen. Turns out they are laundromat machines that are also sold for residential use.

This article does say it is not an efficient machine. they tweaked the normal cycle to pass the DoE efficiency test (but your clothes are not washed), and left alone the inefficient cycles which are not checked by DoE: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/speed-queen-revie...

I’ve only ever seen Speed Queens in laundromats in Eastern Europe.

I will grant them this: the branding is not lying, they are fast as fuck.

I've only used them very occasionally in laundromats when travelling.

They are fast, but the clothes aren't cleaned properly.

I had no trouble with them cleaning some heavily dirty clothing (from doing construction works), I guess mileage may vary somewhat.

I did notice that the dryers (which I think are the same brand) have a hard time properly drying some articles such as thick wool socks within their programmed time.

Using a ton of water is a plus. Saving water is a necessity in overcrowded megalopolises maybe, imposed on all the rest.

Just don't use any plastic parts, over-engineer the whole thing internally, no wifi, just a dial for temp and lever to engage. All these fancy toasters still can't toast bread.

If you do WiFi, do it right. Nobody wants to install a toaster app but many Devs would enjoy a little API for their toasters

I would imagine the percent of people who are looking to buy an expensive toaster is small, the percentage of those customers who know how to code is even smaller, and the percentage of those programmer customers who have time to and are also interested in programming their toaster is vanishingly small.

You might be right but I highly believe that it would increase in popularity once you have more local only devices in this space.

I have plenty smart devices with stupid apps, but I would pay premium for a quality product with a simple API and no third party servers anytime.

Personally I base many buying decisions around 'hackability'

Edit:// actually I think this is a coming market as Google only recently started to support smart devices without third party servers for their home app so before that local only ment no Google home most of the time.

I am honestly struggling to find any use case to an iot toaster. Keen to understand what you have in mind.

Smart timer, finish notifications and statistics. Nothing would make my breakfast better, but I surely cannot be the only one who would pay more for a device like that. Maybe I am..

We bought a set of Speed Queens a couple of years ago and they've worked out pretty well so far. No IoT crap. Not cheap, but not really more than, say, a Bosch or something of that ilk.

For a toaster, what you need to do is recreate the Greatest Toaster of All Time, the Sunbeam T-20. (And then after you do that, recreate the Sunbeam CG-1 waffle iron.)

Or the old-school KitchenAid mixers

https://www.hobartcorp.com/products/food-prep/mixers/n50-5-q...

any small kitchen appliance that says "ask for a quote" is probably gonna be outta my hobby kitchen/cooking budget

Yeah, an N50 is around $4500. A Kitchenaid is like 1/10th of that. The original KA was the domestic version of the Hobart.

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