(I rent, and I have what seems like a pretty modern fridge. The only real innovation I can discern between it and my childhood home's 20+ year old fridge is that it beeps when it's been left open for more than a minute.)
[1]: https://appliance-standards.org/blog/how-your-refrigerator-h...
* Better organization - pull out can drawers or exterior-facing small doors so you don't need to expose the whole contents of the fridge to warm air just to grab a can of soda or the ketchup
* Water and ice dispensers - not brand new tech but I've owned plenty of fridges without them (even bought one such fridge within the last 10 years) and much prefer to have them.
* More temperature zones
* Better internal organization
* Significantly better energy efficiency
* Reduced noise
I don't want to have to replace appliances (or cars, or most anything) every 5 years, so I'm glad there are a range of options, but there do continue to be quality of life improvements.
Couple of really nice ones - vacuum chamber for meats, humidity controlled area for vegetables.
Or just being able to put hot food without worrying it will spoil everything else (probably ok with most modern fridges tbh).
(But practically: I don't think the domestic Japanese refrigerator market is available to me, at least not without going through some very expensive and individualized import process. So maybe I'd like to buy one of these, but they're not immediately available to me on a 5 year cycle anyways :-))
It's possible the food you lose could cost a significant portion of the fridge price.
I have always wondered about that when I see the LG fridges with glass doors (knock to light up). I don't think the R value of even a great glass door can be very good.
When I've found a fridge that solves the problem of keeping my food safe, and does it reasonably well (quietly, efficiently, etc), I never want to solve that problem again. I don't care about any incremental improvements whatsoever. I could die happy without ever buying another appliance of any kind.
This is true for most things that I own. My car, my phone, my computer, my TV, etc.
When it comes to hobbies, sure, I can indulge a little in the hedonic treadmill thing. For the rest of it, don't bother me.
That's not your problem until a government makes it the manufacturer's problem, and of course you're going to be against them doing that because it's an affront to free markets and will increase your costs so you can no longer get a new "disposable" fridge every five years.
Oh, well. Nothing to do, I guess.
What could go wrong?
- No carbon waste
- No hassle/time waste to install new one
- Good tech that I truly want in a fridge comes around every 20 years, not 5.
- Fridge seems to be getting bigger and bigger. No decision fatigue in having to choose a decreasing number and best of limited options every 5 years.
'Stuck' with something good and reliable is good thing for god's sake!! Where the minds got distorted into this get a lot new things fast, just because it is Brand New kind of nonsense?....
There's no reason to expect refrigerators of constant quality to get more expensive in real terms, and NPV calculations traditionally assume a reasonable (and positive) cost of capital, likely exceeding the rate of inflation.
So I would've said 1000 + 920 + 850 + 780, or something like that.
You mean no such reason that you want to find. Same extremely lowered (shit) quality things cost same present value, so increased through time with inflation, items made more complex as this is the case with fridges involving unnecessary 'engineering' and 'development', adding additional costs, old inventions hit wall for improvements after a while, probably we could find some more reasons if we analyse how prices increase for the same kind of product in time, which is the norm for things exist for multiple decades. (you may think about months or few years timespan here of new inventions/developments with maturing manufacturing and the pay off of investments of develping something new, but it is so very far from the situation here).
I also wonder how many people had fridges in 1935 vs now. I don't think it's some cynical plot to make things worse over time but a result of competition. It's similar with flying and how miserable it is. People fly a lot more these days because competition has driven cost down and make it more accessible but quality had to be sacrificed. If you can afford it, business or first class flying is still pretty nice.
Some plastics last forever, others don’t. There’s no way to tell without buying one and seeing if the parts self destruct or not.
With metal it’s simpler, it just lasts.
When I recently went through this for a new oven I found the high end ovens were all gas tops (I was set on switching to Induction - and boy am I thrilled to have made that decision!) and on the metrics they were smaller ovens, had fewer bells and whistles, but had a big brand on the front for impressing guests.
There is a business opportunity here, like Framework (with open specs), but for Induction cooktops, refrigerators, dishwashers, etc.