Not for all things. I presume no-one wants a hiking bag with zips that come undone, nor a wallet that deforms.

I would also rather let someone do that work for me, if they feel so inclined to do it, as I have neither the time nor the money to engage in such activities.

So please, post a list!

While "the best" is certainly different for everyone, it's always interesting to see what works for different people.

The research and details are what makes this pursuit interesting for me. Usual reviews tend not to cover these things (one of the reasons I enjoy the work of John Siracusa).

I would be extremely interested in a list of the things you have found to be best for you, and the reasons you came to that decision, or the process by which you arrived there.

I enjoyed the post. I really liked the idea of living with a single backpack.

But, how exactly do you decide what is the best for you? You say that you "developed a blind trust in the things you used".

Blind trust in what?

If that blind trust is towards the products themselves, then how will you know when something better for your purposes comes out?

If that blind trust is towards the company/person making the product, I'm afraid that is not an interesting or new concept. It is called brand loyalty or "fanboyism" in slang and I think this is actually the opposite of what you would want. Brand loyalty can prevent you from finding the best of everything.

We are not living in the Samurai age, where there is one excellent sword maker and you shouldn't consider swords made by others as long as you can find that guy and afford his swords. We live in a fundamentally different world, where almost all kinds of products (especially consumer electronics) have very short lifecycles.

I'd be more curious to hear your thought process, not to mimic it, but to see the facets that matter to you but would never have occurred/mattered to me. And conversely, to see the things that I value that others don't. I guess I'm mostly curious about other peoples' worldviews, and this seems a manifestation of that.

Although for those thy don't have the same time and drive to find the very best, they can find something that is very good right away.

Of course it's different for everybody. But please do post more, and how you wound up with them, it's fascinating.