Yes but refrigerators back then were around $2-3000 in modern currency (for a no frills ice box). You can get a cheap fridge now for like $90 (mini fridge). Much of our modern lifestyle was created by accessibility of home appliances like washing machines, refrigerators, and air conditioners, and that accessibility was driven by companies making things cheaper (but easier to break).
You’re free to buy appliances like the stuff that used to exist. They are found in the commercial realm, and you’ll still be spending about $3000 for a no-frills entry level fridge.
The other interesting question to consider is: how long do consumers want to run the same fridge? How likely is the fridge to be damaged in some other way that causes the extra life of the 50-year fan to be wasted away in a refuse dump or recycling center? There's a balancing act to do, between too short a lifetime, wherein the customer is not ready to replace the fridge yet when it dies, and too long a lifetime, where resources are spent to make something last a long time, and it gets thrown away anyways. The original video didn't estimate a lifetime for that motor, but I would expect about 15 years is a standard lifetime for that motor, and that about fits with people wanting to replace their fridge at about every 15 years. Sure, some will go to 20 years, and others will fail at 10, but putting a 50 year motor in a fridge is a form of waste. (There's also the angle of increasing efficiency, that also pushes towards a more frequent replacement cycle than 50+ years)
Considering that fridges today have built-in 24” touchscreen displays running Android and cavity cameras so you can see inside your fridge when you’re at the supermarket - the useful life of a fridge is probably on the order of 1-2 years before Google obsoletes the firmware and Samsung shuts-down the video feed relay service.
I've messed with these in stores and just been blown away at what a useless feature this is. Ah, yes, an appliance running Android Cupcake what a fabulous idea.
It's clear that some items have hit peak functionality and manufacturers are just bolting on nonsense to keep up the facade of "luxury."
But I'm sorry, running Spotify on my fridge is hokey, gauche and entirely unnecessary.
I wanted to buy a new microwave oven recently. Every single model I could find committed at least two of the following crimes:
- Loud, ear piercing beeps on every opportunity. Why would anyone need to hear a beep every time they press a button? Imagine if an iPad did that.
- Speaking of buttons: over-complicated controls, for something that should be two dials and one button
- Ugly, spaceship like industrial design that has no place in a home
- Inner surfaces with holes and protrusions that would be difficult to clean
- Bright glowing green or blue LEDs that are always on, contributing to indoors light pollution
There were a few expensive models that were less terrible (red lights, softer beeps (still beeps, mind you!), OK controls) but they were all too big to fit in my kitchen.
My conclusion is that these manufacturers have no clue and no culture to figure out what a “luxury” product would look like today. They still think people find LED screens, chromed plastic and digital buttons impressive.
Go on Amazon - or go down to a Business Costco or whatever similar restaurant supply place (that sells to the public) is available in your area - and purchase a commercial microwave; Sharp or Amana are the ones most sold.
My wife and I got sick of our microwave always dying after a few years, plus having a ton of "features" we never used. Too many buttons, too much complexity, and too expensive to be buying year after year. So we went with a commercial 1000 watt microwave:
1. It has only a single knob to set the time limit in 15 second intervals - up to 6 minutes.
2. No turntable to break, clean, or wear out.
3. One cooking level - HIGH.
4. An interior that is super-easy to clean - just wipe it out, all surfaces are smooth and seamless.
It's only real downside is the fact that the light doesn't turn on when you open the oven door (it's only on when it is cooking).
Other than that, it's been a joy to use. It takes a bit of getting used to not having cooking levels, but other than that - it's not an issue. The trick is knowing that in a regular microwave, "cooking levels" are done in a "slow PWM" fashion - a duty cycle of the magnatron - so much turned on for so long, then off for a period. You can simulate that yourself if you have to, but we usually just thaw things in our fridge ahead of time (or put them in our sink or on the counter).
Not having a timer that can go more than 6 minutes also means you have to be paying attention if you are doing something long-term (cooking rice or something); just pull it out, stir it, pop it in for some more time. If you have to rotate something for even cooking, do that manually too.
Less functions, less parts, less junk to wear out, clean, or break. Win, win, win. Unfortunately, it wasn't cheap - but given we were replacing our microwave every 3-5 years, it'll pay for itself in a short amount of time.
These are all things that drive me crazy! Minimizing and simplifying would be easy and save these companies heaps of money. I hope somebody will fix these things soon. Then, they can move on to fixing the clicking mouse.
Regarding the piercing beeps - I popped open the case on mine and put a piece of tape over the piezo buzzer speaker, which brought the volume down to just the right level.
Just being gauche and gaudy isn't enough to qualify; typically there's either enhanced utility or extravagance and an old-ass version of Android running on my fridge is neither.
Same with cars now too. What's the point of a leather dashboard and doors? How could that possibly be better than plastic? Or ambient lighting? Or heated arm rests?
> What's the point of a leather dashboard and doors?
Aesthetics, then passenger comfort. It's certainly a _nicer_ feeling when you rest your hand on quality materials in the passenger cabin.
That said, I drive a Tesla Model X with the all-white interior - Tesla is famously vegan - so it's all pleather - and it made me a pleather convert (it's just unfortunate most pleathers you see are cheap and nasty and wear-down too quickly).
> ambient lighting
That's not a luxury feature - some form of ambient lighting is standard in every car I've been in. It's essential to help you navigate the passenger cabin in the dark without turning on the dome-light which can dazzle or distract the driver, such as seeing where the glovebox is or other controls.
> Or heated arm rests?
Same reason we have heated-seats and heated steering wheels: passenger comfort in cold weather. Also useful for people with poor circulation where being stationary (in a car seat) gets really uncomfortable.
And I don't mean normal interior lighting, I mean the kind that is light piping all over the dash and doors that can be set to any color of the rainbow.
Leather is easier to clean. You'll regret cloth everywhere if you have have dogs that ride in the car, kids, or you enjoy getting dirty. Leather wipes clean.
We just bought a new refrigerator this weekend, replacing the $3500 2011 Bosch that came with the apartment.
The Bosch burned out the compressor’s ECU - a $350 part that with labor would have been an $800 repair.
We comparison shopped all the appliance stores in NYC and ended up with a $2k Samsung side by side (not my favorite brand, but it fit in our tight galley kitchen)
PC Richard had only a single model with a touchscreen on the floor (Samsung French door). Best Buy and Home Depot had maybe one more from LG.
So on one hand, the concern that every refrigerator will have a useless touchscreen seems unfounded.
But... I was reading through the manual and was surprised to find instructions for connecting the appliance to my wifi. (MAC address available two hex digits at a time flashed through the temperature gauges)
Ostensibly this is to provide a channel for electric demand response (they even documented the api). It also connects up with Samsung’s SmartHome ecosystem (why??)
I have no doubt there is a full Android stack hidden what appeared to be a normal “dumb appliance”.
These hidden smart appliances are going to be great attack surfaces. I’m sure soon enough they’ll automate the wifi connection by making a back channel the nearest lightbulb or something.
Of course who’s following CVEs on their mesh connected toaster?
You probably could have found the control board for sale online for half that cost and replaced it yourself. It's no more that a couple plugs, refrigerator repair is very over priced unless they have to tinker with the refrigerant.
Appliances don't magically disappear when they're replaced. When your "built to last five+ decades" fridge hits 15 and you want a newer model, you can sell or give it to someone else, who'll pull another 15 years out of it. There's plenty of people who don't care or can't afford to care about their appliances being in mint condition. As long as the fridge still cools, they'll take it. And after something finally dies, that fridge could still be taken apart and used to repair other models.
As for the increasing efficiency angle, I'm not buying it. I have a strong feeling that all efficiency gains are eaten by manufacturing. E.g. imagine you replace a fridge every 5 years, and each one is 2x as efficient as the previous one. I can't imagine how this uses less energy than running the first (least efficient) fridge for 15 years, once you account for the energy costs of designing, making and shipping the two newer fridges.
> As for the increasing efficiency angle, I'm not buying it.
It used to be true(r). As you keep halving electricity consumption with each generation of products, eventually it isn't worth replacing just to save electricity, even if the new appliance is cheaper than the previous generation.
The problem with fridges is... they're almost all used 24/7.
Re-using old inefficient devices is fine/encourage-worthy in low-duty cycle applications, but there's just a lot less usage variability with fridges.
Fridges have a need to be cool 24/7, but not run 24/7. It's quite remarkable how sparsely insulated they are compared to 1980s kit. It's very clear that insulation depth has undergone the same transition to "as little as we can get away with" as shown with the motor in the video.
Efficiency gains have come from better compressors, and to a lesser extent increasing use of built in drawers and compartments, to stop all the cold pouring out the moment you open the door. Were they still insulated well, particularly as we have better materials to choose from, running costs could be reduced far more...
The real aim of modern appliance production seems to be to sell you the extended warranty/service contract.
The better fridges use technology like vacuum insulation panels to make the walls thinner whilst still providing the same level of insulation. This gives more interior space for a given appliance size whilst still keeping it efficient. I think there's diminishing returns from adding more insulation, partly because heat loss from things like the door seal and opening the fridge starts to become more important than loss through the walls themselves.
All I can say is the time that a fridge or freezer takes to warm in the event of fault or power outage has decreased markedly. Even trying to stick to best manufacturers and top end of ranges. There may well be more space, but that seems at the expense of at least some of the insulation ability.
Yeah but you trade a few watts for a pile of electronics with custom Asics, and "no user serviceable parts inside". And then combine that with a board 1/2 the cost of a new device.
Software and smarts SUCK on things that should be boring and reliable.
Worse yet, this is also directly related to the climate catastrophe issue. What would our world look like if we maximized for durability and repair?
I'll give you all a hint: we maximized for cost. And vehicle, appliance, junkyards, and trash dumps show it.
It's high time we make these companies with "manufactured limited reliability" to pay directly.
These companies do predictive reliability engineering that targets 5-7 years. That aligns with how long people own homes and their liability for repairs.
There’s no waste associated with putting an electric motor in a durable good that would potentially last 25-50 years. If that were the engineering goal, they would be able to achieve it while adding a very marginal cost to the bom.
The goal is to produce consistent, known failure rates that maximize revenue for new sales and high margin service plans. The appliance maker does not pay for disposal, recycling or any other indirect cost that isn’t imposed by regulatory requirements.
> There’s no waste associated with putting an electric motor in a durable good that would potentially last 25-50 years. If that were the engineering goal, they would be able to achieve it while adding a very marginal cost to the bom.
Now, when you don’t stop at just the condenser motor, and apply that line of reasoning to every part on the BOM, your appliance now costs double the competition.
You can buy these appliances today, they’re designed for commercial use.
A fridge is overhead to most people. It's not worth more than the bare minimum in terms of resource allocation (money, time, attention). It's like a sink or toilet or some other home fixture. As long as it works most people will keep using it unless the cost of replacement is so low that you can do it on little more than a whim. The only time people replace them is when they break or if you're high class you replace it when you renovate the room because keeping it would "look dated" or some such.
I looked into commercial ranges, not because I actually intend to purchase one, but because I'd gotten spoiled cooking on one and got curious if it was even feasible to get one. For those of you who haven't cooked on one, one huge perk is that you can get a low simmer with the heat spread fully across the bottom of the pan, not just in the center.
It turns out, however, that the standard depth for a commercial cooktop is quite a bit larger than the standard depth for a domestic one. Having worked (briefly, a long time ago) at a chain bakery, I vaguely recall the fridge being a very different size than a domestic one.
Sure, you're free to get commercial gear, but you aren't just paying more for the appliances: you're going to be paying to renovate your kitchen to fit them.
We have some industrial washing machines and dryers and they each break down at least once a year. But so far it has always been easily fixable. Can't say the same thing about modern home appliances.
Commercial ranges get hot. Fast. In a big surface area. My father in law was a higher up at a major food company that sounds like a major network equipment manufacturer. He put a commercial kitchen in our barn. It has roughly double the width and 30% deeper than a consumer cooktop. It has 6 eyes and will bring 3 gallons of water to a boil in less than 10 minutes. Preparing a meal in it cooks in a matter of minutes. We use16-20” skillets on it and there is no issue with hot spots. I don’t have the numbers but I wouldn’t doubt if it had triple the btus of even the best home model. The oven is gas and convection and cooks about 30% faster than a standard electric oven. The whole experience is just faster and larger scale. If you have the room and a father in law to pay for it I highly recommend buying one!
Looked up the model we have it it is a 30,000 BTU cooktop. Looks like the high end “home” cook tops will top out at 18000 btu. I bet the average home cook top is 10-15,000 btu. So I was a bit off, but it is definitely a much hotter stove. It is a very effective heater for the house as well so keep that in mind if you want to go “pro”.
I'll recycle a comment I made in another thread a year ago:
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 2017, I have to work one day for a freezer (after taxes.)
That’s what you assume, but entry commercial appliances are garbage just as much as consumer devices.
Your best bet is to look for used stuff older than circa-2005. That’s when the efficiency standards increased and manufacturers started undersizing motors in earnest and using all electronic controls that fail. This is especially relevant for refrigerators and washing machines.
Our current washing machine is a speed queen laundromat model (sans cash box) that was manufactured in 1988 and that I pulled out of the garbage in 2006 for $0, and put a new clutch in for about $50. There is literally not a better machine made on the market, and the efficiency claims made by modern devices are both questionably accurate and overtaken by the expected lifespan of 5-7 years.
I completely agree, and a major growth segment of electronics and appliances has been “pro-sumer” style devices. These are basically the same as their regular consumer devices but either more commercial features and management, or easier support and repair, or is just marketing glitz. It’s very easy to get fooled in this segment and think you are getting quality when you actually aren’t.
+1 for Speed Queen. I hear the newer ones aren’t the same but still way better than the same ol’ white labelled electrolux appliances that are rebadged to every brand on the market.
Laundry mat in college used speed queens. They destroyed a lot of my clothes, so no thanks.
My mid range top loading HE washing machine doesn't try to beat everything I own to death.
Not sure what the cost breakdown is there, but I like buying 100 shirts that last 5-8 years. A washing machine that ate them up in half that time would have a rather significant financial impact.
Weighing that against the cost of the washing machine itself? Eh, I'd have to think about it some more.
There is Miele. They design their machines for 20 years of use. The cheapest models are as durable as the most expensive models and you usually don't need the extra features. They are still (more or less, depending on appliance class) very expensive.
When I was a kid, my friend's mom had an old all-metal Kirby vacuum cleaner - thing sounded like a jet engine running. One day we decided to see if it could pick up a roll of quarters (his mom wasn't home). We ran it over - it shuddered, the lights in the house dimmed and flickered briefly, but it kept going, making a glorious racket. Eventually every single quarter was picked up and in the bag, and it ran normal thereafter - no damage at all. We opened the bag, fished all the quarters out, then went down to the arcade to play some rounds of Gauntlet and Smash TV.
Yeah, our house came with a Viking commercial cabinet depth refrigerator, and it has been warming up on us semi-regularly for no apparent reason and, after a bit of research, I discovered that this isn’t all that that uncommon for these units.
It takes fractions of a penny to make something with electronics last several years longer than just the minimum 2-5 years. Yet the device manufacturer chooses the short-lived version.
Consumers should demand devices that have a long life and can be easily repaired ideally by yourself. As long as there are rapid technological advances, consumers do not care about the lack of longevity and the resulting waste.
Our parents had long-lasting household appliances, radios and TVs that could be repaired. It was considered standard to receive a circuit diagram with your device.
>You’re free to buy appliances like the stuff that used to exist. They are found in the commercial realm, and you’ll still be spending about $3000 for a no-frills entry level fridge.
You can certainly pay that. And they are better than residential. But they are not like old residential.
Often these "made to fail" products actually cost more to engineer than products that last longer. It's just the company makes more money by selling you two of something than one of something.
Something to also be aware of is that some commercial "appliances" should never be installed in a "residential" (or anything close to it) setting.
I once had an employer who had this extreme Icee addiction. Our office was near a 7-11, and he'd be over there getting an Icee all the time. Well - one day he was one Craigslist, and found an Icee machine someone was selling for a few hundred dollars.
Since I was the only one with a pickup truck, he enlisted me and all the other software developers to go and pick up this machine - he was going to install it in the office. Yeah - he made terrible decisions like that - apparently paying us to do manual labor at software development rates was a-ok.
So we go and get this machine - heaviest darn thing I've ever seen, short of the cast iron fire place insert my parents had. We get it wrestled into my pickup, and drive it back to the office. We carefully get it up to the office.
Then began the long process of making it functional. He dragged me all over the place, I'm not sure why I was the picked guy. But we went to ace hardware, various welding supply places (needed CO2), and several other places - to get all the special hoses and other parts to fix the darn thing. Some parts we could only get from Icee itself - fortunately there was a local distributor - and I don't know how he swung it, but he managed to not only get parts, but also to get Icee flavors (we toyed with the idea of using boxes from Costco, but they had a different connector or something for the hose IIRC).
We got the thing all together, then began the process of cleaning it - because it hadn't been run in a long time, and there was gunk and other junk inside the parts, etc. It's crazy how complicated Icee machines are - heck, you wouldn't believe the manual for programming them (it used some kind of small 8-bit microcontroller system from the 1980s - probably 8051 or something like that - maybe even a Z80 - but anyhow, it could be programmed to make "the perfect Icee" - of course, in order to really do that, you needed a special scope to allow you to measure ice crystal sizes - I am not joking - the manual was easily 500 pages long).
So - we got it clean. Now mind you, again, my boss is paying me as a software developer to do all of this with him, instead of - you know - working on client's software. I don't know what was going thru his head. "Must have Icee" or something crazy like that.
So - we get it all done. It's clean, it's right. We plug it in, pressurize the system, follow the steps and turn it on. And it runs...
A few hours later, we pull the first Icee. A little runny. Pull a second an hour later. Better. Pull a third 30 minutes later. Pretty much perfect. So there we have it - an Icee machine in our office. It probably cost him $1000 not counting my paycheck - but "free Icees"?
Guess what - an office of a few people can't drink that many Icees - not even with a boss who has an addiction. We tried, we couldn't do it. We burned out quick.
We also found out that a commercial machine like an Icee machine, if it isn't kept running and used constantly (like you'd see in a convenience store or such) - that it will break down often. And this machine did. Each time costing a lot of money and time to source parts and fix it. One time we had to make a custom tool to pull the impellers that stir the mixture in the freeze chamber (the actual tool was god-aweful expensive), in order to change some seals. It was crazy.
Then one day, after Christmas break, but before New Years - one of my coworkers and I had to go into work (we didn't take the days off). I get there early in the morning. Our office was on the third floor. I walk down a hallway to the elevators as normal and see that the ceiling is leaking. I think nothing of it, but plan to call maintenance to let them know. I take the elevator up to the office.
I step out of the elevator. Squish. WTF? Look down the hall - water running under the door from our office. SMH.
Long story short, my coworker and I got things cleaned up in a jiffy using a shop vac and a rented rug doctor. We called maintenance and let them know, but we played stupid on the water connection and the machine (after they left, I checked the machine, and what had failed was a solenoid valve for the water supply). My boss wasn't pleased when I told him about the problem, but we got it cleaned up (he was at Disneyland over the break) over the day. Maintenance also helped with the cleanup (fans and more shop vacs). I'm not sure what/how maintenance or management said/did to my boss, but the machine was gone in a week.
Converting the cost into "modern currency" is missing the larger problem though. As companies are making things cheaper to produce, the overt government policy is to debase the currency so that nominal prices go up instead. Wages nominally rise too, but not nearly as much. So we get left with cheaply made appliances that actually aren't cheap, while the savings get funneled upwards.
> you’ll still be spending about $3000 for a no-frills entry level fridge.
And if you purchase it for use in a non-commercial environment, that'll usually void the warranty. That said, I'd still take it over the standard consumer models.
My wife and I wanted to do that ourselves, but without a major kitchen renovation (our house was built in 1973), nothing commercial would fit. So the last time we replaced our fridge (earlier this year) we just got another side-by-side. But you know what?
New side-by-sides have (mostly) become larger! And they don't fit into the spaces meant for the refrigerator in 1970s homes! So we couldn't even purchase our "new" fridge "new".
Instead, we went to the place where we purchased our first fridge, a local used appliance refurbisher/dealer (who's been in business since the 1970s). We got that fridge when we got our house in 2002; there was actually nothing wrong with the cooling/freezing functions - just that the icemaker and on-door water dispenser no longer worked. So this used appliance lasted us a good 17 years. We ended up getting a similar style fridge and so far it's been great.
But anything else, we try to buy commercial, because it's so much better quality (but you have to pay for it). We have a commercial microwave oven (we were tired of having to buy a new oven every time the old one died after a few years of normal usage) - it only has a single knob with a max of 6 minutes of setting and high-cooking only, but that's never been a problem - and the interior is super easy to wipe out, and not having a rotating turntable has never been a problem (if you need to even the cooking out, just stop it and rotate the plate yourself like old-times). It'll probably last forever.
A couple of years ago I bought my wife a Robot Coupe food processor. Ugliest appliance I've ever seen - it's basically a box with a 1.5 HP motor in it, with 3 switches (on, off, and pulse). The blade is like razor sharp and heavy steel. Shakes the whole counter when running. Chops and blends anything. Her old Kitchen Aid thing just died after a few years.
We also have an older model (early 90s) 4.5 qt Kitchen Aid stand mixer - not their largest model, but the next size down. It's a beast, and has never let us down. I'm not sure if their currently models are any good; I think I would likely go with their commercial offerings if I had to (Hobart).
So yeah - commercial is where it's at, if you have the space (for some things) and don't mind the utilitarian look of most of the appliances (we don't care - it needs to work, first and foremost) - oh, and the cost (none of the appliances I mentioned were inexpensive - but that's worth the peace of mind). I also like that they are all super-duper simple; if you know how to cook, you don't need all those fancy controls and settings, and fortunately for me, my wife does know how to cook (she used to work at a place that didn't have an oven, but the place next door was owned by the same owner and had a pizza oven - she learned how to bake cookies properly - and fast - in a 700+ degree oven).
The noise that my brand spanking new high efficiency Samsung fridge makes is completely unbearable. It’s not the fan, but the compressor itself. I’ve tried coating the entire compressor compartment with dense material, like you would find in a nice car audio installation, to no avail. The fridge is in an alcove on top of a dense rubber mat, designed to absorb sound. There are foam acoustic pads on the wall behind the fridge. Doesn’t matter what I do, the damn thing is obnoxious.
Worst part is... it’s well within “spec”. I had lots of ear problems as a kid culminating w/ surgery and ironically my hearing is hyper sensitive, as opposed to being worse off. My wife thinks I’m nuts to be so annoyed by the sound (she hears it, though) and technicians who come out say the same.
Saying something is "within spec" is something that Samsung seems to do to avoid dealing with defective products.
I bought a $3,000 65" 4K HDR TV 4 years ago. When it was delivered, it had 4 "bright" corners that I later found out were likely caused by the panel being pinched by improper shipping or shipping materials. I told Samsung that this defect was unacceptable and they needed to replace or repair the TV under warranty. They told me that it was "within spec". For their top-end $3000 tv. Yeah, right.
Luckily, I purchased the TV from a local retailer, who exchanged it for me (with one we opened and tested at the store). Sadly, that retailer has since been driven out of business by Amazon.
Yep, Samsung (at least their TVs) have terrible quality control and they blame everything as within spec.
Similar issue to you, went through 4 TVs then got a refund. A friend had the same TV and those bright corners developed after a couple of years. Luckily Australia has great consumer laws and he got a refund and got a Sony TV.
A good way of thinking about the problem is that you're essentially trying to create an "impedance mismatch" to prevent transmitting pressure waves in much the same way that an impedance mismatch works electronically and limits transmission power.
I recently moved into a new place with a Samsung fridge that had an unbearably loud compressor. I had a repairman over to see if anything could be done to salvage it, but he said it would take replacing the entire compressor. Replacing the compressor is the same cost as an entirely new refrigerator.
But if I have the same risk of a super loud compressor on a replacement, I definitely don't want the repair. Ideally I'd be able to find a place that needs a fridge but is noise tolerant. That I can donate an otherwise working product to, so it just doesn't go to waste.
But until then, I can't in good conscience just toss this thing, so my family has gotten used to it, and it's only guests that suffer.
The thing that sucks is I can hear what is making the noise in the compressor, and as far as I know it’s something loose, not normal operating sounds. The compressor housing is a welded ball of metal, there is no way to open or maintain it. I was so frustrated when I realized the sound was the compressor. I was praying the compressor wasn’t mounted properly, or was mounted without isolation pads, etc... but nope I got down there and put my ear on it (damn near burned myself) and waddaya know it’s coming from inside the welded ball.
For future reference, there are automotive stethoscopes avaliable with probes designed to reach into deep/inacessable places. Very handy tool to have, check your local auto parts store for mechanic's stethoscope.
Ironically, replacing the compressor with an older quieter model could likely be done, but would probably be illegal under some EPA law...
The newer ultra-high-speed compressors are supposed to be more efficient, but looking up some historical data on refrigerator energy consumption, I'm not so sure if that's true in general.
Is it possible to even find out the rated noise level before purchase? I feel like every 'fridge and air conditioner should print this up front with the capacity and voltage. Noise level is the main thing I look for in an appliance with a compressor.
The noise level is less of a concern for me (the volume at least) it’s more about the frequency or sound itself. You ever hear those sounds that just bother your ear, and they sometimes are hard to locate? It’s like they become omnidirectional. Maybe this is at the edge of the human ear’s spectrum or something... kinda how a UV light bothers your eyes and can be disorienting at times.
For instance I have a Dell 2U server in my home office. It’s pretty quiet all things considered, but I wanted to lower the fan speeds manually (possible with ipmi tool) to make it quieter at the expense of maybe a warmer system. You’d think the lowest possible RPM would be best... but actually increasing it slightly from the baseline was the most pleasing sound, despite it being a tiny bit louder volume wise than the lowest RPM setting. At the absolute lowest speed the fans created this cacophony as they went in and out of sync, making a vibration sound. A little bit higher, that individual sound dissipated and I was left with soft white noise that was more enjoyable.
For heat pumps the noise rating is often published, and I would hope air conditioners are similar.
Purchase of consumer products is so difficult, especially with the huge variety of model numbers. Though I'm fairly unsatisfied with the latest iteration of Apple laptops, I do appreciated the very limited number of models, which at least allows fuller evaluation.
Umm, price aggregator sites around here show noise level in dB for a bunch of things (AC, fridges, washing machines, etc.). And I haven't been to appliance stores in the last ~10 years, but the detail sheet probably has the same information as the online version.
Have you considered coupling a chunk of dense material to the compressor?
Something like a block of scrap iron hanging off the side of the compressor housing affixed with a tightly fitted robust hose clamp.
I've seen numerous differential housings on automobiles over the years with such sinks hanging off their mounts to eliminate some harmonics or other harshness that would otherwise enter the cabin.
I've gone through a lot of fridges in the past few years with only one concern: noise. Cost and efficiency don't matter.
Most of the ones I tried suck - they might not be loud, but they were very irritating and frequently running. At least old fridges ran less often and had a more plesant engine-like noise.
The exception is ammonia absorption which doesn't require a compressor or fan. They are mostly used in RVs and hotel rooms, but can be used at home too.
I have a totally unsubstantiated theory that a big chunk of the stress of modern life comes from this sort of thing.
People own more appliances and gadgets than ever, but for each one you're expected to worry about planned obsolescence, often high maintenance, and treat them as fragile. A world where everything is always threatening to fall apart around us. Compare with life 100 years ago. It wasn't like this.
The maintenance instructions alone are often ridiculous - you'd probably be spending 100% of your free time on maintenance alone if you followed what every manual actually recommends for everything in your home. And it's impossible to know what's actually important and what's just covering their ass legally. Like, my garage door manual says to wipe it down every two weeks - what? No-one's doing that. But the idea that you should be doing all this stuff still contributes to stress, even if you try to ignore and it just get on with life until your stuff finally breaks or explodes.
Or things require more work due to fragility, like non-stick pans you can't scrub clean. Or things are just cheaper or fashionable but they don't work as well, like touch buttons instead of knobs on cooktops. Or things just get broken because they're made of cheap plastic.
Warranties are a joke. Two years on a fridge? It should be 15. 10 years on aluminum window frames for your house? It should be 50. And the waste from all these obsoleted appliances is ridiculous on its own. There is a case for not overengineering things that users will want to throw away and replace anyway, but larger appliances rarely advance so far that you can't at least sell your old working one to someone (the most recent true obsolescence I can think of is CRT TVs).
I'd vote for a law that says all major appliances must have a 10+ year warranty, with minimal maintenance performed. And maintenance recommendations should be displayed alongside the product.
The latest trend I've observed is straight up not honoring the warranty.
In the span of 2 years, I had a $300 fitbit, a $700 acer monitor, and a $300 TCL TV fail, all within their warranty period. All three companies flaked, all with a dubious excuse, correctly gambling that I wouldn't care enough to take matters to small claims.
Yep, that's exactly what I've done: reduce my exposure. This is an iterated game, and if I buy into a luxury product tier and find garbage products and garbage service, I just retreat from the luxury tier. Fool me once.
I’ve run into this too. Earlier this summer I dropped $500 on a new LG air conditioner on Amazon. Out of the box it was covered in a layer of oil, probably from the compressor. Needless to say, it didn’t work. Despite that, Amazon refused to accept it as a return and LG is yet to agree to refund me the purchase price. Amazing how little these companies are willing to stand behind their own products.
Amazon is usually pretty good, but I did run into an exception recently. I bought some "green paint stripper" that didn't work at all and the return was denied because hazmat. It wasn't shipped hazmat in the first place but try arguing that to the machine :) I bet there are other exceptions like it. Maybe there are size restrictions or heavy equipment restrictions?
The "green paint stripper" is a fun tangent in and of itself. Based on the texture (textured cream), coloration (granite), scent (lavender), lack of solvent smells, lack of flammability, and neutral pH, I suspect it was actually some kind of cosmetic that failed skin compatibility tests, or something, and an enterprising fraudster figured out they could get away with selling it as "green paint stripper." No need to ship it hazmat, because it isn't, but it's plausible to tell Amazon it's hazmat, so no returns. Clever.
Now my paint-stripping policy is that if I can't find a MSDS listing dichloromethane, dimethylcarbonate, or acetone, I don't bother.
“Hazmat” was the same excuse they gave me. Ridiculous considering that they shipped it to me in a normal UPS box and never warned me during checkout that it was un-returnable.
Do you have a Kohl's retail outlet near you? From what my wife tells me, they do returns for Amazon purchases now. Just take it down to them and go to customer service and drop it off.
Again, I don't know what they do at that point - they might scan it, claim hazmat and refuse to take it.
Do a chargeback on your credit card. Let them figure it out. When they realize they aren’t going to get paid, things start to happen.
(That said, I’ve never come close to being dissatisfied with Amazon’s A2Z customer service. They’ve always done what I thought was reasonable or even more in a few cases.)
I’ve been warming up to the idea of municipalities invoicing manufacturers for disposal fees.
Eg. Most garbage dumps sort appliances into a separate area to recycle the metal. So there should be a guy there that takes note of the manufacturer and sends them a dumping invoice every quarter.
So manufacturers that produce junk that ends up in the dump have to lay for the externalities that today they don’t have too.
A few years ago my children's hamster escaped. We couldn't find him for days. I figured he had made it outside somehow cause we didn't see him or hear him or see any droppings.
After about 4 days though, there was an off smell in the kitchen. We tore everything apart, emptied every cabinet, pulled the stove out from the wall, moved the refrigerator, etc. and still could not find him (or any evidence of him.) We scrub everything and out it all back.
But the next day, smell is still there. Then it occurs to me that the refrigerator back panel has holes to vent the fan. I shine a flashlight and see some fur. Bingo.
I take the back off the fridge, but I still can't reach him. At this point its not clear to me what's killed him. I get some tongs to grab him but I see he's stuck. I wiggle his body free and pull him out, and immediately the fan starts arts spinning full speed and I nearly retch.
The point of the story is 1) R.I.P. Jordan the hamster, and 2) The condenser fan was basically held in place for 4 days without burning out - very impressive as far as I'm concerned. (This was a very old refrigerator BTW)
The condenser fan was basically held in place for 4 days without burning out
As the video mentions, this is a deliberate design decision for safety and robustness --- the motor is designed to survive being stalled indefinitely without damage. It's known as "impedance protected", because the impedance of the winding is such that it will never draw enough power to burn itself out. The downside is low starting torque, which is why they're only used for things like fans.
(I was referring to the older shaded-pole motor; the newer one might blow the fuse instead, which is still OK from the safety standpoint but definitely not robustness.)
I have a whirlpool top loader laundry machine, just under 20yrs old, couple of months ago it failed, and the part is a plastic sacrificial part and it's obviously designed so it'd sacrifice itself to save the more expensive motor. I loved it, $5 part later (or $75 in New Zealand because New Zealand) it is back up and running again. I loved all the old American white-ware, they were built with respect to consumer nowadays not so much.
This. I bet you're talking about the agitator pawls been there. Or the rollers in a clothes dryer. Or an impellor blade in a dishwasher. Or the element in a heater. Done this a bunch of times.
So many of these machines can be fixed with a few dollars and an hour of your time if you're not afraid to read up a little, watch a youtube, then tear it apart and look up the part number on a website. A pro visit would be $150 trip charge (or two), another $150 labor, and a big markup on that part. Or they'll just tell you to replace the whole thing.
This is one thing that can actually be worth your time, so give it a try to save it.
Twenty years ago I was entering 5th grade (damn, time flies). In my mind manufacturing quality hasn't changed significantly since then. Has it? I though that's when the offshoring of all manufacturing was already in full swing?
Indeed I have the exact same experiences with a Kenmore washer from 2005, including the exact same cheap plastic replacement part, along with a few other cheap switches breaking more than once.
I'm not convinced things are that different. Hell, you can buy Samsung mainboard or powerboard components on Ebay for $300 and $70 respectively and bring a broken TV back to life with nothing more than undoing a few plugs and sockets and maybe some soldering skills if a capacitor has popped.
Is this really different from not being able to replace or repair the electron gun in the picture tube of a 1950s TV?
I suspect being in New Zealand, this was older stock... I'll try and find manufacturing dates but I vividly remember at the time we had 2 choices, a more sensible sized one by Whirlpool that was already made in Korea, or the bigger one but still made in USA; needless to say we opted for the USA model. We actually had whirlpool fridge and washing machine in the late 70s and early 80s and was really impressed with them, hence why when we migrated to NZ we still seek out this brand. I still have a double door whirlpool fridge that's made in USA, just over 15yrs now too; though I can see it's going to leak some refrigerant soon with a copper rust spot on the line to an Embraco motor...sigh
FYI - our dishwasher died and we called a local appliance repairman, unaffiliated with any manufacturer. He told us it couldn't be fixed and suggested we buy a Whirlpool to replace it. So that particular brand seems to command at least some respect.
Brand new Samsung dishwashers have a water quality sensor that gets blocked up and kills the dishwasher. If you figure it out, it's just a $50 part and not hard to replace.
I was recently in the market for a new refrigerator to replace a newish Samsung fridge where ice built up around the condenser fan, eventually causing it to freeze still, and spoiling all my food every ~3mos (Avoid Samsung appliances if you value your sanity) — It came with the house so no real cost on my part aside from the annoyance.
Now I have a perfectly adequate Whirlpool fridge, but the condenser fan is obnoxiously loud. It seems to have one setting, off and turbo. I’ve resorted to taping acoustic pads to the back of the fridge — and no joke, some hardcover books backed up against the back of the freezer (They aren’t noticeable and don’t take up a significant amount of space). This helps a lot, but the thing is still louder than I’d like.
I’ll probably leave this fridge with the house as well.
I had the exact same problem with my Samsung fridge. Same timeline too - it was like clockwork. Every quarter I would have to take the back plate off, melt the accumulated ice with a hair dryer and reload the fridge.
I eventually did enough googling and found a support bulletin from Samsung about this issue. It said to move the thermistor from the intake tube to the output tube. I wish I could find the pic but the general procedure is mentioned here: https://www.appliancejunk.com/forums/index.php?topic=14561.0
Best of luck. Thankfully it’s been a year since I’ve had to fix the fridge. Funny side note- our fridge used to be so clean when it would fail every three months. We would be forced to unload all the food and we figured why not clean it out at the same time. Now we don’t have that forced cleaning cycle any longer. Oh well.
That's the evaporator fan, and not all fridges have one. The condenser gets hot, not cold, and is outside the fridge. It almost always has a fan. The evaporator is inside, and the part that gets cold.
I'm not a fridge tech, but I have a Samsung in my garage after it constantly gave us this problem. I just removed the cover to the evaporator and let it ice up, and don't keep much in it. A second thermostat shows that the interior is still maintaining a safe temperature, with few things inside and a non-functioning fan.
The (suspected) problem is that the defroster heater is too far from the circulation fan, and the ice starts where the copper pipe is from the top, where there is no heater coil. The ice eventually grows to the fan, and seizes up the fan.
You can fix some freeze-over issues by taking a length of stiff wire (14 gauge solid copper is great if you have some, a wire coat hanger is an OK substitute), wrapping one end tightly around the nearest part of the defrost cycle heater element, and routing the other end through the area where you are getting ice build-up. Some freezer designs allow ice to build up out of the defrost heater’s reach, and the added wire just conducts that heat where it’s needed.
I must have the same model Samsung fridge as you. Every 3 months or so I need to pull it apart and defrost the fan. It's super annoying and apparently very common in that model.
I have a ~2014 GE Profile counter depth fridge that freezes every 3 months like clockwork. Incredibly annoying for a $3000 appliance. It should be illegal.
I've got the exact same problem with my Samsung fridge. It's such a common problem with Samsung, I'm surprised they're still in the refrigerator business.
How much does the fan cost to buy second hand or from the manufacturer to replace? It looks like it's a few screws and a single plug and you can have your fridge run for another 5-10 years
1. Durability is hidden, cost and features are apparent. I can see on the box what features the OEM claims. I can see on the box what it costs. I cannot see the common failure modes on the box.
2. People want appliances that are durable and repairable, but often end up replacing them before end of life of the product, or destroy them some other way (cell phones).
3. Survive the warranty. Unless there is a resale market for the product, the only durability requirement is to survive the warranty.
4. Efficiency (on some metric). The linked video discounts the increased efficiency of the newer fixture, but that's not how product engineering works. If the product has a goal to be more efficient or lighter, then everyone has that goal. Lighter may mean less durable or less effective overall, but more portable or useful.
Re 2. and 3., resale market is enabled by durability. If a product still has plenty of life in front of it but I want to get rid of it anyway (e.g. to buy a newer one), there's a good chance someone will be willing to buy it off me, whether to use it or to strip it for parts. Manufacturers don't make money off secondary sales of used products anyway, so the pressure to make products barely survive the warranty is always there.
The question revolves around how do we ensure that companies that optimize to maximize long term customer value do not get undercut and out-competed by companies that optimize to maximize short term customer value.
And it's a very challenging thing to do, since most human's natural instincts are to apply hyperbolic discounting models, while companies have to operating on... non-hyperbolic discounting.
Create incentives for (or simply mandate) longer warranty terms.
In Germany, anything you buy has a 2-year seller's warranty, plus a presumption that any issues occurring within the first 6 months are a manufacturing defect unless the seller proves otherwise.
Turning that into a 5-year warranty on large appliances would be relatively trivial and immediately provide an incentive to make long-lived products.
> " Manufacturers don't make money off secondary sales of used products anyway, so the pressure to make products barely survive the warranty is always there."
I agree there is not a strong price pressure in most cases, but resale value is priced into new cars/trucks to some degree for instance.
I thoroughly enjoyed that. We all have anecdata that “things aren’t made the way they used to be” but it’s rare to see something explained the way this was.
I think the video makes a clear argument to the increase of number of severity of failure modes in the more modern part, I don't feel that it does a great job at a lot of things.
So both designs likely have a life limiting factor of oil. It's clear that the older design will have a longer life before running into oil related issues. However, he still needs to modify (punching a hole in the housing) the motor to oil the unit. He makes no affordances to the modern unit for doing so. While it might be a pain to have to re-oil more frequently, it's still likely to be an action that occurs on a multi-year basis. At that point, the difference between re-oiling every other year, and every 10 years feels pretty academic.
He discounts the ~6W of energy savings. It's true its not a lot - especially if you take the perspective of - 'let's try to save 6W of power from a 1970's fridge'. However, modern units consume the order of 200W, so an increase of 6W is a 3% increase in energy consumption. Maybe you can justify that for a single component, but how would you justify that across the board?
It's 3% difference in energy consumption, at a cost of replacing a fridge much earlier. Fridges being replaced more often means fridges being made in much larger quantity, which eats up all potential energy savings and then some.
> At that point, the difference between re-oiling every other year, and every 10 years feels pretty academic.
You missed some stuff. It was one oil change for 50 years, not 10, and second, whereas the old fan would stall and heat, but not burn out, when it failed, the new fan would fail irreparably if oil ran out. And it would fail without warning. The type of failure mode is important here.
And that's just if the oil runs out. Of course, being crap in an egalitarian way, it is designed so that the capacitor would fail, or the fuse would blow, or the IC's would short, or the windings would burn out, all at precisely the same time. It's mean-time-between-failure engineering.
I agree with all your points; it's what I was thinking along while watching the video. I also don't accept that hypothesis that in general newer designed motors fail earlier than older motors. I don't even accept it for being told that these two particular motors chosen at random. Will the newer motor in this video will fail before the older design in this video? Perhaps but I'd like to see some real evidence.
The energy argument is valid, but I think the trade off is a result of poorly thought out regulation.
For a water heater, there is an energy guide as well as a durability guide. The good/better/best ratings help the consumer make an appropriate decision.
Energy star should be similar. I’m not interested in saving $4/yr in electricity if that means buying a new appliance in 4 years, but I have no way to evaluate the quality of the device.
That's a reasonable wish. I imagine the usual thought is that warranty periods should provide a reasonable proxy for durability information, but I also understand that it's a pretty imperfect proxy.
I'd argue that OEM extended service plans are the real proxy, at least for a service call.
Look at Apple as an example, two years is the max service plan for an iOS device. That's the lifetime of a battery. For Dell/HP laptops, they will have 3 year warranties with up to 5 years of extended, but usually exclude the battery and often exclude the screen.
About 10 years ago my parents gave us a Sears horizontal freezer they'd had in their garage, and had no further use for. It's now around 55 years old and still running with all the original parts. I don't know what the thing would cost in current dollars if built today to the same standards. I don't even know if you could build it today to those standards, or that it would make sense for anyone to pay for a freezer that will last a half-century. But I would like to think so.
Have you compared its power efficiency with equivalent recent hardware? Watts turn into dollars quickly—even as little as 1 W more all the time is 8.76 kW over the course of a year, which, picking an arbitrary electricity price of 20¢/kW, is $1.75 a year.
What is the cost of decommissioning soon-to-die hardware like this? Right now companies arent required cradle to grave handling, so quick disposal is prioritized.
There is no such thing as away, so watch what we put there.
That's a really good point. Companies being required to buy back their products when they die should align the incentives to solve the problem, which is essentially one of unhandled economic externalities.
Has anything changed in Europe since these kinds of laws have been put in place?
In Canada, we have a fixed environmental disposal fee slapped on certain classes of electronic products. I wonder if that fee actually makes the problem worse because it makes high-durability manufacturers subsidize their planned-obsolescence competition!
That's per year per watt, though. A fridge made prior to 1990 probably uses 1000-1500 kWh/year, and one made more recently probably uses 300-500 kWh/year. There's $70+ per year.
...and a 1930s GE Monitor Top uses less than 250kWh/year, with ones from the 40s and 50s also in that range. Frigidaire truthfully advertised its "Meter-Miser" compressor (which is 1/8HP, or ~93W) as using less power than a 100W lightbulb. Having done most of the restoration of one, I can confirm that power usage. If it ran 24/7 that would still be ~800kWh/year, but it doesn't run continuously so actual consumption is far less --- at a more typical 50% duty cycle it would be closer to 400. Once I get it completely back together and reinsulated I can check.
Energy consumption shot up in the 60s and 70s with things like automatic defrost heaters and thinner insulation (because power was cheap and it made for more interior room), and then decreased again gradually after that due to environmental regulations. But the ones before that are a lot more efficient than most people think.
I purchased a commercial freezer for our home basement. We feed our dog raw and a shelf fully loaded with frozen cubes of meat can weigh a considerable amount.
About £1800 retail, fortunately I found one on eBay for considerably less.
Firstly the thing weighs a tonne, it’s noisy, and it also requires a large ventilated space all around otherwise its efficiency drops through the floor.
We ended up having to point a pedestal fan at the rear of the unit to keep the compressor and radiator cool.
Service costs were high at £90 just to have someone look at it and replacement parts a minimum of £120. So whilst it can be serviced it isn’t cheap.
It also ate 4-5x as much electricity as a consumer freezer of similar size.
What you get when buying a commercial freezer or appliance is a device that can take a beating and can be serviced. They cost nearly an order of magnitude more over the course of their lifetime vs their domestic counterparts. So yeah they’re well made but at a very high price.
We need to do something about this. If I buy a washing machine, I have NO idea how much cost cutting has gotten into it - in fact, companies spend way too much money in marketing, shiny stickers, features and IoT bullshit than things like oil bushings that this video is talking about.
We need a review website that hires these experts that take things apart, and expose the shitty practices and cost cutting that has taken place so that the consumers are more informed. Kind of like a more formal version of AvE (Youtube fame). And that kind of review methodology needs to get so popular that no manufacturer can escape it. What's capitalism when every one is cheating, lying and depending on the ROI of their marketing budget? Competition disappears, innovation stops and shiny things propel.
If you go and buy an dishwasher from Miele, you bet your bottom dollar they are not gonna cut corners like this - because industrial grade equipment needs to last and live up to the daily abuse or its credibility is lost. In consumer market, there is way too much marketing noise than objectivity.
There might be another organization / name for your country, but this is not a new idea.
It seems that only a tiny minority of consumers value this, and the designs you see from mass-market manufactures reflect what consumers actually want when making their purchasing decisions.
> the designs you see from mass-market manufactures reflect what consumers actually want when making their purchasing decisions
Well, no.
The actual problem is consumers come from a high-trust society, but producers do not. When producers ALSO came from a high-trust society, consumers were right to not worry about what "hidden cuts" were being made in the name of almighty profit, because it simply wasn't done, and in fact, couldn't be done because there were too many honest people involved that a bad apple here or there couldn't get any traction.
That's no longer the case, but culture changes slowly, and in this case, it's a change for the worst: not being able to trust your fellow man.
That's an interesting way of looking at it, but I see it more like air travel. Consumers say they want a better product, but when they actually see the cost, they pick basic economy. And no one who's flown before in the US is trusting that the airline will give them good service or legroom; the only trust is that the airline will get them to their destination alive sorta but not really on-time.
Consumer Reports was amazing in the late 70s through the 80s. I don't think my parents bought anything > $100 without consulting the thick CR annual report guide, which tested pretty close to everything: cars, TVs, appliances, tools, bikes, checking accounts, telephones, computers... you name it. And the reviews were amazing: they'd build testing rigs to simulate years of usage. They'd tear down appliances and show you where a fridge would probably fail first. They'd list what was important and what was marketing BS for everything.
Today, though, it's but a shadow. When I've checked on their recommendations, and then checked crowdsourced reviews, the crowd frequently bests CR's opinion.
Wirecutter and it's ilk should hire a mechanical or electrical engineer to do teardowns into every review.
Maybe I'm just doing it wrong, but I've never really found Consumer Reports to be that informative when I'm looking to buy something. Often they rate things based on features I don't even care about.
They will typically offer a numeric overall rating but also breakdown a review with a number of sub-ratings. For example, if you look at the list of tires in any given category, you'll get a numeric list sorted by number, but each tire is rated poor/fair/good/very good/excellent across categories like dry braking, wet braking, handling, hydroplaning, snow traction, ice braking, ride comfort, noise, rolling resistance, and tread life. They break things down similarly with other products. You can even sort the list they provide on any of the various categories to get a feel for how the products perform in the areas you care about.
CR and the BBB are cancer. They're worse than irrelevant - they are products of the bygone age of post-war high-trust production. The field is very very ripe for disruption, but bias and conflicting interests are a tough nut to crack.
Interesting. I had assumed they were one of the 1000s of other fake review websites.
Another good one I found is carsurvey.org, but I'm not sure how it'll hold up when (if not already) the marketing departments of car manufacturers swarm it.
The trunk space measure for Car and Driver and other assorted car magazines, at least when it came to sports cars and compacts, was always golf clubs. I've never played and, as a reader, I always wondered what the hell the significance of golf clubs was.
The wheelchair metric seems a little more practical. My mother will soon have bought three cars using that as a filter. Or perhaps there's a built in assumption that any car capable of carrying a wheelchair can also carry golf clubs, I don't know.
Consumer reports doesn't tear anything down or really analyze the quality of anything, they just "test" stuff, and collect failure data from their subscribers. Whenever I would try to buy something they rated highly in their reviews, I would find that it was no longer for sale.
What annoys me is that they are constantly harping on safety above all else, and are on what seems to be a personal crusade against self driving cars in general, and Tesla in particular. I recently cancelled my subscription.
A commercial dishwasher from Miele. Miele also does consumer products, and while they are highly regarded and rather expensive, they are not immune to cost cutting.
That's unfortunate but I found that the most cost effective way of buying appliances is to go with major mid-low end consumer brands and accept planned obsolescence. High end consumer often isn't as good as the price make it look and commercial-grade is just too expensive (expect 10x price).
Usually, with mid-low end consumer brands, you can expect your appliance to last at least for the duration of the extended warranty period. People offering you extended warranties know what they are doing, and will cover the the time period where your appliance is the least likely to fail.
The biggest problem is: how is said review site going to be sustainable?
Even apart from what you've mentioned, white goods are a minefield of scummy business practices. Just a few I've seen:
(1) Consolidation: reputable companies buy out lower quality brands or merge with other companies, and roll out the lower quality / economy models under the strength of the brand name of their higher end consumer product. The consumer never knows if that year's vacuum cleaner is the reliable model.
(2) Sowing confusion through different naming schemes: with different model numbers in different countries, all with subtly different faceplates but mostly identical innards, it is impossible for the consumer to rely on review sites. E.g., RTings is great for TVs... if you live in the USA.
(3) Meaningless warranties: e.g. on refrigerators they will give a "10 year compressor warranty" but the compressor isn't the thing that's going to break, it's the touch-screen panel on the front of the fridge, and by the time it breaks there will either be no replacement parts or the replacement and repair / labour cost will be so high you may as well buy a new fridge. Same for washing machines and dryers - the 10 year warranty is worthless, the PCB holding the membrane buttons on the faceplate will vibrate and corrode its way into failure within 2.
That's just on the manufacturer's side, and that's not counting things like planned obsolescence. The store is another hell hole of scummy practices (loans, "extended warranties", misleading sales tactics, what have you).
So how is this review site sustained? For the rich the cost is immaterial, either they get the high end doodad or they replace the cheap one yearly, whatever amortises better over their lifetimes. The live-in or part-time help probably does all of the work anyway. They don't need a specialised review site.
For the poor there is no choice, they will get what is cheap and if it breaks they have to get a new one. They sure aren't going to fund some specialised review site.
For the middle, you will make the best decision you can in the time you have and spend it more productively on other things. A review site will be nice but what for?
I mean... I'm totally with you on this, but really, what is the solution?
e.g. on refrigerators they will give a "10 year compressor warranty" but the compressor isn't the thing that's going to break, it's the touch-screen panel on the front of the fridge
Indeed, the core "refrigerating machine" is extremely reliable, because it's hermetically sealed (a design which dates back to the 1930s --- and the guy who made this video has others on his channel of such machines still in working condition), and it's usually something else that fails first.
I would love for more things like this. We do have this for phones at least with their teardowns. However appliances aren't so "hot". Might be more difficult to make a business out of it, particularly because "information wants to be free". That makes being a primary producer of information risky, and if it's not something that brings frequent eyeballs on it, then it might not go so well. As Appliances are something we only want to deal with no more often than once a year, the eyeballs won't come, and you have to deal with people absconding with your information and making it free.
Edit: and yes, this is the same issue that journalists face. This wouldn't be much different from journalism. The function of journalism is supposed to be the independent watchers, for example, in government so that we can keep them honest. Same sort of deal.
What do you think about a paid service like this? I would gladly pay $20 a year for a membership to get access to detailed tear downs, unbiased reviews and objective analysis (with proper metrology, standards, etc.)
iFixit execs - if you're reading, please look into this - you guys already have a phenomenal business and expanding into all sorts of goods and services would be amazing. Instead of repairability rating, we need a Doug score (Youtube fame) for consumer goods and services or even better - measurement results, comparisons, etc.
Yeah I did consider a paid service, but that's when I was thinking about the information wants to be free issue. Unless you've got a good legal team, what do you do? I was still trying to think of a way around it, perhaps you could get people interested enough if you market it well? I imagine you'd need complementary info segments to go with it.
Patreon with early access may be the way to go.
You pay a small monthly fee and get access to videos before others.
Also, you get to vote on what to review first.
I think you have your answer already. If you want reliability you pay for it by buying the commercial/industrial version that commits to specs upfront and outlines the cost of maintenance for the life cycle of the device.
Not saying what the consumer focused side of these businesses is doing is right but there is a work around with defined costs out there.
> If you want reliability you pay for it by buying the commercial/industrial version
It is frequently very difficult to find the commercial/industrial version, even when you're in the know and actually want it. I'm typing this on a "Pro" laptop.
Marketing sticks "commercial grade" on pretty much everything. You have to know which brands service commercial and what their commercial lines are. That's not information that's always easy to find.
For a laptop, you might want to look into whatever is used by the military or LEOs - they tend to be ruggedized and designed for abuse.
In that vein, the Panasonic Toughbook was the go-to (and may still be - I haven't checked lately). They sold nearly identical consumer versions of the same ruggedized laptop.
A lesser known "brand" was made by a company called "General Dynamics" but I don't know if they were/are available to the consumer (I only know about them from the pre-owned market).
This place is a good one to see what's out there (I cannot vouch for them as a vendor or seller or anything like that; I've never shopped with them):
yeah it should really be the law. It's insanity that its not already like that now that you mention it.
Food and cosmetics has this in the form of an ingredient list. And even then, as a manufacturer you don't have to list every ingredient depending on the threshold and the region.
Why isn't this standardized? We could have open reviews for designs that are known to fail, just like we have open criticism for ingredients that are unhealthy to consume.
"Miele, you bet your bottom dollar they are not gonna cut corners like this"
In my experience, sample size 1, Miele dishwashers are junk.
We bought a house in 2011 with a Miele dishwasher that was installed around 2007 (previous owners renovated the kitchen). It has broken down every 2 years or so. I think we've probably replaced almost every major part, thankfully under the home warranty that came with the house, and then under the home warranty we purchased when we rented the house out during a temporary relocation.
Contrast this to a builder-grade basic GE dishwasher from our old house (which was built around 1995 or so), which never failed. And whose interior got hot as an oven during the drying part of the cycle and actually dried the dishes. The only think the Miele has going for it is that it is quietest dishwasher I've ever used.
As another sample of the same size, my mom's house has a Miele dishwasher we've installed in 1997 or so. I occasionally take spray arms off and clean them, and it hasn't had any problems ever. Same for a Miele vacuum of the same age.
Maybe they did go downhill since then, but a Miele dishwasher I had installed in one of the apartments I lived at in 2008 or so also still going strong, as far as I know.
Only buy things with long standard warranties. AEG has some dryers with 10-year warranties on the main components. Liefherr sells fridges with 7-year warranties. IKEA's appliances have 5-year warranties as standard.
You don't need a website. Whatever model you're interested in, the answer is simple: as much cost cutting as fucking possible. Like on the scale of if a certain change saves ten cents per unit, the engineer has justified their own salary for the year.
Those new "smart" devices with the fancy touchscreens? Same exact fundamental parts and functionality, plus a half-integrated "smart" module to keep up the veneer that hides the rest of the thing being as uninnovative as possible. If you're lucky, a non-baseline model contains a single extra sensor that enables some increased functionality. Of course that means additional complexity, lower popularity, and higher margin which actually gives you a higher chance of breakage.
Ultimately when it comes to appliances, DIY repair or GTFO. Like seriously if this topic is a concern of yours, next time something breaks, just open it up and figure out what's wrong. Odds are it's a simple repair common to the particular model. Youtube is your friend [0], along with some polyurethane coated gloves (sheet metal attacks!).
Trying to outsource to a repair person won't help you either. A friend just had their apartment clothes washer die. One of those nicer ones without an agitator that still seems to do a good job getting clothes clean. A rough look says its a mechanical problem with the drum suspension. But the repair person said "control board" - at least $500 for list-price parts and labor, about the same cost as buying a new baseline model with an energy rebate. I've personally concluded that "control board" was likely just a canned response to test whether the customer is serious about paying for the real labor to actually diagnose the problem.
So both they and I are getting new washers. I don't actually think it will be the control board, but if it is, I will be highly tempted to just design a new generic one myself, which might as well have Linux and a network link, and see if I can't do my own little part to get us out of this planned obsolescence meets surveillance capitalism mess.
[0] The part where it helps you get stuff done, not the part where it spies on you to better psychologically manipulate you. Hell, people with mechanical abilities will probably be priority threats when AI gets serious about optimizing us out of the picture, so you might want to use a VPN. But I digress.
There is very strong incentive for anyone that manufactures and sells anything at scale to do it as cheaply as possible.
There is a lot of money to be made in parts replacement services, as well.
Capitalism sort of guarantees this result after a certain amount of time. Even Miele has cut plenty of corners. Open one of their appliances from 20 years ago, and open another from today, and tell me I'm wrong.
I cynically think that this is a fall out of top-down direction from management for their little cost cutting bonuses. Short term benefits and incentives (fuck the consumers, durability will be dealt with when I am no longer around) trading off long term consumer loyalty. I hope I am wrong.
You can see a stark difference between family run businesses and a firm that has a board of directors.
There would definitely be a market for 'open source appliances' I believe. Appliances built to last, based on modular design, and with full documentation available along with plenty of hooks included to permit third party creation of modifications and enhancements. Basically, applications as a sort of durable platform. Want to be able to connect your oven via wifi and see an image of what's cooking or get a food of its current temperature? That sort of thing could be added a little addon card or module, etc. Of course, most businesspeople would look at that and say 'sure, even if you come to dominate the market, what THEN?' and not like the lack of a built-in way to force people to buy new product. But eventually you would expect there to be one person who would be satisfied with making a few hundred million dollars over a decade even if that shrinks later on.
another interesting thing I found recently is that lot of water dispensers don't dispense chilled water, just room temperature water. They don't mention that.
It's weird that repairability (either right to repair, or simply technical feasibility) has been a huge topic for at least 10 years in cars, mobile phones, home appliances, etc. And yet i haven't seen any end-user product really advertising it.
Worse, the trend seems to be even more toward cheap black boxes that you'll change entirely whenever they break.
As another example of things going the wrong direction: a few months ago i saw a video about a Tesla test, and the car's engine refused to start. The owner had to turn it off and on again so that they could start the engine and begin the test. As a software engineer, that made me feel so bad...
Is there any solution toward better quality products, aka : having the benefits of cheap electronics and advanced functionalities, but with the longevity and ability to repare and customize of the old mechanical technology ? Is it a business model problem ? a technical one ? a supply chain / pricing one ? marketing ?
> It's weird that repairability (either right to repair, or simply technical feasibility) has been a huge topic for at least 10 years in cars, mobile phones, home appliances, etc. And yet i haven't seen any end-user product really advertising it.
99% of people don’t want to repair their appliances. They either “don’t want it to break”, or want it to be repaired by someone else.
A product labeled “commercial grade! 10 year warranty!” will always massively outsell a product labeled “user serviceable! Schematics included!”
Apple is super successful with un-repairable products.
With the latest iPhones they try to prevent you from going to a non-authorized repair service to exchange the battery, a part that is known to deteriorate after two years leading to decreased performance. Maybe people do not care because smartphones have been rapidly improving in the past.
On the other hand when considering household appliances, Miele is able to fetch premium prices due to their perceived longevity.
Based on my recent experience of removing the beater bar on my Miele vacuum, I'd bet that Miele is not substantially better. I had pretty good feelings about my German engineered, $600 vacuum until I saw the insides. Lots of cheap plastic waiting to break, and it was much less serviceable than I expected. My dad used to work for a janitorial supplies distributor and I occasionally got my hands on commercial vacs. Those were generally built like tanks. Don't get me wrong, I like other features of my vac, like the HEPA bags with the flap that closes when they're removed, but I don't think of Miele in the same way now.
Small differences can make a huge difference. Like a bit of plastik that's 1mm thicker in important spots. Or picking electrolytic capacitors with extended lifetime.
We're in the uncanny valley of manufacturing now. In not too many years you'll be able to download a schematic of that old motor, and have one made for you on your desktop.
For anything more than a solid plastic or metal part, I doubt it. There's too many materials, the precision needed is too great, and mass production almost has to be cheaper.
You’re free to buy appliances like the stuff that used to exist. They are found in the commercial realm, and you’ll still be spending about $3000 for a no-frills entry level fridge.