[HN Gopher] A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than ...
___________________________________________________________________
A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I
own now
Author : zhte415
Score : 290 points
Date : 2023-07-31 13:37 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mstdn.social)
(TXT) w3m dump (mstdn.social)
| toldyouso2022 wrote:
| Fiat money vs sound money. With fiat money if you produce things
| that last you get money that devalues over time but no recurring
| income. Your company fails. With sound money, money don't devalue
| as easily, you can produce things that last. Also there may be a
| psychological effect on giving money more value and therefore
| wanting more from the things you exchange them for.
|
| Just some thoughts
| MostlyStable wrote:
| I agree with some of the comments that this fridge doesn't
| actually seem that much better than modern fridges (other than
| _not_ having some of the worst modern features, but you can still
| get fridges without those).
|
| However, it does seem to me like _lots_ of things are getting
| worse over time, through a combination of removal of features
| (phones: IR blaster, FM radio, headphone jack, etc), addition of
| features (kitchen appliances: wifi connectivity, touchscreens,
| etc.), or lack of repairability (everything).
| no1groyp wrote:
| [dead]
| sampo wrote:
| I put a high value on inverter compressor, so the fridge's heat
| pump can run at low power all the time. Instead of being
| regulated on and off, with that loud "thunk" sound.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| locallost wrote:
| The slide out shelves and the ice tray are nice, but the rest I
| would not want. It has a too specific use, e.g. ok you have a
| butter tray but what if you don't want to eat butter. What if a
| brand shows up that makes butter twice the size, now it doesn't
| fit anymore. Etc.
| jpl56 wrote:
| Last year I almost needed to replace my 20-yo fridge because of
| temperature issues, condensation and short bulb life.
|
| New equivalent fridges didn't even had a door for spreadable
| butter, so I didn't buy any without continuing searching bot the
| best one.
|
| Then I realized the lamp never turns off when I close the door.
| The door sensor isn't easy to replace, I just removed the bulb
| and bought a rechargeable closet lamp with a movement sensor
| online. 12 euros. Problem solved.
|
| Btw I read here I should check the power consumption, we have a
| rather easy way to do it in France.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Temperature and condensation issues sounds like a leaking door
| seal. Should be easy enough to replace.
| [deleted]
| hindsightbias wrote:
| There was some initiative years back that so many world problems
| would be solved by giving everyone access to a fridge.
|
| But does that still work out if it's a crappy fridge that fails
| every few years?
| spacecadet wrote:
| You can definitely still buy dumb fridges, TVs, toasters, etc
| that are all well made and when adjusted for price are similar in
| cost... Its just hype noise selling bottom line Internet of Shit,
| dont listen.
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| I would hazard a guess and say this was probably expensive by
| today's standards.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Sure, but you'd buy once and that fridge problem was sorted for
| a few decades. Over the long term you paid significantly less
| because you weren't replacing a broken fridge every few years.
| If problems did crop up appliance repair was a cost effective
| long term fix. Ain't designed obsolescence a wonder?
| DSMan195276 wrote:
| I think the point is more that you can buy expensive fridges
| today that could last that long - people don't because they
| care more about spending less on a fridge.
| js8 wrote:
| > people don't because they care more about spending less
| on a fridge
|
| I don't think so. First of all, there are lots of quality
| improvements that could make life longer, at almost zero
| additional cost per unit. Also, repairability could be
| improved.
|
| Second, there is an ecconomic problem with information
| asymetry - while I know the pricetag, I have no idea what
| the life expectancy is. So you get
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons ;
| that's not the customer's preference.
|
| The latter could be possible to fix if we mandated
| producers to publish "expected usage per lifetime" (MTBF)
| numbers and also show price/usage ratio to customers.
| DSMan195276 wrote:
| > I don't think so. First of all, there are lots of
| quality improvements that could make life longer, at
| almost zero additional cost per unit. Also, repairability
| could be improved.
|
| I don't entirely disagree, but there's always going to be
| a weakest link when you're targeting a low price point.
| It doesn't seem to take a whole lot of research to find
| that better fridges with those issues fixed _are_
| available if you're willing to spend a bit more, people
| commenting on this article even linked to some.
|
| > The latter could be possible to fix if we mandated
| producers to publish "expected usage per lifetime" (MTBF)
| numbers and also show price/usage ratio to customers.
|
| I support this idea, but I'd also say the numbers
| presumably would not be significantly different from the
| warranty already offered on these things. I feel like
| it's not much of a secret that the warranty is intended
| to last the minimum lifetime of the product and not more.
| If they were confident in their product lasting longer,
| they'd sell you a longer warranty.
|
| I think there's also an unmentioned detail here, which is
| that many people probably won't own the same fridge for
| 20 or 30 years anyway - when you move, you commonly leave
| your fridge behind. There's not a huge incentive to buy
| an expensive fridge that could last a long time if you
| think it's likely you'll move before then anyway.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| But you can't buy expensive fridges that last that long,
| they just come with more stainless steel, wifi, and a
| larger price tag. The internals are all commodity
| components that are manufactured in the same plants from
| the same materials as lesser models, all with the same
| incentives to have households replace their fridge as
| frequently as possible without actually tanking the brand.
| chollida1 wrote:
| Sure you can.
|
| We spent about $12,000 on our fridge 15 years ago when we
| first renod our house and its still going just fine.
| Never once has it had to be serviced.
| ljf wrote:
| Similar (or actually not as good) fridge was $330 - so let's
| say $350 for a better one:
| https://www.thepeoplehistory.com/50selectrical.html
|
| $350 in 1950 is equivalent in purchasing power to about
| $4,431.04 today.
|
| My last Samsung fridge freezer was PS250 and had a 10 year
| warranty. Was plenty big enough and did everything I wanted it
| to (keep food cold and fresh).
|
| This idea that 50s devices lasted decades seems odd to someone
| that grew up in the 70/80s, and everyone seemed to have new
| devices then (or 10 year old at best). But hey if I spend $4k
| on a device you bet I'll be fixing it if it breaks!
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| Definitely not as good, doesn't have all the fancy door bits
| and slick shelves. I would say the OP fridge would have been
| more than twice as expensive, so maybe $8K for a fridge.
|
| I've still got the fridge I bought after I moved out of Uni
| halls >10 years ago for PS120, so price wise it's probably
| cheaper to buy fridges every ten years, but terrible for the
| waste.
| ljf wrote:
| Yeah it is a hard trade off - waste vs efficiency. Sad to
| see waste generated but efficiency is increasing still, so
| the energy saving of replacing a device can be large.
|
| I brew beer and a lot of people make keezer or kegerators
| (fridges or freezers to serve kegged beer from).
|
| So often someone will find an old fridge or freezer and
| want to use that 'as it is basically free' - ignoring the
| fact that even a 10 year old fridge can use more than PS150
| a year in electricity (maybe more at current rates?).
|
| I got a brand new chest freezer for PS179 and when run as a
| fridge is uses PS35 a year at current prices - so I'm
| saving money after the first year.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| What about microwaves - two buttons - power and time. Right now
| you have 100000 buttons and everything is confusing.
| starbugs wrote:
| > Thing is, producing crappy, cookie-cutter, uninspired,
| overpriced junk that falls apart within 5 years (generously
| speaking) pays more to the shareholders. That's how we got from
| there to here.
|
| This summarizes it quite well for me.
| beezlewax wrote:
| And this should be regulated so it can't happen. So much waste
| is generated to keep shareholders happy.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| I get a little tired of repeating this, but there are some good
| reasons why fridges (and most appliances) are the way they are
| now:
|
| * Strong regulation on energy use by appliances (modern fridges
| are much, much more efficient than ones from 70 years ago)
|
| * Extreme competition from companies all over the world
|
| * Consumers who care more about convenience and cost above all
| else, and reliability basically not at all
|
| These 3 are why modern appliances are not as reliable. It is
| not a conspiracy. It is not lazy manufacturers. It is pressure
| from consumers and government that made things this way.
|
| Take HVAC, which is a great example. Regulations have required
| far greater efficiency. So what happens? You get things like
| variable-frequency drives. These can slow down the fans in low-
| load scenarios. However, they also add another failure point.
| And speaking of fans, many evaporators now use plastic fans
| instead of metal ones. And guess what? They crack a lot more
| than the metal ones ever did. But they're lighter and thus more
| efficient.
|
| It's like that with everything. Just take a look at modern
| clothes washer agitators compared to the old ones.
|
| The other problem is really with consumers. All (the vast
| majority of) consumers care about is convenience, cost, and
| looks. They want a fridge that has the ice maker and the water
| dispenser, stainless steel, french double door, etc. They don't
| care about the reputation of the brand - they just buy the
| cheapest one that fits those checkboxes. That leads
| manufacturers to cut cost as much as possible - especially
| since they now have to compete with companies all over the
| world with cheap labor, which 70 years ago was not nearly as
| true.
| ekanes wrote:
| Similar to why the flying experience can be so awful -
| consumers by airline tickets based largely on price. The
| airlines that lower costs (and experience) best win.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Not for everyone... I'll go with a different airline for a
| generally better experience. Ex: Delta over United.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| And somewhat counterintuitively, they don't even make most
| of their profit off of ticket sales. The big players make
| almost all their money on the reward cards and membership
| systems. Some of them even take a _loss_ on their ticket
| sales just to make the memberships more appealing.
|
| In that scenario, there's little reason to make the flying
| experience great.
| greatfilter251 wrote:
| [dead]
| amluto wrote:
| > Just take a look at modern clothes washer agitators
| compared to the old ones.
|
| Huh? Good modern clothes washers don't have agitators.
| Agitators clean well, but they are _terrible_ for clothing. A
| good modern front loader cleans almost as well and damages
| your clothing much less in the process.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Last time I looked into it, I saw that the large, conical
| agitator had been replaced with a sort of agitator-plate
| that was much smaller.
|
| Part of that is it's also more efficient, iirc.
| adrr wrote:
| They are one of the most efficient washers in terms of
| water usage. i like them better than front loaders
| because of issues with the gasket like leaking and keep
| the gasket clean from mildew. Its just slower but with
| increased capacity. I can fit two queen sized comforters
| in mine with no issues.
|
| https://www.consumerreports.org/top-load-he-
| washer/things-to...
| tracker1 wrote:
| Not to mention, they both don't need to be as heavy, and
| are more mechanically stable than trying to balance a
| heavy water load effectively from the sides.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > The other problem is really with consumers.
|
| Nobody ever wants to admit that they make bad choices, but
| this is the most important explanation for why a lot of stuff
| sucks. If people were willing to pay more for a reliable
| refrigerator, that's what would get made. In empirical fact,
| their actual priority is cheapness, so that's what they get.
| keymon-o wrote:
| Do you have any suggestions how at least a single consumer
| would initiate a demand for reliability? And how would a
| manufacturer declare and prove they indeed include
| reliability in their products?
| wizofaus wrote:
| If I could choose between a $1000 appliance with a
| 10-year warranty and a $500 one with a 5-year warranty I
| know what I'd go with. But that sort of choice is
| virtually never available.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| Except that there's basically no way to know which products
| are going to be more reliable!
|
| You can use price as some kind of signal, but it's only
| loosely correlated. Manufacturers use a dizzying array of
| different model numbers that change constantly, so it's
| impossible to buy a model that's been in the field long
| enough to have a meaningful track record.
|
| You can probably figure out that some brands are basically
| _always_ junk, but even the brands that do make higher
| quality products _also_ sometimes make junk, so good
| luck...
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| I'd argue that's still part of the consumer's
| responsibility to vote with their wallet, since part of
| what makes a brand a brand is its reputation.
|
| This has long been the case for cars, where Japanese
| brands focused on reliability and were able to outcompete
| less reliable brands when new, and command higher prices
| in the used car market. Many Japanese brands are now no
| more reliable than their domestic counterparts, but that
| doesn't mean they're unreliable, and consumers are still
| voting with their wallets based on their past experience.
|
| Bringing this back to home appliances, when my parents
| purchased their home, it came with a fancy-looking
| Samsung fridge, which broke shortly after the warranty
| period. That meant that when it came time to purchase my
| own fridge, I wrote off Samsung completely. Additionally,
| my parents purchased a nice LG washing machine, which has
| been running great for well over a decade now, and again
| when it came time to purchase my own, I went with LG.
| None of these were the cheapest, and I as a consumer
| voted with my wallet.
| wizofaus wrote:
| > Except that there's basically no way to know which
| products are going to be more reliable!
|
| The fact that basically all manufacturers offer the same
| fairly pathetic warranties (and that extended ones cost
| absurd amounts) should give you some idea that basically
| all products out there are made with similar expectations
| as to how long they'll last before something breaks.
| Qwertious wrote:
| >* Consumers who care more about convenience and cost above
| all else, and reliability basically not at all
|
| Don't blame the consumer for this. It's just The Market For
| Lemons at work.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
|
| If you _really_ need someone to blame, then blame the MBAs
| who buy up quality brands and then sell junk until the
| reputation is all ground up.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Consumers are actually the problem, just as voters are the
| main cause of bad politicians. Most people will say they
| want one thing, but actually want another. They want robust
| appliances, but they will buy the 199.99 ones, which forces
| even the most honest manufacturer into a race to the
| bottom, unless they target the luxury segment.
|
| An airline which I can't recall, found the same: people say
| the want more leg room or other comfort, but when it's the
| time to pay, most end up choosing the cheapest ticket.
| viraptor wrote:
| > They want robust appliances, but they will buy the
| 199.99 ones
|
| That's unfair for many people. Not only do robust
| appliances cost significantly more, you also need to
| figure out which significantly more expensive model is
| also robust. You can't easily sample and replace a fridge
| when it's not the ideal one.
|
| > found the same: people say the want more leg room or
| other comfort, but when it's the time to pay, most end up
| choosing the cheapest ticket.
|
| There's nothing weird about it. Premium economy on the
| flight to my family is 2-3x the price on an already
| expensive flight. For my parents that's effectively
| equivalent to choosing: "visit once a year, or every 3
| years".
|
| This view of customers are the problem, they don't spend
| enough feels really bad - a disconnect of what people can
| realistically spend money on. There's many who need to
| consciously save for a few months to buy the $199
| appliance.
| hulitu wrote:
| > Consumers are actually the problem, just as voters are
| the main cause of bad politicians
|
| Voters do not know that politician X worked for company Y
| before getting into politics and do not know that
| politician X will work again for Y or for Z after his
| mandate is over.
|
| Consumers can only buy what is available. And quality is
| gone for good in military industrially capitalism.
|
| One can be happy if the product lives the live it was
| designed to.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Part of why it's important to be more involved at the
| local level... You may not know your senator, but you can
| definitely know your city/local govt, your local party
| reps, etc... and they will often know the candidates
| better than most.
|
| There's a lot of effort in the grassroots of both major
| parties, and in third parties to displace the
| establishment. It takes effort and local involvement.
| Most simply aren't and don't care.
| Naijoko wrote:
| if consumers are the problem. Where can I buy one of
| those fridge that works for 50 years? Seems like the
| market is missing quality good.... could this be the
| problem?
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| You're not going to find that in the consumer segment at
| all, the pressures are too great - even if you're going
| more upscale like Miele or Bosch.
|
| If you want a fridge that lasts 50 years, go to the
| commercial segment instead. It'll cost a lot and likely
| isn't great for day-to-day use, but that's the best
| you'll get.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Can't speak for others, but I rarely buy the cheapest
| option for any kind of appliance... some, sure, when
| there are not any truly better options. I mean, I don't
| necessarily want to go all the way up to commercial
| models, but there's got to be some room for in-between.
|
| I remember buying a washer-dryer a while back and the
| sales person was like, "this is kind of the Cadillac
| model." To which I responded, "what do you have in a
| Buick?"
|
| It just sucks pretty much knowing that the "X-year"
| warranty won't actually cover the control board that
| changes every model year that is the most likely thing to
| break just outside of warranty anyway, or even if sooner,
| you won't be able to get replaced.
|
| The main burner went out in my range (top cracked) and
| I'm pulling my hair out on picking a replacement
| oven/range... There are too many options, and quality is
| all over the map, even in the same brand/model from year
| to year. These things should have lifetimes measured in
| decades.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| > It's just The Market For Lemons at work.
|
| It's not, really. Information about brand reliability is
| widely available. People just value different things.
| astrostl wrote:
| "When you buy a new refrigerator, you probably expect it
| to last about a decade. Consumer Reports' member surveys
| back up that claim, with 10 years being the median
| expected life span for a newly purchased refrigerator.
| But it turns out the odds of having a problem-free
| experience over that decade are not in your favor. Based
| on our most recent survey results, we estimate that 31
| percent of all refrigerators will require repairs by the
| end of the fifth year of ownership, making them one of
| the least reliable products we analyze in our surveys."
|
| Modern fridges are pretty terrible as an entire category,
| at all price points.
| beardbound wrote:
| I agree that people value different things but I wouldn't
| say information about brand reliability is widely
| available. I have a consumer reports membership for
| checking that kind of thing simply because all of the
| info out there is mostly blogspam and fake review sites.
|
| Information from reputable sources on large appliance
| purchases is incredibly hard to find since most people
| don't buy appliances often, so even consumers used to
| doing online research will be hard pressed to know which
| sites to trust. I know that I wouldn't have a clue.
|
| If there is a place besides consumer reports, which is a
| paid service, where you can. Heck these things I would be
| very interested in hearing about it.
| sharemywin wrote:
| how would a site like this even get paid? from appliance
| company commissions?
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Information about brand reliability is widely
| available.
|
| Information that you can trust, however, is harder to
| find.
| brnt wrote:
| > Information about brand reliability is widely
| available.
|
| Where? If you Google for it, you're only ging to find
| SEO'd info-free sites. If I take a look at what people
| tall about in only forums, they haven't a clue either.
|
| I just see no evidence of this.
| potta_coffee wrote:
| Shopping for appliances recently, I found that ALL
| available brands are pretty shit as far as reliability
| goes. It's basically a gamble. I've learned to avoid
| Samsung though because the circuit boards in them cannot
| be had for any amount of money and so the appliances are
| essentially not repairable.
| coryfklein wrote:
| > Information about brand reliability is widely available
|
| I too see this information everywhere but I have no idea
| what to trust on this anymore and what information is
| paid for and gamed by the companies themselves. Brand
| reputation is its own business these days with its own
| products and markets.
| sharemywin wrote:
| exactly. everything is corruptible anymore.
| karaterobot wrote:
| This isn't a relevant paper, not only because it's not
| about home appliances, but because it's about a situation
| where there is information asymmetry. I can research
| everything I need to know about a refrigerator before
| buying it, including whether it's a piece of junk or not.
| layer8 wrote:
| > I can research everything I need to know about a
| refrigerator before buying it, including whether it's a
| piece of junk or not.
|
| Nope. The information made available is usually laughably
| sparse. And often you only learn about the model's
| reliability when it isn't in the market anymore. Models
| change faster than reliability can be assessed.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Not only that, but varying production runs of the same
| model will vary dramatically... The model in EU, produced
| in Germany vs the US model (same number) produced in
| Mexico will vary dramatically. This isn't a promotion or
| knock on either country, only in that some facilities
| will do better/worse than others, source different parts
| from different suppliers and have varying results.
|
| Beyond this, is the brand white labelling and the same or
| differing parts for varying lines of appliances from
| different brands even.
| owisd wrote:
| I don't think the fact that you could potentially invest
| time in closing the information gap negates the general
| point, e.g. you could take a course in car mechanics
| before buying a used car
| pessimizer wrote:
| No, you can't.
|
| What you can do is read as much as possible, and make a
| guess. Most of what you have read will probably have been
| indirectly sponsored by the manufacturer, or one of its
| competitors. None of it will be rigorous - in fact, the
| most honest information you get will be anecdotes from
| people whose purchases have failed, and who are as likely
| as not outliers.
| Naijoko wrote:
| how could it be the consumer if the Industry did fake good
| products since the begining of time?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
| ddoolin wrote:
| > The other problem is really with consumers. All (the vast
| majority of) consumers care about is convenience, cost, and
| looks. They want a fridge that has the ice maker and the
| water dispenser, stainless steel, french double door, etc.
| They don't care about the reputation of the brand - they just
| buy the cheapest one that fits those checkboxes. That leads
| manufacturers to cut cost as much as possible - especially
| since they now have to compete with companies all over the
| world with cheap labor, which 70 years ago was not nearly as
| true.
|
| I don't think you're wrong, but I think the _why_ is the crux
| of the issue, as in why are consumers so cheap? IMO, it 's
| the same reason businesses are happy to cut corners to make
| them as cheap as possible as well. Turns out it's a negative
| feedback cycle.
|
| Some consumers pay less, so businesses charge less, so
| businesses pay less, so their employees (customers by another
| name) have less to spend, etc.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| >why are consumers so cheap
|
| Because consumers have limited time and effort available. I
| enjoy spending some time getting good products, but even I
| admit it takes a _lot_ of time and effort to really
| research and understand what makes a product good. Looking
| at a multitude of reviews (avoiding the ones that are
| bought out), looking over recommendations from repair
| people with many years in the field, looking at online
| discussion forums for people _really_ interested in X
| product, etc. Really starting to _understand_ the different
| parts and pieces, and manufacturing approaches. You need to
| actually learn how the product works internally to an
| extent.
|
| It can take weeks of back and forth discussion and
| research.
|
| Most people have very busy lives with children and work and
| sports and whatever else. They don't have the time or
| energy to spend weeks finding the PERFECT refrigerator.
| They just buy one that works and move on with their lives.
|
| Price is easy. Smaller number better. Don't need to think
| about that one much.
| dig1 wrote:
| I will second this as I recently went through an interesting
| road of purchasing a new fridge. I looked for good energy
| efficiency, a long warranty, replacement parts availability,
| and nothing else fancy. None of the models from the famous
| brands (Samsung, LG, etc.) had these; instead, they had
| internet connectivity, an ice/water dispenser, all sorts of
| nooks and crannies, and (what is currently quite popular) a
| low price.
|
| I found a bland-looking Liebherr at a discount (still pricey
| compared to mentioned brands), and I'm happy for now. It
| looks like reliability and serviceability are considered a
| premium these days.
| cududa wrote:
| I mean even when you buy an expensive appliance, the majority
| of them still tend to break way too quickly and are just more
| costly to repair.
|
| I'd happily pay more for something well made, but, unless
| it's like commercial kitchen quality, it's still not "great"
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| _You_ might happily pay more, but 99% of consumers won 't.
| They just look at the sticker price + features and call it
| a day. And with the prices this low and trying to meet
| energy goals, reliability goes out the window.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > They just look at the sticker price + features and call
| it a day
|
| This thread makes it clear most people think all models
| are unreliable or that a consumer can't search based on
| reliability.
|
| If you accept everything is equally unreliable or
| unreliability is equally unknown, what else but price and
| features would you use to make a decision?
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| If reliability is a _true_ concern, then go commercial.
|
| If not, spend weeks researching. Cross reference text and
| video reviews from many sources, look into the
| technologies manufacturers use, look at feedback from
| people working in the repair industry, etc.
|
| Then, _maybe_ you can get something a bit better than
| average. At the very least you 'll avoid the true lemons.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Well thanks for telling _me_ this. My point was that
| reliability could be a true concern, but if people
| believe they can't shop for it, they won't bother.
|
| You kinda proved my point too - your suggested steps to
| follow take weeks, and end in a "maybe you'll get
| something a bit better than average". That truly sounds
| like "don't bother even if you want it".
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| That's a fair point. If there was an easy "reliability
| score" slapped via a sticker onto every appliance, and it
| was reliable, then yes, consumers might care a lot more -
| especially for the more expensive ones.
| vGPU wrote:
| See: Samsung fridges. A huge touchscreen and a water pump/ice
| maker that will fail in <5 years are standard.
| gruez wrote:
| >See: Samsung fridges. A huge touchscreen and a water
| pump/ice maker that will fail in <5 years are standard.
|
| They still make models that aren't like that[1]. In fact last
| time I bought a fridge I specifically looked for a model
| without those features because they're known points of
| failure and I don't use them.
|
| [1] https://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-25-cu-ft-33-3-door-
| fren...
| secabeen wrote:
| This one is a french door model, which means a complicated
| double-door latching interface. Single-door is even simpler
| still, and half the price! You pay almost $700 just for the
| french door element.
| ljf wrote:
| But they also do entirely plain units that last well with no
| 'extras' - their commercial units are also great and easy to
| repair. But most people want to spend as little as they can
| so avoid the commercial units.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is it - high quality stuff is often still made, but
| it's expensive and/or has other downsides that you really
| do need to be aware of.
|
| For example, commercial equipment is often bullet-proof and
| long-lived, but it can be louder than you'd want in a home
| kitchen. Commercial dish washers have no noise insulation,
| get hot, but can wash dishes so fast they can crack them
| from the temperature changes.
|
| Commercial ovens have no or minimal heat insulation, so
| when you fire them up you can really warm up a room fast,
| and they have to be installed away from flammable
| materials.
|
| And people need to be honest about it, too - whenever you
| buy an appliance new, write the purchase date in indelible
| ink or spray paint on the back of the unit, because I've
| had appliances I was sure "lasted barely more than the
| warranty" and then I realized I'd purchased it 15 years
| ago.
| usefulcat wrote:
| > Commercial ovens have no or minimal heat insulation
|
| This seems counter intuitive to me. Why would I not want
| more insulation in an oven that's going to be used a lot
| more? Seems like the cost of the insulation would be
| amortized more quickly than in a home kitchen, since a
| commercial oven is presumably being used a lot more?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The insulation in non-commercial units is mostly to do
| with fire-safety. In a home kitchen it is likely the unit
| will be installed with wood-ish cabinets immediately
| adjacent to it. This is very much less likely in a
| commercial kitchen.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Insulation distributes heat release over time, at the
| cost of temperature control. If its going to be used all
| the time, especially with multiple units, distributing
| release over time doesn't change much but the delay
| between first turning it on and full effect to the
| surroundings, and the impact on temperature control is
| still there.
|
| Insulation is only effective with intermittent use.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| No. If it was only effective with intermittent use then
| we wouldn't insulate water heaters as they're 24/7.
|
| Insulation slows heat flow and thus means the hot side
| rises to closer to the temperature of the heat source and
| thus there is less energy transfer.
| masklinn wrote:
| > If it was only effective with intermittent use then we
| wouldn't insulate water heaters as they're 24/7.
|
| Water heaters are not _running_ 24 /7.
|
| The entire point of water heater insulation is that you
| run them to heat up the water in the tank, then the water
| sits there at temperature, and when needed it has a fast
| response time (and also actually provides hot water as
| the heating loops generally don't have the heating
| capacity to bring the water up from ambient or sometimes
| just above freezing to sanitary at the flow rates users
| ask for).
| Qwertious wrote:
| >No. If it was only effective with intermittent use then
| we wouldn't insulate water heaters as they're 24/7.
|
| Hey, if your taps are emitting a stream of hot water 24/7
| then you should call a plumber. Expect your water bill to
| drop _massively_.
| vanviegen wrote:
| Yes, but no. Insulation helps maintain a temperature
| difference. Assuming the kitchen is not perfectly
| isolated itself, and probably even has at least some
| ventilation, if not airco, it will help keep the oven
| warm and the rest of the kitchen cool, even if it's being
| used 24x7.
| masklinn wrote:
| Possibly because you want very responsive temperature
| control, if the oven has a lot of insulation it's more
| efficient but it responds much more slowly to temperature
| decreases.
| amluto wrote:
| This should be straightforwardly solvable with an
| improved control algorithm.
|
| A well insulated oven cools much more slowly with the
| door closed, so a control algorithm can't recover as
| quickly if it overshoots the set temperature.
| masklinn wrote:
| It's not just a question of control algorithm, if have
| one dish you need high, and the next you need lower, you
| have not overshot anything but you need the oven to come
| down. No control algorithm will magic that out.
| Swizec wrote:
| > Why would I not want more insulation in an oven that's
| going to be used a lot more?
|
| Primarily different regulations. Everyone interacting
| with a commercial oven is a trained professional getting
| paid to be there and the space is designed to a certified
| standard. This means you can focus more on pure
| performance and less on liability stuff.
|
| And commercial equipment, because it needs to last long,
| is optimized for maintenance. I imagine insulation makes
| it harder to access and clean (or fix) the internals of
| an oven. Not to mention how often you'd have to change
| the insulation to keep your kitchen up to health
| standards.
| bombcar wrote:
| Insulation on a home oven is to protect the kids (by
| trying to keep the outside from being finger burning hot)
| and to let the heat slowly dissipate into the kitchen.
|
| A commercial oven runs all day when it is being used, so
| it will eventually get hot no matter how much insulation
| you have unless it's somehow cooled or can send waste
| heat elsewhere.
| amluto wrote:
| The outside of an oven running for a long time will tend
| toward a steady state temperature at which heat is lost
| from the surface to the room (by radiation, conduction,
| convection, etc) is the same as the rate at which heat is
| added to the surface (from loss through the walls).
| Increasing insulation will decrease steady state
| temperature, and keeping a safe exterior temperature
| matters even in a commercial kitchen for safety and for
| comfort (even if no one cares about the comfort of the
| cooks).
|
| One can also actively cool the exterior surface by
| forcing air through a gap in a double wall oven. Many
| residential ovens do this.
|
| As far as I know, the actual material difference with
| residential ovens is that most of them are mean to be
| installed in cabinets, which severely restricts the
| amount of heat that can be safely dissipated through the
| walls.
| bombcar wrote:
| Commercial kitchens that want insulation around the oven
| install it in the walls or whatever it's being mounted
| in.
|
| Houses aren't built for that.
|
| See https://deqonline.com/blog/post/7-reasons-not-to-use-
| a-comme... for some example issues that you might not be
| aware of if you blindly ran in with "commercial better".
|
| If you fully understand them (you worked as a line cook
| for awhile, etc) and compensate for them, it might be a
| fine option.
|
| If you need 500,000 BTU.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Every order you open the oven up twice or so. Insulation
| probably doesn't matter if the door is open 20% of the
| time.
| veave wrote:
| Surely high quality stuff is cheaper than it was 50 years
| ago when adjusted for inflation.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Except in many cases it's simply not available.
| bluGill wrote:
| Commerical dishwashers are better called dish
| sterilizers. Unlike home dishwashers they are not built
| to get dishes clean (other than what a minimal rinse
| does). You have to pre-wash everything if you want it to
| come clean.
| bombcar wrote:
| The key is a commercial dishwasher almost never sees "dry
| food" - the plates either go past a sprayer to get most
| everything off, or they went into a soaker.
|
| Whereas home dishwashers are designed to run all night
| slowly recirculating water and removing caked-on grime
| (with more or less success).
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I can't imagine even worse insulation than a normal oven.
| Whenever I open my broiler door and pull out the drawer I
| can see the kitchen floor getting the 500* blast straight
| on.
| bombcar wrote:
| Imagine that level of insulation on everything, including
| the door. Kids aren't under the oven and can't touch
| that, so it's often not insulated or insulated badly
| (which should be taken into consideration when designing
| a kitchen).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| You do not even have to use commercial units. Go to
| Costco.com or HomeDepot.com or Lowes.com or BestBuy.com and
| you can filter for fridges without unnecessary frills and
| see many options.
|
| There are at least 7 different simple top freezers at
| Costco, and at least 3 French door freezers without even
| water dispensers.
|
| Not sure what else people want, other than to complain.
| D13Fd wrote:
| Have you actually tried this? In my experience if you do
| it this way you just end up with the low- or ultra-low-
| end stuff that lacks those features, but is also of
| generally poor quality.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, I have, multiple times in the last 15 years. I
| usually buy LG, but GE/Whirlpool/Frigidaire have been
| fine for me too.
|
| I have 2 of these in my home and after 6 years, there is
| zero noise, zero complaints. Just have to vacuum behind
| it every now and then to make sure air flow is happening.
|
| http://lgeus.to/Y0PbYh
|
| https://www.lg.com/us/french-door-refrigerators
| secabeen wrote:
| Yep, helped a friend buy a $700 LG yesterday. No features
| beyond a freezer box and fridge box. No water dispenser,
| ice maker, no holes through the door, nothing. Just two
| boxes that get differently cold. I expect it'll last 10
| years+.
|
| And without any of those features, it has the most
| internal space too. All that add-on crap takes up space
| that could be used for food.
| troupe wrote:
| The thing that usually breaks on my refrigerators is the
| plastic shelves. They just don't seem designed to last
| more than 4 or 5 years at the most. I'm not sure how to
| filter for "has shelves that don't decompose when kept
| cool."
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I have never seen or heard of that happening. Are they
| being overloaded?
| secabeen wrote:
| Interesting, all the fridges I've seen have glass
| shelves, and usually metal framing/brackets. The drawers
| are plastic, and eventually do go, but replacements are
| available.
| zo1 wrote:
| I've never seen fridge plastic decompose. What are you
| doing to those materials that makes them do that? I've
| never in my entire life's existence seen plastic inside a
| fridge that has "decomposed". I've just seen them get
| grey/cloudy over time if they're clear-plastic, and maybe
| crack. Besides that, indestructible.
| justinlloyd wrote:
| Agreed on your points. Much like Samsung make domestic TVs
| and domestic fridges (and microwaves and toasters, and a
| bunch of other stuff), Samsung also makes their commercial
| line, which is, visually, almost identical, except that it
| will lack one or two features (no internet connectivity, no
| requirement to connect to WiFi so that your water filter
| works), or have a slightly less efficient motor, or metal
| blades on a fan that increase the energy consumption by
| 0.05% per year. And you can only buy those devices through
| dealers, and they cost about 50% to 150% more in price.
| devonbleak wrote:
| I used to think extended warranties were bullshit. Then I
| bought the Samsung fridge with the huge touchscreen and the
| water pump/ice maker.
| MisterTea wrote:
| I saw a Samsung floor model at Home Depot with a frozen
| screen and Android error message. "Stick a chip in it" needs
| to die a fast yet horrid and painful death.
| drcongo wrote:
| My Samsung fridge is the worst thing I've ever bought.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| Agree. Mine lasted 6 years. Replaced with a Whirlpool.
| Lowe's sales rep told us at the time that the Samsung's
| were great. I went back 6 years later and told him that we
| bought a Samsung from him 6 years ago when he told us 6
| years later not to buy a Samsung. Needless to say, he was
| apologetic.
|
| Now, my Bosch dishwasher has been solid. No issues.
| soco wrote:
| My 5 years old fancy double door Bosch refrigerator had
| every year the touchscreen replaced. That's 6
| touchscreens - first ones under warranty, latest out of
| pocket (and I learned to replace it myself). The bulk of
| it is still fine, but such details kinda ruin the
| experience. PS no I'm not hitting it, the warranty
| technician knew the problem.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| Lowe's sales rep said Bosche refrigerator's stink.
| Whirlpool I have seems to be OK for now (I have all
| Whirlpool other than dishwasher now in my house)
| usefulcat wrote:
| > Now, my Bosch dishwasher has been solid. No issues.
|
| Seconded, and also confirmed by an appliance repair tech
| when I asked him about his opinion of the reliability of
| our various kitchen appliances.
| pfdietz wrote:
| We've had very good experience with Bosch dishwashers.
| brewdad wrote:
| My only complaint with mine is that, since it doesn't
| have a heated drying cycle to conserve energy, dishes are
| sometimes still quite wet when it comes time to put them
| away.
|
| I've found using the recommended rinse agent and putting
| them away within an hour of the wash cycle finishing
| helps tremendously. Since the thing runs at only 41dB, I
| don't mind running it any time of day.
|
| EDIT: typos
| pfdietz wrote:
| Does yours pop the door open when it finishes? Mine does,
| which lets the dishes dry more after that happens.
| arethuza wrote:
| The Bosch dishwasher in our house lasted about 15 years
| and was fairly repairable - ultimately it got an
| electrical fault that I wasn't confident fixing so we got
| a new one and chose another Bosch.
| julian_t wrote:
| For us, it's Miele. Washer and dryer are >20 yrs old, and
| the tech who came to fix a leak said they'll keep going.
| Dishwasher is about 10 yrs old, also going good.
|
| The Panasonic microwave/combo ovens, though, last about 3
| years before expiring.
| FeteCommuniste wrote:
| Interesting. My Samsung TV will soon be 14 years old and
| still works perfectly. I wonder if there's a general
| degradation of their products or it's a kitchen appliance
| thing.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Samsung is an especially weird example because they
| always seem to be pendulum swinging between both poles.
| Some of their products some years use Tizen as the OS.
| Tizen is interesting and mostly rock solid, but has fewer
| aps. Some of their products some years use Android.
| Everyone knows what Android is, and it has tons of apps,
| but between Samsung's deep customizations and other
| factors, Android on Samsung products isn't always the
| best experience (less likely to be "rock solid", more
| questions about update support lifetimes, etc). Which
| products are which each year, from my consumer
| perspective, seems to be based on some sort of random
| number generator or other whims of weather in the
| executive suite that isn't visible from outside. (One
| visible factor, though, is the variable of how much money
| Google has thrown at them recently.)
| mholm wrote:
| The worst part is that sometimes less price conscious
| customers will also get tempted in, because they're the
| only ones trying to push fridge features forward. The
| 'beverage center' door with a 64oz pitcher that gets
| refilled on close, allowing you to quickly pour whatever
| you want, then stow it back in the door to be refilled, is
| the greatest feature I've ever experienced on a fridge. It
| just pains me that if I get the fridge, I know it'll only
| last a few years.
| pram wrote:
| Agreed, I have the automatic pitcher fridge and it's so
| convenient I wouldn't consider one without it now.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Samsung appliances are really bad in terms of reliability
| it seems. Every single dishwasher they make is seemingly
| designed to have a certain "dirty water" sensor replaced
| every couple of years. My father has installed like 5 of
| these things, and they all fail in the exact same way in
| the exact same time frame.
|
| But he doesn't care because he thinks they are really quiet
| (so what) and he often gets them cheap and "it's a cheap
| part and an easy fix" (for you it is)
| gok wrote:
| This is going to shock people, but appliance manufacturers in
| the 1950s also had shareholders.
| hcarvalhoalves wrote:
| Did shareholders had the same expectations regarding rate of
| return?
| Qwertious wrote:
| Over time, investors have become less _invested_ in the
| companies they invest into. It 's a cultural thing, it seems.
| Levitz wrote:
| It's also a consequence of constant R&D improvements.
|
| We can make appliances that last for 20 years or more, sure,
| but then when 20 years pass you have an appliance that is 20
| years old and doesn't have any of that new stuff that came out
| in the last 20 years.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| Making a fridge last 100 years seems like an R&D activity
| though. They can sell it as a subscription too.
| pikahumu wrote:
| And which of those things coming out in the last 20 years do
| people actually need? Wifi-enabled fridge? I'd rather have
| the features from that b/w clip.
| trwired wrote:
| Which is fine by me. I need a fridge to cool things down,
| oven to heat them up and TV to show moving pictures, all
| without access to wifi and other bells and whistles modern
| appliances come with. Just the basic stuff that those
| appliances could handle 20 years ago. More doesn't always
| translate to better.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > TV to show moving pictures, all without access to wifi
|
| You watch _network TV_ ??? In 2023 ???
| Arrath wrote:
| While I appreciate that joke (and likewise can't stand
| the ad loading of modern tv), OP may well use a stream
| box like a chromecast, roku, or firestick, or even a game
| console to do their watching through a plain dumb tv.
| maccard wrote:
| 20 years ago with fridges is a bit of a funny one because
| by then most had gotten rid of the nasty CFC's. But, even
| at that, it looks like today's fridges are _orders of
| magnitude_ more efficient to run than those from about
| 15-20 years ago.
|
| For an oven and hob, the basics haven't changed, but my
| previous flat had a $600 oven that was silent, leaked
| practically no heat, preheated in a couple of minutes and
| came with nest features like an auto switch off. My new
| home has a range from about 15 years ago that cost 3x that,
| takes 20 minutes to preheat, has massive cool spots in the
| oven, and is noisier than my dishwasher.
|
| For TV's, 20 years ago we were using CRT's to drive 480
| vertical lines for the most part. Nowadays, you can get a
| 1080p HDR led TV for $200 that used 1/3 of the power of the
| CRT.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > it looks like today's fridges are _orders of magnitude_
| more efficient to run than those from about 15-20 years
| ago
|
| 15-20 year old fridges are about 35% less energy
| efficient than the best modern fridges, not 100x. We just
| haven't made that much progress in refrigerants,
| compressors, nor insulation.
|
| It looks like very efficient fridges today use about
| 400kWh per year. Those are the best (not the average).
|
| In the late 90s, the overall _average_ (not best) figure
| was ~850 kWh /yr and from the early 2000s (20 years ago),
| it was ~550kWh/yr.
|
| A 15-20 year old average fridge is about 35% less energy
| efficient (550/400 - 1) than the best modern fridges.
| maccard wrote:
| > 15-20 year old fridges are about 35% less energy
| efficient than the best modern fridges, not 100x
|
| I apologise that you took orders of magnitude literally.
| I'll settle for an entire order of magnitude really. I
| think it's _way_ more than 35%, though.
|
| > It looks like very efficient fridges today use about
| 400kWh per year. Those are the best (not the average).
|
| Where did you get that number from? Here's [0] a $220
| fridge that advertises at 90 kWh. I found another that
| claims 61 kWh, but it's $1800 so I left it. 20 years ago
| is a very specific timeframe, if you go back _25_ years
| you 're also likely talking about removing a bunch of
| horriffic CFC's which were widespread at the time. I'm
| finding it hard to find numbers for that time frame
| though, the only ones I can find are early 90's claims of
| 1700+kWh/year.
|
| But yes, I concede, we have not had a 100x improvement in
| energy efficiency in 20 years. The entire rest of my post
| stands, and I think we've seen a 10x improvement in
| efficiency. At today's electricity price in the UK, the
| savings from a 550 kWh fridge to the one I linked above
| would pay for the fridge in a little over a year. Said
| fridge is under guarantee for 2 years in the EU/UK, so
| it's a _guaranteed_ cost saving over that time period.
|
| [0] https://ao.com/product/rl170d4bwe-hisense-fridge-
| white-80358...
| sokoloff wrote:
| I Googled "most efficient refrigerator 2023" and landed
| on https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/most-energy-efficient-
| refrig...
|
| I then Googled "refrigerator annual energy consumption
| 2000" and landed on https://blog.arcadia.com/much-
| electricity-refrigerator-uses/
|
| BTW, your link [0] is to a _mini-fridge (without a
| freezer section)_ , not a full-size fridge. It claims 132
| liter capacity, while a full-size fridge tends to be 550
| to 700 liters (4 to 5 times the size). If you're going to
| compare a mini-fridge to a full-size fridge/freezer in
| order to try to win an internet argument, enjoy your
| trophy.
|
| [0] - https://ao.com/product/rl170d4bwe-hisense-fridge-
| white-80358...
| maccard wrote:
| 132L isn't a "mini" fridge, it's an under counter fridge.
| 700L is... utterly enormous and I don't think I've ever
| seen a 700L fridge in real life. Most of the fridges I'm
| finding on AO are in the 1-200 kWh range, honestly
| dublin wrote:
| Utter Bullshit! Today's refrigerators are no more
| efficient than those from decades ago. In fact, the
| older, banned refrigerants are often _more_ efficient,
| since their refrigerants were optimally designed and
| selected for maximum performance /efficiency in the first
| place! (And engineers were much better then, too. Really.
| Plus, I assure you that Thermodynamics has not changed in
| the interim!)
|
| I'm _sure_ my 35 y.o. Freon refrigerator is pretty much
| identically efficient to a modern one. The biggest
| difference is that mine is still running beautifully
| halfway through its 4th decade, while all the latest
| Chinese-sh _t-tech refrigerators will be unfixably dead
| in about five years at the outside. People should
| consider_ that* environmental and efficiency advantage!
| schnable wrote:
| My house came with a Subzero Fridge from 1989. Works like a
| champ and has a great layout. The only feature I miss from
| the late model LG I had at my last house is on-door water and
| ice. The SZ has an interior ice maker that works great
| though. Hope it lasts another 30 years!
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Well, I'll be the cranky old man today - I just want a box
| that keeps my food cold enough not to hurt me. That's really
| all I need and I imagine all I will need 20 years from now.
| 3cats-in-a-coat wrote:
| You don't even want to tweet from your fridge? Dude.
| melx wrote:
| Or self order from that big e-commerce that does tax
| avoidance. You're missing out.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| You mean Xeet from your fridge?
| dh2022 wrote:
| (I read this as "exit from your fridge". I LOL'ed - what
| happened that you got inside the fridge to begin with???
| :))
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| I read "Xeet" as "shieet"
| callalex wrote:
| How else would you survive a direct blast from a nuclear
| bomb? (I am referencing the absolutely absurd scene from
| Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull)
| ilyt wrote:
| There is a level where you don't care about more
| improvements. Fridge is a box of cold stuff. I don't need
| much more than that.
|
| Sure it could be slightly more efficient but even 20 years
| old ones are _pretty_ efficient, and I 'd rather just slap an
| extra solar panel or two on the roof rather than replace
| whole fridge and junk the old one.
| LegitShady wrote:
| Sure but how can I code an ai bot that lives in your fridge
| and analyzes your shopping habits, and sells that to the
| highest bidder? Maybe with amazon grocery integration so
| that it sends your groceries before you even knew you
| needed them. And Microsoft Tay integration! Ask your fridge
| questions and have it answer, in a hilariously racist
| fashion! New Andrew Tate plugins sold as DLC.
| jxramos wrote:
| No thank you.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Fridge is a box of cold stuff. I don't need much more
| than that.
|
| The entire premise of TFA is essentially that you're wrong.
| Phrenzy wrote:
| I would rather not require the use of my FIDO key to
| obtain an ice bream sandwich.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > ice bream sandwich
|
| That amusing typo sounds absolutely disgusting.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| not really to do with keys etc.
|
| boxes with different humidity levels.
|
| shelves: slideout, adjustable height, rotating
|
| humidity control/air circulation
|
| lighting
|
| door panel-only opening (saves energy)
|
| utility of door-back shelf space
|
| It's a lot more than "a box full of cold stuff".
| random_savv wrote:
| When I did the math on replacing a 10-15 year old fridge, I
| was able to amortize the cost of the new fridge in 2.5
| years, from the energy savings.
| momirlan wrote:
| assuming the new one will last 2.5 years...
| williamcotton wrote:
| https://www.thisoldhouse.com/home-finances/reviews/best-
| refr...
|
| It looks like all of the major manufacturers have a
| "sealed system" warranty for five years:
|
| _A refrigerator's sealed system typically refers to the
| compressor, evaporator, condenser, dryer, and connection
| tubing. Most companies cover both parts and labor for
| this system for five years. Miele and KitchenAid extend
| this sealed system warranty for an extra five years. Note
| that years six through 10 cover parts only._
| maccard wrote:
| Barring something going horribly wrong, even the cheapest
| of cheap household appliances will last that, and more.
| Most major retailers offer longer retailer warranties
| than that. And, for an absolute bottom of the feature set
| appliance, a repair shop still exists
| momirlan wrote:
| maybe in your universe. i lost count of appliances that
| failed after 1 year, where the vendor is asking for all
| sorts of pictures and then declares "it's not covered by
| warranty". repairing such item comes from own pocket, and
| -if possible - it's usually comparable to paying for it
| again
| maccard wrote:
| For something like a fridge, vacuum, dishwasher, washing
| machine they're all lasting substantially more than a
| year, even at the bottom of the market. If you're talking
| about a PS20 blender then... yeah, I guess?
| goodpoint wrote:
| With appliances lasting <5 years we are way below the sweet
| spot.
| amluto wrote:
| > new stuff that came out in the last 20 years.
|
| There isn't really that much of this. Let's consider an oven:
|
| Good temperature control: accurate, precise and reliable
| temperature sensors (e.g. thermocouples) have been around for
| a long time, as have switching devices that are plenty high
| speed to make an excellent oven. PID control would be easy
| with 1980 technology or current technology. Ovens with good
| temperature control are nonetheless rare.
|
| Forced convection (aka a fan): no new technology required.
| And they've been around for years.
|
| Direct outdoor exhaust: this _was_ available in the 80s and
| 90s. Not sure where it went.
|
| Good insulation: nothing fancy here. Mineral wool and
| fiberglass have been around for a long time. Even silicone
| rubber gaskets that tolerate oven temperature are not
| particularly new.
|
| Touch screens: most of them are still worse than the old
| analogue controls.
|
| Steam with good controls: this is pretty new and _very_ rare.
|
| I suspect most of what's going on is that fancy appliance
| makers try to keep BOM cost _very_ low and that helps and
| whistles sell appliances. (Compare a $1500 induction cooktop
| to a $7k fancy brand gas cooktop. I suspect the BOM cost on
| the induction unit is rather higher. The gas unit has some
| cheap brass or bronze castings (I think I read somewhere that
| those burners cost under $20), a potentially shiny piece of
| stainless steel sheet, and _really cheap_ controls. The
| obvious safety mechanism to turn off the gas if the burner
| isn't lit? Nonexistent. The only thing $7k buys you is a nice
| brand name and maybe slightly more solid construction than a
| much cheaper unit.)
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > The only thing $7k buys you is a nice brand name and
| maybe slightly more solid construction than a much cheaper
| unit.)
|
| Typically you also get: more BTUs, better simmer control,
| easier repairability (due to construction design).
|
| I'm not arguing it's worth the money (which is why I got my
| $15k stove from craigslist for $2k :)
| amluto wrote:
| more BTU: BTU on a gas stove is ridiculous -- they are so
| lossy that the flame pattern is a bigger deal.
|
| better simmer control: even a lot of expensive gas stoves
| have fairly bad simmer
|
| repairability: I regrettably own a fancy Thermador stove
| that is hard to repair -- extracting the crappy ignition
| units requires a special tool that has been discontinued.
|
| If you want excellent temperature control, get a Breville
| Control Freak. It outperforms everything else (generally
| by far), it's offensively expensive at $1500, and it's
| also cheap at $1500 if you think of it as _the best_
| stove that just happens to have only one burner.
|
| You'll also discover that 1800W (~6100 BTU/hr) is about
| right for most purposes with pans up to 12-14" _at near
| 100% efficiency_. You _do not want_ 15000 BTU /hr
| delivered to your pan for any purpose other than boiling
| water or maybe reducing a big stock if you are stirring
| actively.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > You do not want 15000 BTU/hr delivered to your pan for
| any purpose other than boiling water
|
| Wok afficionados may differ with you here. I get by on
| 10k BTU/hr.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Three things that hardly matter for thousands. You can
| still boil water and simmer with the cheap stove. My
| parents stove is probably well over two decades old and
| never needed a repair for anything. I imagine a techician
| will have an easier time repairing a basic gas range
| where all the parts are generic compared to getting the
| miele certified mechanic out or whatever.
| rsynnott wrote:
| People who are just boiling water and simmering probably
| aren't buying the expensive stove, tho.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Yeah, ovens last more or less forever, and haven't had
| significant efficiency gains in a long time. They're
| probably the thing you're least likely to want to replace.
| There's often far more of an incentive with, say, fridges;
| if you have a 20 year old one, the replacement will likely
| pay for itself in a few years in power savings.
|
| > The obvious safety mechanism to turn off the gas if the
| burner isn't lit? Nonexistent.
|
| ... Wait, surely these are mandatory ~everywhere by now?
|
| EDIT: Huh. Apparently they are _not_ required in the US
| (except maybe in apartment buildings) and are not common
| there. Weird; they're not very expensive.
|
| Maybe it's an American Rugged Individualism thing. While I
| find the flame failure devices in my gas stove extremely
| irritating (they're particularly conservative, and won't
| reliably acknowledge that there's a flame until about 5
| seconds after it's lit) I recognise that they are for my
| own good; this is probably very European thinking, though
| :)
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'm trying to think how I would reliably prove flame in a
| way that would resistant to annoying false negatives in
| the face of a very low simmer. (Somewhat ironically, this
| is probably the most important setting for which you'd
| need it. I'm not in any real danger of having a full-bore
| gas burner go out. I am in danger of having the lowest
| possible simmer blow out undetected.)
|
| Over a long enough period of time, a sufficiently
| sensitive raw temperature sensor is probably good enough,
| but that's not likely to be cheap nor reliable/long-
| lasting.
| amluto wrote:
| Wow. I have literally never seen a flame failure device
| on a residential stove in the US.
|
| I've seen them on gas fired ovens with pilot lights.
| (Don't get a gas fired oven with a pilot light. As far as
| I can tell, they have no redeeming features unless you
| like the broiler hidden under some of them. They make for
| pretty bad ovens, and they suck for indoor air quality.)
| srgpqt wrote:
| "Improvements". Sure, sure.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I mean, in general, things we buy today are a lot more
| "affordable" while being lower quality.
|
| Googling says the average cost of a refrigerator in 1950 was
| $250 to $400 (for 10 cubic feet -- a fridge today is 20 to 30
| ft^3), which would be $3K to $5K in 2023 dollars.
|
| If you pay $3K to $5K for a fridge today (for a fridge 2-3x as
| big as the 1950 fridge), do you get a better longer-lasting
| one? I'm not sure.
| sameerds wrote:
| To use a very imprecise comparison, the fridge that my
| parents purchased way back when, cost them three months of
| savings, while the fridge that I purchased would cost half a
| month's savings for a similar job.
| picadores wrote:
| With the service per lifetime measurment stick, its still
| increddibly cheap. We are definatly poorer if you take the
| Terry Pratchet boot economics yardstick.
| missedthecue wrote:
| I paid $400 for my current fridge, new. It's 320 liters which
| is 11 cubic feet. That's actually insane how manufacturing
| and technological innovation has kept the price of fridges at
| the same price as they were in 1950, _even after inflation!_
| [deleted]
| SoftTalker wrote:
| A basic, white, 18-20 cu ft refrigerator/freezer can still be
| purchased new for under $400 in 2023 dollars. In the 1950s, a
| TV or refrigerator was a major purchase for most families.
| Therefore there was more concern over quality of materials,
| repairability, and longevity.
|
| Today, a TV is basically a throwaway item. Nobody really
| repairs them, if you have a problem under warranty you
| exchange it, or if it's out of warranty you replace it.
| Refrigerators, laundry machines, are not far behind.
|
| If you wanted a repairable appliance built solidly enough to
| last a couple of decades, you'd be paying the inflation-
| adjusted 1950s price. Instead you're paying much less, for
| something that you will probably want to replace anyway due
| to changing standards, changing styles, better efficency,
| more features, etc. (Who would still be interested in using
| their 19" CRT television in a heavy wood console cabinet in
| 2023?)
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| It doesn't helps what there is only the panel itself,
| circuit board and power cord, basically.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| There's still some repairable stuff in most
| refrigerators.
|
| I have a GE side-by-side refrigerator that's probably 10
| years old. It still works, at least as a
| refrigerator/freezer. The icemaker and water dispenser
| never worked well and don't work at all now, and at one
| point started leaking which ruined the laminate floor in
| the hallway behind the kitchen before it was noticed.
|
| I have replaced the control circuit board, and the
| freezer defrost heating element. These parts are
| available and pretty easy to install if you are even
| slightly skilled as a home handyman, and in the time I've
| owned it, the need for these repairs doesn't seem
| unreasonable. The board likely got fried due to a power
| surge in a thunderstorm, a reminder that most modern
| appliances should get power through a surge supressor.
| The defrost heater failure is typical of any frost-free
| freezer.
|
| I think putting water and icemaker in the freezer is a
| mistake and won't buy another one like that. If you need
| more ice than you can make with ice trays, get a
| standalone ice maker.
| masklinn wrote:
| > If you pay $3K to $5K for a fridge today (for a fridge 2-3x
| as big as the 1950 fridge), do you get a better longer-
| lasting one? I'm not sure.
|
| One of the difficulties is it's become very hard to know if
| an item is more expensive because:
|
| - it's better quality
|
| - it's full of bullshit
|
| - it's marketing
|
| However 3-5k for a fridge is well into "professional kitchen
| commercial refrigerator / refrigerated cabinet" range. At
| that price you can get a triple glass-door adjustable shelves
| wheeled model e.g. https://www.saro-
| kitchenequipment.com/refrigerators-commerci...
| mrob wrote:
| Professional appliances aren't strictly better, because
| they're rarely designed to be quiet. Your example:
|
| >Sound pressure level: approximately 65 dB [presumably dBA]
|
| That's much louder than domestic fridges. I would find it
| unacceptably annoying.
| maccard wrote:
| You don't need to go to anywhere near that price to get
| before you hit a sweet spot. For like $600 including tax
| one of the biggest retailers in the UK will sell you the
| most energy efficient fridge on the market with a 5 year
| guarantee. Like most products, you're reaching diminishing
| returns at a certain point and that seems to be it as far
| as I can tell.
| ska wrote:
| Isn't the point of the OP that this "top of the line"
| fridge has poor ergonomics and features relative to the
| 70 year old one?
|
| If true, that is at least interesting.
| klyrs wrote:
| Frankly, a 5 year guarantee is pathetic. Appliances
| lasting 25 years was once unremarkable.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Without proof of 25 year warranties, I call bullshit.
|
| If a seller had a product good enough to offer a 25 year
| warranty, and they could sell it for 5x cheaper than a
| product with a 5 year warranty, they would not have
| stopped selling it, because people would not have stopped
| buying it.
| potta_coffee wrote:
| It's not bullshit, my parents had the same fridge from
| when I was born until I graduated from college.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The claim was not that your parents' fridge lasted 25
| years, it was that appliances in general lasted 25 years.
|
| If that was true, manufacturers would have been
| advertising 25, or least 10, 15, 20 year warranties to
| win customers.
|
| Nobody putting their money where their mouth is is a
| better signal than anecdotal data.
| potta_coffee wrote:
| I understand the claim. I know my experience is anecdotal
| but I think it's common enough that many people can
| relate. I don't really need empirical evidence for this
| one.
|
| I also think it's common sense that companies go out of
| business when there's no repeat buyers because their
| products last a lifetime.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >I also think it's common sense that companies go out of
| business when there's no repeat buyers because their
| products last a lifetime.
|
| I had not considered this, but I guess it would be a
| deterrent to offering long warranties.
| sokoloff wrote:
| My kitchen was remodeled (by the previous owners) in
| 1993. All of the appliances, except for the dishwasher,
| have not been replaced by us in 16 years of ownership and
| I believe they all date back to the 1993 remodel (based
| on serial numbers and general condition when we bought
| the place).
|
| In that time, I've replaced the dishwasher in 2014, a
| spring on the door of the dishwasher in 2022, and a
| heating element in the defrost circuit of the 1993
| fridge. That's an oven, a cooktop, a fridge, a trash
| compactor, and a garbage disposal that all have 30 years
| of service, with only the dishwasher having failed and
| two repairs. Their older fridge in the basement is still
| chugging along as well. That's 5/7 perfect, 1/7 with one
| minor repair, and 1/7 failed inside of 30 years. My
| parents built their place in 1999; of the kitchen
| appliances, only the microwave has been repaired. Their
| place before that, built in 1974, only the dishwasher
| replaced between 1974 and 1998 when they moved.
|
| My conclusion is that dishwashers sucked and still suck,
| but that old appliances generally chug along for decades.
| ticviking wrote:
| But the claim you called BS wasn't that they had 25 year
| warranties, just that they last 25 years.
|
| As rule my Grandparents had stuff that was out of
| warranty, but having repairs done was cheaper than
| replacement. By my parents time things got replaced every
| 5-10 years.
| [deleted]
| Qwertious wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
| lb1lf wrote:
| I'll recycle a comment I made in another thread a few years
| 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 2023, I have to work five hours for a freezer (after
| taxes.)
|
| (2,000kr is slightly less than US$200)
| thomasahle wrote:
| 2,000kr is $300. If you earn that in five hours, you make
| around $10,000/month after taxes. So more than double the
| median of $4,632/month. But okay, even at that median, I
| guess it's just two days of work.
|
| Are you sure you had to work 5 months for a freezer at
| median work in 1950? Seems nobody would buy them then.
| tomtom1337 wrote:
| Some context - I'm assuming that OP is Norwegian:
|
| 2000 Norwegian kr (NOK) = 198 USD
|
| 2000 Swedish kr (SEK) = 191 USD
|
| 2000 Danish kr (DKK) = 296 USD
|
| 2000 Icelandic kr (ISK) = 15 USD
| rsynnott wrote:
| After tax, in many places you have to work a _decade_ at
| the median wage for a house (or in some places
| considerably more). And yet people buy those.
|
| Domestic appliances really have gotten dramatically
| cheaper relative to earning power, pretty much
| everywhere. Have a look at some old prices and compare to
| median wages; it's really fairly dramatic for most stuff.
| lb1lf wrote:
| I am Norwegian, our kroner are somewhat less sought after
| than the Danish krone.
|
| As for the cost in 1950, I have no idea except what my
| grandmother told me - but the 7,000kr average annual pay
| I looked up at the bureau of statistics.
|
| My paternal grandmother, though, upon hearing my maternal
| grandmother had a freezer already in 1950, was green with
| envy - they had not got one until the end of that decade.
|
| I guess being an early adopter came at a price back then,
| too.
| lb1lf wrote:
| I found this [0] story (In Norwegian only, use your
| translation service of choice), where it is observed that
| a freezer cost 'several months' wages' for a worker, and
| that adoption didn't take off until down payment options
| were introduced in the early sixties.
|
| Interestingly, I found another couple of historical
| prices on consumer electronics:
|
| A 21" black-and-white TV set in 1960: NOK 2,200 (two
| months' gross wages)
|
| Tandberg 1/4" reel-to-reel tape deck (Also 1960): NOK 880
| (Just shy of a month's wages)
|
| 'Cheap' 26" colour TV, 1993: Three weeks' wages
|
| VHS recorder, also 1993: Another three weeks' wages.
|
| Sony Walkman, also 1993: A week and a half of wages.
|
| It is ridiculous how prices have come down in later
| decades.
|
| [0] https://forskning.no/forbruk-hus-og-hjem-moderne-
| historie/dy...
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Is there really a correlation between price and durability in
| appliances?
| rsynnott wrote:
| Yes. It's far from perfect, of course, but there are high-
| end appliance manufacturers who do make very reliable
| appliances.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| But aren't their also mid-end appliance manufacturers
| that make very reliable appliances?
|
| Who are the high-end ones that are really that much more
| reliable??
| bluGill wrote:
| There is a curve. High end appliances don't have enough
| volume to shake out all the problems and fix them in the
| next design. Mid range does.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Possibly we're thinking of different degrees of high-end.
| I'm thinking Miele and similar; definitely very
| expensive, but relatively high volume. There's certainly
| a tier above who make stoves that cost more than a car,
| and your concern would certainly apply there.
| [deleted]
| dragontamer wrote:
| Refrigerators might be a bad example because we got rid of
| highly effective refrigerants on purpose to patch a hole in
| the ozone layer.
|
| Or perhaps more accurately, to stop poking a giant hole in
| the ozone layer.
| yellowapple wrote:
| None of the features in that ad missing from modern
| refrigerators have much to do with the refrigerants,
| though.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Today's refrigerators are much more efficient.
| indymike wrote:
| Old lock handle fridges are surprisingly efficient. I
| have a 1949 Hotpoint and a 2022 LG. They both draw about
| the same amount of power when running, the difference is
| the Hotpoint runs less because it has four inches of
| insulation and a lock handle that seals much better than
| the drawer on the LG freezer. The only complaint with the
| Hotpoint is that it stays around 32.5degF which is too
| cold for veggies, but fantastic for beer.
| pixl97 wrote:
| And a lock handle that kills your kid in an hour or your
| money back.
| skyyler wrote:
| Simply do not have children.
|
| Issue closed.
| troupe wrote:
| My refrigerator does just fine keeping things cold. The
| plastics shelves just decompose. My guess is that if they
| get a warranty claim based on a broken shelf they can just
| send one out easily. They make the things that will be hard
| to fix (compressor, etc.) so they last long enough to get
| through the warranty period.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I don't think freon fridges were inherently mechanically
| any more reliable than fridges using modern refrigerants.
| If anything slightly less so all else being equal, I'd have
| thought.
| dublin wrote:
| _ALL_ older appliances were way more reliable than any
| you can buy today. I 'm just old enough that all our
| appliances are from the 1980s, plus a huge chest freezer
| from the 60s or 70s bought secondhand on Craigslist for
| $45. They are simple, reliable, faster, and work better
| than their modern counterparts. Our refrigerator, bought
| in 1989, has never had any problem at all.
|
| They can be easily fixed, and parts are still available -
| unlike my Mom's 5-8 year-old Samsung and LG appliances,
| which will have to be thrown away and replaced soon,
| because parts are NOT available. As for efficiency -
| they're not really much less efficient than new ones,
| especially when you figure that each of them has
| outlasted a half-dozen or more modern appliances.
|
| When the washing machine tub cracked a couple of years
| ago, I asked the local parts shop if it was worth getting
| our old Kenmore(Whirlpool) machine fixed, and when he
| found out it was from 1987, the manager said, "Don't
| _ever_ get rid of it! You can 't buy anything made that
| well today at any price!" So I spent $80 on a new tub
| (plus $75 for labor, since installing it is a pain).
| That's one of only two major repairs it's ever needed (I
| swapped out the synchronous clock driven cycle controller
| myself 15 years ago) - it still runs just like it did
| when new.
|
| It's certainly possible that all my appliances could
| outlive _me_...
| bluGill wrote:
| While old appliances have good features, LG and Samsung
| have earned a reputation of being bad. Whirlpool and GE
| still make some good stuff and they still sell parts. The
| reason you keep the old washer is the new versions
| legally cannot use as much water, and so they don't clean
| as well.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Oh you can buy the old wasteful washers if you still want
| them. They just don't got any EnergyStar ratings (in
| fact, people have been shopping around for "lack of
| EnergyStar" to find those old wasteful washers).
|
| But "they don't clean as well" is a bit of a myth. More
| water requires more soap, and as it turns out, shuffling
| clothes around with *proportionally more soap* and *less
| water* leads to better cleanliness for the vast majority
| of stains.
|
| ------------
|
| Think about it: if my washer only uses 1 gallon of water,
| but yours uses 5 gallons of water, your soap is 5x less
| effective than my same soap.
|
| Its not the "water" that cleans, its the soap after all.
| With one exception: caked on mud prefers water over all
| other solvents.
|
| But with regards to blood, sweat, grapes, tomatoes, and
| "typical" stains, its not the "water" that does anything.
| Its the soap. See ConsumerReports.org testing (ketchup
| tests and whatnot), as well as efficiency numbers that
| they've tested.
| bluGill wrote:
| Water is called the "universal solvent" for a reason. We
| use soap for the exceptions, but water still does the
| bulk of the removal of things you don't want (dirt,
| salt), while soap handles the rest (generally oil based
| stains)
| dragontamer wrote:
| Except the #1 thing you are washing off is the natural
| oils from human skin and sweat.
|
| And #2 and #3 are the oils in food (chocolate, grease,
| wine, and other food products) and then the oils from
| grass / outdoors.
|
| Literally the only thing that water helps with is soil /
| dirt. Outside of that, the washing machine should be
| designed to use the minimum amount of water needed to
| activate the soap, the actual cleaner.
| Naijoko wrote:
| its the mix of water and soap. There is a fix amount of
| soap per liter water and kg of clothes. so its both
| vel0city wrote:
| My family had a bunch of 80's appliances. They were
| terrible feature-wise like the washer would eat my
| clothes, the dryer was practically either stupid hot or
| practically no heat, and the fridge didn't have any
| defrost functionality nor water features. They broke down
| or were otherwise replaced in the 90s. They were replaced
| with units with far more features and were good until the
| 2020s, surviving a few moves. A few even got sold in the
| end as needs changed.
|
| My current kitchen has a microwave that's from the early
| 2000s, it works fine and has exceptional even heating and
| top notch auto sensor modes. The 1980s one we had was a
| total hunk of junk that constantly had failures, wasn't
| as powerful, didn't have any sensor cooking modes, and
| performed very poorly at cooking evenly. The other
| microwave from the 90s ate fuses for breakfast and had
| massively unreliable sensor cooking modes.
|
| So for me, practically all my newer appliances are _way_
| better than the old ones and have still often lasted
| >10yrs. Anecdotes are anecdotes.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > ALL older appliances were way more reliable than any
| you can buy today.
|
| Sure, if you only consider all the older appliances that
| have survived this long.
| dragontamer wrote:
| I had an old chest freezer from the 80s.
|
| You had to manually defrost it for it to keep working.
| Modern ones have automatic defrosters and other such
| features.
|
| Yes, the old one "kept working", but at worse-and-worse
| reliability as the frost built up, until you manually
| removed everything from the freezer and ran a proper
| defrost cycle (aka: turn it off, wait for everything to
| melt, sponge out the water).
|
| I think I'll stick with my "less reliable" heater-inside-
| a-freezer with an escape hole to automatically siphon +
| pump the water out. More moving parts means less
| reliability, but these features are absolutely worth the
| loss in reliability.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| $4K will get you a nice solid-state (thermoelectric Peltier-
| effect refrigerant-free) research-grade fridge from Fischer
| Scientific, only 5.5 cubic feet though. Five-year warranty.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Peltier is very inefficient cooling. Nice for reliability
| and lack of vibration, not nice for your electric bill.
| api wrote:
| They're only more affordable if you don't amortize the cost
| over a long period of time. You either buy high quality
| _once_ or buy low quality multiple times.
|
| I've found that you usually have to go to high-end brands
| and/or "commercial grade" to get quality anything in the
| appliance space. A decent heuristic is also where it's made.
| For high-end brands some have certain models made in places
| like the USA and Germany and others made in China. The ones
| not made in China are usually the good models that will last.
|
| Things like Wifi and _especially_ anything with a 'cloud'
| component are massive anti-features that should be avoided.
| Not only are these things privacy problems or ways for them
| to push ads at you, but they're also often indicative of
| cheap gimmick-encrusted crap.
| dublin wrote:
| There is no product from China that I can name that is
| viewed as "quality" or "reliable" There is a reason that
| "Chinese shit" has effectively become a single word - it's
| a well-earned association.
|
| And despite being a leading IoT innovator for decades,
| myself (I designed and manufactured the world's first
| embedded web-enabled wireless and PoE sensors), there is
| almost _nothing_ useful in having WiFi /Net-connected
| appliances, especially if they require an app or cloud
| services of any kind. (Seriously, what kind of state do you
| really care about even for monitoring, much less control,
| in your _appliances_? Unless you 're a wack job, pretty
| much zero...)
| api wrote:
| China makes some quality electronics, heavy industrial
| products, etc.
|
| The problem isn't China intrinsically but the fact that a
| lot of companies in the US and EU outsource to China
| purely to save money. That's usually done on lower-end
| models or when pivoting from a quality product to a low-
| quality product sold on marketing.
|
| Apple makes quality stuff in China because they're trying
| to make quality stuff. They work closely with their
| Chinese manufacturers. Of course they're also trying to
| move some things away from China but that's for
| geopolitical diversification reasons not quality reasons.
| bluGill wrote:
| "back in my day kid"... Japan and Taiwan used to have a
| well earned reputation for being the source of cheap
| junk. They both have cleaned up and now deserve a
| reputation of quality. Only time will tell if China does
| better in the future (they have proven they can make
| quality, but they still are the source of cheap junk
| overall). Someone else may take over as the source of
| cheap junk next.
| callalex wrote:
| Ever heard of iPhones? MacBook Pros?
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Nowadays it's difficult to just pay premium and trust things
| to last for decades. A more likely event is that you pay
| premium, get more features, and the appliance breaks down if
| one of which breaks.
| lopis wrote:
| Specially since companies are moving to selling you the
| service of repairs. It's well know that fridges with water
| coolers and ice makers are very prone to breaking. I like
| the features in the video though, as those are just fancy
| shelves that are unlikely to break. Nowadays, most fridge
| special features come in the form of complex electronics,
| IoT and other tech that is likely to break within a couple
| years.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Yup what I really need is a sturdy, large volume fridge
| with basic functionalities and last for decades. I don't
| need ice makers or a touchscreen that can play Quake on.
|
| On the other side, I'm really itchy to get into IoT
| security if I had more time. I'm sure security is not the
| first concern of fridge makers (or whatever "modernized"
| appliances) so it might not be difficult for an amateur
| to break into them.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| And the real kicker: It cannot be fixed. I DGAF if my
| expensive appliance breaks, but I can buy a ten dollar part
| and get it running again by the end of the week (maybe less
| for fridges)
| jancsika wrote:
| The best low-end Frigidaire you can get today is around $750.
|
| For $5k you could buy 6.7 of them.
|
| Lowe's extended warranty appears to be 5 years, so I'm
| guessing these things are designed to last 6 years.
|
| 6 * 6.7 = 40.2 years.
|
| My own estimation is that a $5k fridge today will last
| perhaps 10. And most of that money is going toward smart
| features that add complexity, which adds to the risk of
| having to pay for repairs. And it's not like those companies
| stop using cheapo plastic and styrofoam in their more
| expensive fridges.
|
| Still, I'd like to know how much it would cost per year in
| electricity to run one of the old models like in the ad.
| dublin wrote:
| Not as much as you think - the people selling them want you
| to think the old ones were awful and need replacing, but
| they were designed for both reasonable efficiency and
| decades-long life. (You really need to factor in a literal
| 6-10x lifespan difference into efficiency and environmental
| impact figures, too...)
|
| I have a large 60s/70s vintage chest freezer I bought on
| Craigslist a few years ago. I worried that it was power-
| hungry, so I got a Kill-A-Watt and monitored it. I don't
| remember the exact figures I came up with, but it was
| pretty negligible: Even in my non air conditioned (but
| attached) garage in Austin (with the highest electric rates
| in the state, by far), it costs me only about a dollar a
| month to run. So we're saving a ton of money by being able
| to buy and store as much frozen food as we want, at a cost
| of $45 up front to buy the freezer, plus a buck a month to
| run it - that's a deal to me.
|
| All appliances, back when they were made here in the USA,
| lasted for decades. I have a cousin who had a (admitttedly
| expensive at the time) KitchenAid dishwasher from circa
| 1960! (In very cool copper color!) It still ran perfectly
| when she sold her ranch house several years ago.
| secabeen wrote:
| Chest freezers are a little special, as they don't need
| much actual cooling power if the insulation is functional
| and they aren't opened. Vertical freezers and fridges
| lose all their cold air when opened, chests don't.
| jancsika wrote:
| > it costs me only about a dollar a month to run
|
| The low end Frigidaires are estimated at $56 a year,
| perhaps $8 less per year for an Energy Star one.
|
| I don't know anything about chest freezers, but there's
| no way a general purpose 1960s/70s fridge that one opens
| multiple times a day gets anything close to that.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Chest freezers are automatically a lot more efficient.
| The cold air tends to stay in them when opened, unlike
| upright models.
| hobo_in_library wrote:
| > You really need to factor in a literal 6-10x lifespan
| difference into efficiency and environmental impact
| figures, too...
|
| I would love to see energy efficiency regulations take
| the item's expected lifespan into consideration instead
| of being a mere "energy per hour" measurement.
|
| One simple/naive way to do it would be to divide (energy
| per hour) by the number of years on the warranty. Your
| warranty is for twice as long as the other guy? Then your
| device can use 2x the energy.
|
| Obv, this would require the warranty to be a "full"
| warranty, and not something manufacturers can too easily
| weasel out of.
| xbkingx wrote:
| I would love that, too, but it's not possible today.
| Everyone would offer 25 year warranties, close up shop in
| 5 years, and reopen as a new subsidy or company.
|
| The only way I see it working is to hold some large
| portion of the revenue in a trust and relinquish it to
| the company over the warrantied lifespan. The company
| would have to operate at a loss for a while to books
| those reserves, so there would have top be something like
| a zero interest government loan to cover the cost, which
| can't be escaped through bankruptcy.
|
| Or maybe a contract like the shitty cell phone plans in
| the US. Buyer agrees to pay for the full price of the
| appliance over the warrantied lifetime in installments.
| If you want to sell it or trade it in early, you either
| have to finish off the payment or transfer the contract.
| The company would have to service the product (within
| reason), or the contract is voided, releasing the buyer
| from payment obligations. Again, this system can be
| easily gamed, too, in today's market, but I just can't
| imagine a scenario that doesn't require a major paradigm
| shift.
|
| I do a decent amount of 3d printing and I cannot count
| the number of random letter Amazon brands for filament
| that have popped up over the last year. Most are simply
| rebranded waste from larger manufacturers. Once the
| product gets below 3.5 stars, the brand disappears and a
| suspiciously similar new brand pops up with the same
| spool design and 20 5-star reviews overnight.
| magicalist wrote:
| I mean, it's a cooler packed with a bunch of frozen
| stuff. Of course it's cheap to maintain its cool, that's
| why it's designed the way it was.
|
| > _in Austin (with the highest electric rates in the
| state, by far)_
|
| This is tangential to your point, but this isn't remotely
| true
| kozzz wrote:
| The failure mode for pre-80s compressors was to continue heating
| up until the windings short out.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| It's sad that when I see things like this I think "wow all I see
| is more shit to break"
| rascul wrote:
| A lot of those features are available in today's fridges. Also,
| they use less power today. And you really don't have to get one
| with wifi and a touchscreen.
| Meph504 wrote:
| this is true but the build quality of the appliances today are
| unquestionably worse, I as a side job in my youth did a lot of
| appliance maint/repair. And now working on my modern high end
| appliances it just makes me sad. plastic gearing, metal housing
| with so little ferrous metal magnets have trouble sticking to
| them. compressors made of such thin material its a wonder they
| ever survive the pressure they are under for 10 years.
|
| Washing machines whose outer clading is the only thing that
| holds it together, so they strongly flex as they run, wearing
| the barrings and belts out.
|
| the water sensing tech that is required by law is built with so
| many easy to fail parts that it probably has caused more waste
| than has ever saved water.
| faitswulff wrote:
| I just really want that vegetable box. Any recommendations?
| nimajneb wrote:
| You could get a clear plastic shallow bin with relevant
| dimensions to fit on a shelf in your fridge. Then you can
| take it out and put it back as needed. I just use the
| vegetable drawer in my fridge though.
| jxramos wrote:
| OXO Good Grips GreenSaver Produce Keeper is a pretty good lil
| product.
| bombcar wrote:
| The vegetable box on mine makes things last a long time with
| a filter for ethylene gas, perhaps something like these could
| help: https://www.amazon.com/ethylene-gas-absorber-fridge/
| Phrenzy wrote:
| How will that help? Does the dog inhale the ethylene gas?
| bombcar wrote:
| Stupid amazon will give you URLs that then stop working,
| maybe this will work:
| https://www.amazon.com/s?k=ethylene+gas
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| All of those features you say?
| Tagbert wrote:
| My fridge has equivalent to most of those features. It doesn't
| have an ice ejector but it does make its own ice. the only
| feature mine doesn't have is the box for chopped vegetables. I
| don't think I would use that anyway.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Yeah but I'd bet the one we see in the video is probably still
| working, while I'm on my third fridge in 20 years. I think that
| negates any energy efficiency gains
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Maybe you should look at why your fridges keep dying instead
| of assuming it's the norm.
|
| I've got a fridge that uses 1Kwhr/day whihc places it near
| the bottom of the current energy start guidelines and it's
| about 15 years old.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Why doesn't everyone have old fridges then? You only buy new
| when the old one breaks down right? But if the old ones were
| so sturdy why were they all replaced?
|
| I expect there's some survivorship bias at play here.
| MikusR wrote:
| Because they leak coolant. And turns out the old coolants
| destroy the ozone layer.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > You only buy new when the old one breaks down right?
|
| Are you kidding? You must not live in the US.
|
| People buy new phones despite the old one working. My phone
| is almost 6 years old. No one I know keeps phones around
| that long. Becoming rare to see anyone keep one for even 4
| years.
|
| I lived on cheap, used furniture. There's a _glut_ of it,
| because people buy new furniture despite their old ones
| being just fine.[1]
|
| People often change their cars even though they're not even
| 10 years old.
|
| They change their shirts even though the old ones are not
| worn out.
|
| And so on. There are not that many things people keep till
| they break down.
|
| [1] They cost about 10% of a new one. Heck, do this
| experiment: Buy an expensive table/bed. Don't even assemble
| it. Immediately put it on the used market. Note how know
| one will buy it for even half the price. I have one that I
| can't sell for 20% of the price. Unless it's some fad item
| or office chair.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| ... Why do you think this is going to be special to the
| US?
|
| Do you think other cultures don't have consumerism? (they
| do). Or maybe other countries have old stuff more often?
|
| I like cheap, used furniture. But I also understand that
| furniture wears out. I've had legs break, arms split,
| cushions lose comfort. Beds get lumpy. Finishes wear off.
| Drawers come apart and dovetail joints break. Some of it
| becomes unreliable or unsuited for daily use. Fine, keep
| your linens in that old dresser, but using it daily will
| hasten its end - that one drawer is barely together,
| after all.
|
| Not to mention that some of these things are just not
| usable in modern society. An old desk might be pretty,
| but it wasn't designed with a computer in mind. Good luck
| fitting your great-grandmother's dining room table in
| your small dining room. It was made for 8, and you have a
| family of three. Beds with a metal boxspring built into
| the frame aren't as comfortable to sleep on as you might
| imagine and can be _quite_ squeaky. Some old furniture
| just won 't fit in your abode either - and boy, oh boy is
| some of it absolutely _filthy_.
|
| Sometimes you can fix this stuff, if you have the time
| and space and equipment to do so. Many folks don't.
|
| And of course lots of folks replace cars. In most places
| in the US, you can't survive without a vehicle. A vehicle
| that breaks down is a vehicle that can get you fired. It
| is _much_ easier to keep up with an older car if you don
| 't have to rely on it. And again, you still have issues
| with having to be able to have the time, space, and tools
| to work on it - and you might need to have enough
| strength.
|
| And so on.
| treis wrote:
| Energy efficiency is a big one. You'll make back the new
| fridge cost in 5ish years over a 20-30 year old fridge.
| Depends a lot on local energy prices and if it's a garage
| fridge.
| [deleted]
| CivBase wrote:
| Because it's more convenient to buy a new fridge than to
| seek out an old one in good condition on the used market?
| And because they don't manufacture old fridges so the
| remaining good ones fetch a much higher price? And because
| there's no way for a consumer to reasonably determine the
| longevity of a new product before purchase?
|
| I don't necessarily think that's why people aren't buying
| _this_ fridge but those are reasons why new products can
| still be successful even when they 're worse than the old
| ones.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Why do you make your statements into questions?
| CivBase wrote:
| To emphasize they are hypotheticals which I am offering
| with an unsure, questioning tone.
| mholm wrote:
| > You only buy new when the old one breaks down right? In
| my experience it's half and half. Sometimes people have a
| nice old reliable fridge that just looks ugly and dated to
| their tastes, so they upgrade. Same with older energy
| inefficient fridges.
| rascul wrote:
| I used to deliver and install appliances. My experience
| is approximately the same as yours. About half the time
| the old fridge broke, the other half is for upgrades or
| something when the old fridge still works. Or because the
| easily replaceable and still working fan makes some
| noises sometimes. That fridge is now in my kitchen.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's amazing what working stuff people will throw out
| simply because it's out of fashion, or failed in some
| easily repairable way. You can outfit an entire house
| with furniture, appliances, and electronics from the
| dumpster outside of a vain/impatient person's apartment.
| drakythe wrote:
| Remember when looking at old technology that still works
| Survivorship Bias is a thing to be aware of. Yes, that
| elderly family member with the 1950's fridge makes us
| jealous. But how many of their friends who bought that same
| fridge had to upgrade because theirs crapped out?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
| delfinom wrote:
| I have a old basic GE fridge with a mfg date of 2008. It's
| still going strong and I hate myself for fixing it because
| it's fucking miserable having to bend down to the fridge as a
| tall person LOL. (I really want a bottom freezer fridge,
| single or french door) In the last month I have dropped
| probably 5 glass items and shattered them because I'll hit my
| hand on something trying to put things in or out of the
| fridge.
| [deleted]
| photonerd wrote:
| I've had 8 fridges in 22 years, up until my latest I've they
| were all from this supposedly better age. All failed, in some
| cases disastrously.
|
| The only one that's survived longer than a few years _for
| me_? The new one. Going 6 years strong.
|
| Not everything on my new one is perfect--I managed to break
| the built in water jug--but I feel a lot of the replies here
| need to take into account survivorship bias.
| marricks wrote:
| What do you do to your fridges??? I'm in my 30's and have
| never had to replace a fridge.
|
| Never had a "modern" fridge except as a kid. All looked
| like low budget fridges from the 80's or 90's.
| photonerd wrote:
| They were old. They failed. That's what happens.
|
| One the compressor died & would have cost about 5 times
| the value of the fridge to replace. One a coolant line
| cracked (guessing just age). One the seals on the doors
| failed. One actually started HEATING things... that was
| ODD. One just... stopped, no idea what was wrong but
| nothing obvious.
|
| Old stuff breaks.
| taeric wrote:
| Quality of power supply to your house will almost
| certainly be one of the bigger factors in how long things
| last. Combined with standard stochastic behavior, I'd
| expect anecdotes of both kinds.
| jwells89 wrote:
| I suspect that a great many problems with electronics,
| lifespan related and otherwise, are rooted in power
| quality issues.
|
| The newer apartments and house I've lived in as an adult
| have been decent in that regard, probably because they're
| closer to being up to spec electrically and have newer
| lines running to them thanks to being in urban areas, but
| one of my childhood homes out in the countryside which is
| now approaching a century in age had a "habit" of killing
| computers every so often.
| bombcar wrote:
| A whole-home surge protector is something everyone should
| install, just out of general principles.
|
| And if you have appliances/computers die, you should get
| your electricity monitored to see if it's out of bounds.
|
| In fact, anytime an appliance dies you should do a post-
| mortem to try to identify if something about the house
| may have contributed to it (hard water, electrical
| spikes, etc).
| photonerd wrote:
| I've had that kill HVAC for sure (capacitors get fried if
| you have power issues).
| smileysteve wrote:
| Re: Power; Digital Inverters, variable compressor
| technology are recent in the last decade and should
| reduce compressor failure from invalid state; More
| insulation added over the last 3 decades should reduce
| compressor run time, further reducing failure.
|
| IMO, most "failures" are from failure to replace relays
| and door seals.
| taeric wrote:
| Exactly. By most evidence, new machines should be lasting
| longer, all told. That so many people feel that is not
| happening seems to be interesting, in itself. Could be
| correct, I don't know.
|
| And same in experience. At large, the doors that are
| getting opened and closed repeatedly by my kids are far
| far more likely to get broken than any others. Which
| leads to door seals that are not up to where they should
| be. And will not surprise me that we run those
| compressors harder than we would otherwise. Which will
| lead to those failing.
| bena wrote:
| I've purchased two fridges in my life.
|
| I've had one fridge fail on me in my life. The compressor
| (I think) failed and no longer cooled the fridge. The
| difference in replacing the compressor or getting a new
| fridge was negligible.
|
| Other than that, I've only changed fridges when I moved.
| The house we bought didn't come with a fridge, so we had
| to buy one.
| rsynnott wrote:
| ... Huh. Was this from a range of manufacturers? That seems
| like an astonishingly high failure rate. Anything funny
| about your electricity supply?
|
| EDIT: Ah, misunderstood.
|
| > all from this supposedly better age
|
| is in reference to _old_ fridges; I'd read it as being a
| complaint about _new_ fridges. All these failures were old
| fridges.
| Retric wrote:
| So you needed to replace 7 fridges in 16 years? You're
| either a crazy statistical outlier or doing something very
| very wrong.
|
| Something seriously wrong with your houses electrical
| supply is the obvious explanation but it's far from the
| only possibility.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| That's sometimes what happens when you buy used stuff,
| especially appliances.
|
| You might get something that lasts for a few years. It
| might last 8 months.
|
| It might have roaches, too.
| photonerd wrote:
| It's called "old fridges eventually fail".
|
| Nothing statistically strange about that.
|
| Luckily most were either "came with the place" ones or
| cheap 2nd hand ones. The point being: old fridges also
| fail, in fact they're more likely to as they get older!
| jy14898 wrote:
| 7 fridges over 16 years is crazy, do you live in a hot
| climate?
| bena wrote:
| I live in a hot climate. I've had one fridge break on me
| in about 19 years. I've technically used 5 over that
| span, but I've also gone through 4 addresses in that time
| as well.
| photonerd wrote:
| Not when they're old
| bombcar wrote:
| Survivorship bias and "when do I toss it" - I have a
| freezer/fridge thing from Best Buy (something like this but
| it was about $300 on clearance:
| https://www.bestbuy.com/site/insignia-13-8-cu-ft-garage-
| read... ) that literally is one box that you can dial in a
| temperature on. It had wifi for some unknown reason that
| never worked, but still pitifully broadcasts a wifi
| hotspot. It's been running for five years now, and it can
| only die by ceasing to freeze; there's nothing else to
| break.
|
| The fridge in the kitchen, however, has various features,
| some of which would cause me to throw it away _even if it
| was still functioning as a fridge /freezer_ - for example,
| if the ice maker died, I might just replace the whole
| thing, instead of spending $300 to replace the ice maker,
| especially if it's a metric pain in the ass to do so.
|
| I try to take a look at repair prices and parts now before
| buying, because a $500 appliance where the likely breaking
| parts cost $500 is unlikely to be something that lasts
| long-term.
| low_common wrote:
| My parents have lived in their house for 28 years and had
| to replace the fridge like two or three times. 8 fridges
| sounds like your house might be part of the problem.
| photonerd wrote:
| Did they buy them new?
| bayindirh wrote:
| Yes, my top of the line Siemens fridge has _one_ pull out
| drawer for breakfast stuff, and it just comes out half-way.
|
| And, it's labeled as a premium, major new feature.
| masklinn wrote:
| A lot of those features also seem quite debatable.
|
| - The big pile of fruits and veggies is a good way to pressure-
| bruise them, and also to trap ethylene, and you can usually get
| the crisper drawers out so not sure I see the difference.
|
| - Special compartments for butter and cheese are a completely
| unnecessary lack of flexibility.
|
| - Metal roll-out trays / drawers exist in high-end fridges,
| there are also drawer fridges and freezers for some use cases
| (mostly compact kitchens / appartments where you don't have the
| space for swing doors).
|
| - The ice cube thing seems like a complete mis-feature, there
| are 4 ice cube trays integrated which seems fine, why would you
| move those to a bucket of ice cubes losing 1/3rd the freezer
| space and congealing the cubes together? If you regularly need
| industrial quantities of ice cubes, getting a quarter-size
| (100L) chest freezer seems like a better idea. Or an upright if
| you have a lot of frozen stuff which you need regular access to
| (or you don't have a cellar to put a half or full-size chest
| in).
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| * why would you move those to a bucket of ice cubes losing
| 1/3rd the freezer space and congealing the cubes together? *
|
| I use a portion of my freezer space for ice cubes. I make a
| batch of ice in the ice machine, and then freeze it until it
| gets low and/or used. My fridge doesn't have an ice machine
| and this uses less freezer space than ice cube trays.
|
| I use the ice to make delicious alcoholic drinks, and would
| happily make more ice than I ever though I'd need just to
| avoid having to make it when inconvenient.
| masklinn wrote:
| Sure but
|
| 1. that's _your choice_ and you have the flexibility to do
| that
|
| 2. you don't have 4 ice cube trays as a fixed feature of
| the freezer _plus_ a separate ice bucket, half the space of
| which is a quick release system for the cubes from the
| trays
| wil421 wrote:
| My fridge came with a 3rd drawer in the middle for veggies or
| fruit. It has pouches that absorb ethylene gas and works very
| well. You have to replace them every few months but they
| aren't too expensive on Amazon. You can buy a plastic stick
| on piece and install it in on an older fridge.
|
| The drawer is in the middle above the freezer in a French
| style fridge. You can set the temp to things like fruit,
| meat, or cheese but we prefer a dedicated produce area.
| rwultsch wrote:
| I am getting a Sub-zero in a few weeks which is damn near the
| most expensive fridge. It does not have nice pull out shelves
| or the veggie compartments.
|
| I expect the sealing and ethylene scrubbing will keep veggies
| fresh linger.
| distances wrote:
| Why does everyone keep their veggies in the fridge, do you
| buy them in bulk? Basic veggies like onions, tomatoes,
| cucumber I eat fast enough to just keep on shelves and in
| regular rotation, and all more special plants are anyway
| bought for a certain meal in mind so they're used within a
| day or two.
|
| My fridge does have a veggie section but I use that for beer.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| That assumes you go shopping every couple of days.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Yeah, I think both the "why would anyone put vegetables
| in a fridge" stance and the "how could anyone not put
| vegetables in a fridge" stance are probably mostly based
| on lifestyle factors. I walk past two supermarkets plus a
| greengrocers on my way home from work, so I don't think
| I've ever put a vegetable in my fridge. But I know people
| who live in rural areas and go to a supermarket once a
| week or less frequently.
| mbg721 wrote:
| To keep the bugs off of them. I know in theory you're
| supposed to keep tomatoes out, but they attract fruit
| flies.
| distances wrote:
| Somehow doesn't happen to my tomatoes. Maybe the organic
| trash bin is just a juicier target for my flies.
| tetromino_ wrote:
| 1. Ants, cockroaches, and flies invade one's apartment
| fairly regularly, and will stay if you leave food for them.
|
| 2. Inconvenience of going to a grocery store every day.
|
| 3. Unavailability of non-basic ingredients within a short
| distance of one's home. I can walk to a nearby store to get
| some carrots or cabbage, but if I want bitter melons, black
| radishes, or oyster mushrooms, I have to drive to a
| different neighborhood. And once at a store there, may as
| well load up and buy in bulk to reduce the number of trips.
|
| 3a. Unavailability of _affordable_ ingredients within a
| short distance. Buying in bulk at a big store gets very
| tempting when one notices how much cheaper it is per pound.
| (Alas, one forgets that some of those bulk pounds will
| wilt.)
|
| 4. Unpredictability of consumption. Maybe the toddler
| really doesn't want tomatoes on the table today. Maybe
| there is a production outage at work, so you don't have
| time to cook.
| distances wrote:
| Good points, although you don't have to go shopping every
| day in any case. Tomatoes last a few weeks, onions and
| garlic a month or two. Carrots and cabbage are rare
| enough that I only buy them for specific meals.
|
| I live in a city flat where there is no risk of ants or
| cockroaches, and even fruit flies are only around in the
| summer months. So I guess I just don't have the same
| problems as others.
| talkingtab wrote:
| I think companies could build refrigerators like this if they
| wanted to. And by wanted to, I mean if it would make economic
| sense for them. What makes economic sense for companies is to
| make the cheapest thing they can sell.
|
| If you think about that last sentence, what they can sell is not
| "what customers want". And therein lies the problem and the
| question. Why is it that those two things are not equivalent? The
| ratio of things that are what I want to buy compared to what I
| buy is surprisingly low. That ratio is probably highest at Ikea.
|
| I use Amazon a lot and searching for "things as I want them" is
| surprisingly hard. I often search for something then try to find
| the best lowest price ones that have the highest ratings. Like
| which refrigerator has the most stars and the most reviews at the
| lowest price. Amazon does not want you to shop that way, because
| it would affect their bottom line. (thanks a lot amazon!).
|
| So my take is that _how_ we shop determines what companies can
| sell and that - in turn - determines what kind of things we can
| buy.
|
| The stupidest example of the problem that I can think of is a
| dish rack for washing dishes. The number of really bad/over
| priced products is enormous at both Amazon and IRL Walmart. One
| day (out of many) Walmart actually had a FUNCTIONAL REASONABLY
| PRICED DISH RACK. I bought it. Best dish rack ever. Best price
| (and yes it did come with a drain tray and eating utensil
| holder).
|
| In my opinion it is stupid that it is so hard to find and pay a
| reasonable price for a simple functional item.
| ElectronBadger wrote:
| It's also freon-propelled and contains elements made of lead.
| Thanks, but no.
| marricks wrote:
| Some of those fridges are refurbished and still around[1]! It's
| my dream to own one someday when my fridge from the 90's dies.
|
| Every couple years there's a HN link to a blog post about how
| those appliances were built better in the day. Couple highlights
| I remember were:
|
| - Parts were dipped in paint rather than sprayed leading to
| fuller and thicker paint coverage
|
| - Motors had some changes so were actually built to last
|
| Got to imagine fewer electrical/mechanical parts that can fail as
| well.
|
| [1]
| https://carolinasantiqueappliances.com/Web/index.php/restore...
| ethbr0 wrote:
| There was a motor teardown linked on HN at some point.
|
| Essentially: electric motors from the 50s were vastly over
| designed, which meant they were extremely robust to physical
| failures
|
| The larger point about stuff now vs then is likely the use of
| capacitors. And specifically, cheap capacitors in consumer
| electronics.
|
| Absent electronics, you're talking an order of magnitude longer
| lifespan.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| > And specifically, cheap capacitors in consumer electronics.
|
| Speaking of reliability, I just replaced the start capacitor
| in my 20 year-old garage door opener. The replacement failed
| in less than 3 weeks!
| topspin wrote:
| An anecdote...
|
| Bought a Sony receiver around June 2021. The thing has barely
| had time to get dusty and its never been over ~20W. It's
| already dead, or dying at least. The power supply caps are
| bad and it power cycles itself when it tries to drive the
| speakers.
|
| It's not a high end model; I'm not an audiophile trying to
| get 0.001% THD at 10KWs. But lunching itself 25 months into a
| 24 month warranty... wtf.
| rsynnott wrote:
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve - if it's
| going to break, statistically it'll probably do so in the
| first few years.
|
| Have you tried bringing it back to where you bought it?
| Depending on where you live, failing after 25 months may
| not be okay, regardless of what the warranty says.
| topspin wrote:
| > Have you tried bringing it back to where you bought it?
|
| No. And the thought of having to deal with them, whoever
| they are, makes my skin crawl. I'd rather eat the entire
| cost of it twice than do that.
| vsareto wrote:
| >Parts were dipped in paint rather than sprayed leading to
| fuller and thicker paint coverage
|
| Hopefully not lead paint?
| SuchAnonMuchWow wrote:
| It probably is: lead paint is much more durable and
| resistant, which is why it was everywhere in the 50s
| marricks wrote:
| Well that's a compelling point in favor of modern fridges.
| 542458 wrote:
| > Parts were dipped in paint rather than sprayed leading to
| fuller and thicker paint coverage
|
| This doesn't sound right to me... You can apply powdercoats
| much thicker than wet paint because the lack of an evaporating
| liquid carrier means much less worry about runs and sags.
| Modern powdercoats can also be much harder than traditional wet
| paints, and often more chemical resistant. They're also better
| for the environment, since you're not filling the air with
| evaporating solvents.
| marricks wrote:
| Hey man, take that up with the post I read 5 years ago on HN
| and didn't link to.
|
| More seriously, if I find the time I'll try to link to it.
|
| I'm sure there's a better way to paint things now but I think
| we often don't for appliances.
| shagie wrote:
| One of the YouTube channels that I watch from time to time is a
| guy who is ranting/passionate about technology.
|
| The Antique Toaster that's Better than Yours -
| https://youtu.be/1OfxlSG6q5Y
|
| and
|
| How to design an actually good toaster with lessons from the
| 1940's - https://youtu.be/bLk1cjZ4ll0
|
| It's not a fridge... but similar design thoughts. There is a
| recent video about a fridge...
|
| This goofy fridge has a really clever design. It's also kinda
| terrible. - https://youtu.be/8PTjPzw9VhY
| oliwarner wrote:
| I think people are taking exactly the wrong things from this.
|
| In demonstration, this fridge full of drawers and runners looks
| great. In practice, as soon as those metal slides, bearings,
| runners, etc get cold, normal household air will condense on
| them. They get wet, they rust, they're suddenly the worst and
| need replacing. Bearing runners in fridges are just the absolute
| worst idea.
|
| In the opposite vector, this is why older laundry machines were
| great: they were simple, powerful machines that never failed
| because they were just a motor and a rubber band.
| seer wrote:
| A side not I always wondered why don't we have refrigerator
| models that are "split system" as we have with ACs.
|
| As it stands now it's a heat pump that pumps the heat from your
| refrigerator into your home. Wouldn't it be possible to create
| way more energy efficient model that has an outside body? Or even
| better connects to the AC body you already have outside? Like in
| the summer it would "help" the AC by being another AC itself, and
| in the winter it would effectively be "free" as it got its cold
| from the outside.
|
| I'm sure there's a reason nobody has attempted this (complexity /
| price) but was just wondering what the data point on something
| like this would be? Presumably with modern buildings this could
| be reduced accommodated, especially with geothermal AC being on
| the rise right now, would be cool to have all your heat pump
| systems connected to a single loop, sharing efficiency.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| This is why its more efficient to have your fridge in your
| garage versus your kitchen. You aren't having ac fight your
| fridge generating heat. You aren't having your fridge fight
| your stove baking out the room.
| not_the_fda wrote:
| Because you have to worry about cycle times. Central AC is
| sized to cool the entire house and is only used when its hot
| outside. Tying a fridge to the central AC would give frequent
| and very short cycle times because it doesn't require the
| removal of as many BTUs. The AC system's life expectancy would
| then be shortened.
| ajot wrote:
| > Wouldn't it be possible to create way more energy efficient
| model that has an outside body?
|
| Lots of shops (think mostly of butchers, charcuterie or take-
| away restaurants) here in Argentina do this, I think mostly to
| avoid all that heat and noise being trapped in the premises.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| While I really like the idea of a split system approach you run
| into some big installation issues. Namely, the refrigerant is a
| restricted product that can only be handled by licensed
| professionals.
|
| Thus, what I would like to see is a system where the
| refrigerator has two air pipes to the outside and a concept of
| heating/cooling load. It would have an ambient temperature
| thermostat that would say to reject heat indoors if it's below
| X degrees in the room, otherwise reject it to the outdoors. It
| would also have the concept of using outdoor air in lieu of
| it's compressor if it was cold enough.
|
| (And I would like to see an integrated HVAC temperature
| control, also--you set the minimum, ideal and maximum
| temperatures. If ambient air can be used in lieu of power it
| does so--and stops at the ideal temperature rather than the
| limit temperature. Instead of heat/cool/off settings you have
| on/vacation/off, in vacation mode it only enforces the minimum
| and maximum and ignores the ideal and it has different settings
| for minimum and maximum. And, yes, I want a maximum when on
| vacation--I don't want to bake the insides at the 110F that
| could easily happen in the summer here.)
| hoosieree wrote:
| I wonder if it would be worthwhile to water-cool the
| refrigerator's condenser coils, and use the heated water as
| input for a dishwasher or kitchen sink.
| tzs wrote:
| Or if not outside, I wonder if you could dump the heat
| someplace inside that is better than just dumping it into the
| inside air? Such as dumping it into the hot water heater.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Most residential units match one outside compressor to a single
| interior evaporator because to use one exterior unit for both
| you'd need way more complex valves to control which unit is
| receiving cooling.
|
| Even if your matching one to one you have the added cost of
| running all the lines associated with that including having a
| trades person coming out to install and charge the extra piping
| between the two units and installing the exterior unit that
| will need power. It's just massively simpler to have a complete
| unit you can drop down and optionally connect to water.
| dahwolf wrote:
| The more awkward differences compared to now are much larger
| families and home cooking being the standard.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Well, the patents on that fridge can't be still in action, so why
| don't you go build it? I suspect no one actually wants it
| because:
|
| - vegetable shelf is in door
|
| - veg shelf is hard to handle
|
| - ice makers beat ice scraper
|
| - fixed height shelves
|
| - Freezer shelf pull out feature is how they are today, but you
| need to open this fridge to access them
|
| - much lower capacity
|
| Essentially, this fridge is worse than present day fridge but you
| could build it today if you wanted and have a failed fridge
| company that made shitty fridges.
| lakomen wrote:
| Not found the requested resource could not be found
| dustincoates wrote:
| This reminds me of the same types of complaints around air travel
| now versus the 50s/60s. Both ignore the relative costs and the
| fact that you can still buy high-end fridges or first class
| tickets if you are willing to spend the same amount of money that
| you would have had to back then.
| pikahumu wrote:
| If you want to fly without the security theatre today then a
| first-class ticket won't cut it. You'd need to get a private
| jet, which is of higher relative cost than a plane ticket was
| in the 60s.
| r0fl wrote:
| Many first class tickets have priority check in, and separate
| priority security at many major airports. You avoid a lot of
| the security theatre that way.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > This reminds me of the same types of complaints around air
| travel now versus the 50s/60s
|
| The huge difference compared to banck then is TSA, for cultural
| reasons I don't think many people would complain about not
| being able to smoke on board or the fact that planes are a tad
| slower.
|
| Air travel completely changed because for some reason ill
| intentioned people decided to bring their ill intentions to
| fruition on a plane instead of a train.
|
| As a matter of fact the same group targeted trains in Madrid
| and London as well as malls, but the assumption is that since
| trains and malls cannot be defended fatalism is not only
| authorized, but it's the only game in town. Stark comparison to
| the process you have to undertake to catch a plane, where you
| have to provide an x-ray of your bowels before being allowed to
| board.
|
| In the 50s and 60s where you could board first and then
| purchase the ticket on board....can you imagine something like
| this today?
| BeetleB wrote:
| I think what GP was referring to were the larger seats, more
| leg room, free meals, and a few other perks.
| dustincoates wrote:
| Precisely. If you want a high-end dinner and an open bar
| with a lay-down bed while you fly, well you pay for it, and
| if you fly Emirates, you can even have a shower thrown in.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I want to fly from LA to NY with these amenities. Will
| Emirates fly me there?
| dustincoates wrote:
| You're not getting a shower or a stand up bar, but the
| rest, sure: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/where-to-
| find-lie-flat-seat...
|
| (I even had a nice salmon meal on my last business flight
| between Austin to LAX, in fact, which seemed opulent, but
| I wasn't complaining!)
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| This sort of quality of life bump for the few pales
| compared to the huge improvement for the many if we only
| accepted that it was just a coincidence that 9/11
| happened with planes.
|
| Cities, especially metro stations, malls and stadiums are
| much more dense and packed than planes are and yet we are
| much more confident about getting in there than we are
| about planes
|
| Doesn't make any logical sense
| phren0logy wrote:
| True, but even most high-end brands these days are more about
| fashion and high markups for the illusion of luxury than
| actually better quality. Though at least they generally have
| far better customer service, which makes a big difference.
| oblio wrote:
| It probably depends on where you are, but you can absolutely
| find brands where the production quality is higher.
|
| It's like with electric bikes. You can buy VanMoof (bling) or
| Gazelle (quality).
| dagw wrote:
| _but you can absolutely find brands where the production
| quality is higher_
|
| The problem is that those are mostly targeting professional
| kitchens and generally aren't what people want in their
| home kitchen. Finding something that will perform and last
| like a professional grade piece of kit, while still work
| and look good in your designer home kitchen is very hard.
| imchillyb wrote:
| There is no real world comparison between air travel in the
| 50's with anything else, except perhaps rampant
| enshitification.
|
| Double decker airframes, a standing lounge, smoking on board,
| unrestrained pets at the lounge...
|
| Nothing compares to the removal of these standards on all
| domestic flights. No industry did the consumer as dirty.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Double decker airframes? Since you're talking about the
| 1950s, you're sure not referring to what I think that means
| (747/A380-style "double decker"). What do you mean by your
| statement.
|
| Smoking on board? Yeah, as a non-smoker, that change was a
| major improvement. It may have done dirty to the smokers, but
| those are not the majority...
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| ...orders of magnitude improvement in safety don't matter,
| but yeah, you could light up back then and get bit by
| someone's lap rat for good measure.
| robin_reala wrote:
| I'm old enough to remember smoking on board flights (and
| trains), and I'm extremely happy that those days are behind
| us.
| rascul wrote:
| I'm a smoker and I'm also glad we don't allow smoking on
| flights and trains.
| etblg wrote:
| Choosing the 1950s as a great time for air travel seems like
| an odd choice, the first pressurized airliners to be used
| widely started in the late 1960s.
|
| Air travel in the 1950s was done in slow propeller planes
| like a DC-6, which were very loud, had a low service ceiling,
| had a low range, weren't particularly safe, and were
| unattainably expensive for most people to use.
|
| The 747 was only put in to service in 1970, the 737 in 1968.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> you can still buy high-end fridges or first class tickets if
| you are willing to spend the same amount_
|
| Can you, though?
|
| Or has the maker of that high-end $1500 fridge been brought out
| by the maker of $500 fridges? Are the two brands made in the
| same factory, to the same quality standards, while the owners
| laugh at those chumps who are paying 3x the price just to have
| a different sticker on the front?
|
| I've brought high-end white goods in the past and found the
| performance unimpressive. In my case, a high-end washing
| machine with poor rinse performance.
| rsynnott wrote:
| This is, of course, why you should always investigate the
| corporate structure of your appliance makers. There certainly
| are high-end, or at least highish-end brands in that camp,
| but it's not all of them.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Sorry, but $1500 is not high end. Not even close.
|
| Heuristic: If you can buy it at Lowe's/Home Depot, it
| probably isn't high end.
| r0fl wrote:
| You can buy column fridge / freezers from sub zero,
| thermador, miele that are about $20,000-$30,000 (price in
| Canada) with complete different quality standards
| michaelt wrote:
| Actually it was a Miele washing machine that produced that
| mediocre rinse performance I mentioned.
| idlewords wrote:
| My girlfriend's mom has a teaching oven (used in home economics
| classes) from the 1950s. The 'teaching' part mostly means it has
| a more accurate and detailed temperature gauge.
|
| This gas oven is so heavy that light in the kitchen
| gravitationally lenses around it, but it's still going strong and
| the best oven I ever used.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| On a serious note, how heavy does an object have to be for
| gravitational lensing or bending to be noticeable with a naked
| eye?
|
| s/visible/noticeable
|
| s/noticeable/noticeable with a naked eye
|
| s/lensing/gravitational lensing
| [deleted]
| dav_Oz wrote:
| A quick search would tell you:
|
| > _The angle of deflection (theta) is:
|
| theta = (4GM)/(cr^2)
|
| toward the mass M at a distance r from the affected
| radiation, where G is the universal constant of gravitation
| and c is the speed of light in vacuum._[0]
|
| The best resolution our eyes can offer is about one arcminute
| (1/21600 of a turn). Depending on your distance from the
| object, just plug in some numbers.
|
| Say at the earth-moon distance 384400 km the object must be
| about 24x the mass of the sun to bend the incoming light at
| one arcminute (~0,0002909rad).
|
| The sun actually bends light at about 2 arcseconds as seen
| from Earth; the focal point would be about 542x the distance
| Sun-Earth. [1]
|
| Alternatively the object of say 1m^3 volume at a distance of
| 10 meters will bend light by 1 arcminute if it weighs
| 3.27x10^16 kg, the density of about 1/10th of a neutron star.
|
| To conclude: one will be instantly overwhelmed by the
| gravitational forces before being able to see an object bend
| light with one own eyes. That's why this kind of _extreme_
| bending /lending is reserved for galaxy clusters.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens#Explanati
| on...
|
| [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_gravitational_lens
| adolph wrote:
| > On a serious note, how heavy does an object have to be for
| lensing or bending to be noticeable with a naked eye?
|
| 22 grams. That is how heavy my glasses are.
| leidenfrost wrote:
| Depends on how you define "noticeable". If you can measure a
| small enough distance, you can see the lensing effect of any
| object.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Noticeable with the naked eye.
| idlewords wrote:
| Comments like yours are what keep this site great.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Only in a Newtonian world--but there wouldn't be lensing in
| a Newtonian world. Once you consider Heisenberg and quantum
| mechanics you find your signal swamped by noise for smaller
| objects.
|
| Now, figuring out this limit is left as an exercise for the
| reader as it's way beyond my abilities.
| leidenfrost wrote:
| Haha you're right. I was mistaken.
| ben_w wrote:
| That you'd be able to see it with the naked eye?
|
| a = 4GM/((c^2)b), where b is the impact parameter[0].
|
| Apparently human visual acuity is 0.3 milli-radians, so if b
| = 1 meter, that's approximately "the moon" (in at most a 1
| meter radius volume)...
|
| ...assuming I didn't mix up my units in this formula I never
| used before, though it feels about right given the
| Schwarzschild radius of the Earth is ~ centimetres.
|
| [0] never heard of this before just now; I think it's the
| shortest distance between the central point and the path the
| light would have taken if it hadn't been deflected?
| treeman79 wrote:
| There is also Superman's key. Made of neutronium.
|
| https://dcmovies.fandom.com/wiki/Fortress_Key_(All-
| Star_Supe...
|
| Last I tried to calculate (poorly), if you were to touch
| it. You liquify and be sucked into it just before contact.
| adtac wrote:
| The Schwarzschild radius [0], which defines the radius at
| which the escape velocity equals the speed of light, is
| given by 2GM/c^2. I don't know what the impact parameter is
| either, but given these two expressions, it sounds like b
| is dimensionless.
|
| I don't know how fast the radius of curvature drops off as
| a function of the Schwarzschild radius, but I'd imagine
| it's at least R^-1. So assuming a spherical cow^H^H^H oven
| with gravitational lensing dying out at ~100x the event
| horizon, we need a Schwarzschild radius the size of a
| tennis ball in order to still see the curvature a few
| metres out. The oven needs to weigh ~4x the Earth's mass
| for that.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_radius
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I have a Sunbeam Radiant Control toaster that still works
| flawlessly.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfxlSG6q5Y
|
| They used a shielded bimetalic thermostat to measure the
| radiant heat coming from _the toast surface_ , instead of a
| timer, to establish doneness (consistently toasting despite
| heating element variance) and implemented the mechanical
| lowering & raising of toast without a single motor (which is
| why 60+ year old examples still work).
| stickfigure wrote:
| I've lived with two of these (at home growing up, and later
| via a roommate) and I hated both of them.
|
| The toast slot is too narrow. You can't heat a bagel - well,
| technically you can force it in there, but it won't come back
| out with some help from a utensil.
|
| They get flakey and you end up bouncing the toast a dozen
| times to get it to lower. Yes, I know there's an adjustment,
| but it's finicky and annoying. It's a _toaster_ for crying
| out loud.
|
| Yes, the design is ingenious, but there's a good reason they
| aren't made anymore.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that the reason they stopped getting made
| was influx of dramatically cheaper toasters, at a time when
| the idea of paying top dollar for premium kitchen tools was
| not very common. I'm also pretty sure that fixing all of
| your issues would not be hard with a modern re-design. It
| would just result in a ~$100+ toaster. The crazy thing is
| is that _there are more expensive toasters than that_, that
| are basically identical to cheap toasters except they look
| better. I'd _gladly_ pay $100 for a new toaster that had
| the features of the Sunbeam and was well made enough to not
| have the finicky features bits you mention. And paying for
| premium kitchen tools is _common_ now, to the point where
| even people who don't really care about cooking will still
| have a KitchenAid Stand Mixer and a Vitamix Blender.
| stickfigure wrote:
| > fixing all of your issues would not be hard with a
| modern re-design
|
| I'm not so sure. You could probably make the slot wider,
| but it's still a 100% analog device that operates via
| heat expansion of metals. The adjustment is going to be
| finicky. People expect toasters to "just work" without
| maintenance.
|
| As soon as you add digital electronics to automate the
| analog adjustment... why bother with the complicated
| analog part?
|
| The only major advantage this toaster has over a
| spring/timer device is that the toast (usually, but not
| always) goes down by itself. Pushing down on a toaster
| spring just doesn't seem like that much of an
| inconvenience.
|
| Have you ever owned one of these things? Did you
| genuinely like it?
| MostlyStable wrote:
| That is not even close to the biggest advantage. The
| biggest advantage is the sensor instead of a timer for
| how long to toast. If I had to pick one advantage, it
| would be that one. The fact that it also means that the
| raising/lowering is automatic is gravy in my opinion.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Have you actually owned one of these machines? They do
| not, in my experience (two different units over many
| years) toast more reliably than other toasters. The
| primitive analog "sensor" just isn't that accurate and a
| simple timer actually turns out to be pretty effective.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I've yet to get a bad piece of toast out of mine, in
| comparison to other toasters I've owned.
|
| The lack of bagel-width is annoying, but widening the
| slot on a redesign shouldn't impact any other components.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Toasters are one of the more obvious appliances to show
| how bad things have become. Outside of getting one of
| those conveyor-belt continuous restaurant toasters, I
| simply cannot find a new toaster at any price point that
| does a good job of making toast.
|
| Even low-end toasters from the '60s outperform high-end
| toasters these days.
| idlewords wrote:
| But how do you cancel without a cancel button?
| stickfigure wrote:
| You move the darkness slider all the way to the "light" end
| for a second. For all the machine's faults, this one wasn't
| a big deal.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| If you make a toast-related error, by inserting bread into
| the toaster and then deciding you don't actually want it
| toasted, you unplug the toaster.
|
| As the elements cool, your bread returns to you, unharmed.
| mcpeepants wrote:
| > unharmed
|
| harmed to a degree that is proportional to the toast-
| decision-making latency of the operator
| bern4444 wrote:
| What if you only want 1 piece of toast and not two? Will it
| still automatically go down?
| reichstein wrote:
| Only one of the holes has a trigger. You fill that last, or
| only.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I believe they're weighted so that a single piece of toast
| has enough mass to trip the mechanism.
|
| Since they only use a thermostat on one side, you do need
| to use a particular side for single toast.
| mongol wrote:
| I don't think it is better where it matters. Modern fridges
| circulate the air to manage humidity and temperature better for
| different zones (meat, vegetables etc). Also, less energy usage
| and no ozone-destroying coolants.
| cde-v wrote:
| Having to throw a fridge in the landfill every 5 years negates
| the energy usage and ozone issues.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Where are you buying these fridges that fail every five
| years? Perhaps consider a different brand next time; that's
| not normal. Modern fridges probably will not last 50 years
| (or at least only a tiny fraction of them will) but you
| should be getting a lot more than 5.
| gbraad wrote:
| And the feature is: "still operational after decades"
|
| Built like a tank. Imagine Indiana Jones getting onto a fridge
| from now and try to survive a nuclear blast.
| techdmn wrote:
| Certainly not the first to mention this, but see also:
| microwaves. I worked at a restaurant that had a microwave with
| precisely one input: a timer dial. To start the microwave, you
| turned the dial to the desired time. To stop the microwave, you
| open the door (ok, that's two inputs). To add time, you turned
| the dial further. It didn't beep a million times either.
| vel0city wrote:
| I prefer my microwave. I often just press the "Reheat" button
| once and its practically always perfectly cooked. It'll even
| suggest turning or stirring if it thinks it needs it, which is
| usually only for large things.
|
| I don't even have to think about how far to turn the dial.
| philipkglass wrote:
| I had a microwave from the 1990s that had one power level dial
| and one timer dial. That interface was the best I've ever used.
| It took two seconds to start the heating process after I knew
| what power and time I wanted.
|
| If I could get a modern inverter based microwave oven with a
| two-dial interface I would love it. I just want the basic power
| and time controls to be fast and tactile. I'll happily give up
| sensor based cooking and the other extras in exchange for that.
| tzs wrote:
| My beef with power level settings on microwaves is that they
| usually don't tell you what they mean. Say I want to
| microwave something in my 1250 watt inverter microwave but
| the instructions are based on an 800 watt oven. What power
| setting in closest to 800 watts?
|
| All the manual tells me is there are 10 power settings, 10 is
| full power, and 3 is best for defrosting. It would be nice if
| it said something like "When following instructions written
| for an 800, 1000, 1100, or 1200 watt over use power level 7,
| 8, 9, or 10 respectively".
|
| I did some measurements of heating water on my Panasonic
| inverter microwave, and based on that it looks like the power
| levels 1-10 are roughly 140, 230, 300, 380, 620, 720, 800,
| 960, 1140, and 1250 watts.
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| bayindirh wrote:
| The most enlightening comment is "capitalism breeds innovation"
| (told sarcastically), but it's incomplete.
|
| The complete version is "Capitalism breeds innovation for getting
| consumers' money out of their hands".
| ilyt wrote:
| Yup, competition breeds innovation but captialism will do
| everything it can to not have to compete. Patents, secrets,
| pirce fixing, and walled gardens, anything but trying to
| compete on actual product
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| What system do you recommend instead?
| bayindirh wrote:
| The shortest answer is "a system with strong pro-consumer
| regulations where you can't buy people and laws legally and
| illegally".
|
| This idea proved to be a nice one, but unfortunately it
| includes humans.
|
| In a more broader sense, we needs checks and balances. A
| better version of this idea is a "bigger government", where
| government not only regulates, but builds the baseline
| products which pushes other companies to compete to build
| better goods.
|
| But this generates tons of brouhaha. It's called "communism",
| "non-free markets", "government intervention", etc.
|
| In reality, private companies hate and despise real
| competition, because a corporation is (or has become) an
| establishment for generating shareholder value, not make
| customers happy beyond the level required to keep the company
| afloat.
| momirlan wrote:
| i think "consumer protection" laws is a good start. "bigger
| government doesn't quite correlate with "better product".
| Vicinity9635 wrote:
| lol @ mastdn.social
| johnea wrote:
| To use the Mastodon web application, please enable JavaScript.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| 1950-1970 seems like a local optimum in UX that we've yet to
| surpass.
|
| My personal, completely-unsupported theory is it was a
| combination of 3 qualities.
|
| (1) New types of things, while unlike anything that came before,
| were still simple and understandable enough that someone without
| formal engineering training could understand their use _and offer
| improvements_.
|
| (2) Engineering was still seen as something that was approachable
| by anyone, and so more people availed themselves of the design
| tools it presented.
|
| (3) Manufacturing was physically colocated with design,
| increasing agility to implement improvements.
|
| Since then, we've moved into geographically disparate
| manufacturing of such optimized and tightly-packaged systems that
| as simple of an ask as "Could that light be red instead of
| green?" requires overwhelming machinations to design and
| implement, resulting in "Let's just leave it green." _(Repeat for
| every UX component of a system)_
| ilyt wrote:
| I think for any long term products the designers of interface
| after they get to the optimum are just changing shit to keep
| themselves employed, while long time or professional users are
| just getting annoyed on having to re-learn stuff.
| pikahumu wrote:
| (4) "Optima" is plural, "optimum" is singular. So, 1950-1970
| seems like a local _optimum_.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Fixed! Thanks. Sans coffee typing
| user3939382 wrote:
| There probably are a mix of factors. A big one that I see is
| that consumers moved away from "pride in ownership". Modern
| consumer culture weighs absolute price more than price per
| quality, so you get products that reflect that priority. Real
| inflation is also about double the rate of the official numbers
| IMHO, so the resources to invest in quality aren't as
| available.
| vsareto wrote:
| It's iterative vs. up-front design. Or agile vs. waterfall.
| Designers shouldn't be doing iterative development when the
| supply chain works best with up-front design. They might be
| forced to because of how the business operates though.
| Iterative design and quicker product releases are a quicker
| feedback loop for the business.
|
| Most companies don't do grand designs or long-standing flagship
| products meant to be advertised for years, but that may
| actually be on the consumer by constantly choosing the new
| thing. I don't think any car manufacturer has left a car design
| completely unchanged for longer than 10 years, for instance.
| Same for computer or laptop manufacturers.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| IMHO, the progression that explains the current state of
| things is:
|
| {vendor power decrease} led to {fierce competition on unit
| price} led to {consolidation of vendors and manufacturing
| cost minimization / volume maximization} led to {offshore
| lower cost manufacturing} led to {decreased design agility}
|
| Consequently, there's less appetite for the type of wild
| experiments that characterized 1950s and 1960s design.
|
| Low volume = not interested
|
| It used to be that tech was insulated from the phenomenon,
| but I think Google shows the same progression playing out. It
| just took tech longer to consolidate.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| This fridge has an ice dispenser that requires you to use a
| tool to knock out a dozen ice cubes. My fridge has an ice
| dispenser that runs by itself until a big vessel of ice is
| full.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| If you've never had an ice maker break on a fridge, then
| you're a lucky person.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Also, everything was new. Now everything has been done, so
| people 'innovate' on silly crap in the UX space. Or they try
| and eek out margins resulting in intended obsolescence
| sproketboy wrote:
| [dead]
| toss1 wrote:
| Very true. Many solid comments deriding the current generations
| of wifi-enabled (and randomly disabled when they shut off the
| servers) carp, but the seventh comment down nails it:
|
| >> "capitalism breeds innovation" haha
|
| Indeed, in many areas, 'capitalism' has not produced innovation
| that benefits anyone using the products, but merely increases the
| ratio of cash extracted from buyers in return for reduced value
| provided by sellers.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| What system do you recommend instead?
| toss1 wrote:
| Well-regulated capitalism, with _strong_ anti-trust
| regulations and enforcemet.
|
| The idea of a "free market" is an absolute fallacy.
|
| Every market has some set of rules and regulations. At the
| definitional level, it is irrelevant whether the regs are
| written, spoken, or tacitly understood, or whether they are
| enforced by law or self-imposed limits. Without regulation,
| no market lasts.
|
| The question is what regulations exist and how they are
| enforced.
|
| With very little regulation, markets coalesce to monopolies;
| the strong/wealthy get stronger & wealthier, and buy out or
| force out the smaller players. Even without explicit
| collusion among large players, they have the ability to
| sustain predatory practices to kill upstarts or buy out any
| promising ones. With collusion, they can enforce predatory
| low quality and high pricing on entire nations.
|
| Which is what we see here. The barriers to entry are high and
| the competition is so little that the entire appliance market
| has been massively enshittified -- there is literally only
| crap available (unless you want to go full professional
| restaurant or hotel equipment). Even multiple different
| brands are literally made to the same specs in the same
| factories. I don't recall the details, but this was the case
| over a decade ago when we last looked for appliances, when it
| was bad enough that we found a couple new-old-stock from a
| previous mfg year of some units we knew were good. And I
| repair them when they need maintenance b/c it's only worse.
|
| This is only one of many industries, and tech is even worse,
| where incumbent positions and insane piles of capital
| effectively kill off any upstarts.
|
| Anti-trust needs to be a LOT stronger, more clear, and
| rapidly enforced.
| LocalH wrote:
| Modern capitalism is about figuring out exactly how much you can
| enshittify something, and how much money you can charge for those
| enshittified products.
|
| The old ideal of "make really good, quality products and you'll
| prosper" has given way to "make really shitty products that
| people will pay for anyway, and you'll prosper _more_ "
| epolanski wrote:
| And how much power did it consume? What were the materials used
| for those fridges and paint? How much did they weight? How stable
| was the temperature in the freezer and refrigerator? Did those
| fridges had any mechanism to avoid frost formations? How much did
| they cost?
|
| Point is, the needs of a fridge barely changed in 70 years, the
| only real expectation we had was that they would become cheaper
| to buy and run and easier to operate and maintain, all things
| modern fridges achieved to do.
|
| I would also argue that the ice cube breaker is a non-feature and
| that shelves being so easily removable is a minus rather than a
| pro. The ones on the door would easily break and the other ones
| could be easily pulled (sending every other thing on that shelf
| on the floor) if something got stuck.
|
| The door shelves also having all of those compartments lead to
| much poorer local cooling and are arguably worse for hygiene.
|
| In other words: there's reason why we moved from these designs,
| they had pros and cons and the focus was price and power
| efficiency.
| hoosieree wrote:
| These are valid points, yet anecdotally it seems like modern
| fridges are less reliable and require more frequent
| replacement. Old fridges were "inefficient" because they didn't
| have an integrated variable speed motor and control board. But
| modern fridges seem to suffer a critical failure of some
| mysterious component 2 months after their warranty expires.
| This component can only be fixed by replacing the entire
| control board, and that's half the cost of a new one. Wouldn't
| you rather just buy a new one?
|
| But if you zoom out, is it globally more efficient to trash the
| whole fridge every 5 years, or use an "inefficient" fridge with
| replaceable parts for 40 years?
|
| Modern appliances are all slowly heading in the same direction.
|
| It starts with DRM on replaceable items like water filters.
| Then un-mutable advertisements playing on the screen. Then
| subscription fees for "options". Then subscription fees for
| things like being able to open the doors. Then fridge-as-a-
| service where you rent the entire fridge and the fridge vendor
| resells your personal information to anyone and everyone.
|
| There will be a "vintage replica" premium market for rich
| hipsters to enjoy the luxury of a fridge without any of these
| features. But this market will be short-lived. The vintage
| fridges are just modern fridges dressed up in vintage sheet
| metal. They buy their critical components from the same
| wholesalers as the DRM vendors, so eventually they'll be
| compelled to put in the same features. Maybe they'll be
| permitted to use an old-timey font on a round touchscreen with
| a chrome bezel, to maintain the vintage vibe.
|
| I picture the execs of these companies studying Black Mirror
| episodes in darkened boardrooms... "Are you writing this down,
| Dave? This show is a gold mine!"
| moritz wrote:
| I mean I don't know how serious you are, but I am when I say
| I have a list in my notes of "appliances I might eventually
| need someday and should buy when I have spare cash before
| they won't be available without a computer anymore".
| pfdietz wrote:
| Many of the failures I've seen in modern appliances are failures
| of the control board. It ends up not worth repairing them.
| [deleted]
| JohnFen wrote:
| In my opinion, most (but certainly not all) manufactured things
| from 70 years were _much_ better than the same manufactured
| things now are.
|
| Things now are cheaper, of course. But I'm far from convinced
| that's a good thing. It means that the things are disposable, and
| it's one of the things that is advancing ecological destruction.
| momirlan wrote:
| thank planned obsolescence
| uhtred wrote:
| But my fridge today has wifi and an app so i can check it's still
| on when i'm on vacation.
| quartz wrote:
| Wait is this actually better? It's well presented in the ad but:
|
| - that removable veggie holder in the door looks crazy heavy and
| super awkward to put back in place (lining up at a sharp angle
| while gripping likely slick sides)
|
| - you have to open the refrigerator door to get at the freezer
|
| - the door compartments are narrow and probably can't handle odd
| sized containers
|
| - the shelves have holes in them so anything that drips off that
| uncovered plate of food gets all over everything below it
|
| - the ice ejector is completely unnecessary in our current world
| of ice makers. I doubt that fridge has a water line coming into
| it
|
| - the shelves don't look like they have adjustable height so
| you're stuck with 3 shelves that can't fit a gallon of milk
| snotrockets wrote:
| Not to mention that it has an on/off compressor, much less
| efficient than modern, inverter ones.
| mongol wrote:
| Agree. It gives that "nifty!" impression, but I don't think it
| would be so useful in practise. Especially, I don't think the
| vegetables would keep well in that box. When I replaced my
| older (90s) fridge, vegetables kept much better in the new one,
| which had ciculation of air that the older fridge missed, and
| thus better humidity control. I suspect that tight box would
| not be good for durability of freshness.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Yeah the only two features that this fridge has that my fridge
| doesn't have are the pull out shelves and the removable bin for
| vegetables.
|
| I've got no idea why you'd really want the removable bin for
| vegetables. Carry all my veggies over to the sink first and
| then pick out the ones I want? And look at how small that thing
| is.
|
| Pull out shelves seem nice I guess, but they'd only be useful
| on lower shelves. My fridge seems to be about a foot taller
| than the one in the video. This person wouldn't be tall enough
| to see all the stuff on the top shelf if it were pulled out.
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| > I've got no idea why you'd really want the removable bin
| for vegetables.
|
| They say in the video that it's for when you bring a bunch of
| fresh vegetables home. You put the bin next to the sink and
| then load the vegetables into the bin as you wash them.
| masklinn wrote:
| Does your fridge not have crisper bins for veggies? I've had
| that in pretty much all my fridges, and the bins are always
| easily removable.
|
| Pull-out shelves not so much (all the fridges I've had, had
| adjustable but "locked" glass shelving, I would assume for
| hygiene as a glass shelf is much easier to clean regularly or
| after a spill, plus they don't block light so much), but they
| are available on expensive or professional fridges.
| bbatha wrote:
| The pull out feature can be found on modern fridges, my
| previous LG fridge had it.
| VectorLock wrote:
| The pull out fridge doesn't even seem that great, I just
| think of shit sliding off the back or you push them in and
| then you push everything off the front.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| _- you have to open the refrigerator door to get at the
| freezer_
|
| Not to mention that this freezer is likely: 1. Not self-
| defrosting, and likely to build up ice since you open the door
| each time you open the fridge. 2. Definitely less convenient. I
| have a fairly cheap, small refrigerator - one that fits in my
| attic apartment - and the freezer has pull-out drawers. Since
| it sits under the fridge, this is _usually_ nice.
| ozim wrote:
| Imagine how much hassle it is to wash that veggie container in
| sink.
|
| How much gunk can get into shelves rails.
|
| I clean fridge twice a year and would like not to do it more
| often.
|
| Modern fridges are optimized for easy cleaning.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| My grandfather had one of these fridges that still worked in his
| basement. While it had those cool space saving features like
| slide out shelves, it was also significantly smaller than modern
| refrigerators (and I'm talking about a "basic" fridge, not those
| fancy french door fridges that are even bigger).
|
| The other thing is the freezer section was not a separate
| compartment from the fridge. This meant that if you stored
| anything on the top shelf it would freeze just like the stuff in
| your freezer, not to mention all the cold you lost every time you
| opened the door (and speaking of the door, it was effing heavy).
| sireat wrote:
| In Europe you can not buy a home vacuum with decent power simply
| because it is the law.
|
| https://commission.europa.eu/energy-climate-change-environme...
|
| You can argue that the law is well intentioned and even
| necessary.
|
| The end result is the same, my old cheapo Scarlett 1500W vacuum
| from 20 years ago does a better job that, AEG, Electrolux and
| even my new Miele. All of them are hard limited to 900W.
|
| Then again is it really saving power if you spend 2x time using
| 900W vacuum instead of 1500W one?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Similar story in California. My pet peeves are water conserving
| toilets and washing machines that are so finicky to calibrate
| that they usually require two flushes or Cycles, defeating the
| entire purpose and wasting your time.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| Plus I'm pretty sure agriculture is the worst offender of
| water waste in a drought, not toilets
| nathancahill wrote:
| Just today I was using my soldering iron passed down from the
| 1960s. Heats up to full heat in 2 seconds and has fantastic flow
| control. Nothing similar exists today under $600 (although that's
| likely the inflation-adjusted price).
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| So, it's a soldering gun with a wire tip? Those are still
| available.
| gpvos wrote:
| Relevant classic: The antique toaster that's better than yours:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfxlSG6q5Y [video]
| cmsonger wrote:
| I wonder what it would cost to make / sell.
| someguy7250 wrote:
| I recently found my old HTC phone and it had a "fastboot"
| feature. The boot time is just 4 seconds.
|
| I hope old tech gets a comeback. I hope it creates more local
| jobs for phone repairs and software customizations. But it's
| probably just me being stupid.
| K0balt wrote:
| But, those are all physical features that cost money to produce
| each one!
|
| Surely an app that can be cobbled together from some no code
| framework that we will stop maintaining in 18 months (but you
| can't defrost or adjust your temperature without it) will add
| just as much value, but at zero marginal cost!
|
| Plus, we can't harvest data from useful physical features!
|
| Bits > bolts!
|
| But the worst part is , bits>bolts is actually very applicable in
| many cases.
|
| It's just universal enshitification that has made that axiom in
| to a sad joke.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| Next time you speak to an appliance repair guy, ask him what
| appliances he tends to visit most and least often and what the
| failure modes are.
| rascul wrote:
| You might also check with the delivery guys to see which brands
| come back the most. It was LG and Samsung when I was delivering
| and installing appliances.
|
| Interesting thing about LG and Samsung is that they wouldn't
| accept returns. So if we delivered a brand new $4500 fridge but
| the fan didn't work when we plugged it in, then we took it
| back, talked to LG or Samsung, they told us to scrap it. So
| many easily and cheaply repairable Samsung and LG fridges went
| to scrap.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| That's worse than anecdotal data, because you're only seeing
| what they're trained and contracted to repair. It's like asking
| a mechanic if he's seen any Ferraris in the shop this week, and
| then assuming they must be reliable cars if he's seen none.
| Apreche wrote:
| The fridge from 70 years ago was an extreme luxury item. Most
| people could not afford one. Nowadays we have refrigeration so
| cheap and accessible to all.
|
| If you want a fair comparison, go spend $20k+ on big fancy
| commercial refrigerator. I guarantee it will be better than the
| '50s model.
|
| Just to throw one more comparison. It is not shocking to say that
| a Rolex watch or a Leica camera from decades ago is better than a
| Swatch or a cheap point+shoot today.
|
| TL;DR: It's not true that they were better at making things in
| the olden times. It's true that luxury high end goods are
| superior to mass produced goods.
| MeteorMarc wrote:
| In Europe there are energy consumption regulations for household
| equipment like fridges, see: https://commission.europa.eu/energy-
| climate-change-environme... . What energy label would your fridge
| from 70 years ago have?
| ilyt wrote:
| It actually might be pretty decent one as it was using freon
| which is very good at its job.
|
| The process didn't change all that much, neither did engines
| used in compressor so it is mostly "how well isolated the
| fridge is"
| pfdietz wrote:
| Current refrigerants are also very good, they're just more
| expensive.
|
| I doubt the refrigerator from 70 years ago had blown foam
| insulation (polyurethane insulation was introduced in
| refrigerators in the mid 80s), so it probably had terrible
| efficiency. It may have clawed some of that back by lacking
| automatic defrosting.
|
| https://dura-foam.com/assets/images/2-0/energy-
| consumption.p...
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| 70 years ago a fridge would cost $250-$400 - about a months
| salary, that's about $4k in todays money. If you pay $4k for a
| fridge instead of $400 today you can get one with a fair amount
| of gadgets too.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| My fridge is like 10k but it has massive design flaws
| tzs wrote:
| > 70 years ago a fridge would cost $250-$400
|
| That looks right. Here's the start of the fridge section in the
| 1950 Sears spring/summer catalog to give an idea of what it was
| like then [1]. Here's the start of the freezer section [2].
|
| [1]
| https://christmas.musetechnical.com/ShowCatalogPage/1950-Sea...
|
| [2]
| https://christmas.musetechnical.com/ShowCatalogPage/1950-Sea...
| lopis wrote:
| But that's the thing. We don't want today's gadgets. We don't
| need internet connected fridges, apps and other breakable IoTs.
| We just want more usable fridges.
| m463 wrote:
| I have also wondered if internet-connected fridges use more
| electricity. Having a computer and touchscreen and wifi
| collecting data 24/7 and sending it to samsung can't be cheap
| power-wise.
| Shawnj2 wrote:
| It's probably negligible compared to the cost of running a
| condenser
| nateb2022 wrote:
| > Having a computer and touchscreen and wifi collecting
| data 24/7 and sending it to samsung can't be cheap power-
| wise.
|
| I would probably estimate that those additional components
| consume about as much power as a typical low-powered
| laptop, or about ~20W. You're likely not going to be paying
| more than $1/month for that, electricity wise.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| I can quickly go out and buy a fridge that is far cheaper
| than a month's salary, and that has the same effective
| features. I was honestly waiting for the feature that I
| couldn't do on a normal, non-internet-connected fridge these
| days.
|
| So, really I don't understand what this post is referencing.
| The fridges from today are vastly better than that thing,
| especially when you consider things like temperature control,
| power usage, space, and usability.
|
| Can you buy worse fridges? Sure. You can spend substantially
| less and get something more barebones.
| criley2 wrote:
| This fridge looks way worse than my current one. Much smaller and
| poorly designed.
|
| The ice machine looks annoying and inferior (mine automatically
| drops ice and dispenses it through the door, no touching or work
| required). Mine also dispenses purified water through the door, a
| major feature missing here.
|
| Over-use of door space for temperature sensitive goods is a
| classic refrigerator mistake as it's the warmest section.
| Combined with the inability to control humidity for fruits vs
| veg, it's clearly an inferior produce storage system.
|
| I do also have a removable container for fruit/veg, but mine is
| much better designed for real world use. I can't imagine what a
| huge and thin door-cage-system would offer you. Total gimmick.
|
| What we don't get to see is how well the temperature is
| controlled ESPECIALLY between the fridge and freezer. This isn't
| easy to pull off (and we have degree-accurate settings today) and
| it's likely that this model runs a lot warmer than we are used to
| today, especially in the freezer compartment. There's also
| questions about frost-free operation as many classic units
| required manual defrost cycles (taking all your food out) while
| my unit has automatic defrost cycles and guaranteed frost-free
| operation.
|
| Finally this fridge would have cost $5000+ in todays money. Mine
| is better in basically every way I can think of and I paid 1/5
| the price. I bet mine will last twice as long, use a fraction of
| the electricity (cost significantly less to operate), and have a
| fraction of the environmental impact, too.
| c-linkage wrote:
| My wife is a brute[1]. She's broken two of the plastic
| refrigerator drawers -- the vegetable drawer and the deli drawer
| -- which were impossible to repair. Yes, I tried super glue, but
| the bond never held.
|
| It's cost me $400 to replace both drawers -- 1/3 the cost of a
| new refrigerator.
|
| I wish I had one of these refrigerators; they look virtually
| unbreakable! And even if it did break, I could hammer it back
| into shape or weld it back together at home.
|
| [1] She's _bent_ both her house key and her car key, and broken
| the car 's shifter twice!
| globular-toast wrote:
| Yeah, women tend to break stuff for some reason.
| avereveard wrote:
| You need something for cold temperatures like two component
| epoxy based glues, not cyanoacrylates
| francisofascii wrote:
| The ice cube extraction feature is pretty cool. Have never seen
| that before. Do modern refrigerators have that? (I get that we
| have ice cube maker features, but those can fail before the
| refrigerator does.)
| rascul wrote:
| I'm not aware of any fridges that use an ice extraction
| mechanism like that. Seems unnecessary and extra work compared
| to an ice maker that just dumps ice into a container. If the
| ice maker fails, it's often replaceable.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| I'm curious what features in that fridge in the ad the authors
| current fridge doesn't have?
| vpastore wrote:
| and it cost like 5k$
| Pxtl wrote:
| I bought a series of matching Whirlpool/Maytag appliances like
| 5-10 years back. They're all garbage. I already had to replace an
| element in the oven, it burns its own insulation sometimes and
| the glasstop takes eons to heat but then blows through the
| desired temperature and incinerates my food, the fridge has a
| light that flickers and it accidentally freezes stuff stored in
| the back near the vents, I had to replace a piece of plastic in
| the door that broke with some washers, the dishwasher fails to
| scrub things clean despite me following the best "Technology
| Connections" practices for dishwasher ownership despite how
| difficult it is to reassemble after cleaning (the clips _almost_
| fit together).
|
| My kitchen is overdue for a remodel. I'm going to end up breaking
| the bank on a full set of Bosch appliances or something, these
| American-Chinesium products are clownshoes.
| sva_ wrote:
| You mustn't compare your low budget car with a Lamborghini?
| gok wrote:
| Besides being power hungry and small, these fridges also had
| mechanical latches, which trapped and killed dozens of children
| per year.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Why would I want this fridge??
|
| Why is the ice ejector in the cold space at all? That should be a
| countertop tool, it's just wasting space.
|
| Slide-out shelves increase the chance of knocking things off and
| they're almost certainly not adjustable.
|
| I see *one* good feature--everything in the door has covers which
| means it doesn't warm up as much when you open the door. I'd like
| to see that in the whole fridge--everything is behind doors to
| minimize air spill and make it clear exactly where the load limit
| is.
| brenainn wrote:
| I bought a Mitsubishi fridge about 2 years ago that's been going
| good. 470L french door model (MR-WX470F but I think that's an
| Australian SKU).
|
| No touch screen but the controls are capacitive which is a
| bummer. The ice maker isn't plumbed, you fill up an internal
| container so no water line to worry about. Little details I like
| about it like how the ice draw is lined with foam to dampen the
| noise when the ice drops in. It has this weird "super cooling"
| metal-lined draw, intended for storing leftovers without freezing
| them. I never used it until I realised it's really good at
| chilling beer. Made in Japan for what that's worth. Time will
| tell if it craps out early but I have a good feeling about it.
| erremerre wrote:
| This video from technology connections shows exactly the same but
| with microwaves, specifically one from 1997.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiS27feX8o0
|
| What I don't understand is, you have done the development, the
| cost of the rest of things is marginal. Why don't keep giving
| those features into all microwaves manufactured by the same
| company?
| bastardoperator wrote:
| My mom still has the fridge from my childhood in the garage. It's
| been working at this point for at least 40 years. I bought a
| brand new Samsung fridge, and it completely broke down within 9
| months. Thankfully the State of New Jersey sued the pants off
| Samsung and made it where consumers could recoup their losses.
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