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
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.
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.
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.
You could easily solve this the same way pull-out shelves all over solve it: a small lip or some other sort of securing. I don’t think that’s too much of a concern.
However it strikes me as a necessity for deep and rather badly organised fridges so while I can see the value (it’s pretty much the only not-useless thing I can see in the ad) it seems limited unless you’re at a pretty high level of use e.g. you use a literal ton of fridge space or you commonly need to swap entire shelves of e.g. desserts in and out.
Unsurprisingly slide out racks and trays seem pretty common on professional fridges.
> 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.
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.
- 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.
The hinged box in the door will live till it gets left drop-open. Then it will break the hinges, stop points (and I fear it will require the entire door replaced), and give foot injure.
Sliding shelves -- I see stuff sticking to the upper shelf and falling behind onto the lower one, making it impossible to draw this one back and close the fridge. (Occasionally you have to stuff things in plastic bags onto each other, because of lack of space, and they push onto the upper shelf; or sometimes bags get pushed to the back wall and freeze to it -- and it's no problem on still shelves.)
This reminds me of cellphone Sony J70, with a scrolling wheel. I wanted one badly in 2002, bought one -- and turned out it wasn't much more convenient (the wheel wasn't smooth) and it broke the very first time I dropped the phone on the floor. Repair was costy. That's how I learned that seemingly cool features have downsides to them.
I was able to find a print ad for this thing[0], and it has 9.5 cubic feet of storage. Modern "full size" fridges have 2-3x as much storage (20-30 Cubic feet!), are going to be vastly cheaper to run/use, and have built in ice and water makers.
And you get can similar sized, simple fridges (that are still probably vastly cheaper) for like the same price as that one, but minimum wage is like 8x higher today.
The people purchasing the top of the line, best in class Imperial refrigerator marketed toward postwar suburban families were not going to the small market nearby, they were going to a supermarket in their car to live the American Dream.
See the difference between the normal[1] and top of the line[2] friges.
> the shelves have holes in them so anything that drips off that uncovered plate of food gets all over everything below it
My childhood fridge had wire shelves. The most common problem was when mom's sourdough starter would get frisky and blow the lid off its plastic container, spreading starter goo to all sorts of things. Seemed to happen at least once a year.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Remember when a complimentary toaster was the gimmick that banks offered to new customers opening an account? I believe that the toaster was also a very stereotypical wedding gift, as well.
And blankets. My dad did marketing for a bank years ago. We have lots of blankets (!). I don't remember the toaster as I do the blankets, but I do know they were premiums.
> 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?
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.
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.
α = 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?
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.
(Superhero physics is vague and unrealistic at the best of times).
Assuming "dwarf star material" means "neutronium" (which is unstable at any level less than a neutron star) and the "half million tons" mass quote for the key…
That's about the energy content of all the world's fossil fuel reserves being released in a 10 minute half-life.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The higher end of refrigerators don't have today's gadgets. The wolf zub-zero ones are 10k+ and are the most boring, efficient, and durable things I've seen.
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.
Then spend a grand or two on a decent fridge from a reputable manufacturer that will last and has the features/gadgets you probably do want (auto defrost, quick freeze, chilled water etc).
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.
An internet-connected fridge might use a tiny amount of additional electricity (probably a couple watts when active, and much less when idle, which should be most of the time).
But this is dwarfed by the massive improvements in refrigerator efficiency over the last 70 years. A modern refrigerator uses less than a third of the energy of a 1960's-era fridge while also having considerably more space for food.
> 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.
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].
I randomly found out today that the fridge in my house (previous owners bought it) is a 10k item. It sounds crazy but on the other hand it's a beautiful large fridge and you kinda want that I guess.
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.
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).
* 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.
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
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.
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
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?
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.
> 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.
... 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
A replacement for the dented door for my 9-year-old fridge costs more than I paid for the whole thing originally. Some repairs are not that economical compared to a shiny new model with a fresh warranty. It's not my instinct (and I have the skinned knuckles from a fraught dishwasher heater pump swap to show for it), but I can see that the inflated spares prices, shipping, labour and call out fees if you can't DIY, hassle of locating the parts if second-hand (good luck figuring out the model numbers, there are thousands and thousands of subtle differences), transporting the thing if it can't be fixed in place, etc etc, do add up to Beyond Economical Repair for some people.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
A friend worked for GE Research a several years ago. They were focused on reliability engineering. Meaning have predictive reliability on a bell curve to avoid failure during the 3 year warranty period, and to have a rate of failure during the extended warranty period to preserve the margins.
The impact of surprises… bad components, variances in operational conditions, etc can have a big impact. Also, the quality improvements that emissions controls had on cars didn’t happen for white goods. Cars were hit with emissions AND safety standards, which raised prices.
For appliances instead they incentivize things like all electronic controls (more prone to failure with rough service or high heat), and undersizing components. Old appliances were all mechanical and easily fixed, the electronics tend to turnover quickly and are difficult or impossible to get from a 3rd party.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!"
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”.
My list also includes some light research on when various brands tanked their quality either for profit or to keep their price stable under inflation. Lava Lamp, for example did it in 2003.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
No, you don't avoid it. You just reduce the wait time in line.
It's not just about the queues. Even with first class you still need to get body-scans, pat-downs, get your hand luggage searched, perhaps take off shoes and belt, and throw away the water bottle you just purchased inside the airport and the toothpaste you forgot to move from hand luggage to checked-in.
That has become so normalized that most people just shrug, but it's a quite humiliating treatment and most of it is meaningless beyond the mere appearance of security.
> > 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?
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.
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
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.
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...
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.
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.)
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Modern home refrigerators are efficient enough thanks to insulation materials and efficient heat pump. Adding external unit just for 500kWh/y to 300kWh/y is not what we want.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
> Real inflation is also about double the rate of the official numbers IMHO,
It’s funny that one reason CPI hasn’t increased as fast as nominal prices in some cases is because it also factors in the quality of goods.
e.g. modern cars are more expensive but also significantly better (they both have more features and last longer) I think this applies to a whole bunch of other products too.. I don’t know how accurate it is though, guess it depends on user preferences.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
$350 in 1950 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $4,431.04 today.
My last Samsung fridge freezer was £250 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!
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 £120, so price wise it's probably cheaper to buy fridges every ten years, but terrible for the waste.
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 £150 a year in electricity (maybe more at current rates?).
I got a brand new chest freezer for £179 and when run as a fridge is uses £35 a year at current prices - so I'm saving money after the first year.
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?
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
Yeah and I've got a $400 lab fridge (no freezer, no nothing) of similar vintage that I've yet to have an issue with. Flukes happen. I think it's hysterical that refrigerators that have similar price tags to cars I've owned exist in the world. Nice racket for someone I suppose. Some people's kids...
> Yeah and I've got a $400 lab fridge (no freezer, no nothing) of similar vintage that I've yet to have an issue with. Flukes happen. I think it's hysterical that refrigerators that have similar price tags to cars I've owned exist in the world. Nice racket for someone I suppose. Some people's kids...
:) Well I guess today is the day you learn that everyone has different interests and tastes. We like to cook and a fridge the size of the one we have means we can hold a few weeks worth of food that we prepare.
it also means we can stock up on fridge food so we don't need to buy it every day and the large freezer means we can keep food for longer.
You could also consider that we just may have alot more money than you and us spending $14,000 on a fridge is the equivalent amount of our income or net worth as you spending $400 on a fridge.
I don't need your justifications for grossly overspending on appliances. You could have gotten a literal restaurant walk-in for less, and shove the flex, I know folks who live in doublewides that could almost certainly buy and sell you. To be painfully clear I'm not offended in any way by your purchase, I think you're preening about getting taken for a ride and that's funny to me.
I haven't seen any durability issues with my modern fridge. I've had the same cheap (about $250) one for 10 years. It has worked without a hiccup all that time, and I live in a country with a relatively unstable power grid.
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).
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
>Brand reputation is its own business these days with its own products and markets.
I'm halfway convinced that selling a brand is just sort of illegitimate - a brand is just a reputation (ie. built-up trust), and selling out your reputation for money on your way out the door is cleanly, obviously immoral.
I'm sure there are arguments for it (like "well surely my son can inherit the family business" and "well surely I can sell the business to someone who I trust to maintain reputation"), but overall those arguments don't change what actually happens: the business is sold to someone who wants the profit from abusing the trust that's been built up.
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.
"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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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
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.
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...
> 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.
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.
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?
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.
I missed this comment, sorry for the late reply. A warranty system guarantees for free repairs or replacements but doesn't guarantee for a reliable product.
Plus choosing a $1000 for a 10-year warranty would be a very bad deal, since $500 guarantees you 5-year product, additional working time or ability to sell and repurchase of an improved version of a product. Minus could be inflation or less reliable product in the future.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 $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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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 32.5°F which is too cold for veggies, but fantastic for beer.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?)
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.
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.
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...)
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.
"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.
With the service per lifetime measurment stick, its still increddibly cheap. We are definatly poorer if you take the Terry Pratchet boot economics yardstick.
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!
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.
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.
$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.
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.
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.
> 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?
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.
> 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).
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
An exhaust fan, on the other hand, will do a great job. And some ovens have an exhaust fan for smoke control (hah, I grew up with one of those and I miss it) and to reduce humidity in the oven when desired (nice, but not nearly as nice as the extinct Thermador system).
Admittedly, the ducted exhaust fan is not nearly as useful in a commercial setting where the oven is under a hood.
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.
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).
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.
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).
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
The white plastic just stops being able to hold the glass shelves to the metal brackets and chips/cracks until it can no longer hold weight. This is a 12 year old LG refrigerator.
Decompose is probably not the right word, but it loses whatever property makes plastic usually last a long time.
I don't think so. Just a typically loaded fridge. The shelfs have metal arms and then plastic holding the glass to the metal. Structurally the weight is on the plastic though and the plastic breaks. This is on a 12 year old LG refrigerator that works just fine on staying cool.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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 £20 blender then... yeah, I guess?
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.
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.)
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 :)
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.)
For whatever reason, while gas stoves are fairly common in Ireland (I think they are in decline now, as induction offers most of the same advantages, along with its own), gas oven are practically non-existent; haven't seen one in years.
Didn't realise they were still a thing in the US, though it makes _sense_, I suppose; on a 110V system an electric oven is going to be a more expensive wiring job than on a 230V one.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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-sht-tech refrigerators will be unfixably dead in about five years at the outside. People should consider that* environmental and efficiency advantage!
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
I think 2 of 3 of the shown features are a bad idea.
First, the sliding shelves. I can see a package get stuck in the upper shelf, and then when the shelf moves, fall down behind, onto the lower shelf, making it impossible to push the moved shelf back and close the fridge. And it's not something rare -- sometimes I have plastic bags freeze to the back wall. Or something sticking up into the upper shelf. With still shelves nothing wrong happens to these, but with moving one it does and would annoy consumer.
Second, the box in the door on hinges... As soon as someone lets it drop-open, they'll have it break both the hinges and stopping points, and get feet injure. I had a similar thing happen with a piece of furniture. This will require a big repair of the entire door.
The ice cubes feature is interesting. But you have those in your fridges today with some bottle dispenser, etc. I mostly saw these features being idle.
So, as usual the featured fridge has nice features that failed the test of life.
My current fridge of choice is Liebherr brand, which makes them simple (no digital stuff), with very convenient shelves, and very quiet.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.)
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.
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).
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.
Decades of value engineering reduced cost of appliances that consumer electronics makers need to add bell and whistles to capture more value i.e. there's recent article about Samsung wanting to milk billions in live services from smart appliances. It's dumb but it is what it is when fridge design reach marginal returns on core features like keeping things cold.
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.
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.
I hink the only feature that one has than not modern one does is that it will work for 20 years. Probably would be 0.25x the efficiency of a modern one though.
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"
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
- 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