How do I know the $130 version is any better? Formally good brands have been cost cut to death and can be just as bad or worse as the cheap version. Only difference is the manufacturer collects a higher margin on the perceived product superiority.
There was a time where you knew a Craftsman tool was worth a premium price.
Resale value is probably a better metric, if it's $130 new and $100 second hand while the other one is $100 new and sub-$50 second hand that'll be a fairly good sign that it at least works.
It's still not 100% but it'd at least mean you're going to be out less money in the end if it's a dud for you.
Hah! It's upvoted now but I was really confused by it too tbh and I usually am not; guessing it was either less coherent than I thought and/or someone misread it entirely.
I've once was looking for top-performance windows laptop. Bought a nice Asus ROG M16 for $2500. Expensive? Sure!
But they did cost-cutting, put a crappy wifi card from Media-Tech, which resulted in a daily BSOD. Bought Intel card for $25 instead to fix this issue.
And that's about everything. Take a $50k car and you'll find same cost cutting measures!
>Take a $50k car and you'll find same cost cutting measures!
My step mom bought an expensive Cadillac a few years ago when she retired, the electronically actuated glove box has never really worked well and eventually got to where it wouldn't open at all. The whole thing is a bunch of plastic parts that move together to release one side of the glove box and gravity is supposed make it slowly drop down, but the side that it releases is the far side from the motor that's actuating it, and due to slack in all the plastic parts it doesn't actuate enough to actually release it. It takes like an hour to tear it apart so that you can shave down the catch. Cadillac has had the car for months at a time to fix it and was unable to and also unable to get a new glove box assembly. One day me and my son tore it apart and just shaved the part down ourselves, something neither of the service notices for that common issue recommended.
Cars reveal a lot about this but it's not really specific to cars. Ad-ridden "smart" TVs, etc. The hacker mindset is not really special nowadays as everybody recognizes dumbing-down and cheapening in technology. Hackers used to like having an OS with a `sysctl` for every little tunable for the same reason that anybody should be able to change the spark plugs or battery in your car without spending an hour removing two cowlings and an air intake hose because everything is so tightly packed. My 2014 model car has two separate LCD screens for the driver, yet somehow the interface to deal with a problem is still an idiot light, or wipers waving out codes, and me borrowing somebody's OBD2 scanner. Resetting the battery management system, or the oil change involves obscure codes like pressing pedals or switches in a certain way as if I am trying to open a drug courier's secret compartment, and even then, I do not even have an option of knowing what the oil change interval has been set to. Forget about anything like a live readout, or talkback to my key remote so that I can know that my engine has started. It's these kinds of design issues that are presented as condescending black boxes. It is insulting when Python is taught to schoolchildren now. These things should be performed with care to completion in the face of economic pressure.
Yep! Eventually you might just give up and pick a medium cost one that seems to be OK. Top quality products are like lottery nowadays.
I paid $100+ for a Logitech mouse and thought it is a good enough price, but it broke down in just a few months. Fortunately they gave me a second one, but I don't know how long it lives!
This gets so exaggerated online especially if you rely on reddit to figure out what to get they always recommend the one that is 10x as expensive and they insist cheaper things won't last or work but it almost never is my experience with the cheaper ones when I end up getting them. Maybe it starts out true but the cheaper ones eventually get good enough
It's the same with cell phones the claim is iPhone/pixel will last way longer than the cheap ones but i feel like this get less and less true, not that the quality is going down on the good ones but I know people who are on their 5th year of a $150 one and no problems
There was a time where you knew a Craftsman tool was worth a premium price.