(I’m trying to adjust my shopping habits for quality, long-lasting goods from reputable brands. This isn’t some hailcorporate thing)
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I don’t think you can completely trust any brand. Obviously some are better than others and I assume that’s what you’re asking.
Bosch tend to make pretty good machines. Mercedes cars are okay. Jura coffee makers are decent. Snap on tools are nice. Petzl outdoor gear is good. Armytek lights are solid. 3M products are good. EDZ and Icebreaker garments are nice.
I have a few Fiskars products I really like. Hatchet, garden trowel, craft cutting board. They use a very durable, lightweight plastic
I abused the shit out of my loppers and cracked the blade. They sent me a new blade without much fuss.
I was looking in this thread for Brother printers. They are consistently OK, as all other printer brands have gone to shit.
Deuter backpacks.
In many years of backpacking I never met someone who had trouble or regrets with a deuter bag.
I broke one of the steel rods in mine after years of heavy use and clearly by my own fault and way out of any manufacturer responsibility and they just replaced it for free. I just asked if there is any way to get spare parts and they were like “Here you go, have a good trip.”
Besides that, you have put in serious effort or serious stupidity (in my case) to break them at all. Especially normally easily breakable parts like clasps and zippers, are super sturdy.
Mainly I use them as a easy way to recognize German tourists. Never seen them on sale anywhere but I guess they must be sold in Germany because Germans sure love them! French can be recognized by Quechua backpacks BTW tho less reliably. And in the past, Italians by Invicta and Swedes by Fjallraven.
Anker. Every time I buy one of their products, I’m impressed by the quality. It’s come to the point that I’m seeing knockoff brands inserting the Anker keyword into their product descriptions, hoping a search will put their product up in view.
They were caught spying on their cloud based surveillance camera customers though
Anker has been a solid brand since at least the 90’s. Always reliable. Never the fanciest, but always reliable.
Patagonia since they also offer repair services in the event of damage and are relatively ethical.
Breville (Sage in the UK).
They’re expensive, but they’re good, and they last.
I’ve owned: espresso machine, coffee grinder, automatic loose leaf tea maker, coffee maker, toaster oven, bigger toaster oven, waffle maker… I think that’s everything?
I’ve never regretted any of these purchases and never had one shit the bed. I did sell the tea maker and the smaller toaster oven, but I still have everything else. The coffee grinder I’ve had for over 10 years.
Dualit used to be the dog’s bollocks of toasters but they sold out, and Breville is the new king.
If you can find a 20 year old steel Dualit on eBay however, it’ll last the rest of your life
How exactly did Dualit shit the bed? Aren’t they still repairable and made in the UK? Sorry, I’ve been doing a lot of toaster research and have one in my cart literally right now, so it would be awesome to know if I missed something before paying $350 lol
Can confirm. They’re not commercial grade kind of quality, but they are some of the best consumer grade right now, mostly because they use fewer plastic parts than most and good quality steel. Though they still use too much plastic in things that would be better served by lower grade metals or glass.
I also have an espresso machine, coffee grinder, and toaster oven that I’ve had for ages and never needed new parts. I also have an all stainless french press that is really sturdy, but because the shape isn’t perfect, the rod for the press needed to be replaced once since it requires a lot more pressure than it should to use it. But even with that defect, it has lasted nearly 15 years, and I only replaced the rod and filter once.
Kirkland
Surprisingly good quality for just about everything except dishwashing and dishwasher detergent.
I use Kirkland dishwashing detergent; the new formulation is comparable to Dawn, at about half the price. The older, clear formulation was not quite as nice.
I haven’t tried it in several years. Like you said, the old stuff didn’t meet our expectations. Is it comparable to Dawn, or Dawn Platinum? We’ve found that Platinum stuff to be superior to everything else. Also, how about the dishwasher detergent? Have you tried that stuff recently?
I’m using Costco pods and they are the best I’ve used. I don’t pre rinse, I use it on old dishes. My dishes come out nice and clean. My sister cancelled her membership and now I have to find a new dishwasher pod dealer.
Why don’t you just get a membership? We save tons of money shopping there. The gas alone will save more than the membership fee if you drive a car.
The true answer is a bit embarrassing, but it’s because my husband does our grocery shopping and he is bad with money. He will buy too much stuff because it’s a “good deal” which just ends up costing more overall. I love him so much, and he has so many good qualities, but he’s a real sucker for “deals” and that’s all Costco is.
Gas, paper products, salad, honey, cereal, bacon, snacks, even alcohol. It’s just me and my husband and we live pretty frugally. We opened a membership a few years ago and have never once regretted it.
Peterson pipes are good and IMP meerschaum pipes are good too.
Hello, fellow piper.
I also find Missouri Meerschaum pipes an excellent starter pipe for $20 to get someone into the hobby.
I would love to try one of them but I spent all my pipe money on meerschaums so it’s gonna have to wait.
Garmin. They have been churning out better and better stuff over the years. Its pricey, indeed, but both hardware and software quality is top.
Been using the Fenix 7 Sapphire Solar watch, which has amazing battery life, amazing sensors, top hardware quality overall and software is perfect for the job. Screen too is amazing (MIPS, not Amoled…).
Also using bike computer and radar (Edge+Varia), where battery life could be better, but easy to remediate.
There are competitors, but at the same price point I wouldn’t ever give up in Garmin for them.
I goddamn hate their avionics tho.
Yeah, it seems like they finally invested in firmware and software programmers. WAY fewer issues than back in the day, still amazing hardware quality.
I have a Garmin Edge 840 bike computer and I do like it (more than the Wahoo ELMNT Bolt v2 I had before), but man some of the design decisions are just baffling to me.
Like why can’t I have tones for my notifications (for refuelling), without also having them for navigation? And why do notifications close themselves after 5 seconds? I always miss them because I either have the tones silenced and happen to be looking where I’m going instead of my head unit when they pop up, or I have the tones on I miss them because the navigation tones are so obnoxious I just learn to ignore all the sounds.
And why can’t I disable the virtual partner, and why the hell is the arrow on the map for the virtual partner bigger than the one that represents the actual rider?
/rant
I have disabled the virtual partner on my 520, so you should be able to do the same as well.
As tones, you can do some tweaking, and I read somewhere that the sound is a file that you can replace by connecting the unit via USB to PC…
Garmin entire filesystem tree is accessible from PC via USB (mtp)…
None. Do your research and due diligence.
This could help but make sure you take everything with a grain of salt
Cotopaxi
Washer/Dryer - speed queen
When I needed a new washer, I did a lot of research and strongly considered Speed Queen. But then I read they enshittified in 2018
Brother printers. I have 78k pages printed on my 15 year old color laser printer from them, and it’s still going strong. They still sell OEM toner and even replacement parts for it, although the only part that ever needed to be replaced so far was the drum.
A brother laser printer was the best decision of my college career. I only wish I’d have bought it sooner
3M does tape and chemicals better than most anyone.
If it’s supposed to be sticky: 3M over anything else.
How 3M Executives Convinced a Scientist the Forever Chemicals She Found in Human Blood Were Safe
https://www.propublica.org/article/3m-forever-chemicals-pfas-pfos-inside-story
I’ll just leave this here without further comment
Yeah, I’ve read it before. And bayer gave aids to foreign countries, and nestle has done deplorable things, and the banana people have hired mercenaries to kill natives for banana control, and our US government let tons of black people die and spread syphilis because they just wanted to see how it went instead of giving them the cure, cable companies stole billions and never delivered on promised infrastructure…if it’s a big entity, they’re usually pieces of shit. I’m still getting my tape from 3M.
“so what if they poisoned, are poisoning, and will continue to poison everyone in the US and abroad. So what if they single-handedly lowered the life expectancy of the planet, whilst if not causing, exacerbating every cancer. They make good tape.”
Not trying to come at you, it’s just this is where we are as a society, and it makes me sad.
The world also still let’s planes use lead gasoline. My point is you won’t be able to buy anything if you boycott every corpo that does something like this. It’d be great if you could, but you can’t.
