Take washers, for example. I was looking at Speed Queen washers to replace mine. On paper they are great, more durable. But it turns out that while they have physical knobs and switches, newer models still hide a circuit board inside, so the gap between commercial and consumer models is shrinking (and not in the direction we want.)
The Speed Queen washers also have nearly half the capacity of off the shelf consumer washers, and use twice the amount of water and electricity. I did the math, and at the current utility and washer prices I’d break even replacing the washer every 5 years.
Furthermore, the local appliance repair shop that I trust told me it could take them weeks to get replacement parts for Speed Queen. For a laundromat that’s not a huge deal when it’s one washer out of twenty, for a single machine home it’s a problem.
Yes, I do wish that consumer appliances were more reliable. But barring that, the next best thing is easily and quickly repairable, and on that matter there’s brands that are qualitatively and quantitatively better in that regard than others.
I also want to point out that for some products (such as smart phones) there’s an additional trade-off between repairability and quality:
When you have screws in your phone instead of having everything glued together, that means you have additional moving parts and probably gaps between the parts, where water can enter and cause corrosion. If everything is glued together, it’s not repairable but it’s also less likely that it needs to be repaired because there’s fewer problems to begin with.
There’s tradeoffs - simplicity, repairability, efficiency.
Take washers, for example. I was looking at Speed Queen washers to replace mine. On paper they are great, more durable. But it turns out that while they have physical knobs and switches, newer models still hide a circuit board inside, so the gap between commercial and consumer models is shrinking (and not in the direction we want.)
The Speed Queen washers also have nearly half the capacity of off the shelf consumer washers, and use twice the amount of water and electricity. I did the math, and at the current utility and washer prices I’d break even replacing the washer every 5 years.
Furthermore, the local appliance repair shop that I trust told me it could take them weeks to get replacement parts for Speed Queen. For a laundromat that’s not a huge deal when it’s one washer out of twenty, for a single machine home it’s a problem.
Yes, I do wish that consumer appliances were more reliable. But barring that, the next best thing is easily and quickly repairable, and on that matter there’s brands that are qualitatively and quantitatively better in that regard than others.
I also want to point out that for some products (such as smart phones) there’s an additional trade-off between repairability and quality:
When you have screws in your phone instead of having everything glued together, that means you have additional moving parts and probably gaps between the parts, where water can enter and cause corrosion. If everything is glued together, it’s not repairable but it’s also less likely that it needs to be repaired because there’s fewer problems to begin with.