This is why an increasing number of consumers go with the more is less when shopping for appliances. I don't need my fridge or washing machine to have all these bells and whistles. I just need it to do its main job, and do it well with a minimum of components that can fail, and make sure it's running reliably.
My newest appliance, a microwave, has a dial to set the time, a row of buttons to select the power level and a door handle. It's the best microwave I've ever owned. It was also the most expensive, but since it is intended for commercial kitchens, I expect it to last at least ten years.
I just bought a microwave. All the reviews I found for the Panasonic model (who apparently make the majority of microwaves) with the dial to set the time had a lot of people saying it failed after a year or two.
I never spent so much time looking for an appliance. I must have spent 6 hours looking at Amazon, Home Depot, Best Buy, etc, websites. There are so many models, sizes and types. The model that died was ~25 years old. It performed well, but the company doesn't make microwaves anymore (Sanyo)... at least I didn't see that brand when searching.
The is the same argument used by people who buy SpeedQueen washer dryers. But the technology in them is woefully old and not to mention very inefficient in its use of electricity and water.
The local mom and pop appliance shop stopped stocking SpeedQueen in the last five years and replaced it with Fisher and Paykel. Their baseline washer and dryer is where it's at. They have the simplicity of SpeedQueen in terms of how cheap/easy they are to repair and replace components, but are super high efficiency.
They use(d to use) more energy and water, but maybe they get the laundry cleaner or get it done faster. A washer repair tech on reddit said that after 2017 SpeedQueen went the same direction as all the others, but if you get an older one it might be a better machine, depending on the model.
What's more inefficient: the extra electricity and water of older machines, or the extra waste, manufacturing, and shipping caused by shorter replacement cycles?
I know many people who have had to replace or service their "high efficiency" machines within 5-10 years, while many old washers seem to last at least 20 years without service. Given the electronics and specialty parts in the new machines, it seems doubtful that you could keep one of them in service for more than 15 years.
That's exactly why I tell people to buy commercial. Sure they're 2 or 3 times the price. They'll also last 20+ years and need simple maintenance and repairs.
Do your research. I witnessed an office where the CEO's partner was an interior decorator, and said partner was responsible for the office construction.
In the opulent kitchen, they put two commercial dishwashers, the kind where you preload the dishes onto a kind of rack, and slide the whole rack into the dishwasher in one step.
Greatly increases utilization of such dishwashers, because the dirty dishes can be queued up for washing, and the clean ones can be unloaded and put away while the dishwasher is running.
These dishwashers were designed around maximizing utilization during busy periods. But.
In an office kitchen, they would be run once or twice a day most of the time, with bursts only happening during infrequent events. This turned out to be an unexpected problem.
It seems the dishwashers were full of steel for durability, and they needed to run a load to warm up. Once warm, they could to load after load at high speed. But when only doing one load a day, they wouldn't clean the dishes properly.
The vendor told them this and suggested they have one "prosumer" model and one commercial model for when they had a catered event, but this displeased the CEO's partner, so the company was stuck with two commercial units.
They learned to run an empty load every day before running a full load, wasting enough time that the dishwasher lost its speed advantage. It also wasted water and energy do do one preload for each daily load.
Something to think about when buying commercial. It's usually ok, but sometimes, a commercial unit has tradeoffs that will gravely undermine its ability to function in a home or office.
> Something to think about when buying commercial.
You make a very good point, but I don't think that whether its commercial or not is what you need to look at. The intended use case is. There are several commercial use dishwashers, for instance, that are intended for relatively infrequent use. The ones you describe were intended for heavy-duty restaurant use -- that's the real mismatch, not the fact that they were built for commercial use.
But being a residential model means EPA restrictions, which means it automatically sucks. So limiting to commercial should still be step 1. Then look at use case.
The infrequent commercial resturant / office kitchen models you mention are good, but lab/ medical models are what I imagine most people want.
You can get them based on power and water availability (real 240v+ hot water heating element!!!), high pressure pumps, all stainless parts, sanitary cleaning in under 10 mins, and can use active heating for drying. Fully programmable wash cycles, both time and temperature, but in an under counter residential-like form factor. Get one of these, plus some fryer clean out detergent, and you're set.
Also, they're easily 3-10x the price of higher end residential models.
My brother and I once toyed with the idea to build a website that explored, compared and offered sources for commercial, or at least, higher-grade alternatives to consumer-level fixtures, valves, switches, HVAC and appliances. A site aimed at people who are doing remodels or building anew. Why not the marine-grade brass quarter-turn valve for the water mains or toilets? Or the much-superior commercial-grade sillcocks? Gas furnaces with electric/gas fan motors that continue to function in a power-outage?
In the scheme of a remodel or new-construction adding the high-quality, durable options is a small expense and saves on very expensive repairs down the road where you have to pay $2,000 to replace an item that would only have cost a few dollars more to install one that will almost never need replacing.
This is a fantastic idea. It's kind of the opposite or at least going in a tangential direction from something like Wirecutter. Instead of recommending the solution that will be merely adequate for the majority of people you would recommend the solution that would be the absolute best but may appeal to a smaller audience.
You also hit on something that I think too many people don't think of when they're pricing stuff. People tend to look at the sticker price alone, not the total cost of ownership. I've found that often (but certainly not always), the more initially expensive but high-quality stuff will end up being cheaper in the long run.
I think "more is less" is more accurate. These days, my list of antifeatures is more of a consideration than desired features when shopping for an appliance.
My TV has a terrible display but doesn't know how to connect to the internet, for example.
I’m sure you’re aware, but you can achieve the same by getting a tv that is full of spyware but has a nice screen, then not connecting it to the internet or blocking it at firewall/Pihole or similar.
I did this with my 4k "Smart" TV. I've never connected it to the ethernet, nor have I configured the wifi. It acts as a dumb monitor and that's what I want.
