It's been an interesting evolution as I have aged to observe myself going from one end of the spectrum to the other (mainly, as I've accumulated more wealth).
I'm now at the point where I crave quality at just about any cost because it's abundantly clear to me that buying crap is bad value. Many of the few high quality things I bought early on in life are still with me and I love them. But so is a huge amount of the garbage I bought earlier and I hate it.
So where I used to go into shops and look at all the expensive items with scorn and think "what idiots must there be who buy all these things that are twice the price!", now I go in and actively try to find out "but is there an even more expensive one I could get with higher quality?"
It's not always the price too, often enough the higher quality item can be cheaper, just less of a fancy package maybe. A lot of companies blow all their budget on advertising and packaging instead of product quality and research. Knowledge is key. Especially be careful in stores like TJ Maxx, Home-sense and such -- lots of lowest quality fancy packaged junk to be had there.
Honestly I've gone in the other direction. Quality for its own sake is not a virtue; all that matters is whether the item meets the needs you have. An item that breaks and needs replacement is waste, but an item that is overbuilt and never used to its potential is a different kind of waste.
I don't need the best tools in the world for my home toolbox. I use each tool maybe a couple of times a year and even the cheap ones don't break at that level of use. I bought a $250 RC car and a $10 one, and while the $250 one is awesome I've gotten more use out of the $10 one. Sometimes you need quality but sometimes you don't.
I have been feeling exactly like you for the past couple of years but I've noticed that sometimes items that are known to be "buy it for life" kind of quality level have disappointed me a bit. My most recent example of that is the Herman Miller Embody chair I got just two months ago. Sure, it's very comfy and it worked really well during the first month. And then came the second month and it started to creak, squeak, pop and all kinds of other weird noises. I've researched the issue online and it turns out Herman Miller consider this perfectly normal because apparently it's a "complex product with a lot of parts". I'm not sure how that makes any sense for a product that costs this much. My IKEA Markus is 5 years old by now - it makes zero noise, it has 80% of the comfort of the Embody and it cost literally 1/10th of the price.
So yes, I also want the best of the best and "buy it for life" but I'm starting to think that sometimes this classification is a bit overrated and you need to find a very good balance between price and quality.
For me the issue is figuring out what is even quality. It feels like a lot of the time all options are meh or the feature set I want just doesn't exist.
My hobbies and interests are more established. I know which tools I use a lot, how I use them, and where spending more makes a difference. I've owned and outgrown my entry level gear.
That, and I have more disposable income. I can afford long term investments because they don't incur short term deprivation.
On the other hand, when trying something new, I still go with the cheaper option until I can appreciate what a better tool would do. In most cases, I find that the cheap tool is enough.
I like BIFL-type items for some categories of products, but not others.
Some of the recommended items are great. I love high-quality skillets, knives, rice cookers, etc.
For other items, I've seen an overly high focus on "specs" in the BIFL community, where the durability comes at the price of being uncomfortable and bulky. With shoes, it would be using X leather here, using Y sole stitching there, etc. By comparison, I want light-weight shoes with soft / no heel counter, that weigh less than the recommended leather bricks. The bloody blisters I got from "quality construction" forced me to figure out what I personally need in a shoe.
I'm a video game guy, so I tend to see things in video game terms. Some things are consumables and some things are permanent upgrades.
Some clothes are consumable, underwear, t-shirts. jeans. I buy conformable, well fitting and cheap, with no expectation that it will last. I don't think too much about it. (A $5 t-shirt will not last as long as a $50 t-shirt, but there is not _that_much difference)
Other clothes, I now know, if I choose carefully can last 20-30 years. My winter jacket that I only wear 2 months of the year is at least 20 years old. My belt that I wear almost every day is at least 15 years old.
Sometimes I find myself doing an insane amount of research trying to find the perfect product, but its a kind of procrastination because I don't actually really need any more stuff. The backpack I take to work everyday is a little ratty, and I have spend a lot of time looking at backpacks on the web while watching TV.
One thing I have found, is that buying stuff that is supposed to last for life, ends up making the possessions own me, instead of me own the possessions.
Especially with kids, when I have disposable objects, I don't have to worry if they trash it, or get it dirty. I don't have to worry about losing it(I can order a replacement on Amazon that will be here in 2 days). With long-lasting products that are for life, I find I worry about cleaning them, organizing them, and protecting them.
Maybe to total cost of ownership is less for the more durable product, but you only have to lose it once or damage it once for the savings to go away.
With no disrespect (especially with children, I know their destructive tendencies well enough), this sounds like a shunning of responsibility, and irks me. Our cheap, disposable consumer goods are ending up in landfills, our plastic waste has permeated every square inch of the earth, and we continue to justify these destructive habits.
If you need something, you should care for it, you should maintain it, and you should commit to a certain level of care. Not caring about your possessions and seeing them as disposable validates the business models of shelling out crap quality products and the further destruction of our environment.
On the other hand, crappy knock-off products aren't going to be the right tool for most jobs and will fail when you need them most. The trick to not being owned by your possessions is to only own what you really, truly need.
Further, buying low-quality throw-away type products ends up supporting the greedy, lazy low-quality manufacturers. We all end up with only junk for choice.
And as @desine already commented: all this junk ends up in the landfills, oceans, etc.
yeah, there should be some products where "buy it for life" might be... just don't buy one.
Do you really need a cast iron frying pan? They seem to be over-represented in this category because they don't break. But iron in your diet is not that good for you if you're male because it accumulates.
Another thing to be wary of is "buy this best stuff" lists are easy money, people will curate your lists for you, then you just link to amazon and hoarding behavior does the rest.
Some of the product listings are not great. I see non stick skillets that I know won’t last than a year or two with moderate use. Otherwise I like the concept.
I was surprised to spot apple's "magic mouse" there too. I'm fairly close to an apple fanboy, but even I'd admit non-replaceable batteries isn't compatible with "buy it for life"
I agree with you. It looks like it made it onto the site because it has a lifetime warranty. Still, I’m not keen on eating flakes of PFAS aka Teflon as these types of products wear out
It’s always amazed me that high carbon steel / cast iron / stainless steel pans aren’t more commonly used.
You literally are buying it for life. They cook the food way better. And a small amount of oil is all that’s needed for eggs and other non stick applications
I'm an avid user of carbon steel pans, but I bought one of the hexclad pans just to try it out. It's actually really nice. I've used it about 50% of the time for over a year now, and it has held up really well. It's not as pretty as it was brand new, but it is still non-stick and there is no noticeable degradation.
I’ve found a wonderful exception for clothing: https://www.woolx.com/pages/about-woolx. You aren’t replacing your entire wardrobe with them, but I wear their shirts 50% of the time and their boxers 100% of the time.
Interestingly enough, RAM seems to have a lifetime warranty, as discussed on other places on the web [1]. Of course, lifetime warranty does not mean the lifetime of the buyer [2].
I love quality tools and products, especially when you have taken the time to find what works for your specific use case or body type. That being said, I started slowly shifting to an attitude that, to paraphrase an over quoted movie, "on a long enough timeline, everything is a consumable". The biggest factor isn't so much buying something for life, but buying a product that 1) matches the lifespan of my usage 2) won't frustrate me with its quality 3) will last a length of time somewhat in line with the improvement cycle of that type of product.
Instead of BFL, I only buy products that I'm ok with getting destroyed or products I have a laid out upgrade plan for. Example: All of my pants are Levi's 501s. I can get them for 50-60 bucks, which is nothing. They last a really long time, but they're not made in America nor do they have a lifetime warranty. BUT I don't have to worry about spilling stuff on my pants or going through the tedious process of filing warranty claims every time a button breaks. I just get on the app and order a new pair.
What's more important to me is narrowing down the list of brands I buy from so I spend less time thinking about shopping and more time being productive.
It hurts me a little to see “50-60 bucks” for jeans referred to as nothing. I now grudgingly buy similar $50-60 Levis or Eddie Bauers because my wife likes them better than jeans that cost half as much. Looks some common basic jeans at Walmart are still ~$15 which is amazing since that’s what I remember paying for them like 15 years ago.
Some cheapo Harbor Freight tools last a lifetime if you only use them a couple times a year. No sense in buying something very heavy duty when it won't see much duty.
I feel like "buy it for life" is just a different kind of (hipster?) snobbery.
And the tools they’re listing, Milwaukee Hammer Drill, for example, offers no warranty at all and wouldn’t be what I would consider to be “high end” either. Just seems like a purposely placed product rather than a legitimate BIFL item.
There are tools for weekend warriors, and then there's tools for the "professional" built for daily use.
I often repeat the phrase "buy it nice, or buy it twice if not thrice". I've done the buy it cheap to get 'er done type of thing, and I've also bought the good item because it was going to make a shitty job that much easier.
One really nice thing about safety-critical activities is that the equipment tends to be made to extremely high standards and usually lasts a very long time.
If you buy equipment for climbing, shooting, scuba diving, etc. you can reasonably expect that it's made to a very exacting standard (almost certainly in the US, Japan, or Europe) and will last many years (with well-defined consumable components and maintenance requirements).
You probably just have a decent budget for guns and haven't seen the dodgy ones. The market is flooded with garbage that I would not even consider firing.
I genuinely dont understand the reason behind hijacking right-click (long press on phone). I'm using a slow internet, and I'm used to open multiple tabs so I can only wait for one and then go through all of them. So I'm eager to understand if this is done to stop people from copying from the site or there's another reason behind it.
I don't think right click is disabled? It's just that a bunch of the "links" aren't semantic <a> tags so you can't open them in a new window. (they're just <div> tags with onclick handlers)
I think this happens often in single-page-apps just because developer don't care or don't think about this use case. It's frustratingly common.
>So I'm eager to understand if this is done to stop people from copying from the site
Disabling right-click for this purpose is like a lock on the front door to your house. It only keeps the honest person at bay. If I want to see the details of the site, there's no stopping DevTools. Hiding images div backgrounds or under click blocking divs is just a mere inconvenience. If the browser is displaying it, it can be gotten to in DevTools
[+] [-] zmmmmm|4 years ago|reply
I'm now at the point where I crave quality at just about any cost because it's abundantly clear to me that buying crap is bad value. Many of the few high quality things I bought early on in life are still with me and I love them. But so is a huge amount of the garbage I bought earlier and I hate it.
So where I used to go into shops and look at all the expensive items with scorn and think "what idiots must there be who buy all these things that are twice the price!", now I go in and actively try to find out "but is there an even more expensive one I could get with higher quality?"
[+] [-] lupinglade|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] modeless|4 years ago|reply
I don't need the best tools in the world for my home toolbox. I use each tool maybe a couple of times a year and even the cheap ones don't break at that level of use. I bought a $250 RC car and a $10 one, and while the $250 one is awesome I've gotten more use out of the $10 one. Sometimes you need quality but sometimes you don't.
[+] [-] avalexandrov|4 years ago|reply
So yes, I also want the best of the best and "buy it for life" but I'm starting to think that sometimes this classification is a bit overrated and you need to find a very good balance between price and quality.
[+] [-] jimktrains2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicbou|4 years ago|reply
My hobbies and interests are more established. I know which tools I use a lot, how I use them, and where spending more makes a difference. I've owned and outgrown my entry level gear.
That, and I have more disposable income. I can afford long term investments because they don't incur short term deprivation.
On the other hand, when trying something new, I still go with the cheaper option until I can appreciate what a better tool would do. In most cases, I find that the cheap tool is enough.
[+] [-] ridethebike|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Scene_Cast2|4 years ago|reply
Some of the recommended items are great. I love high-quality skillets, knives, rice cookers, etc.
For other items, I've seen an overly high focus on "specs" in the BIFL community, where the durability comes at the price of being uncomfortable and bulky. With shoes, it would be using X leather here, using Y sole stitching there, etc. By comparison, I want light-weight shoes with soft / no heel counter, that weigh less than the recommended leather bricks. The bloody blisters I got from "quality construction" forced me to figure out what I personally need in a shoe.
[+] [-] jay_kyburz|4 years ago|reply
Some clothes are consumable, underwear, t-shirts. jeans. I buy conformable, well fitting and cheap, with no expectation that it will last. I don't think too much about it. (A $5 t-shirt will not last as long as a $50 t-shirt, but there is not _that_much difference)
Other clothes, I now know, if I choose carefully can last 20-30 years. My winter jacket that I only wear 2 months of the year is at least 20 years old. My belt that I wear almost every day is at least 15 years old.
Sometimes I find myself doing an insane amount of research trying to find the perfect product, but its a kind of procrastination because I don't actually really need any more stuff. The backpack I take to work everyday is a little ratty, and I have spend a lot of time looking at backpacks on the web while watching TV.
[+] [-] RcouF1uZ4gsC|4 years ago|reply
Especially with kids, when I have disposable objects, I don't have to worry if they trash it, or get it dirty. I don't have to worry about losing it(I can order a replacement on Amazon that will be here in 2 days). With long-lasting products that are for life, I find I worry about cleaning them, organizing them, and protecting them.
Maybe to total cost of ownership is less for the more durable product, but you only have to lose it once or damage it once for the savings to go away.
[+] [-] desine|4 years ago|reply
If you need something, you should care for it, you should maintain it, and you should commit to a certain level of care. Not caring about your possessions and seeing them as disposable validates the business models of shelling out crap quality products and the further destruction of our environment.
[+] [-] lupinglade|4 years ago|reply
Further, buying low-quality throw-away type products ends up supporting the greedy, lazy low-quality manufacturers. We all end up with only junk for choice.
And as @desine already commented: all this junk ends up in the landfills, oceans, etc.
[+] [-] m463|4 years ago|reply
Do you really need a cast iron frying pan? They seem to be over-represented in this category because they don't break. But iron in your diet is not that good for you if you're male because it accumulates.
Another thing to be wary of is "buy this best stuff" lists are easy money, people will curate your lists for you, then you just link to amazon and hoarding behavior does the rest.
[+] [-] alexpetralia|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] christiansakai|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fnord77|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loldk|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tracer4201|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soneil|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chaostheory|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bushbaba|4 years ago|reply
You literally are buying it for life. They cook the food way better. And a small amount of oil is all that’s needed for eggs and other non stick applications
[+] [-] darksaints|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fnord77|4 years ago|reply
I'd argue there are almost no "buy it for life" electronics. Same with clothing except maybe outerwear.
[+] [-] auslegung|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iib|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.quora.com/Why-does-computer-RAM-have-a-lifetime-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warranty#Lifetime_warranty
[+] [-] thih9|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|4 years ago|reply
Show HN: I calculated the monthly cost of ownership for products - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26525183 - March 2021 (2 comments)
Show HN: Summarizing product reviews into simple bullet-point lists with GPT-3 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26224784 - Feb 2021 (41 comments)
Review broken products instead of new ones - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25810708 - Jan 2021 (121 comments)
Show HN: Recurring reviews to track the whole lifecycle of a product - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25558891 - Dec 2020 (61 comments)
[+] [-] treetoppin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilovecaching|4 years ago|reply
What's more important to me is narrowing down the list of brands I buy from so I spend less time thinking about shopping and more time being productive.
[+] [-] JohnCohorn|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dehrmann|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fnord77|4 years ago|reply
I feel like "buy it for life" is just a different kind of (hipster?) snobbery.
[+] [-] jonwest|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dylan604|4 years ago|reply
I often repeat the phrase "buy it nice, or buy it twice if not thrice". I've done the buy it cheap to get 'er done type of thing, and I've also bought the good item because it was going to make a shitty job that much easier.
[+] [-] artificial|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emre|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wyager|4 years ago|reply
If you buy equipment for climbing, shooting, scuba diving, etc. you can reasonably expect that it's made to a very exacting standard (almost certainly in the US, Japan, or Europe) and will last many years (with well-defined consumable components and maintenance requirements).
[+] [-] jeffbee|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ekianjo|4 years ago|reply
I clicked on Go to Shop, it leads to Amazon with a search for "thinkpad T series" and nothing related to the X200. Useless.
https://www.buyforlife.com/products/185/thinkpad-x200
[+] [-] varispeed|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Meph504|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chakerb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] varenc|4 years ago|reply
I think this happens often in single-page-apps just because developer don't care or don't think about this use case. It's frustratingly common.
For example, Apple's online store does it too: https://www.apple.com/shop/accessories/all/cases-protection No way to right click the various items and open a bunch of tabs.
[+] [-] dylan604|4 years ago|reply
Disabling right-click for this purpose is like a lock on the front door to your house. It only keeps the honest person at bay. If I want to see the details of the site, there's no stopping DevTools. Hiding images div backgrounds or under click blocking divs is just a mere inconvenience. If the browser is displaying it, it can be gotten to in DevTools
[+] [-] gumby|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] golemiprague|4 years ago|reply
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