For most people, the majority of positive reviews are noise on any product and they evaluate them by reading negative reviews.
For once, let's turn it all upside down:
We should build a collection about how things break - review broken and worn-out products to teach how to identify cheap products (where are the stress points, what manufacturing techniques exist to alleviate those). Then compare those with used products well past their warranty period that hasn't broken, and look at why they haven't.
PS: I'm the creator of the community-driven Buy For Life platform. Let's overcome cheap products and keep corportaions accountable.
I find it meaningful that all items (currently) displayed at https://www.buyforlife.com/ are typical outdoor use, high-quality, representative for a certain kind of living.
This kind of living has pros and cons, but I guess not everybody wants to live like that. For instance, some people would prefer to have some shitty but portable kitchenware instead of expensive, bulky and representative "professional" units.
This is a bit of "urban" lifestyle against "suburbia" lifestyle, or "downshifter" lifestyle, or "countryside" lifestyle.
For instance, I am a bit aware of the "zero waste" community. These people would probably buy a single macbook (because it is stylish and looks as if you had taste, not neccessarily because it is high quality), but no kitchen device at all, because such devices express the "wrong" style of life. Similar arguments could probably be made about some certain kind of hacker culture. People buying hoodies and thinkpads because it is "in vogue".
This is probably the main reason why just another review page won't take off: The products are not "in vogue".
Just my two cents. Very emotional, not objective at all.
You pinpointed what I’ve been feeling. There are things I want to buy for life. Things like (most) tools, camping equipment, or things I don’t expect to improve over time. But there is a large number of products that I don’t plan to hold onto because they are imperfect either because state of the art hasn’t advanced enough or because I can’t afford the better version yet. For example:
Boots. I can afford the boots I can afford today and I like them. But I am sure that 10 years from now I’ll be able to afford better ones.
Coffee mugs. I currently sport a Yeti that will likely last me at least 50 years. But I also expect that better coffee mugs will come.
Smart watch and mobile phone and laptop. No matter what, Moore’s law will catch up with you. And developers dislike worrying about running software on old hardware.
Clothing. Yes I know, but I do to an extent care about how I look and showing up somewhere in pleated pants and a plaid suit today because you bought it 30 years ago and it’s still holding up isn’t something I can pull off.
Vehicles. Yes, even your Tesla will become obsolete. There will be one that will be a no brainer upgrade.
This isn’t to say that I want to buy junk. But a $6 T shirt lasts me about two years and a $60 T shirt will need to last me more than 20 to make it worth it. In the mean time my body might change, my tastes might change, and styles might change. Timeless styles are a thing but when you spill red wine on it and can’t get the stain out four years in, who is your next move?
That better last more than 40 years and be wholly responsible for saving my life +1 family member, wash/dry on any cycle I want, and never get chewed up by mice if I leave it on floor.
I wear merino wool t-shirts to bike to work because they don't get smelly, however, they actually wear out much faster than cheap synthetic shirts. I usually buy them on clearance/sale for $30-40. $70-120 is nuts for a t-shit. I also don't understand how that can be buy it for life anyways. Its a cloth shirt, maybe its decently made but any synthetic fabric will last longer (still not forever).
I have a couple sets of cotton t-shirts, about 5-8. Have had them for 5 years already, wear them daily and normally for 1, 2 Max before going back to the wash basket. Cost me perhaps 3€ a piece. I don’t see the need for these wonderfully expensive extravaganza...
As I said in my post, they don't get smelly so for me the $40 is worth it, they still last easily dozens of wears so the cost is minimal and I don't have deal with a sweaty smelly shirt in my bag at work. Also, I don't find a cotton shirt the most comfortable for active use.
The estimated monthly cost for that T-shirt is higher than kitchen appliances listed on the site. A mixer is rated at $2.73 per month. A fridge at $7.64/month is less expensive than two of these T-shirts. That T-shirt is clearly overpriced.
Utility of merino is not in them being super ultra durable. It is more that it is warm even when wet when you sweating and they are comfortable when exercising/hiking/whatever in bad weather conditions.
Yes. If I need a shirt that will be critical to what I’m doing, it might be worth it. Something to keep me warm in a critical situation. But I wouldn’t expect it to last me for life, just be high quality to not fail unexpectedly.
> Boots. I can afford the boots I can afford today and I like them. But I am sure that 10 years from now I’ll be able to afford better ones.
If you can get 10 years out of a pair of boots it means they were good. I've had a pair of Caterpillar boots break after 2 years. I'm happy to see a review site with a strong focus on long term ownership.
There's a lot of variation. Materials change. Stuff wears out. I have old gear and I have gear I've replaced because what I wanted wasn't available 10 years ago.
As for boot. I have custom boot that I've had for a couple decades (and have had repaired). But they're heavy and I don't wear them for everything.
We probably shouldn't take "for life" any more literally than we do the "four hour workweek". It represents an idea. You might not want your boots to last forever and may in fact decide to replace them after 6 years. But if they were sufficiently well made, then you'll get more for them when you sell them and they'll last longer for the next owner if you sell or donate them.
Without knowing much about the site or where the items came from, you might be seeing a big founder effect based on the creator's interests (and, inevitably, the biases that likely builds into their network, etc.) But these things change.
Any effort to judge product quality is going to have some skew towards more expensive products--the stakes are just higher--but I think there's a risk here of conflating style, quality, durability, and price.
Most of us have probably had at least one ~expensive product marketed on quality that broke jaw-droppingly fast. We've probably all also bought some cheap utilitarian workhorse that lasted for decades.
Some of us care a lot about style and signalling, it's true, but I don't think many of the rest actually want to own crap?
> This kind of living has pros and cons, but I guess not everybody wants to live like that.
I suspect that if you gave everyone a choice of what products they want, they would gravitate toward the better made, longer lasting ones. However those often cost considerably more for incremental improvement, or for improvements you may not need (eg massive service interval for something rarely used).
Hi there, I checked out your website. It's a cool idea and one that is needed.
What do you think of the fact that many of the products are in fact disposable by backed by a "lifetime" warranty precisely because they're so highly marked up that the manufacturer can give you a new one for free instead of attempting even trivial repairs? Osprey is the king of this. This seems to be the opposite of the buy for life mentality - things should be repaired if economical, but no one repairs what they can get replaced for free.
Very interesting point that I haven't thought of. How could we solve this? I guess after a lot of reviews/comments and some downvotes, it would become clear that Osprey doesn't provide a proper reapir service and is in fact, a wasteful company.
I don't trust your company .. or any single company. This task should be done a Wikipedia kind of company and the data should be available for anyone for free or a small fee.
Yes you will own the review after you created it. Trustworthiness is the main asset of this page. I'm even thinking about creating a non-profit org for it.
Interesting idea but is your site curated for some items or just 100% autogenerated/crowd sourced? For example, you have listed the Thinkpad X220 which is a 10 year old laptop. Furthermore I also noticed the Magic mouse and is that really considered buy it for life(in terms of repairable)? Speaking as someone who has purchased and accidentally destroyed multiple Magic Keyboards by liquid spills, I love their products but would never consider them "buy it for life" from a repair perspective.
The Thinkpad line was acquired by Lenovo from IBM in 2005. They've done a good job in maintaining the quality of the product line but some products with the 'Thinkpad' branding is absolute crap. Technology products are hard to rank for build quality in my opinion. When Lenovo again made an acquisition of Motorola Mobility in 2014, I thought they'd do a good job of maintaining Motorola phones just like Thinkpad. At first, you had almost a close to Vanilla version of Android with regular updates but since 2019+ they stopped maintaining Android Security updates and releasing whole Android versions on some of their bottom-tier phones. Things change quickly in the technology department so BIFL ranks are difficult.
Maybe I'm taking ths site name too literally, but I would think that computers, along with most electronics, are just one of those things that would never be a "buy it for life" purchase.
I actually do have a Casio calculator from High School (30+ years ago) that I still use, but no other computing devices that are more than 10 years old. Even if they still work, there just isn't much practical you can do with them.
My current private laptop ist 7 years old and still running fine. It's some dell laptop and I suppose it will fall apart at some point but so far I don't see why I would replace it. I wouldn't mind it lasting another 10 years.
Same for mice. I'd certainly use a mouse for 10+ years if it's good enough. I've invested in a quite expensive ergonomic, mechanical keyboard and I have a very old mechanical cherry keyboard at work and I do expect them to last forever.
If you don't need the latest sh*t (touch bars and what not) you'll probably be fine with current characteristics of laptops for quite a few years.
I use a mechanical keyboard at home, but I won't use it at work as it would drive my fellow cube farm dwellers nuts. Is your keyboard a silent click one?
This is exactly the kind of initiative I've been looking for and thought about lately! Thanks so much!
I especially like the idea of rating products by their monthly/daily cost.
I imagine this growing in a direction where the manufacturers and producers have added initiative to produce durable products again.
Of course for real change to occur governments, regulation, large scale action would have to happen.
One vector which would be interesting to see this with is bigger and maybe even less consumer centric products. How durable is a delivery van? How durable and cost effective is a factory machine?
I can't speak for the rest but factory "machines" are built to last in most cases and have long warranties and easily swappable components. Most of what's there can be machined in a pinch. I went to a glass factory one that had some machines that were 70+ years old. When something broke, which was pretty rare, they simply machined a new one. On a tangential note I expect my Lodge cast iron cooking set to last at least one lifetime :D
Excited about this. I love certain things because they simply last forever and do what they are supposed to. For example about 18 years ago I bought 2 HP12c calculators when I started working in finance (One for work, one for home). Not only have they not broken, but I can't tell you the battery life because they are both still on their original batteries. Now old hands tell me the new modern 12cs (like mine) aren't a patch on the original and the old ones from the 80s had even better battery life than that.
I worry in the long term that this becomes immeasurable for some products. I have a leather belt that's at least 15 years old. I would bet the product, and perhaps the company, does not exist any longer.
For once, let's turn it all upside down:
We should build a collection about how things break - review broken and worn-out products to teach how to identify cheap products (where are the stress points, what manufacturing techniques exist to alleviate those). Then compare those with used products well past their warranty period that hasn't broken, and look at why they haven't.
PS: I'm the creator of the community-driven Buy For Life platform. Let's overcome cheap products and keep corportaions accountable.