Moreso, the fridge will stop working in two years cause that is when their subscription cloud service to access your fridge will be updated with firmware that is no longer compatible.
Also the required app will no longer be supported
My fridge doesn’t have a TPM chip and won’t upgrade to FridgeOS 11.
Remember, friends don’t let friends buy Samsung or LG appliances!
(Also, long lasting appliances still exist, you just have to be ready to pay the price, otherwise get something from the Maytag family)
Honestly I don’t get why Rossman cry so much about “he expected that his $2000> TV would not track him or at least have the option turned off by default.”
Why shouldn’t they? Why would anyone expect in the first place that by buying a more expensive product they are going to care about your data? Obviously it benefits them to sell everyone’s data, from Rossman’s point of view it sounds like people who buy cheap products deserve to have their data sold because the company is making a loss by selling them the product.
I usually agree with Rossman’s points, but this one in particular sounds ridiculous to me.
Yeah he’s really upset about LG, but it seems like everything tracks you these days. Seems a bit shortsighted to just shit on LG and no one else.
citing Rossmann?
There’s some appliance breakdown vids (idk if Rossman is one of them) but the gist is Samsung and LG like to put cheap plastic parts in high wear locations which inevitably fail.
Fridges are dead simple appliances. A compressor and evaporator coils with a temperature sensor. There’s absolutely no reason they shouldn’t outlast you and everyone you love.
It’s insane these “premium” brands are built to fall like they do.
Real premium brands do last, but not everyone wants to pay 10k for a fridge
I mean, having to replace a fridge every few years because it constantly breaks in a way that’s uneconomical to repair will cost you a lot more in the long run.
That’s the thing, it’s more expensive being poor.
You’d be better off getting a 2nd hand quality brand from a wealthy suburb when they remodel their kitchen every 5ish years or so.
An insulated box with a decent compressor does not cost 10k. Making a compressor that fails after 2 years is actually hard to do, something both LG and Samsung spent time and money to achieve.
Consider, for example, that nearly every car manufactured with an AC. Which is exactly the same tech as a fridge. Yet you rarely end up needing to replace the compressor on your car. You might need to recharge it or clean it, but not replace the compressor. 10k of your car price isn’t the HVAC.
I wish I had friends. It would’ve prevented me from buying the shitty dishwasher that last less than 3 years.
I like our used Samsung dryer. For basic drying. It has all those other bells and whistles that I don’t care about, but it’s done well for years. That damn finished drying tune though…with the option to turn it off or…not turn it off. omg
For real, we bought a fridge in November and it is already breaking
Back when my dad bought a new whirlpool fridge, it didn’t take long for the LEDs inside to start failing.
“…I am also the size of a dorm fridge”
Today’s products are built to just barely cross some finish line and not a day longer. It’s bad for you, and bad for the environment.
I used to rent this tiny little house from an elderly couple a little over a decade ago. It was their first house when they got married in the late 40s and they’d been renting it out since they moved to a bigger house in the 50s. In all that time the refrigerator has been replaced ONCE in like 1968 and that fridge still worked perfectly when I moved out lol
I moved into a dated house that came with dated kitchen appliances 70/80s. I’ve updated the floors under, the water line and gas line to them. Mostly everything around them. I’ve still kept the appliances. Still work great.
I’ll keep my money and the fridge that still does what new fridge does, keeps shit cold. And the stove that does what a new stove dies, make shit hot.
I see your refrigerator and raise you a freestanding oven. The one with coils.
But why? Like what is failing so often in new fridges?
Shitty solder in wiring. Plastic for things that used to be aluminium, aluminium for things that used to be steel.
Just cost cutting by value engineers. I remember reading that the 3rd year of a cars model was probably the best, as they’d worked out the kinks in the design and hadn’t watered everything down much… I couldn’t back that up if you wanted a source, however
Source: I work in/with electronics manufacturers
Tl; dr - a mix of value engineering and consumer preference. You wanna buy a $3k TV, or a $700 TV? How rock solid does your automatic sprinkler really need to be, compared to a satellite radio in the Sahel?
Per IPC industry standards, there’s three classes of electronic workmanship/quality control used:
- Class 1: It works, just about. Shoddy soldering is okay as long as connectivity is maintained. Passing a QA test may be as simple as “it runs when powered”. This is where most consumer grade stuff lives: calculators, watches, flashlights, etc.
- Class 2: Better built with generally more QA. Testing usually involves actually checking for function and different modes. Generally used only on commercial/civil government stuff like traffic lights, power controllers, heavy machinery - anywhere where reliability and longevity is worth paying more for.
- Class 3: Complete process control and 100% coverage function (and almost always) burn-in/stress test cycles. Top quality and cost, typically only used for military, aerospace, or medical - where stuff failing means people die.
We bought our current car used years ago with a similar philosophy - it was the first year of a new change, and they hadn’t changed or recalled anything in the few following years. Combine that with a one car owner locally, and it obviously was a good buy at 17 years old running strong.
But I will say even the best car makes, models, and years have their lemons. You have to look hard at each car’s history and evidence to really win. We got pretty lucky.
Compressors fail way too often nowadays. The higher priced old ones were built sturdier and if they didn’t fail in a year because of a defect they run almost indefinitely.
The idea that they never fail comes from survivorship bias.
All the control boards are always a popular thing to fail. They always cheap out on the components and out the board where it’s done get moisture damage.
That fridge, in that color occupied a similarly wood paneled kitchen for me growing up. I got a little sweaty when I saw the picture, wondered who’s been in my old house.
Survivorship bias
Contemporary appliances actually do fail more often, and earlier, than their predecessors. They have added a bunch of extraneous things to what was a very simple, stalwart, design. These additions have drastically increased the complexity of their designs and created many fold more points of failure than there used to be. It isn’t so much that the manufacturing is sloppier, or that the materials aren’t as good, though in some ways that is a contributor, just not the main one.
If you by a recently manufactured fridge like the following, you will get a fridge that will last decades if you do the minimum to keep it in good condition. However if you buy one that has an in door ice machine, lcd touch screen, complex lay out that requires the basic mechanical devices, to keep the fridge cool, to have a bunch of extra tubing, wiring, connections, etc. it is much more likely to fail because of all the extra points of failure you added.