Dyson vacuum cleaners. I’ve had mine for about 20 years, had to replace a part here and there, but it’s just as strong as the day I got it. Probably the single best purchase I’ve ever made. A close second would be my Sonicare toothbrush.
Dyson is a marketing company that happens to make okay vacuums. Anyone who owns a Miele or SEBO vacuum would never go to a Dyson. Dyson vacuums never hold up to their high quality bagged competitors in almost any regard. Just my 2c. I used my family’s Dyson before moving out and buying a canister SEBO and the difference is remarkable. nytimes.com/…/what-we-learned-from-vacuum-enthusi…
It might actually outlast your Model M. The membranes on the Model M seems to be the thing that has died for me (after like 20+ years mind you). I frequently still use my Leopold from 2009 and its rock solid.
Is that an IBM Model M, or a Lexmark Model M? Earlier Model Ms were entirely mechanical, later ones made by Lexmark used the buckling-spring-over-membrane design.
And in the case of a membrane Model M, I wonder if you can get a replacement from…whatever that company is that bought the molds and still makes them to this day.
Groove Life makes some fucking solid belts. And if you do actually manage to destroy it somehow, they have a lifetime warranty.
If you toke and like resin carts, Eleaf batteries are amazing. I was going through whatever I could find at smoke shops about once or twice a month before I got an Eleaf. I’ve had this thing for 2 or 3 years now… So long I can’t even remember exactly. It lasts for days and charges in like 10 minutes if you have a quick charge capable charger. Plus it’s compact and also has voltage settings.
I haven’t used Eleaf, but I’m very happy with my Vuber. My first one was still going strong after 5+ years until I unfortunately lost it and had to buy a replacement.
Doc Martens are now Chinese made IIRC and don’t last.
Solovair is the the company that used to make Martens and you can still buy that style there. I hear they’re much better than Martens, but also occasionally a mixed review that they didn’t last very long.
I’ll offer a mixed review for carhartt…while they used to be strictly workwear, they’ve started putting up retail spaces in designer clothing areas. Prices have shot up. I had a belt from them that fell apart pretty quick with normal wear. Got a work shirt that’s doing pretty good though. IMO they’re headed down the same road as a lot of brands that get popular - price hikes with decreased quality.
I just got some Carhartt “wool” socks for Christmas. They are pilling like crazy after 1-2 wears/washes. They’re less than half wool, so that might be the issue.
I do WFH and I don’t wear shoes in the house, but that’s literally why I wanted wool socks.
I asked my parents for wool socks for Christmas twenty years ago and they gave me a few pairs each of three or four different brands. The ones that have lasted the longest and include a lifetime warranty is Redhead from Bass Pro. I’ve only exchanged them once or twice. They’re tall and thick with high pile wool. I’ve worn a pair almost every day for probably nine months out of the year, sometimes year-round, ever since I got them.
I’ll offer a mixed review for carhartt…while they used to be strictly workwear, they’ve started putting up retail spaces in designer clothing areas.
Carhartt and Carhartt Work in Progress are two different brands, the former is the good workwear one, the later is the designer fashionable stuff. Stick to their non WIP stuff
Slight correction: From my understanding, Solovair is the company that purchased the cobbling machinery/factory that DocMartens sold off when they fully off-shored. DocMartens then contracted with them for their limited release, price-inflated, Made in UK boots. As the designs are long out of patent, Solovair also manufactures their own. I see Docs at a 15% markup, just for the name.
I’ll throw a weird one in here. If you want to do any smart home automation stuff, Lutron. Their stuff is famously bulletproof and generally “just works” and almost never needs troubleshooting.
It can be a little pricy for a light switch, but it will work with just about any platform you want to use. Also, all of their wireless switches work without internet.
The door from my driveway opens into my office. The light switch in my office is in a really shitty place. When coming into my office at night, I have to navigate to the light switch in the dark to turn on the light.
Or, at least I did. Now when the door opens at night, the light in my office comes on at 10%.
WiFi is really handy because it’s easy and accessible, but as you add devices, you wind up with WiFi network issues.
Because these devices can just talk to the internet, they can talk to their manufacturer’s websites and tell them everything they learn about you from your network, such as all the other devices on your network, any open file sharing protocols (and the files on those devices), any other devices that are willing to talk to the WiFi device. So - literally - everything on your network becomes exposed to the manufacturer of the device. It’s unlikely the manufacturer would be nefarious, but they would extract all your data.
And if the device has poor security, opens a port to the outside world, or - as I discovered this weekend on my soundbar - just has a root ssh shell with no password requirement, it could pose a security risk to you and your devices.
…. And I just remembered outbound federation is currently broken on my instance and maybe one person will actually see this comment. Fuck.
I have my lights set to turn on slightly before I am supposed to wake, turn off after I go to work, before I return from home, and after I go to bed. I’ve recently added mmwave sensors to turn them on and off based on my presence within a room. I can do all kinds of automations that I could do manually sure but if I don’t need to and can minimize the amount of excess energy waste then why wouldn’t I want a wirelessly controlled switch and or lights?
And yes most everyone can do this. Google Home Assistant and get lost in the rabbit hole.
Flexibility. A hardwired switch is choosing your lighting configuration at build time, but when you have light bulbs that can all be controlled individually through software, then you want a switch that can interact with that software.
For instance, let’s say you do something crazy and unprecedented like add a lamp to your room, with hardwired switches now you either have two switchs in two different spots to deal with every time you enter a room, or you need to call an electrician to wire up a switched plug. If your switch was instead a software switch you could just reprogram it to also control the lamp.
I bought an old model in 2013 and it lived in my backpack through 7 years of school and university. It was dropped hard enough to permanently bend the heatsink, the disk drive cover snapped off, and it regularly overheated from throwing it in my bag without turning it off. It ran windows, dozens of Linux distros (up to 3 at once) and now it’s a hackintosh for when I need a Mac. I’m confident I could buy spare parts and repair it myself if anything important broke.
I was extremely skeptical when IBM spun off that division but time has proved me wrong. The Lenovo rinkpads have been much better than I ever expected them to be.
This is no exception. Thinkpad used to be great years (decade?) ago. The stuff they have produced in recent years is crap. I had two work laptops in the last 4 years and both are absolutely terrible compared to the old stuff.
Yeah when I took my issue to Lenovo customer service, their first response was that my laptop has reached the end of its usable lifespan. 5 years!? I’m not wealthy and that thing cost me $1,500 and I will never be able to afford another laptop again.
Buy yourself a used T400-T430 (and models of that age) if you don’t have very big computing requirements, they are 10+ years old and they will last you another 10+.
If you buy a Lenovo from the last 7-8 years you will get an overpriced piece of junk.
Merrell, Doc Martin, L. L. Bean, The North Face, Fjällräven for clothing and accessories.
Bullhidebelts makes some really nice authentic leather belts that actually last because they aren’t those synthetic belts with leather veneer like Gucci, Luis Vutton, or others push for stupid high prices.
Logitech makes some good quality pc peripherals that have exceptional battery life.
Invicta has also impressed me in recent years with their watches. I was gifted a clone of the Rolex Submariner and it’s a very good copy without the high price of a Rolex. It’s been so good that most Rolex owners I’ve met buy an Invicta watch as a daily driver.
Edit: Seeing the comments a bunch mentioned Doc Martin as junk now, so I checked and they did get bought by a Chinese company, so maybe not those any more.
I bought a Logitech Pebble M350 a year ago, and I have proceeded to basically buy exclusively Logitech peripherals ever since.
Been so happy with their products, as long as you avoid the cheap sub $20 stuff (I’ve always wondered why they don’t put their cheaper items under a different name), you certainly get your money’s worth.
At this point, I don’t generally give trust to brands but products. Too many companies that used to be a name to trust have decided to monetize that trust (or get acquired by another company that doesn’t see the value in maintaining that trust), but they might still have good quality products in their lineup along with the cheap ones.
Though I’ve also done well with the “just buy one to see how important it is to have quality in this particular thing”. I just sold my old cordless drill after owning it for about a decade. It was weak but I didn’t even really notice that until I wanted to drill a hole through a stone counter top. A bought another cheap corded drill for that, but have since also bought a quality cordless drill set that might even allow me to sell the corded drill.
And if you need quality, look for stuff marketed to professionals. People who use their drill every single day aren’t going to be using the ones that can’t hold a charge or break after 20 hours of usage. Booster Juice doesn’t have shitty blenders where the connection between the motor and blade wears down with each use such that the motor spins but the blades do not before 3 digit uses, or even 4.
I think it’s good to know the histories of companies that are reputable though, then you can get an idea of what you’re getting when looking at thrift stores
Looking around my immediate environment, I see very few things that aren’t
A. already 30 years old made by companies that are essentially defunct and if the brand does even still exist it’s transitioned to another parent company as a zombie brand that produces identical temporary garbage to the rest of the industry, like my Kenmore 80 series washer and dryer.
B. Modern shit with a single-digit year life expectancy, like any computer hardware I have, my cell phone, my printer, etc.
C. Isn’t from a company that has completely pissed me off glares at my very, very last Dell products
D. I didn’t make myself from scratch, like an increasing amount of my furniture.
The only item that falls in my eye line that I can say “buy it now and your grandchildren will actually want it” is my Revere stainless steel frying pan. It’s not as ragnarok proof as cast iron but it also won’t cave in my glass cooktop. I think my grandmother bought mine in the 80’s, you can still buy them today.
I do want to mention my Kitchenaid mixer. The unit itself is well made, I’ve made at least one pizza a week with it for the past…six years? It’s a quality power tool. I dislike the company and their product range. They have a tendency to discontinue attachments in favor of incompatible and worse ones. For example, I’m aware of three different meat grinder attachments, one metal one and two plastic ones only one of which the food mill attachment is compatible with, and they did their best to prevent people from learning that, because the difference between the plastic one you probably already have, that was possibly packed in with your mixer, and the one that’s compatible with the food mill, is like, a few millimeters in diameter here and there. If I show you their marketing pictures (of white plastic on that White Marketing Void background) you couldn’t tell them apart, and the model numbers are very similar. That has rubbed me the wrong way in a bad place.
For printers, I’d like to suggest picking up a brother laser scanner/copier/printer off Craigslist.
They can usually be had for ~$100 if you just get black and they’ll last for a stupidly long time. Toner is expensive but you’ll easily get 1500+ pages out of one cartridge and it never dries out.
If you want color, look around for an HP laserjet pro. They’re usually commercial grade and while you’ll probably pay a fair bit more, I see them on Craigslist regularly for ~$150-250 depending on the model. I have one in my office and I’ve gotten several thousand pages through it with zero problems.
I just get the toner refill and old cartridge exchange from whatever local print shop. My current area doesn’t have one sadly but I still have 2 left as I normally do 5 at a time. For anyone looking for printers I recommend checking openprinting.org and grabbing one categorized under “perfectly” even if you don’t use Linux. The driverless printers will work with phones and such too.
Have you tried unplugging it with things powered on to make sure the battery is working? The batteries are supposed to be replaced every couple years, I found out when I started having power outages last winter and my (seasonic) PSU just turned off when the power flickered and PC was running. I bought a replacement battery off Amazon for cheap and it was easy to swap out.
PSU is different than UPS. PSU is the Power Supply Unit and doesn’t have a battery. UPS are Uninterruptable Power Supplies and do have batteries. Seasonic only makes PSU’s.
Speed queen washers and dryers. LGs and Samsung’s drop like flies in comparison. They are expensive but they are made in the United States and last donkeys years. I’ve heard of people moving out after 10 years, and taking their speed queen dryer with them.
Also, in general, hand made Japanese knives. Any knife will keep cutting if sharpened but most of “sharpness” is thinness of the blade. That’s why we don’t use meat cleavers for daily prep. Japanese knives are made to be thinned and polished, as the edge will become thicker with repeated sharpenings. Other knives will get thicker and thicker and become complete carrot crunchers. These can be thinned too but it’s much more difficult with only sharpening stones.
Additionally the handles are easily replaceable by anyone, western style handles require destructive disassembly of the existing scales and rivets.
Japanese knives are great if that’s your preference but that excludes a lot of other BIFL knives worth considering.
Wusthof in particular should be on the list as well as Global. In general kitchen knives are more forgiving in the BIFL category because a lot of it is just properly caring for what you have.
I’ve had wusthof handles break on me and they are a pain to replace. You have to drill the rivets, remove the scales, glue new ones, drill new rivet holes, hammer new rivets and then shape them. With Japanese knives you tap the handle off and put in a whole new one.
Another issue with wusthof is that the bolsters on their chef knives are way too large. They weigh the know down and makes it annoying to sharpen. Over time it will develop a recurve and won’t contact the cutting board. Your only option is to grind it down, which is a big endeavor because they’re so damn big nowadays.
They’re still great knives but because of those issues that Japanese knives don’t have, they aren’t the best BIFL option for me.
I get that everybody has their own preference but BIFL is more about quality of materials, durability, reputation of the company etc.
I’ve had wusthof handles break on me and they are a pain to replace.
How so? You just send it to Wusthof and they replace or repair it. Seems pretty BIFL
Another issue with wusthof is that the bolsters on their chef knives are way too large.
My Wusthof Ikons have no more bolster than my brothers Japanese set. I assume you’re talking about the Classic line of Wusthof?
You raise issues based on your preference but that doesn’t impact them being BIFL. They’re well made, hold an edge and Wusthof stands behind them 100%.
I dropped my utility knife once and it bent the tip. I shipped it to Wusthof and they took care of it, only cost me shipping. I also had a knife block that split, for that they wanted a picture, then they shipped me a replacement and asked me to destroy the old one. I used it in a campfire. Seems pretty BIFL to me.
This is the one to pay attention to. Speed Queen is what every laundromat uses, because they’re fucking rock solid and don’t need a lot of maintenance. They don’t have as many bells and whistles as a Samsung, but they’ll outlast two or three Samsungs and still be cleaning just as well as the day you bought it.
They also cost as much as 3 samsungs. I am all for buy-it-for-life, but when I can buy a nice Samsung with bells and whistles, have a better wash, lower energy use, and more flexible options on how the clothing is being washed- then why would I not buy the Samsung? My Samsung washer was 800 and the dryer was 600. A speed queen starts at 2400 each. I could buy 3 washers and then 4 dryers for that. Plus I save money on the energy cost with my Samsung eco settings.
I have a house filled with buy it for life where I can and where it makes sense. And when I bought the washer and dryers I looked into speedqueen. It didn’t make sense. And before people start saying things like “good luck replacing them in 3 years” they are already 5 years old. My 1400$ is 5 years in and doing just fine.they could break today and need to both be replaced, and I am still ahead. I think speed queen is one of the few BIFL brands that I disagree with.
Already mentioned in thread, Anker cables. It has very good threaded covers that are strong and hard to damage. Internal copper cables and the USB ends are also very well made so there is no chance for it to fray or crack.
Bought a pair pack over 6 years ago. Still haven’t used the second cable because the first one is as good as new.
This is what everyone told me, so I bought a two pack of Anker branded cables. Both of them broke and wouldn’t charge without being held at a weird angle within a month. I bought an Amazon basics cable after that and it has worked for years just fine.
I seem to be in the minority here, but I will never buy Anker again after this awful experience.
I’m in the same boat. I’ve bought their cables at least 3 times at 3 different points in my life. All of their cables have failed within about a year. That being said I use them extremely heavily because I’m an Android app developer. I have many test devices and I’m constantly plugging in new devices and sometimes have up to 3 devices connected at the same time. I’m also not just charging the devices as I’m transferring data between the computer and device.
Anker has been hit-or-miss for me. It either craps out early, or lasts much longer than it has any right to. They’re still my go-to for cables, because I usually lose or give many of them away before they have a chance to show their worth
The main thing that kills cables is sitting a phone in portrait on one’s chest and having it plugged in for charging. That creates a nice 90-degree or nearly 90-degree bend that just destroys the cable over time.
The Anker Powerline 3 Usb C cables are amazing. 100W rated, nearly impossible to tangle and I’ve had no issue with them being used continuously for either my phone or laptops, including surviving a lot of falls, being pinched, run over by a desk chair, etc. I have two and would buy more but I’m waiting for USB C to up the max wattage before I do. The colors are also a nice touch.
It’s American Eagle for me. Their pants have lasted me for longer than any other brand that I’ve worn regularly. Also, I don’t have to adjust them because they just fit.
American eagle jeans are under rated. Their stretch jeans have last me for years with the only issues being some wallet / cellphone lines, and an occasional hole in the pocket that needs patching.
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