I'm sure I end up with results biased towards whatever's in vogue for that community and likely something a bit more expensive, but it seems to have been a reasonably successful strategy in terms of getting things that fit my needs.
Wonder if there's a good way to facilitate finding such resources and avoiding the endless SEOed spam that one gets when googling any item for reviews/recommendations.
Indeed, it's a freaking scourge. My current tactic is to append "reddit" to my searches. Often there's a subreddit of mostly genuine enthusiasts about $thing.
In the last year I’ve bought a great garbage disposal, some all weather tires, a pellet grill, and a dishwasher based off their recommendations. Often times instead of getting the very best rates of something I’ll buy the second best which is often 1/2 the price. Sometimes the best of an item is really cheap compared to other brands that are shinier but objectively worse at the core function of the product.
We ask a lot of our chargers these days (e.g. 100w USB-C PD), and the price-quality curve seems to be very jumpy. Have had good experiences with companies like Anker or Aukey, but also seen tear-downs of failed units one price tier down that had zero isolation between mains voltage and what's going to the device. Would love to find some better guidance on buying such things.
For instance, I've bought stuff from Aukey and Ravpower that's worked well so far, but I wouldn't necessarily call those name brands yet in the US, unlike Anker.
Manufacturing ridiculously cheap shit at scale to where more and more people click a button and have anything they want delivered to their door in a fucking day... is absolutely disgusting to me. But that's me, in my privilege. This machine adds ever more people up to the "consumer" class from out of abject poverty and welp that is a good thing.
I'm just conflicted because I feel like that has to be so doesn't it? We get to pontificate about "post consumerism" and derive meaning and such and such and such. Meanwhile that literally-worth-2-cents-t-shirt actually happens to be a good thing, at history scale, to all the people that have not being able to clothe themselves =/
sigh, I don't know what my point is, your comment just compelled me to share.
For example I'd go super cheap on wired earbuds but premium on a set of knives. Or super cheap on knives but premium on an electric knife sharpener