> If you pay $3K to $5K for a fridge today (for a fridge 2-3x as big as the 1950 fridge), do you get a better longer-lasting one? I'm not sure.

One of the difficulties is it's become very hard to know if an item is more expensive because:

- it's better quality

- it's full of bullshit

- it's marketing

However 3-5k for a fridge is well into "professional kitchen commercial refrigerator / refrigerated cabinet" range. At that price you can get a triple glass-door adjustable shelves wheeled model e.g. https://www.saro-kitchenequipment.com/refrigerators-commerci...

You don't need to go to anywhere near that price to get before you hit a sweet spot. For like $600 including tax one of the biggest retailers in the UK will sell you the most energy efficient fridge on the market with a 5 year guarantee. Like most products, you're reaching diminishing returns at a certain point and that seems to be it as far as I can tell.

Isn’t the point of the OP that this “top of the line” fridge has poor ergonomics and features relative to the 70 year old one?

If true, that is at least interesting.

Frankly, a 5 year guarantee is pathetic. Appliances lasting 25 years was once unremarkable.

Without proof of 25 year warranties, I call bullshit.

If a seller had a product good enough to offer a 25 year warranty, and they could sell it for 5x cheaper than a product with a 5 year warranty, they would not have stopped selling it, because people would not have stopped buying it.

It's not bullshit, my parents had the same fridge from when I was born until I graduated from college.

The claim was not that your parents’ fridge lasted 25 years, it was that appliances in general lasted 25 years.

If that was true, manufacturers would have been advertising 25, or least 10, 15, 20 year warranties to win customers.

Nobody putting their money where their mouth is is a better signal than anecdotal data.

I understand the claim. I know my experience is anecdotal but I think it's common enough that many people can relate. I don't really need empirical evidence for this one.

I also think it's common sense that companies go out of business when there's no repeat buyers because their products last a lifetime.

>I also think it's common sense that companies go out of business when there's no repeat buyers because their products last a lifetime.

I had not considered this, but I guess it would be a deterrent to offering long warranties.

But the claim you called BS wasn't that they had 25 year warranties, just that they last 25 years.

As rule my Grandparents had stuff that was out of warranty, but having repairs done was cheaper than replacement. By my parents time things got replaced every 5-10 years.

My kitchen was remodeled (by the previous owners) in 1993. All of the appliances, except for the dishwasher, have not been replaced by us in 16 years of ownership and I believe they all date back to the 1993 remodel (based on serial numbers and general condition when we bought the place).

In that time, I've replaced the dishwasher in 2014, a spring on the door of the dishwasher in 2022, and a heating element in the defrost circuit of the 1993 fridge. That's an oven, a cooktop, a fridge, a trash compactor, and a garbage disposal that all have 30 years of service, with only the dishwasher having failed and two repairs. Their older fridge in the basement is still chugging along as well. That's 5/7 perfect, 1/7 with one minor repair, and 1/7 failed inside of 30 years. My parents built their place in 1999; of the kitchen appliances, only the microwave has been repaired. Their place before that, built in 1974, only the dishwasher replaced between 1974 and 1998 when they moved.

My conclusion is that dishwashers sucked and still suck, but that old appliances generally chug along for decades.

Professional appliances aren't strictly better, because they're rarely designed to be quiet. Your example:

>Sound pressure level: approximately 65 dB [presumably dBA]

That's much louder than domestic fridges. I would find it unacceptably annoying.

I'll recycle a comment I made in another thread a few years ago:

When clearing out my grandmother's house a few years ago, my uncle and I almost broke our backs trying to get the freezer out. It felt like it weighed a ton, even empty.

My grandmother told us it had been a wedding present, and that they had been totally awestruck at the time at the generous present from her parents-in-law.

After all, a decent freezer cost at least 2,000 kroner! (At this time, the average yearly gross pay was just in excess of 7,000 kroner.)

My grandparents married in 1950. Since then, monetary value has been reduced twenty-fold. You can still buy a top-loading freezer for 2,000 kroner; I just checked.

So - in 1950, you had to work for five months to earn money for a freezer (after taxes.)

In 2023, I have to work five hours for a freezer (after taxes.)

(2,000kr is slightly less than US$200)

2,000kr is $300. If you earn that in five hours, you make around $10,000/month after taxes. So more than double the median of $4,632/month. But okay, even at that median, I guess it's just two days of work.

Are you sure you had to work 5 months for a freezer at median work in 1950? Seems nobody would buy them then.

After tax, in many places you have to work a _decade_ at the median wage for a house (or in some places considerably more). And yet people buy those.

Domestic appliances really have gotten dramatically cheaper relative to earning power, pretty much everywhere. Have a look at some old prices and compare to median wages; it's really fairly dramatic for most stuff.

I am Norwegian, our kroner are somewhat less sought after than the Danish krone.

As for the cost in 1950, I have no idea except what my grandmother told me - but the 7,000kr average annual pay I looked up at the bureau of statistics.

My paternal grandmother, though, upon hearing my maternal grandmother had a freezer already in 1950, was green with envy - they had not got one until the end of that decade.

I guess being an early adopter came at a price back then, too.

I found this [0] story (In Norwegian only, use your translation service of choice), where it is observed that a freezer cost 'several months' wages' for a worker, and that adoption didn't take off until down payment options were introduced in the early sixties.

Interestingly, I found another couple of historical prices on consumer electronics:

A 21" black-and-white TV set in 1960: NOK 2,200 (two months' gross wages)

Tandberg 1/4" reel-to-reel tape deck (Also 1960): NOK 880 (Just shy of a month's wages)

'Cheap' 26" colour TV, 1993: Three weeks' wages

VHS recorder, also 1993: Another three weeks' wages.

Sony Walkman, also 1993: A week and a half of wages.

It is ridiculous how prices have come down in later decades.

[0] https://forskning.no/forbruk-hus-og-hjem-moderne-historie/dy...

Some context - I’m assuming that OP is Norwegian:

2000 Norwegian kr (NOK) = 198 USD

2000 Swedish kr (SEK) = 191 USD

2000 Danish kr (DKK) = 296 USD

2000 Icelandic kr (ISK) = 15 USD

Refrigerators might be a bad example because we got rid of highly effective refrigerants on purpose to patch a hole in the ozone layer.

Or perhaps more accurately, to stop poking a giant hole in the ozone layer.

Today's refrigerators are much more efficient.

Old lock handle fridges are surprisingly efficient. I have a 1949 Hotpoint and a 2022 LG. They both draw about the same amount of power when running, the difference is the Hotpoint runs less because it has four inches of insulation and a lock handle that seals much better than the drawer on the LG freezer. The only complaint with the Hotpoint is that it stays around 32.5°F which is too cold for veggies, but fantastic for beer.

And a lock handle that kills your kid in an hour or your money back.

Simply do not have children.

Issue closed.

They were efficient because they weren't self-defrosting.

I don't think freon fridges were inherently mechanically any more reliable than fridges using modern refrigerants. If anything slightly less so all else being equal, I'd have thought.

ALL older appliances were way more reliable than any you can buy today. I'm just old enough that all our appliances are from the 1980s, plus a huge chest freezer from the 60s or 70s bought secondhand on Craigslist for $45. They are simple, reliable, faster, and work better than their modern counterparts. Our refrigerator, bought in 1989, has never had any problem at all.

They can be easily fixed, and parts are still available - unlike my Mom's 5-8 year-old Samsung and LG appliances, which will have to be thrown away and replaced soon, because parts are NOT available. As for efficiency - they're not really much less efficient than new ones, especially when you figure that each of them has outlasted a half-dozen or more modern appliances.

When the washing machine tub cracked a couple of years ago, I asked the local parts shop if it was worth getting our old Kenmore(Whirlpool) machine fixed, and when he found out it was from 1987, the manager said, "Don't ever get rid of it! You can't buy anything made that well today at any price!" So I spent $80 on a new tub (plus $75 for labor, since installing it is a pain). That's one of only two major repairs it's ever needed (I swapped out the synchronous clock driven cycle controller myself 15 years ago) - it still runs just like it did when new.

It's certainly possible that all my appliances could outlive me...

I had an old chest freezer from the 80s.

You had to manually defrost it for it to keep working. Modern ones have automatic defrosters and other such features.

Yes, the old one "kept working", but at worse-and-worse reliability as the frost built up, until you manually removed everything from the freezer and ran a proper defrost cycle (aka: turn it off, wait for everything to melt, sponge out the water).

I think I'll stick with my "less reliable" heater-inside-a-freezer with an escape hole to automatically siphon + pump the water out. More moving parts means less reliability, but these features are absolutely worth the loss in reliability.

> ALL older appliances were way more reliable than any you can buy today.

Sure, if you only consider all the older appliances that have survived this long.

While old appliances have good features, LG and Samsung have earned a reputation of being bad. Whirlpool and GE still make some good stuff and they still sell parts. The reason you keep the old washer is the new versions legally cannot use as much water, and so they don't clean as well.

Oh you can buy the old wasteful washers if you still want them. They just don't got any EnergyStar ratings (in fact, people have been shopping around for "lack of EnergyStar" to find those old wasteful washers).

But "they don't clean as well" is a bit of a myth. More water requires more soap, and as it turns out, shuffling clothes around with *proportionally more soap* and *less water* leads to better cleanliness for the vast majority of stains.

------------

Think about it: if my washer only uses 1 gallon of water, but yours uses 5 gallons of water, your soap is 5x less effective than my same soap.

Its not the "water" that cleans, its the soap after all. With one exception: caked on mud prefers water over all other solvents.

But with regards to blood, sweat, grapes, tomatoes, and "typical" stains, its not the "water" that does anything. Its the soap. See ConsumerReports.org testing (ketchup tests and whatnot), as well as efficiency numbers that they've tested.

its the mix of water and soap. There is a fix amount of soap per liter water and kg of clothes. so its both

Water is called the "universal solvent" for a reason. We use soap for the exceptions, but water still does the bulk of the removal of things you don't want (dirt, salt), while soap handles the rest (generally oil based stains)

Except the #1 thing you are washing off is the natural oils from human skin and sweat.

And #2 and #3 are the oils in food (chocolate, grease, wine, and other food products) and then the oils from grass / outdoors.

Literally the only thing that water helps with is soil / dirt. Outside of that, the washing machine should be designed to use the minimum amount of water needed to activate the soap, the actual cleaner.

My family had a bunch of 80's appliances. They were terrible feature-wise like the washer would eat my clothes, the dryer was practically either stupid hot or practically no heat, and the fridge didn't have any defrost functionality nor water features. They broke down or were otherwise replaced in the 90s. They were replaced with units with far more features and were good until the 2020s, surviving a few moves. A few even got sold in the end as needs changed.

My current kitchen has a microwave that's from the early 2000s, it works fine and has exceptional even heating and top notch auto sensor modes. The 1980s one we had was a total hunk of junk that constantly had failures, wasn't as powerful, didn't have any sensor cooking modes, and performed very poorly at cooking evenly. The other microwave from the 90s ate fuses for breakfast and had massively unreliable sensor cooking modes.

So for me, practically all my newer appliances are way better than the old ones and have still often lasted >10yrs. Anecdotes are anecdotes.

My refrigerator does just fine keeping things cold. The plastics shelves just decompose. My guess is that if they get a warranty claim based on a broken shelf they can just send one out easily. They make the things that will be hard to fix (compressor, etc.) so they last long enough to get through the warranty period.

None of the features in that ad missing from modern refrigerators have much to do with the refrigerants, though.

Nowadays it's difficult to just pay premium and trust things to last for decades. A more likely event is that you pay premium, get more features, and the appliance breaks down if one of which breaks.

Specially since companies are moving to selling you the service of repairs. It's well know that fridges with water coolers and ice makers are very prone to breaking. I like the features in the video though, as those are just fancy shelves that are unlikely to break. Nowadays, most fridge special features come in the form of complex electronics, IoT and other tech that is likely to break within a couple years.

Yup what I really need is a sturdy, large volume fridge with basic functionalities and last for decades. I don't need ice makers or a touchscreen that can play Quake on.

On the other side, I'm really itchy to get into IoT security if I had more time. I'm sure security is not the first concern of fridge makers (or whatever "modernized" appliances) so it might not be difficult for an amateur to break into them.

And the real kicker: It cannot be fixed. I DGAF if my expensive appliance breaks, but I can buy a ten dollar part and get it running again by the end of the week (maybe less for fridges)

With the service per lifetime measurment stick, its still increddibly cheap. We are definatly poorer if you take the Terry Pratchet boot economics yardstick.

How? 5-10 years for 5-10x less seems like a better deal cost (if not environment..) wise. Even if you ignore energy usage.

Is there really a correlation between price and durability in appliances?

Yes. It's far from perfect, of course, but there are high-end appliance manufacturers who do make very reliable appliances.

But aren't their also mid-end appliance manufacturers that make very reliable appliances?

Who are the high-end ones that are really that much more reliable??

There is a curve. High end appliances don't have enough volume to shake out all the problems and fix them in the next design. Mid range does.

Possibly we're thinking of different degrees of high-end. I'm thinking Miele and similar; definitely very expensive, but relatively high volume. There's certainly a tier above who make stoves that cost more than a car, and your concern would certainly apply there.

$4K will get you a nice solid-state (thermoelectric Peltier-effect refrigerant-free) research-grade fridge from Fischer Scientific, only 5.5 cubic feet though. Five-year warranty.

Peltier is very inefficient cooling. Nice for reliability and lack of vibration, not nice for your electric bill.

They're only more affordable if you don't amortize the cost over a long period of time. You either buy high quality once or buy low quality multiple times.

I've found that you usually have to go to high-end brands and/or "commercial grade" to get quality anything in the appliance space. A decent heuristic is also where it's made. For high-end brands some have certain models made in places like the USA and Germany and others made in China. The ones not made in China are usually the good models that will last.

Things like Wifi and especially anything with a 'cloud' component are massive anti-features that should be avoided. Not only are these things privacy problems or ways for them to push ads at you, but they're also often indicative of cheap gimmick-encrusted crap.

There is no product from China that I can name that is viewed as "quality" or "reliable" There is a reason that "Chinese shit" has effectively become a single word - it's a well-earned association.

And despite being a leading IoT innovator for decades, myself (I designed and manufactured the world's first embedded web-enabled wireless and PoE sensors), there is almost nothing useful in having WiFi/Net-connected appliances, especially if they require an app or cloud services of any kind. (Seriously, what kind of state do you really care about even for monitoring, much less control, in your appliances? Unless you're a wack job, pretty much zero...)

"back in my day kid"... Japan and Taiwan used to have a well earned reputation for being the source of cheap junk. They both have cleaned up and now deserve a reputation of quality. Only time will tell if China does better in the future (they have proven they can make quality, but they still are the source of cheap junk overall). Someone else may take over as the source of cheap junk next.

Ever heard of iPhones? MacBook Pros?

China makes some quality electronics, heavy industrial products, etc.

The problem isn't China intrinsically but the fact that a lot of companies in the US and EU outsource to China purely to save money. That's usually done on lower-end models or when pivoting from a quality product to a low-quality product sold on marketing.

Apple makes quality stuff in China because they're trying to make quality stuff. They work closely with their Chinese manufacturers. Of course they're also trying to move some things away from China but that's for geopolitical diversification reasons not quality reasons.

To use a very imprecise comparison, the fridge that my parents purchased way back when, cost them three months of savings, while the fridge that I purchased would cost half a month's savings for a similar job.

The best low-end Frigidaire you can get today is around $750.

For $5k you could buy 6.7 of them.

Lowe's extended warranty appears to be 5 years, so I'm guessing these things are designed to last 6 years.

6 * 6.7 = 40.2 years.

My own estimation is that a $5k fridge today will last perhaps 10. And most of that money is going toward smart features that add complexity, which adds to the risk of having to pay for repairs. And it's not like those companies stop using cheapo plastic and styrofoam in their more expensive fridges.

Still, I'd like to know how much it would cost per year in electricity to run one of the old models like in the ad.

Not as much as you think - the people selling them want you to think the old ones were awful and need replacing, but they were designed for both reasonable efficiency and decades-long life. (You really need to factor in a literal 6-10x lifespan difference into efficiency and environmental impact figures, too...)

I have a large 60s/70s vintage chest freezer I bought on Craigslist a few years ago. I worried that it was power-hungry, so I got a Kill-A-Watt and monitored it. I don't remember the exact figures I came up with, but it was pretty negligible: Even in my non air conditioned (but attached) garage in Austin (with the highest electric rates in the state, by far), it costs me only about a dollar a month to run. So we're saving a ton of money by being able to buy and store as much frozen food as we want, at a cost of $45 up front to buy the freezer, plus a buck a month to run it - that's a deal to me.

All appliances, back when they were made here in the USA, lasted for decades. I have a cousin who had a (admitttedly expensive at the time) KitchenAid dishwasher from circa 1960! (In very cool copper color!) It still ran perfectly when she sold her ranch house several years ago.

I mean, it's a cooler packed with a bunch of frozen stuff. Of course it's cheap to maintain its cool, that's why it's designed the way it was.

> in Austin (with the highest electric rates in the state, by far)

This is tangential to your point, but this isn't remotely true

Chest freezers are a little special, as they don't need much actual cooling power if the insulation is functional and they aren't opened. Vertical freezers and fridges lose all their cold air when opened, chests don't.

> You really need to factor in a literal 6-10x lifespan difference into efficiency and environmental impact figures, too...

I would love to see energy efficiency regulations take the item's expected lifespan into consideration instead of being a mere "energy per hour" measurement.

One simple/naive way to do it would be to divide (energy per hour) by the number of years on the warranty. Your warranty is for twice as long as the other guy? Then your device can use 2x the energy.

Obv, this would require the warranty to be a "full" warranty, and not something manufacturers can too easily weasel out of.

I would love that, too, but it's not possible today. Everyone would offer 25 year warranties, close up shop in 5 years, and reopen as a new subsidy or company.

The only way I see it working is to hold some large portion of the revenue in a trust and relinquish it to the company over the warrantied lifespan. The company would have to operate at a loss for a while to books those reserves, so there would have top be something like a zero interest government loan to cover the cost, which can't be escaped through bankruptcy.

Or maybe a contract like the shitty cell phone plans in the US. Buyer agrees to pay for the full price of the appliance over the warrantied lifetime in installments. If you want to sell it or trade it in early, you either have to finish off the payment or transfer the contract. The company would have to service the product (within reason), or the contract is voided, releasing the buyer from payment obligations. Again, this system can be easily gamed, too, in today's market, but I just can't imagine a scenario that doesn't require a major paradigm shift.

I do a decent amount of 3d printing and I cannot count the number of random letter Amazon brands for filament that have popped up over the last year. Most are simply rebranded waste from larger manufacturers. Once the product gets below 3.5 stars, the brand disappears and a suspiciously similar new brand pops up with the same spool design and 20 5-star reviews overnight.

> it costs me only about a dollar a month to run

The low end Frigidaires are estimated at $56 a year, perhaps $8 less per year for an Energy Star one.

I don't know anything about chest freezers, but there's no way a general purpose 1960s/70s fridge that one opens multiple times a day gets anything close to that.

Chest freezers are automatically a lot more efficient. The cold air tends to stay in them when opened, unlike upright models.

So it's apples vs. oranges.

How much energy is used by upright 60s/70s vintage fridges? If anyone has data I'd like to know it.

I paid $400 for my current fridge, new. It's 320 liters which is 11 cubic feet. That's actually insane how manufacturing and technological innovation has kept the price of fridges at the same price as they were in 1950, even after inflation!

A basic, white, 18-20 cu ft refrigerator/freezer can still be purchased new for under $400 in 2023 dollars. In the 1950s, a TV or refrigerator was a major purchase for most families. Therefore there was more concern over quality of materials, repairability, and longevity.

Today, a TV is basically a throwaway item. Nobody really repairs them, if you have a problem under warranty you exchange it, or if it's out of warranty you replace it. Refrigerators, laundry machines, are not far behind.

If you wanted a repairable appliance built solidly enough to last a couple of decades, you'd be paying the inflation-adjusted 1950s price. Instead you're paying much less, for something that you will probably want to replace anyway due to changing standards, changing styles, better efficency, more features, etc. (Who would still be interested in using their 19" CRT television in a heavy wood console cabinet in 2023?)

It doesn't helps what there is only the panel itself, circuit board and power cord, basically.

There's still some repairable stuff in most refrigerators.

I have a GE side-by-side refrigerator that's probably 10 years old. It still works, at least as a refrigerator/freezer. The icemaker and water dispenser never worked well and don't work at all now, and at one point started leaking which ruined the laminate floor in the hallway behind the kitchen before it was noticed.

I have replaced the control circuit board, and the freezer defrost heating element. These parts are available and pretty easy to install if you are even slightly skilled as a home handyman, and in the time I've owned it, the need for these repairs doesn't seem unreasonable. The board likely got fried due to a power surge in a thunderstorm, a reminder that most modern appliances should get power through a surge supressor. The defrost heater failure is typical of any frost-free freezer.

I think putting water and icemaker in the freezer is a mistake and won't buy another one like that. If you need more ice than you can make with ice trays, get a standalone ice maker.