(I’m trying to adjust my shopping habits for quality, long-lasting goods from reputable brands. This isn’t some hailcorporate thing)
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Hottest take on this site: Apple.
I use my 2011 MacBook Pro to manage my 80k photos. My phone is six years old. My iPad Pro is five? (Edit: I lied, it’s a 2017 model) Years old.
I don’t use their desktops, I use Linux for my servers and windows for playing games. But my Apple shit for casual use has all lasted me an insane amount of time.
My 13 year old MacBook Pro still gets through 1.75 playthroughs of Beetlejuice on max brightness! Full disclaimer, I originally bought it for games and used Windows 7 always plugged in, and only now it has an SSD and OSX and the battery has 30 cycles. BUT STILL
Hottest take on this site: Apple.
That’s because there’s such a huge and biased fan base, and they drown out the actual objective opinions.
I’m going to name a few as I do a lot of different hobbies.
For tools (hand\power) Milwaukee brand is hard to beat, and for hand tools I’m a fan of Husky generally. Underrated.
For Music equipment: Boss and Roland are always a safe bet and worth at least comparing to whatever you are looking at. (amps, pedals, drum machines, synths… etc)
For inflatable water craft (rafts, kayaks, fishing boats): Sea Eagle is the shit.
For computer components (motherboards, video cards, etc): ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI. (ASRock is an honorable mention) I’ve built PC’s for over 30 years now. Thousands of systems. I stand by this.
For computer accessories (hard drive docks, adapters, misc) Startech makes great stuff for the price and all kinds of useful equipment.
For 3D Printers - I love Ender’s due to the amount of easy upgrades\hacks\upgradability to turn a $200 3d printer into a printer that can rival anything out there for it’s type. And a lot of the parts you can just print with the printer you bought. You can do this with many brands but I found Ender to be very accessible with a lot of ready made parts on the web you can get started with immediately. Not to mention upgrading the motherboard\step motors and what not. It’s a great hobby if you like to tinker.
Cars (vehicles): I’ve owned many brands at this point in my life. From high end Volkswagen sports cars (2008 Rabbit modded out) to low end beater 96 Ford Escort, Dodge Dakota pickups and Chevy SUVs. And at this point in my life, with all the money spent, accidents, long road trips and broken parts, I’ll never buy anything besides a Honda or Toyota. They are the best value out there. Period.
Seconding Startech - I bought a DP to DVI-D adapter for my MacBook Pro and while it worked flawlessly with my PC, macOS was only showing me 1280x800 resolution instead of the monitor’s full 2560x1600 resolution. I found that under Windows on Bootcamp it fully worked on the same hardware so it was clearly a macOS thing.
Emailed their support about it and within a day, got a guy who immediately gave me very technical and specific advice and suggestions, clearly very experienced. We weren’t able to solve it (chalked it up to a weird macOS limitation and work gave me a different adapter that worked) but he was still incredibly helpful, and I’ll have confidence in buying from them in the future that their support should be excellent.
Didn’t Asus start enshittifying recently? Thought I saw some chatter about that on here 😢
They have had some sus stuff very recently yes… disappointing.
I will never always trust a brand, there are some brands that have good trust, but I’ve seen too many brands screw people over for money.
I will say currently, Darn Tough Socks, Keen Shoes, EVGA, Milwaukee Tools, if you are in the cinema / live production world Teradek, and Yamaha.
Nah you can’t trust Keen anymore as of like 7 years ago. They switched to much cheaper shoe materials on their presidio walking shoe that was super popular, but the price didn’t drop at all. At the same time, they started inserting huge globs of rubber in the heel of their hiking shoes so you are forced to use their brand of insert that has a hole to fit said bump.
I’ll be honest, just recently bought new shoes from them haven’t gotten a chance to wear them in yet, the previous pair was pre-covid. But they look and feel exactly like my old pair did when I bought them, so maybe their work line hasn’t suffered yet.
And this is why I’ll never be loyal to a brand, as long as they’re good I’ll keep buying their product, when it’s not good I’ll stop.
There are tons of great quality brands. Until capitalism kills them and they become the same as the rest.
The most memorable example of this for me was a long time ago. I was newly married and very poor. I was just starting to build my tool collection in the apartment.
I needed a circular saw to repair some craigslist furniture. So I carefully went around to the hardware stores looking at the prices. They were all more than I was willing to spend.
Then in Walmart one day I took a look at what they offered. It was pretty much an exact replica of the top of the line model at 1/4 of the price. The box was a bit dusty and next to another saw with the same name and UPC. It was obviously a newer box of the same item. It was the cheapest looking thing I could imagine. Completely different from the older one. It looked like a great way to lose some fingers and toes.
I grabbed the solid looking one and walked happily out of the store. It’s had a lot of use since then, and it’s still working flawlessly. I am still the proud owner of all my fingers and toes.
When the MBA’s take over, the company is sucked dry.
Take me over next, MBAs
This is the truth.
YKK zips. On anything I’ve ever owned, they don’t break. And I find that more durable clothing brands will use YKK zips.
Deuter backpacks.
In many years of backpacking I never met someone who had trouble or regrets with a deuter bag.
I broke one of the steel rods in mine after years of heavy use and clearly by my own fault and way out of any manufacturer responsibility and they just replaced it for free. I just asked if there is any way to get spare parts and they were like “Here you go, have a good trip.”
Besides that, you have put in serious effort or serious stupidity (in my case) to break them at all. Especially normally easily breakable parts like clasps and zippers, are super sturdy.
