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Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

dynomight.net

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Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#281

Post by AussieWog93 »

darzu wrote: post #102
hypersoar wrote: post #51

The Wirecutter is a highly flawed review site, but at least it's a real one. There are vanishingly few left for general consumer products. There's WC, Consumer Reports, and what else? They've seem to have all been killed off. When I'm researching some category of product, I feel lucky if I find any professional reviews written by people who have actually touched the thing they're reviewing. I know we've all had the e…

YouTube or google site:reddit.com usually yields the best actual human reviews for me. Or specific categories like America’s Test Kitchen for kitchen stuff.

100% this. YouTube's fantastic for real reviews.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#282

Post by wpietri »

Who is Dynomight?

For me this piece leans pretty heavily on authorial confidence. But I couldn't find any indication of who the author is, or what his expertise is. I get why he's casting aspersions on their revenue model and how it might affect what they write. But then he doesn't disclose what his revenue model and personal interests might be.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#283

Post by TootsMagoon »

londons_explore wrote: post #274

I wish analysis like this would stop using tests of the filter material to make any judgement about the purifier. If the air passed through the filter precisely once and then ended up in your room, it would be valid. But it doesn't - the air passes many times through the filter, and mixes with the room air again and again each time. That means it is far less important to get 99.9% filtration, and far more important t…

Great points. I just scanned the article. Did Wirecutter do any actual testing? They can refute and prove the claims are wrong on paper...but it really comes down to testing. Where is Wirecutter's test data?

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#285

Post by hammock »

CharlesW wrote: post #92
hammock wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes conspiracy theories are true. They are still conspiracy theories

“A conspiracy theory is not the same as a conspiracy; instead, it refers to a hypothesized conspiracy…” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory

My point is it’s a mistake to conflate anything labeled a conspiracy theory as being automatically false, which is often what happens, or the label is applied something that’s already false. Many theories turn out to be true

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#286

Post by watersb »

thechao wrote: post #127
wgd wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding "reviews written by people who have actually touched the thing they're reviewing", I'm not sure Consumer Reports deserves to be listed these days either. I bought a subscription a few months ago because I needed to buy several large appliances for my home, but all I found behind that paywall curtain was computer-generated tables of star ratings and statistics about mechanical reliability. Which is probably…

I have a service tech for appliances. I just ask him what I should buy. He usually has suggestions from all the cost-ranges. Sometimes, I buy used through him (built-in fridge); sometimes I buy new. Since I had the opportunity to buy a bunch of equipment this year (a huge power surge from my HVAC fried appliances, and bad luck): Built in fridge: GE monogram; Dish washer: anything that is quiet (below 42 dB); Dryer: a…

Clothes washer: Staber

My repair guy would bring other techs over to my house to see our Staber washing machine. Nothing else comes close.

https://www.staber.com

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#287

Post by Majromax »

charlie0 wrote: post #256
aiisjustanif wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m going to dissent here on this thread because I’m not seeing any references. I personally feel the quality of Wirecutter has gone down since NY Times just a bit. However, after almost a decade of reading Wirecutter they have overwhelming provided a decent “why you should trust us” section for staple consumer items. There is a good example from just today. [1] You can always say they should do more, but honestly th…

In general, when a company gets bought out, quality tends to drop. Maybe not immediately, but definitely with time. The new owners have to make back their money and they'll start to cut corners wherever they can. These cuts, even if small, eventually have a negative impact. I've lost a lot of faith in Wirecutter after NYT bought them out. This is my own very subjective feel on the topic and this article has vindicate…

> In general, when a company gets bought out, quality tends to drop.

I think you can simplify that to "in general, quality tends to drop."

It isn't malicious; it's reversion to the mean. An organization's reputation comes from its high-water mark of making the most impact and having the widest reach, and being solidly average after that looks like a step back.

This correlates to buyouts because would-be corporate parents (obviously and understandably) want to associate themselves with the prestigious up-and-comer.

However, replacement-level output doesn't compare to the historic highs. This is made more visible because the buyout acts as a nice "before/after" marker even if it has no structural impact, and it remains in the public eye because a high-profile corporate overlord can't let their new acquisition fade into obscurity.

See also the results of Electronic Arts' independent studio buyouts, where they buy out a developer at the top of their game only to see quality fade before corporate meddling sets in.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#288

Post by daenz »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #271
daenz wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're misquoting me. I never said they were extremely fortunate for choosing one model over the other, I said they were extremely fortunate for "being able to choose form over function." When wildfire season rolls around and air becomes very hazardous where I lived, local air purifiers of all kinds were completely sold out, and the box fan solution is all a lot of us had[0]. It's not just inexpensive, it's about ava…

Are you talking about emergencies, or are you talking about "the low-income perspective"? Because you said you were doing the latter, and I was criticizing your words using that context. In that context, your words come across as judgemental. If you're actually talking about the former, then you chose your words pretty poorly.

The low-income people are often the most impacted when an emergency hits. I'm sure if someone had $1000 for an air purifier, they could get one the next day, in most circumstances. Though I'm not low income (now), I got a reminder of it when local materials were totally gone and I would have had to pay through the nose to keep my place breathable. It was bad. The hallways in our apartment building had a haze of smoke 24/7. Fortunately the city let everyone know about the box fan solution, so that's what we did.

For me, being unprepared in a new city, and for low income people who aren't prepared, choosing form over function was a luxury.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#289

Post by rootlocus »

jefftk wrote: post #48
99_00 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>HEPA is not right for a purifier that sits in a room Why not? I don't know anything about HEPA, or quality, air flow, etc.

The article explains it well: Here’s a thought experiment: Take a 1000 cubic feet room and a purifier that processes 100 cubic feet of air per minute. (I follow Wirecutter in using vulgar imperial units.) Assume pessimistically that all particles are the worst-case size. If you run that purifier with an E12 filter, the fraction of particles that will remain after one minute is .1 × (1-.995) + .9 = 0.9005. That’s beca…

Another application of Amdahl's law.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#290

Post by jefftk »

rootlocus wrote: post #289
jefftk wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article explains it well: Here’s a thought experiment: Take a 1000 cubic feet room and a purifier that processes 100 cubic feet of air per minute. (I follow Wirecutter in using vulgar imperial units.) Assume pessimistically that all particles are the worst-case size. If you run that purifier with an E12 filter, the fraction of particles that will remain after one minute is .1 × (1-.995) + .9 = 0.9005. That’s beca…

Another application of Amdahl's law.

"the overall performance improvement gained by optimizing a single part of a system is limited by the fraction of time that the improved part is actually used"

Thanks for teaching me the name for this principle!

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