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Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

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Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#571

Post by danachow »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #203
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…

I've always enjoyed Marques Brownlee (MKBHD)[0]. He's made a pretty lucrative career of great reviews, without selling his soul. [0] https://www.youtube.com/user/marquesbrownlee

The reviews as actual reviews are terrible. And the retro tech series - well if you know anything about the items being discussed you'll find quite a few inaccuracies. It's pure entertainment.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#572

Post by usednet »

simondotau wrote: post #498
danudey wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Apple fanboy, I can easily say that Linus does not hate Apple. Linus DOES hate a lot of what Apple does; cases where they make things more unrepairable for no real reason, or various socio-political causes (like opposing Right to Repair or unions or whatever). Regardless of that though, I would trust a Linus review of a new iPhone or iPad a lot more than I would trust a lot of other sites, because I know he's n…

As an Apple apologist, I also concur with most of the above. Though I do find it amusing that Linus has often commented negatively on companies that don't want their employes to unionise, when Linus does much the same thing. In the case of LMG, Linus employs emotional threats, publicly warning his employees that forming a union would represent a declaration of "personal failure". Don't get me wrong, I agree 100% with…

Unionisation as a default state of affairs is what prevents exploitation. Join a union.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#573

Post by danachow »

ethbr0 wrote: post #219
thechao wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So much this. Find someone who does a lot of residential repairs of X. Ask a few of them for recommendations, specifically on what not to buy. As the Farmer's Insurance jingle goes, "They know a thing, because they've seen a thing." Every service tech I've ever asked has immediately had a "Never buy {popular brand}, because they all {have shoddy part | catastrophic design error}." And it's night and day between what…

The flip side of this - is that service techs are by their nature biased to failures. They don't come out to the machines that are working. This is an issue for top-selling items where they may see a lot of service calls but the overall rate is lower than something they see less frequently. In my experience I have known few technicians that have the statistical smarts to account for this.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#574

Post by etchalon »

amluto wrote: post #538
etchalon wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying, "OK, but as a total percent of the air in your home at any given time, the difference is tiny" is … weird. It's still a 10x difference. Using small numbers to make the difference look small doesn't hide that.

Sorry, you’re still missing the point. If you are taking air, running it once through a filter, and using the air that comes out for an application that needs very few particles, then a 99.99% filter is “10x” as efficient as a 99.9% filter in the sense that the air coming out will have 1/10 as many particles. For example, a 99% efficient face mask is “10x” as efficient as a 90% efficient mask (assuming both fit perfe…

I understand the point. The point doesn't matter.

Air purifiers operate on a fraction of available air. That air supply is continually being cycled, refreshed and mixed. Particulate matter within that air is not evenly dispersed.

That, for a single minute, as a percentage of total air, a 99.5% and a 99.95% purifier produce a minor difference in total air quality is deeply irrelevant to the overall performance of the purifier over any length of time. The 10x difference, however, will matter over time.

This is why the tests, which the author dismissed without any reasoning beyond "looks wrong!", in the original WireCutter article showed such stark differences between the performance of the Förnuftig and the Levoit Core 300, over a 30 minute span.

If you were correct, over those 30 minutes, the amount of particulate in the test room would have been roughly equal for both purifiers. It wasn't. The Förnuftig removed only 64.5% of the particulate while the Levoit removed 97.4%.

Can you point to a test which shows dramatically different results than the ones the WireCutter reported?

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#575

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

geerlingguy wrote: post #518
biggc wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the depth of gamer’s nexus, but their videos are like watching someone read an Anandtech breakdown.

Heh, at least they give chapter markers so you can glance at the benchmarks you want then skip to their conclusions.

This is such a welcome feature! It makes going to videos without these pretty painful.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#576

Post by DubiousPusher »

usednet wrote: post #572
simondotau wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Apple apologist, I also concur with most of the above. Though I do find it amusing that Linus has often commented negatively on companies that don't want their employes to unionise, when Linus does much the same thing. In the case of LMG, Linus employs emotional threats, publicly warning his employees that forming a union would represent a declaration of "personal failure". Don't get me wrong, I agree 100% with…

Unionisation as a default state of affairs is what prevents exploitation. Join a union.

Not to mention that if you wait to unionize until you are being exploited, you will have far less power to resist coercion. Striking when you have some money under the mattress is a lot easier than doing so after you've eaten the last of the shoe leather.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#577

Post by rocqua »

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…

RTINGS is a pretty good actual review site for electronics. Sometimes I find their focus on measurable data a bit annoying. Intangibles matter aswell. But they are exhaustive reviews and make comparing very easy.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#578

Post by [deleted] »

zucked wrote: post #292
throw0101a wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? I like America's Test Kitchen for kitchen-y stuff. Project Farm (on YouTube) for tools / DIY stuff perhaps.

ATK is, as far as I am concerned, the gold standard for kitchen reviews.

[deleted]

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#579

Post by hoseja »

teh_klev wrote: post #456
fartcannon wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but those WAN show lectures are often starkly mirroerd by strongly worded submarine advertisement playing as segments on his various shows. He basically does a thing, then says that people shouldn't do that. To put it gently, it's exactly what someone with soft sales skills would do. He deflects like a politician. Even if he's wrong, and admitting it, he's very skilled at making it sound like its everyone who…

> Maybe, but those WAN show lectures are often starkly mirroerd[sic] by strongly worded submarine advertisement playing as segments on his various shows. Every one of their videos clearly mention who the sponsors are i.e. the "sponsored showcase" videos. And when they're not those types of videos, but just have regular advertising, they say out loud and clear "and this segway's to our sponsor...". I'm not shilling fo…

The word is "segue", not "segway".

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#580

Post by simondotau »

usednet wrote: post #572
simondotau wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Apple apologist, I also concur with most of the above. Though I do find it amusing that Linus has often commented negatively on companies that don't want their employes to unionise, when Linus does much the same thing. In the case of LMG, Linus employs emotional threats, publicly warning his employees that forming a union would represent a declaration of "personal failure". Don't get me wrong, I agree 100% with…

Unionisation as a default state of affairs is what prevents exploitation. Join a union.

Which is great in theory, until you realise that unions can and do exploit workers too. Collectives of people (whether corporations, unions, or entire countries) tend towards corruption as they scale. History has shown that large unions are similarly prone to exploitation and corruption.
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