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Appliance repairman here. New appliances are aggressively overpriced for very little reward. Aside from looking nice they offer nothing new. And worse of all older appliances from the late 90s early 2000s are significantly better than anything coming out right now.
It is a pleasure working on those old appliances when they pop up.
I would assume newer appliances have just as many increases to efficiency, as they do corners cut to reduce the cost.
I'd say the smart features are something new, but it's almost always locked behind information stealing applications that you need to have, just to check if your laundry is done yet.
9 times out of 10 you can get better smart integration with some alligator clips and a raspberry Pi or esp32.
In 20 years of appliance repair doing on average 5 orders a day I have met maybe two or three clients that used the smart features in their appliances. Otherwise they are totally useless.
I remember reading an article from GE a while ago where they were complaining that very, very few people were using the WiFi features on their washers and dryers.
No one asked for WiFi, no one needs Wi-Fi on their appliances.
I only want to get an alert when the dryer finishes. The places I usually sit and wait for it to do the thing, are all too far away to hear the frilly "end chime" it quietly plays at the end of the cycle.
My late father's dryer had a very loud buzzer that you could hear almost everywhere in the house.
The dryer in my home just plays a little ditty through what I can only describe as a 486 system speaker. I can't hear it one room over.
Shout-out to my 30 year old sandwich maker
That's no way to talk about your significant other
Better in terms of reliability, I'm sure – but what about efficiency?
I recently was in the market for a new dishwasher.
I compared the EU eco labels (which are based on water and energy use).
Buying the worst possible eco label currently on the market, and comparing it against the best two:
- A label dishwashers cost almost twice as much (up to €400 more)
- ombined energy and water costs saved over the lifetime of the device (which I optimistically set for 10 years at three cycles a week) is less than €100 euros
- If you're not into money, but more concerned about the planet, think about it this way: how much damage could €100 in energy and water spread over 10y really be causing our planet?
- These savings are only achieved if you use the most ecological program, which fails at it's primary job, which is cleaning dishes.
If I could find a decent 90s model for which parts were still widely available, I'd buy that instead. I truly doubt that burning through these poorly made newer devices are sufficiently more ecological than just using a old machine for a longer time.
These savings are only achieved if you use the most ecological program, which fails at it's primary job, which is cleaning dishes.
In my experience it cleans just fine? Maybe your dishwasher just sucks
Efficiency is a double-edged sword manufacturers will manipulate how efficient their appliances are to make it look as though they're compliant.
For example new washing machines for clothing advertise to use very little water which technically they do. The problem is that they will drain and rinse several times throughout the cycle. Which in turn makes the cycle significantly longer.
A washing machine from the '70s used about 15 to 20 gallons of water per cycle but the cycle itself lasted for about 30 minutes.
Now a washer will use 5 to 10 gallons of water per cycle but the cycle is almost 2 hours long. The savings in water compared to the usage of electricity cancel each other out gaining you absolutely no increase in inefficiency.
A refrigerator from the mid to late '90s used about 40 to $50 a year in electricity new refrigeration uses $30 a year in electricity the increase to efficiency is so small that it's completely negligible.
And keep in mind modern appliances are nothing more than convenience. Aside from refrigerators of course, things like dishwashers clothing washers clothing dryers we don't actually need any of those we can do all that stuff by hand.