(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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Brother printers. I have 78k pages printed on my 15 year old color laser printer from them, and it’s still going strong. They still sell OEM toner and even replacement parts for it, although the only part that ever needed to be replaced so far was the drum.
A brother laser printer was the best decision of my college career. I only wish I’d have bought it sooner
At this point none. Trademark law has been rendered null and void when a holding company can own 3/4 of the brands on the market. Go pick up a power tool off the rack at Lowe’s or Home Depot and tell me where it was made. When Stanley Black & Decker source different tools for the same brand from different anonymous manufacturers…
I’m at the point where I’m going to suggest to you learn how to work wood and metal with hand tools.
Most of the shit is made in China now, including Craftsman, Snap-on, and other traditional American tool manufacturing brands. Wera and Wiha are made in Germany, and worth the extra money if you expect your tools to last a lifetime.
Wera and Wiha are both great but Craftsan and Snap-On still machine and manufacture tools in the US
They haven’t had their primary manufacturing in the USA for like a decade. They’re just recently starting to move their manufacturing back to the USA.
Craftsman, maybe, but I can drive 45 minutes from where I’m sitting right now and see the same Snap-On factory that was there 20 years ago and I sure as hell ain’t in China
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.
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.
I’ll start my own thread with OXO for their kitchen goods. After a decade of dealing with subpar containers and utensils, I’ve slowly started to rebuild my set with OXO stuff and habe yet to be disappointed by anything of theirs.
Seconded with Knipex hand tools. They’re far pricier than the competition you’ll find on the store shelves, but the quality and engineering is better than anything else you can reasonably find (barring boutique toolmakers).
I’ve used my Knipex 5” cobra pliers more than anything else in the toolbox, except maybe a torx set. Solid tools.
They’re great. As a line cook, I used to EDC a pair of the 4" minis in my pocket for taking off burner nozzles for cleaning. By the end of my year there, everyone else I worked with had bought a pair because they were so much better than dealing with the garbage Hart brand pliers the restaurant supplied.
