Category Guides
Vacuum cleaners: airflow, sealed suction and the leaks between them
Two different measurements describe a vacuum, and each answers a question the other cannot. What separates machines is usually how…
Yusuf Baig
Contributing writer, Best Pro Deals
Yusuf covers durability and repairability, and has taken apart more appliances than he has fixed.
Contact Yusuf through our contact page — mark your message for their attention and it will be passed on.
20 articles
Category Guides
Cookware is a compromise between conductivity, mass and how you cook
Every pan material is good at something and poor at something else. The construction that resolves the compromise is usually…
Category Guides
In small kitchen appliances the plastic gear is a deliberate fuse
A component designed to break protects a more expensive one behind it. Whether that sacrificial part is sold separately tells you…
Category Guides
Printers are sold as machines and bought as a supply contract
The purchase price of a printer reflects the cost of the consumables that follow it. Understanding the engine architecture explains…
Durability & Repair
Bearings are the clock running inside anything that spins
Almost every rotating product fails at a bearing eventually. What varies is whether the bearing was protected, whether it was sized…
Durability & Repair
Hinges wear out by count, not by age
A hinge that opens twenty times a day and one that opens twice do not age at the same rate. Cycle count, load and lubrication…
Durability & Repair
Cables fail where they bend, and the strain relief is the whole design
Conductors break through repeated flexing at a single point rather than wearing out along their length. Everything protecting a…
Durability & Repair
Serviceability predicts lifespan better than how solid something feels
A heavy, tight, well-finished product can still be scrapped over a five-pound part. What predicts a long life is whether the part…
Durability & Repair
Heat is the quiet cause of most electronic failure
Electronics rarely fail dramatically. They fail because components spent years slightly too warm, and the components that mind most…
Durability & Repair
Failures cluster at the beginning and the end, and the middle is quiet
Reliability engineers describe failure rates as a curve with two humps and a long flat stretch. Knowing which part of that curve…
Durability & Repair
Every mechanism has a part chosen to wear out first
Somewhere in a design there is a surface intended to be sacrificed. Knowing which one it is turns an alarming symptom into a…
Durability & Repair
On anything with a zip, the slider is the part that ends it
Zips get blamed for failing when the teeth are usually fine. The wear happens in a small component that most designs make…
Durability & Repair
A finish is a sacrificial layer with a life of its own
Paint, plating and anodising are not decoration attached to a product. They are a barrier with a defined thickness, and once it is…
Category Guides
Air purifiers are a filter, a fan and a room you have to measure
The performance of an air cleaner is set by how much air it can push through how good a filter, against the size of the space.…
Durability & Repair
Resonance explains why one speed shakes and the others do not
Vibration is not proportional to speed. Every structure has frequencies at which it amplifies whatever is exciting it, and machines…
Category Guides
A refrigerator is an insulated box with a heat pump attached
Nothing in a cooling appliance makes cold. It moves heat outwards and then tries to stop it coming back, and every design choice…
Durability & Repair
Things break at a load they have carried a thousand times before
A component that has survived a force repeatedly can fail at that same force without warning. Fatigue is a counting process, and…
Durability & Repair
Glue is a structural decision with a temperature limit
Bonded construction is not a shortcut. It distributes load in ways fasteners cannot, and it brings a distinct set of ageing…
Durability & Repair
Switches are rated in operations, and the contacts go before the mechanism
A switch is a wearing component with a countable life. What consumes that life is not the moving parts but the small electrical…
Durability & Repair
A battery you cannot replace is the product's expiry date
Cells age whether the device is used or not. When the pack is bonded in, that ageing curve becomes the lifespan of everything…