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Samsung’s 20-year-life EV battery runs 600 miles on 9-minute charge
(interestingengineering.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Their batteries are usually top notch. If you're hunting around for 18650 cells--which are notoriously bad for fake claims on Amazon and Aliexpress ("80,000mAh!!!!" when the best 18650 cells are closer to 3,500mAh)--a genuine Samsung cell is a safe bet.
Except when they explode. 😀
Samsung was very transparent about their fuck up with the note 7. The article you linked makes it very clear it was a connection issue or a different manufacturer. At this point this is equivalent to the burn banana peels to get high or you eat dozens of spiders while you sleep internet lies.
It's not a lie, they screwed up twice. I don't care if it was another manufacturer that screwed up, at the end of the day, Samsung is responsible for QA on anything they sell.
That said, they were very transparent (hence why I linked it). However, I still don't trust Samsung for other reasons:
They do make some high quality stuff, but I generally avoid them because I don't trust them (I do have a Samsung "dumb" TV, and I may get a Samsung washing machine). I don't think their batteries will explode again, but they'll probably do something like make it difficult for independent repair of their batteries. They're actually better than most in their phones, but that's a pretty low-value repair vs for cars.
Mostly agree, I hate Samsung in general (sent from Samsung Galaxy S22). Anytime I see someone considering their appliances or TVs I try to turn them to something else. They have made the best batteries for a long time though. I hope a competitor rises to squish them a bit.
Don't buy a sumsung washer. I only buy used washers and dryers because I'm cheap and handy. Samsung is not an option because a large part of the user market is broken in a way that costs the same as buying new.
I do sort of disagree with your QA comment. Everyone seems to think QA stops once you sell a product, but it doesn't. They did a full recall to fix their quality mistake. It'd be like if Tesla finally recalled all of the cybertrucks for sucking as much as they do. Massive PR hit to attempt to maintain quality.
Idk, this was after they were banned by the FAA, so I don't think it was a "PR hit to attempt to maintain quality," I think it was to stem the damage. The Note 7 was already in the news by that point, and 3 major airlines had already started telling passengers to turn off their Note 7s specifically. The second set of devices failed even when powered off.
Here's Time's timeline of events if you want to revisit it. I can understand the first not being caught, but Samsung should have been extra wary of the replacement devices. But no, they only stopped after even more bad news came out.
If Samsung really cared about maintaining quality, they would've taken more than a month to test and ship fixed devices. They should've done a total recall and relaunch a few months later, once they have thoroughly tested their products.
And thanks for the warning about Samsung washers. I have an LG now, and this is the second time the logic board has had an issue in the 10-ish years I've had it (this time it's a sticking relay), and I'm debating repairing vs replacing it. The part is something like $100, but I'm thinking there's a chance something else could die given its age. Then again, $100 is totally reasonable if it lasts another 5 years. If you have any recommendations for brands, I'm all ears.
I went with Speed Queen for laundry machines. If I recall they have three models: a 3, 5, and 7, with a warranty of the same number of years (I got the 7). They've been mostly solid, but we have had some issues and I like that they are made to be serviced instead of thrown away and replaced. I've heard Maytag's commercial line is similarly made to last.
Awesome.
My parents like their Speed Queen, so I'll have to see if my wife would be cool with that. I like that there are very few electronics, just dials and buttons, so there's a lot less to go wrong. I'll have to see if there's a decent commercial dealer in my area.
I also found Yale Appliance's reliability discussions on various appliance categories to be helpful (although they seem to like LG in both categories of washers):
https://blog.yaleappliance.com/most-reliable-front-load-washers
https://blog.yaleappliance.com/most-reliable-top-load-washers
Eh, they only look at the first year of service, and honestly, that's not particularly interesting. I'm more interested in what happens after 5 years, since that's about half the expected life of the average consumer-grade washing machine.
I honestly don't have a problem with LG, the only issues I've had are with the circuit board, and it's been two separate issues (the first seemed like a short, the second was a sticking relay) spaced about 5 years apart (I've owned it almost 10 years now). So the rest of the components seem fine (pump, motors, screen, etc). And honestly, the current failure I have is inconsistent, so it'll probably last a few months before I absolutely need to fix or replace it. I like this YouTuber's reviews, and his recommendations are:
But apparently, he says anything other than Samsung.