You’ve bought a new small home appliance, it didn’t cost a great deal but it’s developed a fault. Do you take it back and complain, or do you just resign it to the recycling pile?
We buy more than 59 million small electrical products each year (yes, that’s a lot of kettles and toasters) and while the majority of the work as promised, others miss the mark.
In our latest small appliances reliability survey we reveal the brands that you’ve said are most reliable. Our results have also shown that you expect your small kitchen appliances (that’s your toaster, kettle, coffee machine, breadmaker, food processor or stand mixer, and iron) to last longer than they actually do.
Reliable kitchen appliance favourites
My favourite, the toaster, for example is expected to put in more than eight years of hard-toasting-graft, when in reality most last around five and a half years. Stand mixers last around 10 years, according to the data you’ve provided us with, but you expect them to last double that. And when it comes to the large scale appliances, some of you have experience of very long-serving appliances.
But are our expectations for small appliances too high, and why do we expect them to last so long?
Have we been brought up on long-lasting sturdy appliances that have stood the test of time or are we now a nation of time-saving gadget loves that rely on a kitchen full of small electrical to help with breakfast, rather than using the trusty cooker hob and grill to boil the kettle and toast the bread.
Great expectations of gadgets
Of all the product areas we survey, quite a few are actually fairly reliable. With irons for example, there isn’t much difference in reliability between the brands we asked about. Food processors have a good shelf life as do stand mixers.
Toasters have better reliability than maybe a lot of us would expect (we get a lot of member comments on toasters via our customer reviews tab) . Your feedback usually relates to the evenness of toasting and performance, rather than actual faults
Kettles seem to be the main culprit for inconsistent reliability, and this is one product that we replace quite a bit, and quite quickly after it breaks, not surprising really considering 95% of you own one. Maybe we just can’t cope without a cuppa.
So, what do you think about small appliance reliability? Has your toaster broken in the middle of breakfast, or did your kettle cut out just as you were desperate for a cuppa. Tell us about your reliable appliances and which ones have lasted the test of time.
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