The grandparents-had-it-better trope is overstated more often than not. But on one specific axis — how long a household product lasts before it’s replaced — the older, simpler version really does keep winning. The 1992 dishwasher with a knob and a single board outlasts the 2022 dishwasher with a touchscreen and Wi-Fi. The lever espresso machine outlasts the bean-to-cup robot. The mechanical thermostat outlasts every smart one ever made. Once you start looking for the pattern, it’s everywhere.
The reason isn’t nostalgia. It’s that the failure modes scale with the parts list, and the parts list has exploded.
Every feature is also a failure point
Each new feature on a product is a new component, a new sensor, a new firmware dependency, or a new connection. Each of those is also a potential point of failure, and the failures compound. A washing machine with three buttons fails when one of three things wears out. A washing machine with a touchscreen, eight cycles, smart-app integration, and a load-detection sensor has dozens of failure points, many of which can take down the entire unit. Worse, the more sophisticated the failure, the harder and more expensive the repair — replacing a control board can cost half the price of a new machine, while replacing a worn knob takes ten minutes and a five-dollar part. Manufacturers know this. The features don’t exist for durability; they exist for differentiation on the showroom floor.
Software is the silent killer
The newer the product, the more likely its lifespan is bounded by software support rather than mechanical wear. A smart appliance that depends on a manufacturer’s cloud service is operational only as long as that company keeps the servers on. Several major brands have already orphaned smart-home product lines, leaving customers with mechanically functional hardware that no longer works because the app stopped being maintained. Older mechanical equivalents have no such dependency — they keep working for decades because their “operating system” is a cam, a spring, and a switch. If you want a thirty-year product, choosing one without a chip is the most reliable filter available.
Repair is the actual long-term metric
Even when a complex product lasts well initially, what determines its real lifespan is whether it can be repaired economically. Simpler products win here too: standardized parts, schematic diagrams, and a community of independent repair people exist for older lines. Newer products often use proprietary parts, sealed assemblies, and manufacturer-only diagnostic tools — the right-to-repair movement exists exactly because this trajectory was making consumer products effectively disposable. When you’re shopping, look up whether independent technicians service the product, whether replacement parts are available aftermarket, and whether common failures have YouTube repair videos. The answers correlate strongly with how long you’ll actually own the thing.
The bottom line
Simpler isn’t always better, but for products you want to keep, fewer features, fewer screens, and fewer chips is a remarkably reliable rule. The Internet of Things lifespan is measured in years; the lifespan of a well-built mechanical device is measured in decades. Choose accordingly.
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