Certainly good advice. But it's not always cheapness that's the problem, either. In the wild and woolly days of boutique 'high end' (mid '70s to mid '80s) a lot of expensive gear that was highly touted as 'sounding good' had horrible reliability. Old timers might recall the Quatre 'Gain Cell' amplifier, or Andy Rappaport's amps and preamps, the ones that ran so hot you needed a liquid CPU cooler (which hadn't been invented yet) to keep them operational. Word had it that those had an almost 100% failure rate. 'Underground' mags loved them, while at the same time ridiculing solid and well built gear like McIntosh. When failure rates climbed, the mags moved on to other boutique gear, forgetting their earlier recommendations, and hoping readers wouldn't notice.
Personal anecdote: the dealer I frequented sold expensive amps from an outfit called Dunlap-Clarke. He once told me that almost all of his last shipment failed in the field.
For most, buying expensive/established is probably the way to go if you can afford it, but even then there is no guarantee that what is in the box is running to spec. I recall Rich Modafferi reviewing an Accuphase tuner. His conclusion was that it was one of the best tuners he'd ever run across (Richard knew all the good ones). That was the good news. The bad news was that it was horribly misaligned from the factory, and he had to spend his time setting it up before it met specs. Now, a guy like like Modafferi can do that. The average consumer?
It's why brands like historical McIntosh (I don't know about the 'new' Mac, which seems kind of trendy in design), Bryston, and on the 'lower end of expensive' Benchmark are respected for what they offer.