You are dependent on reviewers or a vendor with an in-home trial period.
Reliability/Longevity:
Metric #1: Thermal hotspots
Heat. It would be great if reviewers used a FLIR to assess electronics under standardized conditions. They're not crazy expensive and it's sort of cool that in the USA, we can buy export controlled gear like this as ordinary citizens.
@amirm and
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You need somewhat standardized conditions like "Exposed on top of a table" vs. "Enclosed in a Rack" but the key is looking for hotspots. A lot of gear, even with internal fans, are very conservative in running those fans. My Arcam SR250 had leaking/bulging capacitors after just 5 years and you'd be able to detect the heat.
Big heatsinks are only necessary if you generate heat, but big heatsinks are one of the easiest ways to cut costs/corners because it adds to shipping (across the entire supply chain cycle) and actual costs.
Stereophile pre-conditions their amplifiers before testing and I'm always surprised how many amps go into thermal protection. I'm also surprised how few other reviewers address heat. This is way more important than SINAD.
Metric #2: Look for reliability metrics like technical bulletins and availability of service manuals/replacement parts.
I have the Arcam SR250 which failed and I spent good money to repair a few months ago, including replacing the dim VFD for cosmetics. I liked the feature set of the unit.
I also bought the Arcam AV40 brand-new A-stock from Best Buy a few months ago which was DOA.
Arcam has its service documents available to the public:
Look at the current generation which was released in 2019
"Loss of audio or not turning on – possible burning smell reported." - Sept 2022
March 2023
View attachment 309583
So even 3+ years after release, they're having production issues. In the 80's when automotives had wildly different levels of reliability, Consumer Reports was wise in saying that reliability was not simply quality control during production -- cars that were unreliable were generally designed poorly from the beginning and in-field repairs wouldn't convert them into reliable cars once "fixed".
In contrast, look at the previous generation Arcam:
In 2021, they talked about capacitor failures for a 2016 product launch, but there are minimal service bulletins.
If you're considering something expensive, I try to look for service manuals for that product or at least previous generation products. Sometimes you have to spend US$ 10 to buy the service manual but I think of it as being the equivalent of petrol costs for driving to a store for a listen. The Marantz PM-10's service manual reassured me that they introduced a lot of Marantz-specific protection features on top of HypeX's protection features.
This answers your question about past-performance not predicting future performance *IF* there is a full-on redesign. It might be valid if there were subtle generational differences like Parasound HCA --> Parasound Halo --> Parasound Halo+.
Companies like E1DA don't have formal service manuals, but you'll see ready discussion of repairs, etc.
Metric #3: Consumer Service Experiences on Message Boards
Look at something like Yamaha and you'll see comments like "this broke, they couldn't fix it, so they gave me a brand new, upgraded model".
If you look at Accuphase, you have "I bought this from an authorized dealer and they took care of me" versus "I bought this as a gray-market import with aftermarket voltage change and they explained that there was no warranty."
Some of the smaller companies here have reports like "they ignored my emails" or "I was asked to falsify customs declarations".
If you look at Soncoz, they recalled the ESS hump DACs in the field, published an "open source" description of one fix for the ESS hump and clearly have made efforts to follow through. That's good.
My Raphaelite had a dented transformer cover and I was able to get a replacement cover shipped to me from the retailer.
The consumer service experiences reflect a sampling-bias of
a) people with problems
b) people who felt that their problems were not addressed properly
But that's still important. I'm less worried about reading about products that failed (although where there's smoke, there's fire) but more about the response to those failures.
