Great article! As a consumer that cares a lot about buying long-lasting quality products, here are a few resources:
Project Farm (youtube.com/projectfarm) - Great independent reviews of tools
Mcmaster.com - Higher quality products than you can get at your local hardware store and excellent customer service. When I've gotten the rare incorrect or damaged item, 1 email gets me a refund and a replacement overnighted.
Wirecutter - Not as go-to as it used to be in my mind, but great for background
ConsumerReports - Check if you can get free access through your local library website
ReviewMeta (reviewmeta.com) - Analyzes Amazon reviews for authenticity
All of these have problems but they are still good resources. Any others I'm missing?
McMaster also has the best ecommerce tech stack I've ever seen. It should be the case study. It is incredibly fast. The checkout flow is different from anything I've ever used before, it's so fast, you don't even feel like you should be done. And, if you type plain text in the search box, it will translate that to a parametric search (for example, try '1/4"-20 screws', and you'll see that it takes you to the "screws" page with 1/4"-20 selected as the thread size).
If there's a such thing as rockstar software engineers, the people that made McMaster's site are it.
At my workplace, we have what I call "McMaster syndrome" - employees design things around parts available on McMaster because that's the easiest website to order from.
As a frequent business user of McMaster I find it serves a very particular purpose - everything on there works and does not break. However, their markup is massive. I once placed an order large enough that they redirected me to their supplier and found that they had over 100% markup on their orders. You're paying this markup so that McMaster verifies the quality of what you're buying. This makes a lot of sense for a business - you're not wasting employee time on reading Amazon reviews. I doubt it makes much sense for most consumers.
I'm continually disappointed with the quality of fasteners bought from Amazon. What you get from McMaster is much better. The problem, I guess is that Amazon is too low quality and McMaster is too high quality.
I also don't think they mark everything up 100%. I have built a lot of stuff out of T-slot extrusion ("80/20") and their price seems exactly the same as buying from 80/20 directly. I guess there is probably some Aliexpress vendor cheaper than the brand name, though.
Project Farm (youtube.com/projectfarm) - Great independent reviews of tools
Mcmaster.com - Higher quality products than you can get at your local hardware store and excellent customer service. When I've gotten the rare incorrect or damaged item, 1 email gets me a refund and a replacement overnighted.
Wirecutter - Not as go-to as it used to be in my mind, but great for background
ConsumerReports - Check if you can get free access through your local library website
ReviewMeta (reviewmeta.com) - Analyzes Amazon reviews for authenticity
All of these have problems but they are still good resources. Any others I'm missing?