Extreme tests - what would you like to see?

Including kink resistance.

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Here here. This idea could be extended.

Outdoor polymer furniture and implements will be exposed to sunlight and should be designed to survive it. How do we know what is UV durable or not?

Other things that are expected to experience heat (indoors or outdoors) also need to be built of suitable heat resistant materials. Just because it doesn’t burst into flame doesn’t mean that it will last. I have a toaster with a plastic case that is chalky and shedding bits. The metal mechanism is fine but the case is ugly and impossible to clean. Clearly the case is made of the wrong material and either nobody tested, or tested long enough, or nobody cared.

The question is can extreme testing accelerate heat or UV degradation so that we can say X amount of exposure over hours or days is equivalent to Y years of normal use? This is not a simple matter I think.

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Yes, the proper butchers gloves will - think ‘knight in shining armour’

http://www.everten.com.au/niroflex-plus-stainless-steel-mesh-glove-med.html

(I have no connection with Everten other than being a happy customer a couple of times).

Pic if you’d rather not click the link -

A single glove is a couple-hundred dollars 
 for one made in Germany. I’d be surprised if there’s not knock-offs in closer markets that are probably adequate - but a test would be interesting, alongside the much cheaper cut resistant variety 


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Got mine when I worked at the meatworks
finger saver many times.

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I’d love to see tests of timber flooring products within units. Given the increasing number of people living in Strata title environments a lot are implementing timber flooring. This brings certain noise issues and the need to meet specific Australian Standards.

There are a couple of articles on here about the wooden flooring but they relate to houses - where the sound annoying a neighbour is less of an issue. I’d like to see Choice start adding a noise level (or annoyance level) rating for neighbours for products. It’s more of an issue now given that (a) more people are living in units and (b) the units seems to have increasingly thinner walls.

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I’m past needing this (see point 3) - I’m a very monogamous type, and these days I shoot blanks at a non-existent target - and only one non-existent target (see point 1), and when into things long-term it becomes somewhat of a non-issue (or should, but that was long ago and she’s now someone else’s concern) 
 but ‘back in the day’ it seemed that the only way to protect the parties involved had the same characteristics as a thorn-proof inner tube, but despite their apparent resistance to any kind of sensation they still seemed to suffer from issues relating to structural integrity, and always at the most worrying times.

It is an important issue for a variety of reasons, very serious reasons for some 
 and I’m sure some ‘fun’ could ‘be had’ in the ‘testing’ process of these little rubbery friends 


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I would think that extreme testing would be a waste of Choice’s time and resources, most consumers buy and use products as the maker intended with due respect to their cost and relative ‘break-ability’.

If the jackass generation wants to do dumb things with their hard earned then lets not follow their lead.

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At that price and made in Germany I would feel pretty safe. I was thinking more of the budget “Cut 5” gloves that are being sold through safety and hardware stores and via online sellers for even less (say $7 for a pair!). Some claim to be food grade and safe for butchers at this price. We use them at work for a totally different purpose (engineering work) and I know they are mandatory on many mine sites etc as everyday work gloves. They seem rather flimsy to me and being that they are made so cheaply out of China I am wondering if they can truly be relied upon???

Below link explains the EN388 standard that the Cut rating is derived from.

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Let’s see which suitcases can stand up to the appalling treatment meted by baggage handlers from two major Australian airlines. If you want to do smartphones, try putting them through a washing machine. A more realistic test, given that some of us still use phones small enough to fit into a pocket.

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Many of them are claiming some amount of water resistance now - mostly to the old cheap 80’s digital watch standard of 1.5m for 30seconds. We should verify it.

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Similar test for politicians and bank executives - but minutes not seconds?

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I would like to see a test of some top CEOs, to examine whether they actually really and truly produce 50 to 100 times the value of one of their minions.

How could you do such tests? Well, they’d be multi-part. There would be typing speed; analysis of email production time and quality; tracking of the number of phone calls made while on the job; and presumably the standardised tests that are often used to choose office staff.

There would also need to be several controls, to simulate the average employee’s situation more closely. These could include the ‘family simulator’ whereby the CEO is woken in the middle of the night by a crying baby. An automated elbow could be employed to accompany this, along with the recorded “It’s your turn to do feeding”. There would be regular drug and alcohol tests, and any evidence of alcohol in your system that costs more than the local supermarket’s weekly specials would be cause for instant dismissal!

Then there is the ‘budget test’, whereby the CEO is expected to live on the average Australian wage while paying off the average home loan and managing the average family.

Finally, at random intervals during the testing period emails would be sent through the company about its poor performance and likely imminent need for layoffs.

Is this the kind of ‘extreme testing’ you had in mind, or is it just me?

There are plenty of politicians I can think of who would be unable to keep their mouth shut for thirty seconds.

You may be able to use mobile phones without ever scratching or breaking them, @tndkemp, but most of us are human. While I haven’t run over my mobile phone, I did have an incident many years ago in which had I failed to notice that it had absconded from my belt clip I would have run over it. I keep my phones in rather bulky and decidedly ugly after-market cases (including screen covers), which somewhat defeats the purpose of ‘newer/thinner/lighter’, but see plenty of people with cracked screens or other damage to these valuable pieces of equipment.

I would love to have a mobile phone that did not need to be completely covered in order to protect my investment - but have not yet seen a decent one that is durable enough to match the demands of normal, everyday life. Thus, I think ‘extreme’ testing is a great idea.

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I am a working outdoor tradesperson my typical day has me handle heavy materials and I have to regularly climb and manoeuvre my self into sometime awkward situations and over the years I have never damaged a phone. These phones are always left in my sweaty trouser pocket often lying against keys, coins and sometimes hand tools and they all survive with little more than some scratches so I would hazard that my ‘not human’ use of phones suggest to me that extreme testing of products is a waste of Choice’s time and funds.
Given that choice currently carries out a pretty vigorous drop test of new phones when they test them currently.

As I said earlier if the ‘jackass generation’ wants to see what damage they can inflict on their consumer goods and still have them work then let them, but to design a consumer testing regime around them or the clumsy owner is just a waste.

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I work in an office 8++ hours a day, and I’ve just smashed my second camera lens on my 350-ish$ Android by having it in my pocket with keys - you’d think I’d learn. It has a cover, but a hole where the camera lens is - so it is recessed. Oh, and I should mention I don’t take my mobile to the office - it sits at home or on the rare occasion I take a car it stays in the car park. No other damage though 
 just the damn lens. Probably depends on the type of phone, strength of lens in my case, and some luck (bad)

I have a number of motorcycles, and have never imagined a need to smoke a tyre up on the phone :slight_smile: Especially given my rear tyres are worth more than the phone, and they’re typically dead in 5000k’s anyway, save it for the road seems wiser 
 I’d assumed the video was ‘for attention’ - I have no issue with extreme tests that are still within the bounds of normal use - like a drop test, maybe do them all at the rated height but at the end of testing one might increase height and find the ‘fail height’ - still there are so many variables it would be hard to know.

Other items - like helmets as I mentioned before - are treated much more ‘extremely’ in the wild than the testers ever put them through 
 but yes, I feel leave the ‘jackass’ tests to the tele shows 


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You have used this term a couple of times now, and I remain unsure what exactly you mean by it. Which entire generation are you denigrating with the term ‘jackass’, and on what basis? Or are you using the term to talk about a specific ‘group’ of people rather than the entire generation - in the way that Reagan referred to ‘welfare queens’ (which of course were a figment of his speech-writer’s imagination, but a useful ‘other’ to blame for the world’s woes)?

Certainly you appear to have formed some particular disgust for someone, but can you clarify exactly who and what you mean, and why you think some group about which I’m guessing you know very little is worthy of your scorn and ridicule?

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There is a movie ‘Jackass’ which features, smashing, crashing and destroying. As far as I can see there is no such single generation as nearly all pubescent and teenage boys go through this phase. Many grow out of it. The difference is now they can vicariously enjoy it on the screen! Does this lead to life imitating art or does it satisfy a need while directing them away from physical harm? There would be PhD in that.
Compared to my childhood it is now harder to buy bungers to blow up letter boxes but easier to download bomb plans. Things change but they stay the same.

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As @syncretic said, but also have a look at https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jackass to see what they get up to.

I’d like to ‘extreme test’ the NBN satellite. The challenge: can you watch live video streaming for more than 30 mins without any breaks due to buffering or other issues, blurry picture periods, frozen frames, and out of sync video and audio? Very extreme testing, I know, but I hear talk that other forms of internet connection allow uninterrupted video streaming.

That should show whether or not it is fit for purpose!

It’s taken me almost 5 hours (intermittently trying) to get here on NBN satellite, unsuccessfully as it turns out. I’ve reverted to hotspotting my phone to get some internet as everything is timing out on the NBN. The phone signal is a bit intermittent, but with careful placement I can get a reasonable variable speed connection most of the time.

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Sledgehammer anyone? :smile:

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I’d like to see weather stations tested also. We’ve been through 2 - first one lasted less than 12 months and the 2nd lasted about 2 & a half years ($200 approx). Husband has been looking online and has found that some of them are now around $10k!! Way out of our range but the cheaper ones don’t stand up to Tassie weather. Winter’s coming and I’d like to monitor our rainfall and wind speeds (thinking of adding a wind turbine to our solar system & going off grid).

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