I want to buy my parents a cordless land-line phone as a gift, so that I can hear them when I call them. They keep buying cordless phones that last a few months before they die, and that have terrible range and voice quality in the mean time. I want to buy them a good one with at least two handsets, very long range, good voice quality and battery life, but I feel like it's beyond my power to actually do that. I hate buying consumer electronics, because I feel lost. It's impossible to know a good quality product based on the box, and the products change so often, that once you find something good, you will never be able to buy it again.
In an ideal market I would be able to find the product that has the level of quality I want, and then I could decide if I wanted to spend that much. The thing that annoys me about consumer electronics is that it's hard for me to actually know what I'm buying. You can't shop by brand; all brands seem to be equally inconsistent. I could assume that the most expensive one was the best, but that's not always true either. It's not like riflescopes where I could just buy them a Leupold and know that it was going to be good.
