Yea this stinks of someone’s palms not getting greased enough.

I’ve used them for a while too. Sometimes they’ll have weird keys super cheap. Like I was able to grab Dark Souls 3 + both DLC’s for like $16 or something way back when.

Generally I don’t buy anything else other than Phillips. They’re usually bulletproof if you don’t get the smart bulbs. I’ve not had a Phillips fail in ~10 years. But that’s a sample size of like 30 or so bulbs.

Like the other commenter said, you can get some pretty good deals due to the recent issues.

Just don’t bother with a 13th/14th gen intel right now. Either go 12th gen intel, or straight up AMD which is what I’d recommend.

Source

Yep. When I moved into my house the previous owner had used all garbage Walmart LED’s. I think I had one fail each month and just bought a bunch on sale from Phillips eventually.

Most common failure was the driver. So they turned into strobe lights lol. Most annoying failure ever.

And more importantly, not every LED is dimmer compatible. Sometimes they’re super picky or just plain don’t work.

Anything mini led with local dimming and HDR will be more than enough at a lower budget. Hisense has some pretty nice ones.

Check out rtings to get a general idea of features and their usefulness.

Clearance, tires, and open diffs are the big 3.

Most awd vehicles use torque sensors to brake the wheel that has no traction to push power to wheels that do. It doesn’t always work and most awd systems are clutch based so there’s slippage.

More of the basic 4wd vehicles these days come with electric lockers, more power, and better clearance. They still have road tires though so there’s room for improvement there.

I will say, most people that don’t do this stuff on a semi decent basis have ZERO idea on how to actually wheel. You can get pretty far in a base model but even the cheapest new bronco or wrangler are better equipped to deal with actual wheeling than a Subaru.

Driving Sports TV on YouTube shows how most of the vehicles work in light off-roading, and spoiler, most are terrible.

Is that why I can find some brands in Colorado and not in Michigan? Or are there just really that many brands?

Soft plaque forms like the other comment said from bacteria excrement.

It then hardens and becomes impossible for a regular brush to get rid of within 24ish hours. It’s why you should get regular cleanings and brush twice a day. And floss.

My bad. It just seems like the low hanging fruit everyone plays off of.

We actually used to get vehicles close to this size. The Suzuki samurai (really a jimny) was sold here for a number of years. Geo sold a fair number of almost kei cars that Suzuki made.

I’m a fan of limiting them from interstate highways, but keeping them registrable. It’s just dumb they cite “safety” even though the law explicitly calls out they aren’t required to be safe. I just want a nice 25-45 mph city truck to lug dirty junk around.

But if anyone is curious, Douglas deBoard imported so many European cars in the 80’s that cut into the profits of Mercedes USA enough that they pushed the law through. Buying them in Europe and importing them was actually cheaper (in some aspects) than buying a US market one. And the imported cars were better equipped!

It wasn’t even about protecting American manufacturers or trucks. Mercedes has just always been a huge dick.

Doing comparisons like these don’t make sense when motorcycles and trikes exist.