The Whole Category Is Great

Many years ago I bought a Marshall bluetooth speaker, it was so great. More recently I have bought Anker bluetooth speakers, they are also great. I remember seeing reviews for JBL bluetooth speakers, the people who have them say they're really great.

I am sure there are bad bluetooth speakers out there, but fundamentally I think that 1) bluetooth speakers as a product-category are great, 2) they've gotten much better in the last few decades, 3) people tend to purchase them very rarely, and if you're happy with the first one you get you're likely to stick with that brand in future.

As a result, I think some people make a kind of philosophical error, thinking that their very specific bluetooth speaker brand is great rather than that bluetooth speakers are great and almost-any reputable brand of speaker would have impressed them.

I could say the same about my XGIMI portable projector: it is WILD to me that you can get high-quality wall projection for a few hundred bucks, you can point it from any angle and it self-aligns to a perfect rectangle, incredible stuff. But (with all due respect to XGIMI), I suspect that what I'm impressed by is the state of modern projector technology, and that there are many other brands that are equally good at it, I just don't have a reason to go and find out.

Probably tech products are over-represented in this dynamic, since we buy them fairly rarely and the quality-to-price ratio keeps improving from both contributors. (I love my cordless vacuum cleaner, but I have no real sense of how it compares with other modern vacuum cleaners, only that it's so much better than the vacuum cleaners of my youth). But I'm sure there's other types of products that follow this dynamic as well.

I think mostly it's fine that people misattribute the greatness of the category to their specific item: there is no reason for me to love my XGIMI projector any less, just because in some other nearby universe I am loving some other acronym. But in certain circumstances it's important and relevant whether the things you love about an item are specific to one brand or just features of the general category, so I think the distinction is worth acknowledging.

There's actually a social version of this that you see sometimes. E.g. you meet someone who's in a good relationship for the first time in their life, and are talking about how great their new partner is, but citing it to very basic stuff that really everyone should do for each other. And in your head you're like: I'm delighted for you bud!, I'm glad you have these nice things. But also, those are just the basic qualities of a good relationship, they're pretty much standard with any decent brand.