Long discussion about the great electrolytic capacitor failure fiasco of 2003. Someone said Dell lost $420 million on in-warranty repairs (we had Optiplex 270 and 280 MoBoards with those bad caps).
Tom May
One single video of cheap capacitors failing could be an individual with an axe to grind, trying to blemish a company. I would be more inclined to believe the caps were bad if several other independent testers confirmed that the same caps were inferior.
You have to remember that not all inferior caps will fail in service. For instance a cap rated at 35 volts fails at 18 volts, so is considered inferior. But put the cap into a circuit with a 9 volt supply and it may work fine for decades. There are other factors such as tolerance, ESR – equivalent series resistance – and mechanical stability. Some very reputable manufacturers may compromise on a factor in order to reduce the cost and sell a competitive product. One example of this is the reduced wire size on the leads.
I respect your opinion, but you ascribe their motives to evil intents: you said, “They likely don’t care…” What I’ve seen is a lot of companies have gone out of business in the last 2 years due to COVID-19 and many that have survived have had to make compromises in quality to keep from going under. I don’t think they all have had evil intents.