Whenever I buy a physical product or choose a piece of software, I try to select things that will give me maximum satisfaction and last as long as possible. I often found myself choosing one product over another without being able to explain why, but that hunch usually turned out to be the better long-term choice.

I’ve distilled this instinct into a set of objective criteria that help me determine if a product is truly great. When in doubt, they help me choose one product over another.

What Makes a Product Great?

First, we have to establish what “great” even means. I’ve broken it down into four categories, in order of importance:

1. Usefulness

   The product does what it promises, reliably and effectively. Too often, I see products that try to be fancy but completely miss the point of usefulness.

2. Longevity

   It’s built to last: durable, repairable, and not disposable. This also means its design is timeless. From a business perspective, the company behind it is sustainable and profitable, ensuring continuity for the customer.

3. Quality of Craftsmanship

   No cheap shortcuts were taken; only high-quality components were used. The product shows high attention to detail in its engineering and construction. It reflects care and pride.

4. User Experience (UX)

   The product feels good and is enjoyable to use. Every touchpoint shows that the creators cared about how the user perceives and experiences their work.

Some people won’t care about these things, for reasons like “it just has to work.” But to put it in Linus Torvalds’ words: those people don’t have good taste.

How to Spot a Great Product

Using the definition above, I’ve developed a few guiding principles to help me spot great products:

• The CEO Uses the Product

  This is my favorite indicator, as it’s easy to check and almost always guarantees the product is great. The reason is simple: CEOs who use their own products experience the same pain points as their customers, and they have the power to fix them. These CEOs genuinely care about the product, and you can feel it.

• Word-of-Mouth Referrals

  When people recommend a product simply because they love it, that’s a powerful sign. It means the product is so good that it’s worth talking about. For the business, this is the best kind of marketing, which in turn helps them grow and improve the product.

• A Passionate Community

  Great products often foster a passionate community. Look for active forums, thriving chat servers, user-made tutorials, or a rich ecosystem of plugins and themes. This is a sign that people are so invested that they dedicate their own time to celebrating and improving the product. It’s one of the most powerful indicators that a product is truly special.

• It Isn’t Overhyped by Marketing

  Marketing is necessary to connect a product with users. But there’s a line between genuine marketing that sells a product for what it is, and hype that sells a regular t-shirt as the greatest innovation of the century. Great products often speak for themselves.

• No Dark Patterns

  This applies mostly to software, but finding dark patterns like vendor lock-in is a big red flag. Good products don’t need to trick or force users to stay. Users stick around because they want to. It’s that simple.

A Few Examples of Great Products

Here is a short list of products that meet these criteria:

• ASKET is a clothing brand whose co-founders regularly share what they are wearing. In my opinion, this is some of the highest-quality clothing you can buy. I bought my first pieces two years ago; they’ve been washed weekly and have held their shape and color perfectly. Another great thing is that the clothes have no external branding. The are timeless, simple, high-quality garments.

• Framework: Just watch their latest launch event, where CEO Nirav Patel speaks about their product with an in-depth knowledge not often seen in CEOs. Their community and their commitment to upgradability and repairability speak for themselves. It’s a great company with great products.

• Pebble is the exception that proves the rule of longevity. Though the original company shut down, the product was so beloved that its community kept it alive to this day. It’s the ultimate sign of a great product: one so good, its users will it back into existence. Founder Eric Migicovsky is officially relaunching the brand, and I am extremely excited about it.

• Obsidian.md is, in its simplest form, a note-taking application. Its CEO, Steph Ango, uses the product extensively himself.

• Laravel is a great web framework. To this day, founder Taylor Otwell still writes most of the code. You can feel how well-thought-out the framework is, and how it prioritizes the developer experience to make it a breeze to work with.

Let me know about other products that fit this category!