I wonder how much difference there really is between the lower-cost parts from "established brands" and lesser known (Outside China) brands like Lelon, Capxon etc.
Designing something in just because they're an established name isn't necessarily good engineering when cost is a major factor.
No, but in this case there was evidence that they haven't skimped on every last cent for everything.
And we have seen Nippon-Chemicon caps in a really horribly cheap PSU teardown before.
Given a fixed budget, what might they have skimped on elsewhere because they decided to use a more expensive part because of the brand name without really knowing if it's actually any better?
About the "knowing" aspect. What engineer is going to do the hundreds or thousands of hours thermal testing required to test if some cheapie brand is up to scratch?
You don't of course. If you deem capacitor life to be a potentially important factor in your product, then as a design engineer you do not take chances (budget allowing), you design in the top brand parts that have many decades of quality brand reputation in the industry. Do you think the tops brand have not earned their industry reputation?
This is standard design practice that extends to many different parts and their specs on their datasheets, not just caps.
For instance, you need a reliable reed relay. Do you trust a one-hung-low brand who's datasheet says 1,000,000 operations, or do you trust a Pickering with the same 1,000,000 rating? The answer is obvious. Therefore in reviewing or tearing down gear, it's important to look at this stuff.
Same goes for using a genuine Analog Devices True RMS converter chip, or some asian knockoff as another example.
A company can of course do extensive testing to qualify a lesser brand part, no problem with that, but that's an issue up to them. And unless they publish their results, the industry does not have anything to go on except the slow build up of experience over decades.
IME of 30-odd years of repairing things, the biggest differentiator of capacitor reliability is heat exposure rather than capacitor brand.
For caps that are not thermally or electrically stressed, I'd be surprised if there was much difference between brands.
I'm almost certain that you are wrong.
The "bad capacitor" problem was a real issue in the industry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plagueThe major brands were not affected.
And who discovered the problem? And ex-scientists form Rubycon.
http://www.molalla.net/members/leeper/alumin~1.pdfBut sure, temperature and electrical stressing is always the major factor in capacitor failure.
A "torture" test comparing performance of various cap brands might make an interesting episode...
The number of hours involved in doing that would be huge. And the likelihood of getting a null result would likely be high. As this issue is more to do with industry experience on a mass scale than one that can be easily reproduced.
Image if I tested them and there was no difference? Would that prove that the crap brands are just as good? No it wouldn't, because collective industry experience proves otherwise.
In this case it's much easier to prove a positive result (failure) than a negative one (no real failure/difference)
But I agree that it would be interesting.