It depends of your criteria. E.G: old appliance are bulky, noisier and suck more juice. You could say modern ones are then better. But my mother still own stuff from decades ago, that are consistently sturdier, last longer, are easier to repair, and have a better UI.
I just bought a food slicer. The motor was connected to the saw using a very soft plastic gear. Its teeth became smooth after a month of use, rendering the machine useless, and no way to buy a new gear on the internet.
This is modern tech at work: you getter a cheaper machine, but to get there, the materials used suck. And there is no stock for replacement parts because it's expensive to keep them around.
They're probably deep in planned obsolescence since most people will use them about 3 times in 30 years.
The more common everyday things like kettles, vacuum cleaners, toasters, etc all seem to have very good options for not much money.
I've never driven a car, but my family seems to need less trips to the mechanics by far than when I was a kid. Computers definitely seem better in every way, and of course all small electronics like tape players have been phone-ified and seem to be much more reliable.
It may well be that slicers are niche enough that consumer versions are worse.
Still, nylon gears can be very durable(Unless any ozone gets on them, that seems to kill them).
A truly modern slicer with the same crappy materials would probably be using the MCU to predict the gear temperature based on motor current and limiting the duty cycle, and it would last a long time and perform acceptably well.
Either that or they'd have some direct drive scheme for then really nice ones, or maybe even some kind of no moving parts linear motor.
Modern power tools do this all the time. They shut down or reduce power for what seems to be no reason or a minor reason, but the computer probably detected some subtle overload condition I wouldn't have. It's a bit annoying, but it makes them cheap and durable enough to not think twice about buying used.
The stuff at Wal-Mart usually sucks, but there's almost always some affordable modern version that beats the older tech.
It does seem that 3rd party gears exist though, for some slicers.
I just bought a food slicer. The motor was connected to the saw using a very soft plastic gear. Its teeth became smooth after a month of use, rendering the machine useless, and no way to buy a new gear on the internet.
This is modern tech at work: you getter a cheaper machine, but to get there, the materials used suck. And there is no stock for replacement parts because it's expensive to keep them around.