10 January, 2011

Misleading phrases

I came across what I think is the most misleading marketing phrase so far: "modified sine wave". This is used to describe inverters, such as those you use to convert 12V in your car to 230V so you can use a microwave in your car. The 230V you get from the sockets in your home is a nice, smooth sine wave, and most devices are designed to use this. However, when converting DC (in your car) to AC, it's not so easy to produce a sine wave, so cheap inverters use "modified sine wave". From this phrase, you'd think they start off with a sine wave then make some changes to it. If they already had a sine wave, why would they have to modify it further? This phrase is a downright lie! The inverter produces a square wave, and they should just call it like it is. It's like saying this post is in translated French! More accurate phrases would be:

  • Simulated sine wave
  • Modified square wave (if they did something further to the square wave)
  • Not a sine wave


Another marketing lie is Dyson calling the Air Multiplier a "bladeless fan". It's not really bladeless, the blades are just concealed in the base.

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