It used to be easy. Whether you purchased a refrigerator, lawnmower, television  or even a new car. You could count on the fact that what you purchased was designed with longevity in mind and you could expect to get years if not decades of trouble free service out of it. Unfortunately those days have long since passed. 

Before we get into brands and what to purchase we want to touch on what’s changed in the garage door and opener industry that has led to the current state of affairs. 

The garage door opener was invented in the 1920’s; and from its invention to say just over 20 years ago garage door openers essentially consisted of an A/C motor, mechanical switches to handle the start / stop locations and force adjustments, then with later models a basic logic board took over this task. This set up was bullet proof. Everything was overbuilt and you could expect to get decades of service out of those units. Models like the Linear LDO-50 (in photo above), Genie PMX-500 and various other models from LiftMaster literally lasted for decades. There are thousands of garage door openers that ABS Garage Doors installed over 20 years ago in Palm Coast and Flagler Beach, Florida that are still working fine to this day. 
 

Around 2001 there was a new type of garage door opener introduced to the market by Marantec called the Mac Lift III it consisted of a DC motor and software to handle the bulk of the tasks that used to be handled by mechanical switches. The DC ( Direct Current) motor replaced the old AC (Alternating Current) motor and this allowed the power to be modulated, rather than just on - off introducing features such as the soft start and soft stop and this allowed a more gradual and safer movement to the operation of the garage door.
 

In 2006 - 2014  LiftMaster / Chamberlain / Raynor followed suit with the introduction of a jack shaft / wall mount DC garage door opener and in the ensuing years various ceiling mount openers with DC motors. From 2014 until today other garage door opener manufacturers such as Genie, Craftsmen, Linear / Nice, Skylink and others have followed suit adding their own models. 
 

Since 2014 features such as LED lighting, battery back up, Wi/Fi, MyQ (LiftMaster), Aladdin connect (Genie), etc., camera’s, radio’s, speakers you name it have been added to garage door openers in an effort to make them a vital part of your home.
 

The good news is all these changes have made today’s garage door openers, quieter than they ever have been and along with all of the new features easier and more convenient to use. The caveat to all of new technology is the more features you pack into any products, whether it be an appliance, automobile or a garage door opener the less reliable they are inherently going to be. 

In part II we will go into the root cause of many of the current problems and how you can choose the most reliable garage door opener for the money.