I normally used Bosch Aerotwins, but got a good deal on a pair of Valeo Silencio last time around and I have to say they are very good.
I've been using Valeo Silencio for years on all our cars and they seem fine.
Man I'm old! I remember when Champion was the brand to have. Then one day I bought a set of Champion blades and you could see straight away that they'd made them cheaper. The frames were thinner metal and soon bent open and the blades shuddered. Switched to Bosch on the recommendation of a garage.
I used Bosch for years but kept having issues with contamination on the windscreen. A kind of residue that didn't want to come off and made the wipers smear in the rain. Tried loads of things but couldn't get rid of it. Eventually switched to Valeo blades and the
problem just went away!
To be honest, I just don't trust Bosch anymore. I know they'll have lots of different divisions making different types of products but I've seen too many examples of them making cheap, poor quality product presented as high quality. About a month ago I bought a 12v Bosch combi-drill for the office and I'm actually angry about how bad it is. I've used full-sized tools from DeWalt, Makita, Milwaukee etc and they're all fine. Even the cheapest DeWalt will take a hammering in an industrial environment. More to the point I own four 12v Makita drills/impact drivers and they are great. The impact drivers are better than 18v DeWalt in some ways.
But this Bosch, it's a piece of ****! It's marked as Bosch Professional but it's barely better than a child's toy. Motor is weak, tiny batteries but still take ages to charge, hammer action is useless. I'm not convinced the function ring does anything at all. It's a pathetic tool similar in quality to maybe the supermarket own-brand rubbish you see for £40
A few years ago my father-in-law bought a new Bosch lawnmower from B&Q. Not long after he bought it he asked me to look at it because it wasn't cutting properly. The entire frame is made of plastic and flexes all over the place. Worst is that the fixed blade is ridiculously thin metal on a plastic bar! It just bends under any kind of pressure so try to cut much more than water cress and it bends out of the way and the damn think won't cut. I've got a forty year old Qualcast that still works and still cuts better.
So I'm very suspicious of Bosch products. I'm not saying they don't make good ones but they are clearly not above selling crap dressed up as quality. You expect that from the Chinese but not a German company. Just look at the Bosch drills on Amazon. They're all over the place. I can count about six different battery types. Looks to me like they're getting cheap crap made in China with their
badge on it. I'm not saying it's all crap but I don't trust them. If there is an alternative to Bosch, I'm buying it.
). The rear ones are quite common to Seat / Skoda / VW models.
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. Prior to that on trips to Germany when the modular ones as these are use to be very expensive in the UK. That was a Bosch service centre that use to get them in for me, German precision. I'd email and pick them up the next day in Trier.
