Preferred wheel bearing manufacturer?

Just about to buy new front wheel bearings for my MK-IV and noticed a lager difference in price between the different manufacturers (Hudson, FAG, OEM). Is there any reason to get the more expensive bearing kit?

The OEM kit is a lot of money for the VW logo on a box. I would use the FAG kit, which is known to be of OEM quality. Hudson may be OK, but I have no experience/knowledge of the quality. The low price makes me wonder what shortcuts were taken in manufacture, so I would go with what I know is a good thing.

Paul

I have seen others use and have myself used bearings from FAG, Timken, Hudson, SKF. I've not seen quality problems with any of them. Typically, the differences seem to be whether the c-clip and axle nut was included in the box as a kit or not. And the most telling detail on whether the bearing will live is the proper installation - seating the bearing properly and sufficiently torquing the axle nut as well as not messing up a perfectly good brand new bearing by pressing in the hub before remembering to install the retaining c-clip for the bearing. I don't want to recount to you how familiar I am with that particular screw-up.

After that, I haven't heard lots about failures of a particular brand among those mentioned above. There are sporadic episodes mentioned of a person having bearing failures in rapid succession - for example, a bearing not lasting 10k miles or having to be replaced in 30k miles. I would first question the installation on those, but that is well nigh impossible due to elapsed time, or because a shop did it.

The bearing I got from the dealer was a FAG made in Canada. A respected vendor sells the exact same one for around $30.

Sometimes repeated wheel bearing failures are caused by a bent hub, from smacking a curb.