I saw this post and wanted to ask the opposite. What are some items that really aren’t worth paying the expensive version for? Preferably more extreme or unexpected examples.
Medicine. The house brands and generics are the exact same, tested the same, made the same.
But real Advil has the candy coating on the outside, and I haven’t found a generic that does =(
Otherwise 100% identical yes.
A few years ago, I wondered why that was and googled it. I came to an Advil site with an expandable FAQ, and one of the questions was “why does Advil taste sweet?”
So I expanded it out to reveal this shocking answer (or something similar): “Advil tastes sweet because it is lightly coated in sugar.”
Thanks, I guess. I just closed the tab in mild irritation and moved on with my day.
Yep
There may be a difference in things like pill shape, texture, release mechanism / time to absorb (if it’s not very important for how the medication works)
So it’s ok to have a preference for one brand over the other when one of those points is relevant to your situation. I know some people also prefer the generic brand version over the regular (even if prices were the same)
Problem with the candy coating is you can’t enjoy it, unless you want to suddenly learn what pure poison tastes like. It’s such a tease. Doesn’t help that they look like scrumptious little caramel-y morsels.
Oh I suck on them first. It lasts long enough.
Wait, what? I have no idea what advil is, but sugar coating any drug is a recipe for disaster.
Sugarcoating pills is fairly common, especially for pills which are frequently ingested or target older demographics. It’s because sugar coatings are much gentler on the esophagus (i.e.: less likely to cause esophagitis, “pill burn”). Advil (i.e.: ibuprofen) is a cheap, well tolerated, and non habit-forming pain reliever – it’s about as safe as such a thing could possibly be, so hopefully that helps to explain why a sugar coating might be warranted given the aforementioned upsides (for the love of all that is holy; always read the directions on the label, it’s still quite possible that Advil is not safe for you specifically). FWIW: the bottles also have childproofing mechanisms built into the caps (… at least in U.S. markets. Not sure about elsewhere?)
I’ve never heard of sugarcoating pills, is it a US thing maybe?
I think you have a wrong image of how this looks/works. It’s not like there is a cany-shell or something. It’s a regular, smooth pill. You usually do not notice this coating because you don’t keep a pill in your mouth. If you were to, the pill would taste sweet.
If you ever have gotten a pill of some sort that dd not feel chalky on the outside but smooth and looked kinda shiny, that probably has been a sugarcoated pill.
I think you’re right then, and honestly I can’t say I’ve noticed.
many birth control pills are sugarcoated for example. Or anti-histamine allergy medication like Cetericine
Aspirin and paracetamol I don’t think are patented by any one company now. Supermarket brand is super cheap.
Often made by the same.
Depends on the meds. I take concerta for ADHD and as I understand it, the generic doesn’t use the same release mechanism.
I’m also on concerta (ADHD highfive) and I’ve found lower efficacy with the generic… I sure wish it was the same though.
Not exactly. Just a fun fact and disclaimer that I use generics if at all possible. But my pharmacology class taught that generics can have higher tolerance of error in % of active ingredient. Not usually a big deal unless the drug has a very narrow therapeutic range, meaning too little doesn’t work and too much will harm you. 99.9% of generics is fine. But if you ever wonder if one batch of your med doesn’t seem to work as well this it’s likely that batch was on the lower end of acceptable.
Also, a cheaper alternative is to eat less and eat healthier. I know we can’t all afford expensive healthy foods but just simply cutting out excess fats, sugar and empty carbs from your diet will add years to your life and also add better years to your life.
Water. At least here in Denmark. Bottled water is less regulated than tap water.
In parts of the Alps, the stuff coming out of the fountains in the town square is cleaner than the stuff that comes out of the tap lol 😂
Dogs, rescues are just as doglike and mostly free compared to the Hapsburg simulator known as breeding
But look at the chin on that dog!
Cats too! I like to say I get all my animals used.
I buy a lot of generic or store brand stuff. Usually I’m comfortable doing this with things that have been around for a long time like bleach, laundry soap, and basic foods. I assume that it is not difficult to do these things so anyone can make it and there’s little if any difference between brands.
On this topic: I heard once that you should first buy cheap tools. Use them until they break and then decide what you want to improve about those tools and buy better ones. Often those first tools never break. This seems like pretty good advice for most things.
The tools is good advice most of the time, but not if the tool would fail dangerously. Don’t skimp on car jacks, table saws, or other things that are likely to injure you if they fail.
Screwdrivers/drills/hammers/crowbars/etc. don’t need to be expensive if you are going to use them rarely as the professional grade is mostly about being used all day every day and being able to survive rough handling by tired workers.
I try not to use a lot of plastic wrap, but sometimes it’s the right tool for the job. I will always spring for the good stuff, generic is basically useless and you waste way more for inferior performance.
Yup, buy most things at harbor freight the first time, if you break theirs buy whatever name brand fits your color scheme.
Harbor Freight is fucking awesome.
Cars. Expensive cars require more frequent and complicated maintenance and repairs than cheaper cars. They over engineer them on purpose in order to make it unreasonable to maintain them in the long run. They don’t want their brand sullied by old versions of their cars driven around by poor people.
Hard disagree!
Are you saying that you’ve owned both cheap and expensive cars, and that your favorites have always been the cheap ones? That they’ve been more reliable, more comfortable, better-riding, and better-driving? Or, at least, no worse than the expensive ones?
Yes, more expensive cars are more expensive. They often have a higher cost of ownership. And, sometimes, brands really fuck up and cut corners they shouldn’t, and result an reputational harm that takes years to recover from, long after they’ve fixed the production issues (c.f. Audi in the early 00’s). But, IME, it’s usually worth it, if you can afford it.
Cheap cars definitely are more reliable if you pick the right brands. On all the other points it just doesn’t make enough of a difference to me to justify the enormous cost increase.
Our $10k used Camry is still kicking ass over ten years later and hasn’t ever needed work more extensive than replacing leaking struts. The reliability truly is astounding.
EDIT: But, let’s not talk about my camera-buying habits lol
Our 2016 (new) BMW has never had a major issue. Our 2014 (new) Volvo - which cost half what the BMW did, has almost never not had something going wrong with it. We bought a new Altima many years ago that was less expensive than the Volvo; we had it for several years and it was fine, but it was still in the shop more than this BMW (but less than the Volvo).
The issue isn’t so much reliability, but what it costs when there is a problem. Fixing the Altima would certainly be cheaper than the same repair of the BMW. The Volvo TCO is higher than the BMW or the Altima.
I also think you have to be comparing similar years. My sister - who’s 20 years younger than me - is still driving a 1996 Nissan 240SX, and it’s in great chat wasn’t a “cheap” car when it was new, but still. I think cars from last century were more robust.
The repair cost is ultimately the most significant, that’s true.
We’ll have to see how statistics play out in the long run: that’s where the non-anecdotal evidence for Toyota’s supremacy comes from.
let’s not talk about my camera-buying habits lol
Ah, that’s the perfect hobby if you really hate having money 😅
There’s not going to be a huge difference between something like a Toyota and a Mercedes other than cost and reliability. You’re paying for the brand.
Mercedes is an outlier. Try comparing Toyota with Lexus, Nissan with Infiniti, Chevy with Cadillac, or Ford with Lincoln. In all of these instances, the luxury marques have equivalent or better reliability than their economy counterparts.
Of course, whether or not the reliability and features are worth the cost is a different question entirely. (I generally lean towards no.)
Lol I don’t think the reliability difference between Lexus and Toyota is measurable. If anything I see way more old Toyotas on the road than I do old Lexuses. But that may be just because less were produced.
When I was in college, I admired my boss and his BMW. He then told me that it was a hand-me-down, and he spends a few hours a month maintaining it because there’s always something that breaks and he can’t afford to bring it into the shop every time.
He joked on a few occasions of just giving me the car after a year, and after a while, it felt like a cry for help rather than a joke.
Admiring a car is such a stupid thing to do. I’m not trying to attack you, just saying. I’ve done it in the past. It’s just so stupid.
I personally do not find expensive wine and liquor worth it. That obviously don’t mean all cheap wines are good, but I find the percentage of bad wine I had at $50 - $70 range is pretty much the same as wine around or under $20.
I find the best way is to research online before you buy or go for couple known-good brands. Most of the results actually tend to be on the cheaper side (around $20 for wine, around $35 for liquor).
IMHO, there are two price bands for wine: under-$10, and over. I have an unsophisticated palette, but I can tell a cheap wine from a not-cheap one. I can’t tell a not-cheap one from an expensive one, though. Some really expensive wines taste like crap to me, worse than the mid-range ones. That’s the only time I can pick out on expensive wine: it might taste bad, but it doesn’t taste cheap.
I’ll disagree to a point on liquor.
I like single-malt Scottish whiskey. I like Islays the most, followed by Speysides, Cambelltowns, Highlands, and Lowlands (in that order). I’ve found that, generally speaking, the longer a whiskey has been aged, the better it’s going to be at mellowing out the harsher flavors in a given distillery’s offerings. Compared to blended whiskeys–which are usually cheaper–single malt, and single barrel are a better experience in my opinion. I’m usually paying $50-200 for something that I’ll really enjoy, with most being in the $100-150 range.
But $5000 for a 40yo bottle of Macallen? Absolutely not.
I can’t tell the difference between wine at all. Whiskey and beer I can definitely tell the difference between cheap and good stuff, but once you hit the 80$+ range it all blends together.
grape wine sucks
there’s more complexity in Shaoxing cooking wine than grape wine
also the best beer I’ve ever had was some artisanal non-alcoholic one, I’ve been trying to find it for 10 years but never succeeded
Phones
You don’t really need an 8-core CPU and 12 gigs of RAM for making calls and browsing the web, which is what 95% of people use their phones for. Not even buying such phone for the sake of longevity is worth it since most manufacturers drop support for their phones after 5 years at most.
Can’t exactly say the same for Samsung phones though. I used to have their cheaper midrangers and after like 2 years they’d get horrendously slow in day-to-day tasks. I got an older flagship for roughly the same price as a new midranger by them recently and I hope it’ll last longer.
But they’re so nice and shiny. Also, who’s out there paying full price for their phones? most carriers have so many deals out the wazoo you end up paying like 10% of the retail price. Laughs in iPhone 15 Pro and you can’t shame me for it.
Buying operating systems is not worth it. Just use Linux.
Linux is not free. I already work full time job, and unlike maintaining and endlessly diagnosing countless issues that I don’t experience on Windows, my actual job gives me a paycheck every week.
- Removed Snap
But seriously stop buying Microsoft’s shit. Even indirectly, don’t buy Windows pre-installed computers unless you have a very specific reason for it.
What about people that actually want their stuff to work?
Use Linux Mint.
Not 100% compatible with everything i use. I understand that advice works for most though. Or I’ve been told that at least.
What isn’t it compatible with? All these people making baseless complaints about Linux driving me crazy. Most people are just too lazy to Google an error code. I’m convinced there are hidden Windows shills in the fediverse like undercover Russian spys.
Seriously people act like googling an error is the end of the world AND windows never ever makes a user troubleshoot. Like dude windows constantly fucks up and you gotta figure shit out
Lol, are you serious? Any Adobe software, Microsoft Office, plenty of games (especially those that rely on anticheat software). That’s everything that comes to mind right away, there’s definitely more than that when it comes to specialized software. And no need to reply with “but there are good alternatives/use an older version”, this is software that is required for work and it’s industry standard for a reason.
Industry standard so you can use Windows on a work computer and be free to use Linux at home.
I’ve been doing that for more than half a decade now, but the point still stands: the claim that Linux is compatible with everything is just not true, and while there are plenty of people for whom it will work perfectly fine, there are also lots of situations in which it is not a feasible solution.
Does not run Creo. Does not run DCS. Does not run Destiny 2. These are most of what I do that needs a useful computer versus just a ipad or something. Therefore, a Linux PC would only be useful for blender and firefox. Only being able to use 40% of programs means a Linux PC is basically e waste already.
Youtube premium
On phones; while you don’t need a flagship model if you are privacy conscious it is worth seeking out a platform that will work well with degooglified OSes; ironically the Pixel is one of the best thanks to GrapheneOS.
makeup removing coton pieces
OK, this one is true until it isn’t.
HDMI 1.4 and arguably 2.0 specs were straightforward enough that it was rare to encounter a cable, no matter how cheap, that did not support all the features you wanted if it listed the right HDMI spec. That… is no longer a universal truth with HDMI 2.1 if you need something that will do 4K120 with HDR. There are cables that just don’t like some ports, particularly on PCs.
Length is also a way this can be wrong. Go above 2.5-3m and you may start losing the ability to hit some of the spec. I have a HDMI setup that requires a longer cable and there are basic cables that work and some that don’t for the application. To get a better chance on longer cables you end up having to go for powered cables or HDMI over fiber, which are both more expensive than normal cables and it can be luck of the draw even with expensive cables whether they will like your devices and be compatible with what you’re trying to do.
So console plugged directly to your 60Hz TV over 1.5m? Sure, cheap cable will do. Longer distances or higher bandwidth requirements? Be prepared to shop around and try different options, potentially getting very expensive.
This used to be true, but unfortunately, like USB-C the game has changed completely.
The downside to standardization is that if you keep the same physical form for multiple iterations, the internals can change. The specs of the source and receiving ends have gone through tons of changes since 2015 and old HDMI 1.4 Cables don’t have the same standards to transmit high speed signals from things like PS5, Xbox, Apple TV etc.
Additionally because they require programming and HDCP (a verification handshake between the 2 devices it connects) when companies cheap out they may not properly program them.
That being said, you don’t need spend an arm and a leg, but don’t get shit either. Generally speaking, buy the cheapest version HDMI 2.1 from a reputable brand or vendor. Definitely not from Amazon anymore, a TON of products labeled 2.1 are actually 2.0 or worse, 1.4.
This was pretty close to being true for 1080p and lower resolutions. If you get a 4k 120hz HDR display then bandwidth and signal integrity start becoming very important. The article you linked is rather old and really only considers media up to 4k 30fps. Cable quality especially matters at lengths above 4 ft for uhd and higher.
There’s a lot of snake oil so you can’t just trust marketing claims. I’ve had terrible luck with cables that claim to support high resolutions from amazon and even monoprice. I’ve resorted to buying cables from actual electronics suppliers like digikey since their speed ratings should be accurate.
“There are major durability differences between different cables and many manufacturers offer additional features, beyond the ability to carry an HDMI signal, that could add value and cost” says Park.
There can still be a difference in physical quality, even if signal quality is relatively unchanged.
Sure, but not enough to justify monster cable prices.
Expensive Cars. If you have to have one, buy a cheap one. One of the worst lifetime financial decisions you can make is spending money on cars, all of them get you to A to B. A used Prius is just about the most economical car you can buy for total cost per mile travelled. It would be nice if more cities had good public transportation systems, but unfortunately most don’t. I love long island, getting around on public transportation is so convenient.
Edit: Something like this example prius is the way to go if you are trying to maximize your dollar. Drive it until the wheels fall off:
Fashion accessories. For most fashion (not workwear), the expensive stuff is made from the same material and in the same factories as the cheap stuff, they just market it harder.
Body wash. It’s watered-down soap. Just buy a bar of soap.
Amazon Prime. Amazon used to be space-age Sears. Now it’s just Aliexpress. Fake reviews and bribery are rampant, dangerously nonfunctional products get top recommendations, used and broken products get resold as new while untouched returns get thrown into landfills, Amazon Basics violates IP, and they’re putting ads in Prime Video now.
Microwaves and space heaters. The boxes may try to convince you otherwise, but the amount of heat these devices can deliver is bottlenecked by the power outlet. Every 1100W microwave is just as effective as the others. If you’re paying more, it’s for looks and for features you’ll never use like popcorn mode.
Electronics, for most people. Most people won’t get more use out of a new $1500 phone than a last-gen model from the same manufacturer for $500. Do you really want a $200 smart coffee maker, or a $20 dumb coffee maker with a $10 plug-in timer?
Software. Obligatory FOSS plug. I don’t blame people for sticking to what’s familiar, but if you have the time and energy to spare tinkering, most software out there has a good free or open-source equivalent these days. At least for personal use. In my use case, LibreOffice beats Microsoft Word, Photopea beats Photoshop, and Google Sheets beats Excel.
I agree with everything but using Google sheets. It’s neither free nor open source. You don’t pay with money but with your privacy. Libre office is just as good as a desktop application and is actually FOSS. If you absolutely need the cloud storage, get a provider you can trust, buy the space and sync your files online, after editing locally.
Google sheets isn’t FOSS, right? Is there something comparable in libre?
Hard disagree on body wash vs soap. Soap always leaves a weird filmy feeling on my skin no matter what brand I use. Plus having to lather up the bar is annoying and I don’t want to deal with wet washcloths in the shower. Give me a poof and a bottle of body wash any day.
The advantages of being hairy. I have out evolved the need for washcloths.
Medicine in a pharmacy, similar to the pregnancy tests.
