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products not worth the premium
gneGne
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I was wondering, how many products are there, I probably just buy the premium brand of, that aren't really worth it? Im thinking about all kinds of products. Usually electronics are worth the premium price. So anyone have some good examples? Like toothpaste?
gneGne on
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I don't believe it - I'm on my THIRD PS3, and my FIRST XBOX360. What the heck?
Bread is probably one of the few bad examples of food.
Good bread is goood.
Terrible bread is terrr...you get the point.
In fact, a lot of 'premium' food can be better than the budget stuff. Even things like baked beans, the cheaper ones often have fewer beans and more sauce or are loaded with preservatives. Better meat cuts cost more as does better treated meat. But then you need to think more about what you're doing with it and whether the meal you are cooking really needs premium fillet steak or whether cheaper cuts of beef will do.
Honestly, though, this is a pretty broad question. If you're trying to save money on your monthly outgoings, you need to make a list of everything you buy and figure out if there is a cheaper alternative and try it out to see how it compares.
Same drug, different mechanics for some though.
Eh, I don't notice a difference between the 18 different styles of bread. Bakery bread tends to be tons better though. I've also found a lot of "store brand" items are usually repackaged name brand items, but cheaper.
That's true enough. Non-prescription drugs too, like Ibuprofen and Asprin you're better off just buying the shop-brand version rather than the stuff that gets advertised on TV. The active ingredient is always the same, it's usually just the delivery method that might vary.
Around here there's a brand called "Shopper's Value", which we consistantly refer to as "Shopper's-Value-Gotta-Use-Two". Yes, I'm paying half price for paper towels and plates, but when I have to double up to accomplish the same thing as the normal brands...
This is very much a YMMV topic.
On the other hand, never cheap out on a power supply when you are building a computer
My kitchen and bathroom are both filled with store-brand whatever. Except saran wrap and freezer bags. Never buy cheapo saran wrap or freezer bags. Cheapo garbage bags are risky as well.
$6 dollar whole grain wheat bread has whole grain wheat and sugar, the 2$ wal mart whole grain wheat does not have whole grain wheat, and uses high fructose corn syrup. It's fine that you don't notice a difference, but there is a big one with bread. There's some premium food that's a ripoff, but a lot of it costs more because more quality ingredients go into it, weather you can taste them or not.
I got some fancy name hamburgers a while back, which weren't any better than the store-brand ones, but were laden with enough grease that cooking them burned me a few times with the hot grease. After that I went back to the store brand and they're tastier and easier to cook and cheaper.
Really the way to figure out though it to try the less expensive/more expensive once and see how you like it.
*for the purpose of wearing clothes to cover your nakedness.
I've seen multiple tests and studies where nobody in a test group which included A/V specialists could tell the difference between $6 generic cables and $30 Monster cables. In fact, one study I saw had an A/V tech analyze the output signal through a test set, and apparently the signal was exactly as strong and clear through each.
This is probably ill-advised. The normal shelf life of a CD-R is only 3 to 5 years, and using cheap media (made with cheap dye and lacquer) will cut that in half. Name-brand flash media also tends to be more reliable, though their lifespan would be measured in "writes" rather than "years". Only cheap out on that stuff if it's for temporary use.
Look at the ingredients. Cheap bread contains high fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated oils (aka trans fats) and other artificial gunk that's bad for you. Good bread doesn't.
Generally speaking, that's how food pricing works: chemicals and artificial ingredients are cheaper than their natural equivalents.
Expensive bread (e.g. Pepperidge Farm) uses high fructose corn syrup too. It's a mass production thing, not a quality thing. I've found that the only bread in my supermarket that doesn't use high fructose corn syrup is Roman Meal.
A lot of breads in my grocery store don't contain HFCS. The one I usually buy is this which is only about $3/loaf.
Pepperidge Farm sells a variety of breads, and the ones that I would call the more "quality" line are the 100% natural line and Whole grain line, neither of which contain HFCS. Much of their other stuff is really just overpriced versions of the generic grocery store brands.
In general, I usually try to buy the more budget options for products, because while there is frequently a difference, it's usually not a big enough difference to justify the price gap. And a number of times I've been extremely disappointed by the name brand products anyway (I'm looking at you Hefty, with your crappy trash bags ripping all the time... or maybe I just got a bad box...).
Things that are just basic chemistry I won't pay a premium for. Saline solution is saline solution. So is bleach, ibuprofen, disposable batteries, etc. Also, sometimes the "premium" store brands are better than the low end name brands, and cheaper. Example would be Target brand paper towels.
Another thing to consider is buying high quality name brand stuff used. Clothes, books, electronics, cars, etc.
So for food, usually buying the absolutely cheapest isn't worth the savings, but buying the very top of the line is only marginally better than the stuff that's half the price, but still very good. Same with electronics, cars, clothes... shit, you can apply it to most everything.
Sure, you can buy clothes at Wal-Mart, but the same clothes from Gap will probably fit better and last longer because they're put together better. Do you need to buy your jeans from the boutique? Nah, not worth it, but spending at least a little more almost always is.
I'm in an MBA program so I like to use the term "diminishing returns," but my wife uses a similar idea when we're buying something that we haven't researched before -- say, duct tape. She looks at what the cheapest option is, and then goes one step up. Usually it's worth it to go a step up.
On the flipside, sometimes it's worthwhile to test the absolute cheapest product to see how it works. Like AtomBomb says, basic chemistry you might as well buy the cheap stuff.
But it's also OK to spend a bit more for something simply because you like it. I spend more on paper towels because I get the select a size (since I almost always use the smaller size) and the better durability when wet. I buy Charmin toilet paper, but I get the "basic" that's kind of the opposite approach -- a premium product that's discounted to be basic.
This isn't really all that true, the guidelines for making a generic are pretty different and the amount of actual medicine can be much lower while still getting to call itself a replacement. When it comes to pain relief especially, companies like Watson get away with making total shit that doesn't work nearly as well as the other generics.
Google it for an interesting read.
They all come from a chicken butt. The difference is what the farmer fed it.
No, he's right. Birds only have one hole.
Ah...there are many whole wheat breads at walmart that certainly are whole wheat, and do not have HFCS in them, and don't cost even close to 6 dollars. Maybe you like paying a feel good tax?
Some stuff I have found to be worth it: A decent set of knives. A siphon starter for your brewing kit. Trash bags. Soda. Clam chowder. Toilet paper.
Some stuff that's not worth it: Soap. Tomato soup. Napkins. milk. Eggs.
Some stuff where cheap or non-branded is actually usually better: Meat. Getting fresh steaks and stuff from the butcher, even the butcher at a chain grocery, is almost always better than buying pre-packaged.
Pizza: The wal-mart take and bake pizza is actually very good, better then most national brand frozen pizzas.
I host a podcast about movies.
Not always true.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Wow, that's a hell of a lot more informative than the Watson vs Others narcotic stuff I've read. To be fair, some things that are generic can be identical, simply because the exclusive patent on the original has run out and everyone can make it identically... mostly not. There's also a huge difference between generics of the same drug. Good link, will read it all now.
A free range egg in the US is simply one with access to some sort of outdoor area. Which can be a tiny pen shared by hundreds of other chickens. So basically, if it's a nationally distributed brand of eggs, it doesn't really matter.
I host a podcast about movies.
Same thing with "organic." There's no legal definition of the term, so companies can pretty much slap the label on whatever the hell they feel like (and many have, like most of Wal-Mart's "organic" house brands) and charge more than its non-organic counterpart. So if you're going organic for ethical/political reasons, you'd better do some research and make sure the organic product really is.
I'm pretty sure this is actually not true. There are regulations for claiming you're selling organic products. This page has some information about it (specifically this document -- http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELDEV3004323&acct=nopgeninfo -- (PDF) showing requirements for different types of labels)
After working in a pharmacy most of that read reminded me of every patient who "totally had an allergy to the bonding chemical used in this generic vs that generic".
99.9% of those people had no significant issue with their generic aside from the fact that they were paranoid and delusional and thought that the pharmacy industry was trying to screw them over. ESPECIALLY people with drugs like Adderall.
Yes, the FDA "regulates" what is considered organic, but it's ridiculously loose. Note that the PDF you linked rates products as 'organic' based on if they are made from 'organically produced ingredients'. An ingredient is 'organically produced' if it was grown without pesticides or artificial fertilizers. You can still call a product organic if it contains all sorts of chemicals and unhealthy things (HFCS, partially hydrogenated oils, etc) as long as the plants used to create the chemicals were grown organically.