I had this exact stance until I won a pair of $200 running shoes in a raffle. My occasional backpains and joint problems disappeared almost immediately. I started buying the best footwear I could afford and my quality of life went measurable up after that decision.
The BIGGEST changes were going to a reputable podiatrist and getting shoe recommendations based off of my arch shape, weight and gait. They put me on a treadmill with highspead cameras at the sides and rear to record how my stride landed both walking and running. That and custom molded insoles.
Now Shoes are a part of our yearly budget to make sure we have good condition, supportive shoes at all times. Also re-soleing if applicable.
Changed my tires for the first time last year. Bought the cheapest tires acailable to me and now my car feel a bit wobbly. I'm definitely buying better tires next time.
Stop recommending bidets to me, I'm already convinced. It's just that from the three toilets I've owned in my life, all of them were for one reason or another incapable of being retrofitting with one. I envy your guy's clean assholes
I find Charmin tends to shred too easily, even the ‘strong’ kind. Angel Soft is at the right level between firm and soft for me. Might be less of a problem if I had less ass hair.
It's not, its actually wonderful. It's one of the few brands that doesn't shed bits off, and whatever chemicals/softeners they use doesn't irritate my skin like other big-name brands.
Rechargeables are definitely a good upgrade for most applications where people use alkalines. They have better performance under high load, are much less likely to leak corrosive electrolyte, and you can use them again after you drain them. I'm a little surprised they aren't more popular.
The Panasonic Eneloop is the gold standard for rechargeables, particularly the white ones which are more shelf-stable and have a longer service life than the higher-capacity black Eneloop Pro. Made-in-Japan Ikea rechargeables are suspected of being rebranded Eneloop Pros, but I don't think that's been conclusively proven.
A few years back a guy did agood dive into this on (other website name redacted). He said for things like digital camersand other high draw items, Duracell is still the champ - however, $/hour of use, some cgeaper bands came out ahead. I still have half a giant pack of AC Delco AA / AAAs that have been quite solid.
I've heard certain generic brands are actually just repackaged Duracells
Might depend where you live, I live in Nothern Europe and the cheap generic brand batteries from a popular electronics store chain, rechargeable, are quite shit when I compare them to my 5+ year old Eneloops. Haven't tried IKEA ones though.
Definitely! For electronics, Eneloop batteries are worth every penny. I think I have ~10 AA and AAA, and I haven't bought disposable batteries in years. I try to make sure I have 4 of each available at all times so I don't have to wait for them to recharge. I've tried cheaper (Amazon) batteries, and they fail much more quickly, and sometimes swell to the point where I have a hard time removing them.
Some people say IKEA's batteries are just rebranded Eneloops, but I haven't had a chance to try them
I know the divide is not quite what it was with stick drift affecting almost all of the 1st party offerings, but there's just something that feels so cheap about using any generic controller, even ones that are marketed as higher end.
Have they changed the joystick material yet? The joysticks off my ol' 8bitdo pro (the original) kept shedding with use, so I stopped using it in lieu of the switch and steamdeck controllers. Gods, the controller was way more comfortable and sized just right than any other 3rd party controller for me. My google fu is weak, so I never found fitting thumbpad covers for it.
Running shoes. Antipronation shoes are fucking expensive, but having bad support will eventually hurt my feet, ankles or knees. I would get hurt very fast if I started running in cheap sneakers or something.
My rule has always been "don't skimp on the things that separate you from the ground." Shoes, tires, chairs, beds, etc, get the best you can afford to and don't pinch pennies.
We ran trials in my middle school home economics class on various popular dish soap brands, and at the time (23 years ago) Palmolive absolutely blasted the shit out of every other brand, Dawn included. So my wife and kid now ride or die with that brand. It's green, too..
Dawn doesn’t seem to dry out my hands like Palmolive or every other dish soap. I think they all work good enough but I hate the way they make my hands feel.
Interesting. I have a huge jug of Palmolive at home because it was the cheapest dish soap. Didn't expect it to also be the best. I'm curious, what did you measure to determine that it was the best one?
At least before the debacle with Underwood Ranch. I unknowingly bought extra before it happened and am close to running out. I'm not sure what to do afterwards but I'm not inclined to support Huy Fong.
There are dozens of vodkas and gins, fake and slightly different whiskeys, rum and so on but I totally agree on buying the brands (not just the top 1 or 2)
Mooncakes for mid-autumn festival. Như Lan bakery or skip. The other brands (even the 'fancy' ones) have too much sugar. In HK there are other good brands too, but in VN Như Lan is the best.
I guess also expensive tools like oscilloscopes (Siglent, Uni-T). It's a big enough investment that I need it to work well, but I'm not rich enough for the fancy brands.
Oh, and motorcycles -- Honda please (yes, we have unbranded motorcycles here, we call them 'ghost bikes'). There's always a repairshop that can fix a Honda within walking distance, but I've never actually needed to go to one. When I had a Yamaha it broke once in a while, and that meant a long walk in tropical heat.
Nothing quite so disgusting, they're the usual sorts of flavors you would expect to find in a cough drop. I taste mostly menthol and a bit of licorice, but they are definitely something that was made to be an effective cough drop first and foremost and tasting good was not a major consideration
They are kind of ugly brown tablets that don't look too dissimilar from maybe a pellet fish food for a koi pond or something. I have a hunch that I haven't tested that you could probably get carp to bite on them if you tried to use them as bait, carp will go for some weird stuff
Tires. Every time I've tried to save money by purchasing some PrimeWell or Sentury or other no-name tire I've worn them out in no time flat or they burst when I hit any bump that stands more than 1cm above the road surface. If they are that weak then they aren't safe.
I work in the rim and tire industry so I find this really interesting. Haven't seen either of those two brands before where I am, but most cheaper brands nowadays are all made at the same two or three locations and just get a different name stamped into the sidewall.
It's been a while but I think primewell is Firestones bargain brand. They're shit but compared to anything wal-mart was selling they were tolerable. I never saw as many broken belts as when I was working there starting out.
My information may also be out of date, it's been years since I was so broke that I had to just buy whatever cheap tires I could afford.
I had a set of "Sentury" tires I put on a Mitsubishi Mirage, and they were worn to the wear bars in 9,000 miles. They were carrying a 1,900 pound/860 kilogram car, and that was heavy enough to wear all four tires down in less than 1/4 the tread warranty period.
Ballpoint pens. Bic, Papermate, and Zebra are pretty much all I would consider buying.
Edit: there are lots of other brands that I forgot to consider. I'm mainly talking about inexpensive plastic tubes, but included Zebra (a metal tube) which I'm a fan of.
Had a generic refill in one of my zebras and holy crap was that crap. I could not reliably get it to write off a cold start. And it was fresh, just constantly getting stuck.
Interesting. I still use the 360 controller on my PC because that thing is a tank. Basically indestructible. But my One controllers are garbage. The plastic was so badly formed I got aftermarket grips because it was constantly pinching my hands. It also feels like I could twist it in to pieces with by hand. The Series X controller fails to live up to the 360 but it feels significantly more solid and the pieces at least fit together.
I do feel I could break my xbox controller easily if I twisted it. It's got some heft but not much. The 360 controller did feel a bit more solid.
The series x controller is also nice. Disturbingly light but I appreciate that it's good for long sessions to have a light controller. It's just the damn button sound. It makes a nasally little twing-click sound each time the button is pressed. Drives me nuts.
What's wrong with the series x controller? I bought one for my pc when my xbox one controller died. I haven't really used it loads yet to be fair, but it seems fine to me. I preferred the +style dpad on xbox one but other than that it feels basically the same to me.
You probably already know all this, but in case it would be helpful to others: Your doctor should also be able to write you a prescription for whatever vitamins you're taking, from what I understand the ones you get from behind the pharmacy counter are actually what they say they are.
I have low vitamin D, and when it was atrociously low (#1 lowest my dr had ever seen! 🥴) I got an actual prescription for it.
YMMV on whether insurance puts up a fight about paying for it, if applicable. If not and you have to stick to OTC I try to get stuff with the USP verified label on it.
Soda, chips, candy, etc. If I'm gonna buy it, I'm buying the good one. I've tried many different off/store brand peanut butter cups, and they're always fucking horrendous.
Surprisingly, frozen pizza is the opposite. The store brand ones are really good (at least the ones I get at Shaw's and Market Basket). Meanwhile, I've payed much more in order to try out the big name brands. They are usually smaller, lower quality, and taste worse than the store brand ones that cost nearly half as much.
Interesting. I switched from brand phones (HTC) to generic no-name phones a while ago. My current one is by Ulefone and I couldn't tell any difference. For 300 bucks I got a phone thats comparable to samsung phones twice the price, since I didn't pay anything for the brand name. Any specific reason why you avoid no-name with technologie?
for dumb tech no-name is fine, we have that stuff figured out to the point where you can kick it around a bit without it breaking. But high-tech is weirdly robust and fragile at the same time. You can cheap out on the circuitry and you'll be fine for a while but eventually the low grade circuits around the chipp will damage it, causing it to lose performance. With bigger price gaps you usually get some reduced performance in a key part on top of it (usually memory or the processor) if it goes even beyond that then we enter the territory of "this device would be selling at a loss if they truly ship what's wrotten in the specs, where tf do they get the money to compensate for that?" (spoier: it's either spyware and selling customer data or lying about specs)
Obviously there are exceptions here, most high-end tech products for example are vastly overpriced to generate as much money as possible from whale customers. But with the mis- to low-high-end stuff you usually fall on your face with some aspect or another after a few years with cheap no-name devices.
Not to mention the very real problem of credibillity: it's very easy for unknown players to just fake reviews of their products, you won't ever know because there are not enough real users of these devices to punch through the fake reviews
Ironically, the next time I am in the market for jeans, I will be specifically avoiding Levis due to their inconsistent sizing. I have owned probably 15 pairs of the same cut in the same size, but some are too big and some are too small. I can never know until they get here (brick and mortar stores never have my size, so I must order online).
I've never had that happen, within the same type. I had some loose-fit Levis 568 which were very different, but the 501s never change. Just switched from 40w to 38w, got exactly the size change I expected.
I usually wear Levi's 511 but they've been going down in quality over the last 10 years. Newer pairs didn't last nearly as long as old pairs. Sizing is inconsistent now too. I'm looking for a better brand in the same style...
Frozen pizza. Most all pizzas are basically just crackers with tomatoe sauce and cheese, but then there is Dr Oetkers Ofenfrische. I find myself eating 14 euro wood-fired takeout pizzas, only to realize that it stinks compared to an Ofenfrische
This is a weird one, but Astepro nasal spray for allergies. The name brand is a little unpleasant to blast up my nose because of the smell/taste. But the off brand stuff is absolutely foul and bitter. I would get random whifs and drips of the nastiness in the back of my throat for an hour.
I'm an absolute whore of a human for Mitsubishi 'Uni' Pens. I don't even like writing, but their Jetstream line are cheap and should be the ubiquitous goto pen. Everytime I have to pick up a bic, I die a little inside.
I have Kirkland boxer briefs and Kirkland undershirts (and love them both), but I don't recall ever seeing Kirkland socks. I always get the Puma brand socks from Costco.
A lot of the time they're completely identical too though. Don't get me wrong, you won't find me buying own brand for plenty of items but certain cereals and various ingredients are literally identical. To the extent that the only thing that changes at the factory is a new package design is loaded into the machinery for the branded version, that's literally it.
i got a bootleg version of vans slip-on (aka vans asher) and in less than a year they've got destroyed already, it looks like the sole is about to come off the shoes themselves
i got a bootleg version of vans slip-on (aka vans asher) and in less than a year they’ve got destroyed already, it looks like the sole is about to come off the shoes themselves
The non-bootlegs do the same thing. Crap quality all around.
Edit: I am FLABERGASTED at how many people disagree, I genuinely thought this was obvious, pls recommend anything you prefer to nutella (and whether it's more or less expensive)
Nutella is the holy one! There's other good stuff and I don't say Nutella is better, it's just in a one-and-only category: if you want Nutella, you buy Nutella, if you want some chocolate cream, you buy what you like best
I've never had Samba or any other brand of chocolate spread, but I agree Nutella tastes like chocolate slime. It's as if they melted (vomit flavored) Hershey bars down into a spread.
In Germany we have Nudossi which has less sugar and a lot more hazelnut. There's a variation without palm oil so this is what Ive been buying instead of nutella.