I grew up with $20 walmart blenders, and hated anything that required a blender.
Recently bought a ninja and there is no going back. I’ll never use a crappy blender again.
Anything else like that?
GPU’s, usually the budget ones have worse performance per dollar ratios
I am going to replace my 980ti this year. Most expensive GPU I ever bought, but I have been using it for almost 8 years. I am not optimistic about my next one lasting that long. Waiting for the Supers to release so I can get some benchmarks and see what prices do.
I bet a lot of users will get 8 years out of a 3080 if they bought it at launch. 4080 value went uh, a bit downhill
Take a look at the rx cards as well
I am actually hoping the 4080s causes a $200 price drop on the 7900XTX. I think the 24 GB of memory makes it the best long-term prospect.
Luggage.
You don’t want to be repacking your shit while late a for a flight because you’re a kg over the limit and it’s gonna cost an extra $100 if you don’t and mistakenly rip the zipper off your carry-on. You really, really don’t.
You don’t have to completely break the bank either, but if you value your sanity, I wouldn’t spend too much less than $200 on a carry-on/check-in pair.
Most liquors, but gin and tequila in particular.
You don’t call out whiskey in particular but I find there’s definitely diminishing returns above even €50.
Kitchen knives, definitely. A good knife is a fucking godsend.
Quality underwear (once you’re an adult).
A good office chair (not necessarily one of those expensive as fuck mesh ones - I hate those… But something quality).
Also, I’d distinguish between pointlessly expensive and quality.
So, I should buy my kids cheapo underwear?
Absolutely, growing humans will almost never wear through clothing.
They’re just going to grow out of them.
Your kids should absolutely suffer the indignity of uncomfortable and itchy underwear.
It’s definitely that important. /s
I bought a nice sharp knife for my Mom because hers were dull. She has a utensil drawer she throws all the knives on.
From the drawer, into cutting the cardboard box, then the veggies, and straight into the dishwasher. And people wonder why their knives go dull so quickly.
Tbf, I keep my crappy box-cutting, hole pokinng Ikea knives in the kitchen drawer too. But if you do that to my good knives, I will stab you (with the Ikea ones).
Idiots buy expensive gaming chairs. They feel like you’re sitting on plywood. I don’t care how many colors it has im going to be sitting on it for hours a day.
Put that into a good office chair, where they put research into making sure you’re comfortable for that entire time
Allow me to sell you on my gaming chair that cured my back pain. I got a secret labs chair in 2020 because it was the only chair under a grand that could arrive in less than 3 days. It replaced a Herman Miller I used at work.
The Herman Miller can only be sat in one way. It’s very light so climbing around it is just going to tip. You pretty much have to use it in the hr approved ergonomic position. Doing that for 8 hours a day just hurts. My gaming chair however is heavy enough that I can press my legs against the wall, or kneel on it without wobbling, or crosslegged. I can also sit with my neck on one handiest and my feet across another. Sometimes I lie with my legs at the head resting my head at the seat cushion.
The best sitting position is the one you don’t stay in long, my gaming chair lets me do that and my back just stopped hurting. When the chair starts to age out I do plan on looking at ergo chairs as well, there seems to be a market for “weird chairs” that enable uncinventionak sitting but they seem to go a little too far as well, I do want to sit normally as well sometimes too. Gaming chairs really seem to hit my requirements of heavy, tall, wide and large armrests.
When I started working at home due to COVID, I decided to buy a new chair. I was tired of having shitty chairs with “genuine leather” (aka leather spray paint) that would peel off over time. So I looked into chairs and landed on a nice gaming chair. Sure, it’s ugly, but it’s gotta be comfy right? Nope. Sitting in this thing for hours at a time has quite literally translated into a pain in my ass. I had to eventually get a seat cushion to sit on, because it was killing me otherwise.
In hindsight, I should have just gone with a traditional office chair.
You can get open box, unused steelcase chairs on eBay for cheaper than “gaming” chairs, BTW. There’s no reason to buy those abominations.
And, let me tell you, those chairs are worth it. I paid about $1200 for my Leap (I needed an extra tank one for a drafting table desk) and have had it 15 years now. 8-10 hours a day my job is to ensure that my chair does not float away using only my 200lb body mass. Not only is it still in good shape* I never have a sore back even after a long day of ballasting. Prior to owning the Leap I’d go through a $100 office store chair in a couple of years.
*the seat cushion was a little worn at the edges and the cushion not quite as supple so I replaced that this year.
I paid $230 for an open box Think v1 like five years ago, still use it everyday. I tried to upgrade to a v2, but the wife ended up with it instead.
I bought a boring looking office chair from an ergonomic furniture store about 10 years ago. I spent about $600 and it’s still just as good as it was when I bought it.
That’s a sharp contrast from the shitty $150 chairs I would keep buying from Costco and having to replace because the foam or seat started to collapse after a couple years.
A good office chair (not necessarily one of those expensive as fuck mesh ones - I hate those… But something quality).
Man, I get they’re not for everyone, but after having a mesh chair, I will never go back. Currently on my second one in about 8 years, so it’s not exactly BIFL material but the first one lasted longer than a ‘normal’ chair ever did, and neither were particularly expensive, as quality chairs go (I paid ~$150 for the first and ~$225 for the second, got both during sales, so I’m not sure what the regular price would have been but I’d guess $300 or so).
It’s absolutely a choice of personal preference - I just wanted to be clear that the super trendy silicon-valley office chair company from a few years back isn’t necessarily best for everyone.
Mesh chairs can be extremely comfortable if you run hot.
Agree with the underwear, I’m still wearing pairs daily that I bought from 2015. Around $15 a pair.
Toilet paper. Once you rip through cheap one, you’d pay anything to buy better one in the first plce.
Cheap one ply toilet paper will make you question whether there really is a god or not. I’d sooner wipe my backside with a corn cob.
Cheap one play recycled plywood was exactly the thing my high school used to supply. It was real pain to shit in school. Literally.
My high school was worse - they had TP holders designed to only allow you to take like two sheets at a time, and they had absolutely awful 1 ply paper. It’s been over 15 years and I still remember that bullshit. I’d rather be in class, but instead I’m stuck here wiping my ass.
Actual plywood might have worked better (!). I hate one-ply and I have a whole shitload of it because I bought it on sale without realizing it was one ply. Only good thing I can say about it is, ---- OK there’s nothing good I can say about it.
One better: A bidet, leave the toilet paper behind and stop rubbing your butt raw with paper.
This is the way. This way you use way less TP and get the good stuff.
Butt how will I know that my butt is clean if I can’t make the paper look like the flag of Japan? 🤔
You still wipe, just once or twice instead of 14 or 15 times.
If your TP looks like the flag of Japan after wiping your ass, you should go see a doctor.
Wooosh
I just bought a $16 personal blender from Walmart and I love it so far. I juice fruit and smoothies.
Boots.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
A cute little passage from Terry Pratchett, but it holds very true if you ever need boots.
Paying for quality boot work, especially the kind that can be re-soled, is worth it for anyone who has to wear boots with any regularity.
When I first got a job that needed boots I was using an old secondhand pair. It was hell. Eventually I saved up for a quality pair and was totally worth it. I’ve not underspent on boots since.
As for suggestions as to what brand to go with these days for that… I’m less sure on that because I’m researching new brands myself since Red Wings are a joke compared to what they used to be. Danner still seems pretty all right these days.
Georgia boots are the shit…
I second boots. I went through 3 cheap pairs of hiking boots (between £40 - £70) all promising the world and dry feet. In the end, sacked it off and bought all leather boots with a vibram sole. Requires maintenance of waxing them but they’ve had many miles in them now and just as good as day 1.
Yes, second to boots is getting quality boot wax.
You don’t truly appreciate a good pair a boots till you park a 2 ton pallet jack on your toes and laugh it off.
Safety boots with steelcap? That’s another category though. Don’t want to use them for a walk.
That hasn’t stopped me. Just think of it as training weights.
A refrigerator with a good ice maker is worth the extra expense. Our ice maker just gave out, and I’d forgotten how much a pain in the butt it is to make ice in plastic trays.
Not necessarily expensive nowadays, but I agree. Just bought a new fridge because our old one gave up. Icemaker is a must. I fucking love icewater. It broke once a year ago, until I fixed it, it was awful. Never going to not have fresh ice now, so of course our new one has that. Now it’s on its last legs, and the icemachine doesnot work anymore :(. The new one also has a larger inside volume due to better insulation!
For the few things that I do want chilled, I prefer reusable cubes - they don’t melt and make my drink all watery.
Made the leap to an undercounter ice maker when we renovated, since the fridge ones keep breaking, and it has been the best decision, despite the initial ridiculous cost.
I go through sooooo much ice and ice water every day now. It makes me so happy every time I open the door and see the heap of perfect clear cubes waiting to be scooped into my cup.
I’d take issue with the “only,” but setting that aside: musical instruments. Guitars, for example. You can find perfectly serviceable guitars for cheap and they’ll be playable with a decent setup, and you can obviously find deals. But in general, if you try your $100-$200 Fender acoustic guitar or mandolin and then go to a guitar shop and try out a high-end Martin, for example, there’s a world of difference.
I’m saying this mainly from bass perspective. But generally you have to get lucky in the cheap department to get decently good instrument. When you shift to like $500 range it gets better and for “normal use” $1000 is good enough (normal = not professional, just hobby player). Most things above $1500 are usually just waste of money to show off.
(All calculations including pre-owned prices.)
Another approach for electrics is to take a cheap body and swap out the electronics with something from a much nicer instrument, in addition to a proper setup. Far cheaper route and you’ll end up with a $100-$200 guitar that sounds and feels like a $1,000+ guitar.
I got a super cheap electric guitar kit that I’m going to build (someday). Is there a good source for electric guitar electronics (pickups, etc.)? Or would you just recommend buying cheap used guitars and “stealing” the electronics?
I’m thinking that my electronics are super low quality so I’d like to upgrade.
Aside from ebay, Reverb will have a lot of pickup options, both new and used. For example, I bought a set of bass pickups out of an $850 Fender bass to put in my ~$100 Squier bass. I think I paid like $50-$80 for the pickups by themselves.
That used to be really true when I was a kid in the 79’s, but not so much today. Back then, a quality guitar cost way more than the cheap stuff and the cheap stuff was rubbish.
Nowadays, with CNC machines everywhere, there are lots of modestly priced guitars that are very playable. The junk that we used to have to settle with back in the day only exists in the realm of “toy” instruments that almost aren’t intended to be played.
Seriously, $300 can get you a very playable instrument, especially in electric guitars.
Power supplies and motherboards for PCs
generally if either of them go the rest of your investment goes with it. Worst case scenario the power supply damages the motherboard meaning your cheap purchase made you lose more parts.
The current motherboard situation is a total clown fiesta though. There is no such thing as a cheap motherboard any more.
And you will have to upgrade them whenever you upgrade your CPU these days.
Almost like socket types aren’t a thing anymore…
Yup, power supplies and batteries are also usually the first components to die. All the more reason to avoid cheap ones.
What you said + nicer motherboards often come with bios flashback which should (IMO) be a mandatory feature for motherboards on platforms like AM4. Makes CPU compatibility much better since a supported bios version can be flashed anytime, no matter what CPU is currently installed (if a CPU is installed at all!).
A mattress, sheets, and at least one pillow. It can be expensive, but the first time you lay down in a bed that’s actually comfortable, you’ll know it was worth it.
Escorts
It’s pronounced E-sports
It’s pronounced escrow
It’s pronounced ex-spouse . . . Wait, what was the question again?
It’s almost always better to not buy a cheap sex toy. There’s no regulation of the industry and many materials in cheaper toys are just straight up dangerous. Here’s an article (it’s NSFW, there are pictures) that goes over what materials are and aren’t safe.
Like thinking you’re wearing a 100% silicon butt plus to an MRI….
For the unaware: A patient wore a buttplug into an MRI, because it was marketed as 100% silicone. It had a metal core. It was rocketed up into their abdomen. The patient survived with serious injuries.
Silicon is a crystal. You’re thinking of silicone.
Interior wall paints (and rollers/brushes). I recently remodeled my house.and decided to buy the really good stuff instead of just the well known brands from the DIY store. Man, what a difference that makes. Painting is sooo much easier and it dries much nicer.
With the expensive paints, single-layer is actually true, so it really isn’t all that much more expensive.
I’ve been happy with Home Despot’s Behr paint. What brand(s) do you like?
Kelly-Moore!
Windshield wipers (that don’t go SQUEEAK SQUEEAK & actually let you see out the window).
I always buy shitty ones. They last just as long as the expensive ones, and when you wipe them off when installing, they work just as well too.
Ymmv if you live somewhere with actual temperature changes though.
