Asklemmy

Tools and sports equipment especially if it's something niche.

People shit on harbor freight but if you need a new tool or something for a hobby it's probably not something you're going to use often if youve already soent any significant tiem doing that hobby.

Buy the cheapest version of it and of you use it enough to either break it or figure out what parts of the design you don't like it's a good sign spending a little extra on a better version isn't a waste.

Especially getting into a new hobby avoiding the urge to buy expensive shit right at the beginning because you think it'll make you better at the thing.

I often see people say to buy the expensive toilet roll but I always go for the low end of the midrange rolls. I don't need 4ply, scented, quilted shit, I just need two pieces of paper stuck together.

There is a balance, you don't want to get the 1ply stuff you'd find in a stingy office. But just look at the label and price-per-sheet

(If you can afford it, buy a year's supply in bulk from the company)

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.

Most stuff on a bicycle for the average person unless it's carbon, plastics or electronics. Including safety stuff. Some caveat if you wanna huck yourself off a mountain or do like 100kph descents on your roadbikes.

But for the most stuff? The cheap shit works absolutely fine because at it's core it's bits of formed metal with threads attached connected by steel wires. Very hard to fuck any of that up to the point it becomes dangerous. I keep seeing parts being rated as SAFETY LEVEL 5 E-BIKE READY as if the metal rod that is my handlebar usually disintegrates once I hit the ludicrous speed of [checks notes] 25kph. Your $2 Alibaba Special V-Brakes are, at worst, gonna have garbage springs so it doesn't return to not-braking great, but you're not gonna like snap them in half even if you were a gorilla riding a bicycle.

wrapping paper

Headphones/ear buds. It really comes down to your use case. If you listen to podcasts and audiobooks 90% of the time then you only need good enough which is typically around $40.

I don’t think this is much of an issue for anyone here but… expensive wrist watches. I am a reformed watch guy. My $11 Casio F-91W keeps better time than my FIL’s $6,000 Omega. Quartz and batteries were a real game changer when it comes to watches. I really like having a watch but there is no reason for anyone to spend real money on a watch that doesn’t use quartz.

If you want/need a watch, to me the sweet spot are those Casio G-Shock squares. Totally bullet proof, can last a lifetime, and you can spend as little as $35 or up to about $150 if you want solar and atomic time. But spending any more than that and you’re really just buying jewelry, not something to keep time.

Cosmetics. Maybe not women cosmetics, but the expensive moisture cremes and so on only add stuff you don't want on your skin. Btw, "natural" marigold cremes are really bad there.

I buy good brands from China for my professional tools, phones, laptops, and gadgets. The key is knowing which brands in China are good. Nothing else can compete in terms of value for money.

Motorbikes (for commuting). My midrange motorbike cost under 2k USD brand new, and it gets me to work at the same speed as an expensive one (Asian traffic, haha).