Good tools are worth it, bad, lousy tools are not. They only add frustration to the work. On the other hand, luxury tools are not worth it either, since the added price does not add any further value. There is an old proverb “It’s a poor craftsman that blames his tools”. True enough. But some tools are simply not up to their intended use. The craftsman seeks the highest quality possible without any luxury detracting from getting the job done. This enables him to do his job promptly, straight to the point and without delay and without any frustration due to inadequate tools.

How do you find good quality tools, then?

This is unfortunately not an exact science. Every product, every tool, comes in a number of price categories and ranges going from budget to enterprise editions. In most of the cases the budget ones will not provide the necessary quality for the job. Sure, there might sometimes be an excellent but totally under-priced product, but how would you know with all the other crappy ones in the lowest price segment? On the other end of the spectrum are the luxury editions, most of the times they have gadgets and doohickies included, are made out of unnecessarily expensive material or other distracting elements to get your work done. Frequently also, after a certain price point, price does not guarantee better quality.

After a certain price point, price does not guarantee better quality.

Now that you have narrowed down the price point to the middle third, what will you do? Obviously, you still don’t know what to expect from these products qualitywise. If you are inexperienced at the job you want to do with a tool, my personal experience has shown, that choosing a lower price tool often leads to better results. Since you are inexperienced you don’t exactly know how to use the tool and what you exactly need it for. Thus spending less on the tool seems reasonable. Anyway, most physical things break eventually, lower quality ones rather sooner than later. Thus you will have opportunities with the cheaper tool to gain some experience how it works and more importantly how you will use it to perform the work. Hence, the first tool is always a learning experience. Soon you will discover things that you don’t like, that outright suck, but also things which you like. That’s good, since it sharpens your senses as to how you want to use the tool. Once the tool is broken or you move up professionally your gained experience will come in handy when it is time to purchase another tool. You know now what to expect, what you need and what you disliked. Looking for a new tool will most certainly bring you to a selection of brands in the higher middle price range. Your next buy will be no doubt an even more successful one.

Choosing a lower price tool often leads to better results.

Many people rush to buy either the cheapest or the most expensive tools depending on their price orientations. The people buying the cheapest ones will be disappointed by the quality and tend to generalize that all of those particular tools are bad, often they will even abandon the use of the tool altogether.

The people buying the most expensive ones usually buy it to show the tool off, without ever seriously and professionally using its intended functions. (These are, of course, broad generalizations, I’m very aware of that, but they serve well to illustrate my point).

So, don’t be one of them. Get a genuine learning experience with a cheaper tool until you know how to use it and what you are actually using it for as well as where its strengths and weaknesses lie. With your newly gained knowledge and expertise buy another one which fits you and your working style even better. An excellent way to keep the first investment even lower is to look for a second hand alternative.

Buying any new product, one which you don’t have any good idea how to use it or how it works, always entails a certain amount of uneasiness. Which one should you buy? Can you trust reviews? If you start with a lower cost alternative and you find out that you need it a lot, it will break sooner or later and then you can buy a better one. If you don’t use it much or at all, at least you haven’t spent too much money on it.

What about other people’s opinions? What about reviews? Don’t trust them too much. Not because they lie (although sometimes they do and sometimes reviews are sponsored), but because you don’t know their experience level, and the particular ways they use the tool. What can you learn about stress tests in reviews for a function which you will never use? Unless they test the tools exactly in the way you will use them the review will be pretty useless.

Why not buy a more expensive tool the first time around? Of course you could do that. But in my experience the way you think about how you will use something and how you will actually use it, if at at all, differs quite significantly. Generally you will use few tools for longer times. Most of them – you will quickly find out – will not perform the way you imagined. And then you usually just abandon the use of it altogether and look for something new. Hence, in order to minimize you financial expenditures on tools you will not need down the road – do yourself a favour and buy a cheaper one in the middle third as a first buy.