Does Paying More Get You a Better Product?

Update, 12 October 2026. Four shortlists were added, for phones, game consoles, security cameras and gaming laptops, bringing 14 products with a price read on the makers’ own stores that day. One product left: Roborock’s US store no longer lists the Roborock Q7 M5, so the $299.99 we quoted for it is gone and it drops out of this set; its 7.7 average is unchanged. The set is now 41 products from fifteen shortlists rather than 28 from eleven. The correlation is −0.13 rather than −0.19, and the slope −0.16 points per tenfold price rise rather than −0.33: about a sixth of a point, where we said a third. The cheapest product is now the $44.98 Wyze Cam v4 and the dearest the $4,899.99 Razer Blade 16, both at 8.5, so prices span 108.9-fold rather than 45.5 and the cheapest and dearest still score the same. The score range, 7.0 to 9.7, did not move. The relationship is still weak and still points the wrong way, but it is weaker than on 8 October and now accounts for under 2% of the variation in score rather than under 4%. The robot vacuum section no longer prices the Q7 M5, and its line that Roborock’s dearer machines score higher, which rested on that price, now says only that the budget-tier machine scores lowest. The limits now count the products with no current price, 30 of 71, in place of “four of our top picks”.

Update, 8 October 2026. The portable speaker shortlist was re-read: two scores we had wrong were corrected, moving the JBL Flip 7 from 9.3 to 9.7 and the Sonos Roam 2 from 7.3 to 7.7, and two speakers were added, the $54.95 JBL Go 5 and the $399.95 JBL Xtreme 5, both at 9.7. The set is now 28 products rather than 26. The correlation is −0.19 rather than −0.07, and the slope −0.33 points per tenfold price rise rather than −0.14: about a third of a point, where we said a seventh. The cheapest product is now the Go 5, so prices span 45.5-fold rather than 25, and the cheapest and the dearest score the same again. We had called the relationship essentially none; at −0.19 it is weak rather than absent, still pointing the wrong way, and the text below now says so. That one shortlist’s refresh nearly tripled the figure is itself a measure of how far a sample this size can be trusted.

Update, 4 October 2026. Every price was re-read on the sellers’ own stores, and the set changed. Five products dropped out because they no longer have a current price we can cite: the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and the OnePlus Pad Go 2 are no longer sold by their makers in the US, the 2024 Kindle Colorsoft is unavailable, Hisense does not sell the U8N direct, and the Qrevo Curv’s $849.99 was a sale price on a robot Roborock now shows sold out. Several others rose, the cheapest of them the Sony WF-C710N, from $89.99 to $129.99. Recomputed across the 26 that remain, the correlation is −0.07 rather than −0.08, and the slope is unchanged at −0.14. The finding stands. One line did not: the cheapest product in the set is now the $99.99 Amazfit Active 2, at 8.7, so it is no longer true that the cheapest and the dearest score the same; a $129.99 pair of earbuds and the $2,499.99 television do.

Update, 21 September 2026. The robot vacuum and TV shortlists were re-read on 21 September, and five of the averages this page uses moved: the Roborock Saros 20 from 9.0 to 8.5, the Roborock Qrevo Curv from 8.7 to 8.6, the Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai from 7.3 to 7.0, the Samsung S90F from 9.3 to 9.7 and the Hisense U8N from 8.0 to 8.8. Recomputed, the correlation is −0.08 rather than −0.10 and the slope −0.14 rather than −0.18; a price re-sourced on 5 September had already moved those to −0.09 and −0.16 without this page being updated. Two conclusions changed. The cheapest and dearest products now score the same, where the dearer one used to score lower. And robot vacuums are no longer a clean counterexample: the budget-to-flagship gap there shrank from 1.3 points to 0.8, and the $1,599.99 Saros 20 now averages below the $849.99 Qrevo Curv. We also said the 31 products spanned twelve categories; they come from eleven shortlists.

Among things already worth buying, paying more does not get you a better-reviewed one. We hold 41 products with both a current price and three published outlet scores. The correlation between what they cost and what they scored is −0.13: a weak relationship, and it points the wrong way.

The fitted line puts it in money: ten times the price is associated with about a sixth of a point lower. The cheapest product in the set, the $44.98 Wyze Cam v4 (affiliate link to Amazon, opens in a new tab), averages 8.5. The most expensive, the $4,899.99 Razer Blade 16 (affiliate link to Amazon, opens in a new tab), averages 8.5 too: about 109 times the price, the same score. At the top of the range the pattern repeats: the $54.95 JBL Go 5, the $129.99 Sony WF-C710N earbuds and the $2,499.99 Samsung S90F OLED all average 9.7.

Read the limitation first, because it is doing real work

This page describes a sample of products that already passed a filter. Every one of them reached a bitcritiq shortlist, which requires three named outlets to have published a numeric score for the same model. Not one of the 41 averages below seven out of ten.

Within a band that narrow, no variable predicts much, and price is no exception. So this is not evidence that price and quality are unrelated in general. A sample containing genuinely poor products would almost certainly show a relationship, because very cheap tech is often very bad tech and the reviews say so.

What the sample does describe is the situation an actual buyer is in: standing in front of several options that are all defensible, deciding how much to spend. In that situation, and on this evidence, the extra money is not buying a better verdict from the people who tested both.

The numbers, and what they are made of

Products with a price and three scores	41
Shortlists they come from	15
Price range	$44.98 to $4,899.99, a factor of 108.9
Score range	7.0 to 9.7, a span of 2.7 points
Correlation, price against score	−0.13
Slope	−0.16 points per tenfold price rise

A correlation of −0.13 is weak: on its own it accounts for under 2% of the variation in score. It went from −0.07 to −0.19 when one shortlist was re-read, then to −0.13 when four were added, so read it as a direction in this sample rather than a measured constant.

The price axis on the chart is logarithmic on purpose. On a linear axis the 24 products under $500 collapse into a smear against the $4,899.99 laptop at the far end, and more than half the data becomes unreadable.

Where the money does show up

Two places, and neither of them is the score.

Robot vacuums are the nearest thing to a counterexample, and a partial one. The $1,599.99 Roborock Saros 20 averages 8.5; the budget-tier Roborock Q7 M5 (affiliate link to Amazon, opens in a new tab) averages 7.7. That 0.8-point gap is the widest budget-to-flagship gap we hold, two and a half times the next, and all three outlets that scored the Q7 M5 mark down its mopping. Roborock’s US store no longer lists the Q7 M5, so it is not one of the 41 priced products; the gap compares tiers and scores, not current prices. And price does not sort the rest of that list: the Qrevo Curv, on sale at $849.99 until Roborock sold out, averages 8.6, above the Saros 20, and the $1,199.99 Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai averages 7.0, below the budget machine. Within Roborock’s range the budget-tier machine scores lowest; across brands, on this shortlist, price does not predict the score.

And an averaged score flattens what you actually pay for. When the $149.95 Flip 7 (affiliate link to Amazon, opens in a new tab) draws level with the $399.95 Xtreme 5 (affiliate link to Amazon, opens in a new tab), that is not a claim they are the same speaker; JBL rates the dearer one at ten more hours of battery. When the cheap earbuds tie the expensive ones, the reviewers were scoring each against what it costs, which our earbud shortlist works through at length. Everything the extra money buys still exists. It has simply stopped showing up in the number most buying guides lead with.

What to actually do with this

• Set the budget first, then read the scores inside it. Choosing the price bracket is the decision that matters; within one, the scores will not sort themselves by cost.
• Ask what the premium buys that a score cannot show. Battery, expandability, a longer support window, a system you can add to. Those are real and they are invisible here.
• In a young category, compare what each machine is marked down for. Among robot vacuums the budget pick trails both Roborocks above it, on mopping, but the second-dearest machine on the list averages lowest of all.
• Check the list price before the percentage. Our audit of every superseded pick found that four of six successors cost more than the model they replace, and none cost less.