After all, how different can one cleaning cloth be from another? To get a better sense of what you can expect from these everyday necessities, we took a closer look at a handful of AmazonBasics products that we hadn’t previously tested, to see how they performed relative to other popular brands in their categories: pencils, microfiber cleaning cloths, disposable utensils and dog-waste bags. But the cheaper stuff can look enticing, especially with those great user-review averages backing them up. However, spending just a bit more gets you something a lot more capable. For example, its Bluetooth speakers’ most distinguishing characteristic is their low price, which made the BTV2 good enough to contend for a budget pick in our Bluetooth speaker review. However, based on our past testing experiences, we wouldn’t commit to anything AmazonBasics sells that costs much more than $20 without doing some research first. The result is a house brand with an exceptionally random selection of offerings that also appears to be exceptionally well-regarded by users.ĪmazonBasics probably makes a bad product from time to time, but it’s good at detecting and removing them before you learn about them. In other words, AmazonBasics probably makes a bad product from time to time, but it’s good at detecting and removing them before you learn about them. Skubana’s research suggests that underperforming products (anything approaching three stars or lower) are discontinued as soon as they start struggling so they don’t drag down the average. “Amazon has a very stringent and dedicated practice toward quality control and they do benchmarking,” notes Rubin. Only a very small handful have fewer than four-star averages, and none have fewer than 3.5 stars. Judging by the number of positive reviews AmazonBasics items have gotten-a large number have several thousand user reviews, each with four-plus star averages-AmazonBasics is doing quite well. (We asked Amazon to comment on Skubana’s analysis, but the company didn’t reply to us.) Chad Rubin, Skubana’s CEO, explained in an interview that it’s an open secret that Amazon targets things-regardless of category-marketed by other brands that are selling exceptionally well on the site, and creates its own, often nearly identical versions, launching them as new AmazonBasics products. What unites all these things has less to do with what AmazonBasics sells, than with how Amazon decides to sell it. But others, especially many of the newer items, don’t feel like “basics” at all: yoga mats, bocce ball sets, a “ natural stone fire pit with copper accents.” Many are indeed “basics,” the type of commoditized, undifferentiated, everyday items you don’t “buy for life,” and that you don’t want to waste much time researching or shopping for: cables, screen protectors, dog-waste bags. But it’s hard to discern what, exactly, all of them have in common. But the company is releasing new things in new categories at a faster pace than we can keep track of them.Īccording to data analyzed by e-commerce software company Skubana, there are currently more than 800 AmazonBasics-branded items for sale on the site, with over 20 new ones launched each month. But they don’t always fare so well in our testing (Amazon’s rechargeable AA batteries were the worst performers by a wide margin). We test AmazonBasics offerings whenever they’re relevant and even recommend its stuff as a top pick or alternate in our guides to paper shredders, HDMI cables, school backpacks, and 12 other reviews (as of this writing). So should you respond to the company’s repeated nudges to also consider the option from AmazonBasics? Since launching in 2009, AmazonBasics products now regularly top the best-seller lists in many categories, such as lightning cables, laptop sleeves, and hangers. If you shop on Amazon, it’s hard to ignore AmazonBasics.
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