In my shop, the only thing I regret buying the super-cheap model of is a bandsaw. It's just so crappy as to not even be particularly useful for doing bandsaw-type work. But I have so many other cheap tools going strong, the strategy is definitely paying off in aggregate.
Low torque? Curious what makes a crappy bandsaw crappy.
And yup! That was the math: (cost of cheap things) * (total number of things) - (cost to rebuy) * (% of things you end up rebuying) << (cost of mid-range things) * (total number of things)
