Oil opinions are like assholes, everyone has one or two or three.
Considering some of the replies, I get the impression that the more you spend on oil, the better your entire life will be. Especially if it's purple.
My father worked during WWII in the petroleum industry, and not just an oil yard grunt, he was top of his class in college and had a degree in chemical engineering and boiler-making. So he was building cracking towers and knew the molecular structures, and how oil was refined and distilled. And his reply was always "Buy oil, change your oil, Any oil is better than not enough, all of the stock sold for lubrication is going to be pretty much the same as the rest." He was partial to Chevron and Delo, as he worked for their parent Allied Chemical.
There was an old website I found a few years back, the owner was an oil chemist like my father, and his opinion, backed by some interesting experiments he did with viscosity loss and long chain molecular retention after 100 hours in a typical car engine was that two basic retail oils: Walmart's branded, and Chevron Supreme came out slightly better than some of the highest priced oils. including some semi synthetics.
Synthetics are in their own league, but price doesn't factor in this much either.
Dad ran some old 40's vintage Homelite 220 volt 3 phase 2 stroke generators that powered concrete vibrators for thousands of hours on regular Chevron 2 cycle oil. These engines usually ran under a full load all the time when in use, and the last time we used one was when we were ripping 12X4 dock planking with a 12" Porter Cable worm drive portable at 220 volts for a water and electrical dock job for the county parks at Lakeside and Winchester Bay. 30:1 regular gas and Chevron with engines running 6 hours a day under a pretty steady load. No engines were destroyed with this "cheap" oil.
