How about less snark?
Especially when, who the heck has time for trying out a dozen products? That's at least a full day of work, which probably costs more than the software itself.
No, you just read a few reviews to find the best full price option and best budget option and figure out if the budget does what you need or not. And often go for full price just because you don't even know what features you'll need in 6 months which you don't need now, so safer to just learn the option that is the most future-proof.
You're right. Even across stuff I _really_ use it's hard to bring myself to try.
Anecdotally I haven't tried Codex and use Claude Code. The day I try Codex will be when I hear from my friends/communities that it's much better. Same for IDEs, STT tools, etc