Since earlier this year, revised an old subd model to a mid poly custom normals mesh. Screencaped from Blender 3.5.1 material shading viewport, using the EEVEE - Cycles Material and Texture System addon as a sort of previz/concept for further research putting together an all-in-one personalized asset creation pipeline.
When it's the difference between 4.50 and 5 dollars, yes, I skip the research phase, but I'm always asking where better nicer quality restaurants are. When something costs 50 bux, yes I always research.