29 Things You Should Never Buy at Walmart

As with electronics in general, Walmart isn’t the best place to shop for high-end photographic equipment. The best option for them is to find a good camera store with knowledgeable staff, where you’re more likely to receive the best customer experience (such places do still exist). Otherwise, find a camera department at a national or regional retailer that focuses on consumer electronics.

Video games are increasingly purchased and downloaded online, either through a digital distribution service like Steam or through the PlayStation and Xbox online stores. But if you’re in the market for a video game burned onto CDs and sold in plastic boxes, you’re likely to find better prices elsewhere, especially if you look for used games online.

The phone accessories market is filled with an enormous selection of mobile phone accessories like cables, adapters, and automobile cradles. But so many of them are shoddy, produced by obscure third-party Chinese manufacturers, and they can conk out quickly, or even damage your mobile device. Like its competitors, Walmart does carry name-brand phone accessories, but you’re not likely to be paying the lowest possible price for them.

Walmart’s Photo Center currently offers 4×6 prints for nine cents apiece from images that can be uploaded to the site with a registered account. Canvas sizes images (16 x 20) currently cost $34.96. But if all you need is photo printing, you’re better off using an online service or going to an easier-to-navigate smaller office supply outlet with a printing center.

Walmart sells popular battery brands at competitive prices. For example, a 16-pack of Duracell Coppertop AA batteries is currently $12.78 at Walmart, $3.20 less than The Home Depot’s current price. However, if you’re looking for lower-cost brands with comparable performance, Consumer Reports found Costco’s Kirkland Signature AA batteries (currently 48 for $13.99) were the best store-branded batteries.