I'm frequently puzzled by so many "faulty inner tube" threads. In all my years of cycling I have never had a puncture or a blow out that I could attribute to a faulty inner tube. Whenever I've had more than one puncture on a ride, the second has always been due to something that I did wrong while fixing the first. I don't get a lot of flats - maybe one every 2,000 miles or so. Currently I'm using Marathon Race tires, which have Schwalbe's lowest level of puncture protection with good results but I'm fortunate not to live in the goat head thorn belt.

I don't obsess over what brand of inner tubes that I buy. Except for an emergency replacement, I'll only pay for the exact size tube and exact valve configuration to fit my tire and rim. That's hard to do buying locally so I add a couple of tubes when I'm buying other stuff over the internet to share the shipping cost.

I do obsess when I install a new tire or inner tube. I don't do anything special, I'm just very mindful about what I'm doing. For example, I check both tire beads all the way around to be sure the tube isn't caught between the tire bead and the rim. I've also recently added a tiny needle nose pliers (for removing radial tire wires) to my flat tire kit.