The battle between loose-leaf and pre-bagged tea is one that you only really know about if you are an avid tea enthusiast. Some claim that loose leaf tea is the best because it is more refined and tastes better, while others say the price is not worth it and that pre-bagged tea is much better. Simply put, it is the fancy vs the not-so fancy. Now, there are reasons to be on either side of the argument and I am personally torn between both because I love all kinds of tea.
As I said above, the loose-leaf side is the more expensive side of the argument. It is usually pretty high quality, and not sold in most grocery stores. Typically, you can find it in places like David’s Tea, random little tea shops, and Teavana—before it went out of business. When you buy loose-leaf tea you will also need to purchase things to brew the tea with. There are infusers with varying price levels. They range from a cheap little metal or plastic strainer to contraptions that will brew the tea and then drain it into your cup.  A benefit of drinking loose-leaf tea is the variety of teas and the fact that there are quite a few seasonal ones as well. There is also the choice to be able to mix and match your own teas to make a new blend as well. Of course, the downside of buying loose-leaf tea is that it is generally more expensive than a tea that you would buy at a grocery store. On David’s Tea website, it is almost ten dollars for two ounces of their breakfast blend, while it is only about seven dollars for a box of Twining’s English Breakfast tea which is three and a half ounces.
Obviously, the biggest pro to buying pre-bagged tea is that it is much cheaper. Not to mention, it is so much easier to brew pre-bagged tea than loose-leaf tea. All of the tea is already divided for you, so you won’t need to worry about using too much or two little. It also is a lot cleaner and convenient, as you won’t be getting random little pieces of tea floating around in your drink. You also would not have to worry about cleaning your strainer and getting everything out of it. When people say that loose-leaf tea has more options than pre-bagged tea, it does not mean that there are four or five options for the pre-bagged tea. It means there are a lot of options, but loose-leaf tea just has more. There is also the fact that pre-bagged tea is easier to get then loose leaf. At this moment in time I only know of two stores I can buy loose-leaf from, while pre-bagged teas are EVERYWHERE. That being said, they both have their own qualities that make them great and they are both worth drinking.