I was in a pinch and bought the cheap generic stuff and my tranny shifts noticeably smoother. It may be a case of putting a known name on it and charging more kind of how you take a $5 shirt and embroider Abercrombie on it and it's magically worth $100. I would be interested to see what the chemical composition of each is and whether there's a magical chemical only Honda possesses or if it's all in the name.

I also don't use any synthetic fluids for anything I own except for my dirtbike but that's only because it's al I can ever find that works for it. A test conducted by my professor showed that when one piece of steel was submerged in synthetic oil and one in convention oil that after 6 months the synthetic failed to prevent corrosion on the metal.

It has also been noted that alot of aircraft with plain steel cylinders using synthetic had corrosion on the cylinder walls after a short time of sitting compared to the others which had very little signs of corrosion.

That's my input of the hole synthetic vs. conventional controversy.

As for the tranny fluid. Do what you feel is right. Of course you might always find a very poorly made generic transmission fluid or a generic that is even Better than the Honda brand. Get the Honda stuff if your worried about but I really don't think there's much of a difference.


EDIT:
Sorry for bringing back a very old thread. For some reason this thread was on the front page.