The vacuum devices take more effort, but work well for up to a week or so.
The beginning of the article asserts that oxidation is one of the primary causes of wine going bad, then completely dismisses vacuum systems, which remove most oxygen out of the bottle. Scientifically, this MUST be superior to simply replacing the cork (or screw cap in Australia).
I’ve found that if I open the bottle and pour two glasses and immediately seal and vacuum (most of) the air out, I can get about 2-4 days of the wine tasting good stored at room temperature, versus about 1 day simply replacing the lid.
I even drank a wine after 10 days that, while not great, was still drinkable. It was like a 2 day open bottle roughly.
Why must this be the case? This is a genuine question, not a pure objection.
Consider two oxygen levels, o_1 and o_2, where o_2 << o_1 due to vacuum removal. Consider a set of chemical reactions that occur between wine and the surrounding environment. Of oxygen, glass, trace chemicals, cosmic rays, astological auras, etc. Let ℜ be the set of chemical reations that affect phenomenological quality (flavour) (presumably negatively, as a just-opened bottle of wine is at the peak of quality and can only degrade).
Why must it be the case that o_2 is the limiting factor for all, or even some, of the elements of ℜ? What if another quantity (surface area, pressure, etc) limits the pace or extent of the reaction, and just as much degradation occurs with partial vacuuming (o_2) as without (o_1)?
Perhaps you or someone else is a wine chemist, professional or amateur, and can enlighten me. Until that point, there are more things in heaven and Earth, dear dhsysusbsjsi, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
In the end, though, I think most people discover that those pumps do help preserve the wine for significantly more time.
I went with the Eto for a few reasons. One was price (pays for itself after a few bottles of wine), but the main reason was that it's so much simpler with fewer moving parts and there are no cartridges to replace. And it works well. I recommend the stainless steel version. Happy customer.
As others have stated, losing more volatile aromas into the head space of the bottle is the larger consequence of these devices.