Ha, I’m an American born Chinese and I didn’t get the Americanized reference until I clicked on your link.

In my experience the phrase more or less means functionally sufficient, which is not exactly the same as say ‘not as good.’

Sometimes you want the best thing you can buy, other times you just want one that does the job. Of course, that is a different distinction than being pragmatic vs. cutting corners.

I guess ‘chabuduo’ sometimes sits in the gray area between the two.