At what point does wrapping a FileOutputStream with a BufferedOutputStream make sense, in terms of performance?

BufferedOutputStream helps when the writes are smaller than the buffer size e.g. 8 KB. For larger writes it doesn’t help nor does it make it much worse. If ALL your writes are larger than the buffer size or you always flush() after every write, I would not use a buffer. However if a good portion of your writes are less that the buffer size and you don’t use flush() every time, its worth having.

You may find increasing the buffer size to 32 KB or larger gives you a marginal improvement, or make it worse. YMMV

You might find the code for BufferedOutputStream.write useful

/**
 * Writes <code>len</code> bytes from the specified byte array
 * starting at offset <code>off</code> to this buffered output stream.
 *
 * <p> Ordinarily this method stores bytes from the given array into this
 * stream's buffer, flushing the buffer to the underlying output stream as
 * needed.  If the requested length is at least as large as this stream's
 * buffer, however, then this method will flush the buffer and write the
 * bytes directly to the underlying output stream.  Thus redundant
 * <code>BufferedOutputStream</code>s will not copy data unnecessarily.
 *
 * @param      b     the data.
 * @param      off   the start offset in the data.
 * @param      len   the number of bytes to write.
 * @exception  IOException  if an I/O error occurs.
 */
public synchronized void write(byte b[], int off, int len) throws IOException {
    if (len >= buf.length) {
        /* If the request length exceeds the size of the output buffer,
           flush the output buffer and then write the data directly.
           In this way buffered streams will cascade harmlessly. */
        flushBuffer();
        out.write(b, off, len);
        return;
    }
    if (len > buf.length - count) {
        flushBuffer();
    }
    System.arraycopy(b, off, buf, count, len);
    count += len;
}