SelectedValue vs SelectedItem.Value of DropDownList

SelectedValue returns the same value as SelectedItem.Value.

SelectedItem.Value and SelectedItem.Text might have different values and the performance is not a factor here, only the meanings of these properties matters.

<asp:DropDownList runat="server" ID="ddlUserTypes">
    <asp:ListItem Text="Admins" Value="1" Selected="true" />
    <asp:ListItem Text="Users" Value="2"/>
</asp:DropDownList>

Here, ddlUserTypes.SelectedItem.Value == ddlUserTypes.SelectedValue and both would return the value “1”.

ddlUserTypes.SelectedItem.Text would return “Admins”, which is different from ddlUserTypes.SelectedValue

edit

under the hood, SelectedValue looks like this

public virtual string SelectedValue
{
    get
    {
        int selectedIndex = this.SelectedIndex;
        if (selectedIndex >= 0)
        {
            return this.Items[selectedIndex].Value;
        }
        return string.Empty;
    }
}

and SelectedItem looks like this:

public virtual ListItem SelectedItem
{
    get
    {
        int selectedIndex = this.SelectedIndex;
        if (selectedIndex >= 0)
        {
            return this.Items[selectedIndex];
        }
        return null;
    }
}

One major difference between these two properties is that the SelectedValue has a setter also, since SelectedItem doesn’t. The getter of SelectedValue is faster when writing code, and the problem of execution performance has no real reason to be discussed. Also a big advantage of SelectedValue is when using Binding expressions.

edit data binding scenario (you can’t use SelectedItem.Value)

<asp:Repeater runat="server">
 <ItemTemplate>
     <asp:DropDownList ID="ddlCategories" runat="server" 
                       SelectedValue="<%# Eval("CategoryId")%>">
     </asp:DropDownList>
 </ItemTemplate>
</asp:Repeater>