this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2024
61 points (91.8% liked)
Asklemmy
43893 readers
887 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Thereβs plenty of official stores on Ali and a rule of thumb is to stay away from βno nameβ products and products that are obvious copies of other brands.
Counterfeit products are the main reason I'd ever shop ali
Sometimes, counterfeits or unknown brands are so similar to the real deal that it barely matters. I'd say that basic electronics (alarm clocks, kitchen scales, calculators, SD security cams) or even RAM is fine. With appropriate expectations, parts like video or USB cables, hubs etc., small home improvement items (hooks, screws) are fine too. Avoid categories where a lot of items have fake specs (storage devices, LED bulbs, anything that claims a runtime on a Li-Ion battery). Power electronics (especially if using mains or non-tiny Li-Ion batteries) can be downright dangerous. For novelty items and electronics modules, it's usually easy to find text or video reviews on other websites because they're easy to uniquely describe. Remember to consider ways in which the product can be utter crap despite high reviews citing good first impressions; it also helps to have practical knowledge of testing the properties of the items and fixing common issues.
I'd say be aware rather than avoid. E.g I bought a $10 camping lantern that claimed 2.5 times its true capacity, but it still runs for hours and is a great, well designed, if flimsy, product for the price.
Well, depends on how much you're OK with some problems. I knowingly bought a "2 TB (64 GB Extended)" flash drive, tested its sectors and reprogrammed it to 32-in-64-GB for wear leveling and bad sector avoidance because it was still a cheap 32GB USB drive. I made sure to label it for "non-critical use" such as movies.
As for camping lanterns, ones charged from mains might have a nasty habit of shocking their users. (The YouTube channel contains a huge number of cheap Chinese charger teardowns and most don't meet safety criteria. Usually, there is just 1 or 2 layers of thin tape between mains and the output you can touch.)
You can even have that flash drive for free if you claim it wasn't sold as advertised!
It was advertised as "2 TB (64 GB Extended)" at a local clearance sale (not AliExpress), which was basically correct though I would prefer "64 GB but misprogrammed so everything can get corrupted at any time". When buying it, I didn't yet know if I could reprogram the chip but the low price was justified for the pretty aluminum case with a USB-C port and place for a custom PCB. I decided to buy it also to prevent another, less technical person from using it and losing their data. The store was getting rid of inventory for very cheap and would close soon so no more fake drives would be ordered.
Ah fair enough, and nice that you good a deal for the small amount of trouble.