Asklemmy

43893 readers

887 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

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

[email protected]

What are your best tips for finding quality stuff on AliExpress and similar? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

27 comments fedilink hide all child comments

AliExpress can offer great deals, but it's also very easy to get scammed, receive a cheap knock-off, or even end up with nothing at all. The search engine isn't very helpful, often mixing reputable merchants with sketchy ones and real products with junk.

So far, I've found the AliUp extension, which seems fairly helpful. I wish there were third-party websites with independent reviews, but I haven't found anything truly helpful or comprehensive yet.

So, what are your tips for buying on AliExpress or similar platforms?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Avoid categories where a lot of items have fake specs (storage devices, LED bulbs, anything that claims a runtime on a Li-Ion battery)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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.)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

You can even have that flash drive for free if you claim it wasn't sold as advertised!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Ah fair enough, and nice that you good a deal for the small amount of trouble.