Everybody loves mobile devices, phones, tablets, smart watches – there’s just something about mobile electronics that gets geek’s like us oozing with anticipation the moment newer and better devices are unveiled. There is unfortunately one slight problem with this techno obsession, that is unless your fortunate enough to be a very wealthy individual then the cost of keeping up with the latest in mobile goodness can often be a real barrier which is why inevitable we’ll be fund scouring the deal websites, calculating the cashback incentives and eating dried cardboard just to afford the latest gadget. That’s not the only solution however and since you’ve joined us here we’ll assume you know exactly what were talking about; buying from china.
Now for a novice the thought of buying from anything from overseas is a daunting prospect, no less from a country shares little similarities with the west and is at best, a bit of mystery really. So common concerns? import duty, quality, delivery time, scams to name but a few, but persevere and there are some truly brilliant value devices to be had and with these handy steps I’ll show you to make your first china device purchase go swimmingly!
1. Picking a quality brand
The first thing to note when starting your search from the perfect china mobile or tablet is the sheer range of brands available, most if not all of them you’ll never have heard of before, so right off the bat thing’s are quite daunting. To ensure you pick one of the better brands a simple but often accurate barometer of brand quality is it’s popularity so look and how many sales their products have had, many many ratings and that should give you a decent idea. Another measure is price, generally speaking the higher priced products are from brans who have earned the right to charge more than the lesser known brands.
Here are some quality brands to get you started:
Android phones
HUAWEI
Lenovo
CUBOT
Xiaocai
Zopo
THL
UMI
JIAYU
ZTE
iOcean
Cube
Tablets
Lenovo
PIPO
JXD
Onda
CUBE
Ainol
Ployer
Freelander
CHUWI
AMPE
Ramos
All that being said, new brands are constantly popping up and not all of them will be bad so don’t write them off until you’ve checked out some reviews from their products!
2. What to Look For:
Next up you’ll be wanting to pick a device, whether that be phone or tablet there are a few thing’s to look out for to ensure you end up with a product that’s really going to meet your expectations.
Build quality
This is difficult to decipher without having the device in hand but choosing the right brand is a good start, from there on you’ll want to check reviews and in particular, check out hands-on videos on Youtube which should give a better idea of the overall quality of the device. Mostly chinese devices these days are supringly well built, especially those from the bigger brands so this shouldn’t be too big an issue.
Fake features:
Unfortunately some products, particularly clone products will be advertised with features that they don’t have or are otherwise mis-advertised. Look at for features which seem too good to be true and be sure to check the specification across many different websites. If in doubt then contact the seller.
Poor quality cameras:
If there’s one spec where numbers don’t tell the whole story it’s the camera specs. Often you’ll see phones and tablets advertised with decent sounding camera’s, sometimes with unrealistically high mega pixel counts – if this looks to be the case then walk away, mostly likely the device in question will use some poor quality software trickery to interpolate a lower quality image to a higher resolution giving nothing like the quality stated. In this area there really is no substitute for impartial, third party hands-on write-ups and camera samples so you can see for yourself the actual quality on offer.
Under performing chipset’s
One of the first thing’s you’ll notice when comparing china phones is that they are most often powered by Mediatek in phones and Allwinner or Rockchip for tablets, rather than the usual Qualcomm or Exynos chipsets often found in western phones. This is primarily due to cost as these other chipsets are cheaper and don’t quite offer the same levels of performance you get from a top of the range Qualcomm or Exynos processor, in most cases though they are more than enough for 90% of people.
The best chipset’s to look out for other than the establish Qualcomm and Exynos ones are currently:
Phones
Mediatek MTK6582
Mediatek MTK6592
Tablets
Rockchip Rk3188
Rockchip Rk3066
Allwinner A31
If in doubt, check out some benchmark scores to get an idea of performance, bearing in mind that multi-core processors may appear more potent than their true, real world performance – this is especially true of new octa-core proccesors so bear this in mind.
Also be aware that each chipest has its limits so for example the Rockchip Rk3066 is a great chipest for up to 720p resolution but any more than that and you’ll see it struggle, so for want of a better phrase – “courses for courses”.
3. Where to Buy From
Broadly there are two types of place you can purchase your device, marketplace type websites or traditional online retailers.
Marketplace sites
These are websites that essentially act as a platform allowing you direct access to wholesalers and maybe even direct to manufacturers in some cases.
The two best known of these types of websites are:
http://uk.alibaba.com/http://www.aliexpress.com/
Now these marketplaces have a wide range of products with some very appealing prices but the trade-off is the question marks over the dependability of the individual sellers listed and whilst these platforms do their best to ensure quality and security there will be scammers on these types of sites so look out for prices that look too good to be true, check seller ratings and use Paypal where possible for your protection. If your willing to take a risk however, these sites can offer up some real bargains!
Traditional Retailers
The second type of place to buy from is the traditional online retailer, of which there are many! Most offering free delivery which will usually result in your goods arriving in 2-3 weeks. Picking a store to purchase from is a case of trail and error or asking around for opinions but here are the ones that I’ve found to be amongst the better ones:
Banggood -
http://www.banggood.com/
Pandawill –
http://www.pandawill.com/
Dealextreme –
http://www.dx.com/
BuySKU –
http://www.buysku.com/
I personally use ‘Banggood‘ as I’ve found their prices to be very competitive, the site is pleasant enough and their service has been decent in terms of replacing any faulty products or cancelling orders.
4. Making Payment
Now you’ve picked yourself that perfect tablet, phone or whatever it is that takes your fancy you’ll be wanting to actually buy the thing! Now naturally you might be concerned about where your money is actually going, especially when using a new site from overseas.
My one piece of advise here is to use Paypal where possible, this gives you protection if anything does go wrong. Failing that use good old fashioned card payment as you may be covered by your bank if you do come in to any trouble.
If the only payment methods offered are western union and escrow services then walk away, whilst they can and are often legitimate payment methods they can also be used by scammers and when they only other this means of payment its probably not worth taking the risk!
5. Avoiding Import Duty
Your nearly there! If your just about to click that final payment confirmation button but start having palpitations thinking about the import duty then don’t worry, too much.
Most retailers will mark down the value of goods and/or declare them as ‘gifts’ to avoid you paying any import duty at all! In my experience importing over 20 products of value over £100 I have not be asked to buy any import duty, perhaps I’m lucky but generally speaking it seems that people are seldom charged any duty for personal products.
It has to be said though that my experience comes from having products shipped via the free economy services offered which to my knowledge are less likely to be checked and duty charged, so bear this in mind if you opt for one of the express services as you may find an additional charge levied.
The formula is (phone price in € times 1.23) and then +€6 through An Post or +€15 through a courier
Check out this great import duty calculator if your nervous and incorporate any charges in to the purchase price so you know what the worse case scenario is.
Wrap-up:
And that’s it! easy peasy. Buying from china doesn’t have to be a worrying experience, embrace it and its really quite exciting to enter a new mysterious land of magical new devices you’ve never heard of before, just have this handy guide to hand and you’ll be just fine – enjoy your new China phone, tablet or whatever!
