There are some nice stuff of Ali that was original intended for the Chinese market. But you have to know you get what you pay for in China. If it’s too cheap, it’s going to be crap.
I was looking for some eletrical component for my arduino and the only place that had it was aliexpress. That was a pleasant surprise. Three months later I still got almost daily spam mail from them. I block the mail address, but they just generate a new address to spam me with. Lukily it has stopped now. I’m never buying there again if I can help it.
I used to buy a lot of things in AliExpress, but since they’ve changed their business it’s usually better to just order on Amazon.
The things on AliExpress used to be dirt cheap and it was a no brainer buying random electronics components in a pack of five for a price of one in the EU shop.
Or sometimes I was looking to some oddly specific item and I always found it on AliExpress. It’s no longer the case, it seems the search results are 10 products of 3 manufacturers that are essentially the same thing.
I bought an intel i7-5775c for like £70 about 2 and a half years ago from Aliexpress. Really strong cpu for the price, overclocks well and has meant that I haven’t had to upgrade my motherboard and ram to ddr4 yet.
Sometimes if there's a good deal for something I know I want. For instance, I was wanting an RG35XX (portable retro console). I had never heard about Temu, went there and got the $100 off bundle (basically a set of thresholds to hit for up to $100 off). I found the RG35XX for $53 ($17 less than Amazon), and that coupon knocked it down to $28. For me that was a no brainer.
I’ve bought from aliexpress in the past for obscure electronics that you can’t really get anywhere else for a good price. But I will never shop at temu, I am incredibly suspicious about how they have such an incredibly large advertising budget yet their prices are so low. Either it’s a straight up scam or they are expecting to make a lot of money later down the line
Some arts supplies are good. I'm very poor and I hate consumerism, but I can't really afford the good stuff so I sometimes resort to stuff like this. They do good acrylic markers and have a huge pack of normal markers that's also really decent.
I got a decent little fanless i5-based computer with 6 ethernet ports to use as a router, and it was cheap and works well running OPNsense. That’s about the only thing I’ve bought on AliExpress.
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