This is an outlet for Chinese (only?) companies. I find some of their prices remarkable. Often the goods come by air in just a few days. On some items I guess you might have to pay some duty. Even so, their prices are unbelievable.
I suppose the downside is that this kills western manufacturing that cannot compete with labour costs. Making in Europe or the USA we would not be able to compete on price. Making consumer goods more locally would stoke inflation.
2 comments:
One has to be careful of fake items. I would say 50% of transistors I have purchased have been counterfeits. This need not be an issue if all you are after is a small signal transistor but rf and power devices are almost always fakes. Typically a power device might have a smaller die for example. You may have been after a 50w device but ended up with a 2w device instead rebranded as the 50w device. Schottky diodes are sold as Germanium etc.
Modules are generally okay if you derate the power ratings by 4 times although I did end up with fake buck regulators once. I think China has made its own copies of things such as LM386 and 555. Sometimes these have better specs than the originals. I have purchased LM386 modules with much better spec'd ic's than a genuine LM386 which has pretty awful distortion and instability in its higher gain mode.
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One needs to be very diligent when purchasing from AliExpress. In particular read the reviews and see how many of the item you're interested in have been sold by the seller.As mentioned above semiconductors in particular must be treated with caution.
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