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Comment by whamlastxmas | Hacker News Reader

Discovering aliexpress was pretty awesome when I got started working with electronics hardware. Easily 1/5th the price of buying from an American store, in some cases as low as 1/10th the price. I've spent $500+ on stuff from aliexpress that would have been over $3k from a place like Adafruit, and I've had very few garbage pieces (though admittedly haven't used/tested a lot of it).

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Adafruit buys most of their jellybean parts off of Alibaba and resells it. You are paying extra for them to stock this stuff in the US (NYC in particular). Real distributors like Digikey and Mouser have better deals because you can get name-brand stuff for the same price as the Alibaba stuff from Adafruit. By jellybean parts, I am mainly talking about pin headers and such. Most of the dev boards Adafruit offers are unique to them.

I agree about the Adafruit, etc. buying jellybean parts from Alibaba, but Digikey's prices being close? No. At least not in smaller volume. I can buy Arduinos on AliExpress (qty 10 or so) for less than I could purchase even just the AVR chips alone.

If a part is critical, I'll buy a known, characterized, device made by a reputable manufacturer from a reputable supplier. (I don't expect that an Omron 50A relay on Alibaba for $5 is real) But for generic LEDs, non-critical switches & connectors, it's Alibaba/Aliexpress all the way.

I see it as I'm also paying for their time and expertise in selling me a thing that won't malfunction in ways which might take me hours to troubleshoot. I also like what they do and their contributions to the community, and me buying a esp8366 through them with good-quality docs, tutorials, and working examples is worth the extra few dollars for my personal enjoyment of my hobby.

I also can't feel good supporting fakes / copies and China's mistreatment of the environment for profit.

Yup. And Taobao is often even cheaper.

Sadly, a lot of the Aliexpress stuff is so cheap because it's unlicensed/knockoffs. It'll work, but in a lot of cases, it's the hardware equivalent of pirating software. :/

>It'll work, but in a lot of cases, it's the hardware equivalent of pirating software. :/

Let me find my eye patch and parrot.

The lack of a proper english translation for Taobao is a game killer for me though..

https://www.baopals.com/

All the expats in China use it. You need to figure out shipping though.

Pirating software (and media for that matter) usually gets you the exact same product though; with electronics, it's a lot dodgier.

As someone who finds the American copyright and patent system unbelievably fucked up, I really have no qualms with buying knock-off modules/boards. It's not like any of them are especially novel or something any competent EE couldn't conceptualize with relatively little effort.

Digikey and Mouser are cheaper than Adafruit (For example, http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/texas-instruments/S... vs https://www.adafruit.com/products/450). Adafruit's advantage (and the reason they are in business) is that they specifically market to hobbyists, selling stuff that's easy to use and giving you instructions on how to use it. And some of their stuff is straight from Aliexpress (https://www.adafruit.com/product/1150). As a side note, I prefer to buy Chinese components from eBay. Some of the time, you can find high quality new-old-stock on there too.

It's great for obscure cables and such too. My wife has a Nexus 6P, so I got her a shiny new USB type-C charging mount for her car. I still wanted to be able to charge my micro-usb phone in it though, so I wanted a USB-C female to micro-usb adapter. You'd think those would be available, but they're really not, because 99.9% of people who want such an adapter need it to go the other way. Found them on aliexpress though, for about 5% of what I probably would've been willing to pay. (I bought three, in case any were defective or got lost, but they all work great.)

I've been ordering from Banggood. So far so good. $2 Arduinos are pretty fun to play with or give away to people.

  Discovering aliexpress was pretty awesome

I'm sure that you got lucky. My first experience with them was terrible. I ordered a phone (it was a dual-SIM android device) which wouldn't work for either voice calls or text messages. Tried SIM cards from different carriers, but nothing would work. You could connect it to the WiFi, though. Reporting the matter to AliExpress was terrible, those guys would insist that they're concerned, would look into it, but nothing happened.

  though admittedly haven't used/tested a lot of it

I'd recommend doing it.

More complex electronics like phones is where I'd draw the line.

I've ordered things like a dirt cheap soldering iron, a multimeter, a bluetooth mini keyboard for controlling the laptop when watching TV, USB charging cables, PCIe cables, LED strips, flawless, high quality knockoff sunglasses, etc and never had any issues. If you sort by most orders you normally filter out the worst of the crap.

> I've ordered things like a dirt cheap soldering iron

Some of the manufacturers have interesting ideas around mains safety. I'd be wary of dirt cheap soldering irons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeILL08T08w

Thanks for the heads up. FWIW I've used mine (occasionally) for several years without problems.

AliExpress is similar to Ebay. You're not dealing with AliExpress that much, you're buying from many different sellers. As such, investigate!

If you buy something more expensive, look for feedback from others. Don't assume it'll be ok. It might be something that only works for China.

I have bought loads from AliExpress. Pretty much comparable experience to a cheap store. Meaning: quality is sometimes poor, but similar experience to going to a shop. Most of the sellers are very concerned with their star rating btw.

I suspect that AliExpress helps sellers manipulate ratings, else the sellers wouldn't turn a deaf ear to any queries.

Moreover, I'm not even sure how does the rating system on AliExpress work. I wasn't even given an option to rate the seller. The official support is terrible; they'd act as if they're very concerned but they wouldn't do anything even if the seller doesn't respond to any of your messages.

As others have said, I'd never buy anything expensive from AliExpress. Maybe like 30-40 dollars max. Especially if it's something as commonly faked as a phone.

I've never used aliexpress before. Anyone have thoughts on the likelyhood of getting stuff made with toxic materials?

I have certainly gotten a few cables and other plastic/rubber items that stank strongly, but after a day or two outdoors weren't noticeable. Likely the toxicity of the materials is a much larger problem in China, where these items are made. Unless you were considering ingesting them...

I order PCBs and ICs and other similar boards that all use lead based solder I am sure. So I wash my hands after working with it. A good practice even if you're buying stuff from American sellers because it's often the same parts.

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