This year’s holiday shopping season is driven by bargain hunters, but not all inexpensive options provide the best value.
Customers are turning to foreign vendors for reasonably priced presents as the price battles between the biggest American stores intensify. Salesforce forecasts that over one out of five holiday purchases will be made on Chinese-based or affiliated retail platforms. Temu, Shein, AliExpress, and TikTok are a few of them that provide incredibly low costs that American competitors have rushed to match.
Customers seeking less expensive alternatives to name-brand products may have to compromise on quality in order to save money. For example, safety authorities recently expressed concern about certain children’s products marketed on Temu and Shein; the companies have stated that they are committed to following the law and support initiatives to strengthen consumer protections. Due to significant marketing initiatives, both companies, which have their roots in China and operate throughout Southeast Asia, have seen a sharp increase in popularity among American consumers in the last 12 months.
Temu offers a wide variety of goods and has grown to become one of the biggest Chinese-affiliated retailers in the United States, whereas Shein primarily sells clothing and accessories. However, the outcomes were inconsistent when NBC News tested a number of Temu products side by side with their name-brand equivalents.
Six items—a fitness tracker, a smartwatch, running shoes, a juicer, a hairstyling tool, and an espresso machine—that together cost $180 on Temu were examined by NBC News. This is a small portion of the more than $1,000 price tag for their name-brand counterparts.
The waterproof smart watch by TakeDesertcat Direct, which was just featured on Temu for $14, is far less expensive than the about $400 Apple Watch Series 10: According to NBC News, the gadget was imprecise, cluttered with digital advertisements, and glitchy. When a producer used it at Universal Studios, her Apple Watch recorded 18,000 steps, while the Desertcat only recorded 13,000, a discrepancy of about 30%. A request for comment from Desertcat Direct was not answered.
For a while, other Temu items performed admirably.
The $34 juicer produced a lot of noise and produced a perfectly good glass of beet juice, which is comparable to a $60 Hamilton Beach model. The $29 Temu hair tool wrapped hair around a curling barrel using airflow, just like the highly sought-after Dyson Airwrap ($570). However, a stylist who used the Temu device reported that it made her worry about hair damage and produced curls that loosened more quickly than those made with the Dyson. However, because it costs only 5% as much as the Dyson, it can be a good option for people looking for affordable wavy hairstyles.
Although an Oura ring, which can cost anywhere from $250 to almost double that, uses wearers’ biometrics to provide individualized health insights, a less expensive $16 model performed admirably. Its measures weren’t as comprehensive, but up until NBC News discovered the sleep counter stopped functioning after approximately two weeks, the fundamental activity and sleep data it collected matched the Oura rings.
The $63 Temuespresso maker, which was almost half as expensive as a cheap countertop machine on Amazon, became dangerously hot, according to another producer who tested it out. This led her to unplug the gadget each time she stepped outside her house.
And when an NBC News correspondent put on some bright green running shoes called Men’s Breathable Running Footwear on Temu, which looked a lot like a pair of Sauconys that cost $275, he discovered a potentially dangerous result: the soles were so solid that he claimed that after a 5k run, his knees began to pain. Temu stated it suspended the footwear and would review the goods after NBC News brought that to their attention.
Three out of the six Temu products, according to NBC News, functioned as anticipated overall. Temu said that the sleep tracker and step counter on its smartwatch were within error bounds and that the espresso machine heated up due to a preheating mechanism for warming the mug—a feature that NBC News could not see in the product’s initial listing. The business also mentioned that if clients find any problems with the quality of their items, they can return them for a refund within ninety days.
According to Mark Spoonauer, head editor of the product review website Tom’s Guide, shopping on Temu is similar to purchasing a scratch-off lottery ticket. When you initially get anything, there’s a lot of excitement, it’s incredibly inexpensive, and you might win or lose.
He suggests purchasing fashion and home décor from inexpensive internet marketplaces rather than technology and other devices. He advised being cautious and not purchasing anything related to your fitness or health if it is not a name brand.
Additionally, Spoonauer noted that some technologies, particularly those that require constant plugging, can be troublesome. He said, “You never know what could happen.”
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