Posted on: October 7, 2018 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

Our modern love affair with gadgets has transformed society, but the marketplace for consumer electronics is so large and competitive that finding high quality products is a challenge.

So are there any sure-fire ways to sort the wheat from the chaff and buy from brands which create truly reliable tech, while avoiding sub-par electronics altogether? Here are a few tips that should help intrepid online shoppers.

Shop With Reputable Retail Outlets

This is perhaps the most important yet oft-ignored piece of advice, as when you’re buying electronics from the web it’s just as important to think about the reputation of the site you’re using as the specs of the device itself.

An established e-commerce outlet will not only be easier to use and provide a broader selection of top quality products at competitive prices; it’ll also be better equipped to handle returns and deal with complaints if you are not satisfied with your purchase.

Add to that the fact that you can often find compelling voucher codes, like the ones at groupon.co.uk/discount-codes/shops/currys.co.uk, when you buy online with major retailers, and you’ll see why reputation is so important.

Read Professional Reviews

A quick search for a specific product or brand will usually pull up plenty of impartial coverage, allowing you to soak up professional opinions on important aspects like build quality, reliability and value for money.

Make sure the outlet that’s hosting the relevant content is well known, as almost anyone can set up their own site and post reviews of electronic devices, whether or not they have any experience or expertise in this area.

It’s also vital to remember that while critics can have different opinions about things like features, functions and design, when it comes to whether or not a product is reliable, a consensus should form unambiguously.

Consider Customer Feedback

Not every gadget out there will have received the attention of the pros, so it’s always a good idea to take onboard reviews posted by amateurs. The best shopping sites will allow users to add their own feedback on the product pages, so you will not need to look far to find out whether a prospective purchase lives up to the hype.

Of course fake reviews are a problem for even the biggest brands in the world of online retail, so it is worth taking the supremely positive and damingly negative customer postings with a pinch of salt. Even with misleading feedback posing a risk to impartiality, you can generally work out whether or not a product is of a good quality by absorbing reviews from a number of sources.

Check Out Video Coverage

YouTube is the best place to find short clips and longer examinations of the latest tech, allowing you to see the results of wear and tear on expensive gadgets and electronics in real time. So if reliability is a concern, you can quickly find out all you need by heading to this popular streaming site.

JerryRigEverything is a great example of a modern YouTube channel that sets out to champion consumer causes, testing things like the durability of smart locks, the scratch-resistant properties of mobile phone screens and lots of other important facets which most viewers would not be advised to try at home.

Marques Brownlee is another great YouTuber to subscribe to if you are obsessed with gadgets and want to drill down into the differences in quality and durability that exist between the competing brands, from Apple and Google to Huawei and Samsung.

Ask Friends & Family

Often the most useful and influential advice we get in relation to the electronics purchases we make comes from the people we know in real life. If someone has had a bad experience with a brand in the past, or is encountering issues with a particular device at the moment, they will happily tell you the details, or steer you in the direction of a company that has served them well in the past.

Ideally you will be able to get hands-on experience with the tech that you crave if someone else in your social circle already owns it. Look and feel can be just as important as other aspects, so trying a brand’s offerings out first-hand is invaluable in the decision-making process.

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