Buying from China
China has been a great boon for electronics hobbyists worldwide, providing a vast selection of inexpensive electronic components. Over the course of a couple months I have ordered 24 items, whose time to arrive at my doorstep after placing the order is shown in the histogram above.
Sources
There are sellers from China on eBay, Amazon, but I primarily purchased from Aliexpress, a marketplace similar to Alibaba.com but offering smaller quantities for the individual customers instead of wholesale for resellers.
Can I sell on AliExpress? explains only vendors from China can sell there:
We appreciate your interest in selling products on AliExpress. Currently, only suppliers from Mainland China can sell on AliExpress.
How long does it take to ship halfway around the world? The slowest shipment was from S+S+S+ on Aliexpress, at 54 days (!) to receive this ESP8266 board. The fastest shipper was umisk*2014 on eBay, at 7 days.
Average/mean of 18.875 days, mode 11 days, median 20 days. 54 days is an extreme outlier, and there was feedback about this seller from others reporting “extremely slow shipping”, I haven’t encountered anything else like it. 7 days was also an outlier, on the other side. A reasonable expectation is “about a month”, or less.
Curiously, many of these sellers offered free shipping.
How is this possible?
To understand how China has become a global leader in electronics, I recommend this excellent documentary from Wired:
(And also the game Shenzhen I/O by Zachtronics for fun.) bunnie’s blog: Akihabara, Eat Your Heart Out shows inside the SEG Electronics Market:
“Chips that I couldn’t dream of buying in the US, reels of rare ceramic capacitors that I only dream about at night. My senses tingle, my head spins. I can’t supress a smirk of anticipation as I walk around the next corner, to see shops stacked floor to ceiling with probably a hundred million resistors and capacitors.” -Bunnie
This marketplace is accessible worldwide via China Post, especially ePacket:
From Why is China to US shipping cost so much cheaper than US to China?:
1. There is a difference in economies. You have to earn five times as much here to get by financially.
2. The Chinese government subsidizes shipping.
3. eBay and USPS brokered a trilateral ePacket agreement with China Post that gives China bulk shipping rates (which apply to individual packages as well) at a rate far below what we have to pay and which INCLUDES tracking to the U.S. destination and which does NOT require China to offer reciprocal tracking.
ePacket is quite fast and extremely economical and enables Chinese sellers selling small items to retain their TRS [eBay’s Top Rated Seller] status
I’ll get into the specifics later, but it is more economical to order almost all of my electronic components directly from China, than from local retailers.
So there you have it. China has a massive advantage here, anyone getting into electronics even as a casual hobbyist cannot ignore it.
How long will this last?
EEVblog forums: US Election and what it means to China Imports raises the question of how long this gravy train will continue. From the primary source, NYTimes: Donald Trump Says He Favors Big Tariffs on Chinese Exports:
“The only power that we have with China,” Mr. Trump said, “is massive trade.”
“I would tax China on products coming in,” Mr. Trump said. “I would do a tariff, yes — and they do it to us.”
Mr. Trump added that he’s “a free trader,” but that “it’s got to be reasonably fair.”
“I would do a tax. and the tax, let me tell you what the tax should be … the tax should be 45 percent,” Mr. Trump said.
It remains to be seen what the future holds. Further reading of interest:
either way, China is currently an amazing resource for the budding hobbyist.
Reviews
Not going to write an in-depth review of each item in this article. Instead I’ll point to previous articles where I used the items I bought from Aliexpress. You can find the product links in each of those articles, if you are interested. Anyways, here is a summary of the components I ordered and used:
Tools upgrade: Hakko FX-951 soldering iron and more: Multimeter leads were my first purchase from China, and I’m quite satisfied with their performance, they are the main leads I use now. Not purchased from Aliexpress: the new soldering iron, solder, tweezers. I also bought a new soldering iron tip from Aliexpress, but it wasn’t a good idea: not compatible with my iron (my fault), pure copper (missing the plating to avoid oxidization), wrong tip (chisel is best). Lesson learned: make sure you know exactly what you’re buying.
The solder wick was also nearly unusable; stick to name brands.
Home automation with Raspberry Pi + Homebridge: BME280 temperature/humidity/pressure sensor, moderately pricey but it does the job.
ESP8266 first project: home automation with relays, switches, PWM, and an ADC: The ESP8266 NodeMcu board that took 54 days to arrive, but it was worth it. A complete microcontroller with built-in Wi-Fi, nothing else like it.
High-voltage AC generation using relays: Test hook multimeter leads couldn’t withstand the high voltage sparks very well, and began to melt. Not the best purchase, I’d likely be better off with alligator clips, but I still got some decent use out of these inexpensive test hook multimeter leads.
Notes on prototyping circuit boards: breadboards, perfboards, and beyond: Prototyping through-hole circuit boards, single-sided, 5x7cm of phenolic material. A superb purchase, I already used 9 (out of 10) of these boards for various projects. The board can be cut easily with a knife to widen the holes for larger components, I may have to order more of these boards later because they were so useful. The full-size breadboard was also a good choice, cost less than the Sparkfun version and I liked it better, no split rails to confuse you.
Upgrading to a giant breadboard for Raspberry Pi GPIO peripherals: The bidirectional level shifters work satisfactorily (3.3V to/from 5V), and so does the full-size breadboard (the giant breadboard wasn’t purchased from Aliexpress, I already had it from elsewhere).
Surface-mount electronics for hobbyists: easier than you think: My biggest purchase was for the surface-mount resistor/capacitor books, not cheap but too handy to pass up. I also bought & built a surface-mount soldering practice kit, and a surface-mount prototyping board from a PCB manufacturing house. Lastly, I bought surface-mount bicolor LEDs and they work great.
Organizing electronic components: Through-hole resistor and ceramic capacitor kits for only a couple bucks, what a steal. These greatly helped stock my parts collection, adding a variety of values at little cost. $1.46 for 300 assorted resistors, $1.58 for 300 assorted capacitors, no problem with either of them, this has to be one of the best values so far. I also very much enjoy the component tester, costlier but indispensable for identifying and testing unknown components. Based on an open source design, MTester is an example of the power of China’s mass manufacturing prowess.
Crystal oscillator tester frequency counter kit review: My first straightforward review of a product purchased from Aliexpress. The tester came in a kit you build yourself, all parts included, just stick in the components and solder. Ordered assorted quartz crystal oscillators for testing, and also built my own square wave oscillator to use the frequency counter. No problems here.
Exploring ternary logic: building ternary inverters using complementary MOSFETs: Experiments using N-channel and P-channel enhancement-mode MOSFETs in SOT-23’s, bought from Aliexpress. And so were the 0603 resistors, the bicolor LEDs, the MTester, even the protoboard itself. This project was almost entirely 100% built from parts sourced from China, the only exceptions are the wire and solder.
Quality
My general strategy has been to buy the cheapest components I can find and hope for the best, but splurge on quality tools (for soldering, etc.). This has worked quite well, whenever I deviated from this technique I was burned (from bad soldering iron tips or poor-quality solder wick), but I haven’t had any serious problems with the electronics components. Granted, I’m not stressing any of the components near their specifications, or building anything for production.
Your mileage may vary, I haven’t read this book yet but it was the best book of the 2011 according to Economist, Poorly Made in China: An Insider’s Account of the China Production Game, Paul Midler:
Conclusions
Overall, buying from China, mainly through Aliexpress, has been a positive experience, I’d recommend it to anyone. Indeed, I may have not gotten into the hobby of electronics to the extent I am without readily available inexpensive components from China.
