The Art of Buying any Electronic Gadget
This article is for those who finds it difficult to explore and buy new gadgets.
Ever confused or stuck while buying any electronic gadget ? There are various reputed brands and their promising products available in the market. It’s challenging in a different ways to select the right product. Reading this article might help you next time whenever you stuck while buying any electronic gadget.
The art lies in the appropriate approach and the basic understanding about the gadget you want to buy. If you don’t have much technical knowledge or the specification understanding, about hardware or software related terms of the gadget you want to buy, then the simple and straight forward thing to do is just get the basic knowledge enough to understand what you should be looking for in the gadget you need. You can always find such basic information on the internet. You are just one google search away from the basic knowledge or the information about the gadget. You can also find results understandable to any non-technical person from many sources, for this you might have to go through couple of more searches on the internet via any search engine like Google. It’s always a good practice to know about the features, specifications and other things provided/offered by that product and what are its benefits.
Online shopping has enabled us to explore more and more products online;check their prices, specifications/features, reviews, ratings,etc. Not only this, but we can also check the most sold and popular products in the specific category. These many details and information not only does help but also confuses us. Like you had different brand in your mind but either specifications or price doesn’t satisfy your requirement or some other brand is providing same or more features under the budget. In some cases there are multiple brands available in option that you might be interested in looking into, sometimes you are looking for a product you don’t have much knowledge about (For example, hardware specifications of a router). In the end what you want is the right product that satisfies your need.
How to find the right product ?
There are two main parameters about which you must be very clear about - Budget and Requirements. Requirements does not mean just hardware or software requirements, you must know about the expected performance, usage, situation and environment (in some cases) in which you want to use the gadget, etc.
Once you are clear with the budget and requirements, next important step is to know that whether you want to explore with specific brands only or not. In most of the categories, it is better to go with specific brands only, like Mobiles, Laptops, Camera, Television, or Home Appliances as we expect long and good service in return. In some categories like Headphones, Speakers, Powerbanks, Smartwatches, we can try new brands by exploring different features offered by them. If you are planning to buy a gadget that is expensive or you are planning to use it for longer period then I would highly recommend to go with specific brands which are reputed not only locally but globally. If you have specific brand in mind then it becomes very easy and clear to select the product satisfying the budget and requirements as it’s easy to explore in single brand where you don’t have to look at hundreds of options.
If you have some or none brands in your mind than you must explore for the required gadget on online stores or google where you will find hundreds and/or thousands of results for the gadget you are looking for. If you are exploring on online stores then you can apply filters there based on your requirements and shortlist the search result, if you are googling it then search in this manner — “Best <name of the gadget> in <your country name>” and here you can also search under the budget or requirement by just appending it with the above query — “Best <name of the gadget> in <your country name> under <amount>/<other -requirement>”.
Note : Always cross-check and verify popularity and ranking of gadgets on trusted or multiple websites. By checking on multiple sites you will get pretty good idea about the top trending brands and products which makes it easier to go with specific brands in some cases when you don’t have much idea about the brands offering and has the required product/gadget.
Later, shortlist the gadgets from the list or results that satisfy your requirements and are convincing to you. Take at least 2–4 gadgets for consideration. It will not only give you more options but also the idea about the present and missing features from the others and what you should be looking for.
Now, the most important task begins -
- Benchmarking : This is the most common and an important way to find out the best product(gadget) from the shortlisted products. Benchmarking is the process in which we compare two or more products against each other to find the best product from the list of shortlisted products. Note down the features and specification offered by each product and compare them to find the product which is more suitable for you and offers better set of features and quality. Many online shopping websites now offer this feature to compare multiple products against each other side-by-side by using the same set of parameters of the products and their description, features, specifications and prices.
2. Product Reviews : When you find the most convincing product(s) then before finalizing it’s very important to check the ratings and reviews of the product. By this, you will get direct idea about the quality, performance, usability, etc of the product directly from the users who have already bought that product and using/used it. You can cross-check the reviews and rating on the multiple sites to ensure the reviews are from genuine or verified user. For example, you can find the reviews and ratings of the products on almost every online shopping websites like Flipkart, Amazon, Official Brand sites, etc. Not only this, you can always check the review of the product on YouTube where you will find many professionals who uploads full review video of the product there. Some YouTubers or channels also include the comparison of the product with other competitive products available in market and gives us more detailed idea by directly using those gadgets in front of the camera so that you can get more detailed information and live visual understanding of the gadget that how its performance is and the usability of that product.
*Always check the reviews uploaded most recently.
3. Service Quality in your region : It is very important to make sure about the service quality in your region provided by the brand. Doesn’t matter how good the brand is and you heard about how good the service it provides, if the brand doesn’t have it’s service center in your region or the service provided in your region is not good then it might be not a good idea to choose the product of that brand. Specially the cases where you are looking to buy Home Appliances, Laptop, Mobile, etc as at any point in future you might need the service for the product if anything happens to the product. Many times this happens that even globally reputed brand fails to provide better service in some areas due to various reasons. Sometime the Service Center is not located locally but you can still get the good quality of service if you reach the nearest service center on your own carrying the product. But today everyone wants the home service or the service available locally is always preferable. You will not face this kind of issue if you are in a big city, such issue generally rise in the areas which are not much developed.
Now, if you have found the product which passes the Benchmarking, has positive reviews, satisfies all your requirements then you can definitely go with the selected product as by this point you have studied and compared all the competitive products from the same or different brands and you have pretty much good idea about the offerings from each shortlisted product.
I hope you have enjoyed this article and it will help you next time you will be buying any gadget. If you have any suggestion or point do comment and share it with me and other readers. Thank You
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