Every day, people ask the same question: Where is the best place to buy my new Kodi box? Let’s discuss why you shouldn’t buy a Kodi box from China!
When you look to buy a new Kodi box, everybody asks themselves the same questions. Should I save a few dollars by ordering a Kodi box from China on a website like aliexpress or gearbeast? How do I know which brand is the best? Should I get from Amazon where shipping is clear? Let’s address these questions and I will give you MY opinion on what you should do.
Should I save a few dollars by ordering a Kodi box from China on a website like aliexpress or gearbeast?
Sites like aliexpress and gearbeast are filled with Kodi Android boxes, all running similar hardware and sold from individual retailers who use cryptic descriptions and claim to sell the best. Often times, these Kodi boxes are 10-30% cheaper than official branded boxes from North America, which is enticing to those looking to save a few bucks on a Kodi machine. Put simply, I would NOT buy one of these boxes for a number of reasons.
- Warranty is inconvenient or non-existent at all, so if you ever have any problems you will spend that 10-30% you saved just trying to get support.
- Products are sold by individuals who are buying Android boxes in bulk to make a profit, similar to eBay, so you have no control on quality or history of the product.
- Shipping can take a while from China, often two or more weeks.
- Listings often appear to be “official” models like G-Box or FireTV but with one letter changed to fool you into thinking you are buying something official.
- Parts are often OEM – meaning they are real parts used in actual Kodi boxes, but have failed factory acceptance, have been returned, or are of lesser quality. This is a huge reason why these boxes often fail quick.
- Cheap and illegal labor is often used in these factories making the boxes, which is why they are sold for a discount.
If you want to guarantee the quality of your new Kodi box, check out Amazon today and specifically the Kodi Tips Amazon store and do NOT buy a Kodi box from China. Kodi Tips has gone through and individually hand-picked popular Kodi boxes that are proven to be reliable and of high quality. All of your purchases will go through Amazon, but by using the Kodi Tips store, you can be sure that you aren’t getting a third-party rip off.
If you want to know which Kodi boxes is good for you, have a look at our review of some of the most popular Kodi box brands here.
If you have a Kodi box you believe is of high quality and should be mentioned on Kodi Tips, get in touch with us on Facebook and Twitter today!
I got my box from eBay here – https://goo.gl/tZAuIp
Best and cheapest place I have found 🙂
Tammy is from cableslash.com and we have ANDROID STREAMIN211 boxes available for 129.99usd.
Complete BULL! I am sorry but I have been using a variety of Chinese boxes for the past 6 years and HAVE never had a problem as far as reliability goes. I have used boxes that cost 20.00 usd to boxes that cost 130.00 usd and we even program them and sell them and have NEVER had a problem as far as one dying. Now we have had some boxes shipped to us that were not configured and ready to use but that’s why people pay us above retail as we configure it for them.
You can contact “sales at inphic dot cn” for reselling TV boxes.
Where do I buy android boxes to resell?
Rubbish article. Out-dated mindset. Good luck…
Of the top ten TV Boxes (Roku, Apple, NvidiaShield, X-Box 1, Chromecast, Chromecast 2, Slingbox 2), only one is NOT made in China. That one is Slingbox 2, made in California.
Your assumptions about products made in China are misplaced. I have been making thousands of TV boxes in China for the past year and my return rate has been under 5% for defective products. The boxes we have made there are first rate, with all of the best components available in the market today. The manufacturing labor isn’t so much the issue as are the availability of cheap quality components. I could build them here just as cheap as there, but I don’t have to.
Your Warranty argument carries no weight at all. We give customers a full one year warranty right here in the USA, with the option for up to 3 years.
The same goes for customer support. Not only my company, but many companies I know of offer very good customer support on their Chinese made boxes. And since our Support and Warranty are FREE, I see no validity in your reference to 10 – 30% Warranty recovery costs.
No control over the quality or history of the product? Because our products are made in China, they get checked for quality before they go into the box in China, and a second time when they arrive here for testing before going out to customers. Again, you are making assumptions that aren’t true for everyone, but you’re bashing all products made in China.
Shipping from China can also take a few days if you’re willing to pay for it. Besides, most of the shipping from China is Free. There are also numerous companies right here in the USA selling these Chinese products.
As far a the idea of naming products to sound like other products, I suppose there is some validity there. Most of it is American entrepreneurs. The M8, MXIII, etc… is a good example. How many resellers bought this box and relabeled it for resale??? Quite a few I would bet. The good news was that the MXIII Box was actually one of the best early entrants into the market, with an S802 Chip that did a good job of decoding. The worst of those boxes suffered from a lack of RAM (IMHO).
I realize that many people have pre-conceived ideas about what products made in China are going to be like. When I was a boy, we heard the same thing about products Made in Japan. In a mere 20 years Japan passed us and left us in the dust in manufacturing. Today China is doing the same thing. All I know for certain is that Americans want to keep buying cheap, easy to find electronics products and they don’t want to pay much for them. As long as that is the case, products will continue to be manufactured in China.
In the meantime, please don’t try to BS your readers into believing that just because they buy their products from Amazon, they are somehow not buying products made in China. That would not only be false, it would be a misleading lie.
Talk about junk, anything you get from China is the cheapest crap you can buy. And they don’t care if their product is good or not. Good luck if it works past a month.You might as well buy it from Iraq.
The message is buy from Amazon, otherwise they will not make any money, when they allow third parties to sell boxes that also import from China on their site.
It is true that most boxes are made in China, regardless of brand name, although it is possible that some of the major brands with reputations to keep may have access to stricter quality control.
Having bought a few of the popular chines names from the likes of Geekbuying/Gearbest, they do often require some form of Customisation to run half decently.
However, unlike the run of the mill Amazon etc style boxes that are limited to functionality on 1080p and below and often without little options such as optical out, the local chinese brands do push the boat out on hardware advances for HDMI 2 and 4k support etc
It is a shame though that the support of the boxes is not as good as some of the hardware that goes into them,otherwise they would wipe out many of the more well know brand names in an instant.
I have to add that I would be a little concerned when a website only wants to push one seller (Amazon in this sites case), which will make people hoping for an unbiased view to be a little cynical, so perhaps a more diverse supplier centric perspective is needed to give more confidence in an independent recommendation, rather than one that may give the impression that it is probably financially supported by a single vendor.
Thats where 99% are produced. LOL
correct me if Im wrong but unless you have a company over here in the US making them from scratch and not using parts from china, how are you getting NON China boxes. Thats where 99% are produced. Or are you just making people think you have a non china one when you actually do….