Buying a Laptop in China

[roddy]

Was asked to advise a friend, ended up writing a longish email, figured it might as well be edited into a post here. I'm kind of offering this as a first iteration - it's been years since I bought a laptop in China myself, and this probably shouldn't be treated as gospel as there are bits I'm hazy on myself.

Step 0: Is it better to buy a laptop in China or overseas?

Depends. Warranties, power supply, OS language, manuals - all need to be considered. Even if you have an international warranty, will there actually be anywhere local to do repairs? Cost is obviously also an issue - do your price checking on both Chinese and local sites. Assuming you choose China, or have no choice:

Step 1: Choosing a laptop.

Do this online, in your native language, or maybe in Chinese if you know your 硬盘 from a 赢盘. Read reviews, figure out what's important to you, then narrow it down as much as possible. If you then need to try a few hands-on, then head out to your local computer emporium (more later), make it clear to sales people that you're definitely buying but you don't know exactly what yet, and tap away on a few keyboards and gaze at a few screens. Once you've decided don't buy immediately unless you've already done Step 2, and ignore 'today only' offers. Everyday is today.

Step 2: Price-checking.

You do NOT want to go out shopping not knowing what you should be paying. Asking three sellers and assuming the lowest is the 'right' price is not the way to go. At this stage you do need to delve into the Chinese Internet, using sites like zol.com.cn, it168.com and pcpop.com to check the 报价 (quoted prices) for laptops from a range of sellers. Here's the 报价 page for a Lenovo Thinkpad. Note the cities listed at the top - check for local prices. Also look at Ebay equivalent Taobao.com. Amazon.cn has a limited range also.

Step 3. Buying your laptop

Any Chinese city will have some kind of 电脑城 or 电子城 - a computer or electronics 'city', a multi-storey market of individual sellers of everything from mp3 players to consumables to computers. Buying a laptop here can be overwhelming as they're often very busy (if at all possible, go during the week), noisy, and lots of people are talking to you in Chinese about computery things.

Assuming you've got your price-checking right, the cost of your laptop shouldn't be too far off what you expect. There's not much more scope for negotiation, but you may get a few percent off, or have some accessories thrown in - a mouse and bag, a RAM upgrade at cost or close to it, etc.

Legit and grey market (行货 and 水货). There are tarrifs on imported electronics, and even if a laptop has been made in China, it may be classed as imported as far as customs are concerned. 行货 means legitimate products, 水货 are basically smuggled one way or another. However, that doesn't mean a 水货 laptop is destined to fall apart or break - it just means the tarrif hasn't been paid. Watch out for warranty issues though.

Receipts: You need to look for two kind of receipts. A tax receipt will specify how much has been spent, where, and on what generally - 'computer products' for example. You should also have another, likely hand-written, receipt specifying the computer model. If you needed to come back to the seller and prove that you bought this machine, here, that's what you need. Foregoing a tax receipt can result in a discount - specify from the beginning if you need one or not.

Buying Online

There's no reason you can't buy a laptop online - Taobao.com, Amazon.cn, contacting a seller via the 报价 pages and having them deliver it. If you know exactly what you want, this may well be the easier option.

So, who wants to pull that apart?

Caveat: If you've found this page because you're looking at buying a laptop FROM China while you're overseas - avoid any too-good-to-be-true cheap electronics deals. They're good-enough-to-be-scams.

[gougou]

Warranties, power supply, OS language, manuals

Also the keyboard layout if your country does not use the English standard.

[HarryCallahan]

When I was in BJ I bought a camera at the inner city electronics mall (forget name, not zhongguancun), that experience wasn't too bad and I did manage to match taobao.

I wanted a PDA also but never ended up getting one. Problems were:

- my lack of Chinese.

- the units OS language being Chinese (camera not a problem).

- the nightmare of navigating Zhongguancun. Taobao requires Chinese.

- price, in typical phoneshops they want about 6000-7000 for what costs 4000 on taobao (and should cost that). Never could work that out.

- chinese models. Didn't want a Dopod, or other branded device. Original HTC desired.

- shops lacking newer models (e.g. Diamond 2)

Back in Australia bought a Diamond 2 from a Hong Kong seller on eBay, English version, good price, delivered in 3 days, seller has great feedback (i.e. safe trade).

IMO... apart from fake brand clothing don't buy anything in China if you can get it overseas!

[Scoobyqueen]

I went to 中关村 last year to see what was on offer. I knew excactly the specs I wanted but the absolutely lowest price they were able to offer was still over 15 percent what it would have cost in Europe. They were shocked when I mentioned how much the same pc cost in Germany and were unable to drive the price down any lower.

[Mouseneb]

I've now bought two laptops from Dell China, one a few years back and one a few months ago. I'm pretty happy with the experience. Plenty of English help, got legitimate copies of windows in English, as well as a good warranty.

The process had changed since I bought the first one, but here's my most recent experience. Go to Dell's hong kong website and build the computer you want. Contact a representative through the website and explain that you are an English speaker living in (podunk town) China, and you would like to order from Dell China, but need English help. That was no problem. The HK rep was able to take the order from the HK website, send it over to the Dell China people, and have them build and ship the computer.

Payment was a bit of an issue as we wanted to use our Bank of China account rather than an international credit card. We had our representative send us over an email about what we needed to do in Chinese, which we printed and brought to our local branch of the Bank of China. There it caused much consternation, and much filling out of forms, conferring with other bank employees, ripping up of filled out forms, filling out of new forms, calling of the HK Dell representative, ripping up of new forms, filling out second copies of original forms plus three more, etc. You know, the typical bank experience. At the end of that long day we inquired about getting a Bank of China credit card and were told that foreigners were simply not allowed.

In the end though, the money was transferred, the computer was sent and arrived even sooner than we had expected it. Hooray!