alt Hacker NewsMy post is the nuance, and as a buyer/user of GPD, Minisforum, and Xiaomi products I respectfully disagree.
Chinese companies are not on par with Western ones. The QA, safety measures, hazard compliance, warranty, or even proper English (they use an online translator service) isn't there. Cha bu duo is an accurate description of Chinese products.
From the link you send they offer 7 days return policy. In EU you got 2 weeks, legally enforced. Companies like Amazon offer even a month. Then they have a restock fee of 15%. This is AFAIK allowed (if proportional to the damage to the product) but it does not seem proportional. Companies like Amazon don't do this. And Amazon isn't great; they have a lot of cheap Chinese dropshipping brand. Then they often lie in China as well. They claim leather, when you buy it it is fake leather.
Cha bu duo can be good enough if you are on a tight budget, or if the product isn't available otherwise (how I ended up with GPD Pocket 2 back around 2018). But I have personally witnessed how Xiaomi smartphones fucked up a mid sized non-profit who dealt with very sensitive personal details. They went for budget, ended up with a support nightmare, and something which shouldn't be GDPR compliant. Cause yeah, spyware and bloatware is another issue.
Furthermore, Framework sell to Western countries.
Replies
> proper English (they use an online translator service)
Pet peeve: why should I care ?
People take grammatical errors as some ultimate gotcha and indicator of character flaw. I don't pay for the marketing nor value that they asked 3 translators to double-check each other to have flawless text for the damn first boot guide of a computer.
I see it the same as Framework's shaky YouTube presentations: they couldn't bother hiring a cameraman for their product presentations. What does that say about their computers ? To me absolutely nothing. I'll still buy one if it sounds nice enough.
> 7 days return policy.
It's from delivery.
For comparison, framework offers 30 days, but from shipping. Which means if your laptop takes more than a month to get delivered for whatever reason you virtually have no return window.
https://knowledgebase.frame.work/what-is-the-framework-retur...
> Cha bu duo
I hear you, but this is all relative to a market. There's no maker I can blindly trust whatever the country they operate in, and if we're going for cultural generalizations I'd set Tesla as the poster child of US manufacturers at this moment.
All in all, I get why we should be wary about Chinese makers. It's just the same reason we should be wary of every other makers, including those who'll screw their customer base on any other aspect that won't get picked up by a review (repairability has been one of these. Compatibility, durability, vendor lockin, standard parts etc. are other aspects.
> Cha bu duo is an accurate description of Chinese products.
Didn’t realize companies like DJI, BYD, CATL, Insta360, and Anker have a fail fast, fail early mentality.