Europeans: where do you buy electronic components?
I used to buy them cheap in AliExpress, but since the new european tariff it's ridiculously expensive, you'll pay dozens of times the prize of the product in tariffs.
Amazon and other big general retailers are ridiculously expensive as well.
Local buying is not an option because in my city there is not a single electronics shop.
Buying from small specialized online shops, the best option if it were not for the lack of selection, meaning that to order all you need for a project need to hit several shops and be buried in shipping cost.
What do you hobbyists do since ali is not an option anymore within the EU?
19 replies
Generic components from Mouser, Digikey, Farnell. Hobby specific modules from specialist shops like Tinytronics, Botland, Antratek, Gotronik.
I swear it's not a porn site but banggood.com also has pretty good selection and prices. Their quality is not the best but it was cheap enough I could buy 2 or 3 incase of getting a bad one and save money compared to buying 1 from most other sites.
Ooh that's a name I haven't heard in a while.
I haven't used them in years but I checked and site is still active
Doesn't Banggood also ship mostly from China?
It's been a while but IIRC you can choose China or EU warehouse. EU has less variety and higher prices but it's often worth it.
Yes. It has downsides but it's cheap if your prototyping something quick before designing the final product.
Yeah, but with the new tarrifs that's not an option really
One is mouser.com, ive bought stuff from them in the past. Theres a couple more Ive got bookmarked at home, Ill either update or reply with them later
You’ll just have to launder your purchases of Chinese parts through mouser or digikey like the big boys do.
E: try to be diligent when using farnell. They end up with weird shit sometimes.
It depends, for electronics i do mouse or digikey, but for drone parts i use either aliexpress or a local supplier
I have only simple needs so I've remained loyal to conrad.de since before AliExpress was a thing.
Reichelt is also pretty cool, usually cheaper than Conrad.
I buy from electronic shop or national online shop.
Why not? To my knowledge, the 3€ surcharge is applied by category, not item. So, if you're buying electronic components, you pay 3€, once.
I'm not a hobbyist but in Portugal Robert Mauser is a big player. Then there are the specialty shops, as you mention.
That doesn't seem to be how it's been implemented, at least going by the AliExpress subreddit.
Sadly the "categorie" thing is somehow misleading.
There are not a few dozen categories. There are thousands if not millions of categories. And electronics is surely not one category.
I think categories are defined by a 6 digits code in the tariff print, or something like that. And they are very granulated.
At the end, unless you are buying several of the same product you end up paying 3€ per product.
I (American) am also wondering because AliExpress just doesn't ship here anymore
This is gold