dupes are tempting because they're often so much cheaper than the original product, and sites like Teemu, AliExpress, Wish, and even Amazon have made them easier than ever to get your hands on. But how do they compare to the real thing? Let's find out. I replaced three of my core Tech products with Teu dupes for the week so you don't have to, as I hold them for you here. Like, can you tell which one is which? Quick, put your guess in the comments below. I used earbuds I got on Teemu for $11 in place of my $250 pair, a vacuum I got for $75 in place of my $570 one, and a hair styler I also got for $75 in place of my $600 one. I know you're wondering how well the dupes work, and I cannot wait to tell you. But first, let me clarify what a dupe even is because there are a lot of definitions floating around. First, a dupe isn't the same thing as a counterfeit, which is meant to trick you.

into thinking you're buying the real thing. It looks like the real thing, has the real brand name and logo, but it's fake. A dupe is a more affordable alternative to the real thing. It doesn't have the real brand name or logo, but you still might mistake it for the real thing, and that's because it may or may not look and work like the real thing. If that definition sounds broad, that's because it is. I like to think of dupes as a spectrum. On one end, closest to counterfeits, are products that do not work as well as the real thing but look nearly identical to it. These kinds of dupes have a special name, knockoffs. You might mistake a knockoff for the original, that is, until you try it. On the other end of the spectrum, closest to the real thing, are products that offer pretty similar results to the real thing and may or may not look like it. The rest of the products on the spectrum vary in how close their functionality and look are to the original. I like to refer to

anything on this spectrum that's not a knockoff as a dupe. Now that we've gone over the definitions, let's get into my experience with these Teu dupes because each one of them lands on a different part of the spectrum. So I have some concrete examples for you. I'm going to start with these earbuds, which I would call a knockoff, okay? Even though they look very similar, I could tell which one is which as soon as I picked them up. These earbuds are so much heavier than these. This one is from Teemu, this one is the pair I already owned. As far as how these earbuds sound, the more expensive earbuds sound clearer, the less expensive earbuds sound muffled. The sound quality just isn't as good. Like it is equally as loud, but this feels like the sound is like a part of me when I am wearing the more expensive earbuds. When I'm wearing the less expensive ones, it feels like I am listening to the audio.

through a third-party device. Does this make any sense? That's the best way I can describe it. I really wish that you could hear it yourself. Now, that was with having the more expensive earbuds on transparency mode. When I have them in noise cancelling mode, it literally feels like the sound is coming from inside of my brain. I am supposed to be able to switch between transparency and noise cancelling modes by pressing and holding the Teemu earbuds, but neither myself nor my colleague and earbuds expert Lexi Cides could get it to work. Hang on, I pressed and hold to do noise canceling, and it just turns on The Voice Assistant, which shall not be named. How off, I'm turning it off by accident. Hang on, no, there's absolutely not noise canceling. They just started playing when I didn't touch them. Four out of five is my rating. Also, after a few days of testing, I have some battery life data. My more expensive earbuds can last up to 6 hours on a

single charge. I found that around 2 hours and 10 minutes of use, the Teu earbuds start powering off when I have them in my ear, which I'm assuming means they're running out of battery. So, Teemu earbuds' battery life is not as long as the more expensive earbuds. After all that testing, I was still so curious why the Teu earbuds were so much lighter than my more expensive ones. Going to take the Dremel here, cut into this case. So, I sent them off to CET labs to see what was inside compared to my $250 pair for the knockoff of Teu battery inside the charging case. We're looking at 3.81 GS for the Branded charging case. Batteries are at 8.36, so more than twice the density there for the batteries. There's just a lot more components that are included here in the Branded case. You can see everything that is laid out here for the Branded tear down versus for the knockoff knockoff.

battery for each individual earbud. We have 6 G compared to branded 1.34. So a little over double so you could expect probably similar to twice the performance. Nearly all the components in the Branded gear were more than double the weight of what you would find in the knockoff. The drivers, the batteries, the main boards, all of the components, even the hinge was significantly different in weight between the Branded and the knockoff. Going back to our dupe Spectrum, I would call these earbuds a knockoff because while they look nearly identical to my more expensive earbuds, they do not work nearly as well. Even for $1, I can't recommend them. Next, let's talk vacuums. I've got the $75 one and the $570 one. Oh my gosh, how did this happen? That was definitely an accident and I definitely didn't just spill these sprinkles on the floor for the purpose of testing out these vacuums side by.

side okay okay. I have to bring you closer. I was running both vacuums on their low eco mode. Look at this sprinkle pickup. This was the less expensive vacuum. This was the more expensive one. I am really impressed. I feel like they both picked up pretty much the same amount of sprinkles. I'm going to keep testing this thing. I'm going to clean the rest of this floor up including all these Sprinkles with this [Music] vacuum. All right all right let's cut to the chase. This cleaned my apartment really well. Picked up all the little fuzzies all of the hair crumbs. Quite simply the teu vacuum cleaned my apartment just as well as the more expensive one normally does. Now unlike the earbuds the $75 vacuum doesn't look nearly identical to the more expensive one but because it delivers pretty similar results I would put it on the side of our dupe Spectrum closest to the real thing and I would buy it again even if I wasn't doing this.

experiment. Next, I really put the T3 Styler to the test by doing one side of my hair with that and one side of my hair with the $600 Styler. This tool is kind of giving off a weird smell. It's sort of a mix of like a chemical smell and a burning smell. That sounds really bad when I say it out loud. Thankfully, once I started using the barrel attachment, that smell went away. I feel like this side has slightly more body than this side, but if you didn't know that these were done by different tools, I don't think you can really tell a huge difference. I do think that the side from the more expensive Styler is looking more curled at the moment. This side has fallen slightly more, I would say. This one's like a 9 out of 10 right now, and this one's like a 7.5 out of 10 in terms of keeping the curl. The more I analyze it, the more I think this side is noticeably curlier than this side.

timu styler doesn't look identical to the $600 Styler, but it does look pretty similar. Going back to our dupe Spectrum, I would say this product lies somewhere in the middle because it does deliver slightly different results from the more expensive one if you're really paying attention. Now I don't think I would repurchase this one. I'd probably just buy the curler that my hairdresser uses on me at the salon because those curls always look pretty similar to the ones I get from the $600 Style Styler at around a $100 price point. As you can see, dupes vary widely in quality, but timu appears to be going strong. Anyway, marketplaces such as teu have very high revenues. For example, there is an estimate that in 2024 they may reach $50 billion in revenue. I spoke to Dr. Jose Mendoza, a clinical associate professor of marketing at NYU. He's an expert in dupes and says the people who buy them may be

sacrificing more than just quality. The packaging might look similar, the functionality is not the same, of course. It just gets attractive for consumers, and consumers might ignore, uh, in the short term, the consequences of supporting, uh, that industry. In 2023, nearly a third of US adults said they intentionally bought a dupe of a premium or luxury product, and more than half say that dupes aren't a major problem for brands. Juliet Facet would disagree. Oh, it destroyed my business, destroyed it, Facet invented Flippy alongside her husband. Flippy is a soft tablet stand with three different viewing angles for your device. Facet and her husband spent years prototyping before coming up with the design they patented in 2016. Two years later, Flippy got its big break when it was featured on QVC and sold more than a half a million dollars of product in 12 1/2 minutes. Put it wherever you want to get that perfect viewing angle to get the most out of your tablet. But just 3 months later, my

girlfriend called me and said, hey, there's a flippy ripoff on late-night television. When you need to get comfortable, you need pillow pad. And I said, okay, be you know, how could it be so soon? Faet says, ontel and telebrands, two companies owned by the same family and known for selling knockoff products, bought 29 flippy units on Amazon right after its QVC appearance. They just started manufacturing the product in massive, massive volume. Facet says, by summer 2019, the ontel pillow pad was in Bed Bath & Beyond, Target, Walmart, and other major retailers. Someone here in the Pacific Northwest bought one of the ripoffs, and the textile was not color fast, and she sent me an email complaining about her white duvet having been ruined by her red Flippy. And I had to explain to her that it's not my product. People could not tell the difference. Facet looked into suing ontel, but it would have required millions of dollars she didn't have. She thinks that's why companies like ontel and telebrands

target small businesses like hers. They know that we're not going to be able to withstand the litigation, so they just steal the products. At the time I'm filming this, none of the companies we've mentioned that have been involved in selling the Ontel Pillow Pad have responded to our request for comment. For its part, Teemu says it's introduced a enhanced brand protection Center. We now resolve over 99% of takedown notices within two working days. So will I buy dupes from Teu again? Probably not, simply because there was just too much of a range in results in the products I got. But will I continue to buy dupes in general? I will say I'm not opposed to buying products that would lie on the right side of our Spectrum, like that vacuum, to save money. In fact, c.com has a ton of great recommendations for budget products like these. But will I buy a knockoff again? It is a hard no from me. Juliet facet story with Flippy has underscored me how

damaging these knockoffs can be to the small businesses that worked so hard to create these products in the first place. My own experience with the earbuds showed me that these knockoffs don't work nearly as well as the real thing. Although I'm not going to order from Teemu again, I will be more careful when placing ERS on Amazon to make sure I'm not getting a knockoff or even a counterfeit product. There are some really easy steps that you can take if you're trying to avoid the same, no matter what Marketplace you're on. First, check the reviews. If all you see are positive reviews in five stars, the reviews are probably fake. Next, be wary of long shipping times. Brand name products typically shouldn't take months or even weeks to arrive. And finally, trust your gut. If a deal is too good to be true, it probably is. You may save a few dollars, but you may also be buying a knockoff that directly undermines the small business that worked so hard to create the original product.

experiment will definitely change the way I shop. And again, I tried it so you don't have to. Let me know your thoughts on dupes in the comments below, and thank you so much for watching.

Testing Temu Tech Dupes So You Don’t Have To

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