Numerous sites offer smartphones, tablets, laptops, wearables, smart home products, sound equipment, security cameras, and all manner of purpose-specific gadgets.
Finding one of these stores is as simple as searching for an online tech or electronics store in South Africa on Google.
But seasoned shoppers will know you always risk losing your money if you buy from a scam shop or get bad after-sales service from less effective operators.
Even with all their optimisations and anti-fraud measures, online advertisers and search engines can show ads for fraudulent players or rank them relatively high in their results.
Fortunately, platforms like Google, Facebook, and Hellopeter offer user-generated review systems.
While these should not be the only mechanisms through which to identify whether a shop is legitimate, they can help separate the wheat from the chaff.
MyBroadband recently compared the highest-rated online computer shops in the country and conducted a similar analysis of general online electronics stores.
This time, they looked at shops offering a broader range of tech and gadgets that extended well beyond PC components.
To be considered in the comparison, stores had to have a minimum rating of 4.0 out of 5.0 on Google and Hellopeter. That already disqualified larger stores like Takealot, Everyshop, Makro, and Loot. Aside from their comparatively poor ratings, these stores offer a much wider range of goods, which means not all their reviews are related to tech products.
To trim the list further, they only considered stores with 100 or more reviews on either Google or Hellopeter. That left seven stores remaining stores, for which they summarised Google, Facebook, and Hellopeter ratings in their table.
See https://mybroadband.co.za/news/it-services/484579-best-online-tech-stores-in-south-africa.html