If you have an Amazon account, for example, and do a search for “gaming mouse”, you will see that hundreds of results appear for mice of unknown brands, and curiously many will be tremendously similar to each other. This is because they are rebranding peripherals , molds that are made in series in China and that manufacturers then customize in one way or another. Are these peripherals reliable ? And more importantly, are they worth buying?
It is surprising the amount of peripherals from rebranding that we can find in the market, and from unknown brands such as Tenmos, UtechSmart, Versiontech or Havit that are not at all known and less renowned. As they are not from a recognized manufacturer, they raise inevitable doubts about their quality, but they certainly come into your eyes because they are usually quite striking products … at least in the photos.
What is a peripheral from rebranding?
It is mandatory to first explain what a peripheral that comes from rebranding is. Rebranding literally means “rebranding” in English, and even if it isn’t literally like that, it makes some sense.
Imagine that a gaming mouse is designed, with its colors, PCBs, switches, etc. From that mouse a base is made with which they create molds , which are presented to the manufacturers and they introduce small modifications , such as changing the logo or adding some touches, almost always aesthetic. These devices often have software that is identical from the manufacturer, but most of these also personalize it with your logo or the corporate colors of your brand.
In this way, as they are mass-produced products and in large quantities , many unknown manufacturers can enter the market with very striking products and at low cost . So for example we can see gaming mice like the one in the image above that are sold for just 10 euros.
This is a much more common practice than you may think, and even manufacturers already somewhat better known such as Mars Gaming or BG do it. In fact, even the KROM brand did it in the past (right now they don’t anymore and make their own custom peripherals). To show a button: look at the software of the KROM Konor headphones, the Hiditec IKOS and the BG Xonar X6.
As you can see the software of these three headphones is exactly the same but they have personalized it with the colors of the brand and the name of the product, but essentially it is the same since the product is the same, but they have been rebranding.
Are these peripherals reliable? Are they worth it?
As we mentioned a moment ago, these peripherals are manufactured in series and in large quantities to save costs, but despite this it is quite frequent that their construction quality is quite poor and with cheap materials. Why else would they be sold so cheap? So, the answer is no, they are not reliable at all and in fact they tend to fail during the first weeks of use, although obviously you may also be lucky and last for years, but it is not normal.
As for whether or not they are worth buying, as always depends. If you want a product with a gaming aesthetic and that has some advanced functions but you do not want to spend a lot of money, they are certainly a good option because although they are not of good quality or very reliable, they are not bad products either. If you can buy for just 8-10 euros a mouse that will do almost the same as a Razer mouse that costs 100 euros, after all it will have been worth it, although then don’t be surprised if at 3 months it stops working properly.
In short, as always happens when we talk about hardware products (even if they are peripherals): if they are too cheap, be suspicious .