During my Christmas shopping I browsed a lot of MP3 players and searched for the one that offered the most for the least amount of money that I had to drain from my bank account – which already suffered collateral damage from the pre-holiday shopping. Not surprisingly, I passed by several iPod look alike (why manufacturers aren’t confident enough to manufacturer their own style and design is a different story).

What caught my attention was a $23.95CAD lime green, 1 Gig, iPod Shuffle. Instinctively I said to myself, “what a bargain!” If you live in Toronto, you would know that a 1 Gig iPod shuffle sells for at least $84CAD in stores. But my excitement died when I realized it wasn’t a genuine iPod anything, just an imitation made in China. Nonetheless, I was stuck with the temptation to purchase an unknown brand that claims to perform all iPod functions at only ¼ the cost (without the warranty or guarantee that it’ll work and it wasn’t compatible with iTunes).

When I was living in South Korea, I was introduced to the imitation products that floated around Asia and guilty of buying shoes, socks, radios, and clothes. On average, I found that they weren’t durable, reliable, or in the case of electronics – bug free. However, I only needed to fork out change that I had after a meal and it didn’t interfere with my budget. And on that note it gave more satisfaction to make the purchase.

If I was to dissemble an iPod Shuffle and broke it into the components, which would be a silicon board, a few microchips, resistors, transistors, a memory stick, and a battery cell, I couldn’t possibly see the total cost exceeding $30CAD (probably a lot cheaper at bulk).

Is the cost of reliability and product branding worth the huge difference? For some, quality is everything. But in the end, it’s just an MP3 player and within 2-3 years you’ve bought something else that’s more portable and has more functions, and you’ll look back and ask yourself why you bought that MP3 player.

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