I Saved $1,260 Buying Tech Dupes. It Was a Journey Into the Shady Side of Shopping

Testing, reporting and writing by Jessica Fierro. Additional reporting and writing by Corinne Reichert.

I'm trying out a new pair of earbuds, and it's not going well. 

They're dupes, $11 replicas of the Apple AirPods Pro 2 that cost me $250. I was hoping to be surprised by how good they were for the price of a sandwich, but it turns out they're hardly usable.

These no-name earbuds, which look almost identical to Apple's version, don't have the features that were listed when I bought them through the discount online marketplace Temu. And after I finally connect them to my iPhone, they sound muffled. The song Us by Gracie Abrams and Taylor Swift plays, and the singers sound like they're underwater, or on another planet. I miss my AirPods.

At a staggeringly cheap price like $11, dupes like the earbuds are compelling, low-risk buys. We all love a bargain, right? That's especially true when sales like this week's Amazon Prime Day come around.

Bargain shopping is big business, and online discount outlets like Temu and competitors Shein, Wish and AliExpress offer much cheaper alternatives to thousands of products, from clothing and skin care to kitchen appliances and tech, like the earbuds I tried.

But not all bargains turn out to be truly good deals. Reddit is full of cautionary tales of people stunned by the poor quality of dupes, even when they're aware they're buying a knockoff. The "Temu Fail" tag has 104.9 million posts on TikTok, with people sharing videos about the duds they bought on the online marketplace.  

That's part of what drove me to buy those cheapo earbuds — I wanted to find out for myself if gear sold on Temu could be worth buying. I also bought a vacuum for $75 to compare with my $570 Dyson V11 vacuum, and a $75 hairstyling tool to compare to my $600 Dyson Airwrap. Altogether, the real things cost $1,420, while the dupes cost $160. That's a $1,260 difference (plus tax) and an amazing savings.

Temu, which is holding its own Prime Day competitor sale, is a revenue machine, built on selling much cheaper versions of everything you can think of — from clothes, shoes and bags to home decor, kitchen appliances, furniture and electronics — all shipped from China. Though it's not clear how much of what's sold there is a dupe, projected sales for this year are $37 billion.

Compare that with Amazon, whose net service sales for 2023 were $575 billion, and it seems like a drop in a bucket. But it's a staggering number when you consider that Temu has been around for less than two years. Shein, which is more focused on fashion, says it generated more than $30 billion during 2023. (By comparison, the counterfeit market globally is worth around $3 trillion, according to Jose Mendoza, a clinical associate professor of marketing at New York University.)

Those numbers may be why Amazon itself is reportedly planning to launch a new discount section for Chinese sellers to ship low-priced, unbranded fashion, accessories and gadgets directly to customers.

I'm sharing my experience with dupes to help boost your shopping IQ. I tested three products so I could compare how close these budget alternatives come to the originals, and whether they're worth your time and cash. 

It's familiar territory for me. I've tested dozens of tech products for CNET video reviews, examining and comparing high-end tablets, phones and wearables and breaking down all the specs you need to know before deciding on your tech buys. (In putting this article together, I worked closely with CNET's Corinne Reichert to build out the reporting to augment my own hands-on testing.)

But even if dupes are good enough to replace their more expensive counterparts, there may also be ethical considerations. In some cases, the products exist in a murky area between acceptable and dubious (at best), with serious consequences for small-business owners especially.

What actually is a dupe?

First, let's define dupes, which are different from counterfeits. A counterfeit product is meant to trick you into thinking you're buying the real thing: It looks similar, and it sports the brand name and logo when in fact it's a fake. In most countries, including the US, counterfeits are illegal.

Dupes aren't claiming to be the product they take after. They're clones, a more affordable alternative to the real thing. They may be sold under words like "similar to" and "inspired by," and they don't have the real brand name or logo, so they can be legal. "However, there is a fine line there, because this product might be infringing some trademarks, patents or intellectual property," says Mendoza. 

And a dupe may look and function like the actual item, so you might still mistake it for the original.

Temu says the listings on its site are created and managed by individual sellers, with a requirement to submit documentation and sign agreements that they'll comply with legal standards and respect intellectual property rights. Temu has also introduced an "enhanced brand protection center" and expanded its IP protection team. 

"We now resolve over 99% of takedown notices within two working days, which is much faster than the industry average," a Temu spokesperson said in an email.

Then there are knockoffs and alternatives. A knockoff is easily mistaken for the product it was inspired by, but you'll be disappointed by its performance or durability. Alternatives don't always look like a popular product, but they offer similar results.

Spoiler alert: I'd classify those $11 earbuds as a knockoff. They're shoddy, and I'm suspicious about whether they cross an ethical line. It's hard to know:  As Mendoza says, these cheaper alternatives can sometimes infringe on trademarks and intellectual property.

Maybe your first thought is that it's not so bad to buy a pair of $11 earbuds when you know tech giants like Apple have loads of money without your $250 for a pair of AirPods. But I spoke with small-business owners and learned about the pain they feel at having their hard work, original designs and intellectual property cloned and their prices undercut. 

"These companies — there's no way to stop them from stealing your IP," small-business owner Juliette Fassett says. She was telling me the story of how her tablet stand was clumsily reproduced for a cheaper price and sold by America's biggest retailers despite being patent protected. 

"This has been the biggest fight of my life," Fassett says. "It's been devastating and I'm physically surprised that I'm still alive, because of the stress."

Testing the earbuds dupe: Muffled, featureless sound

At first, I was impressed by the earbuds dupe. They look pretty much identical to the real thing. 

This part of my investigation really hit close to home for me. I listen to music basically every chance I get — commuting to work, taking daily walks, doing my makeup. And I love the advanced functionality my AirPods offer, like Conversation Awareness mode, which turns down what you're listening to and lowers background noise when you talk to someone. 

But my favorite thing about my AirPods is simple. It's how clear the audio sounds, and the fact that I can switch between transparency mode, which lets outside noise in (perfect for when I'm on the bus), and noise-canceling mode, which tunes outside noise out (perfect for when I'm vacuuming or drying my hair). 

So I was hopeful when I saw that the $11 no-name earbuds were advertised as switchable between transparency and noise-canceling modes.

Then I actually got hold of them.

First, the physical differences. The case for the no-name earbuds charges by Lightning cable, while my Apple case charges by USB-C. The no-name shines red while it's charging, and a white light shines through for a moment after you take it off the charger. The little dot on my AirPods case is the only thing that's illuminated while it's charging. My Apple case has a side loop for a strap; speakers at the bottom; and product info on the back, while the no-name case has none of those things.

As for the earbuds themselves, the $11 pair doesn't indicate which earbud goes in your left versus right ear. The outside speakers have a slightly different placement between the two pairs of earbuds. The cheap earbuds also sometimes flash red and I don't know why. At first I thought maybe the battery was low, but they were still flashing red while fully charged. On the whole, though, the two pairs of earbuds look very similar. 

But if you try using them for more than a minute, you'll be able to easily tell them apart. Like with my AirPods, you're supposed to be able to control your listening by pressing on the stem. But it doesn't always work. Pressing the earbuds to play or pause does work, as well as double-pressing to skip forward, but triple-pressing to go backward doesn't — that just turns up the volume.

When I took them out of the case and put them into my ears, the cheap earbuds also kept yelling "connected!" no matter how low my iPhone volume was set.

After being fully charged, at around two hours and 10 minutes of listening, the Temu earbuds would start saying "Power off" in my ear (also really loudly) and then turn off, which I'm assuming means they were running out of battery. My AirPods, in comparison, can last up to six hours on a single charge.

I also couldn't figure out how to turn noise-canceling mode on, and neither could my CNET colleague Lexy Savvides, who's an expert on earbuds. We found that the silicone tips on the earbuds did offer some noise isolation, but we don't think there's an actual battery-powered, noise-canceling mode on these earbuds. Pressing and holding, as the instructions said to do to switch modes, just activated Siri or turned the earbuds off. 

I also wish the cheap earbuds automatically turned off whatever I was listening to when I took one out, and then turned it back on when I put the earbud back in, like my AirPods do.

As for how the mic works for taking calls, I sound pretty muffled. My friends and family told me they couldn't catch every word I said when I was on the phone with them, and I accidentally hung up a phone call with my mom because I touched the wrong part on my earbuds while taking them out to switch to speaker phone for better audio.

The cheap earbuds also don't get as quiet as my AirPods, and they don't fit in my ear as well — they're not as snug, and they don't have that soothing coolness I've come to associate with my earbuds. Maybe it's because they feel more plasticky. 

They're so lightweight that it feels like if I drop one, it could break for good. That's another difference — if you break a $5 earbud, there's no Apple Care to help you out, and definitely no warranty. Yeah, they were only $11, so you could just throw them away and buy new ones. But that raises its own ethical questions about waste and overconsumption. (Note: When I went to look them up again, they'd already been discontinued, which goes to show how quickly products come and go on Temu.)

That's the real price of a dupe: Go shopping on Temu, and you'll rarely find quality mentioned. Instead, listings talk about the features (which may not even exist) and the low, low price.

I was curious if the battery had something to do with how much lighter the Temu earbuds are, so I sent them off to CNET Labs to see what was inside compared with my AirPods. Turns out the battery in my Apple 'buds has more than twice the density of the one in the dupe, and there are also a lot more components inside the AirPods. This means they're able to produce louder music, as well as separate the sounds, so the low-end sounds are going to be much better and the sound won't have that thin, tinny timbre; instead, AirPods have a very full sound in comparison.

I absolutely do not recommend these earbud dupes. Not only are they terrible, they're also very clearly knockoffs, which feels like an unethical purchase. Apple recommends purchasing AirPods from authorized resellers if you're after the real deal. We've also created a list of the best  legitimate budget alternatives for earbuds if you don't want to spend $250.

The vacuum dupe: Almost as good as the real thing

I use my Dyson V11 once or twice a week to clean my carpeted apartment. The things that I like about it are straightforward. Most importantly, it picks up all the dust, hair and crumbs that seem to accumulate way too fast throughout the week. I also love that the Dyson is lightweight and cordless (not having to unplug every time I switch rooms makes cleaning so much more efficient). 

Before I even used it, I could tell the Temu vacuum hit two out of those three priorities — it's also cordless and lightweight. So I was really interested to see if it could pick up debris just as well as the Dyson vacuum.

I bought the Orfeld Cordless Vacuum from Temu for $75, and though it does look similar to the Dyson, it wasn't nearly identical, like the Temu earbuds. It delivers pretty similar results to the Dyson vacuum, though, so I'd rate this at the good end of the dupes spectrum, furthest away from knockoffs.

The vacuum cleaned my apartment pretty much as well as the Dyson. I even spilled sprinkles on my rug to test the two vacuums side by side. I ran them on their lowest modes and they picked up about the same amount of sprinkles. Then I continued cleaning the rest of my apartment with the Orfeld vacuum. My roommate and I both felt the results were comparable.

I brought both vacuums to CNET's San Francisco office to test them on hard flooring, and I found that the Temu vacuum is maybe a little less efficient on that kind of surface. I spilled cereal on the floor (apologies to my colleagues) and found that I had to go over the same patch of flooring a few more times with the Orfeld to pick up all the cereal. But with the price difference, I feel that's a fair deal.

The Orfeld vacuum head isn't as wide as the Dyson's, so it covers a little less surface area and, consequently, takes a bit longer to vacuum a room. It comes with similar attachments, although I wish it came with a mini vacuum head attachment, because I like to use that for my couch. I didn't test every attachment, but the ones I normally use (normal vacuum head and crevice head) generally worked just as well. 

The Orfeld vacuum has two power modes: normal and max. Max power mode does feel like it suctions a bit more to my carpet. My Dyson has three power modes: eco, auto and boost. Auto mode detects what type of surface you're vacuuming and adjusts accordingly, which is cool, though not something I find myself using in my mainly carpeted apartment. 

Both vacuums are super flexible, which I like — the heads can turn from a horizontal to vertical position when they're on the ground. Both vacuums can also operate at 180 degrees to get into hard-to-reach areas.

I like that with the Orfeld, you don't have to keep the button pressed down the entire time to use it, like I have to with my other one. I also like that it has a light.

I would repurchase and recommend a vacuum like the one I got via Temu, because I was very happy with the results. It feels like a more ethical purchase because it lies on the other end of the spectrum from knockoffs — it's not trying to be the more expensive, brand-name product, it just feels like a budget alternative. 

Temu has such a range of products, and I'd compare the Orfeld vacuum more to the low-end, budget vacuums sold at Target and Walmart than I would to the high-end $570 Dyson. Unlike the earbuds, which disappeared from Temu within a week or so of me buying them, this exact vacuum is still being sold, which I feel speaks to it not being a knockoff or counterfeit product. It also comes with a 24-month warranty, and customer service from Orfeld.

The hairstyler: Not quite close enough

As for the Dyson Airwrap, I use it basically every time I wash my hair, which is two to three times a week. It comes with various attachments — I use the straight brush the most — but I do love using the barrel attachment for special occasions, and the curls are always, as the kids say, giving. I used it for my college graduation photos, and I use it when I have to do in-person presentations. 

Some disclaimers: I haven't used the styler I bought off Temu ("Provided by Shenzhen Bolesic Electronic," the Temu listing says) for long enough to tell whether it'll damage my hair. (Dyson says its Airwrap doesn't damage your hair, and my hairstylist agrees.) I also didn't test every attachment — there are six included in the Shenzhen-provided styler set — and some may be more or less similar to Dyson's. So, having used the dupe styler for only a limited time, and given what I know about the barrel attachment that I was most interested in, here's what I can say.

To keep things fair in testing (and so I could get a really clear idea of how these hair tools compare), I did one side of my hair with the $75 styler and one side with the $600 Dyson Airwrap.

The $75 styler gave off a weird odor, sort of a mix of a chemical smell and a burning smell, which isn't ideal for something you use on your hair. Thankfully, once I started using the barrel attachment, that smell went away. Though I worried at the time about it burning my hair, it didn't occur to me until later that there could've been a fire hazard. The product does come with the requisite warning labels, like every other hair tool out there, so I wasn't concerned about electrical shock. 

I blasted my hair with 30 seconds of hot air and 30 seconds of cool air. I prepped it with mousse and used hair spray on all the curls multiple times (my natural hair doesn't hold a curl very well, even when I'm using my $600 styler). I like that on the Dyson Airwrap, I can switch between hot and cold air and turn the styler off all from the same button. With the $75 styler, I have to press two separate buttons, which slows things down a little. 

The side I styled with the $600 tool gave me slightly tighter curls immediately after styling, but you probably would've been able to tell only if you were really paying attention. After four hours, the curls styled by the dupe were noticeably looser than the Dyson curls. After eight hours, both sides of my hair were looking significantly less curly, but the dupe-styled curls had fallen much more than the Dyson ones. 

I wanted an outside perspective, so I asked my CNET colleague Faith Chihil what she thought. She said the dupe-styled side looked good but noticeably looser. When I told her the pricing difference, she said she'd buy the cheaper one and just take more steps to try to increase the longevity of the blowout (for example, pinning the curls to set them or adding more hair spray). 

As for the device itself, the $75 styler doesn't look identical to the $600 Dyson, but it's pretty similar. Going back to our spectrum of dupes, I would say it lies somewhere in the middle, because it does deliver slightly different results than the more expensive tool, if you're really paying attention. It does have a 12-month warranty.

When I asked Dyson about the vacuum and Airwrap dupes, the company noted that, at face value, copycat products can be hard to distinguish from the originals because they can mimic the product design and coloring. How they work and how they hold up is a different matter.

"Copycats are intended to confuse consumers into thinking they provide the same performance, experience and quality," Dyson said in its emailed statement. "However, they do not use Dyson's patented core technologies and consumers may be disappointed when they find these products do not produce the same results."

I will say that I love my Dyson. But if it ever breaks, I probably won't buy another one, because the product is so expensive (it hurts me to look at that $600 list price). That said, with the differences between the dupe and the original in mind, I probably wouldn't buy the off-brand styling tool again either. With an eye on budget, I'd rather find an alternative hairstyling product, like perhaps the curling iron my hair stylist uses on me at the salon, which could give me similar curls to the Dyson but at a price point of about $100.

The problem of product infringement

Dupes span thousands of products, from high-end cosmetics to perfumes and colognes to sporting equipment. But electronics like earbuds and smartphones from top brands are being counterfeited and duped the most, according to Mendoza, the NYU professor.

Amazon has a Counterfeit Crimes Unit for small businesses to report counterfeits being sold on the site and aims to remove any that pop up. It prohibits bootleg, fake or pirated products and content; illegally replicated, reproduced or manufactured products; and any products infringing on intellectual property rights, Amazon's anti-counterfeit policy says.

"We act quickly to protect customers and brands, including removing listings and blocking accounts," an Amazon spokesperson said in an email. Amazon also uses machine learning to scan product listings daily for "keywords, text and logos which are identical or similar to registered trademarks or copyrighted work."

Like Amazon, Temu makes money selling cheaper alternatives to everyday items. But Temu works with a very large number of very small manufacturers that sell directly to consumers, Mendoza says, making it more difficult to play Whac-A-Mole with the constant dupes that pop up. 

The price of those products may be a bargain for shoppers. The true cost of dupes, though, may be passed along to those who came up with the original product.

Abigail Rosilier, who founded phone case company Abbyrose out of her parents' garage at age 17, says sites like Shein see so much demand that they need to "steal" other people's designs to keep up with it. Rosilier alleges her designs were knocked off by Shein, with the site's pricing undercutting hers. 

"It's always a weird feeling because you can't really do anything about it," Rosilier says, when she describes seeing products that look just like hers being sold for a much lower price on Shein. "I don't have the money to launch a lawsuit against them, so I just have to suck it up."

Rosilier, now 22, runs the family business out of Lubbock, Texas, and has a whole host of designers working for her so the company can release new phone cases every week. 

She employs dozens of people, so any hit that her small business takes from bigger companies impacts multiple livelihoods. In videos posted to social media, Rosilier shows off four phone cases that she said were being sold on Shein, comparing them to her own. The designs were eerily similar.

"What they're doing is finding what's selling online, and finding what people are liking and engaging with. So their 'research' and way of designing is just looking at other people's work and what's selling," Rosilier says. 

Shein says it "takes all claims of infringement seriously" and is continuing to work on its review process while requiring all its suppliers and sellers to comply with policy and not infringe on intellectual property rights.

Rosilier turned the knockoffs being sold by Shein into a positive by posting about them on her TikTok account, where the clip went viral, gaining millions of views. This corresponded with a spike in her sales to the tune of several thousand dollars per day, as well as a boost in new followers, she says.

But not everyone is so lucky.

The murky ethics of dupes

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, according to a survey by analyst Morning Consult.

But Juliette Fassett would disagree.

"It destroyed my business, destroyed it," she says. 

Fassett is an inventor and businesswoman who spent years alongside her engineer husband prototyping Flippy, a soft tablet stand that gives you three different angles for viewing your device, before coming up with the design that they patented in 2016.

Two years later, Flippy exploded on a QVC appearance, selling more than half a million dollars of product in just 12 and a half minutes. Fassett says that within two weeks, Ontel and Telebrands, which are owned by the same family, bought a total of 29 Flippy units on Amazon. And then in early March 2019, Ontel began airing its commercials for a Flippy dupe it had developed.

By the summer of 2019, the Ontel Pillow Pad was on the shelves of Bed, Bath & Beyond, Walmart, Target, Amazon and other major retailers across the United States. Fassett says it's much harder to recover when America's biggest retailers are selling knockoffs of your product.

"Shein and Temu are scary enough, but I think when you layer that in with the embeddedness of big retail and the trust that Americans put in US big retail companies, that just wipes out an entire section of our economy," Fassett says. "It becomes all just this crap firehose from factories in China directly into the American home."

Fassett alleges that sales of the unlicensed product have amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars that didn't go to her company. Her business, she says, has been struggling to stay afloat since the initial sales rush.

"They just started manufacturing the product in massive, massive volume," Fassett says. "Even if you can muster the wherewithal to get attorneys and money to fight, the damage is done before you can effectively do anything about it."

Walmart and Target haven't responded to our request for comment on the sale of the Ontel Pillow Pad. Bed, Bath & Beyond, which filed for bankruptcy in 2023, couldn't be reached. Ontel and Telebrands also haven't responded.

Dupe-ious quality

Not only are dupes usually made with lower-quality materials, Mendoza says there's also the aspect of warranty, service and support. Buying the cheaper version isn't going to come with the same customer service or guarantees as buying the real thing.

"It gets enticing for many consumers on trying these new products ... with such a big price gap," Mendoza says. "The packaging may look similar, [but] the functionality is not the same." 

Unboxing a dupe of her patented iPad stand, Fassett makes a face. "It's like a piece of garbage when it comes out of the box. ... It smells bad, too." 

She's referencing that strange, chemical smell you might find when you buy a cheaper product from an online marketplace, which she attributes to "off-gassing" — when the chemicals from manufacturing are released into the air when you unpack a lower-quality product.

"The reason my product doesn't smell when you get it out of the packaging is because I'm using better materials," Fassett says.

As for the quality of the original dupes of her Flippy product, Fassett tells a story of someone who bought an Ontel Pillow Pad, not realizing it wasn't her Flippy.

"Someone here in the Pacific Northwest bought one of the rip-offs, and the textile was not colorfast. And it bled red onto her white duvet," Fassett says. "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."

Rosilier has similar stories, saying that in a quality comparison test she did of the phone cases on TikTok, hers were stronger and held up far better than the cases being sold on Shein. But she says a lot of people continued defending the dupes in comments on her post.

"Of course, all the comments were like: 'You're bending Shein's way harder than you're bending yours. That's unfair. You're obviously putting more pressure [on it].' I'm not! This is a flimsy case, and this is my protective rubber case," Rosilier says. "People were pretty heated about the comparison."

Should you buy dupes?

So, is buying dupes worth it? I wouldn't buy dupes from Temu again, simply because there was too much of a range in results with the products I got. Knockoffs are also a hard no because they hurt small businesses — and they just aren't any good, anyway (I'm cringing thinking back to those cheap earbuds yelling "connected!" in my ear).

For me personally, it's difficult to support this industry.

And I'd urge all of you to be conscientious shoppers. That doesn't mean passing up legit bargains. But a good place to start is to ask yourself why a given product is so cheap and to dig a little into the product listing. 

"It's really hard to appeal to people to do the right thing when they don't know," Fassett says. "All they see is the price difference. ... In general, people don't give a rip. They just want to save their 10 bucks and get on with their lives."

It may be an uphill battle: There are subreddits specifically to help people find dupes of products. And unless you're directly searching on a term like "earbuds dupe," you may not even know you're participating in and supporting the dupe marketplace.

But if it's a lower-cost product and you have the time, do the research on where the store you're buying from is sourcing and designing its products, where and how they're produced, and whether the seller is participating in the dupes industry. 

"It's kind of a stab in the chest for us [when people buy dupes], because we do scout people who design; get all the machines ourselves; spend all day working and providing for ourselves," Rosilier says. "So it does affect us, because you are choosing to support a company who's stealing things, rather than us, who's working all day to create these things."

Fassett was successful in getting Amazon, Shein and Target to stop selling the Flippy knockoff, and she's working with Temu now. Temu says it took immediate action after receiving the complaint about Flippy in its IP protection portal, and removed the infringing product listings — and that it's "continuing to proactively identify and prevent the listing of potentially infringing products."

But the Ontel Pillow Pad is still being sold by some major outlets.

Fassett's Flippy story has underscored for me how damaging knockoffs can be to the small businesses that worked so hard to create the original products. And my own experience with the earbuds showed me that knockoffs don't work nearly as well as the real thing.

I'm not opposed to buying something that would lie on the right side of our spectrum, like that vacuum, to save money. But if a product is a knockoff, I can't do it. 

This experiment will definitely change the way I shop, and again, I tried it so you don't have to. Be smart, educate yourself and don't just go cheap for cheap's sake.

Video Executive Producer | Andy Altman

Video Producers | Jessica Fierro, Chris Pavey, John Kim, Celso Bulgatti

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