3 ms·
Professional here: I hate Amazon and die a little inside every time I hear about people buying electronic parts from them. So I am not trying to push an agenda
by exmadscientist 5y ago
Professional here: I hate Amazon and die a little inside every time I hear about people buying electronic parts from them.
So I am not trying to push an agenda when I say that they're fine for generic parts. You are probably not going to cry if your 0.25W resistor smokes itself at 0.2W instead of 0.3W like the name-brand part. Your random 1N4007 is probably still a 1N4007; it's not like they're hard to make. I wouldn't use it on a 999V line, but I probably wouldn't do that with a genuine 1N4007 either.
Where Amazon starts to get dodgy is when you are dealing with delicate parts: precision amplifiers, precision resistors... really, precision anything... or anything where you will need more of that exact thing in the future. You'll get something when you order from Amazon or AliExpress. It might even be the right something. But good luck getting it again later!
- dekhn 5y agoOK. This is a reasonable answer; Amazon is good for 95% of the market and you shouldn't attempt to use it to fulfill the remaining 5%. That's correct: I use digikey or mouser to order precision and power resistors (for the 5% of the time I need either of those instead of a generic cheapie). I use mcmaster for some parts that amazon doesn't stock (or what they stock looks dodgy). But over the years "what is precision" has changed. For example, I can buy micrometer stage on Amazon for $100 that is as accurate as the $10000 stage from 10 years ago. Also, I think most electronics parts are engineered with 3X so I wouyld expect my 0.25W resistor from amazon to smoke itself at 0.75W and the one from digikey at 1W.