Even if you exclude the cost of shipping to purchase it, it becomes a significant risk if something were to go wrong and you needed to ship it back for repair.

Even if you exclude the cost of shipping to purchase it, it becomes a significant risk if something were to go wrong and you needed to ship it back for repair. Shipping it to the US and then back might involve not only stupid expensive shipping, but also having to figure out paperwork for both Australian and US Customs, unless you want to potentially pay double import-duties on each side. I did it with Lenovo laptops years ago, because buying from the US and with shipping it still worked out to be around 1/3 the price of buying it from the AU Lenovo store, and Lenovo had a Global warranty program on their Thinkpad line. Smaller OEMs without that, I wouldn't risk it.