Beware of fake Victron eqpt (and others)

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MisterB

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enough to know i shouldnt touch things i know nothing about ....
Hmm...interesting that The mttp solar controller is an exact rip copy of the Victron one. However, it seems you cannot buy anything via the site. No prices. Contact only via email or phone and the phone number is in China. Not sure how you came across that site - quite a random one!
 
VXman said:
Hmm...interesting that The mttp solar controller is an exact rip copy of the Victron one. However, it seems you cannot buy anything via the site. No prices. Contact only via email or phone and the phone number is in China. Not sure how you came across that site - quite a random one!
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diysolarforum.com

DIY Solar Power Forum

Love building DIY solar electric projects? Come hang out :D
diysolarforum.com diysolarforum.com

its a forum 'run' by will prowse - anyone who has thought of dabbling in their own battery builds etc will know how much testing etc he does !!!
 
They do look very similar for sure, on their web site they say;

"A lot of times, customers always ask, "Do you make products for Studer/ Victon/ OUTBACK ?" No, we are Wenzhou Xihe Electric Co.,Ltd., we only produce our own brand fangpusun.

To put it simply, we are a Chinese factory, taking advantage of China's low labor cost, We import electronic accessories from Korea, Japan and the United States to produce intelligent MPPT solar charge controller and pure sine wave power inverter with the same construction and function as original brands, so as to provide users with top brand solar products at competitive prices".

Then on the Victron community page somebody said;

"I have tested the fangpusun mppts, most of the range and also pulled them apart to compare against victron

I gotta say I was very impressed to the point that I think China might manufacturer these for victron to sell or did at some point

You can not find a differance in the pcb layout, components and even the injection molding is identical

You couldn't reverse engineer them that good without some sort of slight change and besides why would you spend that much time and money and not change it slightly so it's your own make".
 
Most of this sort of stuff is made in China these days. Even the stuff that is apparently high quality and has fancy branding. Do sone digging to find where your high end bit of kit is really manufactured, not where it was designed or where the company is based. Even Iphones, that paragon of western technology have long been made in China.

It’s no biggie. Yes they produce sone garbage, but, as the iphones and the Victron and Renogy kit shows, they are clearly, obviously and of course more than capable of producing decent kit. Theirs is the country and economy that will absolutely dominate the 21st century.

Only the heavyweight trade blocs that can punch at the chinese economic weight will be able to resist the onslaught - the US, the EU. All other economies not at least part of a loose trade based association (ie Mercosur, Asean etc) will be steamrollered and flooded with more of the garbage. Yes, this does now include stupid old Brexit Britain. Sorry.

In Mandarin there is an expression, if you pay a penny, you will get a penny’s worth of product.

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dawsey said:
Most of this sort of stuff is made in China these days. Even the stuff that is apparently high quality and has fancy branding. Do sone digging to find where your high end bit of kit is really manufactured, not where it was designed or where the company is based. Even Iphones, that paragon of western technology have long been made in China.

It’s no biggie. Yes they produce sone garbage, but, as the iphones and the Victron and Renogy kit shows, they are clearly, obviously and of course more than capable of producing decent kit. Theirs is the country and economy that will absolutely dominate the 21st century.

Only the heavyweight trade blocs that can punch at the chinese economic weight will be able to resist the onslaught - the US, the EU. All other economies not at least part of a loose trade based association (ie Mercosur, Asean etc) will be steamrollered and flooded with more of the garbage. Yes, this does now include stupid old Brexit Britain. Sorry.

In Mandarin there is an expression, if you pay a penny, you will get a penny’s worth of product.
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I understand all that, the thing is if you purchase from a reputable British supplier you have the assurance of guarantees, customer contact, feedback, UK legal protection etc.

If you buy a similar product from 'Fangpusun' for example you have no real comeback if a product is substandard and you don't really have any idea who they are and what quality their products are. It is suggested they actually make solar controllers for Victron but there is no real proof of this - just chat on some forum somewhere.
 
dawsey said:
Yes they produce sone garbage, but, as the iphones and the Victron and Renogy kit shows
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Victron gear is made in India not China.

1690188378900.png
 
Two on Tour said:
Victron gear is made in India not China.

View attachment 786162
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It's probably put together in India from parts made in China. That's why the Chinese can produce a copy under a different brand name far cheaper because they haven't paid for the original design work etc.they probably buy from the same chinese manufacturer as Victron as an example.
 
Jimbohorlicks said:
It's probably put together in India from parts made in China. That's why the Chinese can produce a copy under a different brand name far cheaper because they haven't paid for the original design work etc.they probably buy from the same chinese manufacturer as Victron as an example.
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I have a Chinese copy of a Makita palm router and the cheeky sods reference the original Makita part numbers as spares for it.
 
When I bought some Victron gear it looked like the cheaper models were made in China and the more expensive bits in India.
 
Victron kit is made in various far eastern countries, not just India and not only China also.
 
The thing people seem to miss is that the Chinese don't always reverse engineer. Sometimes they get hold of the designs from less than legal means. Someone working for the company in India assembling the Victron parts is offered a couple of years wages to pass on the design blueprints etc. No great surprise when they do it. The laws in both countries are nowhere near what we have and expect
 
Itsmcb said:
No. Just wondering why assembly in India would be better than assembly in China.
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Language can be a big factor. If you deal with an Indian company you can do it easily in English. I've also spoken with people who have had stuff made in China (clothing in this case) and it was always a battle to get them to maintain quality. This was a few years ago, might be different now.
 
TheBig1 said:
The thing people seem to miss is that the Chinese don't always reverse engineer. Sometimes they get hold of the designs from less than legal means. Someone working for the company in India assembling the Victron parts is offered a couple of years wages to pass on the design blueprints etc. No great surprise when they do it. The laws in both countries are nowhere near what we have and expect
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This hits the nail on the head.

A mate worked a lot over there as design manager for a household name product. They would only find out the specs had been altered to make it cheaper to manufacture when they started getting lots of product returns.

The factory would then openly admit it and negotiate a discount. They still saved a fortune deviating away from the original. The company stuck with it as that’s just what they accepted and couldn’t do it cheaper elsewhere.

I used to use dry suits from a UK supplier who had them made in China. He actually had to go and seal the machine settings in the factory in China as they kept speeding them up so the seam tape fell off after a few months and he had loads of returns.

Cost here was £670 and the cost per suit over there was £50 to manufacture.

A few months later an identical suit appeared online for £300 each. Not much they could do once they are manufactured and on sale.

Quality control is everything, the Apple example is a good one. Real quality kit that lasts, made in the same places that churn out tosh.
 
Most factories producing a product make more than needed to ensure they meet the contract, the overun covers quality inspection issues etc. The excess items will be identical to those supplied to the customer with the exeption of not having complete paperwork and history. Of course those excess items should be scrapped to stop them being sold cheap and undercutting the customer's market. Poor monitoring of the scrappage process may lead to these parts being sold on by less honest folk. They are in every way genuine, but bogus. Guess where you go to buy these cheap items.
 
We used to have an off grid house in Spain for 20 years (sold and motorhome bought) with a 6kw Studer Innotec inverter. This company make copy ones which look absolutely identical but for 1/3 of the cost. Studer seemingly got hold of one, stripped it and wrote a good article on the differences in the build and components and it was huge. Some of the high power elements created dangerous conditions if they failed.
 
A made of mine bought a £200+ TheNorthFace bag.
Very high spec, waterproof, designed to by slung on the back of a Yak for the 3 week walk to Everest Base Camp and then back and still be used for the arrival in a 5 star hotel in Paris.

I then bought the same bag, from a, discount/end of line, store in the Midlands, we compared the bags, identical right down to the stitching, except mine was a different colour and did not have the TheNorthFace logo. Mine cost £15 !

So good I bough 4 more for storage.
Interestingly all 6 bags (including the 'real' one) suffered the same design fault within a few years, where the tab of the zip broke off, each one replaced with a large paperclip.

I presume the 'knock off' ones were made by the same factory before they got rid of all the patterns and materials.
 

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