Hello, I want to buy a new gaming laptop and I’m wondering if it’d be better to buy one in Taiwan or wait until I go back to the UK next month.
I live in Chiayi but I’d happily go to Taichung or Tainan or even as far as Taipei or Kaohsiung if it’ll be a lot cheaper.
Specs and price wise I’m hoping to get something with a 970m for around NT$40000 - 45000. I’ve looked on some Taiwanese websites but it doesn’t look like you can get that spec for that cheap. Is it likely to be any better in stores?
I’m not up-to-date about laptop’s pricing, but usually for computer related stuff you should go to Nova. Local stores will usually offer some discount over the regular price. In Taichung back in 2013 I wanted to buy an Acer netbook to bring to University. I went to the official Acer retailer, asked for the model that I was looking for and they gave me the official retail price. I opened up my phone and showed them the price on PcHome, they matched it and gave me an extra 2gb of ram. Most stores will be happy to give you a good discount and/or gifts to make the sale.
My last gaming laptop was an Alienware that I got in Australia. The reason for me to pick AW is their world wide warranty that can be transferred between countries. Considering that a laptop with some problems is not as easy to fix as a desktop, make sure to check the warranty rules of any laptop you’ll buy before moving back to the Uk.
Nova is closed, no? Guess you might get the prices down by a couple of thousands for example by just getting one without preinstalled windows (2000NT or so) plus maybe some extras as Ibis2k12 mentioned. However, looking at the prices, even 45k is 10% less than PcHome charges, doubt if you can get it that much cheaper
In my experience bargaining gets really interesting only once purchasing multiple items at once.
To be honest, sometimes Amazon or Newegg will have pretty sweet deals on laptops that Taiwan prices can’t beat. Make sure you do price comparison before you buy. If you’re in a hurry, you can try Coolpc, there’s a location in Jiayi. This is where I go to get all of my PC accessories.
If you can get through the website, you can actually look up their prices all online. I have successfully haggled them 300-500 on a brand new PC mid-tower.
Trick of the trade, they have their listed price and they have their lowest selling price. Every time I tried to haggle them, they checked their computer screen, most likely to make sure that they were selling it above what they can sell it for. Good luck!
When you pass by Taipei, I suggest you have a look to the stores inside and around GuangHua Digital Plaza
There are tens and tens of stores of all sorts within one or two blocks, and it makes it very easy to have them compete on prices. They have lots of choices, and once you’ve figured out what you want, you just have to walk from one neighbor to the other to see who’s giving you the better deal.
I got myself a nice custom home-server last year which I bought over there, for less than 11k HDDs included.
Ibis’ tip works quite well too. It’s not so hard to get them to match PChome or Yahoo’s prices.
