Is Shein a SCAM?
![Is Shein a SCAM? Is Shein a SCAM?](/pic/is_shein_a_scam_/cml4WmlKX1czYVU_.jpeg)
- SHEIN has become one of the most popular apps in the world for buying fashion and clothes, much the same way that Temu is for tech. But did you know that you actually can buy tech from SHEIN? The question, though, is it as good as Temu or Wish? Or maybe good's a bit of a relative term. At first glance, I mean, it's, it's, it's clearly clothes, right, like, lots of clothes. Wow. Okay.
I think we might have to sensor that one. Well, wait, hang on a second. It is SHEIN.
I need to, like, get a wardrobe, right? I'll get that later. I'll get that later. So if you scroll over to the Electronics section, they do have a pretty good selection: game consoles, power banks. Here, let's go to cell phones.
Let's see what kind of phones we can find. All right, so we got ourselves the... Oh, good Lord. The first thing is a fake iPhone. Now, to be fair, they do advertise it pretty clearly as Blackview.
But, I mean, it is a straight iPhone knockoff. Like, it looks exactly like an iPhone. Oh, this is all so weird. Man, they got a lot of weird stuff in here.
A handheld game console. So it's another little emulator, but this one's a duplicate handheld game console and battery bank. They literally took a little NES clone and they slapped it onto a power bank. (upbeat music) Sure, let's do it. Wireless lipstick earphones.
What the hell are lipstick earphones? Oh, my god, the carrying case is just like a lipstick tube? (whimsical music) Oh, that's cool. These are the new K1 smart Bluetooth earphones, which they're, you know, normal Bluetooth headphones, but they actually have a screen on the front. And it's 39 bucks. Now, if this is anything like what we actually get with the AirPods later this year, this is not a knockoff, this is a knock ahead, knock on. (whimsical music) All right, you know what? Let me get some men clothing. I need men clothing.
High top men's winter insulated shoes. Are these squishy, soft shoe- What the hell? It's like someone took a puffer jacket and made a shoe out of it. Boy, these are ugly.
Wow, these are ugly. Well, here, this one's all right, the Tom and Jerry one. I mean, that's fine. It's made by SHEIN, so it's gotta be high quality. Look at, look at... There's a lot of just real cringe stuff on here.
So with that, my friends, I think we have all the tech and vaguely tech-related items from SHEIN. So let me hit that big red order button and we'll see what happens when it all arrives in two to four weeks apparently. I don't know. All righty, my friends. Let's see what we've got from SHEIN, shall we? Now, I will say that this is very much like Wish in that what happens is they must, like, ship all the packages to like one fulfillment center and they bundle it all together, 'cause theoretically I have like eight or nine or 10 items in here. All right. (chuckles)
(upbeat music) I gotta say, they're a lot fluffier than I thought they would be. (Austin laughs) Oh, yeah. Hang on a second. Let me...
(upbeat music) (packaging whooshes) (packaging boings) You know, the thing is I don't know how ridiculous this going to look, but it feels so strange. All right. Behold, my friends. Tada! - Oh, my God. - I heard SHEIN is the place where you can get yourself some high-quality fashion items.
And boy, oh boy, am I a big old fashionable boy today. Fashionable boy, that's me. I can speak too. Look, we all make questionable decisions sometimes, and SHEIN is all about fashion. And is this not fashion? Are we not running out of censor budget every second that I'm on screen? Maybe. I don't know.
I might need a piece of tape for my hat. Happy birthday! There's tech in this video, I promise, eventually, if you're patient. The heavy rumor is that the next generation of AirPods is going to actually have a screen built into the case. Now, that's a strange rumor to me, but people seem to be very sold on it, so much so that companies are now selling you third-party AirPod-like headphones that actually have a screen on the front.
Now, it's strange to think about this from the AirPods side. But why wait for Apple to sell us a $400 pair of AirPods in 2025 when you got the real-ish thing right off of SHEIN for the low low price of? (lively music) - [Alex] $43. - $43! I thought it was 37.
Well, close enough. (laughs) Bro! No, no, no, no, no. This is not a new set of AirPods. What are you... Dude, this is so ridiculously huge.
This is a pair of Sony 1000XM5s, a nice compact case. And this is my AirPod Chungus 9000s. There's no way...
You're gonna have a dedicated pocket for your AirPods? Are you sure about that? Hello. Okay, how do I activate? Oh, oh, okay, we've got action. Okay, hold on a second. Okay, so it's actually like a whole operating system here. But they're not paired, though. How are they not paired? It's apparently playing The Weeknd somehow, but I don't know where it's playing it 'cause it's not on the AirPods.
What? Connection successful. Oh my god. I finally got it. - [Alex] Yay. - Jesus! - Oh. I could hear that even on my end.
Is it just on full blast? Yeah, I could hear that- - Ow. - Pretty clearly. - But let me actually try to pair the headphones with my phone and see if that helps with any of the audio quality, but I don't think it will. Audio doesn't work. Look, I try to enable...
It's for calls and inputs. I try to enable audio and it doesn't do it. It's, like, not a real pair of headphones. What kind of nonsense is this? The headphones wanna be paired to this, the phone wants to be paired to this, but they don't talk to each other. And on top of that, they're shipping copyright music built into your headphones and they sound terrible.
So you see here, I've got myself an iPhone 15 Pro in a beautiful Latercase. But you know what? (lively music) Trying to do this with one hand's way harder than I thought it was gonna be. Kevlar? No, thank you.
I need some real protection. Yes, my friends, SHEIN has a surprisingly large amount of phone cases to choose from, and this is one of them. It's a lot floppier than I thought it was gonna be.
But you know what? That's fine, because I wanna make sure that when I get a call, that everyone knows exactly what's up. So I'm gonna go ahead and just insert my phone in here. And there we go.
So... Oh, sorry, hang on, I'm getting a call. One moment, please. Yeah, what's up? Yep.
Uh-huh. Yeah, yep, another SHEIN video. No, no, they haven't cared about me in a long time. This, how much did I pay for this very fancy case that already has a hair on it 'cause it's gross and rubber? - [Alex] You paid 10 whole dollars.
- If you want to have a real sense of quality with your phone with a durable rubber build and you wanna show off your style, you wanna be like... - [Joanna] Wait. Walk over here. - [Austin] Yep.
- [Joanna] Okay. All right, there you go. - How do you do, fellow kids? (lively music) Oh, sorry. Cinnamon Roll is calling. (lively music fades) (Austin chuckles) Well, this is thematically color matching.
This is my game box. Now, something I was a little bit surprised about when I was doing the ordering scene was just how much... Like, SHEIN obviously has a large amount of things, but there's actually a lot of emulators, which I guess kind of makes sense 'cause those are probably kind of like trendy. So this is the G7, which the problem is that it's really hard to tell because a lot of emulators are kind of the same thing, but you can't really tell until you actually get them.
So this was, I think, relatively affordable. But the problem is that sometimes when you buy these things, you realize they're just full of like NES games, which, no offense to NES games, but it's lame. (upbeat music) NES games. (upbeat music continues) - [Alex] What do you have against NES games? - Because I wanna play, like, other things. Dude, the emulation is, like, really weird, running at like a weird frame rate or something. Like, (whimsical music) the color's also very washed out.
How much was this? - [Alex] It was $11. Only one more dollar than that case. - I'll say for $11, if you want like a little emulator, it's not terrible. The problem is, is that you can spend a little bit more and actually get an emulator that can play more than just a bunch of built-in NES games. And the screen's not the worst I've ever seen.
But thankfully we have one more. Also, ah, my ear hurts from the headphones. I just, I realized that I still have the ringing from those headphones blasting me earlier. - [Alex] Oh, no, tinnitus.
- Yeah. I mean, no! Tinnitus is for old people. I'm hip. Are these my pants. - [Alex] I don't know. You seem very confused.
Are those your pants? - I think I found my pants. Now that I have fixed my fit, I gotta say I feel Manfinity as hell. I'm just, just an infinite man walking through the TikToks and trying to get the views.
So this, I would categorize as like it's not a fake iPhone, it's just inspired. And if you want everyone to think that you're using an iPhone 11, then this is the move. Now, this one was relatively cheap, right? I think we paid less than $200 for this. - [Alex] We paid $210. - $210 for it. I know that there were a few different versions of this with different storages.
This is one of the only ones that was in stock. It feels like an iPhone, like, 14 or 15 Pro Max. Like it's a very large chunky Phone, but it's also like kind of like tall as well, I guess. It's not actually going to be, like, the same size as like an actual iPhone 15.
You can see it's significantly larger. So it's running Android 13 which uses an eight core processor with 12 gigs of Ram. Oh, okay.
So the display is 2400 by 1080, which is the same kinda resolution as you would find on something like a Z Flip or whatever. - Yeah. - I still slightly am confused on who's gonna spend this kind of money on it, but it actually doesn't feel terrible. Let's, let's try to watch a video on it real quick. That was some real danger right there.
I'm just over here warming up, getting ready. Speakers aren't good. That package was flung aggressively. (lively music) Did YouTube just crash? Yep, YouTube crashed.
Okay, we'll try that again. This is not terrible. Let's try out the camera. So this is a little video sample of what it looks like to record on the Blackview.
While this phone might look like the real deal at first glance, I think as soon as you start using it, you quickly understand why it is not sold at your average Micro Center, Best Buy, Target, Walmart, or Radio Shack, 'cause it's kinda bad. It's not terrible, mind you. I've seen worse. But, like, this is not some $70 phone that you buy on SHEIN or Ali Express or whatever for fun.
Like, this is actually a quite expensive device. And if I've got the choice between this and a Galaxy S21 or even like a Moto G or something, I just, there's no way that I'm going with this, like no shot. Yeah, maybe avoid.
Definitely avoid. So this is Reteke- Wait, wait. Ret- Reteke- Rete- Retekess.
Is this a clear FM radio? (lively music) (Austin gasps) It's prison tech. (Alex laughs) It's prison tech! We found more prison tech! Look. It's a clear FM radio. So alongside my prison radio, I also have some audiophile headphones.
Now, for context, how much were these headphones? They were cheap, right? - [Alex] They were $6. - So normally you'd think, "Oh, $6 headphones, no good." But like I'm telling you, sometimes these, like, like in-ear monitors can be shockingly good, but you can't really tell unless you buy them. Okay, I got static. Let me go through my jog wheel here.
I will say this sounds good for FM radio. The only real negative I can say about it is that you've got very little space, so when you're trying to tune it, you have to be very precise. Like, this is the difference between one radio station and another one. Like, you gotta be real tight on it. I will give the radio a big thumbs up. But, honestly, the fact that this crappy looking radio sounds as good as those headphones makes me very excited.
Let me actually plug this into a phone and listen to it. (lively music) What? That's super weird. Okay, so I think they're okay.
The thing is they're kinda bassy, but there's like no high end or mid range at all. But it's not like that kind of... You know, like when you listen to, like, really cheap headphones and they're like just bass because they rattle? They're not like that.
They actually sound like they would be pleasant if maybe they had a little bit more power to drive them. With my little USB-C dongle, I'm clicking like 80% volume, and they sound okay. But it's, like, you know, like, for those like kind of nicer headphones that need a lot of power, it's like you'll technically get the volume, but they don't sound rich, like, you're missing out a lot.
That's what these sound like. I'm gonna give these a soft pass. But I'll give your little transparent radio two big thumbs up.
It sounds good and it looks cool. You know, I think at this point in the video, we all need to take a second and relax with a dope new chair. Now, it supposedly has not only an ottoman, but also a chair. And it was available for a very, very cheap price of...
I don't remember, but not a lot. I'm not entirely sure, if I'm honest you, why I purchased a big chair except it looked comfy. And, you know, after a long hard day of Sheining, I'm not gonna use that as a verb, I'm gonna wanna put my feet up and enjoy a little bit of relaxation. Okay, let's see what we got here. (funky music) Hey.
Wait, where's my ottoman? Hey, wait. Oh, there it is. Okay, I found it. All righty, my friends.
(funky music continues) So here, I got an idea. Since, you know, we're trying to, you know, to be funny for the kids, I'm gonna jump and land on this, and we're gonna smash cut and it'll be fully inflated. Y'all ready? - [Alex] Yeah. (upbeat music) - Oh, wow! That didn't take 30 minutes of aggressive blowings.
You know what? I could take a nap on this. Ah, what would I do without SHEIN, besides make better content? So this next item, I saw and I had to check it out. Now, at first glance, it looks like a little emulator yet again.
However, this is not just an emulator, it's a 10,000 milliamp hour power bank with an included controller. Now, if you look at this from a few feet away, it might look okay, but as soon as you start looking at it a little bit closer, you realize just how thoroughly cheap it feels Now, it does have a cable built in, so I'll give them props for that. So it does have a USB-C cable as well as it has a Lightning cable built in. So you don't have to worry about losing those. While I'm charging my phone with this cable that leaves me no space to game whatsoever, let's try and fire it up, shall we? (upbeat music) - [Joanna] Hey, that sounds familiar.
(Alex laughs) - [Alex] I wonder if they were made by the same company. (upbeat music) Is it at least smoother than the other one? - [Austin] It is running at a pretty consistent frame rate, it's just the wrong one. (whimsical music) (triumphant music) - [Joanna] Is that the first time you've made it through? - No. I've beaten 1-1 before. 1-2, though, I've never beaten 1-2 before in my life.
How much did I pay for this power bank slash emulator? - [Alex] Uh, I mean, keep in mind it's both a game and a power bank. - [Austin] Uh-huh. - [Alex] $45. (laughs) - Any emulator that only plays NES games, not good enough. You can spend, for 40 bucks you can get yourself a legitimate, real emulator off of AliExpress, Temu, Wish, or even...
(faint lively music) Yes, my friends, because that wasn't enough, I got myself a real emulator. This is Anbernic. Now, if you're familiar, Anbernic is a company who make legitimate, actual, real emulators that will play more than just a bunch of built-in NES games. How much did I pay for this one? - [Alex] Just under 100 bucks. - So, not cheap. But considering that this should actually play, like, real NES games as well as Super Nintendo, Game Boy, PlayStation, PSP, N64, like, theoretically, this is gonna do a lot.
Behold, my friends. Oh, I forgot I got the translucent one! Hell yeah. Good job, past Austin! All righty. So this is the Anbernic. So we've got ourselves a couple of analog sticks, much better feeling buttons, a larger LCD display. And if we come around to the top, we have both USB-C's for power as well as an additional controller, an HDMI, headphone jack, as well as we've got ourselves two SD cards on the bottom.
So the way this is meant to work is that one of these micro SD cards has the OS and the other one, you can load up with a bunch of ROMs, which is a cool idea. Okay, we've got PSP, PS1, Vertical Arcade, CPS1, 1, and 2 cabinets, Neo Geo, MAME, Game Boy Advance, NES, Super Nintendo, Master System, Mega Drive, 32X, Game Boy Color, Game Boy, PC Engine, Neo Geo Pocket, Game Gear, and WonderSwan. That's a lot of games. Let's try "God of War," shall we? "God of War"... So running a PSP game is actually gonna be a little bit demanding, I think.
Ooh, I don't love the fact that it's so squished with the actual aspect ratio. I think I could probably change the settings on that. But we're gonna try to play a PSP game, which is a much more demanding title than something like the NES games that we've been playing so far. All right, we're in. Oh, that looks like it actually runs. Yo, that actually looks really good.
Oh, oh, the audio is kind of glitching a little bit though. Ooh. The audio is not great. Let's go ahead and try one more thing. Well, let's try something like PlayStation. I think you'll be able to play PlayStation 1 no problem.
There's a little bit of a latency. Well, maybe it's not bad. Actually, you know what? This frame rate is smoother than the original PlayStation. It's a little touchy on the controls, but that's not bad. Actually it's quite touchy.
All right, we got 'em, we got 'em, we got 'em. Stay on it, stay on it, stay on it. Oh, no, we gotta line 'em up. No! No, get back over here, R33. Let's go. Go, go, go, go.
Come on, NSX. Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go. No! So close. Ah, how much did I lose that by? Also, a 52-second lap around High Speed Ring doesn't sound right.
I lost by a 10th of a second. Ah! All right. You know what? I feel good about the Anbernic.
I still think we maybe paid a little bit more than we need to. But as Alex rightfully points out, these are often sold out, so it's a little bit hard to get your hands on them. So I'll give this a thumbs up. I feel like this is much better than this kind of like nonsense that, like, seems like a good idea until you actually use it and realize that it's big, bulky, and silly, and just not that useful unless you wanna play Super Mario 17 all day, which I do not. Now, I have some questions about this one. So this is, at first glance, a Switch control, but it actually is meant for your phone.
So I assume it's got USB-C. But when I look at the top, there's a very interesting selection of things. So it says it supports the Steamdeck, Windows 7 through 11, Android, and iOS. But to my understanding, you plug this in via USB-C like you dock your phone in.
So I don't know how you would use this with like a Windows PC. Also it's very squished, so we'll see if it's still works. Oh. Ew.
It definitely looks not high quality. So... (whimsical music) Mm, it's okay. I will say the buttons do light up, which is kind of cool. But let me actually pair this with my phone and see. And theoretically it...
Oh, it's doing things. Okay, well, not what I wanted, but okay, sure. So after wrestling with the controller for a little bit and realizing that I was in the wrong mode, we now have actual function. I can press buttons and things happen. So let's give it a try, shall we? So we're gonna play some "Sonic 2," which I'm sure is gonna be great. Yo! Okay, so the controller does work on Android.
Oh, wait. (lively music) I'm just realizing, so it just... Oh, so you do have the touch controls that are still overlaid. Oh, oh, what the...
B closes the game? What? Uh-oh, it's broken. It's stuck. The B button's stuck pressed down. All right, let's try again. Please tell me this works. Oh my god! No, it does it again! How much did I pay for the stupid controller? - [Alex] $20.
- No, not worth it. First of all, yes, if you wanna pretend that you got a Switch, but, like, it's not built well. The fact that it's Bluetooth only, it doesn't have any kind of wired mode, so you have to deal with all the weird syncing.
The fact that it has some button here that keeps exiting me outta the game. No, this is not it. Now, I've heard a rumor. When it comes to purchasing, legitimate, authentic games for the Nintendo Switch, there are beginning to be fakes out there. Now, from time to time I will run across items on Temu, for example, that seem a little too good to be true when it comes to the prices of the games.
And SHEIN has the same thing. So I have purchased what is theoretically a real, legitimate Nintendo Switch game for, what was it? 40 bucks? - [Alex] It was $55. - Wait, like full price? Wait, this has an Amazon on it.
(Alex laughs) - [Alex] Someone just drop shipped it to you. (upbeat music) (Austin laughs) - Wait a minute, wait a minute. Hold on, hold on. So my... (laughs) I'm so stupid.
I have never found a confirmed fake Switch game. I believe that there might be some out there, but this looks pretty legit. And it is just the cartridge.
And, of course, the most important thing. (lively music) - [Alex] Does it taste European? Does it taste like stroopwafels and- - Ooh. - Nope. - No, it's bitter. It's bitter.
Yep, that's a real game. (lively music) Probably shouldn't just lick random things that I purchased on SHEIN. But you know what? What could go wrong? - [Alex] No, please don't, don't... Anybody at home, do not, do not do that at home.
- You know, I do the sniff test, but with a Switch game, it's the lick test. (Alex sighs) Okay, I think it's pretty safe to say this is a real copy of the game. I don't think that this looks, like, fake in any way. So I would say everything we found could have either been found on something like AliExpress or Temu for cheaper, but more importantly, it's just higher quality. Like, even though there's a lot of tech that actually is on SHEIN, it's pretty clear that it is an afterthought at best and almost all of it is just random drop shipped nonsense. I don't know why I'm surprised.
Sometimes when we do these videos, we actually find, like, legitimate deals or something. But, like, this stuff is just bad. Like, I don't think anything we got was good. Actually, no, I take it back. You know what? There's one good item here and it's the chair. And I think that I'm just gonna sit on this chair and chill out with my giant weird shoes and contemplate the good old days when (lively music) Wish was popular.
(lively music fades)
2024-07-18 16:58