Would it be safe to buy RF products from China like from Aliexpress, Ebay, Banggood?
I have an experience of receiving fake NRF24L01+ modules from ebay, but any kind of RF chips more complicated does not seem to have many counterfeit products.
And what about antennas and antenna cables? Would it be safe to trust buyers from China?

 

I never have trusted anything from China. If I had a problem -- who would understand me?

 

I had an argument with a Chinaman about 4 yrs. ago. It took about half a dozen email exchanges to get him to realize he had sent me the wrong model.

After an ah-so....He told me to keep what I had received, and he sent me the right model free of charge.

The only down side I have experienced from buying China, is the shipping time.

Maybe I just been lucky.

 

Would it be safe to buy RF products from China like from Aliexpress, Ebay, Banggood?

I only buy from them if I expect low quality counterfeit product.

I buy tools (ratcheting crimpers, wire strippers, etc) from AliExpress for dimes on the dollar of what an authentic one would cost and just hope they'll do a reasonable job. So far I'm batting about 0.500.

I wouldn't buy any semiconductors, but I did take a gamble on some bidirectional level shifters; the type that's just a MOSFET with a couple resistors mounted 4 to a board. There's not much that could go wrong with them and if they didn't work, all I'd have to do is replace the MOSFET.

Some member recently posted about some pad per hole proto boards he uses from eBay. I checked AliExpress and they're much cheaper. I'm going to try some because there's not much that they can screw up. 10 each 5cm x 7cm paper (I'm assuming CEM-1) proto board for less than $1.50 with free shipping; I can't even buy plain perf board for that price.