The $9 router that looked great on paper, then died on day 3

Bought a no-name router off a flash sale site for $9. The specs looked amazing for the price, dual band, gigabit ports, all that. Set it up in my apartment in Austin and it worked fine for 2 days. Day 3 it started dropping connection every 10 minutes. Tried resetting it, updating firmware, nothing. A guy in a tech sub told me to check the thermal pads, turns out there were none. The chip was just cooking itself. I pulled it apart and saw the board was barely held together. Ended up spending $45 on a refurbished Netgear that has been solid for 6 months. Has anyone else gotten burned by these mystery brand deals? Would rather hear about what actually holds up than save a few bucks.

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felixm293h ago

Learned that lesson with a $12 smart plug that literally sparked and died when I plugged in a fan. Guess you get what you pay for unless you're paying for the box it ships in, lol.