What's up with Hama?
Today I found out about a German electronics brand named Hama, but I haven't heard anyone ever mention/recommend it to replace American products.. so is this brand just unknown or is something wrong with it?
Hama makes expensive packaging for cheap Chinese products.
Furthermore, they buy exclusive shelf space at major retailers so that their products can be sold way above cost because they are the only ones available.
Somehow they buy the cheapest crap available and sell it still relatively cheap (compared to the stuff that works). But it's still not worth even half of that. I had no idea Hama was "German" but it was on top of my list of "Never buy that crap" brands.
I don't think I could ever recommend someone buying hama. Their products are really bad. I once had a USB-Cable that was so badly shielded it almost worked as an antenna.
If you ever find the cable model and wanna be a superhero, you can send them to your Radiofrequency regulation body (e.g. Bundesnetzagentur in Germany) and they may start issuing fines.
Companies tend to fall in line quickly as non-complaince to these laws is punishable individually by each state (both in the EU and US).
hama does not make electronics. They make supplies for those devices. Every kind of supplies you can imagine. The quality of the products is ok, even good if you take a look at the prices.
Here in germany it's hard to avoid hama. They are really big here. If you go to a shop and buy a cable, a phone case or an usb stick, it's probably from hama. Why nobody knows them? Well, nobody cares for supplies. It's a cable. Nobody cares who produced it. And if you care you want a high quality cable and that's not the business of hama. They do midtier supplies with decent prices.
yeah i was talking more about their smartwatches, i get no one cares about cables 😂
UK resident here. The only times I have ever seen Hama products in the wild were at my middle school in the 2010s. Like most of the school's hardware, they seemed to be held together by sheer willpower, and they had an air of cheapness about them.
I mean, it's all Chinese made products in the end. Do we really need to have them in our focus?
They don't really make electronics. They make accessories - cables, adapters, stands, cases, chargers, docks....
I just got their monitor stand a few days ago and it's decently good. Definitely better than generic noname brands on Amazon.
There's quite some Hama branded products in the German (real-world) stores. They do the cheap or price/value option. Mostly accessories and consumer electronics for phones, computer, photography.
I don't know if that concept translates to online stores, though. In real-world stores they provide the cheap option. Of course their stuff is 99% Chinese-made but there's some brand recognition with Hama so you'll know you'll get some cheap, but somewhat working headphones. And with online-stores there's a plethora of options and everything is cheap. And you can see reviews and a score, sort by price... So I guess you could just buy arbitrary things with a good cost/performance ratio, maybe better than Hama does, just that somebody else imports it from China. So I don't think slapping their label on products helps there. Their products just don't stand out, especially if people don't have any brand recognition in the first place.
(And what other people said, here. Consumers don't really care for brands on their cables, supplies and phone cases. And if they do care, they're part of a different market segment. They'll pick something better, not a Hama product.)
Except they are not cheap. And the quality is not worth the price imo. I try to avoid them as best as I can.
Yeah, I phrased it weirdly. They're not really cheap. There's better options online and more durable, quality stuff everywhere. What I meant they're "cheap" in the context of me visiting a Saturn store. And there's a 30€ phone case. And a cheaper option by Hama for 15€ and that's the selection. So Hama is the cheap option... Of course I'll buy a better 6€ one someplace else. Or pay for quality... Hama's business model kinda depends on a limited selection in real-world stores, because they're really only cheap(er) if there isn't much choice.
I use some products by hama, and they are surprisingly good value for their price.
I know them because they sell accessories for camera like backpack, filters,... Haven't bought any for a while so don't know how good they are today but they use to be decent quality with fair price.
You can find cables (and some other things but mostly cables) made by them in about every electronics store