Temu tested: Chinese giant's budget car products vs the big brand options
Are there bargains to be had from Temu? We compare its products with familiar names to see
Times are tough, and the cost-of-living crisis is hitting us all in the pocket. But while the price of essentials in the supermarket seems to be heading ever upwards, car fans can now kit themselves out with tools, toys and accessories for very little.
This recent development has been pushed by big online retailers such as Temu, which is selling all kinds of products, mainly from China. Some will take a few days to arrive, while others have to come by ship and will take more than a month. But the savings seem to suggest the wait might be worth it. If you can put up with the deluge of incomprehensible E-mails and then fight through the baffling pop-up adverts for offers, you’ll find some prices that are almost too good to resist.
But there is a catch. Unlike regular shops, you can’t touch and feel the products until they arrive, so you can’t get any idea of their quality. Often the descriptions are brief, too, meaning buying something is a bit of a gamble.
To see how Temu’s products stand up to the best of the rest, we used the retailer to buy 10 items that seemed to make brilliant Christmas presents. But are they really bargains, or do they have all the quality of the novelty gift you’ll be pulling out of your Christmas cracker?
Breathalysers
Winner: AlcoSense
- AlcoSense Excel: around £99.99
- Portable Digital Breathalyser: around £5.81
While it might not matter if a mail-order T-shirt is not quite the quality you hoped for, buying a cheap breathalyser is brave, especially if you are risking your licence based on its results.
We recently did a full multi-test of breath-test machines and saw that a £15.99 device from Amazon gave wildly varying readings. We were expecting the same from Temu’s Portable Digital Breathalyser, especially because it costs just £5.81.
But it has some impressive features, including a gauge to ensure it sampled a sufficient quantity of breath. It showed a believable correlation between the amount of alcohol consumed and the number on the gauge, but it was slow to reset between tests. We wouldn’t trust it to do much more than tell us if there was any alcohol remaining in our breath in the morning after a few drinks the night before. The AlcoSense Excel is a precision device, which clearly tells you if you are legal to drive.
CarPlay and Android Auto upgrades
Winner: Temu
- Kenwood DMX7722DABS: around £298.75
- Temu 207 Wireless CarPlay Portable Touch Screen: around £29.19
It’s difficult to go back to basics once you’ve experienced Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. They open a world of navigation and entertainment, and are a big reason why drivers choose to change cars.
A far cheaper alternative is to upgrade your current car’s infotainment system. You could buy a modern double-DIN head unit to replace your existing in-car system, which may require a fitting kit to adapt the wiring and facia. Once it’s installed, though, a model like the Kenwood DMX7722DABS will provide far superior sound and functionality.
Or for a tenth of the price, you could buy a Temu screen, which attaches to the windscreen with a suction pad and connects via Bluetooth to your phone. It will then link to your car’s sound system via the Aux-in plug. It leaves a lot of wires trailing around the dashboard, but it works brilliantly.
Construction models
Winner: Lego
- Lego Off-Road 4x4 Mountain Truck: around £17.99
- Tycole Racing T1089: around £9.78
Lego has been a Christmas staple for generations, but in recent years there has been a boom in ‘compatible’ bricks and construction kits that look and feel almost identical to the original. We chose two Land Rover-type model sets, both with around 300 pieces and aimed at kids aged six years plus.
The Lego kit has a thick instruction book and offers the option of an app to help if you get stuck – useful for avoiding Christmas Day tantrums (and not necessarily from the kids). It also has a Minifigure as part of the pack, along with extra accessories that include a winch and props such as a spanner and banana in the rooftop trunks.
The Tycole kit is fun to build and good-looking, too, but the bricks don’t slot together quite as crisply, the instructions are confusing at times, and it doesn’t feel as solid once built. We’d pay the extra for the original.
Dash cams
Winner: Miofive
- Temu Dual Lens Dash cam: around £10.65
- Miofive S1: around £69.99
If you are involved in an accident while driving, having a dash cam recording of what happened is going to be a real help when it comes to settling the claim. And with cameras costing as little as £10.65 from Temu, there is no excuse not to have one.
The Dual Lens device available at that price even has two camera views, allowing it to record both forward through the windscreen and to the rear looking at the driver and passengers. You’ll need to budget for an additional SD memory card though, because one is not included; indeed, that's likely to cost more than the camera itself.
As you’d expect, there are reasons why Temu’s camera is much cheaper than most rivals. For a start, the front view records in 1080P resolution, which is reasonable, but it lacks the image stabilisation and light-management tech you see on more expensive dash cams. This means the video is blurred unless you are stationary in daylight. All in all, we’d spend the extra for the Miofive.
Drying towels
Winner: HYDRO
- Hydro Max Drying Towel: around £18.99
- Temu Extra Large Drying Towel: around £7.17
A new chamois leather under the tree used to be a certainty at Christmas for any car fan. These days you need to steer gift-givers to drying towels, which are far more effective at preventing water marks and smears from forming on your paint.
We scooped up Temu’s Extra Large Drying Towel, which in 90cm x 60cm form costs £7.17. It seems impressive, with two layers of looped fabric that make it feel like the sort of towel you’d use in the bathroom. It absorbed and retained an impressive 2.4 litres of water.
Hydro’s cloth feels far softer, with a plush fabric which is also more absorbent, sucking up 3.1 litres of water. We think it’ll be kinder to paintwork too. The Hydro is the better drying cloth, but we’d be tempted to get a Temu one anyway at this price and keep it for doing the dirty wheels.
Key Trackers
Winner: Temu
- NLT-10A Smart Tag: around £3.68
- Apple AirTag: around £35
The pioneer of tracker tags was Apple with its AirTags. These are only slightly bigger than a coin, but are packed with clever tech. In addition to using Bluetooth to help you find them when you are nearby, and then bleeping on demand, they also harness all the other Apple devices in the world so the Tags can transmit their location when, for example, you’ve left your keys behind in a public place.
The NLT-10A Smart Tag tracker works in exactly the same way, using the Find My app on Apple devices. When you are close by, it’s not as easy to use, relying on maps – which is not much use if you are trying to find it under a sofa. However, the bleep is loud enough to be heard in quiet rooms. The Temu price is £3.68 for one or £9.80 for two, which would suggest someone needs a new calculator.
Phone holders
Winner: Mous
- Mous Suction Mount : around £14.99
- TOPK Car Phone Holder: around £4.21
This is another test where we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the Temu product. There were other phone holders on the site that cost as little as £1.28, but choosing one at a comparatively expensive £4.21 means you get something that works much better.
The TOPK holds your phone securely in clamps and attaches to a vent on your dashboard using a clamping hook. It held small, lighter phones in portrait mode easily and didn’t creak or rattle loose. However, it struggled to hold a device sideways or manage a bigger iPhone Max.
We’d be happy to use it – if we hadn’t been spoiled by the Mous. This uses an adjustable suction mount to fix to the windscreen or an area of shiny trim and is rock-solid. But the main attraction is the Magsafe attachment, which holds your phone firmly but is much less fiddly to use than the TOPK’s clamp mount.
RC buggies
Winner: PD Racing
- PD Racing 1:16 TK16 Truggy: around £69.99
- Temu R1-BK Remote Control Car: around £17.68
Having a radio-control model is a rite of passage for any driving enthusiast, allowing you to learn elements of car control where the only consequences are a chip in the skirting board and a scared cat.
There has always been a hierarchy of RC cars, with the likes of self-build Tamiya kits at the top and cheaper, pre-built toys at the bottom. Temu’s R1-BK appears to offer a properly specified buggy for the price of the cheapest toys, with full suspension, a claimed top speed of 12mph and a rechargeable battery that lasts for nine minutes of driving.
The PD Racing TK16 Truggy is also pre-built but like it will last. More importantly, its sheer speed and upgrade options will mean the owner is less likely to get bored of it. The battery lasts twice as long too.
T-Shirts
Winner: T-Lab
- T-Lab Over & Out: around £34.99
- Temu DeLorean Motor Co T-Shirt: around £5.99
Temu’s site is full of interesting clothes with excellent designs aimed at car enthusiasts. We spotted shirts and bags featuring classic logos from Recaro, Gulf and STP, plus arty outlines of classics such as the Porsche 911.
We picked a smart-looking shirt with the branding of the DeLorean Motor Company, but we were disappointed. The 100 per cent polyester garment looks shiny and feels thin and cheap, with a poor-quality printed logo.
In contrast, T-Lab’s T-Shirts are something we’d be proud to wear, with unique logos designed by the company rather than replicas of brands. Because they are made from premium-quality 100 per cent cotton, they are more comfortable to wear too. The T-Lab shirts are certainly not cheap, but they feel made to last.
Torches
Winner: Temu
- LED Lenser P7R Pro: around £159.95
- Temu P900 Tactical Flashlight: around £2.42
This is the second biggest price gap in our test, with a whopping £157.53 between Temu’s Tactical Flashlight and the P7R Pro from LED Lenser. Looking at the picture (right), you may wonder why there is such a difference, but when they are in your hand, you soon realise. While the LED Lenser’s aluminium case is weighty and feels as if it would survive Armageddon, the Temu is plastic and feels much more toy-like, weighing just 79g versus the P7R’s 223g. The cheaper torch is also less resistant to water.
But the difference in real-world performance is not huge. On the pair’s brightest settings, the Temu lasted just over seven hours before needing a charge, while the LED Lenser managed another half hour. Both have adjustable beams, and the expensive torch has more illuminating power, but the Temu’s whiter light was surprisingly bright. It won’t last a lifetime like the P7R, but at this price we might buy a few Temu torches to make sure there is always one to hand.
Verdict
In most cases, Temu can’t match the established brands. But sometimes you might need a tool, toy or gadget only a few times a year and the cheaper alternatives will do the job adequately. There are exceptions where it pays to buy something which will work well for years, but in other cases you might think the low price means Temu is a risk worth taking.
Did you know you can sell your car through Auto Express? We’ll help you get a great price and find a great deal on a new car, too.
Find a car with the experts
