We've been in business 22 years. While our prices are generally low, recently we've been peppered with questions about one product in particular, for Helium and IoT. That's the ALFA AOA-915-5ACM, which we have had on our web site for over one year.
Why is it priced so low compared to competing products that look nearly identical?
We keep our focus on the quality of products we provide. But we have had this question asked so often in chat and over the phone, we felt a public answer was needed.
We can't speak for others, but we price our products off cost. And this low profile antenna just doesn't cost as much to make and tune as larger fiber glass style antennas. We can also import 500 for the same freight cost as just 10 fiber glass style, and that makes a huge difference.
ALFA Network products are also made in Taiwan, a TAA compliant country that sources the US military and government, so there's no import tariff either. They've been making antennas for radio well before we became an official distributor in 2007 (yes, 15 years ago). We are confident the performance of this antenna will stand up to any similar looking ones.
Great, but why are some competing models priced over 3x higher, is there any difference?
We can only speak to the quality of our products, but we took a look at ALFA's official SWR report and radiation pattern for this antenna (found here) and compared it to a publicly posted SWR/pattern from another brand that people often ask us about. We will let you decide what the difference is.