Chinese Pagers and Transmitters - are they worth buying?
Paging systems are often used to call customers back to front of house easily in many restaurants for example; but they are used these days for logistics, health and safety and many more uses and have become far more prevalent over the years. It is a cost effective and simple way of working and does allow for removal of those table tents or spoons often otherwise used in restaurants as well as making the perceived queue invisible thus reducing walk away customers.
However, since around 2020 there has been an increase of paging systems, pagers and other similar equipment emanating from the Far East, but mainly from China.
At first sight anyone that is not familiar with a paging system often assumes that 'all paging systems are the same'; Customers might simply assume that what they have bought is firstly a bargain - these Chinese paging systems are cheap! A paging system from any of the quality manufacturers and suppliers in the UK costs probably four to eight times more and for good reason as you will see in this truthful review (but more of that later).
While there are a small number of those Chinese paging systems that do work (albeit short range) many of them are not what they first appear to be and buying them could be a problem. And although there are literally hundreds of brands coming out of China, generally there only a handful of companies that are actually the maker - and that confuses the marketplace for potential customers. So, Truthful Review bought a system as a regular customer to show exactly what you receive, what works or does not, information about the sellers themselves and of course the warranty and service levels; there are also other concerns regarding the legality of the products that we have checked. Examine this review carefully as there is specific information that might prove useful for any potential buyer of those systems.
What's in the box?
- Transmitter/charger for pagers - sometimes as two components
- A number of paddle pagers (variable quantities are quoted)
- An antenna
- A nondescript power supply
- A power cable
- Chinese translated instructions
Assembly
From the supplied items in the box, its relatively easy to assemble the system in to a working paging system. However the 'pigeon' English was not always easy to understand and on the copy included in these systems checked was not well translated to English making the instructions difficult to understand. There were a number of ambiguous statements that did not really make sense and could be confusing if you are not familiar with these types of systems. Be careful about the power connections and always ensure that any antenna provided is installed before you turn the unit on.
Features
Like all these types of paging systems, simply press a button and the pager should respond easily by flashing and vibrating.
In the case of these particular Chinese systems under review that we have looked at, that's not always the case because there are fundamental differences between these types of systems and those other quality ones available also in the UK. Below are the problematic features and exactly what each feature improves or makes worse than the quality systems that we used as reference systems.
- The power output: in the case of these
cheap low cost Chinese systems the power output is just 10mW (milliwatts)
which in real terms is very low for any type of paging system.
The result is that the range of the included transmitter/charger
is short. What happens in real world environments is that there
are buildings around with walls, and those walls reduce the
already very low output even further. Quality UK paging systems
we checked are typically at least 500mW (milliwatts) - fifty
times more powerful, so the range of these Chinese low power
systems might be 100 metres outdoors, but indoors the range can
be seriously reduced and could be unworkable. The truth is, that
this is one of the major areas where Chinese solutions save
manufacturing costs - by having an extremely low power output.
Power transistors with 10mW output are really cheap to buy at
manufacture time.
- The Frequency: In the UK all equipment that
uses radio waves is controlled by OFCOM. Typical frequency
allocated for paging systems is (for example) 459.100 MHz
However, checking the two systems we bought (and a number of other similar
systems off line, typically these Chinese paging systems
use 337 MHz or thereabouts. This is used as a way of selling a
paging system that uses a frequency that is NOT allocated by OFCOM as a
paging system frequency. In fact, the typical Chinese paging
systems use the same frequency as a key fob for a car! And by
using that frequency they are LIMITED to 10Mw output power by
OFCOM as discussed
above. The reality is that these paging systems operate
just like a key fob for a car and have (at best) similar range.
- Signal Booster: Because these cheap Chinese
paging systems use 337 MHz frequency or thereabouts and are limited with power
by law,
it is not possible to legally have a signal booster. If the
range can't be reached with those systems then they will prove
useless and cannot be extended regarding power for further range. If you see
signal boosters for sale, that does NOT mean they are legal!
Overall right from the start, most things that you might need in a paging system are (by design and the law) excluded from these cheap Chinese solutions. If they don't work well for you then they will never work well for you. This is an important consideration that should be taken in to account before you buy along with the other points raised elsewhere in this truthful review.
Batteries
Pagers operate on battery power. But its not the sort of battery power that you might imagine. Some paging systems need a lot of operational power from the battery and other systems might not. In the case of the Chinese pagers the batteries are similar to cellphone batteries, but don't expect the pager to operate as long as a mobile phone. These checked are not big batteries and do have only 200mAh power availability.
A typical Chinese pager battery
These types of batteries offer a small size for a reasonable supply of power. However, as many mobile phone users may attest, Lithium Ion batteries are capable of being overcharged and the result is a damaged battery that can expand and open the case in some circumstances. The circuit is supposed to stop the overcharging, but in many cases the circuit does not. Overcharging can cause battery explosion - be warned. If you get ANY battery issues with the Chinese pagers then they are generally not worth the cost to fix them.
Paging Controls
On the Chinese paging systems examined in this review and actually purchased by us, typically, there are a number of one touch buttons (1 to 20) that when pressed make the corresponding pager vibrate and flash with a shrill beep. The transmitter is also often part of the charging base, but that's not always the case design. It's important to understand that if you have a charging base with the transmitter integral to the charging base, if the charging base fails then you have no transmitter either, and you will probably end up replacing the whole system, or assuming that these types of systems are not for you.
Warranty
For most of the higher quality paging systems available in the UK a typical warranty is two years. One company LRS UK even offers a three year warranty and of course all three companies we checked have UK service departments to help if there are any problems.
But in the case of the cheap Chinese paging systems, while they offered a 1 year warranty, our experience was that pagers were to be returned to China for reworking or replacement. The UK's remote selling legislation is there of course to fall back on, but if you buy the Chinese paging system for example from Amazon, after 30 days Amazon will refer you to the seller, and from our experience is often actually based in China. The result is that you have to pay the shipping to try and send a package back to China with all that entails at your own expense. The UK's remote selling becomes impossible to apply to a Chinese company based in China.
Its worth considering the situation about warranty because paging systems get a hard and rough working life and can be prone to failure if there is ANY compromise of the build quality.
Seriously Important Considerations.
On one of the systems we reviewed, there was careful examination of the power supply (an item that can be dangerous) and the CE approval (and other approvals such as RoHS and WEEE that are important for the environment) to check how credible they actually were. Upon close examination of the power supply that was supplied directly with this cheap Chinese paging system it could be seen that the power supply, on the one hand, proclaimed full CE , FCC, WEEE and RoHS approvals, but in reality was not approved, and never could be approved as supplied. In other words the seller was not telling the truth.
If you examine this power supply, you will immediately see many spelling errors on the label. The problem is this: The label forms part of extensive tests for CE conformity, and this power supply could never be CE approved with these spelling errors as shown. Worse still, that fact alone makes this power supply as not properly safety checked in a laboratory as it should be and most likely dangerous to use. It is certainly NOT CE approved. This is a consideration that if ignored might cost your company dearly from injury or fire. But this extended further to the other components that we examined, and overall, while there are some markings, the systems in our view were NOT approved. Very concerning.
Worse still, the second system we checked (a different style of pager) had virtually no markings except one CE mark embedded in to the plastic and that alone is NOT a true reflection of what should be marked on the equipment that claims CE approval. This is equally concerning as the other system we checked and carries the same concerns about safety and trackability that the first system had.
Summing up
The further we looked in to these two systems, the more concerned we became. There are many more concerns that we have not included in this truthful review and ultimately we stopped the review. Later we referred the system that is included in the photographs in this truthful review to Trading Standards in the UK, and they immediately confiscated it because of the legality and safety of the system. The second system is currently still in our possession but remains unused.
Overall Score
Following our review we cannot recommend any of the Chinese paging systems, and we did check a few of them. Each system had inherent issues or problems, some of the pagers did not work properly from brand new and the important last consideration was the safety and legality of those systems we checked. As far as a review score is concerned sadly the systems we checked achieved no score and cannot be recommended.
Conclusions
Initially the Chinese paging systems and pagers that we examined seemed a good deal, especially from the text and selling information provided by the sellers. But it soon became apparent that there were inherent problems in both of the Chinese paging systems that we investigated. Obviously, most potential customers of those systems would not be aware of the problems that exist when considering this sort of communications equipment. So creating a review like this one has turned out, actually, can allow potential customers to make informed decisions at buy time, and to reduce the risk to their employees or company from buying inferior or dangerous equipment.
Following on from this review we recommend that you visit LRS UK, PCS or CST and each one of those companies sells quality paging equipment that has all approvals (including CE, RoHS, WEEE and more) and warranties that are at least two years or more. Each of those companies are based in the UK and easy to contact if necessary.
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