Imagine a scenario where something that is termed ‘fake’ is actually better than the ‘original’. Sounds crazy right? This is the situation we found ourselves in at AirGradient a few weeks ago.
For a premium air quality monitoring kit, we strive to use original components as much as possible so we opted for the original Wemos D1 mini. However after shipment, we got a number of customers having problems connecting it to WiFi. We tested the same use case and experienced the same issues.
After contacting the manufacturer and sending them samples they did not really acknowledge the problem and we were unsure if they fixed the underlying issue.
For some time we already looked at and tested D1 mini clones which include the D1 mimi and we had never issues with the clones.
So we decided, for the time being, to deliver the cloned board to our customers. The functionality of a product is the number one priority for us even if it means using a clone.
Do you know other cases where you found a clone to be better than the original? We are curious to know!
Mimi’s Forever!? That’s the question.