Where to buy a laptop in Singapore?

Where to buy a laptop in Singapore?

If you’re looking to buy a laptop in Singapore, chances are that most people will recommend you to either go to Sim Lim or Funan Digital Life Mall. While these two IT malls are filled with all sizes of computer stores and many offer laptops, there are some things to bear in mind: people say you can make a bargain on a laptop (or any IT equipment for that matter) at Sim Lim, but equally as many people will tell you that there is a high chance of getting ripped off if you don’t know 100% what you’re going for and how much it should cost. Instead, you will most likely be recommended to go to Funan Digital Life mall to buy your laptop. While it is “safer” to do business at Funan (i.e. you don’t get sold junk), I would still not recommend to buy a new laptop there. The reason for this is very simple: most of the smaller stores that sell laptops (Newstead, Digital Asia) are owned by the same guy and therefore there is exactly zero price competition between the stores. If you try to bargain for your new laptop, or if negotiate a discount for buying multiple machines, you will get one pre-defined discount from the list price and that’s it. No amount of haggling will get you a better bargain. I know this to be true from my own experience buying IT equipment for my company. The fact that all stores are owned by the same guy were confirmed to me by two different employees at Digital Asia and Newstead and proven to be true when one time I went in to buy a couple of screens and the guy actually went around to the different stores to pick up the remaining stock to serve my order. Naturally, there are the bigger chains, such as Harvey Norman or Challenger, which operating independently (though I would not be surprised if they were still all in cahoots and set the prices amongst themselves). What’s more, the consumer laptops you can buy in Singapore are all preloaded with useless crap that slow down your machine.

So the question remains, where do you buy a good quality laptop in Singapore for a decent price? The answer is simple: you don’t. If you want to buy a decent laptop (for more say SGD 600), and especially if you’re looking to buy a business laptop, I would recommend you to buy in the US and have it shipped to Singapore. Initially, this might appear quite costly and time intensive, but instead it’s fast, simple and much cheaper than buying a laptop in Singapore. For example, recently my company wanted to purchase a couple of HP laptops. I went to Funan to get the local prices and when I compared this to Amazon’s price it really blew my mind. The same model, with the same specifications, of a HP Probook cost just over SGD 1,400 in Funan (after “discount”), whereas on Amazon the price was just above SGD 600! This was an older model, but the only and “newest” Probook they had. I also did a search on the HP’s Singapore homepage, where a similar model was offered for SGD 1,600 (albeit including a c. SGD 100 20” LCD).  So, the price difference between buying a laptop in the US and buying it in Singapore was a staggering SGD 800, per computer!

As we wanted a total of four laptops, we ordered them not from Amazon but through an IT company we sometimes work with in New York. The guys were nice enough to procure them through their local supplier, which currently had HP Elitebooks on offer. These HP Elitebook laptops have significantly improved specifications as compared to HP Probook laptops, and at less than SGD 1100 they were still more than SGD 300 cheaper than the Probook I was offered at Funan. We shipped with Fedex, who picked the laptops up in their original boxes and placed two of each in Fedex shipping boxes, which each take c. 9 KG, or 2 laptops, for a cost of SGD 300 per box. If you want to ship one single laptop only, they also have smaller boxes, which are then cheaper of course.

One thing to bear in mind is that if you import these laptops in the capacity of a Singapore registered business, you have to first register with the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) and to activate your Unique Entity Number (UEN), a standard identification number of any entity. This first time registration can be done online and is free, and takes just a few days, as far as I know.

Shipping with Fedex from the US takes between 3-5 days (not working days) and you should track the package to see when it has cleared Singapore customs. If you do not know anyone in the US who can take delivery of the laptops for you and send them to Singapore with Fedex, you can just use very cheap forwarding services such as Vpost, the official forwarding service from Singapore Post,

Bottom line, if you can wait 3-5 days (c. 7 if you use Vpost) and if you’re willing to do a bit of organization/online shopping you can save a substantial amount of money and obtain a higher-quality laptop than in any store in Singapore. This way, my organization literally saved hundreds of dollars and got better laptops all in exchange for a little extra effort. The added bonus for laptops is that the service guarantee and warranty is global.

 

Lastly, once the laptops arrive, you'll have to get an adapter or local power cable to connect the power brick to the socket, as the cable that comes with the laptop will be US standard.