Sony RX100 M3: First Thoughts

Somewhere along the way, I started buying everything online.

My mother didn’t get it at first, especially when it came to food.

“The supermarket downstairs has it. Why the hell do you have to buy it online?”

“It’s cheaper online!”

That was usually my answer, and I figured I had solid reasoning behind it. Look — opening a shop on Taobao is basically opening a shop nationwide. You’re up against sellers from all over the country. If you don’t sell cheap, someone cheaper will. Competition that fierce has to drive margins down, right? And for most electronics, online prices really are lower than official ones.

So I took it for granted that local brick-and-mortar stores, stuck with worse supply channels than the official ones and Shenzhen’s Huaqiangbei, must be more expensive.

And then reality kept slapping me in the face.

A while back I went and bought the Sony RX100 M3 I’d had my eye on for ages. The reason was simple: a comment in a thread on S1stage. Someone was asking what mirrorless camera to buy and said they’d invest in something better once they got the hang of it.

“Beginners can just buy an RX100 to practice the basics, then move up to a mirrorless later. The RX100 can stay as a backup body.”

So one day, passing through Zhengzhou Buynow, I walked in, saw the Sony store, and figured I’d ask about the price. The answer caught me off guard — cheaper than the lowest price on JD and cheaper than Taobao. And the seller said they’d give me an invoice too.

The guy was courteous enough to pull out an RX100 M3 demo unit and let me try it, walking me through the controls and explaining things along the way. Definitely more useful than me fumbling around in auto mode. The RX100 M3 is a genuinely good camera — one casual shot wipes the floor with the garbage output from my Nexus 6. Not to mention the macro focusing, which you simply can’t do with a phone. There was an RX100 M4 next to it; the owner laughed and said its main selling point was 4K video, that it was overpriced, and that he didn’t recommend it.

I could have accepted the price from the start, but I still said I’d think about it — really I wanted to check prices on my phone. The owner was blunt: “Search online all you want. You won’t find a lower price than mine.”

I checked, for both the memory card and the camera, and he was right. And registering the camera on Sony’s official site afterward was no problem either.

“Lots of people assume online is always cheaper, but brick-and-mortar stores can get lower prices too,” the manager said, meaningfully. “Most people are just lazy. They look at deal sites like SMZDM, grab some ‘amazing price’ and think they scored, when actually those prices are way higher than what we sell at every day. We run a Taobao shop too, but we just can’t move volume there. Most of our business is local.”

“Honestly, running an online shop is rough — you have to watch it every day. We clock out and leave. Each has its pros and cons. Sometimes they say free shipping, but the shipping cost is baked into the price.” With that, the owner went to greet an old man nearby who was holding a DSLR — older, but clearly a serious photography hobbyist, and clearly a regular.

Afterward I looked around the Sony store more carefully. The audio gear was fairly complete, though apart from the 1A headphones and the XBA-H3 in-ears, nothing else was available for listening. For players, only the A15 and F880 had demo units; the ZX1, PHA-2, and PHA-3 were all sealed, and you couldn’t listen unless you bought one.

Still, running a brick-and-mortar store this way does have real advantages over online: you save on shipping, and at least you can pick a unit you’re happy with. Which reminds me of when I bought the A15 — the first unit had scratches on the screen. If I’d bought that online, it would’ve been a lot more hassle.

All that said, for future purchases I’ll probably check the local electronics market more often. In the online shopping era, maybe now’s the time to hunt for bargains at brick-and-mortar stores.