Much of the time the Aliexpress products provide the same functionality for far less than Western brands. Sometimes even a bit more functionality. But I'm still a bit wary of mains-connected ones.
> But I'm still a bit wary of mains-connected ones.
That is wise. YouTubers like BigClive regularly tear down Chinese products and you can bet on things like unconnected earth wires and poor separation between high/low voltage parts. Anything that plugs into mains should come from a known manufacturer and a reputable dealer (not Amazon, AliExpress etc.)
At least here we have government agency that mandates recalls on the shoddy stuff bought from local stores. So getting money back is simpler. Even if the quality by amount of recalls is probably not that far...
I'd add lithium batteries to the list. There's no way short of a teardown you can verify what battery vendor, which quality grade and especially which kind of protection circuitry was used - and even if there's analysis videos from youtubers available, there is no guarantee that the manufacturers haven't swapped stuff around during production runs to account for price and availability changes, or that the manufacturer doesn't suffer from supply chain issues.
Granted, established brands can be similarly impacted, but unlike some alphabet-soup dropshipper from Amazon, brands like Anker, Samsung, Apple or the likes have an actual reputation to lose so their incentive to keep safety in mind is way higher (and yes, even they can fail, both Samsung and Apple had their bad battery issues in the past).
That is wise. YouTubers like BigClive regularly tear down Chinese products and you can bet on things like unconnected earth wires and poor separation between high/low voltage parts. Anything that plugs into mains should come from a known manufacturer and a reputable dealer (not Amazon, AliExpress etc.)