Buying a laptop at MediaMarkt is not a nonsense considering the amount of advertisements and offers they launch frequently. However, we thoroughly analyze your catalog, compare it and do the same with your sales conditions.

It is a German company established for years in Spain with a very important sales flow, being Amazon and PcComponentes its main rivals, at least in technology. They offer the advantage of having one establishment per city (practically), which implies proximity and helps to see the products in situ. MediaMarkt also has a powerful eCommerce, so we wonder if their items are worth buying.

Laptop in MediaMarkt, is it a good choice?

To begin with, a good catalog must have variety . In the case of laptops, it is important to see alternatives in different sizes, such as powered by AMD and Intel. Before, selling laptops only from Intel had as an argument that AMD did not offer anything comparable, but the reality has changed since the Ryzen 4000 (Renoir).

We analyze in detail the catalog options that MediaMarkt offers us to buy a laptop.

Options under 14 inches

We have about 69 computers , mixing Windows with Apple MacBook / Macbook Pro. The smallest laptop is an 11.6-inch Lenovo, followed by the Microsoft Surface Go with 12.45-inch, ending with Apple MacBook Air and we would move on to the rest of laptops.

In this measure, we have 6 AMD vs 58 Intel vs 6 Apple M1 and 1 Qualcomm, so we will be doomed to buy an Intel laptop in these measurements. We’re going to give you the benefit of the doubt in the following sizes because the scenery might change.

14 to 17 inches

The offer of AMD laptops reaches 20 , while the rest of laptops are Intel ( 73 ) and Apple (2). It is still a predominantly Intel catalog with little AMD. Inside the Ryzen chips, they sell a lot of older generations.

However, we have seen many laptops with Intel Tiger Lake-U , that is, 11th generation; also, of the 10th generation. Therefore, the presence of Intel is more than clear and it seems that it may be a question of manufacturers and not of choice of laptops.

To heal ourselves in health, we have gone to PcComponentes to see if it is an isolated thing or not. The result is as follows: 168 AMD laptops (not counting those from Intel or Apple). In fact, they have almost the same AMD laptops as the total number of MediaMark laptops: 208.

Therefore, we already start from a weak catalog compared to the competition, which reduces our freedom of choice. We continue with the analysis.

Price of laptops

To be fair, we have filtered MediaMarkt’s laptop by best sellers (the best deals usually appear), we have taken 4 laptops (MM’s best sellers) to compare with Amazon or PcComponentes . We know that Apple products are practically the same price in all stores by brand standards, but the same does not happen in others.

In the first place, we find practically the same price as in Amazon , so the main proposal seems interesting. Of course, we better have MediaMarkt have it physically because its shipping takes longer than Amazon.

Apple is a different case and it will be difficult to buy the same product at a lower price in another establishment: it is its brand, and it is its standards. The good thing about MediaMarkt is that, surely, it has the model in store ready to buy, which Amazon does not.

This is one of the cases in which PcComponentes does not come out very well because it has become a «marketplace light»: they sell other stores within PcC, but very few. It is an external store , but we see an increase in price compared to MediaMarkt , so the consumer will choose this to buy their laptop.

It has been difficult for us to find the same model in both stores, but here we have a curious case: Amazon’s is better and is worth little more. And that the MediaMarkt is lowered, consisting of just what the Amazon costs, while Amazon has not reduced its price at all. In this case, the MediaMarkt laptop would be more expensive.

The laptops compared are the best sellers of MediaMarkt , I mean that we have had a certain benevolence because we understand that they will be the most interesting of your online store. Sometimes it is not so easy to find the same model in another store.

Financing

We go with the financing options that we find in MediaMarkt and other online stores, an important aspect for many who want to buy a laptop. Before starting, I want to clarify several concepts that you have to handle about financing before using this payment system.

Quick concepts to handle in financing:

Financing is a loan in which there are 2 related parties: the lender (credit institution) and the borrower (the buyers). The lender pays the store the price of the product for us, but the property of the product is ours (except in cars, which is reserved of title ) and the use and enjoyment as well.

In return, we have to pay the money back to the lender, with or without interest.

As a legal business that it is, the lender makes money with the operation, and that money that he earns is through interest: lending € 400 and having € 450 returned, for example. For this reason, it is popularly said that interest is “the price of money.”

• TIN (Nominal Interest Rate): it is an interest that is applied on the initial money (€ 600, which is what a laptop costs). Other loan fees (such as the opening fee) are not included within the TIN. It is important to see the time referred to the TIN because they express it in monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual terms.
• APR (Annual Equivalent Rate): is what the loan costs, including commissions or expenses that may be linked to it. When we are going to finance a product, the APR is key because it will allow us to know if the loan interests us or if not. It does not matter the TIN that the loan has: the loan with the highest APR is the one that will have the most interest and whose final price will be more expensive.
• Opening commission. It is a price we pay to formalize the financing loan.
• Insurance It is too aggressive to demand a guarantee on

MediaMarkt

Many people buy a financed laptop , so it is interesting to know what conditions each eCommerce gives to the client. To finance with MediaMarkt, it seems that you have to make a card called MediaMarkt Club Card , which comes to be a VISA, with CaixaBank as the main collaborator.

Do you want my opinion? I do not advise you to get a credit card to finance a product, regardless of how responsible you are. I know that Carrefour also has a similar practice and what they are looking for is to “hook the customer”. To pay for a product in installments, all you have to do is provide our details, it is not necessary to sign a credit card contract, as is the case with MediaMarkt’s VISA.

As we see in the image above, they offer a TIN of 17.95% and an APR of 19.51% in 20 months with a minimum amount to finance of € 200. Therefore, in a purchase of € 1104, we would have to pay 20 installments of € 64.28, whose final price would be € 1285.60, € 181 of interest !

I certainly discourage this operation as being ridiculously expensive. Keep reading because you are interested.

Amazon and PcComponentes

In the case of Amazon , we have seen products financed for 4 or 24 months by external credit (or financial) entities: Cofidis , Cetelem or Credit Line in most cases. One of the advantages of this form of payment is that it does not have interests in Amazon (0% APR and 0% TIN), all this with just filling in some information and sending our scanned ID: no cards.

On the other hand, PcComponentes provides 2 financing : Cetelem and Aplazame. However, we see that Cetelem charges a 5% APR on financing, and in the case of Aplazame they also charge interest .

In addition, unless you find a specific offer, MediaMarkt and PcComponentes (external entities) finance with interest, so the product will be more expensive; With Amazon you pay the same, but in a fractional way over time. It is true that Amazon does not give freedom in the installments (you cannot choose the terms you want), but they are not bad conditions at all.

The English Court

And the financing of El Corte Inglés ? This establishment is very famous for its flexibility and financing, so let’s see what they offer us. First of all, they offer different financing according to product category, we are interested in laptops.

The information they offer on the web has to do with Mac laptops and iPads , but it will be similar in the other brands. They give up to 12 months without interest , but with an APR that varies between 0.86% and 7.83% : the more the product costs, the less APR they charge us in financing. I have to say that an APR of 0.86% is fine, but an APR of 7.83% is too high for me.

At ECI, at a minimum, we have to finance a product that costs € 400 or more , for example:

• € 400 laptop in 10 months -> € 41.40 / month (4.83% APR). We will pay € 414 for it (€ 14 of interest).
• € 1,250 laptop in 6 months -> € 210.67 / month (APR 3.90%). We will pay € 1264 (€ 14 of interest) for it.

The good news is that the financial company of El Corte Inglés is El Corte Inglés EFC SA, a company within the ECI in charge of providing financing: there are no external companies. They will try to sneak in the El Corte Inglés card to have access to interesting or more attractive financing, but it is not necessary to do so.

Let’s say that, after Amazon, it is the most interesting option.

MediaMarkt Warranty:

It has been widely criticized in recent years, so it is interesting to know what guarantee we will get for our laptop in MediaMarkt . To begin with, I want to say that the information they offer is not very transparent and they do not “cut to the chase”, as other stores do (Amazon, PcC, ECI, Wipoid, CoolMod, among others).

In any online store, if we go to the bottom of the page we will find the typical sections of “warranty”, “shipping”, “legal notice”, and so on. Here you have to go to ” contract conditions “, which is hidden below and which give unsatisfactory warranty details. I summarize their policy in the following:

• 2-year warranty from purchase.
• The guarantee is processed in products purchased that present characteristics different from those offered, that present defects that prevent their use according to their nature or that cannot offer the services described.
• The client has 2 months to take the product to MediaMarkt from the time the problem / defect appears, and must report it: when it appears, what the problem is and why.
• If the product is defective, MediaMarkt will be responsible ( whenever possible ) for its replacement .
• If it cannot be replaced due to availability, the purchase money is refunded (as PcComponentes).

A priori, it is a basic guarantee that in theory should not present problems, but we see a lot of criticism on different sites about the MediaMarkt praxis: OCU, forums, TrustPilot score of 1.3 , etc. The truth is that, just by reading opinions and experiences … you don’t want to buy at MediaMarkt.

Personally, I have not had any problems with MediaMarkt, but I have not had any problems with a product defect either. So, I can’t speak to their technical service, RMA, or their warranty in practice.

To compare guarantees, we offer you the reading of the following entries:

• PcComponentes guarantee .
• Computer warranty .

Conclusions about MediaMarkt

Being totally objective with what I have analyzed, I reach the following conclusions:

• Its laptop catalog is not the best and offers few AMD options, but there may be some interesting discounts. It is true that manufacturers are betting more on Intel, but it is also true that AMD has improved its catalog in the last 2 years.
• Their prices are not always the best, so the “I am not stupid” is not fulfilled, but you can fulfill it the other way around and buy a more expensive laptop.
• The financing they offer is the worst, based on the numbers they offer.
• The guarantee does not have to be bad, but it seems that its modus operandi is questioned by many affected users and buyers, expressing their discontent on different websites.

Would you buy a laptop from MediaMarkt? Honestly no. I think that the catalog offered by El Corte Inglés, PcComponentes or Amazon is better, and it is possible that they will respond to RMAs, guarantees and returns more efficiently.