Knockoffs of Ridenow tubes?

[amacal1]

I think it's safe to say that RideNow tubes are among the most popular of all TPU tubes, not even just chiner tubes. When I go on Ali, though, they're all over the map. Different stem and valve styles. Different logos, different color combos. I know they legitimately made some changes, and I know that these companies are always changing things without any notice or documentation. That's just part of it. But, one that threw me today was that some of the boxes were different on the gravel tubes compared to the ones I bought a couple months ago. I've seen some of the different boxes before (some are clear, some are white) but now there was a third box style. There are just SO many sellers, so many different combos of stuff and prices are all over the place. Some of these just can't be legit, right? Are there chiner knock-offs of chiner knock-offs? Has anyone encountered ones they're sure weren't legit?

[rsw42]

https://campaign.aliexpress.com/wow/gcp/sellerInfo/index?sellerId=2660138405&shopId=1103677538&statusBarHeight=151&_dognoseId=WnFTcmZENFJnOGNEQUlDUWhRUEVnSmEBl0FKEwthbGlleHByZQAAAiCZ&_currency=EUR&_lang=de_AT&fromApp=true

That's the true ride now store... Quick delivery to Europe, would buy the if I'm not sure about it...

And yeah ... I heard about knock offs of popular Chinese brands who'd never knock off Western brands...

[Serge_K]

i've handled a lot of chinese TPU tubes, starting with RideNow ones. if you ignore the colour, they all feel the same to me, it's just plastic. I shop for feature, not brand. If you're a bike store, i understand you'd want to have consistency. But i solve for price, given a feature set (valve length, and to a lesser extent, a reinforced stem area as i've had friends complain about failure there), size, weight. It's also easy to break plastic valves, but they're lighter, and if installed and handled properly, plastic valves are fine ime.
China is known to iterate products very quickly without usual western product cycle releases, so you can have fakes, unbranded clones, and authentic products with different features all simultaneously, which is one reason i dont solve for brand for these things. If even Trek is unable to tell you whether the frame in your hands is authentic or not, i wouldnt expect to know if a tpu tube is "really" authentic, whatever that may mean.

What i do know is it makes absolutely no sense spending 30 eur on a tpu tube.