Which Electronics Vary Most in Price Between Lebanese Shops

How we measured it

A product here is one exact item: the same model with the same storage and memory, matched across shops. We kept only new units, in stock, on listings we checked between 1 and 7 November 2026. Each shop counts once, at its cheapest listing for that product, so a shop with five colours of the same phone does not count five times.

Prices are what you would pay. If a shop adds 11% VAT at checkout, we added it. Then we took two numbers for every product: how much more the dearest shop asks than the cheapest, and how much you save at the cheapest shop compared with a typical one (the median shop). The table shows the median of each across a category, so one odd listing cannot drive the result.

The numbers, category by category

Sorted from the widest gap to the narrowest. "Typical shop" means the middle shop when every shop's price for that product is lined up.

Small items, big percentages

Audio, keyboards and mice top the table. A typical set of earbuds or a speaker costs about $98 at the cheapest shop, and the dearest shop asks about $42 more. Against a typical shop you save $16. Most of those prices also sit still: in a separate check of the same listings in August and November, 92% of audio prices had not moved at all. A price that is set once and left alone can drift a long way from the rest of the market without anyone noticing.

In dollars these gaps are small, so most people will not shop around for a $40 mouse. But they add up if you buy several accessories at once.

Big tickets, small percentages, real money

Laptops show one of the smallest percentage gaps, 14.7%, yet the typical difference between the cheapest and dearest shop for the same laptop is $159. Against a typical shop, the cheapest one saves you $74. TVs work the same way: an 11.3% spread, but $111 between cheapest and dearest. For cameras the median gap is $199.

So the rule of thumb flips with price. On cheap items the percentages look dramatic and the money is small. On expensive items the percentages look tame and the money is real.

Consoles: where the gap often has a reason

The PlayStation 5 Slim with a 1TB drive and a disc slot was listed new by 28 Lebanese shops in the first week of November, from $560 to $890. The median shop asked $795. The two cheapest listings both say Japanese version in the title, at $560 and $585. Listings that say European version ran from $699 to $890. Listings that name a warranty in the title, often a local distributor's, sat between $779 and $849.

That is not a gap you should close blindly. A region version can matter for the plug, the warranty and who repairs it. Compare like with like: the cheapest European unit with a named warranty against the next one, not the cheapest listing of all against the dearest.

The Nintendo Switch 2 is the counter-example. 29 shops listed it, from $489 to $579, a spread of 18%, and none of its 32 listings named a region version. Where the product really is the same everywhere, prices bunch together.

Popular products have the widest gaps

You might expect that a product sold by many shops would settle on one price. Our data says the opposite. We split laptops, phones, tablets, TVs, monitors and consoles by how many shops carry each product:

• Sold by 3 or 4 shops (760 products): the dearest shop asks 11.4% more than the cheapest, and the cheapest saves 4.5% against a typical shop.
• Sold by 5 to 9 shops (580 products): 19.6% between dearest and cheapest, a 8.2% saving against a typical shop.
• Sold by 10 or more shops (267 products): 23.6% between dearest and cheapest, a 9.2% saving against a typical shop.

Why that matters for you

The models the most shops carry, such as the current iPhones, Galaxy A phones, IdeaPads and MacBooks, are exactly where comparing pays most. More shops means more chances that one of them is far above the rest, and more chances that one is well below. With three shops, the first one you walk into is rarely far off. With twenty, it easily can be.

What these numbers do not tell you

We compare listed prices. We cannot see whether a shop honours its price at the counter, how long its warranty runs unless it says so, or whether the unit is really in stock today. Our matching groups listings by model and configuration, and on rare occasions two variants that differ in a detail the title leaves out end up together. That is why every number above is a median, not a record low or a record high.

What the table does show is where your time is best spent. If you are buying a laptop, a TV or a camera, checking more than one shop is worth tens of dollars at the least. If you are buying a phone that 30 shops carry, check them all, because the spread is widest there.