Biggest brick-and-mortar computer stores in South Africa

Several stores in South Africa can still offer customers an in-store PC shopping experience.

While most of today’s well-known PC shops operate exclusively online, many consumers might prefer to use a brick-and-mortar retailer.

Aside from being able to speak to technical personnel and get advice in person, there might also be special in-store discounts that the same retailer does not offer online.

For those not as adept at researching and establishing whether ecommerce sites are legitimate, in-store shopping also carries less risk.

In addition, it might be better to get a hands-on impression of certain products like PC cases, which can have design elements that look very different when viewed in person.

Shopping in-store also means you don’t have to wait for your product to be delivered; you can get it right on the spot.

Finally, some online computing shops and couriers are notorious for not handling PC components with the proper care during shipping.

MyBroadband compiled a list of the biggest computing retailers in South Africa.

We considered retailers with a reasonably sizeable footprint — those with one or two stores were not included.

We also looked at the range of components and features available from the store.

Initially, we aimed to focus only on stores that also sold hardware components such as processors, RAM, hard drives, and graphics cards — and not only pre-built systems.

However, that left us with very slim pickings — with only three stores qualifying.

Therefore, we decided to include shops that don’t offer internal hardware components.

The table below provides an overview of the features and Hellopeter ratings of the most prominent brick-and-mortar computer shops in South Africa.

The stores with the highest average ratings were Computer Mania and Matrix Warehouse.

They also had the lowest number of reviews, although this would make sense given that they specialise in computing while their competitors offer a wide range of other products.

Computer Mania and Matrix Warehouse were also the only two stores that checked all four feature boxes — selling internal components, allowing customers to configure builds, and offering installation and repair services.

Interestingly, we could not find a single physical retailer with an average Hellopeter rating higher than four out of five.

Compare this with the myriad online computer stores that easily met this criterion, and it’s easy to see why some prefer online shopping.

However, one crucial factor to consider is that the ratings of individual stores might be higher than the overall ratings, so your experience can differ substantially from one outlet to the next.

For example, most individual Matrix Warehouse outlets — including shops in Centurion, Fourways, Randfontein, and Woodmead — had Google ratings of four out of five or higher.

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Biggest brick-and-mortar computer stores in South Africa