Satico Faucets Review & Rating Updated: January 25, 2023
Law Requirements
This company claims to provide a 2-years guarantee but has been unable to produce a warranty document to sustain its claim.
Learn more about faucet warranties and why consumer warranties in the U.S. must be in writing.
This Company In Brief
Satico is a brand name under which Xiamen Mankote Sanitary Ware Co. sells uncertified contraband faucets through online retail sites in the U.S. and Canada that host third-party sellers.
The kitchen and bath faucets are of average quality and of no particular design distinction. The styles are typical of Chinese faucets that can be found in the inventories of dozens of Chinese faucet companies.
The faucets are considerably more costly in Canada than they are in the U.S. There is no obvious explanation for the price differences.
Black Market Faucets: These faucets are not legal for sale in the U.S. or for installation in a drinking water system in the U.S. or Canada. For more information on contraband faucets and how to avoid these potentially dangerous products, please visit Illegal and Black Market Faucets in North America.
Xiamen Mankote Sanitary Ware Co. is a trading company that sells Satico® brand faucets as Satico Home in the U.S. and Asmiran selling the brand in Canada. Amazon Canada provides no information about Asmiran.
Satico is a trademark registered in the U.S. in 2020. Based on the trademark filing Mankote Sanitary Ware has its eye on marketing more than faucets and other plumbing fittings in the U.S. In addition to faucets, the registration covers
"Air fryers; Anti-splash tap nozzles; Automotive lighting headlights for vehicles; Bath installations; Bathroom heaters; Bicycle lights; Commodes being toilets; Desk lamps; Electric holiday lights; Fitted anti-glare devices for automobile headlamps; Hand held shower heads; Infrared lamps; Kitchen sinks; Lampshades; LED and HID light fixtures; Lighting apparatus for vehicles; Lighting apparatus, namely, lighting installations; Motorcycle lights; Searchlights; Shower faucet extensions; Shower head sprayers; Showers; Tap water faucets; Ultraviolet ray lamps, not for medical purposes; Directional lights for bicycles; Headlights for vehicles; Lamps for outdoor use."
Satico's Amazon inventory in the U.S. is limited to fewer than a dozen kitchen faucets. Its catalog seems larger than it is because every finish is listed separately. In Canada, its Amazon catalog is even smaller.
North American Facilities
Beisi Electronic Commerce has no physical presence in the U.S. or Canada. All Satico sales transactions are handled in North America by hosting websites.
Amazon in particular takes care of inventory, warehousing, sales, payment processing, and delivery. Pawo Furniture's sole role in the process is to ship faucets to Amazon warehouses from time to time, ensuring that Amazon does not run out of inventory.
The company attempts to handle post-sale matters from China by email. These include warranty claims and purchases of replacement parts. The attempt, however, is not very successful. (See more below)
The faucets are constructed conventionally. The body and spout of the faucets, as well as being decorative, are the components that channel water within the faucet.
Construction & Materials
The primary material from which the faucets are made is brass.
Brass
Traditional (alpha) brass is a blend of copper and zinc with a small amount of lead (1.5% - 3.5%) added to make the material more malleable, less brittle, and easier to fabricate. Brass is the preferred material for faucets for two reasons:
- Brass is strong but easy to work with. It casts, forges, and machines with relative ease.
- Brass is naturally anti-microbial. The copper in brass kills microbes including bacteria, retarding the build-up of potentially hazardous germs inside a faucet.
But, brass has one serious drawback: it may contain lead used to make the alloy more malleable so that it casts and machines more easily.
Lead, however, is now all but banned in North America for use in any drinking water component due to its toxicity to humans, particularly children.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), lead, even in small amounts, causes slowed growth, learning disorders, hearing loss, anemia, hyperactivity, and behavior issues.
To comply with the restrictions on lead, today's faucet brass replaces lead with other additives to reduce brittleness without adding toxicity. The most common is bismuth.
Bismuth is similar to lead – right next to lead on the periodic table of elements – but it is not harmful to humans.
It is, however, very expensive. It is 300 times rarer than lead, even rarer than silver, which is the reason that bismuth-brass alloys are much more expensive than alpha brass.
In China, there is no lead limit in drinking water, and faucets made in China for the domestic market often contain large amounts of lead.
To reduce costs, the temptation, especially among Chinese companies selling low-cost faucets, is to sell those lead-content faucets here.
Sure Cure for the Too-Hot Spray Head
Set your hot water at 125° F (52° C) to prevent scalding. It's probably set at 140° F (60° C) – the factory setting – which is dangerously hot.
Any setting below 120°, however, risks the buildup of bacteria in your hot water tank, including the legionella bacillus that causes Legionnaire's Disease, something you definitely do not want in your household water.
Whenever we see brass faucets made in China that have not been certified lead-free, we suspect leaded brass is being used. The faucets have not been certified because the sellers know they will not pass lead-free testing.
Zinc & Zinc/Aluminum Alloys
One way of reducing the material cost of a faucet is to replace expensive lead-free brass with lower-cost materials where practical.
The most frequent substitute is zinc or a zinc-aluminum (ZA) alloy. One of the most common is called , a composition containing 4% aluminum.
ZAMAK is not as strong as brass and does not resist water pressure as well as brass. But, its use in non-pressurized parts of a brass faucet such as handles, base and wall plates, and is common even among manufacturers of luxury faucets.
From examination of the faucets, we determined that Satico faucets include a zinc alloy, probably ZAMAK, for the non-pressurized parts of its faucets. Zinc does no harm when used in these components, and may save consumers a few dollars on the price of the faucet.
Plastics
Plastic is the other commonly used substitute material. It may be safely used in incidental parts like base plates and has been largely trouble-free in aerators and as casings for ceramic cartridges but otherwise, its use is suspect especially if under water pressure.
Satico kitchen faucet spray heads are plastic and the use of plastic for spray heads (called "wands" in the faucet industry) is one of the suspect uses of the material.
Unfortunately, plastic wands have become the standard for many manufacturers, including some that sell upscale faucets such as
Manufacturers give three reasons for their use of plastic:
- Plastic does not get uncomfortably hot in use like metal wands;
- Plastic is not as heavy and is more comfortable to hold for long periods of time; and
- Plastic is a lot cheaper than brass – even cheaper than zinc.
However, plastic wands also fail much more often than metal wands. And although engineers have made significant improvements to their reliability over the past decade, the problem has not been entirely solved.
Better wands are made of metal, insulated against excessive heat transmittal.
Satico Faucet Design & Styling
Satico kitchen faucets are all contemporary single-handle styles. The company does not sell faucets in traditional styles or any two-handle faucets.
The faucets are conservative, fairly common Chinese styles, attractive enough but exhibiting no particular design distinction. Similar designs can be found in the inventories of most Chinese faucet manufacturers.
How Common are Satico Faucet Designs?
to EnlargeThe goal of Chinese faucet manufacturers is to sell as many faucets as possible, which means keeping their designs well within the mainstream to appeal to as many potential buyers as possible.
Although some Chinese manufacturers have begun producing original designs, some of which have won awards in international design competitions, Mankote Sanitary does not source its faucets from one of those companies.
Designs are typically copied from Europe and North America.
A style that sells well in these major markets will often be imitated by Asian factories (with minor changes to avoid patent infringement). The lag time is usually 3 to 5 years, so by the time a design appears in a Chinese faucet, it is no longer new.
Satico's faucet designs fit this pattern. They are pleasant and often smartly styled, but most are over a decade old and some are well past voting age.
Satico Faucet Components
The critical components in Satico faucets are ceramic valve cartridges and aerators.
Valve Cartridges
We inspected several Satico valve cartridges and determined that they are modern ceramic valves in standard configurations of a type that is made by any number of Chinese manufacturers.
The Faucet Cartridge
Its cartridge is the heart of a modern faucet and should be your very first consideration when making a buying decision.
Its finish may fail and the faucet will still work. It may be discolored, corroded, and ugly but water still flows.
If the cartridge fails, however, the faucet is no longer a faucet. It is out of business until the cartridge is replaced.
It's important, therefore, that the cartridge is robust, durable, and lasts for many years.
We were not able to identify the sources of the company's cartridges. They had no maker marks, and without marks, it is almost impossible to determine which of over a hundred Chinese technical ceramic companies made them.
Satico claims that its valve cartridges have passed the standard North American life-cycle stress test.
This test requires operating the cartridge through 500,000 cycles under 60 psi of water pressure without a single failure. At one cycle per second, the test takes six 24-hour days to complete.
If indeed the cartridge has passed this test, it is a fairly robust cartridge that should give years of leak-free service.
But, since Satico does not identify its cartridges and its faucets are not certified, we have no way to verify its claim.
Aerators
There are dozens of companies that manufacture aerators and spray-head assembles. Most are a least adequate. But some, like those from the Swiss company, Neoperl®, are little marvels of precision engineering.
Faucet used to be simple devices that merely added a little air to soften the water stream so it would not splash out of the sink.
Today, however, they are also used to limit water volume to the lower flows required by federal and state water conservation laws, and in some cases, to prevent back-flow that can result in the contamination of household drinking water.
It is important, therefore, that this little device, often smaller than a dime, be the best available.
Unfortunately, Satico does not identify the source of the aerators used in its faucets. We took several apart to see if the devices had any manufacturer identification, but they did not. We do know, however, from the design and configuration of the aerators that they are not one of the better brands.
Satico Faucet Finishes
We had to survey the Satico faucets currently offered for sale to identify the finishes in which the faucets are available. We ended up with just two: Brushed Nickel and Matte Black.
Satico does not identify the processes used to create its finishes, but from inspection, we believe Brushed Nickel is electroplated. and Matte Black is probably a powder coating (but it could also be a PVD finish).
Electroplating
involves immersing the faucet and the metal to be used as plating in an acid bath, then applying an electrical charge to both objects so metallic ions are drawn from the plating metal to the faucet.
Satico's finishes are multi-layer coatings. One or more undercoats are applied, then two or more coats of the finish metal.
The process is potentially hazardous to the operator and the environment. It involves toxic and corrosive chemicals that must be disposed of safely. No other coating technology even comes close to the dangers involved in electroplating.
The top coat may be polished or brushed. Chrome, a relatively hard metal, is usually polished to a high shine. Nickel, a softer metal, is usually brushed to help hide the inevitable minor scratches.
PVD Coatings
or PVD is one of the latest space-age faucet finishing technology, rapidly replacing electroplating as the finish of choice.
Although the technology was discovered in the 19th century, it was not used in industry until the 1950s and then only rarely due to its great expense. Its first use was in nuclear reactors. Today,the technology is everywhere and the machinery required is getting smaller, faster, and cheaper all the time.
The process itself is almost out of a Star Wars movie.
Load a chamber with unfinished faucet components, remove all the air, and add back a carefully calculated mix of nitrogen or argon and reactive gases.
Finish Durability
Some finishes are more durable than others. Here are the Satico faucet finishes and their durability from most to least durable.
- is the old standby. It is a tough finish that will stand up to most abuse. but its durability depends on the metal used.
- Chrome is durable, nickel less so because it is inherently a softer metal (the reason chrome replaced nickel as the faucet finish of choice in the early 20th century.)
- (PVD) finishes are 10 to 20 times more scratch-resistant than electroplated chrome. They are also not affected by most household chemicals. In our experience, they are largely invulnerable to harm.
- is essentially a paint applied in a powdered form and then heated in an oven to cure. It is considered semi-durable with about the same scratch resistance as the finish on your car.
Add a rod of the metal to be used for the coating. Heat that rod to a temperature so high that the metal dissolves into individual atoms. The atoms mix with the various reactive gases to get the color and finish effects you want and are then deposited in a very thin layer – 2 to 5 microns – on the faucets.
Despite being just microns thick, a PVD coating is extremely dense and, in consequence, very hard and durable. By some estimates, it is up to 20 times more scratch-resistant than electroplated chrome.
From long experience, we know that PVD is nearly impossible to accidentally scratch or mar, never fades or changes color, and resists all forms of soiling.
It can usually be maintained with just an occasional wipe from a damp cloth to remove water spots. (And some PVD finishes are given a final chemical coating that resists water spots, so even the damp wipe is made largely unnecessary. A dry buff will do.)
Powder Coatings
is usually described as semi-durable
, not as robust as electroplated or PVD finishes, a little more durable than the finish on your car, and requiring more care to maintain a like-new appearance.
It is essentially a dry paint in powder form applied using a special low-velocity spray gun that disperses the powder while giving it a positive electrical charge. The particles are drawn to the item to be finished which has been given a negative charge.
Once the powder is applied, the item being coated is baked in an oven which melts and bonds the powder and changes the structure of the coating into long, cross-linked molecular chains.
These chains are what give the coating its durability, reducing the risk of scratches, chipping, abrasions, corrosion, fading, and other wear issues.
Satico Warranty
Satico claims to offer a two-year warranty on its faucets. However, the warranty is not posted in the company's storefront and otherwise is nowhere to be found. Absent a written document to support its claim, we have to assume that it does not have a written warrnty that meets the requirements of U.S. consumer warranty law.
The only for-certain protection against a defective faucet is Amazon's 90-day return policy. But even that policy is limited.
Generally, to return a faucet, it must be in its original condition. However, most faucet defects are discovered only after the faucet has been installed, at which point the faucet may not be returnable. In any event, returnable or not, you are probably out the cost of the installation which could be considerably more than the cost of the faucet.
Satico Customer Service
Satico has no presence in North America and that lack of presence includes the absence of a North American-based customer service. Customer service for Satico products, such as it is, is through emails to China.
You can't just call a toll-free number and get something done. You have to email through Amazon, then wait for a response.
The only contact with Mankote Sanitary is through Amazon. Due at least in part to the time difference (China is between 13-16 hours ahead of the U.S.), it typically takes a minimum of 6-9 hours to get a reply, and often as long as 48 hours.
If your Satico faucet is malfunctioning and you need replacement parts, that is far too long.
There is also the language barrier.
Satico customer agents probably speak far better English than you do Mandarin, but English is not their first language
Communication can be slow and difficult with lots of questions and more questions, and explanation after explanation until some sort of understanding is achieved.
We rate the company's customer support as unsatisfactory.
Satico Storefront
Satico does not have an English-language website. Its Amazon storefront is as close as it comes.
Many of the specifications important to an informed faucet buying decision are missing from the company's Amazon storefront and listings. Among the most critical are:
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Faucet Valve:
No information is provided about a faucet's valve other than the fact that it is a ceramic cartridge. But, in addition to this basic specification, the buyer needs to know the name of the cartridge manufacturer. There are good ceramic cartridges and not-so-good ceramic cartridges. To make an informed buying decision the buyer needs to know the manufacturer. Otherwise, there is no way to judge the quality of the cartridge.
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Type of Finish:
The type of finish is not disclosed. The type of finish (electroplated, powder coating, PVD, etc.) is important to the long-term durability of the finish and the type and amount of care and maintenance required.
- No written warranty: U.S. law requres a consumer product warranty to be in writing and posted at the point of sale so it may be read by a prospective buyer before the sale.
- For online sellers it is sufficient compliance with the law if a written warranty is posted with each faucet listing or a conspicuous link to the warranty is displayed in each faucet listing.
Satico Testing & Certification
Comparable Faucets
Faucets made in China comparable to Satico in quality with the same or a better warranty, but not necessarily comparable for design or price, include
Conclusions
There is absolutely no reason to buy Satico faucets. They are much too risky for use in a home kitchen or bath.
1. Price is not enough. The prices on Satico faucets make them attractive, but, as the list above demonstrates, a great many other companies sell good quality Chinese-made faucets for about the same price that are fully certified, legal to use in a drinking water system, and backed by a much stronger warranty. Many are guaranteed for the lifetime of the buyer.
2. They have not been certified so the presence of toxic substances like lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury in the faucet has not been excluded. Because these are Chinese-made products, lead is a substantial risk due to the lack of lead regulation in China.
4. Satico has no written warranty on the faucets, suggesting that even the seller does not have enough confidence in their long-term durability to provide an enforceable warranty.
4. The faucets cannot be legally installed in a drinking water system anywhere in the U.S. or Canada. A plumber probably will not install one for you, and if you do it yourself you risk, at the very least, having to replace the faucet with a legal product and the possibility in some jurisdictions of a fine and a little jail time.
We are continuing to research the company. If you have experience with Satico faucets, good, bad, or indifferent, we would like to hear about it, so please contact us or post a comment below.