Electronics prices in Moldova: up 8.5% since July 2026

Since mid-July we have been following the same offers in 17 stores, and by the end of October the picture is clear: electronics are getting more expensive, just not all at the same speed. A graphics card or a PS5 costs noticeably more today than it did in July. Headphones and mice do not. Below we go through the categories one by one, with numbers.

How much have electronics prices risen in Moldova since July?

We took the same offers (the same product in the same store) and compared their price on five dates. That keeps out new releases, which are expensive from day one, and clearance sales of old models. The base of 100 is the price on 15 July.

Of the 2,621 offers, 1,284 went up, 512 came down and the remaining 825 did not move. The climb sped up in autumn: in October alone the basket rose 2.6%, more than in July and August combined.

An economist would call eight percent a year high inflation. Electronics in Moldova covered that distance in three and a half months. The average hides a lot, though. Some categories barely moved, others jumped by a quarter, and if you have been putting off a big purchase, that difference is what matters.

Category by category: from graphics cards to headphones

The gap between categories is huge. Graphics cards and consoles are up almost a quarter, while peripherals and audio cost the same as in summer or less.

The "Consoles and accessories" category in our catalog covers the PS5, steering wheels and gamepads; its index starts in the second half of July. We compare the lowest PS5 price across all stores from 15 August.

Laptops are a special case. Their index peaked at 116.8 in September and slipped back to 111.5 by the end of October. The sample is small (30 offers), so look at specific models rather than the "average temperature".

Why are graphics cards and consoles getting more expensive?

The main reason is a memory shortage. Chipmakers are moving capacity to memory for AI data centers, and ordinary DRAM, NAND and GDDR video memory are all getting pricier. TrendForce analysts expect DRAM contract prices to rise another 10–15% in Q4 2026, and NAND 15–20%. A graphics card is largely a board full of memory, which is why it takes the hardest hit.

Our data shows it on specific models. The lowest price of the Gigabyte RTX 5060 WINDFORCE OC 8GB went from 9,249 to 12,071 lei (+30.5%), and the ASUS RTX 5070 PRIME OC from 17,131 to 21,401 lei (+24.9%). Model-by-model details are in RTX 50 graphics card prices in Moldova: +22% since July.

Consoles have a different story. Sony officially raised PS5 prices in Europe from 2 April 2026, citing "pressure from the global economic environment". Over the summer, stores in Moldova were still selling older stock, and by autumn shelf prices had caught up with the new wholesale prices. The lowest price of the PS5 Slim Disc went from 11,499 lei in mid-August to 14,999 lei now.

Phones: nearly all of the rise came in October

Phones are up 6.1% on average, but almost all of it happened in October, when the index went from 102.6 to 106.1. That lines up with Apple's September decision to add $100 to the US prices of the iPhone 16, iPhone 17, iPhone Air and iPhone 17e.

The lowest price of the iPhone 16 128 GB Black climbed from 13,799 lei in July to 15,999 lei (+15.9%). The budget Redmi 15C 4/128GB went from 2,419 to 2,799 lei (+15.7%): pricier memory hits cheap models too. On the other hand, the cheapest Galaxy S26 Ultra 256 GB costs 1,000 lei less than in July, even though the same phone got more expensive in the pricier stores.

Where prices actually fell

Peripherals, headphones and audio: categories without expensive memory and with fierce competition between stores. A few notable lowest-price moves:

• Razer Kraken V4 X: 2,022 → 1,499 lei (−25.9%);
• Apple AirPods 4 ANC: 3,749 → 2,999 lei (−20.0%);
• Razer BlackWidow V3 Mini HyperSpeed: 2,985 → 2,239 lei (−25.0%);
• Razer Kraken V3 X: 1,299 → 1,099 lei (−15.4%).

Our takeaway is simple. You can buy a mouse, a keyboard or headphones without checking the calendar; they were not cheaper in summer. Graphics cards and consoles are the opposite: so far, every month of waiting has cost more.

Before Black Friday: be careful with "discounts"

In October, 1,016 offers went up and only 261 came down. Another 625 offers now sit at least 5% above their lowest price of the past 30 days. So a Black Friday "discount" may simply be a return to last month's price. How to check is covered in Fake Black Friday discounts: how to check the price and Black Friday 2026 in Moldova: dates and practical tips.

Second half of October: 214 real price cuts

The index shows the overall trend. At the price-tag level, the second half of October brought 214 cuts we counted as real: the price held for several days before and after, and 1-leu corrections were ignored. The most visible ones:

A word of caution: these are one-off cases, one model in one store. The category as a whole may keep rising, so open the product page before you buy. One-day deals that vanished by morning are not listed; we only care about prices you could actually pay several days in a row.

How did we calculate the index?

• We use only in-stock offers checked by the PriceList.md crawler within the last 3 days.
• For each offer we take the price on 15.07, 15.08, 15.09, 01.10 and 31.10.
• We drop changes of more than 2x in either direction: that is almost always a matching error, not a real price.
• The index is the sum of current prices divided by the sum of July prices for the same offers.
• Categories with fewer than 20 offers (monitors or chargers, for example) are left out of the table, since one or two products do not support any conclusion.

The index is based on PriceList.md catalog data as of 31.10.2026; model prices in the tables were updated on 01.11.2026. 17 stores in Moldova, in-stock products only. Prices change daily, so check the product page for the current figure.