5 ms·

Hmm, I currently have 3 x 24" Samsung monitors and I've been considering the Samsung MD230X6 (6 x 23", 1920 x 1080) but the cost (around $4,000) vs. the $1000 c

Hmm, I currently have 3 x 24" Samsung monitors and I've been considering the Samsung MD230X6 (6 x 23", 1920 x 1080) but the cost (around $4,000) vs. the $1000 cost of getting 3 x 27" (2560 x 1440) means I'm tempted to try out these "korean" monitors. My main concern is why are they so cheap. The article mentions that they're displays that companies didn't deem fit to sell, does that mean these are displays that were due to be destroyed and someone is just selling them on, or are they purchased in bulk at a big discount and then being resold? I figure all that matters is if they work and is only $1,000 but I would be much more comfortable purchasing if I knew exactly what their story was.

samstave 14y ago
>why are they so cheap Maybe they are made by slaves in North Korea underthe work exchange program they have... EDIT: downvoted, but I was being serious... Maybe they are using labor such as that to make these. I dont know I cant think of another reason they are so cheap - unless they see an opportunity to steal the market by dropping margins and getting these to go in high volume ove rthe next months/year...
- brador 14y ago
  I'm not the downvoter, but since we can't know either way, is it of significance when making a purchasing decision?
  - samstave 14y ago
    No, but the question by the OP was "how" are they doing this... I was speculating.
- moonchrome 14y ago
  How likely is it that low skilled manual labor is the highest cost factor in high tech manufacturing of things like monitors.
  - Lagged2Death 14y ago
    Well, look at it this way: Where are such things generally made, and why are they generally made there?
    - dangrossman 14y ago
      > Compared to the cost of buying chips or making sure that you have a plant that can turn out thousands of these things a day or being able to get strengthened glass cut exactly right within, you know, two days of this thing being due, that’s what’s important. Labor is almost insignificant. What is really important are supply chains and flexibility of factories. You want to be able to be located right next to the plant that makes the screws so that when you need a small change to that screw factory, you can go next door and say, “Give it to me in six hours,” and they can say, “Here you go.” Because if that factory was in another state or on another continent, it would take two weeks. It’s the flexibility within the Chinese manufacturing system, that’s what you can do in Asia that you can’t do in the United States. -- Charles Duhigg, the NYT reporter who wrote the iEconomy piece on Apple’s supply chain and the reason the tech giant doesn’t produce its devices in the U.S.
      - Lagged2Death 14y ago
        I'm familiar with this line of reasoning, but I find it unsatisfying and I suspect it's really more of an apologia for American corporate power than a sound history. Manufacturing was absolutely galloping into China before this sort of tight inter-company integration was even a gleam in anyone's eye, and there's no obvious reason such integration couldn't have developed elsewhere -- except for the labor issues. The integration that's now heralded as the reason for moving manufacturing to China seems self-evidently a product of such movements to me.
        dangrossman 14y ago
        It doesn't seem far-fetched to imagine that manufacturing initially moved to China because of the cheap labor, but that it's stayed there because of the supply chain advantages. Labor in China isn't cheap as it once was, scrutiny of conditions is heightened, and domestic labor isn't as expensive as it once was either.
- fusiongyro 14y ago
  It's not a question to be tossed aside, but I don't think the evidence would bear it. For one thing, nothing made in DPRK is going to be sold through South Korea. They're at war still, not trading and communicating with each other. Secondly, while DPRK has a lot of people in labor camps, they're starving and their education level is comparable to 4th grade. I don't think you can get exacting standards of quality out of starved forced laborers, but even if you could, you'd still be dealing with the complete lack of a supply chain in North Korea. There are plenty of countries in the area with established supply chains and populations experienced at making these kinds of things, but DPRK isn't one of them. Third, there just isn't a lot coming out of DPRK in the first place. I've heard of paper flowers made in their labor camps being exported to China and Japan, but in general the trade situation is pretty much a trickle. It's possible, and there are certainly people around better informed than me, but it doesn't sound like the best or most plausible explanation to me.
  - wisty 14y ago
    NK is doing some textiles work for South Korea. Textiles is always one of the first things industrialising countries do, because it's only labor intensive.
  - quant18 14y ago
    Quite a number of South Korean companies have set up shop in Kaesong Industrial Park, right over the DMZ in North Korea. There's 100+ factories employing more than 40,000 workers. There's buses going across to South Korea every day, though obviously they get cut off in times of tension. I don't think LG does anything directly at Kaesong, but there's certainly other electronics manufacturing going on there: 13 firms in total produced $59 million of electronics at Kaesong in 2010. Of some relevance to this discussion, Magic Micro has been making lamp assemblies for LCD monitors there since 2006. In short, it's not just canvas sacks and artificial flowers coming out of labour camps. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL34093.pdf http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL34093.pdf No doubt, in any supply chain, the highest value-added steps are not occuring in Kaesong. As pointed out by others, labour costs can't explain the difference of hundreds of dollars on these monitors and so samstave's guess is likely wrong (though I don't think he deserves to be downvoted into oblivion). But companies don't decide to locate at Kaesong for cost reasons anyway; rather, they're there for nationalistic reasons about promoting reunification. The factories there apparently don't even break even in the absence of South Korean government subsidies, and the future of those subsidies is uncertain: http://koreajoongangdaily.joinsmsn.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=2912661 http://koreajoongangdaily.joinsmsn.com/news/article/article.... (Another slightly more complex point is that companies manufacturing products at Kaesong likely have to accept lower margins on them --- exporting them runs into sanctions issues in many countries, meaning they have to be sold in the domestic market --- but I doubt that's what's going on here to make these monitors so cheap either). For those who are interested in this kind of stuff, the blog http://www.nkeconwatch.com/ http://www.nkeconwatch.com/ makes good reading
- jrockway 14y ago
  How much labor is involved in making a monitor? The expensive part is the panel, and they are buying those from Samsung or LG. Apple and Dell probably sell 27" and 30" monitors at a premium because they don't move many units, and the people that need them have the money to buy them. Some Korean company realized they could sell the same panels on eBay for $300 and still make a profit, so they did.
- Tsagadai 14y ago
  Kaesong Industrial Region area is run by Hyundai Asan (Hyundai is a big group of companies and Asan is not really connected to the Motors side). Kaesong mostly produces low-end, low-tech manufactured goods (think toothbrushes and plastic toys). Hyundai Asan is not run by idiots and there is no way they would put anything in North Korea that would allow North Korea to mass produce high-end, techncial goods like IPS displays. Some manufacturing is done by Chinese companies near the northern DPRK border but it is mainly stuff that requires human machines (labour is cheaper in North Korea than China!). Think, textiles and basket weaving. Power is even imported from China there and North Korea provides almost nothing to businesses except access to a limited labour supply. Your post is conspiratorial and wrong. I know people who have worked at Kaesong (note that Kaesong has also been mostly closed for the last 3 years). Wages may be extremely low but anything that gets more food and money into North Korea while remaining outside the control of the government is a good thing. People can't fight tyranny when they are fighting to not starve to death.
mariusmg 14y ago
They're being sold at a price which guarantees a (probably good) profit. To compete on that market you basically need a name. Rather than trying to invest lots of money in marketing and try to "compete" with LG/Samsung/etc those guys prefer to sell them "cheaper" for a profit.
jsz0 14y ago
My understanding is with these 'B stock' parts the big guys will reject an entire batch / production run when the quality drops below a certain threshold. So these companies are probably salvaging the parts and either testing them or just passing the risk onto the consumer.
- caw 14y ago
  Some of these are also extremely barebones setups. On one of the models I've read about there's no on screen display, and only 1 input. There's sometimes buttons on the frame but they don't do anything besides power.
  - Strom 14y ago
    If you would have read the article you're commenting on, you would know that the buttons do work. It was just a case of Jeff Atwood (unintentionally) spreading lies.
    - frio 14y ago
      Some do; some don't. Source: both of my flatmates have bought these screens; the buttons don't work on any of them (and nor do any but the DVI inputs). It's not like it really matters (after seeing these things I'm saving my pennies to grab a couple myself :)!), but the quality and functionality does differ from manufacturer to manufacturer (and from batch to batch internally - 2 of the 3 can overclock to a 120Hz refresh rate, the other can't).
  - jrockway 14y ago
    That's true of almost every big computer monitor. My HP ZR30w has a couple display port inputs, and the 30" Dells around here have a single DVI connector. Neither have OSDs or support any resolution other than their native.
    - moe 14y ago
      That's interesting. My 27" Dell is covered in ports (5 inputs of all kinds, USB, CFCard, SDCard, you name it...) and has a pretty fancy OSD to go with the 5 physical buttons and 6 LEDs. Granted, I don't actually use any of the ports other than DVI and USB, so it has always seemed a bit overkill to me.
ars 14y ago
You may like the Asus PA248Q. IPS, 24" 1920 x 1200, for $339.
- dtf 14y ago
  I bought a PA238Q a while back, and I use it now as my second monitor. It has incredibly bad persistence... like 20 to 30 seconds of afterimage when I move a window full of text out of the way. Plus the backlight bleed on a black screen is pretty bad.
  - ars 14y ago
    The PA248Q is a completely different monitor from the PA238Q. Also, try adjusting the Trace Free function.
    - dtf 14y ago
      Yeah, you wouldn't think so though, given the one-digit difference in name and the way they place it right next to the PA248Q in their marketing materials. That's marketing departments for you, I guess. Thanks for the tip on Trace Free. It does something for sure.
      - ars 14y ago
        You are not the only person to get confused by ASUS names, so I quite sympathize. Someone I know nearly bought what they thought was a great deal on an IPS screen only to be off by a single character. It was VS228H-P vs VS229H-P Who names these things?

samstave 14y ago

>why are they so cheap Maybe they are made by slaves in North Korea underthe work exchange program they have... EDIT: downvoted, but I was being serious... Maybe they are using labor such as that to make these. I dont know I cant think of another reason they are so cheap - unless they see an opportunity to steal the market by dropping margins and getting these to go in high volume ove rthe next months/year...

brador 14y ago
I'm not the downvoter, but since we can't know either way, is it of significance when making a purchasing decision?
- samstave 14y ago
  No, but the question by the OP was "how" are they doing this... I was speculating.
moonchrome 14y ago
How likely is it that low skilled manual labor is the highest cost factor in high tech manufacturing of things like monitors.
- Lagged2Death 14y ago
  Well, look at it this way: Where are such things generally made, and why are they generally made there?
  - dangrossman 14y ago
    > Compared to the cost of buying chips or making sure that you have a plant that can turn out thousands of these things a day or being able to get strengthened glass cut exactly right within, you know, two days of this thing being due, that’s what’s important. Labor is almost insignificant. What is really important are supply chains and flexibility of factories. You want to be able to be located right next to the plant that makes the screws so that when you need a small change to that screw factory, you can go next door and say, “Give it to me in six hours,” and they can say, “Here you go.” Because if that factory was in another state or on another continent, it would take two weeks. It’s the flexibility within the Chinese manufacturing system, that’s what you can do in Asia that you can’t do in the United States. -- Charles Duhigg, the NYT reporter who wrote the iEconomy piece on Apple’s supply chain and the reason the tech giant doesn’t produce its devices in the U.S.
    - Lagged2Death 14y ago
      I'm familiar with this line of reasoning, but I find it unsatisfying and I suspect it's really more of an apologia for American corporate power than a sound history. Manufacturing was absolutely galloping into China before this sort of tight inter-company integration was even a gleam in anyone's eye, and there's no obvious reason such integration couldn't have developed elsewhere -- except for the labor issues. The integration that's now heralded as the reason for moving manufacturing to China seems self-evidently a product of such movements to me.
      - dangrossman 14y ago
        It doesn't seem far-fetched to imagine that manufacturing initially moved to China because of the cheap labor, but that it's stayed there because of the supply chain advantages. Labor in China isn't cheap as it once was, scrutiny of conditions is heightened, and domestic labor isn't as expensive as it once was either.
fusiongyro 14y ago
It's not a question to be tossed aside, but I don't think the evidence would bear it. For one thing, nothing made in DPRK is going to be sold through South Korea. They're at war still, not trading and communicating with each other. Secondly, while DPRK has a lot of people in labor camps, they're starving and their education level is comparable to 4th grade. I don't think you can get exacting standards of quality out of starved forced laborers, but even if you could, you'd still be dealing with the complete lack of a supply chain in North Korea. There are plenty of countries in the area with established supply chains and populations experienced at making these kinds of things, but DPRK isn't one of them. Third, there just isn't a lot coming out of DPRK in the first place. I've heard of paper flowers made in their labor camps being exported to China and Japan, but in general the trade situation is pretty much a trickle. It's possible, and there are certainly people around better informed than me, but it doesn't sound like the best or most plausible explanation to me.
- wisty 14y ago
  NK is doing some textiles work for South Korea. Textiles is always one of the first things industrialising countries do, because it's only labor intensive.
- quant18 14y ago
  Quite a number of South Korean companies have set up shop in Kaesong Industrial Park, right over the DMZ in North Korea. There's 100+ factories employing more than 40,000 workers. There's buses going across to South Korea every day, though obviously they get cut off in times of tension. I don't think LG does anything directly at Kaesong, but there's certainly other electronics manufacturing going on there: 13 firms in total produced $59 million of electronics at Kaesong in 2010. Of some relevance to this discussion, Magic Micro has been making lamp assemblies for LCD monitors there since 2006. In short, it's not just canvas sacks and artificial flowers coming out of labour camps. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL34093.pdf http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL34093.pdf No doubt, in any supply chain, the highest value-added steps are not occuring in Kaesong. As pointed out by others, labour costs can't explain the difference of hundreds of dollars on these monitors and so samstave's guess is likely wrong (though I don't think he deserves to be downvoted into oblivion). But companies don't decide to locate at Kaesong for cost reasons anyway; rather, they're there for nationalistic reasons about promoting reunification. The factories there apparently don't even break even in the absence of South Korean government subsidies, and the future of those subsidies is uncertain: http://koreajoongangdaily.joinsmsn.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=2912661 http://koreajoongangdaily.joinsmsn.com/news/article/article.... (Another slightly more complex point is that companies manufacturing products at Kaesong likely have to accept lower margins on them --- exporting them runs into sanctions issues in many countries, meaning they have to be sold in the domestic market --- but I doubt that's what's going on here to make these monitors so cheap either). For those who are interested in this kind of stuff, the blog http://www.nkeconwatch.com/ http://www.nkeconwatch.com/ makes good reading
jrockway 14y ago
How much labor is involved in making a monitor? The expensive part is the panel, and they are buying those from Samsung or LG. Apple and Dell probably sell 27" and 30" monitors at a premium because they don't move many units, and the people that need them have the money to buy them. Some Korean company realized they could sell the same panels on eBay for $300 and still make a profit, so they did.
Tsagadai 14y ago
Kaesong Industrial Region area is run by Hyundai Asan (Hyundai is a big group of companies and Asan is not really connected to the Motors side). Kaesong mostly produces low-end, low-tech manufactured goods (think toothbrushes and plastic toys). Hyundai Asan is not run by idiots and there is no way they would put anything in North Korea that would allow North Korea to mass produce high-end, techncial goods like IPS displays. Some manufacturing is done by Chinese companies near the northern DPRK border but it is mainly stuff that requires human machines (labour is cheaper in North Korea than China!). Think, textiles and basket weaving. Power is even imported from China there and North Korea provides almost nothing to businesses except access to a limited labour supply. Your post is conspiratorial and wrong. I know people who have worked at Kaesong (note that Kaesong has also been mostly closed for the last 3 years). Wages may be extremely low but anything that gets more food and money into North Korea while remaining outside the control of the government is a good thing. People can't fight tyranny when they are fighting to not starve to death.

mariusmg 14y ago

They're being sold at a price which guarantees a (probably good) profit. To compete on that market you basically need a name. Rather than trying to invest lots of money in marketing and try to "compete" with LG/Samsung/etc those guys prefer to sell them "cheaper" for a profit.

jsz0 14y ago

My understanding is with these 'B stock' parts the big guys will reject an entire batch / production run when the quality drops below a certain threshold. So these companies are probably salvaging the parts and either testing them or just passing the risk onto the consumer.

caw 14y ago
Some of these are also extremely barebones setups. On one of the models I've read about there's no on screen display, and only 1 input. There's sometimes buttons on the frame but they don't do anything besides power.
- Strom 14y ago
  If you would have read the article you're commenting on, you would know that the buttons do work. It was just a case of Jeff Atwood (unintentionally) spreading lies.
  - frio 14y ago
    Some do; some don't. Source: both of my flatmates have bought these screens; the buttons don't work on any of them (and nor do any but the DVI inputs). It's not like it really matters (after seeing these things I'm saving my pennies to grab a couple myself :)!), but the quality and functionality does differ from manufacturer to manufacturer (and from batch to batch internally - 2 of the 3 can overclock to a 120Hz refresh rate, the other can't).
- jrockway 14y ago
  That's true of almost every big computer monitor. My HP ZR30w has a couple display port inputs, and the 30" Dells around here have a single DVI connector. Neither have OSDs or support any resolution other than their native.
  - moe 14y ago
    That's interesting. My 27" Dell is covered in ports (5 inputs of all kinds, USB, CFCard, SDCard, you name it...) and has a pretty fancy OSD to go with the 5 physical buttons and 6 LEDs. Granted, I don't actually use any of the ports other than DVI and USB, so it has always seemed a bit overkill to me.

ars 14y ago

You may like the Asus PA248Q. IPS, 24" 1920 x 1200, for $339.

dtf 14y ago
I bought a PA238Q a while back, and I use it now as my second monitor. It has incredibly bad persistence... like 20 to 30 seconds of afterimage when I move a window full of text out of the way. Plus the backlight bleed on a black screen is pretty bad.
- ars 14y ago
  The PA248Q is a completely different monitor from the PA238Q. Also, try adjusting the Trace Free function.
  - dtf 14y ago
    Yeah, you wouldn't think so though, given the one-digit difference in name and the way they place it right next to the PA248Q in their marketing materials. That's marketing departments for you, I guess. Thanks for the tip on Trace Free. It does something for sure.
    - ars 14y ago
      You are not the only person to get confused by ASUS names, so I quite sympathize. Someone I know nearly bought what they thought was a great deal on an IPS screen only to be off by a single character. It was VS228H-P vs VS229H-P Who names these things?