

Those budget 27" IPS displays from Korea are for real - geoffgasior
http://techreport.com/articles.x/23291
There are numerous eBay listings for off-brand Korean monitors boasting 27" IPS panels with 2560x1440 display resolutions.  These puppies cost less than $400, or roughly half as much as the name-brand alternatives.  We've tested one against a 30" Dell, and a few caveats aside, it's nearly as good.
======
riobard
Hmmm, LG panels...

These panels were available since a few years ago on Taobao.com (China's eBay
if that helps) in small quantities, and there were lots of excitement to make
your own “Cinema Display” at 1/3 the price. As a big screen lover, I was also
intrigued. So I did some research.

Here's the background story I heard a year or two ago from an anonymous guy
claiming he's working in LG's factories in China. I didn't verify if it's true
(unless I saw LG's contract with Apple, which means impossible), but it makes
a lot of sense to me anyway. You have to judge by yourselves.

These 27" S-IPS (yes, not e-IPS) panels were indeed manufactured for Apple's
iMacs and Cinema/Thunderbolt Displays. Apparently Apple has pretty high and
tight standard (which they do, if you've ever used authentic ones) about these
panels. Once in a while a production run will not meet Apple's expectation for
some reason (e.g. color/brightness/contrast uniformity). So Apple rejects the
faulty batch, and LG has to find some creative ways to deal with the rejects
without losing too much (these are expensive panels) AND not breaking the
contract with Apple.

Turned out Apple forbids LG to resell rejected 27" panels to any well-known
brands in meaningful quantity. The restriction makes a lot of business sense:
you don't want a major brand suddenly floods the market with comparable
displays but at less than half of the price of iMacs and Cinema/Thunderbolt
Displays. Especially so when you had spent a lot of money to secure the supply
of such giant panels.

So what does LG do in the end? They first sort the faulty batch into two
categories: the better ones that can be salvaged by LG itself, and the worse
ones that have to go somewhere else. LG re-cuts the slightly better ones into
smaller panels (24" and below), and re-sells these to its partners as high
grade IPS panels, as this is not forbidden by the contract with Apple (only
27" ones are forbidden). And worse ones? They go to various unknown brands in
small quantities (again, this is not forbidden by the contract).

My bet is that these Korean panels are from the second category.

~~~
reedlaw
Are these still available on Taobao? Do you know which brands to look for?

~~~
est
Sure, Search 27 IPS on any b2c c2c site in China. You can find plenty of them.

The cheapest I can find is about 1599 RMB on 360buy.com

------
northisup
We bought a bunch of them at DISQUS, our current failure rate is about 20-30%
failed within the first three months of use. Would not buy again.

~~~
pavel_lishin
If they're less than half the price of a comparable Dell, a 30% failure rate
seems acceptable. Just buy some spares, right?

~~~
scott_s
It depends on how much you value the extra time and effort it takes to replace
them. If you buy spares ahead of time to negate that time and effort, then
have you really saved money?

~~~
pyre
The point is that a 30% failure rate is less than the 50% discount so you only
end up saving 20%, with the spares included in the purchase.

~~~
ZachPruckowski
But if 20-30% failed in the first few months of an expected 5+ year life
cycle, that's indicative of a >50% failure rate in the medium to long term.
You'll probably come out a loser in monitor-years/dollar.

~~~
jff
That does not necessarily follow. See the "bathtub curve".

------
Xcelerate
These monitors a great deal. One thing that always bugs me on forums (or deal
websites) where these are discussed is that people are quick to point out that
these monitors have A- panels -- the rejects from the Apple and Dell supply.

While this is true for a _few_ of the companies, it is not true for all of
them. "Korean monitors" isn't one entity. There's a lot of companies selling
these things, and a lot of them are A quality panels. (So the lesson is to not
just repeat things you hear without finding a primary source first).

I believe most rumors point to Apple releasing a 27 or 30 inch super
resolution display within the next year. I'll be waiting for these Korean
companies to release their own version and then snatch it up for a cheap
price.

~~~
CamperBob2
There's also a subtext that makes me a bit nervous. The OEM did not build
these monitors as an act of charity. They were ordered by someone, with the
intent of selling them at a much higher price.

When you see a deal like this -- _especially_ if the monitors are actually of
better quality than represented in the ad -- it means that someone at a major
PC manufacturer ordered a metric assload too many monitors. Why/how did that
happen? Does it signal a larger market collapse?

~~~
gareim
Or, you know, the panels just weren't up to the PC manufacturer's standards.
Happens all the time.

------
sachingulaya
As an owner of one I'll toss in my 0.02.

I purchased the Achieva Shimian 27" off of eBay for $290 a few weeks ago. It
arrived within 5 days of purchase from Korea. There are no dead pixels or
other defects. I hook it up to my macbook pro using:
[http://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-DisplayPort-Thunderbolt-
Dual...](http://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-DisplayPort-Thunderbolt-Dual-Link-
Adaptor/dp/B004C4SEH6)

This monitor only accepts dual-DVI input. You can buy the HDMI version for
$350 if you want.

Other variations include "pixel perfect" displays. Pixel perfect means they
opened the box and there were no dead pixels. 80% of people on hardocp
reported no dead pixels.

The stand is definitely a bit wobbly.

For $290--it can't be beat.

~~~
sachingulaya
To clarify--80% of people who did not order pixel perfect displays received
displays with no dead pixels.

"Pixel perfect" displays are ~$50 more.

------
rogerbinns
Annoyingly they are 16:9 which means you lose some vertical resolution versus
16:10. I'm pretty sure I bought the last two displays with 16:10 in this area.

For those who care about colour checkout <http://www.hughski.com> for a device
and <http://lwn.net/Articles/499231/> for details. It turns out that
manufacturers do ship displays with completely wrong colour calibration (yes
I'm looking at you Lenovo).

~~~
kakuri
The dearth of 16:10 monitors available bothers me, but if you're going from
1920x1200 (or less) to 2560x1440, you're still gaining vertical space - you're
just gaining more horizontal space. I replaced my 24" 1920x1200 with a
Crossover 27Q 27" 2560x1400 and absolutely love it.

~~~
rogerbinns
Note that you only gain physical vertical space if you also increase the
monitor size. eg replacing a 24" with another 24" will lose 11% vertical space
even if there are more pixels. Consequently you have to significantly increase
the diagonal size in order to get the same (or more) vertical.

------
citricsquid
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
> _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...

~~~
fusiongyro
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.

~~~
quant18
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>

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....](http://koreajoongangdaily.joinsmsn.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=2912661)

(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/> makes good reading

~~~
fusiongyro
Absolutely fantastic info, thanks!

------
mappu
A friend of mine bought one recently, and it arrived yesterday... his comments
were along the lines of 'Build quality is not as good as Dell, but passable,
and it's a third of the price'. He found a calibration file and seems very
happy with the purchase.

The common brands to search for are the Yamakasi Catleap and (to a lesser
extent) the Shimian QH270.

~~~
kakuri
I haven't seen the Yamakasi's or the Achieva Shimian's in person, but I have a
Crossover 27Q and the monitor housing is sturdy metal and the stand is sturdy
as well. Still overall very lightweight.

------
ori_b
I wish that they were still making 4:3 LCDs. I like having 3 side by side, and
I currently have that setup with 3 20" 1600x1200 monitors, but at some point
I'll want to upgrade to something with higher pixel density. My concern is
that with new wide screen displays, things will span too wide horizontally to
be usable.

~~~
im3w1l
Put three screens in portrait and never look back.

~~~
rhizome
It would be nice if sizes could be standardized in some way that I could have
one large landscape monitor flanked by a couple of smaller ones in portrait,
without looking lame.

    
    
        +-----+------------+-----+
        |     |            |     |
        |     |            |     |
        |     |            |     |
        +-----+------------+-----+

~~~
jrockway
Two rotated 19" 1600x900s flanking a 2560x1600 30" monitor looks like your
diagram.

------
kristofferR
I've heard some great things about the Yamasaki Catleap, another cheap 27".

I might be ordering one of them soon.

The vast majority of the receivers have received perfect screens and been
really happy with their purchase it seems, check out the reports in the table
here: [http://www.overclock.net/t/1225919/yamakasi-catleap-
monitor-...](http://www.overclock.net/t/1225919/yamakasi-catleap-monitor-club)

~~~
jaytaylor
I've been loving mine! My co-worker also enjoys this same monitor as well.

------
rrmm
The guy in the article mentions having trouble figuring out how to change the
brightness using the non-OSD controls.

As great as LCD monitors are, the one thing I miss about CRT's is having an
analogue brightness control. It made it really convenient to adjust the
monitor at night.

(Also, I miss not having blue LED's and touch-sensitive controls. They really
need to force designers to read Don Norman's book).

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Blue LEDs are an evil scourge upon electronics. Most especially on alarm
clocks.

------
kevhsu
I got the Auria EQ276W from Microcenter for 400+tax last week. Fantastic
purchase. Includes Displayport, HDMI, DVI-D, and VGA ports. Colors are vivid,
and I don't believe I have any dead/stuck pixels. Mine has minor backlight
bleed, but probably not more than the $700+ Apple and Dell displays.

------
Scene_Cast2
Anyone looking for a high-quality review of the panel, check out
<http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/dgm_ips-2701wph.htm>. The Pro/Con
conclusion is at the very bottom of the page. I cannot recommend tftcentral
enough as a monitor review site.

------
jfb
I rock the Cinema Display, but would seriously consider one or two of these as
secondary displays. Of course, it the mooted third party Thunderbolt breakout
boxes actually show up (and work), the economics change for me.

------
duncans
Jeff Atwood got some, doesn't look like it worked out well:

"two of the 27" Korean $350 s-ips monitors arrived. They are amazing panels,
but lack of hardware brightness control may be a showstopper."
<https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/224213213649190913>

"beautiful S-IPS panels but no hardware LED backlight brightness control times
3 is untenable. Oh well, experiment over."
<https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/224217599746117632>

~~~
vitalysh
Article mentions that on 3rd page:

<http://techreport.com/articles.x/23291/3>

tl;dr; buttons work, just no OSD.

"Armed with a sense of how the buttons worked, I was soon adjusting the
display brightness up and down, as well. I was able to dim the display to an
acceptable level for the cave-like Damage Labs, and it wasn't even at the
lowest possible setting."

------
wesbos
I've been researching these lately as well and I've found the __Crossover 27Q
LED __to be the best build quality and the nicest casing.

Quite tempted to snap one of these up before they get popular and drive the
price up..

~~~
kakuri
I've got a 27Q and it is excellent. The housing is metal, the stand is solid
(if lacking in adjustment, but other models offer more adjustment - I replaced
it with an Ergotron MX arm). It's very basic - just a DVI port. Crossover has
multiple models offering different stands and different connectivity options.
The major unknown at this point is longevity, but other than that I would
recommend this without reservation.

~~~
majorlazer
I have an Ergotron MX arm (one of the best purchases I ever made) supporting a
23" ViewSonic and I was planning to get one of these 27" monitors. How well do
these arms support monitors that big?

~~~
kakuri
I have the Crossover 27Q and the Ergotron MX works perfectly with it.

------
kitsune_
The last thing I would compromise on with my set up is the monitor. After all,
I'll be staring into this thing every day for at least two years if not more.

No TN-Panel. No glare. I also refuse to buy a 16:9 monitor.

~~~
cbsmith
I like my vertical pixels as much as the next guy, but unless you are doing a
lot of drawing work (and therefore really need a circle to look like a
circle), I have a hard time seeing why one would not give a little on this.

You've got $300. You can either get a 1920x1200 display, or you can get a
2560x1440 display. If somehow there was another choice with a 2560x1600, I'm
going to be _strongly_ tempted to go with the 2560x1400 display unless it has
some annoying display quality issues.

Even if you have more money, it'd be tempting to consider getting 2 of the
2560x1400 instead of one 2560x1600.

~~~
yardie
Basing your display decisions by the price is like basing your car buying
decisions on the monthly payment. Displays are some of the sturdiest, longest
lasting piece of the system, and it's the part of the computer you most
interact with, unless you are blind. My single 27" LG is 6 years old and has
gone through 3.5 computers in that time.

In that regard, you've got $300 right now for a monitor, in 2 months you'll
have $500. If it's possible to get a good monitor right now for $300 then I'd
go for it. If I can't find anything that fits me (IPS, 16:10 are critical) I'd
rather wait.

~~~
cbsmith
> Basing your display decisions by the price is like basing your car buying
> decisions on the monthly payment.

I'd say it really _isn't_ like that, but to the extent it is... buying a nicer
car that gets repossessed in 3 months isn't really a great idea, so that
monthly payment is a pretty important factor.

> My single 27" LG is 6 years old and has gone through 3.5 computers in that
> time.

How much did it cost when you bought it? What would the replacement cost be?

Nevermind the issue of how quickly display interfaces seem to be evolving
these days...

> In that regard, you've got $300 right now for a monitor, in 2 months you'll
> have $500.

So, it's a purchase that lasts for years, but you only save up for it for... 3
months?

> If it's possible to get a good monitor right now for $300 then I'd go for
> it. If I can't find anything that fits me (IPS, 16:10 are critical) I'd
> rather wait.

Hey, you should never buy equipment sooner than you need it. The presumption
is that you need to buy a monitor _now_ , not later. If you don't need to buy
a monitor now, the smart play is pretty much _always_ not to buy one now.

------
theatrus2
Sadly, not a good monitor review (from the likes of say Anandtech). If you're
going to do a qualitative review, you need to check color accuracy, tracking,
gamut, etc.

~~~
sliverstorm
I think it can already be taken for granted that if you are concerned about
color accuracy, gamut, et al, these are not the panels for you.

~~~
corin_
Plenty of people are concerned about specifics when buying any tech product
without buying the most expensive product. I'm concerned about specifications
and benchmarks when I buy a graphics card, it doesn't mean I want the best
possible, it just means I can judge quality vs. cost.

------
brilyient
I can't wait for "tablets" to be sold as "portable displays" that we can plug
into small, low-power general purpose computers. We'll get the resolution of
the Apple iPad butwe can use a real keyboard, a better, open-source kernel and
we can do real programming without the Apple-style lockdown nonsense.

The title is a little misleading. The "non-budget" diplays are often made in
the same place (Asia, not the U.S.), from the same parts, maybe even the same
factories, by the same workers.

------
adrianwaj
Big question is do they use LED or CCFL, and are they the cheaper e-IPS? What
is their refresh rate, >10ms ?

~~~
devindotcom
Says LED on the panel, and they said refresh rate was just fine. Not sure what
type of IPS it is, but given the explosion of IPS panels and demand these days
I wouldn't be surprised if it was the real thing. $337 isn't cheap, after all.

~~~
hastur
The explosion of IPS panels is because LG figured out how to make them really
cheaply. And those economic, low-quality variants are called e-IPS and I have
absolutely no doubt that we're dealing with one here. (Despite the fact that
specs on eBay say S-IPS.)

Also, $337 is not only cheap - it's dirt cheap.

$300 for 24'' IPS is cheap. Courtesy of e-IPS, of course. A Dell U2412M would
be an example.

A decent 24'' IPS display, say a Dell U2410, will cost $500.

A high-quality 24'' IPS display, say a NEC PA241W, will cost $1000.

A high-quality 27'' IPS display, say a NEC PA271W, costs $1400.

Welcome to the real world.

~~~
adrianwaj
I've got my eye on the new NEC P232W: 23", $569 -
<http://www.necdisplay.com/p/desktop-monitors/p232w-bk>

~~~
wmf
That seems crazy since the HP ZR2740w is only ~$100 more.

~~~
hastur
Obviously, he cared more about quality than size.

------
serialx
Take a look at this:
[http://www.danawa.com/product/list.html?defSite=DISPLAY&...](http://www.danawa.com/product/list.html?defSite=DISPLAY&cate1=860&cate2=13735&cate3=14883&cate4=15045)

Simply take 3 zeros in the price tag to match dollars. There's even 220 dollar
display!

------
dshep
Was interested until I got to: "glossy anti-glare coating". I think I'd have
just said it was glossy.

------
overworkedasian
there is alot of good information here on various 27" displays from korea.
<http://www.overclock.net/f/44/monitors-and-displays>

------
luigip
Some more discussion of these monitors here:
<http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/news_archive/26.htm#korean_ips27>

------
eliasmacpherson
the HDCP complaint he lists seems like a feature, not a bug.

~~~
josephlord
Why? An HDCP capable display can show content without HDCP or with HDCP so in
what way is one that only supports non HDCP inputs better?

The only benefit is if only a small minority of people have HDCP displays then
it makes no commercial sense to mandate HDCP for content. And in my view it is
too late for that.

Edit: Note that it wouldn't be a show stopper for me with a product like this
but I would regard HDCP support in a monitor to be a benefit.

Edit2: Added missing word to second sentence.

~~~
josephlord
Just wanted to add another item which is that HDCP is completely broken now
anyway. The remaining security is mostly the fact that it is bloody hard to
handle the massive datarate of the the uncompressed video without custom
hardware.

And why bother; almost everything is available in the compressed form (e.g.
Blu-ray) more easily accessible if you are trying to access the content.

------
fersho311
Just got it! Dead on Arrival, does not work at all. $337 junk. The only thing
that woks on this is the piece of shit built in monitor speakers.

------
hastur
OK, so let's bring this hype down to Earth.

For this kind of money this can only be an e-IPS monitor. (The specs on e-bay
say S-IPS, but it's certainly a lie.)

For those who don't differentiate between the different variants of IPS, e-IPS
is a relatively new thing introduced around 2 years ago (by LG, I believe) and
it's a simplified and much cheaper to manufacture version of IPS. Its
characteristics are somewhere between TN and IPS.

Apart from the display itself, a monitor's quality is also very much dependent
on its electronics. For this kind of money it's obvious they've put the
absolute minimum into this thing.

(For a little comparison: I have an old, med-quality 19'' NEC 1990FX monitor
and a cheap 23'' HP 2310ti touch monitor. The NEC weighs 9kg, the HP 8kg. How
can a smaller monitor be heavier? It's all electronics.)

Same applies to other aspects: you can have no confidence in the monitor's
electromagnetic emissions or reliability. And if the power supply fries for
some reason in 3 months, don't count on your warranty.

I mean, you didn't believe for a second that a no-name brand that sells in the
US purely thru e-bay will honor any kind of warranty, did you?

~~~
ImprovedSilence
"The NEC's display must obviously be lighter. So it's all electronics."

It's not always the "electronics", and besides, who says better electronics
need to weight more? A few years back, I interviewed with a company that makes
high-end blu-ray players. They showed me how they put weights in the cases, so
they were heavier, and felt "sturdier" and of higher quality.

~~~
jfb
It could also be as simple as the glass on the smaller monitor being
marginally thicker.

Using _weight_ as a metric for judging the quality of electronics seems …
peculiar.

~~~
hastur
Not electronics quality but amount.

And from that I drew a (simplified, yes) conclusion that more electronics =>
more processing => better picture.

~~~
jfb
But amount tells you nothing, particularly when making comparisons across
different generations of electronics. Besides, a lot of electronics can mean
shit-ass deinterlacing hardware, or far too complicated OSD functionality, or
pointless A/D conversion. None of which has anything to do with build quality
or picture quality.

