Why Are Ruggedized LCD Small Monitor, Small Touchscreen & Tablet PC’s More Expensive than regular LCD Monitors? Are they cheaper in the long run?
Most of us are familiar with LCD Flat Screen monitors that we all use at home, school or even at the office. Most of us are also very familiar with the prices that the different types of LCD Monitors cost. From the different sizes in LCD Monitors to the number of pixels and how bright the monitors are to whether it brings touch screen functionality or not, we are prepared to pay more for more the newest technology.
With that understanding, we would like to explore the reasons why ruggedized LCD small touchscreen monitor solutions are more expensive in price initially, but are actually cheaper than regular LCD Monitors in the long run. We would also like to explore a concept known as Total Cost of Ownership to see if indeed a ruggedized small touchscreen LCD monitor and its related technology are actually cheaper than non ruggedized touchscreen solutions.
Along the same lines, some industries and businesses require LCD Monitors in unusual places, in situations where the vast majority of displays would not survive nor be able to operate adequately. Some businesses need to install displays or touch screens as display interfaces integrated into different systems, in factories that are extremely cold or extremely hot, or in places and environments where water and steam may damage a regular LCD Monitor. Changes in vibration or changes in voltage may also damage regular monitors and even office touchscreens because they are not really made to operate under such harsh conditions and environments.
Other companies such as automotive or airplane manufacturers, luxury yacht and marine vessel manufacturers, the military, medical device & medical equipment manufacturers, Point of Sale and System Integrators, may need small portable mini sized ruggedized LCD monitors with more advanced technology to be able to function and withstand the harshest of environments.
Why is ruggedized technology pricier initially than most regular LCD Monitors? It all starts from the components and electronics that ruggedized LCD small monitors are comprised of. All Xenarc Technologies ruggedized LCD small touchscreen solutions are built from ruggedized components and electronics in order to operate and endure years upon years of use and abuse.
We never manufacture our Ruggedized Small Touchscreen LCD monitor solutions with recycled parts or components as most manufacturers do. We also require thorough 3rd party testing and certification for our ruggedized LCD small monitor solutions, and oftentimes, we achieve certification targeted at specific industries.
Ruggedized 7",8",9",10",12",15",18",24" LCD Monitor Touchscreen Solutions Manufactured By Xenarc Technologies https://www.xenarc.com
What is rugged?
Before we discuss the reasons why a ruggedized tablet or touchscreen display are more expensive in the short run but cheaper in the long run, let us define what is rugged or ruggedized.
“A rugged (ruggedized or ruggedised) tablet or touchscreen display is a tablet computer specifically designed to operate reliably in harsh environments and conditions, such as outside under the sun, where there are constantly strong vibrations, under extreme temperatures and wet or dusty conditions.” Wikipedia
In general, a rugged tablet or small touchscreen display meets the military standards of MIL-STD 810 (harsh environmental conditions) and sometimes MIL-STD 461 (electromagnetic interference). They also have a high Ingress Protection (IP) Rating, which indicates safeguards against solid particulates and liquids.
Some computing platforms are designated “business rugged,” “semi-rugged,” or “having been built to MIL-STD.” These platforms may or may not have rugged features; “semi-rugged” is a marketing, not an engineering term. The only reliable indication of true ruggedness is independent 3rd party testing & certifications of meeting the relevant standards.
Truly rugged tablet or small touchscreen display are built from the ground up with a durable frame, shielded connectors, reinforced corners, and other strengthening/tough features. Some try to ruggedize their tablet or touchscreen displays by buying protective casings or sleeves. The effectiveness of these casings can be charitably described as “variable.” They may offer some protection, but they do not make your non-rugged computer as reliable as one that has been independently tested and certified to military and ruggedized industry standards that are accepted by your industry or system integration project.
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| Ruggedized 7",8",9",10",12",15",18",24" LCD Monitor Touchscreen Solutions Manufactured By Xenarc Technologies https://www.xenarc.com |
Do you need a rugged tablet computer or small touchscreen display?
Reasons for buying rugged tablet or small touchscreen displays include: the breakdown of the “fat server/thin client” model, growing utilization of “mobility” computers for business purposes, distrust of the cloud, need for support/repair services, working in hazardous environments, and more convenient, ever-smaller rugged form factors such as the ones Xenarc Technologies manufactures (7", 8", 9", 10", 12", 15", 18", 24").
Is a rugged tablet or small touchscreen display right for you? Before you decide, consider the factors described above:
- Do you work or live in an environment that is likely to subject your mobile device to damaging trauma?
- Do you operate your rugged device indoor/outdoor for business purposes?
- How important is your data? How much do you trust the cloud?
- How valuable is your time? For most businesses, lost productivity, lost data, lack of repair/support, and the need for frequent purchases are more expensive than the initial higher cost of a rugged computer. Is this true for you?
- The DB6 can run full Windows; smartphones usually have limited OS like Windows CE. Do you use business applications that require full Windows environments?
While the above checklist may be helpful, only you can decide if you need a rugged tablet or touchscreen display. If you do buy a rugged tablet or touchscreen display, you will discover that you need not compromise on ease-of-use, mobility, or economy. Whether you’re a soldier in theater, an engineer in the field, or a top executive making billion dollar deals, a fully rugged tablet or touchscreen display provides you the power, convenience, and peace of mind that you require.
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| Ruggedized 7",8",9",10",12",15",18",24" LCD Small Monitor Touchscreen Solutions Manufactured By Xenarc Technologies https://www.xenarc.com |
Traditional rugged consumers
As one would expect, the military is a prominent customer of rugged tablets and touchscreen displays. Soldiers’ lives depend on their laptops, tablets, and handhelds operating even in difficult and challenging conditions. Police and firemen also want tablets or touchscreen displays that can take a pounding.
Other customers include:
- Warehouse and logistic workers who do not want to stop conducting inventory when their handheld falls three feet on a concrete floor.
- Surveyors who work outdoors in all sorts of weather.
- Scientists want a reliable platform to store and manage difficult-to-obtain data collected in rough remote areas.
- Food processors whose devices need to survive being hosed down with high pressure water.
Looking beyond the Purchase Price
When going out to purchase new mobile tablet computers or small form factor touchscreen LCD monitor display, most businesses may be tempted to base buying decisions solely on a product’s original purchase price. But because the purchase price does not reflect the real cost of the unit, this could turn out to be a costly mistake. To truly evaluate what a product costs, we need to look at the cost over the life of the product. This is known as the product’s total cost of ownership (TCO).
Even if we do not know the term TCO, we often apply it in other areas of our life. When we are buying a new car, most buyers will do at least some research to find out about the vehicle’s repair record. A cheaper car that spends half the time in the repair shop is no bargain.
The same concept applies with ruggedized mobile tablet computers or small form factor touchscreen LCD monitor displays. Computer Tablets and LCD Monitors taken outside of a safe office environment are going to be subjected to a lot of rough treatment. Drops, vibration, water, dust and extreme temperatures are only some of the conditions a tablet pc or LCD monitor display may face in the field. It seems logical that you would not take a delicate piece of electronic equipment into a rough environment, but that is what happens more often than you would think.
Why? Because many buyers of mobile computer tablets or LCD monitor displays are lured by the lower initial purchase price of buying non-rugged or minimally ruggedized equipment solely because of the cheaper purchase price, failing to take into account the higher costs of actually using this equipment in the field. By failing to purchase the right kind of unit for the job and the environment, they will be paying a lot more in the long run than if they had purchased a more rugged, but more expensive, piece of equipment initially. In other words, the more expensive unit is actually the cheaper unit.
Ruggedized tablet PCs or Ruggedized Small Touchscreen Displays cost more initially and are more economical in the long run
Increasingly, enterprise users who do not work in rough environments are buying rugged tablets or touchscreen displays. They are motivated by the most basic of business reasons, the bottom line. Understanding TCO (total cost of ownership), you’ll see that rugged tablet computers & LCD monitor touch screens actually cost less than consumer-grade devices.
While the initial price of a rugged computer may be more than a non-rugged one, the long term cost (Total Cost of Ownership, i.e. TCO) is much less. A highly publicized study by VDC Research identified specific areas in which rugged tablets or touchscreen displays save money:
- Rugged tablets or small monitor and touchscreen displays break down less often, so the cost of managing and supporting them is less.
- Less downtime means lower lost productivity costs, fewer lost data hours, and fewer repairs.
- Rugged tablets or touchscreen displays have much better support for parts than their consumer counterparts and therefore have longer life cycles.
- Longer life cycles mean less need for training, reconfiguring, and integrating new devices.
- Frequent downtimes can alienate and lose customers.
Price
There is a noticeable difference between consumer and ruggedized tablets or touchscreen displays in terms of price. Consumer tablets tend to be inexpensive; depending on the brand, they can range from $200 to $300 or more. A good rugged tablet PC or small form factor touchscreen display LCD Monitor will usually cost upwards of $500.
Rugged tablets and small mini portable touchscreen display LCD monitors cost more for a reason: they are specifically designed to withstand wear and tear, even in extreme conditions. This isn’t to say consumer tablets are poorly made; they just aren’t built for high-risk environments.
Although the initial price of consumer tablets and regular conusmer LCD monitors looks attractive, it is important to consider the total cost of ownership (TCO), or the estimated price of an item over the course of its life. Buying consumer tablets can save money initially, but they typically require more repairs than rugged tablets or ruggedized LCD touchscreen LCD monitors. Repairs cost extra money that’s not built into the initial price tag. Plus, the downtime that comes with a broken device will also hurt business by slowing down operations and decreasing output. Critical operations cannot afford any down time. Time equals money for a business that needs to be in operation for 24/7/365 days.
Durability
Rugged tablets or touchscreen displays, as the name implies, are extremely tough and durable products. Even though they are much more expensive than consumer tablets and consumer or business office monitors or touchscreens, they are built for tough environments. Therefore, they require less maintenance during their lifespan.
Consumer devices have a lower cost up-front, but when you consider the amount of money you’ll spend on repairs, they end up costing more over their lifetime. Tablet cases and LCD Monitor panel cases are available to increase durability — but even though they can offer some protection, no case, no matter how durable, will turn a consumer tablet into a rugged tablet.
Here are a few things you can get from a rugged tablet or touchscreen display that a consumer tablet simply can’t offer:
Drop/shock protection: rugged tablets or touchscreen displays are built to withstand the impact of a jarring fall. Because of their industrial purpose, warehouses aren’t ideal places for most types of technology. However, a fall on concrete won’t affect a rugged tablet or touchscreen display. Consumer tablets, with the help of a case, might appear to withstand a fall, but the shock of just one fall could ruin the tablet’s components internally.
Water/dust-proof: This is an important one. Even in office settings, spills frequently happen around electronics. A rugged tablet or touchscreen display that can resist bad weather or a dirty/dusty workplace is invaluable in industrial environments like warehouses, distribution centers and most vehicles.
Operate in extreme temperatures: Unlike temperatures in office environments, temperatures in warehouses fluctuate more and are harder to control. Tablets or touchscreen LCD monitors that shut down due to extreme heat or cold result in downtime, lower output, and ultimately, lost revenue and increased costs.
Longevity: In addition to failing less often than consumer tablets, rugged tablets and ruggedized LCD touchscreen monitors also have longer life spans. This means that they won’t need to be replaced as often, reducing their TCO. Xenarc Technologies Small Rugged Touchscreen Monitor solutions 7", 8", 9", 10", 12", 15", 18", 24" are built tough to last.
The Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) for a Xenarc Technologies Rugged Monitor is > 55,000 hours OR 6.2 Years of continuous operation and with the new 3 Year Warranty, a Xenarc Rugged Monitor gives you true peace of mind. Xenarc Technologies All-Weather Rugged 7", 8", 9", 10", 12", 15", 18", 24" LCD Small Monitors are perfect Human Machine Interfaces for Smart Homes, Smart Factories, Smart Offices, Smart Vehicles, Smart Stores, Smart Cities, IIoT, IoT, Industry 4.0 and for low voltage and indoor or outdoor applications.
A higher initial investment can most often give you a lower total cost
TCO takes into account all of the actual costs incurred during the entire life of the product. TCO is comprised of hard costs (like purchase price, development, replacement, testing & certification and deployment costs) and soft costs (training, repair costs, and downtime costs). As more organizations become more dependent on their mobile workforce, downtime costs have become increasingly important and costly. If a field service rep has a device failure at the start of his day, the lost service revenue and customer goodwill from all of the missed service calls can be substantial.
Computer tablets or LCD Small Monitor Touchscreen displays are often defined into one of four categories:
- Commercial
- Durable
- Semi-rugged
- Fully-rugged
A commercial unit has little or no protection against the environment. Durable tablet computers & office LCD monitors generally have only rubber bumpers and perhaps a shock-mounted hard drive. Semi-rugged computers and LCD Monitors are tested to some MIL-STD-810F/G and IP specifications, and fully rugged units are generally fully tested to MIL-STD-810F/G and often totally resistant to both water and dust.
So what is the difference in the total cost of ownership between a commercial device and a fully rugged one in a reasonably tough environment? The Venture Development Corporation (VDC) is a notable independent research firm that focuses on ruggedized computers, tablet pc’s and ruggedized LCD displays. They have performed TCO computations across the 4 levels of rugged computers across a number of common mobile applications. VDC computed the total cost for each level of ruggedization over a 5-year lifespan and then annualized the costs. These costs (broken down into hard costs and soft costs) are shown in figure 1 below.
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| From the figure, it becomes clear that using a commercial or non-rugged device will cost you a lot more in the long run; about 65% more per year than using a fully rugged device. |
It makes sense if you think of all the things that could happen to a non-rugged device in the field. For example, let’s take a look at replacement costs. A fully rugged unit will often last at least 5 years. So if you purchase 100 fully rugged units, at the end of 5 years you will still have most of them still in operation. If you purchase 100 commercial devices and put them into a rugged environment, chances are that none of the original units will be operational at the end of 5 years. And some of those units will need to be replaced multiple times over the course of the 5 year period.
How many commercial devices do you need to buy before you have equaled the purchase price of a rugged unit? And that does not include some of the other costs we discussed like downtime costs, the cost of deploying a new unit, and the cost of re-acquiring lost data.
Ultimately, you need to carefully evaluate your own working situation to determine what your own total costs of ownership are going to be. If your mobile computer or LCD Monitor will not be working in rough environmental conditions, a fully rugged unit may be more rugged than you need. But buying the right level of ruggedness for the application and the working environment is guaranteed to be the most cost effective in the long run.
Testing and Certifications
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| Ruggedized 7",8",9",10",12",15",18",24" LCD Small Monitor Touchscreen Solutions Manufactured By Xenarc Technologies https://www.xenarc.com |
- Drop and Shock Resistance Testing & Certification
- Liquid Resistance Testing & Certification
- Vibration Resistance Testing & Certification
- Particle Resistance Testing & Certification
- Humidity Resistance Testing & Certification
- Temperature Tolerance Testing & Certification
- Pressure Resistance Testing & Certification
- Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) Testing & Certification
- Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) Testing
- Water and Dust Ingress Protection IP65 and IP54 Testing
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