How much does "build quality" cost the manufacturers?

Having worked with business grade laptops before, I am being forced to look at consumer laptops because of some stupid policy at work. And I am taken aback at the somewhat shoddy quality of the conusmer laptops.

How much does it cost the manufactueres to put in good build quality? Businesss laptops are generally more expensive because of the included three year warranties and certified graphics cards etcc. I am wondering how much it costs the manufacturers to just put in good quality cases. Say like a dell precision case or hp elitebook case (upgraded from a inspiron case or a pavilion case). How much is the extra cost?

 

Well I don’t have direct laptop experience, but I do have relevant experience with designing products that have some of the same parts like displays, input devices, processors, power circuits, and batteries. My guess would be not a whole lot more goes into a business class laptop, maybe $50 bucks on the low end and $200 on the high end. The electrical parts are pretty much standard, they are classified as commercial, industrial, and military. Because business laptops are exposed to the same temperatures they will use the same commercial grade parts, so I would not expect any difference in cost of that part of a laptop design. Where the spending of money comes in is on a more rugged chassis design to better protect the hard drive, PCB’s, displays, etc… More design testing of shock on the PCB’s to ensure parts don’t break as easily. The displays are probably more sturdy and able to stand more shock, Better keyboards will add to the cost. I could probably think of more things to consider but you get the point.

 

Its difficult to give you an exact number. However, consumer and business laptops always use the same major internal components responsible for base cost from model to model, so the prices you see reflects the cost difference in build quality unless there are considerable r/d or marketing costs behind a new product.

 

$200-$400 for better build quality sounds resonable..
But judging from the prices, I got the impression that the profit margin is more for business grade laptops.. Asus sells the G73 for 1600 euros; HP sells the 8740w for 3000 euros --- I'm skeptical that better build quality is costing HP 1400 euros more

 

Given that different manufacturers use different designs that have different costs to produce, it is probably better to speculate about HP's consumer line versus their business line. After all, manufacturers of other items frequently use preceding and less advanced designs as the foundation for more advanced designs. For example, Toyota's Lexus RX 350 uses much the same chassis as their simpler Highlander while using the same engine found in their Sienna minivan. This helps reduce cost, and this technique is probably applied to laptops as well, as with many other products.

 

It all depends on the design themselves. Materials, manufacturing processes and all that will factor into the cost of production. In general though, using higher grade polymers or metals of most kind will up the production cost.

That being said, it's not just the build quality you're paying for. lots of business laptops have options like drive encryption and other addon softwares and features such as spillproof keyboards or whatnot.

At the end of the day, business laptops can be considered a more "niche" product than consumer ones not only in terms of the product, but the support. You're paying for that "next day on site" technician or that "part sent within 48h" service too when buying a business laptop.

 

It depends entirely on the cost of materials, how much it costs to machine/mill them into the necessary shape and the manufacturer's buying power. If they can buy in large quantity it will work out cheaper per unit produced. Some materials require specialized machinery or processes to shape which adds to cost and production time and requires employees with specialist training in the operation of same.

As such there is no standard and the price will vary depending on manufacturer's ability to reduce costs. If there is little competition then it is possible to keep the sale price artificially high since there is nothing that directly competes against your product and there is no pressure to reduce sale price to maintain market share. Mostly, there isn't much of a market for super expensive laptops so nearly every company that builds laptops will offer an affordable model. It will not have many custom designed and manufactured parts as these will increase costs and the margin for profit is narrow.

Part of the reason why Sony Z series for example is so expensive is because of the custom machined carbon fibre and aluminium chasis which is more difficult to work with than plastics. There is the custom RAID array which cannot avail of OEM 1.8" solid state drives because space saving necessitates they be smaller than this. It is the same for the custom optical drive and the full HD 13.1" screen which is at this point unprecedented. So the manufacturing process is expensive but the Z series also has very little competition in the subnotebook class so there is also less pressure to lower prices to remain competitive. I have a feeling that Z series notebooks are not the bread winners of Sony's notebook range because their starting price puts them far beyond what the average person can reasonably afford.

A comparison would be Korg's famous OASYS synthesizer. Korg is a multinational designer and manufacturer of electronic musical instruments and the OASYS was their flagship workstation keyboard and it was priced beyond what most people would consider reasonable for a workstation. I can't remember what it was but it was definitely over £5,000 STG at a time when Tritons were selling for less than £2,000 STG.

OASYS was never designed to sell in large quantities nor was it designed to make profit. In fact, given the years of R&D that went into it I suspect it was a huge commercial failure and a giant hole in Korg's corporate wallet. However what it did do was build a name for Korg as the last word in digital workstation keyboards. It was a giant bundle of 'firsts'.

Later Korg discontinued the OASYS altogether but started recycling the technology in OASYS into more affordable products like M3, Microkorg and Radias.

The Microkorg in particular is a huge seller for Korg because it is affordable so the target market is very very big. Much of the cost saving comes with the lack of R&D needed and the use of cheap materials. I think its a clever strategy by Korg. Put all the technology, R&D and manufacturing costs into a single ground breaking product that is exclusive and desirable, all of which reflects on the company's brand name. Then discontinue it and recycle the manufacturing and technology that went into it over and over again to make cheaper derivative products that gives users a little taste of the best that Korg has to offer but never the whole meal. Another big name developer of electronic instruments is Roland and they have been doing this for a long long time. When you look at the stunning amount of digital keyboards/modules the company has produced over the years, many of them are derivatives or watered down rehashes of JV-80 - a famous mid 90s keyboard, elements of which can still be found in Roland's keyboards today.

In the business/enterprise sector, its common to buy computers in large quantity and outsource technical and after sales support. What you want is a product that is guaranteed to work for x number of years at which point all of them get dumped en masse and replaced. For the same reasons, you typically see more rugged construction so that it is designed to tolerate a certain amount of physical abuse, as employees are won't to put their computers through when its on the company's dime, not their own.