[sangnoir]

>I just found a 7-inch tablet for £28 ($43.10) on Amazon (plus a camera and RAM and stuff). Including taxes and shipping. Why is this so expensive?

Sales volumes determine economies of scale, it is likely the £28 tablet was made in quantities much larger than the pi screen (I'd guess at least 2 orders of magnitude).

Also, not all screens are equal. It's not just resolution: there's colour reproduction, viewing angles, brightness, contrast and response time. On the non-technical side mentioned on the blog, they mentioned they wanted a manufacture who would make the panel for a long time. I would bet a dollar that Pi screen beats the £28-tablet display on all the above parameters

[creshal]

> there's colour reproduction, viewing angles, brightness, contrast and response time.

Which seem to be all crap for this panel anyway – 70° viewing angles implies it's the cheapest TN panel they could find.

For a non-profit(!) like the RPi foundation that can neither guarantee sales nor buy them in advance in massive bulks, availability is the only factor that really matters.

[userbinator]

Indeed. They mention it's an "industrial" panel, which in my experience seems to mean "low contrast and brightness, narrow viewing angle, but wider temperature range[1]". The Innolux panel I mentioned in another comment here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10185433 ) is an example of this type.

[1] http://www.pacificdisplay.com/lcd_temp_range.htm

[callum85]

But the £28 one comes with RAM, CPU, wifi sensor, camera, and it's two thirds of the price. Even if the other screen specs (brightness, viewing angle etc) are really terrible on the £28-tablet and incredible on the raspberry pi display, this still seems very expensive, and the difference seems like more than just an economy of scale thing.

[sangnoir]

I mentioned 3 things that might explain the price difference in my comment, not just economies of scale. I should have been clearer

1. Economies of scale

2. Difference in quality of the display

3. Booking factory capacity in advance (there's likely a huge opportunity cost to the manufacturer)