Pricing of Smart Glass is always a major subject, for the human eye it all looks the same but pricing significantly vary. in principle, there are many re-sellers but only a dozen of smart film producers worldwide. Each producer set the level of quality of raw materials. The major elements (over 90% of product cost) are the Liquid Crystal (LC) which responsible for the optical phenomenon and the PET/ITO which used as a substrate as well as the electrical conductor to the LC.
When using top quality Japanese LC and PET/ITO a producer will pay 3 times and more compared with Chinese low quality materials. Labor and overall costs are relatively neglected as it required 2-3 people for production and relatively small space.
If you want to know how it will affect the product, in one word it is reliability over time. Since low quality raw materials are not stable, the Smart Glass may change its color, delaminate, bubbles will appear, non-functional due to shortcuts etc.
Replacing Smart Glass is very costly due to time, delivery and installation costs, not to mention the frustration. In most of the time it is very difficult to analyze the root cause of the problem, when the smart film is already packaged in the glass, so warranty may not be applied.
Our recommendations when choosing a Privacy Glass, are:
Make sure you are working directly with the producers. Today they are all working directly with customers.
Make sure that the producer has over 10 years of installations.
Get a Sample/Demo before you place a commercial order.