I wanted to buy some standard BNC 50 Ohm terminators and was surprised when I saw multiple offers with prices well above 20€ per piece. I found others for around 2€ (same online shop) and now I am intrigued on why the expensive ones are more expensive. Are they in some way better? Longer lasting?
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Probably tested with equipment whose calibration is traceable to a national lab, guaranteed to meet spec, and from a fully traceable supply chain. If lives depend on correct termination, that's a bargain. – Jul 01 '15 at 09:53
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Supply and demand as well. I was pricing 600 ohm terminators the other day, which are obsolete, and best I could do was $US70. – user207421 Jul 01 '15 at 12:53
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For BNC terminators there are usually the following factors that contribute to the price:
- Accuracy of the specified values (i.e. impedance is matching for the whole assembly)
- Wattage of the resistor
- Bandwidth of the whole assembly
- Linearity of attenuation of the whole assembly
- Contact quality
Some of these have similar influences to all kind of other BNC equipment too
PlasmaHH
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Especially the second point (max. power dissipation) affects price very much. – Curd Jul 01 '15 at 10:12
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@Curd: Plus it strongly interacts with the first one. You can get two 5W terminators and after using them for ten minutes one is still good, the other garbage. – PlasmaHH Jul 01 '15 at 10:17
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Another point is brand name and associated expected parameter spread. Very good and cheap BNC connectors do exist; however, to find out whether you found one you'd have to either spend time characterizing the damn thing or money buying an instrument that will do it for you. – Oleg Mazurov Jul 01 '15 at 20:26