Why people here insist on Korad power supply?

[Berni]

Well among the flood of cheap switching lab power supplies onto the market in the past years they are low noise just due to being a linear supply.

One of those Blanko PS3010 (a CircuitSpecialists rebrand of that one is often seen in the videos of ElectroBoom, overall pretty popular PSU due to being really cheap for 10A rating) is a huge piece of crap. We also managed to blow up one of these at work and had to RMA it, we killed it due to simply shorting the output. The LCD readouts are slow and inacurate. And worst of all it pumps out so much electrical noise that it might as well be a jammer. I was tracking down a EMI issue on a product with an antenna connected to a spectrum analyzer, then a coworker turned on one of these Blanko PSUs on the other side of the office. Not only did the spectrum analyzer easily pick it up, but it also started constantly beeping because the signal was so large it was overloading the mixer.

[coppice]

I have seen what look like Korad power supplies being sold (rebranded) under different names. The question I always have is: what compromises have been made in quality and performance to meet the new sellers requirements? If the actual manufacturer's name is on it, I think they are less likely to make bad decisions.

All the rebadges I’ve seen are from big companies (Velleman, Distrelec, Farnell, etc) which want to maintain the reputations of their private-label brands. If anything, they’re more likely to ask for improvements than cost reductions, since as the importer of record, they’re the ones responsible for ensuring compliance with local regulations.

This sounds like a good argument, but I'm not sure it holds water any more. So many of the world's really big brand names seem happy to rebrand bought in absolute garbage, or licence out their name and logo to be stamped on any old junk whose maker will put up the licence fee. Even companies whose entire thing was "luxury", like Pierre Cardin, finally ended up with their name on the lowest of the lowest and became a joke.

[radiolistener]

Well, I think that manufacturers of true low-noise supplies, like Keithley, would disagree with calling it “low-noise”, but it’s certainly more than low enough for the types of things most hobbyists do.

(This reminds me, I want to build a little precision supply based on the LT3045. Now that will be a low-noise supply!!!)

Yes, it has some little noise from dynamic LED indication. so it cannot fight with true low noise power supplies. But it's noise much-much better than any switching mode power supply, and even better than full analog power supplies like HY1505D. This is what I mean when said "low noise"...

[zapta]

>> I think “design philosophy”, “UI approach”, or similar would be a much better word than “ideology”, which is very specific and not normally used in product design lingo.

I think "better choice" or similar would be a much better choice than "better word". Words are not better than others.

[tooki]

>> I think “design philosophy”, “UI approach”, or similar would be a much better word than “ideology”, which is very specific and not normally used in product design lingo.

I think "better choice" or similar would be a much better choice than "better word". Words are not better than others.

Oh please. It’s obvious it’s not a qualitative statement about the sequence of letters/sounds, but of the suitability of the term for the concept being described. The word “better” is frequently used to mean “more suitable for the situation at hand”.

[Randy222]

Is the Matrix stuff about the same as Korad?

[5U4GB]

A question: are all the supplies which look like the Korad ones actually Korads branded up for various other companies, or are some of them rip-off copies?

It depends on whether you're getting rebrands or knockoffs, if it's something you found on Aliexpress then who knows what you're getting but if it's e.g. a Velleman rebrand I'd expect the real thing.  However Digikey sell Korad-branded ones from SRA Soldering Products at around the same price as the Aliexpress ones and they'd be the real thing, so there doesn't seem much point in looking for dubious cheapies from crapvendors.

[5U4GB]

Why do so many transformers buzz these days? A transformer you could hear was quite rare 20 years ago.

It's not just "these days", the problem is cheap transformers where they've saved a few cents by not impregnating the laminations.  I had two bedside clock radios in the 1980s that both buzzed like a small substation right next to your head until I replaced the transformers with something slightly better than the cheapest junk you could get.  Pretty annoying, that's one application where you'd really expect them to avoid transformer buzz.

[Terry Bites]

they don't

[radiolistener]

Why do so many transformers buzz these days?

manufacturers save on quality and materials. Most of Chinese transformers have shortened wire on the primary coil, just because these several meters of copper wire cost some cents... It also affects transformer efficiency and max power limit.