LCD Monitor

All,
I would like to buy an LCD monitor, I guess 17inches would be ok.

I'm considering a Samsung... but I really have no idea on what to check on a LCD monitor before to buy.

Basically, would be better to pay something more and get some really useful feature in... fact is, I don't know which features to consider, a part of resolution and color depth.

Anyone willing to help ?

Sergio.

Don't consider speakers a feature as they are normally rubbish.

A big contrast ratio is good. Also a quick response time on the pixels is vital if you plan to play games. I'm sure others will have more to say.

Before you buy an LCD monitor, do you play a lot of first person shooters?

A lot of LCD monitors have a high "response time". Response time is basically how long the pixels take to change from one color to the next. If this is greater than the rate at which the pixels are actually changing, the result is a really blurry image.

For example, if you play games at 60fps, then 1000ms / 60 = 16.7 which means you need at least 16ms or less reponse time to display the image without blurring.

However, it's not as simple as that. Changing from one color to another takes different amounts of time depending on the colots. And the response time most manufacturers report is that of the BEST case, or perhaps the average. But you need to know the WORST case.

So I would go to a site like tomshardware.com and check out some of his recent benchmarks and reviews. Or buy from a place which will allow you to return it, and test it as soon as you get home on a first person shooter or something else where the view will change quickly. (Not a movie, because those have motion blur built in.)

Me, I hate LCD. I'm waiting for SED. There'll be 58" TV's with it coming out the end of this year or next year. 100,000:1 contrast ratios. Black so black you can't tell the black bars on a widescreen movie from the TV set when viewing in a dark room. Better color quality than CRT, and flat as LCD. 6 million electron guns three per pixel, each one a tiny carbon nanotube.

Important things to look for:

- Contrast ratio, the higher the better
- Dead-pixel policy. Many brands/stores will only allow a return if you have 8 or more dead pixels. While dead or 'stuck' (permanently red, green or blue) pixel ratios have dropped considerably over the last few years, there is still a real chance that you'll end up with one or more bad ones. I personally have a single red pixel right in the middle of my screen, which was not covered for a return/repair/exchange. While unfortunate, it still beats using my CRT without question... But know what you're getting in for! A slightly higher price with a no-questions-asked return policy is much preferable over saving a few pennies and ending up with a permanent distraction right in the middle of your brand new screen.
- Low response time. The lower the response time, the crisper your video will look, with less blurred movement. Unless you only run office applications, go no higher than 16ms, tops. Especially if you play fast-paced FPS's and the likes, 8ms would be even better.
- As Grey Alien mentioned as well, pretty much all LCD screens with built-in speakers that I've seen have absolutely attrocious sound quality. More than likely you'll choose to keep using your current speakers, so unless you know for a fact the LCD speakers sound good, assume you won't be using them. Some come with optional speaker bars that you can attach to the screen (Dell, for example) which will sound better, but any cheap sub-woofer system will still beat it to shreds.
- DVI input is a big plus, since it too gives an improved image quality. The catch is that there is both DVI analog and DVI digital. DVI digital gives the best quality. This scenario also depends on what kind of connectors you have on your video adapter, it needs to be compatible as well.

Many monitors also list a high brightness (450cd/m2, or higher) as a feature, but this can be argueable. I had to turn the brightness on my LCD to the lowest possible settings AND adjust the gamma settings of my video drivers to an even lower setting to make it easy on the eyes. The default settings were un-godly bright. (An LCD monitor is significantly brighter than the average laptop screen, since it has a more powerful backlight -- low power usage is not as much of a concern for desktops as it is for laptops)
- Dead pixel policy, in case you forgot. Caveat emptor (Buyer beware).

The older generation LCD's were not very good, the current crop beats CRT's hands down. I'm sure that many of the nay-sayers haven't actually used one recently. I don't really care about the 'space-saving' over a CRT -- the thing that mattered most to me was that the whole vertial refresh flicker went out of the window. To me, everything below 100Hz on a CRT was pretty much unusable for more than half an hour due to eyestrain. Even with 100Hz on a trinitron CRT my eyes feel tired before long. While LCD's have a lower refreshrate (typical 75Hz) than CRT's, since there is absolutely no flicker it is much easier on the eyes.
Of course, some people are more surceptible to low refreshrates than others. I'm amazed how many of my co-workers can't even 'see' the flicker at 60Hz, when even 85Hz drives me nuts.

www.tomshardware.com
www.behardware.com

2 of the best "gaming lcd" review sites.

I have the viewsonic VP191b, which is guaranteed under 16ms no matter what conditions. There are slightly better models out there now.

Consider Hyundai ImageQuest, Samsung, Viewsonic (only recent models).

Check those review sites out as they really do seem to hit the mark, particularly behardware.

You can get really low latency 19" monitors. Mine's always under 16ms and it's 19". The monitor actually SAYS 8ms, but in real world testing on those review sites, it is around 15ms-16ms under all conditions.

Don't get a crappy cheap one, and remember that the lcd monitors look best only in their native resolution ie. 1280x1024 and with a DVI cable (make sure graphics card has DVI out)

Also look at-

Native resolution - LCDs look crummy when displaying reolutions other than their native one

Viewing angle - I'm not sure if there is a lot to differentiate LCDs in this category, but if I look at the LCD screen in front of me I can notice colour variations between looking at the centre and corners of the screen due to viewing angle.

@SSWIFT - those SEDs do look nice.

The new ViewSonics are incredible...way better than CRTs I've used before. A bit pricey though but well worth it......catch them on a good sales day and you can get one for $300. Make sure you use DVI cables too....and you'll definately see the differences.

8ms refresh rate is a GOOD THING... go no higher than 12ms for FPS shooters... The higher the vcontrast ratio number and lower the response time black to black the happier you will be...

ALSO never buy refurbished in the case of LCD.

DVI hookups are a must. I have noticed that the analog refresh rates are never as quoted... the quoted rates are for DVI.

Viewsonic is a strong preformer but LG has been making some headway. Sony seems to lag and the Half Life movie clip we ran on it had ghosting (12ms response time alleged)

I got me a 17" LCD-TFT Samsung for X-Mas here, nice 8ms refresh-rate, works beautifully in fast-paced games (ex, FPS's)...I'll grab the model number for it when I get home.

Only thing I notice with it is a tiny bit of bleeding when scrolling text slowly, which I hope will go away when I switch from my current VGA cable to a DVI one.

[EDIT] This be a Samsung "SyncMaster 730B".

[EDIT2] Should mention the monitor has a very nice button on it that scales non-native resolutions (1280x1024 for it) to fit correctly to the screen, which, you can fine tune later on if you want.
(ex. low-resolutions {640x480} have their pixels interpolated a bit, you can crank up the "Fine" option in the settings to make it pixel-hard if wanted)

Well, I have a Westinghouse 32" myself that I use my desktop on (even tho it's an HD-Ready TV), and I understand that Westy makes some good monitors as well. I hear that LG bought 'em out, and Westinghouse is using LG panels, or something. I'm sort of wondering if this may play a factor, because looking at Westinghouse, it has that 8 ms response time, it's bright and sharp, with a 1000:1 contrast ratio. I would recommend the LTV-32w1 from Westinghouse, especially when they sell that for under $1K USD, which they usually do.

Make sure you get a true 24bit display, some cheap ones only do 16-20bit colour which looks crap on gradients.

Just some info I got from a friend of mine...

I recommend the Hyundai ImageQuest L90D+. Great for gaming, and it's big.

@ Rob Farley

There's some serious wisdom on it all there!

For what it's worth I went with a 19" iiyama ProLite E483S just before Christmas. No complaints here. Analogue or DVI are just fine; digi just has the edge, but the ana on it is seriously good anyway.

Silly, farting, little speakers, but I would never really use them anyway. Just handy candy at times I guess.

At just under £200 it was a bargain in my eyes.

L90D+ is great for gaming, it's guaranteed under 16ms, it's very good quality and very cheap for the size - 19"

Just picked up a Samsung 930b (19") for $349 and am loving it. Works great for CS (8 ms response time). Improved my game 10x (cause now I can see more than I could on the 15" lcd).

Native resolution is 1280x1024, which I hope to acomplish with the new Geforce7800 in the mail.

Geforce7800 will run 1280x1024 with at least 4xAA.

Got a Sony SDM-HS75P jobbie myself. It's around 4 months old and already I have 2 dead pixels.

However, feature wise it's a bit of alright:

* x-black
* 420 cd/m3
* 8ms rapid response
* DVI
* 600:1 contrast
* 160 degree viewing angle

The only pointers I can give is to look for these key features:

* low response time - 8 to 16ms
* good contrast ratio 600:1 (also look for true black, x-black, and similar terms)
* DVI where possible

My biggest regret is selling my Sony VAIO laptop which featured a superlative screen display thanks to its X-Black glossy LCD. In a lineup of laptops in my local Comet store it blew everything else away.

a dead pixel would drive me nuts... and a stuck pixel would cause me to kill people... I'll probably stay with a CRT for the time being.

your loss. I have no dead pixels and my monitor's manufacturer has a zero dead pixel policy. In addition to this, the screens are manufactured by just a couple of big companies, for example samsung and AU Optronics.

They grade the screens they make by how many dead pixels the screen has (yes all screens are knowingly shipped with dead pixels) and then sort them into bins: budget, mainstream and high end.

You can buy the same top quality viewsonic panel I have in a different name, from a different company, but it might have a few dead pixels and cost a lot less.

So far I have seen hyundai and viewsonic to have remarkably low occurances of dead pixels. Personally I refuse to live with them and would simply return the monitor till I have one without any dead pixels.

The effort is worth it: a modern LCD of sufficiently high quality has no ghosting and has far superior image reproduction. A CRT cannot come close: it is not possible for a CRT to match 1:1 onscreen pixels with the display card memory.

CRT is indeed dead and buried, and there is no life left in it, and that is simply the end of the argument. The reason CRT still exists is simply a matter of cost.

Oh, about the grading story, you'll find that on www.behardware.com

I thought that LG was an actual manufacturer, because I know they are the ones that build for some of the names like Zenith, Westinghouse, Soyo, LG themselves, and I believe Sylvania. Not too sure who else LG builds for.

There are manufacturers of chipsets and display hardware, and there are manufacturers of the actual LCD panel inside all that.

My L90D+ came with some dead pixels, Hyundai replaced it no questions asked. Really happy with their warranty.

I recommend the BenQ FP71. I've played all sorts of games on it and never noticed any sluggishness. The price is also very reasonable. I liked it so much I bought two of them - zero dead pixels on either of them.

I would probably go with an Apple Cinema Display, especially a 30" one: http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/71808/wo/8W6vMzds0h6i3qbMdX6RwqCVh2j/0.SLID?nclm=AppleDisplays&mco=F1A07850

That is, if you can afford a $2,500 USD price tag. They do have a 23" model for $1,300, and a 20" for $800. These are some cool displays, may work with a Windows PC, just doesn't have to be for Mac.

For those who want a display that's bar none, besides Apple, Dell's Ultrasharp Widescreen's not that far behind: http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/category.aspx?c=us&l=en&cs=19&category_id=4058

Whoa, their 30" display's actually $2,200 USD, a little better than Apple, but not by much. They seem to be running specials on their 20" and 24" monitors, from what I see. Am I seeing things, or is Dell actually selling a $6K USD 22" monitor? I wish I could tell you more, but these are great starters.

Gateway's got their 21" LCD widescreen with Faroudja built-in, but I dunno how Gateway's 21" compares vs. Dell Ultrasharp or Apple Cinema, tho.

None of those are any good for fast gaming at all though.

Well, at least Apple and Dell tried to be perfect with digital LCDs to allow for fast action. At least digital doesn't ghost as much as analog LCDs do, tho.

I don't understand. You mean the DVI connection? All LCD's are digital by nature.

Well, analog LCDs use only the traditional VGA connection. However, digital ones use DVI, or some digital LCDs are backwards compatible to VGA as well. It all depends on the connectivity, and the panel's resolutions, etc...