monitors

hi
i dont realy know much about monitors so any help would be Appreciated, im looking at spending about £450 and going for a 24" i found this

24" LG L245WP Black Widescreen LCD, 1920x1200, 1000:1, 500 cd/m2, 8 ms, HDMI/DVI/VGA


http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=644783&source=ciao

anyone who knows better...is this a good choice at £378 + VAT ?

Heh - they get a bit pricey at that size, eh?

yeah bit of price jump passed 22"

Just keep in mind that anything other than the native resolution looks pretty bad on most LCD's, so if you have a lot of things that run < 1920x1200, expect it to look worse than on a screen that has a more common native resolution such as 1280x1024 or so.

also be very careful to check the dead-pipxel return policies of wherever you order it, because the more pixels on the screne, the bigger the chances that there will be some flaws. Nothing more annoying than a pixel permanently stuck to red or green right smack in the middle of your $$$ display.

also, after checking some reviews, it seems to get pretty decent marks. One frequently recurring comment: "very bright".

That's either good or bad, depending on your point of view. (Personally I have my monitors adjusted to be darker than 'normal', just so they're easier on the eyes)

However, when you turn the brightness lower on these apparently the contrast suffers quite a bit according to the reviews. Still gets good marks overall, though.

yeah just read a few reviews on the LG monitor
the brightness does crop up..still cant decide
either the LG or a dell, never thought of the dead pixel thing thanks

http://accessories.euro.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1&sku=104716

its a fair few quid to shell out :/ on something i know nothing about




#edit im now emailing then all about their dead pixel return policy ...lol

We just got some 24" Dell Ultrasharp's in at the office. One thing I realized is that how hard it is to visualize a monitor size like that -- they were larger than I expected. I'd recommend at least taking a look at a 24" monitor in a local store just so you know what you're in for. I think personally I would not go beyond 22" for normal work.

Another potential issue: Depending on how close to sit to the screen, the viewing angle might become an issue. The outer edges of the screen may be at an odd angle, which can lead to discoloration on the far sides from your point of view. (Not an issue if you put it away from you slightly more)

dell and apple monitors are basically rebranded LG monitors, as in they buy the LCD panel off LG and rebrand them.

We have 22 wides at work and they are big, with 24's and up you have to start moving your head around to see different parts of the screen, which can give you neck ache after long periods of use.

I have to move my head on my 22" widescreen, but then I do sit about a foot infront of it.

thanks


good point , i think i will hit the shops

a review on the dell
http://review.zdnet.com/lcd-monitors/dell-ultrasharp-2407wfp-hc/4505-3174_16-32514853.html

says it doesnt handle static images very well..


i hate deciding on new stuff

you should check online for coupons if you go for dell. Here at least, you can sometimes get 40% - %60 off the big dell monitors straight off their web page with coupon codes found online.

flippin' 'eck. That's what I call a discount.

ok after spending all day looking at these things
ive got it down to 2 but as xlsior said i need to see these in shop to appreciate the scale

both get good reviews


Hp 22”
http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=17803&category_id=364

HP 24”
http://www.cclonline.com/product-info-pc.asp?id=17804&pc=ciao

now its all down to size, the missus tells me 2 inches makes a big difference ;/

I'd be more concerned about colour purity on LG. The last LG tft i had claimed to be 24bit but there was clear stepping on gradients...it was closer to 16bit.

Many of the monitors these days are based on cheaper 6-bit panels instead of true 8-bit. They then use fancy dithering to fake the in-between colors (e.g. if a color is mid-way between two six-bit values, it alternates between the two values giving you the illusion of the mixed color)

The advantage is that the 6 bit panels are faster (less ms) and cheaper, but the downside is the reduced color quality.

Most screens out there these days are 6 bit, since they ghost less. Often the only giveaway is that the 6 bit panels are advertised as 16.2 million colors instead of 16.7 million.

seems i may have made a fair choice then

i went with the HP 24"


HP Vivid Color Technology (92% Color Gamut panel), True 16.8M colors (8-bit color)

Remember that there's only 256 shades between black and bright white, for example, so stepping can sometimes still be seen with gradients of certain colours, even at 24bit.

Whats the problem with the screens dithering? The end output is the same. Monitor switches between two outputs each frame? in which case the response time of the monitor will be slow enough to catch this and make it invisible.

Saying that, my laptop recently broke and i had to use another for a while and I noticed colour banding on it- I dont think it was dithering.

Was just wondering how the dithering affects quality? I mean, it sounds obvious until you think about how the individual pixels have response times, and that dithering it will show a full shade of in-between alright....

Scribbla,

Having long been a CRT fan, I had to buy a new screen earlier this year and I now have a 22" Samsung SyncMaster 226BW.

I have to say it is just fantastic.

2ms response time
1680*1050 resolution
high contrast ratio
dvi and rgb connection

The price? Just over £200 inc vat.

In fact this is so good that my client has just invested in 3 for the project I am working on. Their clients were very impressed too, when they saw what they were getting.

Check out the price at : www.microdirect.co.uk/(16668)22-Samsung-SM226BW-Widescreen-LCD-Monitor.aspx

IPete2.

Yeah I have a big Samsung too and am very pleased. I was shocked when I dug out my CRT for dual monitor. It looked so blurred and lacked rich color and detai. I soon got rid of the CRT again, everything just looked dull and tired my eyes too quickly.

ok just receieved the HP 24"

my god why did i hesitate ... very pleased so far although i think i could have got away with a 22"

Modo is costing me a lot of money

new monitor, desk for monitor, conservatory for big desk

I would have reccomended the LG. I don't know anything about the HP, but the LG was the best among the Samsungs and westinghouse and acers and whatever else they had locally. Primary reason I liked it was the wide viewing angles. Few others came close to matching it. The other reasons were more accurate colors, and deeper blacks (though no LCD has really great black levels). Good refresh time too, though the Samsung had it beat there.

ummm seems im having problems already...the lines between topics on these forums & Modo forums dont show up

Dithering isnt an issue if all you do is play games, its a big problem if youre into imaging and photo work.

I dont know which one to get......

it either 22 " ACER monitor(£170) or 22 " Samsung(£230) even thought Acer monitor are lots cheaper

which one do you think I should go for ?

cheers

well this HP is going back, its not for me , if it wont show colours properly...damn n blast

so The HP w2408h doesnt seem to be of much use
hope i dont have any problems returning it

#edit...after finaly getting the bundled software to load and go through all the test stuff ive sorted it...

Adjust brightnmess/contrast, out of the boxmany look pretty bad. I know I couldn't see those grey-on-white divider lines on mine eithe runtil I adjusted them.

i tried that at first..but it seemed like the brightness and contrast wouldnt go down far enough..but the software that comes with it (once you get it to run) calibrates the display with point and click pictures

EIZO is great if you do graphics and colour work. They're very well calibrated, decent response times for gaming, and I've yet to see a dead pixel on one yet. The only problem is they're not cheap.

yep alot of people have mentioned EIZO, but like you say there not cheap

Does anyone have experience with those new huge TV's for computer work? While their pricetag is about 5x a 22", they're still cool to look at, and when you're done coding, you can watch some movies on it. Problem is that in my case I actually need height. My 17" does a height of 1024, those new monitors are usually 1050, 1080 etc. Not much of a vertical improvement. TV's are comparible, some just 768 even. I wonder whether there are still *huge* 5:4 monitors made, or otherwise TV's with a dang high amount of vertical res. A vertical res of -say- 1200..1400 would be quite an improvement to consider. See, mixing huge orchestral music takes typically at least 24 tracks, and I hate to have things scrolled out, or as small as a dime in order to keep things on the screen. It's height I need, and those blasted new monitors and TV's expand horizontally.. :S

Are you talking about Plasma screens? lol the USAF spends(wastes) tons of money on those. They are pretty sweet but we used one just for displaying a program called Whats up Gold (checks connections between servers, switches, ect sort of like cisco works) anyways the image was burned into the screen.

Scribbla,

You are quite welcome to bring your pc round to Birchwood to plug it into the Smasung I have and see if a Samsung would do the job and a cuppa tea! :)

IPete2.

Just get a widescreen that can rotate to portrait.

Man *everyone* is going TFT, I must be the only die hard CRT fan out there!

Grey: The current generations of flat panels are much better than they were even a couple of years ago - I for one will never switch back to a CRT, even if LCD prices were to quadruple overnight. Many of the "LCD-sucks" crowd don't appear to have actually *used* one somewhat recently.

It's definitely becoming the standard though -- Walking into the local cirtcuit city or so they'll have dozens of floor computers out, but not a single CRT anywhere in sight.

Actually I'm looking at getting an LCD tele now, I've resisted for ages but the LCDs are really starting to look damn good now. There appears to have been a massive jump in technology over the past year or so.

@IPete2.
thanks for the offer pete, im sorted now the HP works like a gem...the bundled software finaly loaded and calibrated it :)

Hey that is great new dude - glad you got there in the end.

IPete2.