What's the best desktop LCD size?

[Mdcastle]

I need to replace my 20" monitor. I have it just behind my keyboard and do a mix of web surfacing, light office tasks, and light gaming. I'm wondering if I should get a 24" replacement, or if that will be to big and I should go with a 22"? I know a lot of people have them but a 24" seemed rather large in stores. Seems bigger monitors would make for a more immersive experience in games, but make it harder to do other work without constantly moving my neck. I'm looking at 16*9 1920*1080 panels.

[Brewah]

I have two monitors at work - a 22" and a 24". I find they are excellent for working on spreadsheets.

At home is a 24". I find my gaming experience to be a lot more enjoyable with the larger screen as well. If I am working on a document that doesn't need to take up the full screen, I usually minimize it so that I don't have to crane my neck around while reading it.

[squeegee]

I actually have three desktop monitors, 24, 27, and 30 inches. The 30 is awesome, though it starts to feel like you're craning your neck as you said. The 24 is really not all that large, and you can take in the whole thing pretty adequately without feeling overwhelmed in detail. It wouldn't be all that different an experience from your 20" model, but the extra resolution always helps. Go for it.

[phreesh]

I have a 22 at work and it's pretty great. I have a (brand new) 24 at home and it's awesome as well. Frankly, I haven't found a display to be too large yet, so I'd go as big as you can afford.

[Moonlitherial]

I'm going to go with as large as you can afford.

I have a 24 and a 27 on my home computer and 20 + laptop screen for my work computer and I still run out of space.

I may need to cut back on the multitasking a little.

[Dewey Finn]

I have a 22" widescreen monitor at home. Mostly, I view webpages, so I have it set up in portrait mode. At work, I have dual 17" monitors, while others have dual 19" or 22" monitors.

[Tastes of Chocolate]

I also vote for 2 monitors. One that is 22" or 24", depending on your budget, and then a smaller one, maybe 17" or 19"

That lets you do your main work or gaming on the big, shiny, pretty monitor, with the side monitor for auxilary work like writing an email, or looking up something while gaming. Heck, I can game on my big monitor and watch movies or change the music on the second.

[TokyoBayer]

I'd go with two monitors if you can. It's so nice to not have to play "Find the window."

[squeegee]

Originally Posted by TokyoPlayer

I'd go with two monitors if you can. It's so nice to not have to play "Find the window."

Well, you still do do that in some cases, and with 2 monitors it's now "find the monitor that contains the window", which is in some ways worse.

But if you tend to run one app -- let's say Photoshop -- across two monitors, it totally rocks to have one monitor for the main work + the other for all the ancillary windows/panels/tools. Or let's ignore all that and say you run one main app on one monitor, and then your secondary monitor is e-mail + IM + whatever other nonsense. That works pretty well, too. But then you open a web browser and you're once again stacking windows all over the place. It is manageable, but not free. Once you're used to it and like how you do things, that extra work is worth it. But there is extra work of one sort or another when you decide to run two heads, no two ways about it.

[Rachellelogram]

I'd rather have two smaller monitors than one really big one. I had two 19" wides when I gamed back in my college days, and it was perfect. Now I'm just using one 19" wide because the second one crapped out on me. It's still a good size, though. I sit close to my screen, and any taller would lead to uncomfortable neck-craning (my ability to raise my chair is limited by the height of my keyboard tray).

[Kiros]

The BEST size? A 30 inch 16:10 widescreen, with 24 inch 16:10 widescreens in portrait mode on either side. So, yeah, you could say that I don't really buy in to "too big".

For most people? The best value is at 22 inch 1080p, last I checked, and two of those side by side is a great choice for most productivity applications. If this was primarily for gaming, I'd probably go with one 24 or 27 instead.

[Mdcastle]

I appreciate the advice. I'm leaning towards the 24 since the consensus here and on the web is no one ever wishes they'd bought a smaller monitor. It's strictly a "what I want" decision since the cost difference is only $50- It's $231 for the 22 and $283 for the 24 from the egg place.

I am aware of the trade-offs of a multi-monitor setup. For work I have a pair of 19 narrow-screens, which are indispensible since I have over a dozen windows open at any given time and typically have 5 in view, but for home I'm going with a somewhat larger single monitor since the primary purpose is gaming and web browsing rather than productivity, as well as space and cost issues.

Squeegee: Saitek keyboards are nice, aren't they?

[BigT]

I like the smaller ones as they tend to have higher pixels per inch. Not being able to see those little squares is really nice. That's not sharpness--that's pixelation.

At least consider PPI in your purchase. Check the resolution.

[squeegee]

Originally Posted by Mdcastleman

Squeegee: Saitek keyboards are nice, aren't they?

It was ok, not stunning. I'm now a keyboard removed from that picture, but I work on a single keyboard and work at home, so I'm hard on keyboards and go through them. The Saitek held up ok, and I liked the back light. I wasn't that fond of the key feel, but didn't hate it. I found that the key labels wore off at a faster rate than any keyboard I've owned, and that finally did it in for me; once a good percentage of the keys had smears for labels, I went and bought a different brand and haven't been back yet, but I'd consider them again if the question came up.

[Mnemnosyne]

I will never go below a 30 inch monitor ever again. To get one cheap you can just buy a TV and hook it up via HDMI since most graphics cards now have HDMI output. This won't give you 2560x1600 resolution, but unless your graphics card is top of the line you won't want to go to that resolution anyway.

[Quartz]

Give me 2x 20" 1600x1200 and 2x 24" 1080p displays for work in a 2x2 setup: one for the ticket tracking system, one for email, one for remote control / access, and one for internet / miscellaneous.

[Mdcastle]

I appreciate the responses. I ordered my new monitor, it's a 24" Samung S24A650D- 1920 X 1080 with an MVA 8 bit panel. I know gamers whine that the refresh rate on MVA panels are too low, but I have an MVA panel now and don't find anything objectionable about it.

[elfkin477]

Originally Posted by Mdcastleman

I appreciate the responses. I ordered my new monitor, it's a 24" Samung S24A650D- 1920 X 1080 with an MVA 8 bit panel. I know gamers whine that the refresh rate on MVA panels are too low, but I have an MVA panel now and don't find anything objectionable about it.

Cool. I have a 21.5" LG monitor at home and my 24" work monitor makes me wish I'd gone bigger. I thought 24" would be too big when I bought this, little did I know...

[GuanoLad]

I like the idea of web surfacing. Sometimes it definitely needs it.

[Harmonix]

assuming you have windows 7.

To effectively work with large monitors I would highly recommend you learn the following keyboard shortcuts.

Snap window to left half of monitor : Window key + left
Snap window to right half of monitor :window key + right
Maximize window to monitor : window key+ up.

If you're anything like me, you'll find that you'll start using these CONSTANTLY.

If you decide to go multimonitor, I highly suggest some sort of software that lets you 'throw' a window to the next monitor. It really speeds up workflow.

in the past I have used

UltraMon
and
Display Fusion

[Harmonix]

I would also agree with krios

Re: 16:10 widescreens

Those extra 120 pixels on the bottom of the screen vs a 16:9 make a big difference imho.

Since you mentioned the Samsung @ 280something

You can also buy the Dell U2412 e-ips monitor for ~300$ right now as well. I own it and it's a gorgeous monitor. There might be some coupon involved which you can find by a simple google.

[Mdcastle]

Well, I got my monitor. I'm kind of disappointed in the black levels, but I guess that's typical of MVA and IPS panels and I hate the TN panel in my laptop so I think I'll keep it. It's somewhat OK looking straight on, but you can "see" lighting around the edges if you view it at too much of an angle. I tried it out to see how it did as a TV and it has the same problem my projector did, it will not switch between 1080i and 720P unless powered down, so I'm assuming that problem is the Comcast RNG-150 boxes, not my display devices. I do have Windows 7 and use the snap feature a lot, which is why I consider it acceptable to have a single widescreen monitor. My sister thought it was huge, but I repeated the line "no one complains the monitor they got was too big" so she'll get use to it.

I'm almost tempted to buy another one as a TV, as I'm forced to use an analog connection there too since the RNG-150 won't acknowlege my 22" Vizio TV is HDCP complient, like the VX2025 HDMI f-ups another widely known issue.