Hey, folks! Earlier this year I asked for advice on buying a new computer, and y’all came through like crazy. Now that it’s time to upgrade to a bigger monitor, I figured I’d ask for advice on this as well.
Short description: I’m looking for the biggest and best LED monitor I can find for less than $300. I was leaning heavily toward this Samsung 27" widescreen, until it sold out.
Any thoughts? I’m not a super videophile by any means: we don’t have a TV, and our 20" widescreen Acer monitor has served us well for 4 years. But it’s about time to upgrade, and I’d like to get something that’ll last for a long while.
27" is actually too big for a 1080p monitor IMO; you should be looking at 1440p for that size, but that’s likely well out of your budget. Remember that you’ll be looking at it up close. I suggest you go for a 23" or 24" monitor instead. AOC have just released a 23"IPS monitor that’s well under your budget. With TN monitors you need to be really careful with the colour depth. Many TN monitors have only 6 bit colour which they dither to 8 bit. I’ve got a cheapo Asus 24" and it’s very nice, but not as nice as others I’ve seen.
Well, you picked the correct day to ask this question. My Black Friday answer is this Dell: 24", IPS, LED. The only potential issue from your point of view is that it’s 1920x1200 (16:10), which is much better for using as a computer monitor, but I can’t personally attest to how well it handles/scales a 1080p (16:9) cable box source if you’re running that directly in to it.
IPS stands for In-Plane Switching, and it’s a more recent/advanced type of LCD display that (among other things) tends to have better color accuracy and viewing angles. This Dell, as well as most of the other IPS screens in this price range, are going to be E-IPS, which is better than TN but not as good as some other types of IPS. Since you’re not a huge videophile (and presumably not doing photoshop work), I wouldn’t worry too much about the differences between types of IPS screens.
The Dell one is interesting. The price is higher than others I was looking at, and the 8ms response time worries me a little–others I was looking at have between 2-5 ms response time, and the little I’ve read about monitors says that above 5 ms response can start to impact gaming. I’m not much of a twitch gamer, though, so this may not matter.
When I say we will use it at a TV, for the foreseeable future what that means is that we’ll lie on a sofa about 6-8 feet from the monitor and stream Hulu or watch DVDs. The other main uses for it are as internet browsers and for gameplay. I would like something that serves all these purposes well.
Edit: The ASUS 24" looks promising, with a 2ms response time. It looks as though it relies on older color technology, but I don’t imagine that’ll be an issue, and honestly for $100 less that might be worthwhile. (My original price range was less than $200, but the idea of getting a 27" monitor tempted me out of that range; if I’m going to get 24", it might be worth going back into that range).
I definitely think 24 is the sweet spot right now for price/size. Let’s see, a quick trip to the various sites aggregating Black Friday deals…
… check out this 24" Samsung from Newegg, 129.99 after the BF sale code that works today only. I don’t have any experience with that particular model but I have had pretty good luck with Samsung monitors in the past.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the response times; due to technological advances over the past several years, even the ones that have ‘slower’ speeds don’t cause the issues with gaming that they may have had in the past.
Just noticed that theAsus monitor doesn’t appear to be LED. From what I’ve read, the non-LED LCD monitors use a lot more energy, which rules them out for me. In my own little way, I’m a wanna-be eco-guy, so I want to go for LED’s smaller energy use.
Of those two, the Asus is better, but not so much better that it should override your distaste for gloss screens (if you have one.) For gaming, the difference between 120Hz and 60Hz is greater than the difference between TN and IPS. They’re the gaming monitors to buy until OLED hits at some point this decade. Forget about that LED/CCFL stuff. The difference is like 20w at the most. Just take the bus or carpool one day in the lifespan of the screen and you’ve made up the difference ten times over.
I got the Samsung TFT 24" S24A350H LED <-- copy-n-pasted, yes. Has worked brilliantly for me so far. Not too big to play on and big enough to watch on.