What is the largest (non-widescreen) LCD screen sold for a computer monitor? It seems as if all the monitors I see advertised today are wide-screens and I just don’t like those… I currently have a 19" Dell LCD that I’m happy with, but I’m always on the look-out for the next best thing… My Dad bought a 20" LCD, but his is a wide-screen and his is actually smaller than mine top-to-bottom…one of the reasons why I don’t like the w/s format.
I have a ~23" 1680x1050 widescreen, one nice thing about the widescreen is you can have 2 good-size windows side by side on the screen with no overlap. Plus wide screen is better for movies.
I’d look on http://newegg.com for monitors, they have lots of different ones in stock and let you search by size or resolution.
Well, I have a 21" Samsung that’s in the 4:3 aspect ratio. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen any bigger ones that weren’t wide screen. Personally, I prefer the 16:9 monitors, and those go up to 30" (both Dell and Apple sell 30" models).
I believe 21" is the largest standard size.
Planar makes a 21" 4:3 LCD that retails for about $850, or for about $1900, they have a 23" model.
For $100 more, you can buy a 24" iMac. Yes, I know it’s a widescreen, but there’s something screwy about the idea of getting a powerful PC for essentially free in the package.
FWIW, my TV is widescreen, both my iMac and PowerBook are widescreen, and when I come to work, it feels odd to look at a nearly square monitor. You just get used to 16:9 if you look at it long enough.
You know, I was going to say that $850 for a 21" inch LCD must be a huge rip-off, since 19" ones can be had for less than $200, and a 20.1" widescreen for just over $200 if you shop around, but damn, you’re right, just going up a little bit makes the price skyrocket.
I would suggest a 20" LCD then, here is one for less than $300. Viewsonic is a good brand, IIRC. 8 ms is a good response time (though the best ones are in the 2-5 ms range,) and a 500:1 contrast ratio isn’t bad.
I’m terrible with math… but somehow I have a strong feeling that a 21" 4:3 ratio monitor is much larger than a 21" 16:9 monitor. Can someone who knows how to calculate it out determine the actual screen real-estate you’d have with each style of screen format and show me, once and for all if I’m being silly or not about not liking the wide-screens?
No, you’re right. A 4:3 21" monitor works out to 12.6" x 16.8" (211.68 sq. in.) while a 16:9 21" monitor works out to 18.3" x 10.29" (188.30 sq. in.)
However, it’s more valuable (in my opinion) to just look at the highest resolutions available and decide from that. I don’t care if a monitor is an inch smaller or bigger, but if it’s capable of a greater resolution, that’s much more important to me.
I should add, the 4:3 21" monitor usually goes up to 1600 x 1200, or 1.92 megapixels, while the 16:9 21" monitor goes up to 1680 x 1050, or 1.76 megapixels.
That seems like a strange reason to dislike widescreen displays. Yes, given a 21 inch diagonal, the squarer the display is the larger the area will be, but why compare diagonals in the first place? The question should be, is a 4:3 display better or worse than a 16:9 of the same area? And the answer depends on which proportion you prefer, and which is more practical for the type of material you watch.
Personally I prefer 4:3 for most things, but in Britain we’re being force-fed widescreen, so when I buy a new TV it will be 16:9.
I have a 20.3" 1600x1200 monitor at work that cost >$700. At that resolution with small fonts I can fit a whole lot on the screen at once. However, it is still not worthwhile to try to have >1 window open at once because of the need to constantly resize and scroll.
At home I have a 19" wide screen and a 17" monitor side by side. Together they cost <$400 and are MUCH more usable than even a giant single monitor because what I do to windows open on one monitor doesn’t affect the windows open on the other. A big monitor may be great for games and movies but for any real work two monitors is much cheaper and much more usable.
My problem with widescreens is that I can already stack two monitors next to each other to get width, but a lot of big widescreens can’t even do more than 1050 lines. This is not a technological limitation per se – people just realized they could market a 1680x1050 monitor to the same market as 1600x1200 monitors and tack on “Widescreen”. I think a lot of people who hate widescreens do not hate the widescreens per se, but rather just do not care about width all that much. However, unfortunately people categorize screens in diagonal inches, so somehow 1600x1200 is in the same category as 1680x1050 and not 1920x1200.
It’s a perception issue, to me 1680x1050 is pretty much the same as a 19" 1280x1024, but they’re priced alongside 1600x1200’s. I guess I see improvement in technology as a set of descrete generational steps and I feel cheated by the monitor industry by marketing another step as a leap when it’s actually been a step back. I was expecting a 1920x1440, and then a 2240x1680. Now with widescreens filling the market gap for newer monitors there is less market pressure for it and that makes me wait longer. Kind of silly if you think about it, but I want my 600DPI monitor while my vision is still good enough to enjoy that.
Not huge, but very nice. I have a Samsung 204B - 20.1 inch, 1600x1200, 800:1, DVI and D-sub ins.
The best part is being able to rotate the monitor 90 degrees. If I’m working on page layout, I can see the whole document once rotated.
I really like mine and plan on getting another to replace my 20 inch Viewsonic.