LCD Monitors - ideas?

In My Humble Opinion
1

As noted in this thread , it seems likely that we’ll need to purchase a new monitor sooner rather than later. I did some checking and the smallest monitors on the market - 15 inches - are cheaper than the repair on the old one would be. Our old one is, I think, a 15 incher. A brand new 17 inch monitor would be more than the repair (200-250, probably; the repair is supposedly $170).

I guess we’ll probably pick something based on the reviews at Consumer Reports, plus customer feedback at Best Buy and Circuit City. One thing though, some boast 1ms response time or 2 ms response time, while others say 8ms response time. At a brief glance, there’s a correlation between that and price (faster response, higher price) though I may find that correlation falls apart as I read more.

But - assuming we don’t do a lot of videogaming or watching movies on the thing, would we really see much difference with the slower-response machines?

Any brands strongly preferred / disliked? I’d always thought of Sony as a good brand and indeed this one has served us well enough, well, until 2 days ago! But they don’t sell monitors any more, as far as I can tell.

Anyone ever tried wall-mounting your monitors? Looks like many / most of them can be wall-mounted these days. Did you like it or hate it? That idea intrigues me and it would free up a bit of desk space.

2

I have a Dell at work and (20") and an Acer (19") at home. Like you, I don’t do gaming, but I do watch TV via the Slingbox on both. They both work great. The Dell was bought by my university and is along the top of the line, and the Acer was one I bought a year or two ago when it got cheap on Amazon. I don’t think the Dell is noticably better than the Acer… just bigger.

I think if you stick with the known brands, you’ll be in good shape - not to mention the desktop savings you’ll get with the smaller footprint.

I wear glasses so when I stumble in the office late at night, it’s good that the monitor is not on the wall… so I can move it closer if necessary.

3

I have a Samsung 720 17" LCD. Newegg sells it for $175. It’s great.

4

Response time is important if you watch TV or movies on it. Mine gives me a headache if there are pans or whatever. On the other hand, the best thing that ever happened to me was when my old CRT crapped out. The LCD is so far superior that you might consider selling plasma until you can afford one. Mine is 17", and perfectly adequate, but with an unlimited budget I would probably go 21".

5

There are several different types of TFT LCD panels, though I think almost all low-cost monitors use the TN type. My new NEC monitor (MultiSync 20WMGX2) uses an S-IPS panel. I use it side-by-side with my older Samsung SyncMaster 213T (TN panel), and the difference in color depth and richness is quite noticeable. But the Samsung is quite adequate for most uses.

Response time isn’t very important for a PC monitor, in my opinion. You’re probably better off buying the largest, highest-resolution one you can afford.

Wall mounting doesn’t appeal to me - I’ve never used it, but it seems it’d be harder to adjust the position. Maybe it makes sense for a TV, but for a PC monitor, I usually end up adjusting it fairly often, e.g. to reduce glare.

One feature I really like on my Samsung is the pivoting mount. It means I can rotate the screen 90 degrees, and it becomes a portrait mode monitor. I’m using it that way right now, and I can see this entire thread at a glance. Or I can display a full page of a PDF document and still read everything down to 6-pt size, maybe smaller. Sadly this feature isn’t very common, even Samsung seems to have dropped it on most models.

6

I think you should get one of these. The coolness factor of it heavily outweighs any technological limitations it may have.

7

[QUOTE=Oslo Ostragoth]
Response time is important if you watch TV or movies on it. Mine gives me a headache if there are pans or whatever. On the other hand, the best thing that ever happened to me was when my old CRT crapped out. The LCD is so far superior that you might consider selling plasma until you can afford one. Mine is 17", and perfectly adequate, but with an unlimited budget I would probably go 21".
[/QUOTE]

When I first read this, I wondered “if you’ve got a plasma display, why would you sell it and buy LCD?”. Then I realized you meant blood plasma, d’oh!! :smack:

Yeah - we loved the LCD display and hate the size of even the small borrowed CRT we are using at the moment. A CRT monitor isn’t even under consideration long-term.

From the Wikipedia article, it sounds like if we go for one of the cheapies, we’d likely get something with lots of dead pixels. This does not thrill me, so I imagine we’ll go for one of the midrange ones.

What about widescreen? Who loves it? hates it? Seems like a lot of the monitors nowadays are widescreen. Dunno if I care about that - again, we don’t watch movies etc. on the PC, though I guess more “real estate” is always welcome on the screen. What the descriptions never tell you, of course, is what size a widescreen compares to (e.g. a 22 inch widescreen is the same height as, say, a 17 inch “regular”, or whatever, since it’s measured diagonally).

scr4, good point on the limitations of wall-mounting - especially since, at some times of the day, we’ve got light streaming into that room and it’s nice to be able to angle the monitor slightly differently.

What about the ones that advertise digital + analog input? Our old one had that, though we only used the digital input. Would most PCs (e.g. our 3.5 year old one) even be able to send a digital signal? and is there a real advantage if we did have a digital input?

8

[QUOTE=Mama Zappa]
From the Wikipedia article, it sounds like if we go for one of the cheapies, we’d likely get something with lots of dead pixels. This does not thrill me, so I imagine we’ll go for one of the midrange ones.
[/QUOTE]
Mine was the cheapest at Best Buy at the time, and it had one dead pixel. They exchanged it no problem.

9

I’m using a 19" Hanns-G HW191A and other than the oddly placed power button, am loving it. No dead pixels or any other problems. $178 shipped to your door.

10

Thanks for all the info!

Interestingly, our monitor is now working. :confused:

Dunno if it was having the power and cables disconnected when we hooked up the borrowed CRT monitor, or flipping the switch from analog to digital and back, or simply threatening it with replacement, but the darn thing is fine now.

Which of course pleases me and makes the monitor info moot - at present anyway. Of course, if it repeats, I’ll be shopping for a new one.

11

I went with this one.

An Acer 20" with 1680 x 1050 resolution, which is more than what they would usually put into a 20" monitor.

The price seems to increase with the resolution and size of the monitor. The bigger the monitor the higher the resolution will also be.

If you watch movies a wide screen will definitely make your viewing experience better. Movies that are shot for the wide screen are meant to be watched in wide screen format.

For the response time I would say that anything under 5ms is sufficient unless you are a serious gamer.

[QUOTE=Mama Zappa]

What about the ones that advertise digital + analog input? Our old one had that, though we only used the digital input. Would most PCs (e.g. our 3.5 year old one) even be able to send a digital signal? and is there a real advantage if we did have a digital input?
[/QUOTE]

Check the back of your PC and see if you have a place to plug in one of these . If you can’t plug in a DVI (digital video interface) cable from your computer to the monitor, you can’t receive a digital signal. If your computer can support a DVI connection then just make sure your monitor also can, and that it comes with a DVI cable.