So…here’s the story:
My current monitor is a Sony Trinitron (multiscan G410), and it’s on the way out. Random flickering, diagonal lines through the display, small text is fuzzy, etc.
So…I need a new monitor. However, I have a problem. The cheapest decent CRT I could find (19" min), is about $400. So I figured I’d go with an LCD instead. I’m not a fan of LCD monitors in general but I figure the space+price combo is hard to beat.
Anyway, what I’m looking for:
Comparable graphics quality out of the box. Very good dark contrast. I play video games, so I need to be able to see when someone’s hiding in the dark ;). At least 19", though preferably 20+, and possibly widescreen.
Very little motion blur. I play video games, so motion blur really gets really annoying if it’s bad.
I also want it to look like the guy is wearing armor, not like he’s a black silhouet.
I also want to be able to use it for some light graphics editing. Nothing really fancy, but fixing color levels, and maybe a little bit of simple image fixing.
I’m don’t want to buy another piece of hardware to fix the colors on my monitor, but if I have to…
You know, LCDs around that size are pretty much commodity hardware now. It’s not going to be hard at all to find something that fits those requirements… ViewSonic, Dell, Samsung, LG, Gateway, and many others, including random foreign manufacturers, make good ones.
Look for something with a fast response time (5ms or so), high contrast ratio, good viewing angles, and low light leakage.
Yeah, I’ve looked at the reviews…
I’m looking for recommendations of LCD’s that people know are good. I really don’t want to order it online and have to return it…it’s not like there are stores around me which have lots of lcd’s on display I can go play with.
Oh, and, all of the low response time LCDs I’ve seen reviewed have horrible color reproduction before calibration by another piece of hardware.
Both of my LCDs (I have a dual-monitor setup) show the guy as being nearly a black sihlouette.
There once was a time when I thought an LCD monitor was an LCD monitor, but, alas, no longer. The second of my monitors actually seems quite suspectible to ‘burn-in’, if it’s called that. I’ve got The Beatles album art hovering around in this ghostly green whenever I switch from iTunes - which is, obviously, not often.
Oh, and definitely look for a fast response time where you can. My second monitor takes about a year to come back from standby.
Wow. Reading this back, I guess that’s me and my horrible choice in LCDs out.
Yes, Samsung LNT2653H. I am obsessive about image quality, and I understand where you are coming from. Anyway, the details showed up just fine, and that was with (low) black crush on and off. I was worried about those same things, and researched a good bit before getting my lcd. There is motion blur, but it is minimal. You can see it when you are looking for it, but once you are gaming you will not notice it. I was playing Quake 3 Arena the other day, and it didn’t mess up my game any. This particular monitor (its actually a TV, but has VGA input) costs $700 to $1000, but it is 26" and has a tuner. I’m sure their VGA only smaller monitors would be cheaper. Good luck.
You’re seeing what is termed as “imager persistence” on your monitor. It’s kind of like burn-in on a CRT, however it is very seldom permanent. Turning off the affected monitor for an extended period of time, setting your screen saver so that it displays a wide range of color changes, and moving or changing your desktop images will usually clear this up. When my Samsung monitor first did this I freaked out. The problem cleared up when I left it turned off overnight and changed my power settings to turn off the monitor after 1 hour of idle time.
I had considered getting an HDTV as a monitor a couple of years ago, but I was told that even on a 1080p TV, the greatest resolution possible was 1080 lines of resolution. Is this no longer true, or did I misunderstand the first time?
No, you are correct. Depending on your video card, you might be able to scale down a higher resolution to 1080p or 720p, but that would look worse than just running it at 1080p. The smaller LCDs made just for PCs usually have a much higher native resolution than HDTVs, but what happens when that new game comes out and you have to run it in a lower resolution? Ugly, ugly scaling. Or a new video card. How ironic that I that I had to lower my Battlefield 2 resolution when I got my "HD"TV, heh.
1080p is quite a lot of resolution, isn’t it? It translates into 1920x1080, a resolution that will push all but the newest machines to their limits when you play modern games.
Then again, that’s coming from somebody who grew up thinking 640x480 with 256 colors was enough for everybody and full-color 1024x768 is an unbelievable luxury.
I have a Dell FPW2407 (24" widescreen LCD), which I love to pieces. I finished Oblivion before I got it, though, so I can’t say how it will look when played at non-native resolution. (And there’s no way you could run Oblivion with any sort of framerate at 1920x1200.) The Dell FPW2007 (20" widescreen) is equally highly regarded, and should be more reasonable both in terms of price and performance at the native resolution.
You might trying browsing on Newegg.com for a monitor in your price range and take a look at customer reviews. I’ve had good luck buying products off Newegg with 4-5 star reviews.
Silly me! I actually knew that, but I was mixing it up in my head as “Well, the screen is bigger horizontally! That must mean more lines of horizontal resolution!” :smack:
Anyway, the details showed up just fine, and that was with (low) black crush on and off. I was worried about those same things, and researched a good bit before getting my lcd. There is motion blur, but it is minimal. You can see it when you are looking for it, but once you are gaming you will not notice it. I was playing Quake 3 Arena the other day, and it didn’t mess up my game any. This particular monitor (its actually a TV, but has VGA input) costs $700 to $1000, but it is 26" and has a tuner. I’m sure their VGA only smaller monitors would be cheaper. Good luck.