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Tom Reviews 13 LCD Displays
n3r0.m4dski11z noted that Tom's Hardware has a review of 13 LCD Displays
for anyone who has been thinking about making the leap from the CRT to that
fancy shmantsy LCD stuff thats all the rage with the kids these days.
As usual, they do a pretty good job explaining the issues. In this
case comparing CRT and LCD technology, as well as covering a ton of
screens.
13" is way to small for me and, I suspect, most developers.
Try again next year.
Hogsback
Has anyone actually seen an LCD with good quality? Admittedly the ones I've seen were in stores, maybe sucky ones hooked up to sucky displays, but they all looked like crap. It reminded me of my first .39 dot pitch monitor.
When a new story is posted at Tom's, it gets front page status here. Shouldn't there be a "daily updates at well known hardware sites" category for those of us who go to those sites anyways? I just don't see what the point behind Slashdot getting cluttered with a "posting notification" for Tom's, Sharky, Anandtech, etc.
telling Tom's to take a hike. Great bit of negative web publicity, that.
Typo : meant 15", obviously.
Actually, unless it is Tom himhelft doing the review, Tom's Hardware is widely known for fairly bad reviews. Take a look at:2 6/ index.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/01q4/0111
...which says that the KT266a chipset "blows away" the NForce, when the performance differences are right around 2-3%.
Overall, I still like the site and most pf the reviews, though.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
Cheers,
-- RLJ
...really needs to get a clue.
"Tom's Hardware is just a website, not a magazine. The testing monitors are reserved for the press."
Sheesh.
A properly set-up LCD running at its design resolution looks sharp!
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
Personally I'm inclined to wait for the OLED displays I keep hearing rumors about. They should be at least as good and much cheaper (and lighter) because they don't need a backlight. LCD's are still just to pricey when I can get a decent 19" CRT for about $300.
I noticed that we
got more than 10
words per page with
this review, but
not much more!
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
I don't know about you guys, but Tom's is one of the prime places I check out for hardware reviews. I don't trust most print sites for the news, like ZDNet, as they easily sell out.
If Samsung thinks Tom's is just an online site, well, they've lost my business. And I really want an LCD. I HATE flicker.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
LCD Display?! That irks me just as bad as PIN Number!! If you must not end a sentence with an acronym, say LCD screen at least. *shudder* I need a cold shower now, thanks!
where'd my typewriter go?
THG's complaint about Samsung sure is interesting. From the letter Samsung sent to Tom's:
Tom's Hardware is just a website, not a magazine. The testing monitors are reserved for the press."
Umm, hello? I'd be willing to bet that THG has a higher readership than most hardware oriented print publications. Tom's is damn-near the definitive source for these things, is respected, and well-read. I can't believe Samsung screwed up like this.
Oh well. I've never cared for Samsung much anyway.
- Rev.The Apple 15-inch LCD is very sharp, bright, and looks awesome even from an angle. I'm sure some of these newer VGA models are also in that league, but I haven't seen them, so I can't really comment there.
ScienceSeeker.org
This is the only piece of hardware I have ever drooled over!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
In addition to the advantages and drawbacks given in this section of the article, color LCD technology is inherently sharper than CRT. Because of the inherent misregistration of the red, green, and blue planes of pixels, it's possible to address sub-pixels individually, resulting in a nearly threefold improvement in the effective horizontal resolution. More info is available here, Slashdot covered it here, and software to sharpen bitmap images on LCDs is available here.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Since Apple has not put all it's eggs in one basket, going to all LCDs and trashing the CRTs... We finally get to see how they compare up to other LCDs...
Or maybe they won't review any Apple products...
I though for sure they would with all the hype behind the LCD iMac and such. Oh well.
Agreed!
When I first got my laptop I was blown away by how sharp everything was. I'm so used to using LCDs that I request laptops at work just to make sure that I get an LCD.
The real downside has been watching DVDs on it. So sharp I notice every glaring compression error.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
- Price. Unless you've been living under a rock, you know
that LCDs cost about 5-7 times a comparable CRT. The simple fact of the
matter is that manufacturers understand how to make CRTs well, and
the same cannot be said of LCDs.
- Picture quality. All of my LCDs had a terrible viewing angle -
no better than 15 degrees to either side. Furthermore, ghosting was a big
problem with games (even with active matrix, or DSTN, displays), and all of
my units had several always-dark or always-light pixels. This should not
come as a surprise, as most manufacturers will tolerate shipping units that
have as many as 25 or 30 broken pixels.
- Weight. OLED products promise to significantly reduce the
weight of the display, because they will not require so much glass to
produce.
- Durability. LCD displays are scads more sensitive to EMF,
shock, and time than CRT displays are. Dropping my CRT resulted in a few
scratches; dropping an LCD results in a sloppy mess and a couple hundred
dollars down the tubes.
- Compatibility. I had problems getting two out of the three LCD
monitors to run with Linux. Since they rarely use a standard VGA
connector, they require a proprietary video card which sometimes will not
have open source driver support. Given that I run an all-open source shop
this was unacceptable.
What will OLED help address? Well, the simple answer is "everything." I have tested prototype OLED displays and I would recommend them over anything the LCD manufacturers offer. LCD is a technology that deserves to die, and I only hope that we will be giving it a proper burial in short order.will
I am going to buy a dozen monitors at my work place, they probably would be Samsung, but if they think "Tom's Hardware is just a website, not a magazine." then their mentality is what ? 10 years late ? They couldn't be more stupid.
I, as a consumer, have been underrated by Samsung. I *just* check websites, and it's been a long time since I don't buy computer magazines. I am taking it personal. They don't want web users as consumers ? Fine. I will boycott Samsung. As a system administrator, taking care of 100+ machines, will NEVER more buy Samsung again. I am officially boycotting Samsung.
Suggest you guys do the same. And write letters to Samsung, so they can learn how they screwed up.
And, FYI, I am in no way related to Tom's Hardware.
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
Why would anyone want an LCD for a desktop computer? CRTs are cheaper and produce a better image.
What is the point of saving space when your PC has a massive, ugly case anyway? If desktop size and beauty are important to you then pick up an iMac.
On a related note, Ars Technica recently pushed out a Flat Panel buyer's guide.
KDS RAD5. Traditionally low-brow brand, but damn good monitor. one of the sharpest 15" LCD. Only 1024x768, though. Can be had for $300 or less.
As someone who sits in front of computers all day who has a preference for ungodly high resolutions, my laptop has really helped my eyes. I recently got a Dell Laptop with a 15" 1600x1200 LCD display. For years my eyes have not been great. Not bad enough to really need glasses, but enough to bug me every now and then. Since I started using the LCD, I have had ever decreasing eye problems.
The screen is so much sharper than any CRT at high resolutions. I am starting to consider replacing my 21" sony trinitron (sp?) on my home desktop machine with an LCD. I want more screen real-estate than these 13" screens, but the prices keep coming down.
If you have eye problems as a result of using a CRT all day long, I highly recomend a high-res LCD.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
I am on a philips brilliance 150P2 right now and the quality is fantastic. There is a slight blur when you scoll, but it is nothing that stands out unless you are actually looking for it, and even then it is not really a problem and occurs on all LCDs. :)
The best thing about it is being able to pivot the monitor to play vertical mame games vertically. It works great in linux as well
Maybe I missed it in the review - but I didn't notice where they mentioned the dot pitch of the various LCD monitors. They cover technology type, response time, contrast ratio, and price, but I didn't notice any dot pitch ratings.
.25 mm dot pitch for five years, I can't go back to those awful, grainy flat panels.
.24 mm dot pitch). Cost me less than a 17" flat panel, better dot pitch, good refresh. Just had to pull my desk out 6" from the wall to handle it, and that's just fine with me.
I recently had to bite the bullet and buy a new monitor. I considered buying a flat panel screen for a while, but among the (many many) reasons for not buying one was that the dot pitch sucked. After having a 15" Trinitron with a
So, I ended up buying a 19" Trinitron (think it's a
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
Apple makes some incredible displays, yet Tom didn't mention any of them. Is this anti-Apple bias or simply an oversight?
It's not as if Apple's monitors only work on their hardware.
I'm pink therefore I'm Spam
I own a Dell Inspiron 8000 with a GORGEOUS 15.1" UltraXGA screen. It's wonderful to look at and sometimes it's even easier on my eyes then my dual 19" CRT system on my workstation.
However, from what I understand about LCD screens is that they need to be mated with particular video cards (digital, of course) in order to even come close to high-quality laptop LCDs. Laptop manufacturers mate the best LCDs with the best, tuned, video cards in order to achieve the best display out there. With a much wider array of desktop LCDs and video cards you'd be hard pressed to be able to perfectly match a digital video card to a LCD display without massive amounts of time, money, and trial-and-error.
Thanks,
--
Matt
That would be the answer.
My 12" tft display was only $500 plus it came with a p233, 32Mb, 6Gb, kybd, touchpad, cdrom, battery, sound and slots for wireless net cards to plug VNC into any box I want. It runs Linux and Win2k just fine.
(the link above is a little skimpy on disk size, 2G doesn't cut it for me).
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Have you seen the VIN number on my car? its the same as the PIN number on my LCD display.
anyone know where an ATM machine is?
---
Ignorance is bliss!
How come nobody ever included Apple's flat panels in these roundups? It is my understanding that they will work with PC's as well as Macs and the image quality was amazing.
I was in a store watching a DVD on one of their widescreen studo displays and it was breahtaking.
Even for PC users these things should be considered.
Samsung's flat-panel product line is fairly easy to summarize, even without a formal review. I looked closely at several different models when upgrading my monitor late last year.
The Samsung 170T is godlike, especially with a DVI connection. It has a 400:1 contrast ratio, 0.26mm dot pitch, and it's bright enough to be painful to look at in dim light. The 160-degree viewing angle will remind you of a CRT. Oddly enough, it's not much more expensive than their (far inferior) 170MP and other 17" models.... which explains why most mail-order houses are usually sold out of the 170T.
I've replaced every CRT monitor in my house (three) with 170Ts, and couldn't be happier. There is only one dead pixel among the three.
Sadly, however, the other Samsung monitors are all junk, no better or worse than everything else in the slush pile at CompUSA. I imagine the 170T is blown away by the 210T, but those are even larger, more expensive, and (probably) harder to find.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
It looks like from the 'CRT vs. LCD' section in the article that LCDs pretty much suck for accurate pre-press work. (lack of accurate/high quality color, color depth, contrast, and gamma) Which, if I understand things correctly, is a major portion of Apples market. Are the apple LCDs just that much better, or are they leaving the market for pre-press monitors to third parties?
A good LCD monitor will exhibit almost no ghosting in games, will support either standard VGA or DVI, and will have a viewing angle well over 100 degrees.
I'm sure the OLED displays will be insanely awesome and all, but the present-day reality is that the best LCD displays are now reasonably competitive with the best CRTs. You must have been looking at some really cheap LCD monitors -- or some really old ones -- in order to get the impressions you posted.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
And it is compatible with other things than Macs (as the cinema display is not). The best price I can find on it is $3940; the list is $5370.
Even better is the IBM C220, at about 3Kx2.5K, but it requires a special IBM graphics card and special drivers. Moreover, it runs $21,000.
HW/SW question for slashdotters: For my next system, I'm thinking of getting either a 1920x1440 or a 1600x1200 LCD (probably the VS VP201, instead of the 230--I can afford it better). I like large virtual displays under Linux/XFree86 (currently I'm running 2Kx1.5K that seems to be the most that nVidia will support under XFree86). What graphics card should I choose to be able to get VIRTUAL 3200 2000?
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
not to nitpick... okay, to nitpick a little bit.... but DSTN is a passive-matrix LCD technology. Active matrix is TFT.
Please find the e-mail I've sent to samsung france:n dex.html
Samsung, really demonstrated a very big distance for the computer market. Tom's Hardware is one of the biggest if not the biggest hardware/software and whatever technological gadgets in the world. Samsung with this position makes me not to ever take a product from you, a company that is completely technologically out of this world (and I say this in a negative way).
Please consult their website, make a search on internet and inform yourself with whom you should play or not. http://www.tomshardware.com/display/02q1/020114/i
Why the hell are you dropping your monitor in the first place? You put the monitor on your desk not on your lap! Just because its an LCD doesn't make it a notebook.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
The parent comment is a hardcore troll, geeze people, get with it! STOP FEEDING THE TROLLS, dammit!
I have a 22 inch samsung (not france) CRT monitor. Apart from the fact that the first one failed miserably and Samsung replaced it without a glitch, it works perfectly. Not one burned pixel, perfect color and contrast, 2048*1536 32 bit at 85hz and no distortion. I have seen quite a few LCD monitors, and I AM NOT switching. The difference is just to great. Anything below or equal to 72 hz gives me a headache and I can clearly see it. I wonder how people can work with a 40hz maximum refresh rate and a resolution that is at best 1600*1200 9but for that you have to go in the 18 inch or above LCD and it costs 5000$) .02
Imperium et libertas
Autocracy and freedom
Maybe I'm naive, but I'd say two very relevant qualities of an LCD display, hell any display, are size and resolution.
As far as I can tell, few to none of the "Test Tests" pages provide this information.
The "Conclusion" is actually just a summary of monitor properties with no rankings or opinions gathered presumably from a "review" process. Even then, the summary doesn't include size or resolution.
On the first page, there's no description why these values are not relevant nor significant for the review. Instead, there's three paragraphs regarding why Samsung-France is big and mean for not sending a unit to "review". Not only does that seem like last-page material, it seems unprofessional to even print.
Going back the introductory pages, I did find some references to "only of limited interest for a 15" monitor", and a few other references to "768 pixels". So, after correlating and cross-referencing text from a number of pages in the review, I can make the guess that all the monitors have 15" diagonal with max resolution 1024x768.
Considering the quality of both the review process and the journalism, Samsung was right to not send them a monitor. And, I'm right to resume my practice of never visiting Toms Hardware.
I stopped trusting THG after reading a glowing review of an nVIDIA video card blowing away the competition, while the page itself had a big ol nVIDIA advertisement at the top.
Sure, nVIDIA's hardware truly does rock, but how do we know that the only thing paid for was the little banner ad?
Then again, many, many print magazines pull the exact same shenanigans...
The KDS Rad-5 is just about the BEST Price / Performance LCD i've come across. About $350 , 15" and Ultra-thin. The quality is amazing, 300:1 contrast ratio does a good job to deliver nice whites. Check out this CNET Review . Users rating is 90% Im not an anonymous coward, im just lazy!
I have been looking to buy a 15" LCD in the near future. I had heard good things about the Samsung but I was disappointed to hear that they refused to provide Tom with a unit.
After looking around their web pages for about ten minutes, I finally was able to find an email address to express my displeasure.
Contact Samsung's PR department.
I believe that Samsung makes the highly regarded Apple Studio monitors, as well.
One question I have (as I read through Tom's article) is why a DVI connection will put you back about $100 more than a similar VGA-only LCD.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
The PC case doesn't have to sit on the desktop, but it's a safe argument that the monitor does. Small desk plus 19' CRT means early blindness from sitting two feet away from it, and wrist cramps from having your keyboard crammed on to the same small geography. With a flat panel, you can recover a huge amount of desktop (meatspace desktop, that is) so you can work more comfortably.
Virg
I was just wondering if slashdot had any information on LCD monitor reviews... This is scary...
If you want to use an Apple Studio Display or Apple Cinema Display on a computer with DVI but not ADC, you can get a "DVIator" cable:
http://www.drbott.com/prod/DVIator.html
Anyway, I had a then-current and very nice 17" magnavox on eyry, my k6, and a 640x480 lcd on a ~94 thinkpad 486 I'd picked up for $400 to write at night.
I found myself frequently copying the dissertation to floppy so that I could edit onthe sharper screen of the laptop--my eyes teared after several hours on the crt.
There's also the bit about being stranded two days with a deadline, and editing the out-of-date copy on the laptop, creating a diff, and patching the desktop copy, but that's another story
hawk
I bought a Planar PV174 at the end of December and so far, haven't looked back. Total price was under $700 including shipping.
.4" is nice to have) and the price was comparable or a little cheaper.
Specs:
* 17.4" LCD. 1280x1024 resolution
* up to 75Hz analog, 60Hz DVI. (as it happens, when running analog I found it preferable to run at 70Hz to avoid some slight flickering)
* Built in speakers (I don't use them)
* Built in USB hub (don't use this either)
* Built in pivot (don't use this - the model is available in black or white with a pivot or clear/translucent red/trans blue without pivot)
* 220cd/m2 brightness
* 400:1 contrast
* 160degree viewing angle
* 25ms refresh (15ms rise, 10ms fall)
Frankly, from the research I did at the time the specs were far better than anything else in the 17" market (not to mention the extra
I have a friend who uses the Planar 15" LCD on his Mac and is also very pleased with the way it performs.
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
When you compare an LCD with CRTs, all I can say is that LCD stands for Largest Common Denominator.
I seem to remember (but can't find) an article about a way to lower, by 50%, the refresh rate of an LCD panel. The best part was that it had nothing to do with the physical panel itself, but the hardware used to drive it. I don't even see it mentioned here, so what happened to it?
Anyone? Bueller?
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
...can we have 14" Laptop LCD's that can have up to 1600x1200 resolution (via the Dell Inspiron 4100), yet the best these 15" Desktop LCD's (where power is not an issue) can reach is 1024x768.
IMHO, that's f*cked.
Is it just me, or did THG seem to not really like any of these? They all seemed to be lying about response times and color depth, and each one seemed to have a nasty afterglow problem according to the reviewer. The most positive things said about any was about the form factor! I found ArsTechnica's buyer's guide more upbeat; the cynicism here definitely pushes me away from possibly getting a flat-panel display anytime soon. Not that I was about to anyway; my E790B is serving quite nicely.
-SablKnight
Not sure where Tom's gets their facts, but in the LCD vs CRT comparison, there are a couple howlers. Maybe that's why Samsung wont give them a display.
CRT output is usually speced up to around 250 cd/m2 (candela per meter^2), enough to give a reasonable tan, not the 120 they give.
No defective pixels on CRT? Put up a white screen and look for phospher defects. Those are caused by impurities inside the bottle. Sometimes you can take a 2-by-4 and knock a few of em loose, but don't hit too hard.
Like the black and white kind in my ten-year-old Gameboy?
"Since they rarely use a standard VGA connector, they require a proprietary video card which sometimes will not have open source driver support."
This is absolutely untrue. Most LCD monitors are either driven through analog VGA or through a standard digital interface (DVI.) Of course, the DVI-driven displays will provide higher-quality images.
And what makes you think that OLED cards will have open-source driver support, anyway? IMHO, if the drivers work well, does it really matter if you have the source code? It seems good to try for the utopia of all-open-source, but not purchasing a great monitor just because the drivers aren't open-source seems a bit overboard.
"...dropping an LCD results in a sloppy mess and a couple hundred dollars down the tubes."
Whoa. Stop there. If you spent $200 on an LCD monitor, no wonder you're complaining. The low-end monitors are crappy. I have an SGI 1600SW with Multilink Adapter that will soon be driven by a Geforce3. I spent over $1000 on it, which is more than I have spent on most of my computers. However, it is worth every penny. I would not trade it for any other LCD and I certainly wouldn't wait for a still-vapor technology.
Yes, LCDs are pricey! No, LCDs are not for everyone. But for those of us who want an absolutely gorgeous display -- one that every person who walks into your house will say "Wow!" about, and one that never makes your eyes hurt -- we are more than happy to pay for an LCD.
BTW, I thought this Tom's Hardware article was horrible. Instead of focusing on the wonderful high-end LCDs, this article is dueling the low-end LCDs. Most of these monitors are awful. I would recommend that anyone who is in the market check out the following:
Low-end: IBM T-Series 15" analog
Midrange: Samsung 17" 170MP with built-in TV tuner and PIP
High-end: The SGI 1600SW with Multilink, since discontinued; any Apple LCD
Whatever you do, I wouldn't recommend paying less than $600 for an LCD. Also, definitely read the shopper.com reviews before purchasing. Their thumbs up / thumbs down system is a good way to figure out what people actually thought of the product after bringing it home.
Good luck...
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
I used to live in a place that was right next to a line of high-voltage power lines. And while that isn't a problem to my health, (a few fradulent scientific studies to the contrary), I was close enough that the magnetic induction would give every CRT in my house a 60 Hz signal on the display, so that the screen would move back and forth according to the beat-signal created with regard to the refresh rate.
While this isn't a problem with TVs (which refresh at 60Hz), it was a MAJOR problem with my 21" Viewsonic CRT display, which, in order to get the benefit of the 1800x1400 display, had to be refreshed at 75Hz (going at 60Hz caused too much flicker on that huge display). Needless to say, trying to read tiny text, when the whole screen is shimmying back and forth at 15Hz was headache-inducing at the very least.
This was when I shelled out the big $$$ and got a nice new SGI LCD (SGI 1600SW. It has a good viewing angle, good contrast ratio, runs at 1600x1024 (enough to display two web pages side-by-side), is light-weight and compact (especially compared to my 75 pound Viewsonic P815), and best of all, had no electron beam!
So if, like me, you have a problem with ambient magnetic fields, then I think that the only solution (until OLEDs come out, of course), is to get an LCD. And they're nice. Really nice. In fact, after seeing my display, all my friends went out and got LCDs as well. The only problem is that they're not nearly as cheap as CRT displays.
After reading the various complaints about all of the panels in this (incomplete) lineup, I wasn't able to get any idea of which ones they really LIKED. Why didn't they give a thumbs-up to any of the monitors? Did they all suck? This review has the Crud nature.
BTW, is it really true that the panels cost around $15? What's so expensive, then, the drive circuitry?
Justin
"Why would God give us a waist if we wasn't supposed to rest our pants on it?" - Rev. Roy McDaniels
PIN number.
dammit, wtf is wrong with you people??!?
That was the satellite office in France, not the home office in Korea. It's clear the boys here in HQ did not participate in the decision to decline THG's offer.
Samsung has a very agressive attitude towards all facets of the worldwide market. We look for any opportunity to advertise.
I'm in R & D w/Samsung Display Division here in Suwon, Korea, and I'll make sure to tell the guys in Marketing all about this...stay tuned.
Are there any LCDs that cut the mustard for a current FPS??
feints within feints, wheels within wheels
who couldn't be more stupid?
you would actually decide to not purchase a possibly superior product just because that company's office in FRANCE failed to hand a few grand worth of hardware to a site you go to? well, how does this sound? I am going to boycott you for your stupidity. regardless of how intelligent you sound in the future, I will only assume that you are an idiot. doesn't that just sound silly?
not to mention that you make the asinine comment that you are taking it personally... oh yeah cause samsung is just out to get you! as a fellow system administrator, I'm ashamed of you.
And, FYI, I really hope I'm in no way related to you. =)
I ate my sig.
I just got a new LCD myself! ViewSonic just released last year their VG191, which is a 19" TFT. It's MVA, 1280x1024, 500:1, 250 nits, and it pivots. I love it very dearly.
http://www.viewsonic.com/products/lcd_vg191.cfm
I got mine for $860, though prices seem to have gone up a little since last week (?). I think this makes it a great alternative to those ridiculously expensive ones like Apple's Cinema display. (Especially since I could not find a GeForce 3 with DVI-out at higher res than 1280x1024).
Anyway, the real point of my post is this: If you go for a high-end LCD, do yourself a favor and get one that *pivots* or at least a VESA wall adaptor. I thought this would just be a kind of fun gimmick, but there really is nothing like reading a webpage in portrait mode. I leave my monitor like that almost all the time, in fact (I like to have a widescreen movie playing across the bottom of the screen and emacs up at the top.
With a resolution of 1600 by 1024 pixels, the Apple Cinema Display delivers twice the brightness, twice the sharpness, and three times the contrast of ordinary displays
Yup, just like those G4 CPU's that are twice as fast as what Intel offers...
Of course they're comparing a 700mhz Pentium 4 to their 700mhz G4. So what kind of shrimpy LCD are they comparing it to now?
Need I mention... The brightness on that thing is 180 cd/m, and Contrast ratio = 300:1... Sucker. They're comparing their monitor to an LCD with brightness of 90 cd/m, and 100:1 contrast?
Stop buying into Apple's hype.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
I would have liked to have bought an OLED monitor, but the technology is not available or cheap yet.
I can't say much about price (OLED is likely to have the same problem as LED does) or weight (my LCD weighs only 20 lbs, and I never move it anyway?) or durability (??), but basically, it seems like you haven't used a LCD in many years. This year we are standardized on DVI (I certainly would not want to use an analog connector for a digital device, anyway), the monitors are viewable from almost any angle (my VG191 actually is viewable from any angle I've tried) and the picture quality is totally awesome. My monitor, which has close to 4 million pixels (counting separately the Red, Green, and Blue components) has exactly 2 flaws, both in the same (logical) pixel.
I'm not sure if you have an ulterior motive or what, but this post is seriously misinformed. It will probably be the case that OLED is a superior solution in several years, once it has matured, but LCD is already quite mature and there are many reasons to use it.
After reading toms this morning,,,i was a little bent outa shape no where did i see mention of the actual display sizes.
Maybe i'm blind but if it was there it wasnt obvious, my guess is they were all 15" viewable diagonal
Though this used to be the case, perhaps, now everyone uses DVI and everything is compatible and great.
(The really-high end LCDs usually need special cards to support their crazy resolutions, and some pivoting LCDs might not work with video cards that don't support strange resolutions like 1024x1280.)
LCDs typically have crisper pixels, use far less power, have no headache-inducing flicker, allow better desktop usage (I gained about a foot when I replaced my 19" CRT with a 19" LCD!), often support pivoting, and are more likely to get you laid.
you would actually decide to not purchase a possibly superior product just because that company's office in FRANCE
Does it matter it happened in France ? It does not make no difference to me. Do French deserve a worse treatment ? Hello ? Ever heard of Global Market ?
And, yes, I would decide not to purchase a superior product based on the actions of the company, if there are alternatives.
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Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
I should have qualified my sweeping generalization by saying that I was looking only at 17" monitors, not 15" or 21" ones.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
.... faraday cages.
I was disappointed by Tom's review, since it seemed to confuse one issue (which LCD monitors are the best within a specific class) with another (whether an LCD or a CRT is a better choice for a particular user). Aside from listing certain specifications, all it seemed to contain was a lot of subjective impressions with a negative slant, presumably because CRTs are the "better" product.
Believe it or not, display quality is only one consideration for someone considering the purchase of a new monitor. In my case, I bought a 17" Samsung 760V (1280x1024 native resolution, 16+ million colors, 160-degree viewable angle in both axes) a few months ago and have been nothing but thrilled. Form factor was the major consideration -- given the weight and depth of a 19" CRT, it would have to be placed in a position which would have forced me to turn my head roughly 40 degrees to the right...for hours at a time. With a 17" LCD, however, the viewable area would be comparable to a 19" CRT, but I would be able to place the LCD monitor directly in front of me on my desk. I don't do image editing, but I do spend a lot of time writing, so the ultra-sharp text display and eyestrain reduction far outweighed the color table limitations of an LCD. Finally, since my system had a decently powerful processor/RAM/video card combination, I didn't anticipate a problem running games at the native resolution. (My guess was a good one -- I have had no trouble running Max Payne and Return To Castle Wolfenstein with full detail without motion trails or image degradation.)
I did some research and took the plunge in the LCD market, but it would have been nice to have a decent side-by-side comparison article to read before buying. (I agree with the earlier poster -- in the store, the monitors are often running at a non-native resolution or are hooked to a computer with a terrible graphics card, making even an in-person evaluation somewhat misleading.) Sadly, Tom's article wouldn't have been helpful in the slightest.
"she says i'm lousy conversation. as if that's supposed to help."
That high latency on LCD's really kills motion. By synching to the 85-100 Hz refresh rate (using a DirectX call), you can get rock solid pans and scrolls on a CRT -- on an LCD these scrolls become a blur, even for the newer (and more expensive and higher-power consuming) Viewsonics.
The same holds true for watching DVD movies on an LCD.
You sir, are quite stupid. And I can say that, because you have proven yourself ten times over.
Samsung has made a bad move doing this. The actions of a company definately affect their sales, how can you argue they do not? Regardless of their satelite location, it shows horrible HQ management. What company would let their satelite office make a judgement to hold back review monitors from Tom? That's just asking for it.
And another thing, Samsung has just lost my business for their mentality on this topic. If they dare chew out the little guy, then what is my business to them? I control the purchasing for a large West Coast company, with numerous locations around North America. I was actually looking into the Samsungs, and I am a die-hard THG and HOCP fan. But this stunt has made me go sour on Samsung. I even wrote to Samsung once I heard about this.
So a companys' actions definately do affect my decision on purchasing. As a fellow system admin, you should be ashamed that you would support a company that discourages the internet portion of reviews. Heck, I would believe Tom over PC World any day.
CoyoteGuy
Chief Systems Admin
(I wont say my company name)
Slashdot.. Land of nerds, trolls, and FlameBait..
(my VG191 actually is viewable from any angle I've tried)
Uhhhh.. Ok then. Try 139. Still viewable?
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
do canadians usually do like 5000$ instead of $5000?
I ate my sig.
As a consequence, the LCD monitor's biggest drawback, the lasting afterglow, has been significantly reduced.
They just don't make them like they used to.
ok which is it? first you say "What company would let their satelite office make a judgement to hold back review monitors from Tom" as if Tom's was the godsend of review sites (and it may well be for you)... yet quickly it changes to "If they dare chew out the little guy, then what is my business to them?" make up your mind, are they pro's or are they just a bunch of guys who swung this kewl deal where they get all the new toys (well almost all) first? Judging by Tom's reaction... I'd say its at least somewhere in between.
and as for you and the other one... i'm quite surprised at all of this. that techs would base their buy not on technical superiority of a product, but purely on whether or not that company has pissed off THG? hehe and since you brought up horrible HQ management... is this little tidbit going to be in your purchase recommendation? "they snubbed THG, so lets not buy from them" next I suppose you'll buy new comps for your staff cause the cases have that nice blue metallic color, right? get real.
I ate my sig.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I use a Samsung syncmaster 151s at work to monitor the renderfarm nodes, it's nice, slick and sexy. Especially for the price. The contrast is more than okay, the only thing negative I could say about it is like most 15" LCD, the resolution locks at 1024x768, I'd love to get 1280X1024 on these devices. Aside from that, it's really good.
Tom might bitch at the suppliers not giving them any replies, I could say the same thing about him when some users are giving him a positive way to better some of his benchmarking numbers since he's not an expert in everything (especially 3D rendering, the scenes he's using only stress parts of the processors, when you know the software enough you know you can get 200% difference from a benchmark to another while keeping the same AMD and INTEL processor. Especially when it touches SSE2 optimized rendering functions)
Anyways, he doesn't mention that so it makes the benchmarks totally flawed (and when you look at the rest of the benchmarks, it proves the point that the AMD processor is still the best choice). Did he change it? no, did he acknoledge this? no... did he even bothered to reply to a nice message? no.
Well, if you treat your readers like this that aren't flaming you and writting in a mature fashion, sometimes these are readers working in big corps writing from home, and SOMETIMES you piss them off really good, and SOMETIMES it backfires at you, I'm not surprised at this, and besides, his articles are getting lamer and lamer week by week, anandtech at least keeps constant and professionnal (i.e. without the bitching).
Just my 0.02.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
I think there are medications available by prescription that can help calm you down a bit.
I have 4 machines on or around my desk. I was running out of space. I was able to take a large tower case and put it in the same space as my old CRT/minitower. I think it is much better for viewing as well. Now I'll get a KVM switch and use it as way to switch between 2-3 pc's
The other was Price. I have a 21 KDS monitor that I go t for only $400 while the 15" LCD was $320 (sale) A 21" LCD was outrageous at the time ($2000+) OUCH!
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
and as for you and the other one... i'm quite surprised at all of this. that techs would base their buy not on technical superiority of a product
As for me, I'm surprised for you basing a choice solely on technical superiority of a product. Ever heard of post-sale support ? Generally, when the marketing of a company is bad, so is its post sale.
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Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
I work in R & D @ Samsung Display, here in Korea, and I can assure you that Samsung does not make monitors for Apple. The panels come from various sources, but the end units are not part of our production. We do handle: Compaq, Dell, IBM, Sun Micro, HP and a long list of lesser OEMs.
As for feedback, yes, Samsung HQ is receptive, but remember to keep your comments clear so that any non-native English speakers can understand your statements, etc.
"as well as covering a ton of screens"
Let's think about this. We are looking at a screen shot of another monitor to see it's quality. Uhh, aren't we looking through our own monitor at a picture of another monitor?
So we are really just seeing the quality of the monitor we already have.
LCD panel cost (margin) is highest at the panel manufacturing point, not at the monitor R & D point. When the panel manufacuturers reduce their costs, the monitor manufacturers will further reduce theirs. At this time, the margins for monitor development and manufacturing are negative. The panel manufacturers are the only ones making money right now.
that is quite the generalization... i would actually lean more toward marketing and tech/sales support being two totally unrelated areas within a large company, especially one as large as samsung.
I ate my sig.
With a VGA-style configuration, you can get KVM's and good quality 50 foot extension cables.
What solutions exist for DVI?
SGI 1600sw...
-nouf said
It's very instructive to watch with a magnifier while playing with the width and height controls, to see how they map the logical pixels to the physical pixels. Do that, and you'll see the real reason that CRT's look good at different resolutions.
SCARAB
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I just picked this up on Sunday. The major reason was it was inexpensive and I could get it immediately. I didn't care too much about the display quality since I put it on my server at home (It manages AfterStep fairly well). This display was my second choice, since it only has a contrast ratio of 200:1, which come to think of it is as good as or better than both of my laptop displays.
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I remember purchasing a $5000 19" CRT with ~ 1Mpixel resolution.. damn thing massed 35 kg. Talk about a real boat anchor.
I suspect he meant their office in France, as opposed to their corporate office in Seoul, or their office here in the U.S., where the Internet is based... (I say, I say, that's sarcasm, boy)
There was a recent article in the NY Times about how Sony implicitly permits smuggling of their products in Pakistan, but even though I'm anti-smuggling, I wouldn't necessarily avoid all Sony products because of the actions of their South Asian division. It's a big world.
Hz is not important in LCDs as it is in CRTs. The TFT image is always fixed, while crt's is being refreshed thats why your eyes get tired only with CRTs and not with LCDs
I love it, and i can find it in local stores at 528
170 is much more than I expected though! :)
Hmmm... gonna have to look at one of those
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
I have a 1600x1200 14.1" LCD in my new Dell laptop and I love it. Now I want to get a similar external screen so I can double my screen space but 1600x1200 LCD monitors are only available in the larger versions and those are extremely expensive. I got a Decked out Dell laptop for $2100 so the screen itself can't cost too much. Why doesn't anyone make a resoanbly prices monitor at that resolution? Or maybe one of you knows of one...
Maybe you should keep in mind that Apple's Hype machine uses simulation, not even real code.
Altivec... big deal... Vector units on a processor that are useful primarily for graphics operations.. Hello, that's what I have my GeForce 3 Ti 500 for. :) We all know how much more powerful the Xbox is with its T&L onboard than the PS2 with its vector units included on the CPU.
Oh yeah, I keep forgetting about AMD... How many alternatives to CPU's does PPC have?
I'd love to see what kind of dogma Apple would put out if they made a console... Will their games then be "Twice as good"... what kind of subjective crap is that?
That's as silly as saying Macintosh is better because it only needs half as many mouse buttons as a PC :)
Bill gates states that there are 7000 users of Windows 2000.
dude, where are you getting this info from? a friend of mine works for United Health Care and they alone have over 3,000 win2k workstations. does that mean the UHC accounts for almost half of the windows 2000 boxes in use?
Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400
Windows 98 users.
one of the last places i worked was a computer mfg.. i was there the entire time 98/se was being pushed and we sold over 10,000 systems configured with the OS. do you really expect me to believe that almost all of these work-a-day Joe 6-Pack users converted to linux when they can't even send a proper email attachment?
dude, you got trolled. jeez!