21.3" LCD Monitor Reviewed

SLDave wrote in to plug his review of the 21" NEC MultiSync LCD 2110, the monster LCD that lists for a scant $3800. The largest Apple screen is cheaper, and I'm not sure how I would feel about being forced into 1600x1200 all the time. And at the price of a decent used car? Update: 05/01 18:31 GMT by T : ARP has another idea, writing: "Here is a review of Samsung's 210T which is another 21.3" LCD. Not only is this cheaper than the NEC, but it also has DVI as well as RCA and S-video inputs that turn into a high-definition multimedia display."

Comments

Oooh!

[Omnifarious]

I've been waiting forever for a 1600x1200 LCD monitor. I do all of my work currently on 19" CRTs running at 1600x1200. And, for games, where you want a lower res, the LCD pixel averaging thing doesn't work badly at all. I've tested.

No, when they get down to $2k, I'll start thinking seriously of getting one. :-)

Re:Oooh!

[roca]

Sounds like you want an IBM T221. For only $8000 you get a 22" monitor with --- most importantly --- 200dpi resolution (overall 3840x2400 pixels). I've seen it running GNOME and there's nothing like it. The main problem is that the mouse cursor is a wee bit small, and so are the fonts in a lot of poorly written applications.

Poor specs?

[JoshMKiV]

300:1 contrast ratio, and no digital (DVI) inputs? Boggle...

I'd rather two 17" Planars for just over $1000.

Anyone else use a ThinkPad with 15" screen with native 1600x1200 resolution? My eyes hurt...

Refresh rate question

[iiii]

Just reading the specs on this baby, and I notice that it doesn't support its highest refresh rate at its highest resolution. I've noticed this on lots of monitors. Can anyone explain why this is so?

Sun Microsystems

[adamjaskie]

Sun Microsystems has a nice LCD monitor. It is 24.1 inches, 1920x1200, and can take input from many connectors (DVI-D, 13W3, HD-15 [with 13W3 adaptor] svideo, etc) it also has a built in 4 port USB hub. Havent checked prices anywhere, but it looks expensive.

Re:Your gettin' a Dell, dude

[moonbender]

While I'm of course happy for you that you like your LCD, I'd recommend to wait before buying one for motion intensive applications, such as movies or games. Two recent reviews of 15" LCD on Tom's Hardware Guide were still quite negative on that issue. http://www4.tomshardware.com/display/02q1/020114/i ndex.html http://www4.tomshardware.com/display/02q1/020322/i ndex.html

Re:Your gettin' a Dell, dude

[Waffle Iron]

I would prefer a glass monitor because LCD's blow chunks when it comes to motion, although an LCD would be nice to stare at my source listings all day long.

That reminds me of the storage display teminals I would sometimes use in the early 80's. Some of these were huge, like a 25-inch TV. The CRT had a special layer that would permanently turn on any time the electron beam hit it. You could only add to the "on" pixels; the only way to turn off pixels was to clear the whole screen. The TTY output would add to the screen until you filled it up, but you couldn't scroll.

I remember being able to view 400 lines of code at once on one of these. At the time, it blew away any other display technology at viewing code. The downside was, it really blew chunks at motion, since it was static. You could actually get some work done with a real line-based editor like TECO, though.

Dell 20" LCD is MUCH cheaper...

[gslobber]

I use a Dell 2000fp at work (21.1", native 1600 x 1200 resolution). It's an amazing display and can be had for as little as $1270 (see here for details). Even without the special offers, the list price is $1,599 -- half the price of the NEC.

Dell 2000FP is a great LCD.

[delus10n0]

It only cost me $1150, and it's worked better than I could have imagined. I had my doubts about how games/video would look, but it's only slightly worse than a standard display. UT runs great at 1600x1200. Also, the 2000FP has four different inputs, D-SUB, DVI, SVIDEO, and COMPOSITE.

I would recommend the 2000FP over this piece of junk NEC anyday.

Spend $500 more and get a 1920x1200 24" Samsung

[FreeUser]

NEC MultiSync LCD 2110, the monster LCD that lists for a scant $3800. The largest Apple screen is cheaper, and I'm not sure how I would feel about being forced into 1600x1200 all the time. And at the price of a decent used car?

I just bought a 24" 1920x1200 resolution Samsung SyncMaster 240T for $4200 (literally, I just got it yesterday).

If you are spending $3800 on a big monitor, for goodness sake spend the extra $500 and get an extra 3 inches in size and the ability to support true 1080i HD resolution up front. I work on 1600x1024 monitors during the day, and let me tell you, the added space 1920x1200 gets you is worth the price difference alone. The extra size (21" vs. 24") is also well worth the price difference.
And unlike the Apple monitor, it has standard video interfaces (analog VGA, DVI-D, s-video and RCA video, though the latter two are IMHO unimportant) without a troublesome dongle.

Driving 1920x1200 through a DVI-D port from an NVidia card under XFree 4.2 on a gentoo GNU/Linux makes watching those old Babylon 5 divx's a real treat (even if the increased size makes some of the artifacts visible :).

Re:Dead pixels

[jeffehobbs]

As a point of reference, Apple's official pixel tolerance count for the new 15" LCD iMac screen is six -- you need to have six (6) dead pixels before Apple will replace the screen. That's why I always suggest to my friends who are interested in LCD monitors (or new iMacs) that they go to a store and check one out before purchase. LCD monitors are expensive enough that any decent salesperson wouldn't blink an eye if you said you wanted to unpack the merchandise and hook up the screen before plunking down your hard earned cash. If it were me, I'd even bring a burned CD with one of those LCD checking utilities that cycle through the RGB colors (then white and black) to give it the once over. Dead pixels are annoying.

~jeff

Re:interference from electricical devices

[br0ken by design]

Nope, cause LCDs don't work like CRTs do.
With an LCD, an illuminated pixel is illuminated until the controller changes it, unlike
CRT pixels, which start fading as soon as the electron beam has passed.

A refresh rate of 60hz on a LCD is fine, because it just means the display is getting
updated 60 times per second, with the pixels staying lit between refreshes.
60hz on a CRT would be unacceptable for most people, because the screen is going dark between
refreshes, which is perceptable as flicker.

:wq

Re:Dead pixels

[Overzeetop]

More annoying than dead pixels are "hot" pixels - or those that are always on. Actually, I believe the image in the article shows a hot, rather than dead, pixel. IMHO, a dead pixel in against a field of white is far less noticable than a hot pixel on a field of black.

6 dead is a pretty loose number if hot pixels are counted, and no adjacent/near/location sensitive data is considered. Six hot green pixels near the middle of the screen would be practically unworkable.