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Shopping for a New Monitor?
Cecil asks: "Well, I've looked through the reviews and found several good displays. The problem is that quality can vary drastically from unit to unit. Just because the reviewer got a good screen doesn't mean you will. A lot of people say that it's a bad idea to buy a display device sight-unseen and from experience I have to agree. There are the big chain stores that will have monitors on display, but they will typically only have the 'value' models. So, what is your monitor buying process? What do you do to make sure you get the sort of high-quality display that'll last you through the next couple hardware upgrades?"
Well you didn't really mention your price range but if you're looking for a good monitor that will last, expect to pay atleast $250. I made the mistake of buying a monitor (KDS) from a major nationwide retailer (Wal-Mart) only to have it crap out on me 7 months later, one month after the warranty expired.
That brings me to another good point, make sure the monitor has a good warranty so that if something does happen to it, you can get it fixed for next to nothing.
Being a programmer I spend a lot of time staring at the screen. As a
result I spend a lot of time making sure I have the proper setup.
The monitor is typically the most expensive single component on any
computer setup I get. However it also has the most longevity, so
it's very imporant to get it right.
My favorite monitors are the View Sonic series. It's possible there
are better monitors out there, but I am incredibly hesitant to switch
from a brand that I know very well and trust implicitly. I now own
my seventh ViewSonic (multiple computers) and I've had a good
experience every time except once. On the most recent setup I have
two computers on a monitor switch, on one of the computers the
letters were slightly blurry. It was very apparent because the
letters were crisp on the other computer. Getting a new video card
fixed the problem.
In short here is my advice:
- Buy a brand well known for quality
- Buy from a store with a good reputation
- Go for good resolution and high refresh rate
- Pick a video card that is compatible with your monitor
- Talk extensively with people who have experience with the brand
you are considering.
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
I do a lot of internet research first then I goto the store. Unfortunately, the store's don't do a good job of showing you the real quality of the monitors. My current monitor (Viewsonic VX900), which I bought sight-unseen, is incredible. The same one at stores doesnt look as good. Know your specs, read user reviews, and then goto the store.
I shop at a local clone/junk store that sells tons of refurbished monitors. They are hooked up so you can look at them. Generally the large brand name (like NEC) monitors seem to hold up well.
Maybe not as sharp or flat as some newer monitors, but they seem to last forever and are relatively cheap (less than a new noname piece of junk).
My buddy has a flat panel that is huge (from Gateway) -- but the text/fonts look like an Atari 2600. Look for a wicked dot pitch, and if you're store shopping, crack open a word processor or command prompt, and look at the quality of the plain text fonts. With monitors, you always get what you pay for. And I agree -- you have to see it in person. And lastly, from this non-expert, I recommend that you look for dead pixels when you take it home. Download a shareware dead pixel detector, and look for those dead pixels on the LCD. (assuming you're picking up an LCD/flat-panel) If there are a lot, take it back for another.
Get a Trinitron. They're pricey, but you won't regret it. They're brighter than regular monitors, as sharp as LCD screens, have excellent color and long life. The new ones have a special screen that is externally flat, but internally concave. This reduces glare but prevents the annoying edge distortion of normal flat CRT monitors.
Sony has an interesting description of Trinitron technology here.
If you're not adverse to looking on eBay, you can find some good deals there. Remember that many Dell, Sun, IBM, and SGI monitors are actually relabelled Trinitrons, so don't forget to check on them as well.
These guys have been churning out great value for CRT and LCD monitors for many years now--why bother going elsewhere? They supply a vast range of sizes, prices and features, so you can easily pick the one that fits your (analog|DVI|flat|CRT|15|17|19|20|21) profile.
I used to be a big Viewsonic fan. One of the best for the money but I had to replace one recently and got what should have been the new model of my previous monitor which I loved. It's the A90f. The first one I brought home I assumed was defective. The bottom of the screen has a nasty upward curve on the sides, no way to adjust that on the monitor. The other annoying problem is the image drifts. At times the toolbar would completely disappears. I've had to shrink the size of the screen to allow for that. I returned the first one and found I had exactly the same problems on the new one. Personally the next time around I will go flat screen. The color depth is much better now and I would assume they are more problem free. Not sure who to recommend for CRT monitors. Seems like everyone got so obsessed with making them cheaper the quality has suffered.
Explain to the sales droid that LCD displays can have dead [or permanently alive] pixels. It probably won't know that knackered pixels are expected, but the vast majority of displays are perfect, so there's no harm in making sure you get a perfect one.
Unpack the display and plug it into a PC in the store. Now you need to check both a completely white screen and a completely black screen - because knackered pixels can be knackered either always on or always off.
To check always off, fire up Internet Explorer, go to "about:blank" and press F11 (full screen). This will give you a page full of white. Scan the page closely looking for "always off" dead pixels.
Then, to test for always on pixels, right click on the desktop and go to screen saver. Select "Blank" and then "Preview". Again, scan the blank screen and this time look for "always on" pixels - although these are much easier to spot!
Look at Fatwallet's or Anandtech's Hot Deals Forums for LCD's...
I always find Screamin deals on LCD's there, I bought 3 Dell 1900FP's Just before X-mas for $1300, Dell was running a Buy 2 get one free deal, and I couldnt pass it up the LCD's are GREAT
moo.
The only way to purchase a monitor:
1) Find a store that has a policy that will allow you to bring it back.
2) Pick up what you're salivating over in the store.
3) Take home: word process, hack, frag, or whatever floats your boat.
4) Repeat as necessary for n - 5 days (where n is the length of time you have to return it). I say minus five since I always miss the date by a day or two.
5) If you are in love with the monitor, keep it. Otherwise, take it back, chose another monitor.
6) Lather, rinse, repeat.
I did that at Fry's when I was looking for a new LCD monitor. I purchased something that looked great (and the salesperson said rocked) at the store, but when I brought it home- ugh.
I took it back and picked up a 16" Sony LCD. Zero defective pixels. Excellent res and definition. Zero regrets.
The Dell ones are great, I just got my dream screen yesterday, the 20" Dell 2000FP, it's sweet. 1600x1200 native resolution, and it puts my old 21" Trinitron CRT to shame for clarity. I've got 3 screens hooked up to my PC now, the big 2000FP in the middle, and two Dell 1504 15" LCDs on the sides.
They aren't flashy, but they're reasonably priced, and fairly rugged, you can't go wrong with the Dell screens.
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
A pixel is 'turned off' (goes clear) and lets the white backlight through it to display white.
This is why LCD's are not as good at displaying black as CRT's. The backlight is always on, and the pixels can have varying degrees of opaqueness when turned on. This makes black more of an uneven very dark gray (well, uneven on my LCD anyway..newer ones might be better at it)
Also, they won't necessarily be black or white. I have some green dead pixels.
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Careful there! You've just disturbed the cheap monitor racket!
Buy monitor, tint poorly, return, have a friend buy it, sell on black market, buy guns and drugs. I'd watch my back if I were you.
...
HAH! The fact you mentioned the gimp shows you know naught of which you speak. I assure you, all graphic designers who work professionally as a designer, use trinitron screens. A few these days might use the really high end sony lcds, but they're mainly for DTP, not design, as even the top of the line mac screens are still not as good as a crt for colour matching.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
LAN parties are good, you should always see a sample monitor before buying. Never buy on spec alone.
For LCDs, take a laptop to the showroom, and insist on testing it there for dead pixels. I use simple HTML and opera's full screen function to test a completely black screen (for stuck pixels) and a completely white screen (for dead pixels).
Reject any with any dud pixels (stuck is worse than dead). They can sell them to someone else who doesn't care/ is less informed.
Do not accept any crap about that 1-2 dead pixels are acceptable. They are not acceptable to you.
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
A common refrain is to "trust your eyes," however your eyes can be very deceiving.
Every monitor displays colors differently. Even different monitors that are the same model! Color perception depends greatly on ambient lighting, the signal being put out by the video card, to say nothing of the monitor's controls. This is why the row of monitors at Fry's all look different--it has nothing to do with the actual quality of the monitor! Trusting your eyes may result in you buying an inferior model.
Spec out the monitor you want in terms of size and dot pitch, then go out and buy the model with those specs that also gives you fine-grained control over the color settings. Don't worry too much about what the display model looks like--it's almost guaranteed to be calibrated incorrectly.
Of course, the fun part is calibrating it when you get home. Use a utility such as Adobe ColorSync to do a quick-n-dirty calibration.
Unless you're working in graphic design, you probably won't do anything else with color management.
Nathan
I was under the impression that LCDs sucked for fast motion video like an FPS (Quake).
In general, they do compared to a good CRT. BUT, these newer LCD monitors have faster and faster response times. When they get to the point that they are nearly as fast as a standard CRT (60Hz+), then they should be actually superior to a CRT. The Samsung 171P (which I bought, too) has, I think, a 25ms response time, which is pretty good. 25ms / 1000ms = 40Hz
The problem with cheaper LCDs is that their response time is lower, and so you'll get ghosting as the pixels take so long to change color/brightness that you can notice it. 40Hz isn't bad at all... you should, in theory, be able to watch any DVD movie on it and not notice any ghosting (I haven't actually tried it with my samsung, so I can't say whether that's actually true).
Main things to look for in an LCD: contrast ratio (higher the better), viewing angle (closer to 180 the better), response time (lower the better), native resolution (whatever you want). with LCDs, you are only going to want to run in exact multiples of it's native resolution, otherwise it will look like absolute crap.
The only thing I've noticed with my 171P is that stipple effects (like in Win2k when you hit shutdown) seem to flicker pretty bad, so that's another thing to check. Luckily, now that we have 16, and 24-bit graphics, we don't need stippling so much, so it rarely comes up.
I remember in Quake 2 there was an option to simulate alpha with stippling for slower computers that didn't have 3D hardware acceleration. It looked terrible.
I still use a CRT monitor for games, but the 171P probably would be pretty good, too. I'm just a perfectionist when it comes to these things. The LCD is definately a superior display for programming/word processing.
-If
Run a pencil-and-paper RPG campaign with your far-off friends: Gametable!
Research was the first step, so I checked out the stock at my local Fry's - pretty much everything was a flat panel, and what wasn't was garbage. I have a dual 21" setup at work, so I wanted at least 21" at home - plasma display was not an option for me. Local compter shops didn't have much better to offer - some Viewsonic or Optiquest models that I found were relatively inexpensive, and had good specs. Most of the monitors in the 21"+ range in my local shops were either too expensive or had crappy specs.
Out of all of my local research, I made a couple of brand decisions, and went to the net to get more info. I spent some time comparing between manufacturer's sites to get a good idea of what was 'state of the shelf' at that time. Using pricewatch, I was able to find a feature/price point. Then, I hit epinions.com and consumer reports online to get some further information on the brands.
At this point, I had found the monitor that I wanted - 22" NEC MultiSync FE1250+. I then began to shop around for the best price I could find. There were several retailers that were (relatively) highly rated on pricegrabber that had decent prices for this item. I picked one and followed their order process to see how much I would pay in shipping. The total seemed acceptable (~600USD) so I confirmed the order and moved into the buyer's guilt stage of the purchase.
Here's the big D'oh. As most people do, I went searching to see if I could find a better deal after the fact. I went to some of the larger computer retailers like Gateway and Dell, and wow! they had huge sales and free shipping deals. Not only that, but Dell's price on the same NEC monitor with no shipping charge was nearly 200USD cheaper than the retailer from pricegrabber. I promptly cancelled my order with the smaller retailer and placed an order with Dell. The next week I was bathing in the glow of my new 22" monitor!
So I guess the moral of the story is to research, research, research. Get info, then reinforce it with opinion and testimonials. You don't necessarily have to see it to get a good deal. Oh, and don't rule out the big guys - they often can beat out everyone else, even on stuff they don't normally sell individually!
I disagree. Games and web browsing are where the lines are most noticable. In graphics, the color accuracy, sharpness, brightness, and typically better pixel geometry of a Trinitron win out, and you can generally scroll the image around if you're dealing with a particular part that happens to fall under one of the guide wires.
I'm a big Trinitron fan personally, though my best friend and I have had heated arguments about which is better. It's clearly a very subjective thing. Some of us can't tune out the guide wires on a Trinitron, others (like me) have trouble tuning out the subtle pattern of the mask on shadow mask tubes. To each his own I guess.
Random and weird software I've written.
Yup, I'll add my vote for Viewsonic. They're not the best available, but seem to be at the sweet spot for quality/price. I'm using a pair of G90Fs right now (about $240 on Pricewatch, or $10 more for the .21mm FB version) and am very happy with them.
Another tip: SparcStation IPCs make excellent monitor stands and cost less (mine were $5 or so each) than the flimsy plastic junk that is normally sold for that purpose.
What would Lemmy do?
here went my mod poinst - sighh...
Every monitor has a refresh rate where it whines. You can hardly help it. I am writing this on a professional Iiyama 19" CRT which is the only brand I have been buying for ages for both home and work. They all have the disgusting habit of humming if you are trying to run them at a refresh rate that is too low. You raise the refresh where it belongs and things come back to normal. Actually while on the subject Viewsonic is crap compared to Iiyama.It is not as crap as Philipps which has never learned to converge a color mask.
The best way to undestand what a monitor is worth is not Internet, store or luser reviews. All you need to run is X. That is just X, no managers, nothing. The ugly gray background in naked X immediately shows any unevenness in the color mask, blurr, anything. So until you have run X (without any apps and without tools to set it) and have played with the refresh rates to see how it looks you do not know what you are working on.
Ah... and do not buy monitors with built in speakers. Whatever the brand. Run X on them and see how the color convergence goes to hell near the speakers if you wander why.
If you cannot run X for technnical reasons find the same background and view it under one of those "other" OSes.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/