Budget LCD Monitor Round-up

An anonymous reader writes "FiringSquad has just posted a new 8-monitor budget LCD round-up. It starts off like a traditional review, but their discussion of color accuracy is the best I've ever seen."

Comments

Comment & mirror

[winkydink]

I agree, this is an excellent article and really clarified a lot of things for this CRT user.

Oh yeah, there's a mirror of the full article (no missing pages, I swear!) here

Re:Comment & mirror

[molnarcs]

I created a journal entry for would be LCD buyers where I might answer some further questions about various LCD technologies, give some tips about settings for linux/unix, etc. (I'm the maintainer of a site that collects information about various models: links to reviews, the panel used in them (there are far fewer panel manufacturers than monitor vendors) etc.)

what to look for.

[Kaamoss]

Personally, if I'm getting a monitor I want it to be dvi and have a very fast response rate. I think that the majority of people buying monitors have no idea what most specs even mean. Tom's hardware had a good article on this not too long ago http://graphics.tomshardware.com/display/20040226/ Doubt most of the slashdot crowd would find much new information there, but perhaps some will.

color accuracy

[Anonymouse Cownerd]

where color accuracy really is important, people still use CRT. you just cant get pure black on an LCD screen, and most colors are just washed out compared to CRT.

it's just how the technology is.

Re:color accuracy

[tverbeek]

And yet Apple, whose systems are dramatically preferred by chromatically-fascist graphic designers, sells CRTs only to their low-end eMac customers. I use a CRT and an Apple LCD side by side on my PowerMac, and I find the color reproduction on them roughly comparable, at least for my purposes. Having the appropriate color calibration profiles installed in the OS makes at least as much difference for accurate reproduction as the type of display/printing technology used.

Re:color accuracy

[molnarcs]

That should be moderated as disinformative. What you claim is no longer true. True, you'll never get perfect black on cheap tft monitors with tn+film panels. But you'll get very good black - as good as your better-than-average CRT - on a samsung 193p (or dell 1905fp, which has the same panel).

It all depends on what kind of panel type it has.

• TN+film panels: they are the fastest, and on the new lesser than 12ms response time monitors you'll not see any difference b/w a crt and a tft. Downside is that they don't have good blacks (although there there are some good quality tn+film panels that are not that bad) and they have a narrower viewing angles.
• S-IPS panels (APPLE uses S-IPS exclusively) - they are slower than tn+film, but have wider viewing angles and better blacks (although they take on a bluish/violet tint viewed form extreme angles).
• MVA/PVA good viewing angles, good color reproduction, good blacks, slowest (not good for FPS games). PVA is Samsung's own variant of MVA, and it is supposed to be better than traditional MVA panels, but lately various panel manufacturers (AU Optronics, Fujitsu) improved on MVA - Premium-MVA, S(uper)-MVA etc.

Here is some info about the type of panels some monitors have.

Re:color accuracy

[Anonymous Coward]

This is because chromatically-fascist graphics designers are also likely to scoff at Apple monitors, and opt for more expensive models.

Still, the fact of the matter is that most LCDs can't display more than 24bit color (not that this is a problem for most people). When you're working on 48bit production graphics you get blurries from the downsampling.

Re:color accuracy

[John Miles]

Perception is logarithmic, though. That is 30 dB of dynamic range versus 40 dB -- not such an impressive ratio.

Personally, I don't understand how contrast measurements are meaningful on CRTs. Not many people use them in a totally-dark environment, so their visual dynamic range will be severely curtailed by room light reflecting off the phosphor. What makes reflected room light somehow better than LCD backlight bleedthrough?

In any real-world environment, the best LCDs are much nicer to work with than the best CRTs. I've spent thousands of hours in front of both.

Re:color accuracy

[Sycraft-fu]

Well here's something for you to try: Get a CRT that's of a comparable price and see how it looks. Looking on Apple's site, looks like their 20" LCD is going for $1000. Ok, so for that money (less actually) you can get yourself a Lacie Electron Blue 22" CRT (20" viewable). Go and compare those two, and tell me which one has better color. For an even better demonstration, get a hardware calibrator and calibrate both first.

Yes, a high end LCD will beat out a low end CRT, espically if said CRT is old (they fade in brightness) but currently, CRTs can't be beat for accurate and vibrant colour.

In fact if you look in teh displays part of Apple's site, you'll notice they sell Mitsubishi Diamond Pro monitors, which are on par with the Lacie for quality (Lacie uses NEC tubes).

There's no question that LCDs, particularly some types of them, give much better colour than they used to, but at a given price point, you'll still get better colour from a CRT. Up to you to decide if the other LCD advantages are worth it.

Re:/.ed already

[Anonymous Coward]

Great mirror

of the first page

Color Accuracy

[gbulmash]

Regarding color accuracy, I recently purchased a Pantone "Color Plus". It's a cool little device which hangs (on LCD/Laptop) or sticks (via suction cups on a CRT) over your screen and plugs into the USB port. Using their software, you can test the color accuracy of your screen and generate an .icm color profile to help your monitor be more color accurate.

These types of things can cost major buckage, but this is their consumer version and can be picked up for sub-$100.

I just started a little home-based start-up and I'm doing a lot of graphics for print (not a graphic designer, just being my own in-house ad department) and though subtle, I found the difference invaluable in getting my collateral to come out looking like it did on the screen.

- G

ForMac

[blogeasy]

I always liked the "Gallery" products from ForMac even though they cost a little more ($599) than the economy monitors. I've had one for several years now with my PowerMac and the quality remains great. I wonder how it would stack up against these economy monitors.

TFT-Panels table

[molnarcs]

I bought a viewsonic vx912 a few weeks ago. Prior to buying, I bumped into a forum discussion about various technological aspects of different panel types (tn+film, S-IPS, mva). It was an interesting topic, and after a joined in, we decided to compile a table that shows what type of panel each specific monitor has. You can see the results here. (it is in Hungarian, but the table should be still readable and useful). It is still at a BETA stage, and it's aim is to help would-be customers to decide which monitor to buy. For instance, sometimes you will find exactly the same panel in two different types of monitors - and you will be surprised at the lenght some manufacturers (notably LG) goes in lying about their specs. Anyway, I hope that link is useful.

Personally...

[imemyself]

One of the biggest things that keeps me from considering an LCD (in addition to the extra cost of course), is that equally sized LCD's can't do anywhere near the resolution of the same sized CRTs(that cost less). My 17" CRT does up to 1600x1200. The max I've seen a 17" LCD do is 1280x1024, which is fine for desktop work but for gaming/design/etc it is really lacking. I haven't even seen a 19" that can do more than that, which really makes them pointless, because if you stretch 1280x1024 pixels out over a 19" screen vs a 17" screen its gonna look worse. The few 21" LCD's I've looked at can only do 1600x1200. While that isn't any worse than most 21" CRT's can do, a 21" CRT will cost atleast 1/3 the price, probably closer to 1/4. I don't move my monitor around too much, so I don't think the weight is that big of a deal.

So, basically, to get an LCD that can do what my CRT can, I'm going to have to pay 7 to 8 times as much, and it still won't have the pixels/in. that my CRT can do.

And honestly, my eyes hurt when I use an LCD, not a CRT oddly enough.

Different types of LCD: big deal or not?

[billtom]

I read this article, LCD Guide, that goes into great detail on the different types of LCD monitor (apparently there are three different types of underlying LCD technology). The article makes the point that each type of LCD technology has differing strengths and weaknesses (eg. response time vs. color fidelity vs. viewing angle, etc) and that there is no best technology.

However, I've never really seen this information anywhere else in other LCD reviews. So I'm not clear if the points that the X-bit labs article makes are really important or whether the writer is just a specialist making a mountain out of a molehill.

Anyone know?

Re:DVI vs Analog

[Waffle Iron]

The only real downside being fuzzier letters. Letters already can be a pain because of the anti-aliasing attempt to split a 1 pixel vertical line between two columns of pixels, especially if you're like me and run at high res and small fonts.

Maybe your analog LCD input isn't synched properly. Mine has an auto-synch button, but it only synchs perfectly when I'm displaying a large bitmap of alternating white and black 1-pixel vertical stripes that I made just for that purpose.

Without the bitmap, after auto-synching the fonts look "good", but there's still room for improvement. Using the bitmap makes a big difference on the sharpness of the fonts when using sub-pixel sampling. The display tends to drift over time, and I have to resynch it every day or two.

(If you pull up a large stripe or herringbone bitmap, you'll also see aliasing and "dancing" patterns unless the LCD clock is perfectly locked.)

Re:laptop LCDs

[adonoman]

You probably meant MaxiVista.
I've used it and it's pretty decent.

You've got a flaw in your reasoning....

[aetherspoon]

Minor one, but I thought I'd point it out anyway.
CRTs are measured by total diagonal length - a 17" CRT may only have a 15.7" viewable screen.
LCDs are measured by viewable diagonal length - a 17" LCD has a 17" viewable screen.

So when you compare prices, it is more accurate to compare 19" CRTs to 17" LCDs.

Re:You've got a flaw in your reasoning....

[evilviper]

So when you compare prices, it is more accurate to compare 19" CRTs to 17" LCDs.

19" CRTs have a viewable size of 18", not 17", so you're halfway in-between either way you compare it.

Not exactly right...

[Jott42]

The article states that: "The way to think about it is that on a chart of all possible colors, the 6500K color temperature is actually a line of white whereas D65 is a specific point of white."

This is definitly false. In all the color charts that I have seen, the range of possible black-body colors is a line, but at black-body radiator at a certain temperature is as much a point as the D65 standard. The difference is that the D65 illuminant includes an UV component, which will change the way printed colors appear to the human eye. I fail to see that the article makes a good case for using the D65 illuminant as the reference standard.

Furthermore, a cooler temperature will appear redder, not bluer. And the colors percieved is ass much due to our brain as to the spectrum hitting our eyes. So which color temperature that is the correct one for monitors depends on where the monitor will be used, especially on the color temperature of the room lighting.

Re:Why no digital DVI only budget monitors?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, this thread is pretty funny. Here's the actual answer!

There are several types of DVI plug, but the makers of DVI wanted to make it easy for people to use VGA with it, so some of the pins in the DVI plug are just VGA.

As per the spec, and as more most DVI monitors, they accept VGA input via these pins in the middle DVI plug. This is so that they can make these cheap converter plugs.

So the idea that you'd build a DVI monitor without a VGA converter and it'd be cheaper in parts would be against the spec.

There's nothing more minimum than DVI with VGA pins, that's the answer.

Far better review

[Hackeron]

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/display/20050215/ lcd-01.html

I chose the BenQ FP937s+ as its by far the most impressive at its price. You'll notice no BenQ monitors are mentioned in the roundup, dispite them producing some of the best displays for the price.