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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."
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Sure, but like their discussion of DVI I do have at least one issue regarding analog-DVI. I have a DVI monitor, which also works on analog and noticed the difference when hooking up the DVI cable (when I got my ATI AIW wizzo graphics card) Analog offers a softer image which may be more desireable. With DVI I can tell subtle shades from pixel to pixel, tiny as they are at 1280x1024, yet with the softening of lossy D/A/D conversion it's far less obvious. 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.
I'm still using a Samsung 172t (w/500:1 contrast ratio, w00t) 2.5 years old and only 3 stuck pixels, no pixel smearing, either. Only downside is I can no longer pile things on top of a monitor.
Those images would have been slightly more convincing without the severe jpeg compression, BTW.
should have used a nice picture like this
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
Does anyone have any insight on what I can do with a slew of Laptop LCDs that I have...
I have about 20 Laptop LCD screens that I would love to be able to use, but it looks as though you need to get a $200.+ controller for these screens in order to use them as "monitors"? Is this true? Is there any cheap/free way to put these things to use.
It seems that the cheapest monitor to make these days would be pure digital - digital DVI support only.
Instead, budget monitors come with analog only - which means more complex support circuitry, A/D converter, etc. than what it takes to support digital input.
Since almost all video cards come with one DVI port these days, at least, why not ship something that would be better, cheaper, and likely, more profitable? How about flipping things around and making the analog input optional (and more expensive)? I guess that would make too much sense.
jh
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
Start a happiness pandemic
"When it comes to a great picture there are two elements that come into play. You want the image to be rich in color, constrasty, and sharp. The other element that comes into play is the speed of the LCD and its ability to handle motion."
... and sharpness. The three, the three elements that make a good picture are color, contrast, sharpness, ... and speed. The four, the four elements that make a good picture are color, contrast, sharpness, speed, ... and its ability to handle motion. The five, The five elements that make a good picture are color, contrast, sharpness, speed, and its ability to handle motion.
When it comes to a great picture there are two elements that come into play. You want the image to be rich in color, contrast,
(With apologies to Monty Python)
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.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Color accuracy is actually extremely important for gaming too. Think about how much time you spend making sure your GPU isn't faking its anisotropic texture filtering.
Easy there Geordi. Maybe I'm just not a "hard core" gamer anymore, but it sounds to me like someone needs to step outside for a reality check.
Making judgements on budget flat panels is much harder than the pricier brands in my experience. Budget brands get their LCDs cheaply by saying they'll take a manufacturer's leftovers that fail the quality standards of the bigger name customers. That doesn't mean that all of their budget displays are bad; the budget buyer gets quite a number of perfect displays and almost perfect displays because they have to get something delivered.
For a brand that has high quality assurance standards evaluating one or two displays can be an effective evaluation, but reviewing a budget display this way is meaningless. When you're looking at brands that don't have quality standards and good return policies, then statistics like failure rate, customer satisfaction, and other non-visual stats can tell you whether it's a good risk to put your money down or not. You may get a great monitor; you may get something that's crap. But unless you're looking at the actual monitor you're going to buy in person, its the other stats that are going to tell you what your odds are of getting a great display for dirt cheap.
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.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
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.Not even close. The CRT they tested, which, admittadly isn't the greatest of the great, had a contrast ratio of (now sit down for this one) ...
9,415 to 1.
Yeah. Read it again. Nine thousand, four hundred and fifteen, to one.
A great LCD is in the 800:1 range.
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.
--- Ãther SPOON!
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.
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.