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Group Testing Widescreen LCD Monitors

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the tough-day-at-the-office dept.

An anonymous reader writes "If you're in the market for a new widescreen display, there's a group test of five models at the Bit-Tech site. The test focuses on real world gaming and DVD watching rather than artificial spec tests, and there's also discussion of design, ergonomics etc. An interesting read for those making the jump to wide." From the article: "Let's define the point of this test. We're going to make the assumption that you've got a half-decent graphics card, and you're looking for a new flat panel to connect to it. You want to watch movies on DVD and in hi-def (either as Apple trailers or via BitTorrent) and you want to play the latest games. The price range we're looking at is the £300-£400 range. Above that, you start to get into the territory of 24" screens from companies like Dell and Samsung. Below that, you're going into a range occupied mostly by 19" displays at 1280x1024."

4 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Leaves out two most popular models by n0mad6 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    that are the Dell 2005FPW and the Apple Cinema Display. The Cinema Display may not fall in the £300-400 price range they're talking about but here in the US, you can certainly get the Dell for less than $500.

  2. OT: Why 1280x1024 for both 17" and 19" LCDs? by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I have a 17" LCD monitor that does 1280x1024. I'd like to upgrade to a 19" monitor, but the only ones I've seen locally are also 1280x1024. In other words, the only difference between a 17" and 19" monitor are a couple hundred dollars and sitting a little closer to the screen.

    Why is that? A 19" CRT typically gets you more pixels than a 17" CRT, so why isn't the same true for LCDs? I'm sure I could buy find a higher-resolution model somewhere if I looked hard enough, but I'm really wondering why that seems to be the exception rather than the norm.

    --
    Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
  3. Re:Hmm by zenslug · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've got a friend whose dad runs a branch of an LCD manufacturing tools company (ie, they supply the tools to the people who actually make the LCDs), and I asked him about the future prices of LCD TVs. He says that by Christmas of 2006 a ~37" TV will cost under $1000 and by Christmas 2007 a 47" will cost under $1000.

    Granted, he's talking about TVs and not monitors, but since the tech is basically the same, we should expect the prices on monitors to drop at about the same rate.

  4. Re:Games by OctoberSky · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Maximum detail is the keyword there.

    I have a Dell 2005fpw ($397 to my door from Dell!) with a decent rig (AMD A64 3700+ (754), MSI K8n Neo Platinum, 1 gig Crucial Ram, 7200 RPM Segate SATA, Sapphire X850XTPE (AGP), on board sound, and everything OCed a bit.
    I haven't bought a game since F.E.A.R. and Quake 4, and even with those I was still playing BF2 all day long so I can speak about that better.

    I ran the game at (shortcut hack) 1680x1050 which was really 1600x1200 stretched. I ran everything high except Shadows (which I didn't care for) and texture (which at medium I couldn't see a difference), sound was also kept at medium quality.
    In the bigger fight seens, mainly a large fight (10+ people) and artillery coming down I would slow down to 20 or so FPS, but I was usually around 45FPS. I am not a pro-player, nor am I a FPS whore so I was happy with that. I gave up shadows and textures and facny pants sound (I am on 2.1)

    That system cost (including monitor and keyboard & mouse) around $2300 a little over a year ago. If your in the market for a $400+ monitor I think your computer will be adequate (mine or similar) and you will be able to play well enough. Going ahead I think I need to upgrade (which sucks with AGP and 754) in order to run future games at 1680x1050 (native on the 2001fpw).