Help me pick an lcd monitor

[Vertigo-1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by PinkFloyd I've got an LG L1720B 17 inch and my eyes just cannot get used to it at all, sure the colours are better than my old CRT monitor but there's just something about this LCD that's giving me bad eye strain... the native resolution is 1280 x 1024 but text and stuff is just way too small for comfort..... I prefer 1024 x 768 but if you run the LCD at that resolution the quality is not as good.. to be honest I wish I never bought it and would gladly go back to a high quality CRT any day. If anyone is interested in a Mint LCD with 2 years and 9 months warranty remaining then give me a shout! No dead pixels / boxed / brand new condition.

I had that problem too at first with my LCD (Viewsonic VP171s, very nice LCD BTW that I'd recommend) when I first bought it. I was pretty bummed out at first, but after just paying $600 for it, I sure as heck wanted to spend some time playing with it. I eventually figured out that using DVI was causing the eye strain, as the image is just simply too sharp for my eyes. Went back to plain VGA, and that softened the image enough so that my eyes could handle it. Also turned on Cleartype, and adjusted the brightness down. I still get that eyestrain though with most LCDs, including laptops...seems like some people's eyes just can't handle the sharpness that LCDs have.

No doubt though, CRTs are still better at producing colors. Things look slightly washed out on the LCD, and it's not subtle. About the only advantage I got out of mine was saved space. Not being able to use DVI killed most of the supposed advantage of an LCD on the eyes, and the colors aren't great. At least I don't get any ghosting.

 

[Feanor]

Well, I went to check out the 710T today. The first store I visited has one piece left, but it had a nice bright dead pixel. The viewing angle seemed good, and the screen is clearly bigger than my 17" crt. I'll have to have a longer viewing time when I buy one, cause I had issues with the colors... but that got way better once I took the settings off of 100 contrast/100 brightness. The other stores had no more in stock. I wonder, is it worth buying a monitor with a dead pixel if I can get a big discount? This pixel would be of the allways-on type, witch could get annoying, I guess.

 

[bg4533]

I personally wouldn't buy an LCD with a full dead pixel. One of my LCDs has a single dead sub pixel and I even find that annoying at times. My GFs laptop has a full dead pixel and it is the first thing my eyes always go to when the screen is dark. You might get used to it, but I know I don't.

 

[Jahn]

i'd give the thumbs up to samsung, always a safe bet on monitors. i have the 510mp and this 15 incher is plenty monitor for me - plus you can plug in your cable tv signal or whatever, yep it doubles as a lcd tv. no dead pixels, i got lucky off of a warehouse dump on ebay. scary multihundred dollar purchase by the wife, but she lucked out.

 

[Feanor]

I sleuthed around some more, and the last [samsung]172X in a store also had a dead pixel, but atleast I got a long time with it. It looked nice, n ghosting whatever. I found some other monitors I'll check: Benq fp 767; Viewsonic vx912(I might cough up the extra for it)/ vg712b / vp 171b. These all seem great, and cheaper than the samsungs (some).

 

[adhoc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ReasonablyLucid I sugguest avoiding 12ms pannels. They use a lower color count to acheive the lower refresh than the 16ms pannels. Ive compared the Dell 2001FP (20.1" 16ms) screen to the dell 2005 (20 widescreen 12ms) and everything looks slightly washed out on the 12ms pannels

a. the human eye cannot distinguish >16million colour. almost all 12ms panels have a min spec of 16.2million colours.

b. 'washed out' colours indicate of a brightness level that is set too high, a common problem with lcd screens.

 

[GokieKS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by adhoc a. the human eye cannot distinguish >16million colour. almost all 12ms panels have a min spec of 16.2million colours.

The 12ms panels aren't true 24-bit color (usually listed as 16.7M colors) - instead of 8 bits per color channel, they only have 6, which gets them to 2.62M colors. The "16.2M" colors comes from dithering. And trust me, if you compare two properly calibrated monitors side by side, you can tell the difference between them - for graphics and photography, the 16.2M monitors can be awful.

~KS

 

[ReasonablyLucid]

Heres a monitor for ya:

http://www.go-l.com/monitors/athens/features/index.htm

Only $17,999

 

[Feanor]

I doubt it would be good for gaming.


Hey, wait! Think about RTS on a screen like that!

BTW, things are looking good. I found a store with great prices and a nice dead pixel policy (if I order it at them and dont like it, I can choose another one). I hope we can streach it to the vx912.

 

[Feanor]

Hah! I ordered the viewsonic vx912 today!

 

[Entropism]

Yeah, if you go to the Fatwallet.com forums, you can get Dell stuff REALLY cheap. I got my 2001FP when it first came out for I believe $650, that's when it was normally selling for $1000. I'm considering getting another one when I redo my computer, for a nice dual DVI setup.

 

[Feanor]

Well, I got the viewsonic yesterday! It's big! No ghosting whatsoever and nice colors. the only thing is that the monitor emits a bit of light even when displaying a totally black picture, but I'm getting used to it. Oh yeah: included dvi cable, sure looks great!

 

[GokieKS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Feanor the only thing is that the monitor emits a bit of light even when displaying a totally black picture, but I'm getting used to it.

With LCDs, you really need to turn down both the contrast and the brightness compared to CRTs.

~KS