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LCD Monitor Advice/Discussion
Kiz
Melbourne, AustraliaRegistered User regular
Melbourne, AustraliaRegistered User regular
Recently I got myself a pretty tasty new PC, though my crappy old 17" CRT has been struggling to go above 1152x864@70hz without emitting "the squeal," so I'm looking to get rid of it so I can bask in the high resolution glory.
For the last couple of days I've been doing some research into 22" LCDs (24" is just too expensive for me), and there's something I just don't really understand. Every single forum and review site I've looked at has preached that the Samsung 226BW is the absolute best of them all, but I just don't understand why. Most Australian dealers seem to be asking 450-490 for it, whereas something like this goes for about 350, and has very similar specs.
I'm not looking to be a cheapskate or anything like that, but while every one of the places I've looked has said that the 226BW is by far the best, comparing its specs to the specs of others, I just don't get it. I want to make sure there's a reason other than the name that comes on the monitor that I'm paying an extra 100-150 bucks.
Any advice/input would be greatly appreciated. I'm really reluctant to go far over 400AUD to get a monitor, but I don't want to get something like the Proview linked earlier and regret it. Until a couple of days ago I'd never looked into LCD monitors at all, so a lot of the new terms and specs don't mean a lot to me.
If any of you know of other nice 22" LCDs that aren't quite as expensive, feel free to post some links.
For the last couple of days I've been doing some research into 22" LCDs (24" is just too expensive for me), and there's something I just don't really understand. Every single forum and review site I've looked at has preached that the Samsung 226BW is the absolute best of them all, but I just don't understand why. Most Australian dealers seem to be asking 450-490 for it, whereas something like this goes for about 350, and has very similar specs.
I'm not looking to be a cheapskate or anything like that, but while every one of the places I've looked has said that the 226BW is by far the best, comparing its specs to the specs of others, I just don't get it. I want to make sure there's a reason other than the name that comes on the monitor that I'm paying an extra 100-150 bucks.
Any advice/input would be greatly appreciated. I'm really reluctant to go far over 400AUD to get a monitor, but I don't want to get something like the Proview linked earlier and regret it. Until a couple of days ago I'd never looked into LCD monitors at all, so a lot of the new terms and specs don't mean a lot to me.
If any of you know of other nice 22" LCDs that aren't quite as expensive, feel free to post some links.
PSN: Kiz-ziK | Gamertag: KizziK | Steam: Kizzik
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http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824116060&Tpk=vg2230wm
however with that samsung make sure you check the serial on the back, Samsung outsourced some of those monitors and the ones that were are terrible. read up on it here
:http://reviews.cnet.com/lcd-monitors/samsung-syncmaster-226bw/4852-3174_7-32327967.html?tag=sub
They are notorious for having a wiring short. Basically the monitor SHUTS DOWN every couple hours and you have to press a combination of some buttons on the front panel to get it back on.
I got two Dell 2001FPs at home.
One of them had this problem, but I didn't know about the button mash solution.
Dell exchanged it for a refurb that had a line of dead pixels down the middle.
Dell exchanged it for a refurb 2007FP with the same button mash problem.
Dell exchanged it for a refurb 2001FP that was missing the very unique power cable; once the cable arrived, the monitor displayed a rainbow effect of colors.
Dell exchanged it for a refurb 2001FP with a very faint yellow haze that I can live with.
At work I have a Dell E228 WFPC and so does my boss.
My boss's monitor blacks out and requires the button mash solution. He told me about this.
3 months later, my monitor does the same thing.
Dell can suck a dick.
I got mine (Samsung 226BW) for around 340 Euro. But I wouldn't recommend it, because there are to much [A] or [O] Panels in the wild (because Samsung couldn't meet the demand and had to use the panels from other manufacturers). The white level is unacceptable if you get the model with the "wrong" panel. It has a serious tendency to blue. This can be corrected by changing the color settings, but you will shift the whole color spectrum while doing this. (which is a killer if you plan to do anything resembling "design"). Fortunately its for my dual screen setup and I work on the primary screen anyways, but it is still a bummer. If you get one with an Samsung panel then it is really nice monitor. Getting the right one involves to much "Russian
roulette" for my taste.
So, my question is, if I got a monitor with a higher native res, would everything look like shit if I set it to 1024x768?
LCDs pretty much allow you to only set one resolution.
That's not true. Only the really cheap ones do that.
The rest will convert other resolutions, and yes they will basically look like shit when they do it.
猿も木から落ちる
Hence the "pretty much" in "LCDs PRETTY MUCH allow you to only set one resolution."
I have a Viewsonic VX924 that used to look like crap at non-native resolutions, but updated drivers to both the video card and monitor seems to have remedied a lot of the problems...
...of course it still always looks better at the native 1280*1024.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824255001&Tpk=westinghouse%2b24
This Westinghouse is great. HDMI, component with RCA stereo, composite with RCA stereo, s-video, VGA, audio in, and it also has some built-in little speakers. Only thing I've found not to like is the lack of DVI (use DVI to HDMI I suppose), and no audio out.
Just thought I'd throw that out there.
I'm tempted to get one of those, but Dell would probably finally have another deal on 2407s if I did. I've been waiting for a price drop or coupon for months.
Of the other 22" 2ms LCDs, which have you heard good reports on:
SCEPTRE X22WG
ASUS MW221U
LG L226WTY-BF
I'm gonna check CNet to get a broad idea, but I wasn't sure if anyone here has personal experience with any of them.
I picked up a 22" LCD Sunday from Best Buy for $180. The native resolution is 1680xsomething but that makes my graphics card want to cry while playing Company of Heroes. I ran a game of that at 1280x800 and it looked lovely. 5ms and no ghosting.
One thing to note is this monitor has matte screen, instead of that glossy look. I like glossy better, it really makes the black look inky, but for $180 I'm not complaining.
Like all the 22 inch monitors it has a little bit of light bleed at the top and bottom, but you don't notice it except on an all black screen. When I bought it I got one with a stuck pixel so I took it back and Micro center replaced it without a question. The second one is flawless and I love widescreen gaming. My advice is to buy locally just in case there are any problems, but that $209 deal at newegg is a damn good price.
Is the actual screen matte or glossy? That info is almost never listed online.
It's matte. I hate the glossy ones. Seriously for that price it's totally worth it. Chimei makes panels for lots of different companies, I think even Samsung has used their panels in the past. It's a quality monitor, it's not a Dell super glorious $600 beast, but the only complaint I have is the worthless stand. I'm pretty picky about picture quality in games, and tend to notice ghosting, but I don't on this monitor. It's possible that I just haven't looked at a CRT in months though.
If you need a monitor get it. I'm half considering picking up a second one just because, but I don't have room to put it anywhere :P
Never ever heard of this.
Heres the monitor advice you need OP: TN film panels suck ass, my THREE YEAR OLD 2005fpw is better than 80% of the monitors out there because theyre TN-film trash.
All 22" monitors are TN-film.
Some 24" are TN-film.
A LOT of 19" are TN-film.
I switched from a VX922 (2ms) to a VX924 (4ms) without noticing a difference in games, movies or black on white text scrolling. I got the VX924 instead of a 922 when it broke, and decided to keep it since the black level was better.
I would stay away from most or all 22" panels as they are all TN which is the lowest type of panel for visual quality.
there's a reason they're so "cheap".
also they have no higher resolution than 20" and yet being a larger size they worse the dot-pitch ratio of the pixels and can make things look worse (unless you sit further away).
monitors with good scalers will NOT make things "look like shit" when you're viewing anything other than their native rez, moreover your video card could be doing the scaling if you have that option anyways.
try getting some more information here
http://www.monitorsrc.com/reviews/benq-fp241w-review/
if you can afford it, I'd get a 24" because their resolution is high enough to display full HD content without downscaling or cutting it off.
the best of those are the Dell, BenQ, Samsung, maybe a couple others (HP/LG?)
Well, ok, sometimes the "switch inputs" button doesn't switch right away, and I had trouble displaying true widescreen output on the monitor from my 360, but other than that, they have been fantastic.
I've gone through 7 individual Dell monitors, all of which FAIL, so I'm relating my experience with them.
You can go fuck yourself for the personal attack.
in my experience (with an A04 2407), you could only get proper 1080p if you had an elite using HDMI-->DVI
or used the VGA cable
componenet would only output something close to 1080... like 1776x1000 (which would look FINE when set to aspect scaling mode....)
It's been a year or so, so I may not get the specifics correct, but I couldn't DVDs to display correctly. Games were fine, but the DVD player wouldn't output in widescreen format or something. I would always get black bars somewhere or a squished picture.
Edit: I was using the component video connectors.
Edit 2: And now that I think about it some more, this wasn't really a problem with the monitors. (I don't think) They were displaying what the 360 was sending. (And it wasn't really a problem with the 360 either, it just was expecting a TV on the other end or something)
the only way around that is if your monitor has scaling options like the 2407 rev A04 does. instead of 1:1 you'd set it to aspect mode which maintains the aspect but scales it up to touch the top and bottom.
though it would still be not quite right because 720x480 is a 3:2 signal, yet the content is squished in a way that it's expected to be on a 4:3 or 16:9 display (where the LCD is a 16:10 display)
The end result was that no combination of settings on either end would display a proper widescreen picture. I finally gave up.
And my monitors do have scaling modes. The scaling wasn't the issue -- it was that the signal wasn't in a widescreen format to begin with or something.
the best you can do is either set it to aspect or 1:1 scaling (keeping a 3:2 aspect) and have the 360 set to standard screen..... since 3:2 and 4:3 are one "close" pairing
OR set the monitor to scale to full panel size (a 16:10 display) and the 360 set to widescreen.... since 16:19 and 16:10 are the close pairing.
ideally the monitor should have 2 more scaling options for NTSC/480i/p signals, to scale them to 4:3 or 16:9 aspects.....
I only know of one monitor that does that. but then it lacks other scaling options the dell and most other LCDs DO have.
Really you should never buy a monitor before you see it in the store though.