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Reccommend me a monitor
Scosglen
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I don't know a whole lot about computer displays, so I figured this would be a good place to send up the help beacon.
I'm looking for something to replace my old MAG CRT tube (It's massive, but only has like a 17" diagonal, hence the want for a new display). Specifically I'm looking for a flatscreen type monitor. I have some special needs though, which is where the trouble in shopping comes in. I do a lot of digital painting and other art on my computer so having accurate color display is the modus operandi here. I hear LCD displays tend to misrepresent colors and brighten everything up. I also do a bit of gaming so a decent refresh rate and max display resolution is welcome as well. Mostly looking for color accuracy and a bigger diagonal size though.
My price range is about $100-200 (maybe a *little* more, but I wouldn't push it). Any additional information to consider about what to look for in a monitor or specific monitor reccomendations are very welcome. Looking to buy this off newegg or another online supplier but mentioning in-store deals is alright too.
I'm looking for something to replace my old MAG CRT tube (It's massive, but only has like a 17" diagonal, hence the want for a new display). Specifically I'm looking for a flatscreen type monitor. I have some special needs though, which is where the trouble in shopping comes in. I do a lot of digital painting and other art on my computer so having accurate color display is the modus operandi here. I hear LCD displays tend to misrepresent colors and brighten everything up. I also do a bit of gaming so a decent refresh rate and max display resolution is welcome as well. Mostly looking for color accuracy and a bigger diagonal size though.
My price range is about $100-200 (maybe a *little* more, but I wouldn't push it). Any additional information to consider about what to look for in a monitor or specific monitor reccomendations are very welcome. Looking to buy this off newegg or another online supplier but mentioning in-store deals is alright too.
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I'm not that knowledgeable on LCDs but I think IPS-based panels would offer best colour reproduction and there are some available that are fast enough for action games (ie. measured response time <16ms which translates to >60Hz/fps) but they cost close to $600 for a 20" widescreen one (NEC 20WGX2); I'm not sure if smaller ones are even produced...
Most of the cheap panels use a TN+Film matrix which is considered to have worst colour reproduction. Some panels might use PVA/MVA matrices, but those have awful (eg. 60ms) response times for dark tones, so aren't a good idea for gaming.
My advice? Get a slightly used CRT; Sony used to make some very good ones, and if you can find them Eizo is a great brand. I guess if you'd stick to the very big ones a Samsung or Viewsonic wouldn't be bad either.
Just make extra sure that the screen isn't scratched.
At night, the ice weasels come."
(I also think It's helpful to note that I'm using a 3 year old MAG Innovision 786N that my parents bought from some place for $100; I'm fairly certain this is the same monitor that emachines bundled with it's computers for a while as well (this was an upgrade from an even more ancient 15" compaq monitor))
So basically I'm just looking for an upgrade in quality for a reasonable price, not neccessarily the absolute best stuff.
Anyways, I have yet to find a single conclusive statement about CRTs versus LCDs. Some places say CRTs are still hands down the best for color representation, picture accuracy and speed, but other people say that's old hat and newer LCDs are just as good and are much smaller while having bigger displays.
I figure having a point of reference would be helpful, so I did some searching on newegg and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16824254009 seems like a popular monitor, and I don't know enough about display color counts and contrast ratios and display types to actually know if it is or isn't.
Random addendum, my GPU has a couple DVI inputs but I have to use a converter for my current monitor to let it accept the VGA cable. Is there any kind of noticeable quality improvement when using DVI over VGA?
Yes there is, if you examine them side by size VGA is blurrier. Since you've got them on your graphics card, definitely get a monitor that supports DVI in.
Also with LCDs it helps to get a monitor with the native resolution that you want to work in.
You shouldn't trust the quoted specs too much, as they are often a bit... optimistic. The "display colours" might be somewhat useful, as panels with 16.2M of them don't really display 24bit colour, but rather display 18bit colour and then either use dithering or change neighboring colours of the target one rapidly to achieve it. Supposedly Samsung came up with "true 8bit" panels (it's 8bit per channel with 3 channels so 24bit), but otherwise AFAIK TN+F panels are mostly 6bit; the quality of the displayed picture then depends on the specific algorithm that's used to emulate the full spectrum so it's hard to judge how good the panel is just by looking at the numbers. Here's an article that talks about this, on some page linked from TFT LCD at wikipedia.
You might also be interested in this article at xbitlabs that talks about them all the parameters.
If/when you decide on some specific model I would strongly suggest seeing it personally before purchasing, it would also be a good idea to see the monitor you'll be buying yourself, as this could let you avoid a unit with defects, like stuck pixels or un-uniform backlighting.
Oh, also, many people seem to really enjoy widescreen panels for some reason, so you could consider them when purchasing.
At night, the ice weasels come."