Actually, my post was a generic one. It wasn't in response to your post.
Sorry for the confusion.
Actually, my post was a generic one. It wasn't in response to your post.Originally posted by: harobikes333
So it is saying that samsung is still using old tech that isn't as good..? aka thats why I should go for the acer....?:?
replies are greatly appreciated! ^ ^
Thanks again,
Mark
Originally posted by: harobikes333
Originally posted by: xtknight
Originally posted by: harobikes333
Hi, I was wondering what you guys think of this monitor : ViewSonic - Q20WB Black 20" 5ms DVI Widescreen
Here is my planned setup
On a 1200~ budget.
Thanks a ton! Any help is greatly appreciated!
Mark
The Q20WB seems to be a typical 20" TN (and to tell you the truth I don't know much about it). If you could I would sacrifice a tad on another component if needed to get a more known model such as the Acer AL2051W (preferred) or Samsung 206BW. Saving $50 on a monitor can have severe consequences, while saving $50 on a CPU or hard disk really won't in a lot of cases.
Agreed. Thanks for the warning
I'm trying to decide on the acer or the sumsung... why would you prefer the acer over the sumsung...? samsung has more features doesn't it? ( I'm clueless. *help!* )
Thanks!!!!
Originally posted by: trexpesto
Prices updated.
The price seems to be not AR. A sale perhaps, but no rebate hassle.## Price: ~$1300 USD ($999 AR at Newegg)
Originally posted by: Tasiin
Thanks xtknight, I decided to keep it. I'm going to dispose of my CRT today in order to remove any lingering temptation.
However (and I'm sure you'll be shocked), I had a couple more final questions about it. Not sure why I didn't mention this before, but I've noticed that when the monitor loses the signal to the computer it will emit a high pitched and actually quite loud whining sound for about 2-3 minutes before quieting down a bit, but it will continue for hours at a softer volume unless the monitor is turned off completely, which I've begun doing at night so I don't hear it all the way across the room when I'm sleeping.
Should I be concerned about this, or is it normal for the NEC? That in addition to the orange tint in the corners (which sounds as if it's not as bad on your model) makes me wonder if it might not be a good idea to exchange it for a replacement, just to be on the safe side. I've noticed that it also seems to have a slightly darker band in the middle of the screen against a completely gray background like my desktop.
This could also completely be my imagination as well or I'm just overly sensitive to it, but it seems like it might be flickering slightly. It's not like a CRT which I can see it easily on, but it doesn't seem to be 100% stable against a solid-color background it either. The LCD next to me on my other computer (an older 15" Sony SDM-HS53) seems to be doing it slightly as well against a blue background, so perhaps it's just normal. That monitor has developed an irritating problem though in which the pixels seem to sort of "ripple" a little bit at times, so I'm not entirely sure if it's not normal for that either.
Also, just out of curiosity, do you think this thread at HardForum might be applicable to the 20WMGX2 at all? Sounds like the original poster there was able to get a higher refresh rate on the now discontinued VX2025WM by using a dual-link DVI cable, as 1680x1050@75Hz apparently exceeds the 165Mhz bandwidth available to a single-link connection. Of course, it could simply be discarding some frames and still be internally running at 60Hz as you've said many LCDs do, but it might be interesting to give it a try.
Originally posted by: mikuto
Well, it took a while, but it's finally here: my brand new 20WGX2 Pro. I got it a couple of weeks ago after a looong wait - it's been out of stock everywhere around here for a month or so. Actually, this is the second one; you can guess what happened to the first... but more on that later.
I promised I would give my impressions on this monitor, so here they are. I'll try not to repeat too many things that have been said before; if I don't touch upon a particular aspect, assume I'm in agreement with the majority, that is, it's awesome . Warning: unless you have a bit of time and lots of patience, you may want to skip over this post; if that's the case, I suggest you start spinning that scroll wheel, 'cause it's going to take you a while .
First of all, yes, you got that right - it has the new 'Pro' label. The panel as reported by the service menu is 'LPL LM201WE2 SLA1', which is what the main page of this guide reports. However, while searching for the way to access the service menu, I stumbled upon a forum post that seemed to indicate the 20WGX2 (non-Pro) model actually had a different panel. Here's the link:
http://forum.purepc.pl/index.php?s=&showtopic=208045&view=findpost&p=2442060
It appears to be a quote from yet another source, and it looks like it was translated from German. xtknight, could there be any truth in this? I tend to think not, but still, would it be worth for a few guys having the non-Pro model to look in the service menu and confirm the panel code?
Now back to the important stuff. The first thing I noticed when looking at this monitor was the panel uniformity - excellent. Then, the angles: you can look at a normal image from pretty much any reasonable direction and the variation is minimal to nonexistent. I don't know how anyone could go back to a TN panel after seeing one of these .
When displaying a full-screen black image, there are a few minor issues:
-Very slight backlight bleeding in the lower corners, hardly visible, unless under special conditions - low light, high brightness.
-A purple hue that appears quite quickly when you look at the screen from an angle. Just to be clear: this is only on a black image. Personally, I would have expected it to stay black for a wider angle. Interestingly, if you display an image with black bars on the sides, the purple hue only appears on the black areas when viewed from extreme directions, as expected. For this reason, I don't see how it could bother anyone in practice; I just found it intriguing. Something similar is also visible when viewing an all-purple image: at least to my eyes, the center of the image is very slightly more bluish than the sides. Mind you, this is nothing like viewing the same image on a TN, where you look at the screen and you have three completely different colors in different areas.
-The black level: while it's the best I've seen, it's still far from true black. Again, this is visible on a black screen, and under relatively low ambient light. In a room normally lit by natural light, it's very good - close enough to true black. When viewing an image with black bars around it, again, pitch black. It's just that under relatively low artificial light, a black screen is more like very dark very slightly bluish gray. Again, my expectations were probably set too high; I guess we'll have to wait for other panel technologies to get true black.
Gradients: very good, especially considering I don't have a colorimeter to really set things up properly. I'll try to get my hands on one, but until then, I've just set the important things as recommended here (Advanced DV Mode - Off, DV Mode - Standard, RGB - Native, Sharpness - default at 16.6%), and this is what I found:
-I can get nice and relatively uniform gradients with no banding, but only for very precise combinations of brightness and contrast. For example, for a brightness of 18.7% (my preferred level so far), the gradients look good at a contrast of 77.1%; move it one step higher at 78.5%, or two steps lower, to 74.2%, and you already get one distortion in the scale; it only gets worse farther up or down - banding all over the gradients. This is clearly visible on normal images as well: set the contrast a few steps too high, and you get visibly washed out colors and some shades of gray turn white altogether. To be honest, I would have expected some wider ranges to be available without banding. It's worth noting that this is the case at low brightness; closer to 50%, and with the contrast around that level as well, there's a wider range of levels available without banding. It's just that I don't like bright screens - when working or playing during the night, they burn my eyes.
-I found another very strange thing while making the adjustments. I set the contrast to 50% and move the brightness from around 20% towards 50%: I get a couple distortions in the scale throughout this range; they only go away at 50% brightness. Now, when I move the brightness back, from 50% towards 20%, I don't get any distortions anymore, down to 25%. What the heck?? Why would the firmware set things differently depending on whether I'm adjusting the brightness upwards or downwards? Any ideas?
-Whatever adjustments I try to make, any gray level below 7 is black, and anything above 251 is white. I guess anything better requires a colorimeter. Now, even if these results don't look that great, in practice, the range of distinguishable shades is nothing short of amazing. I can see details that I never thought were there, especially in dark areas in games. xtknight's test images look beautiful; the level of detail and contrast on the darkness test (tree, ledge and stuff) is the best I've seen so far.
Non-native screen sizes: I'm happy to report that the Expansion menu is working on DVI on this model. You have to actually set your graphics card to something at or below 1280x1024 for the expansion options to become active; otherwise there's nothing there. You can either stretch to full screen, scale but maintain the aspect ratio, or display the smaller image in 1:1. 1280x960 is supported as well, so I've been able to play BF2 at that screen size in 1:1. I would be even happier if I could view 1400x1050 in 1:1 as well; alas, anything above 1280x1024 is implicitly stretched to full screen - I'll have to resort to graphics card scaling for this one (rant: why wouldn't the firmware support 1:1 for any size and any aspect ratio that fits inside the native pixel area is beyond me...).
Which brings us to gaming... The guide rates the 90GX2 above the 20WGX2 for gaming; I'll have to disagree on this one :
-I haven't noticed any overdrive artifacts on the 20WGX2, and I looked for them very carefully. The 90GX2 does have some; not major issues, but they're there nonetheless, especially on grayish backgrounds.
-There's less blurring on the 20WGX2 than on the 90GX2. Yes, fast moving textures are still a bit blurry on both, but the 20WGX2 comes out on top; not by a large margin, but still on top. I know this goes against the conventional wisdom of TN panels being faster, but I'm just calling things as I see them.
-Image quality is better overall on the 20WGX2 - lots of texture details that I couldn't see on the 90GX2 because they were either too dark or too bright are clearly visible now.
-Input lag: I couldn't notice any difference between the two monitors in this aspect (yes, I'm relieved ). Several things to keep in mind here:
1. The only FPS I'm playing at the moment is BF2; other games may behave differently in terms of lag.
2. I'm only playing online, with a ping between, say, 35 and 80 ms. The experience when playing on a LAN (3 - 5 ms ping) may be different.
3. I've only played on 1280x960. There's a possibility that the input lag is greater at the native screen size.
4. I'm not saying the input lag is not there, just that it's not noticeable to me under the above conditions. I haven't noticed any change in my level of play when going from a CRT to the 90GX2 and then to the 20WGX2.
5. Enough disclaimers . The thing is, I can tell the difference between playing with 35 and 70-80 ms lag. The way it goes is that I'd join a server, play for a couple of minutes, notice something is 'different', look at the status screen and there it is - 70-80 ms ping. So, if the monitor would introduce some significant lag, I think I'd notice it.
-Back to the overall gaming experience, all of the aspects above combined make this monitor very easy on the eyes when playing, at least for me. This is the first display on which I could play for 4 hours and not feel any eyestrain (see?!... the kind of sacrifices I had to make to bring you this valuable information!... and no, I don't get to do this every day... I wish ).
The OptiClear coating: yes, I had to bring this up again, although it's been debated to death so far. The reason is I have some thoughts on it and I'm curious what you guys think. Basically, it's a tradeoff: you get more reflections, but also better colors and clearer pixels - implicitly, clearer text. I find the latter to be more apparent on 20'' screens because of the smaller dot pitch. I remember looking at an HP LP2065 (20'', 1600x1200) some time ago and thinking 'somehow these pixels are not as sharply defined as I would expect from an LCD on DVI'. In retrospect, I think it was the coating. From what I read on the subject, the matte coatings basically try to disperse reflected light as much as possible to reduce glare; a side effect is that they also scatter some of the transmitted light, thus introducing some blurriness. The glossy coatings rely on different techniques to reduce glare; while they obviously aren't very good at that, they don't disperse transmitted light either, yielding sharper pixels. While I didn't find this obvious on displays with larger pixels, like 19'' 1280x1024, things are different on 20'' ones. I also think I know now why pretty much every laptop you can buy these days has a glossy screen: the dot pitch on laptop displays is getting smaller and smaller, and the effect of matte coatings worse and worse, so the manufacturers had to choose glossy ones, despite the disadvantage of more reflections (I personally find that to be even worse on a laptop screen, because of the position). Do these ramblings make any sense? Anyway, given that I can control ambient light to some extent in the room where I work, I'm now pretty happy this screen has a glossy coating - I really like the sharper text.
And finally, why I exchanged the first monitor: pixel defects. First, I quickly noticed one dead subpixel in the lower left area. On a black screen, I found two stuck ones, one on red, one on blue. As subpixel defects go, the stuck ones weren't that visible during normal use, but the dead one was. At that point, I was already a bit disappointed, as I expected more from a NEC at this price tag. But anyway, now comes the strange part: I started a really thorough inspection on a black screen, and I found... many more stuck subpixels. The thing is, they weren't completely stuck; that is, of the vertical stripe that forms a subpixel, only a part, say, between half and one third, was stuck, and the rest was working properly. These defects were visible mostly on a black screen, at 100% brightness and 100% contrast, and when looking really carefully; otherwise, during normal use, the part of the subpixel that was OK was enough to cause it to appear to be working properly. In total, I found at least a dozen such defects. Thankfully, the guys at the store were nice enough and exchanged the monitor the next day. Now, the new one still has a few such 'partially stuck' subpixels, but no other defects - no dead or 'fully stuck' ones - and the parts that are stuck are very small, appearing like a dot inside the stripe that forms the subpixel. None of them are visible in practice, so I was happy enough to keep this one. But now I'm left wondering: is this a common defect, but something most people aren't concerned about, or not noticing at all? Or was this a particularly bad batch of panels in this respect? Before seeing them with my own eyes, I used to be certain that defect subpixels could be either completely dead, or completely stuck; I had never heard about 'partially stuck subpixels'; have you? I can only hope such defects don't develop into full-blown stuck subpixels over time...
Well, that concludes this long post. In case it wasn't too clear by now, I'm very happy with this monitor. I feel it was the right choice, and worth every penny. Back to work now... nah, maybe a quick round of BF2 first .
Whatever, I honestly care more about the mitochondria of this ant on the floor and since I step on ants all the time that's saying something.
About the ripple I don't know. If it's on that 15" LCD it's probably dithering. If it's on the NEC I am not sure. You are not talking about the pixel-wide-or-so ripple seen during motion right? (AFAIK this is a response time reduction/eye cleaning feature.)
The NEC seems to truly be frozen at 60 Hz according to the dumps of the firmware (EDID) whereas most LCDs that support it to any extent will place something in the EDID (resolution/refresh rate store) about it.
Originally posted by: databird
Ugh.
I was looking at a bunch of TN panels today at an electronics store (everything from the new Samsungs to the LGs), and I was disappointed with all of them. Relatively cheap build quality coupled with an inferior panel technology. If I tilt my head 5 degrees in virtually any direction, I notice the image start to fade. Then again, it's not like the image is even ideal at a direct viewing angle.
I honestly rather my 11 year old Samsung CRT, despite its deteriorating picture and occasional spontaneous shutdowns.
Seriously, when I look at my dad's 2 year old Samsung 193P+ (which I recommended him purchase back then), it makes me even more depressed as to my situation. I hoped that by now, the industry would be making at least some panels at a similar quality. Anyone who says they can't notice the difference between a TN and IPS panel is honestly either in denial, has vision problems, or is just stupid (no offense).
The difference is huge. With the 193P+ (IPS panel), I have to be standing at an angle about 60 degrees to the normal of the screen in order to notice any sort of considerable distortion, and even then, the picture is more than clear. Compare that to ~5-15 degrees with TN panels.
Anyway, I'm just frustrated. I do need a new monitor, but the options seem to be limited or non-existent. Perhaps I will just repair my 19 inch Trinitron that crapped out on me a year ago, since all this trouble may justify the costs.
Originally posted by: Tasiin
I was more concerned about the band in the center really. There's a small patch there where it'll go from light to dark, then light again before returning to a more uniform gray on my desktop (I have no desktop background, just a solid color gray), and another darker area on the far right of the screen.
It's not really a big deal I guess, and I can't tell where the bands are under typical usage most of the time, but I can't help but wonder if I could have gotten a more uniform panel given the price of this thing. If this is typical for the 20WMGX2 (or most LCDs), I don't care however and it's not worth the trouble of getting a replacement.
Okay, I'll just leave it alone. I'm already beginning to get somewhat used to it, as you said. Thanks!
Originally posted by: harobikes333
Originally posted by: xtknight
Originally posted by: harobikes333
Hi, I was wondering what you guys think of this monitor : ViewSonic - Q20WB Black 20" 5ms DVI Widescreen
Here is my planned setup
On a 1200~ budget.
Thanks a ton! Any help is greatly appreciated!
Mark
The Q20WB seems to be a typical 20" TN (and to tell you the truth I don't know much about it). If you could I would sacrifice a tad on another component if needed to get a more known model such as the Acer AL2051W (preferred) or Samsung 206BW. Saving $50 on a monitor can have severe consequences, while saving $50 on a CPU or hard disk really won't in a lot of cases.
Agreed. Thanks for the warning
I'm trying to decide on the acer or the sumsung... why would you prefer the acer over the sumsung...? samsung has more features doesn't it? ( I'm clueless. *help!* )
Thanks!!!!
Originally posted by: databird
I made a post earlier concerning more mainstream monitors (but still very high end) incorporating LED backlights instead of the current CCFL. Here's a link: http://www.behardware.com/articles/654-1/xl20-samsung-s-1rst-lcd-led.html
Originally posted by: shilatoe
Question for xtknight:
I see the new Dell 2407WFP-HC might be coming out next week. The owner's manual is already online. The manual says that the backlight is "6 CCFLs U-type backlight, 92% wide color gamut." Since the earlier, 2407WFP, is an SPVA panel and the current limited specs shown for the HC appear to be the same can we assume that the new panel is a wide color gamut SPVA? I have the impression from your prior messages that most wide gamut panels are TNs. Can an SPVA be wide gamut also? I need a little tech knowledge on this.
Many thanks to you xtknight,
Originally posted by: EvanAdams
I'm looking for a super low LCD. Right now my MAC monitor is set up with a VESA mounting arm that puts my apple cinema display right down to my desk. That allows for better viewing w/ bi-focals. I need a better PC monitor for looking at databases, excell etc....
Are there any LCD's get close to that low w/o a VESA mount? I'm needing a second monitor for my PC. I'm thinking widescreen. Minimum 20+"
Originally posted by: shilatoe
Re the NEC LCD2470WNX, first comments from a new buyer just appeared this morning on HardForum. Sounds good so far.
http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1030962086&postcount=25
Unfortunately, there are no comments re game play yet.
BTW, TFT Central describes this monitor as part of NEC's 70 series. What is that? I don't know enough about NEC to grasp the significance of that. Any help?
Thanks,
Originally posted by: xtknight
Originally posted by: harobikes333
Originally posted by: xtknight
Originally posted by: harobikes333
Hi, I was wondering what you guys think of this monitor : ViewSonic - Q20WB Black 20" 5ms DVI Widescreen
Here is my planned setup
On a 1200~ budget.
Thanks a ton! Any help is greatly appreciated!
Mark
The Q20WB seems to be a typical 20" TN (and to tell you the truth I don't know much about it). If you could I would sacrifice a tad on another component if needed to get a more known model such as the Acer AL2051W (preferred) or Samsung 206BW.
The Acer has a P-MVA glossy panel in it, which is very much preferable to a TN. I don't think the Samsung has any more features (or perhaps rather useless ones like MagicBright). Acer has the same things anyway just under a different name but like I said those are largely useless.
So even though the samsung is currently 239.99 after mail in rebate and has free shipping
I still should get the acer for 249.99 +15.56 ?
I'm about to go look up the difference in the type of panels.
Originally posted by: harobikes333
So even though the samsung is currently 239.99 after mail in rebate and has free shipping
I still should get the acer for 249.99 +15.56 ?
I'm about to go look up the difference in the type of panels.
Originally posted by: xtknight
The Q20WB seems to be a typical 20" TN (and to tell you the truth I don't know much about it). If you could I would sacrifice a tad on another component if needed to get a more known model such as the Acer AL2051W (preferred) or Samsung 206BW.
The Acer has a P-MVA glossy panel in it, which is very much preferable to a TN. I don't think the Samsung has any more features (or perhaps rather useless ones like MagicBright). Acer has the same things anyway just under a different name but like I said those are largely useless.
Originally posted by: harobikes333
:? where do you see that is has a p-mva panel? in the specs at newegg it says WSXGA+
the samsung says a-si TFT/TN
I understand the TN isn't great for being vivid for color and blacks aren't true i guess?? but as far as the acer i looked it up and it has something to do with widescreen... must be better^ ^
I'll take your word for it If you could explain though that would be kool
thanks again!
mark
I'm probably not doing a very good job at describing it. First of all, it's not 'partially dead', but 'partially stuck-on', as in, always lit, not always dark. If you imagine the standard (conceptual) square pixel divided into three equal vertical bands, R-G-B, what I'm saying is that a part of one of these bands is always lit; not the entire band (that would be the usual stuck subpixel), but only a relatively small part. You have to be really looking for them to find them. They're (almost) impossible to find on colored test screens, but they show up on a black screen as very very small bright specks of color (we have to keep in mind we're talking about something considerably smaller than one third of a pixel...). Turning the brightness and contrast up to 100% makes them stand out a little better. I used a 2x magnifying lens to look at them in detail.Originally posted by: xtknight
I can't say I really understand what you mean by the partially dead subpixels thing but I don't think dead pixels are common on the NEC. I have never seen any such sort of 1/100th of a dead pixel on here in my 7 months of using it.
Originally posted by: harobikes333
*bows down before xtknight*
Thank you!!!!
Here's my <a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=27&threadid=2027206&frmKeyword=&STARTPAGE=1&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear">final setup
</a>
Any comments, suggestions are greatly appreciated
PyroHaro
Originally posted by: mikuto
I'm probably not doing a very good job at describing it. First of all, it's not 'partially dead', but 'partially stuck-on', as in, always lit, not always dark. If you imagine the standard (conceptual) square pixel divided into three equal vertical bands, R-G-B, what I'm saying is that a part of one of these bands is always lit; not the entire band (that would be the usual stuck subpixel), but only a relatively small part. You have to be really looking for them to find them. They're (almost) impossible to find on colored test screens, but they show up on a black screen as very very small bright specks of color (we have to keep in mind we're talking about something considerably smaller than one third of a pixel...). Turning the brightness and contrast up to 100% makes them stand out a little better. I used a 2x magnifying lens to look at them in detail.Originally posted by: xtknight
I can't say I really understand what you mean by the partially dead subpixels thing but I don't think dead pixels are common on the NEC. I have never seen any such sort of 1/100th of a dead pixel on here in my 7 months of using it.
I did a quick search on the net and I found a couple references to partially stuck subpixels. Here's somebody that actually took a few pictures:
http://home.comcast.net/~brosnan1/tv/
The most relevant one is the one labelled 'Red stuck partially on subpixel' - you can clearly see the bright part being smaller than the total size of the red subpixel.