LCD Buyer's Guide

[xtknight]

Eyeless Blond: You'd want an S-PVA panel then if response is of little concern because it will succeed further in areas like contrast and color accuracy. Sorry, this is gonna be a little tough.

I can't find anything on the Samsung 916V. I've heard good things about the Viewsonic VA1912wb (it is widescreen if that's a concern). The rest I'm not sure but my guess is they are no-name cheapo models, in stark contrast to the VA1912wb.

But I really, really recommend you expose yourself to a wider range of LCDs. Is that all the 19" LCDs CostCo and Sam's Club have available? (I have absolutely no idea.)

Newegg's return policy is a 15% restocking fee if nothing was defective (you just didn't like it). I've returned with Newegg before and everything went well, and it was because "I didn't like" the item. If you liked the LCDs on display then it's rare you will want to return anything.

 

[Nextman916]

Wow i just got back from a 7 day cruise and this thread is ginormous. The VA1912wb is a nice looking monitor im still contemplating if i should have went with that over my 940b, i kinda thing the frame is ugly though so i dunno. Im loving that theyre making widescreen 19" with low response times, i think acer has one currently being sold outside the states which is alot more attractive that the viewsonic imo, thin bezel with no speakers. I will edit post if i find it.

Edit: lol just found it, its called the AL1916w predecessor to the AL1913w which was a slower 20ms panel, now made 8ms. It uses the exact same panel as the VA1912wb but is much thinner and more attractive. http://www.acer.com.sg/products/monitoral1916w/p_monitoral1916w.asp review can be found here- http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/aceral1916w/index.html The review is very helpful and puts it side-by-side to a 2005fpw which doesnt really do a TN justice. There has been much speculation about when it is going to arrive in the US, if you google it you will see. http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_This_Week_Only_25.html -nother link

P.S- this all is if widescreen is your thing

 

[SVT Cobra]

awesome post I needed this!!

 

[xtknight]

I put the ViewSonic VP930b in first place for 19" now. It seems to have a faster actual response than the Samsung 970P with colors within 0.2 DeltaE of the latter (good) per hardware.fr. Plus it's cheaper and has an OSD unlike the 970P. Many users say the backlight problems are mainly at high brightness and unnoticeable otherwise just like any LCD. It's worth mentioning the VP930b also has an 85 Hz mode, rare.

I'm going to order the VP930b for Christmas! I'll post up a comprehensive review of this AU Optronics P-MVA-based VP930b compared to my Samsung 17" TN. Let's hope it's a knock-out.

Edit: sorry. withIN 0.2 DeltaE, not actually 0.2 DeltaE. 970P had 0.4 DeltaE calibrated and VP930b had 0.6 DeltaE calibrated.

 

[farp96]

I should be getting my vp930b today. I'll throw up some thoughts on it later. Fedex say it will be deliveryed today, although I didn't think fedex worked on saturdays. I didn't get the saturday option. I only live about a 1/2 mile from zipzoomfly and the fedex depot though..

 

[xtknight]

farp96: Neat. I'm anxious to hear your thoughts on it.

 

[xtknight]

Here's a good round-up but I don't agree with their concluded ratings. However the comparison response time images are awesome for relativity.

http://translate.google.com/translate?u...=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools

 

[xtknight]

Well, today I had an opportunity to compare my 6-bit TN LCD (Samsung SyncMaster 710T) to my old shadow mask CRT (eMachines eView 17f2) which my dad fixed.

At first, my desktop looked a lot more vibrant on the CRT, the greens having much better contrast from the blues in the background image of a sky upon green land. So naturally I decided to adjust the colors on my LCD-a lot. After a lot of adjusting, and putting in a nonlinear gamma curve in ForceWare settings, I got it to look almost as good. The CRT still had noticeably more saturated and contrasted colors though. It also seemed to produce much more intense subtle tones which my 6-bit LCD washed out on. But, it looked nearly as good. Also the CRT had an unfair advantage in this case, having a smaller dot pitch (15" viewable vs. 17").

That said, within 10 seconds, surprisingly, and I BS you not, I got quite a bit of eyestrain looking at the CRT. 60 Hz seemed murder on my eyes, 75 Hz wasn't much better. 85 Hz seemed to ease it up, but still it was quite intense. So your eyes to pay a price for the more intense colors, definitely, at least in my experience. I can't stand to look at it very long at all. No wonder I always got neck aches...phew. The CRT does the same as raw onions to my eyes.

For text/internet work, the LCD was so much more pleasureable. My particular CRT's convergence issues stuck out like a sore thumb, and the flickering and intensity just killed my eyes. I don't remember it feeling this bad every day I had been using the CRT, but since I got my LCD, I can barely stand to look at the CRT anymore.

I also tested lots of games. In HL2: Lost Coast, the CRT reproduced the ramp (early in the game) a lot "browner". I didn't see much difference otherwise, surprisingly.

For Wolfenstein: The CRT seemed to have a lot of red ringe to it, but darker colors were more visible, and gray seemed to be produced more faithfully. Rust on metallic objects stuck out a lot better and the whole range was reproduced better overall. I had trouble adjusting my 6-bit LCD to produce it similarly.

In most cases, adjustment on an LCD goes a long way (except in Wolfenstein). Unfortunately, it does have to be adjusted a lot more. I can say the LCD would definitely do better without such a bright backlight though. My current 710T has 300 nits and 600:1 contrast, and my VP930b will have 250 and a greater 1000:1 contrast, so we'll see. Seeing as there as direct monitor adjustment tools even for Linux now, it should be a piece of cake for developers to make something to adjust the LCD better per environment. Web pages/text demand a less bright and less intense image, while games need more red and green added in to the mix.

Black level suffered on my LCD in majorly black environments, but other than that, it did not ruin the experience in any way.

Using my LCD itself as a scaler, I can honestly say 1024x768 looked no different than on my CRT. The text was just a TAD weird because of the ClearType, but otherwise I was awestruck.

Throughout my "journey", I determined ghosting to be little of an issue except in Battlefield 2, where motion was a little smeary against the CRT.

My overall consensus? The CRT did produce more intense colors in some situations, but it was too big of a price for my eyes to pay. The LCD did not look far off once it had been adjusted properly. The CRT is a very good reference point for adjusting the LCD. It did have quite a bad red tint to it. I'd say my LCD's grays looked a lot better. At 9500K on the CRT, the red was gone, but the colors overall didn't look at good either.

Running a 7800GT with dual DVI clone mode (CRT thru adapter), I did not see ANY input lag on the LCD.

Right now, my 6-bit TN LCD has to dither, so that's definitely something to take into account. 8-bit may be worlds different, I'll have to see for myself, no pun intended. I'm still on the Hajj of finding the ideal display. The VP930b may be it.

Just something to consider. I'll post another unbiased and brutually honest review once I get my 8-bit VP930b. Stay tuned.

 

[sunzt]

Very nice guide. I'm looking forward to the VP930b review.

 

[shortylickens]

Originally posted by: Hadsus
Disadvantages not listed.......

Poor blacks. Supported by contrast ratio specs but also supported by real world viewing. LCDs I've seen don't render deep blacks which affect depth, color accuracy, and immersiveness in games. LCDs do poorly with dark games such as Doom3 and Theif series. Technological limitations make it doubtful that blacks can ever be rendered accurately.

Excessive brightness. Screen much brighter than ambient light and CRTs. Reducing brightness affects dynamic range of colors. Long term physiological affects of excessive brightness on eyes unknown at this time.

Silk screen effect. Shimmering of multi-colored pixels and subpixels on the face of the screen.

Screen door effect. User dependent. Some users are distracted considerably and others not at all. Caused by dark filler material to hide electrical connections to pixels.

Bad pixels. Still too common and distracting.

Bound resolution. You have just one native resolution which causes issues with text size and interpolation in games. Requires high end video card with very large screens in order to achieve proper frame rates in many video demanding games.

Screen fragility. CRTs have a glass face which is more difficult to damage accidently (i.e., cracks and scratches) than LCDs.

I used to hate LCD's with a passion. Then I used to say they were alright for work environments where image quality was second to space and efficiency. Then I started saying they were OK for home users who didnt know or care about the differences.

Then I lost my mind and bought one for myself. An Iiyama ProLite E-series. 17". It was a genuine 24-bit color display (or 8 bits per color channel, depending on how you look at it), and had a max res of 1280x1024. The thing was actually pretty darn good. I used it when I made two seperate computers, one for gaming, one for office and internet. I wanted to see what I was missing, if anything. The monitor shipped with no dead pixels and one year later still doesnt have any (that I can find). No ghosting when scrolling web pages or playing low-end, 2D shooter games. Blacks are genuinely dark, colors were not washed out, and the brightness adjusted to create a very clear, vivid picture. It had no screen door effect, although I did temporarily own a 19" monitor that ran at 1280x1024. The effect was really noticeable there. It also used a 6-bit color display so I returned it. I have usually preferred my desktop to run at 1280x1024 so this monitor was no trouble for me.
Never used it for any 3D games. Although I have considered one workaround for the Native Res issue. Many 20 and 21 inch monitors run at 1600x1200. The beauty of this res is you can also run 800x600 and still get a good image. If you use it for gaming and this seems too low, but 1600x1200 is a bit too high (relative to video card processing power) just run the lower resolution with Anti-Aliasing. Doom3 in particular looks good that way. Not that I like the game much. But HL2, Far Cry and others all look nice with AA enabled at that res.

Anyway, I was pretty darn happy with my Iiyama for a long time. Gave it to my mom when I recieved my HP L2335 widescreen LCD. I wont go too deep into the details of the monitor. Anandntech gave it a thourough review and theres nothing I could add to it. I will say I hooked it up to my gaming rig (for a day) to try all the games they used and they were absolutely right. No ghosting or motion blur, excellent color reproduction and many games look good in widescreen. Of course the brings back the previous issue. You wont get a good gaming experience unless you go nuts and spend a lot of money on a hi-end LCD. Mine cost a thousand bucks, and I dont even intend to use it for games. Its for photo/video editing, office work and also looks nice with most web pages.
Although I may break down and buy a cheap 21" monitor for the office computer and move into the LCD world entirely.

For reference, this monitor shipped with no dead pixels and HP has an awesome return policy.

 

[Luddite]

Thanks for sharing your experience with the HP L2335, shortylickens It sounds like a great monitor.

I was curious about large monitors like the HP L2335 which are able to pivot. Could you tell me what happens with the screen image when the monitor pivots. Do the pallettes and toolbars in photoshop, for example, pivot with the image? (thus ending up sideways). Or can you get the pallettes and toolbars to remain readable in a right-side up position? (via special software?) Not exactly sure how that works for photo editing.

Thanks again.

 

[shortylickens]

You have to install the software to adjust the display orientation. It doesnt happen automatically.

As far as moving to narrowscreen goes, I have not yet found an app that automatically senses the resoltution change.
In Corel Draw all my menu and tool bars were scrunched up, I had to drag and reorganize them. However, most high-end drawing programs allow you to save your workspace. So it would be simple matter to make 2 custom workspaces and name one "narrow" and the other "wide".

 

[KnightPalatine]

Originally posted by: Luddite
This is a fantastic sticky xtkight. Thanks very much for your research and hard work!

Here is my situation: Looking to move from a CRT to LCD within the next couple of months (tired of eye strain, etc.). I surf a lot, do a lot of online research, and so need something that has great, sharp text. I game little to none, so don't need a fast panel. I also do a fair amount of photo editing, but it's not critical color work for professional layouts, just a hobby that I would like to get better at.

I am leaning towards a size 20" model and a 4:3 ratio, as I like the sharper pixel pitch at the 1600 X 1200 resolution.

Any suggestions would be highly appreciated.

Thanks again for this thread.

Ditto, and then some!

I need a new display now, as my old Samsung 955DF CRT is starting to get blurry on me. I'm not wedded to the idea of a LCD display, but they seem the only game in town these days. My requirements are the same as Luddite's, but I'm considering the 2005FPW for about $420 + tax. Is this a good choice, or are there better ones?

 

[Navid]

How does this fit in your classifications?

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: KnightPalatine
Ditto, and then some!

I need a new display now, as my old Samsung 955DF CRT is starting to get blurry on me. I'm not wedded to the idea of a LCD display, but they seem the only game in town these days. My requirements are the same as Luddite's, but I'm considering the 2005FPW for about $420 + tax. Is this a good choice, or are there better ones?

That's what I would have picked. The non-widescreen version is the 2001FP if you weren't aware. Both are great. So like Luddite you'll be general web surfing/text/photo-editing?

You'll actually probably be able to use a higher resolution than your CRT, because the 955DF maxed out at 68 Hz at 1600x1200. The Dell 2001/2005 will do 75 Hz at 1600x1200/1680x1050, and flicker free anyway.

 

[KnightPalatine]

Originally posted by: xtknight

Originally posted by: KnightPalatine
Ditto, and then some!

I need a new display now, as my old Samsung 955DF CRT is starting to get blurry on me. I'm not wedded to the idea of a LCD display, but they seem the only game in town these days. My requirements are the same as Luddite's, but I'm considering the 2005FPW for about $420 + tax. Is this a good choice, or are there better ones?

That's what I would have picked. The non-widescreen version is the 2001FP if you weren't aware. Both are great. So like Luddite you'll be general web surfing/text/photo-editing?

You'll actually probably be able to use a higher resolution than your CRT, because the 955DF maxed out at 68 Hz at 1600x1200. The Dell 2001/2005 will do 75 Hz at 1600x1200/1680x1050, and flicker free anyway.

Correct. My only games are MS FlightSim & Combat FlightSim. FPS games make me ill.

Many thanks for your work and advice, xtknight. Happy New Year!

 

[xtknight]

Received my VP930b. (Read the whole review if you read any of it.)

Previous monitor: 17" Samsung SyncMaster 710t TN 6-bit
Current: 19" ViewSonic VP930b P-MVA 8-bit/Overdrive
Both had been/are hooked up via DVI.

First impression: This thing's huge (19") and it's frickin bright as hell! Then I looked at the colors. Meh...washed out. I tried all of the color adjustments and none were that great.

So...I started up some Wolfenstein first. I noticed some more detail in the walls I hadn't noticed before (bigger dot pitch). Surprisingly enough, I noticed in like 90% of the transitions, this monitor exhibited nothing at all during movement except the slightest unnoticeable blur.

Battlefield 2 was next up. I went to FuShe Pass, and strafed myself so ahead of me was a pond and some grass on a blue sky. At that point, that particular color of grass on that sky left a very noticeable afterimage as I moved. Fortunately, that type of transition was very rare throughout my gaming experience. Obviously, that was the type of transition where VA panels hit 80 ms. The rest definitely felt under 15 ms. like the response graphs indicated.

Still, the colors just didn't feel right.

Dumbstruck, I remembered I forgot to apply the ICM color management gamma profile. I loaded up ForceWare, went to color correction, pressed the import button and loaded up the VP930 ICM as on the CD. Everything changed...literally. There was obviously more saturation and nothing looked washed out AT ALL any more. It's amazing how much a custom gamma profile can change things.

The colors on this thing were AMAZING as I browsed through some London Bridge photos on Google.

The text is a tad problematic. I couldn't get a ClearType setting that didn't exhibit color fringing (in ClearType Tuner), but one was fairly good, so I stuck with that. Turning off ClearType after using it for so long was not an option. It didn't look good at all without ClearType, but that's because I'm so used to it. Most of the text on the screen looks great. Just a couple exceptions where ClearType's changes become too evident. I may look at the registry, manually set a ClearType gamma, and report back.

Viewing angle wasn't as good as I anticipated, but still worlds better than my old TN. The colors just get less bright, at least they don't invert like my TN.

Grays are so much better on this display, and the much higher contrast is evident. I can't say enough about how the colors in this image look so awesome on the VP930b. It's like looking out a recently-cleaned clear transparent window. I don't think I could discern the difference between this monitor and that. I do prefer the colors on the VP930b to my old CRT, whereas my old CRT easily edged out my 17" TN to be honest.

There's only one problem. On a completely black image, the lower left and lower right exhibit backlight bleeding. Only does it get annoying on the BF2 load menu, where it's quite noticeable (more so than my 17"). Fortunately, it's limited to that scenario, and black in the middle of the display looks blacker than hell.

Overall, after adjusting the colors with the provided gamma profile, this monitor looks AWESOME. Comfortable on the eyes definitely (at lower, more natural brightness/contrast settings), and definite color contrast. My old TN's colors looked as if you put red-tinted saran wrap and had shone a bluish-white light through it. This one looks like superbright red LEDs in comparison. The white is actually white, not blueish gray. There is nearly no blurring in general use. The pixels in transition all maintain their color very well, compared to my TN in which the colors just smeared over each other. My old TN also produced quite a reddish hue on black-on-white website scrolling. The VP930b? Almost nothing.

If you have ANY questions about this monitor, PLEASE send them my way (via a reply below).

 

[farp96]

Where would you get that gamma profile from? I too was thinking the colors were washed out. I also have an nvidia card, 7800 gtx....

 

[xtknight]

It's on the ViewSonic CD (or I'll send it to you).

Go in NVIDIA ForceWare settings, go to color correction, and click the import button. Specify this file on the main directory of the CD:

VP930_Series.icm

 

[Compellor]

Thanks for the VP930b review, xtknight. I've noticed that even with the VP930 profile installed I still needed to tweak the gamma a bit with my X800 XL. Once I made the adjustment it looked awesome. I also used the ViewSonic software to calibrate and make a custom preset. I had to drop the brightness down to 40 and put the contrast at 60. The colors still look great with those settings.

 

[xtknight]

For VP930b owners-

These are my favorite settings (so far anyway):

1280x1024 resolution over DVI
75 Hz vertical frequency

(monitor OSD)
Contrast: 60
Brightness: 78

Color Adjust - User Color
R: 63
G: 60
B: 62

(ForceWare color settings)
http://xtknight.atothosting.com/vp930b_settings_1.png
-or-
http://xtknight.atothosting.com/vp930b_3.reg

Note: with reg file, you have to open it in notepad and change the vendor/dev ID to match your registry.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\NVTweak\Devices\VEN_10DE&DEV_0092&SUBSYS_C5183842&REV_A1&INST00\Color\Schemes]

The bolded part will have to match your registry. Open regedit and replace that part correspondingly, save the reg file in notepad, then merge it with the registry (double click reg file).

After you merge the reg file, you can load up the ForceWare control panel and choose vp930b-3 in Color Correction.

Download ClearType Tuner
Run it and set options to: ClearType, RGB stripe (first one), 2.0 gamma

These settings deliver linear, rich, saturated colors without raping your eyes (at least on my panel). YMMV.

Don't know how good the bundled PerfectSuite software is. I could only get it to run under Safe Mode (where everything was grayed out once it loaded), otherwise my Windows completely froze, mouse cursor and all.

 

[utkd]

Which LCD monitor would you reecommend.

I play Everquest I and II, Blackhawk Down, Flight Simulator MS version.

Us my computers a lot for web browsing, Graphics work using Addbe CS-2, Nikon Capture for editing images in raw format, email and text work using MS Office 2003.

Viewsonic VP930B, Samsung 970P 19inch screens

Dell 2005FPW Wide screen

Viewsonic VP2030b

Or is there another recommendition to be made.

I am currently using a NEC FP1350X 20inch monitor, the LCD screen on my lap top which is a little over 15 inches diagonally and a little over 8 inches tall.

The winning monitor will be fired by the configuration listed below. I'll add the second ATI X1800 crossfire 512mb GPU by Q2 2006.
Building out a new system with ATI X1800XT crossfire 512mb GPU, ASUSA8R-MVP Radeon Crossfire 200 chipset mobo, AMD 4400 x2, 4600 x2 or 4800 x2 dual processor ( Price will determine which one I go with Newegg's $497, $630, $787 respectively) and min 2gb Crossfire XMS memory.

Recommendations for the monitor would be greatly appreciated. Would like to stay under
$700.00 on the monitor purchase if possible.

Thanks

 

[xtknight]

utkd:

I have the ViewSonic VP930b and I love it, so if you're looking for a 19" I'd highly recommend it. The Samsung 970P may be a tad slower, but it might not have as much backlight bleeding as the VP930b. Unfortunately the 970P lacks an OSD (only be able to control it thru Samsung MagicTune).

All those monitors are great 8-bit ones. I wouldn't recommend 20" widescreen as it may be a little short, especially for Photoshop. Overall I think you'd love the VP2030b. I've heard good things about it.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Originally posted by: xtknight
The Samsung 214T will be a great gaming monitor. It's possible the Dell 2001FP will deliver faster response times, though I'm not sure if the Dell 2001FP uses Overdrive like the Samsung 214T does. I'm fairly certain the Dell 2001FP does not use the overdriving circuit, leaving the Samsung 214T the fastest.

Overdrive circuit? I just got this monitor about 3hrs ago and its nice, really really nice. Although my brothers VX922 seems a little bit better, i still am giving it a chance. I like the 16x12 resolution, but i have yet to see it perform good in games. i don't have a reliable enough benchmark or system to accurately judge whether or not, its good, all i have is just a reference of my brothers VX922.

P.S. again, what about Overdrive???

tHanks,

BTRY B 529th FA BN

 

[utkd]

Well I went out to Best Buy and looked at the Samsung and Sony monitors. The had the 970P it looked good! Saw the 214t Very nice. But what caught my attention was the Gateway FDP2185W. It is a 21 inch wide screen. The image quality was better and brighter that the other 20's and the 19's .. Image resolutions were sharper and at least on the display I couldn't see any backlight issues. It is an 8 bit monitor, 16:10 ratio, 1000:1 and 300 cd/m2; S-PVA with a touted 8 ms gtog.

I will set it up later tonight. Stand raises and lower, swivles and tilts and can be removed from stand and mounted to the wall. Oh and it goes landscape as well as portrait.

Probably paid too much. $599 as compared to the Dell 2005FTP, which from Dell is going for 469 free shipping. But I did't what to have to play the RMA if the quality isn't there. I usually don't go retail, but with so many comments on the backlight issues with some of the LCDs. I just didn't want to deal with the frustration.. Best Buy has a 14 day return policy.

So over the weekend I'll run it through it's paces and see how it performs. And I'll post up. If the one in my box looks as good as what I saw in the store. Eureka-----Pay Dirt!

Bottom line if when it is all said and done ...if it doesn't meet my needs, I'll give it to my wife and go out and get something more suitable! She doesn't play anything but Solitare! LOL

Ya'll have a Safe and Happy New Year and XTKNIGHT, thanks for your reviews and your input earlier! I had to jump in to a19 inch or larger LCD at some point. Figured that I had to stop reading and just go out and make a purchase win loose or draw!

Happy New Year from a Noobe to the group!

UTKD