Low Cost 19" LCD's

[Dr. Detroit]

Dad loves his PC and turns 60 this year. He is still using a 15" CRT due to his penny pinching ways and swear he does not want a beheamoth of a CRT occupying his 800sq ft 2-story Condo as space is already tight.

As he is a cheap old bastard who never games but he really thinks technology is cool. He dropped by Costco and saw the 19" LCD's and wants one.

Of course him being the cheap bastard he is found a $299 No rebate LCD at Wal-Mart, his favorite store!


I tried convincing him to get a Dell E19 for $335 but he's cheap and has to have DVI. Why, I don't know!


So Anandtech LCD gurus how bout this monitor Balance CM2019


And any other good choice for 19" LCD's under $350.

 

[johnnyjay]

If he's not gaming then it should be fine, you're probably not going to find anything better for less than $350 anyway.

 

[LouPoir]

Looks decent for $299 and with DVI -

Lou

 

[Bumrush99]

The only problem with that is that most LCD monitors that are 19 inches only look good at 1600*1200... If his vision is poor he will have difficulty reading the text.

 

[Dr. Detroit]

Originally posted by: Bumrush99
The only problem with that is that most LCD monitors that are 19 inches only look good at 1600*1200... If his vision is poor he will have difficulty reading the text.

Resolution of the monitor is listed at 1280 x 1024 resolution. Will he be OK with that resolution?


I'm still in the dark ages myself using a 17" CRT so I'm no expert.

 

[Bumrush99]

For older people, even 1280 might seem a bit too small... Are you sure he won't settle for a CRT, they can scale down much better than LCD's

 

[Dr. Detroit]

No chance on a large CRT.

I've offered to give him an old 17" I have laying around and he won't take it, continues to gripe about depth and weight. The 15" CRT he has now is from me as well. I upgraded him from a 14".

 

[halfadder]

How bad are his eyes? Using a lower resolution on an LCD is generally blurry, which only makes things worse. You can adjust Windows so that the widgets and fonts are larger, but not everything is increased equally.

Here's one solution I've seen, although it may be overkill in your case: get a 19" LCD with 1600x1200 resolution. Run it at a pixel-doubled 800x600 resolution. Perfect scaling without any blur.

My granpda runs his 17" CRT at 800x600.

Or you could do what some gamers are doing with the new Apple 30" monitor... Its native resolution is 2560x1600 and requires a card that supports DVI DDL. But it can be run off almost any DVI card at a pixel doubled 1280x800, which many gamers are already using it for. Kind of expensive, though.

 

[kmmatney]

There is something wrong with the specs of the monitor listed at Wal-mart. The pixel pitch is 0.264 mm on a 19" LCD at 1280 x 1024. I don't think that's right. That's the pixel size that a 17" LCD would have for that resolution!! A 19" should have a nice, larger, pixel size of 0.294 mm.

A pixel size of 0.264 is definately a little too hard to see..

 

[kmmatney]

Here is the ultimate LCD for someone with bad eyes:

LCD for sore eyes

Its 1024 x 768 spread out over a 18 inches.

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: kmmatney
Here is the ultimate LCD for someone with bad eyes:

LCD for sore eyes

Its 1024 x 768 spread out over a 18 inches.

No DVI though.

You can always enable ClearType on an 19inch LCD you get him even if it runs at 1280x1024 and that might help things a bit

 

[w00t]

old people these days they just dont want to listen. so sad