Looking for a TFT.
My faithful and good quality Sony P1110 Trinitron seems to be slowly dying, albiet very slowly, it's still dying and kinda annoying and a few res' tend to look slightly out of focus which makes my eyes hurt too. Few issues with it are that getting the convergance correct everywhere and being a perfectionist it kinda drives me loopy. Another weird issue is that if the screen is too cold when I turn it on, it whiirrs quietly and slowly starts going out of focus. Sometimes it will make a click sound and correct itself, but other times I have to turn it off for a few sections and turn it back on, and even then this process may repeat till it has warmed up enough. Some low res' on it also cause it to make an annoying high pitched noise, so yeah, I think it's dying.
AAAAnyway, onto the question. I thought I may as well get a TFT so that way I can take it to LANs easier (you try hauling this 21" 5 ton monster ANYWHERE, nevermind through the LADDER you have to climb to get in/out of my room) and will make general life easier as I spend more time doing work than gaming or anything.
There were just a few things that put me off TFTs before though, added to the experience of my laptop TFT kinda put me off completely, but using a very nice 17" Dell TFT at a friends house made me think twice. The issues I have are...
1) I won't accept a single dead pixel, not after having to live with it on my laptop (two bright green ones directly above each other just off center
).
2) They used to look pants at any res other than native (try 800x600 or something on one, you'll see parts of the text look... pixel doubled slightly). This is kinda a big one because I can't run at the native res "all" the time as some things require a lower res). Lots of people don't seem to notice this but it is one of the first things I notice and is highly annoying as it is much an anomaly in my eyes as artifacting so it drives me mad.
3) 1280x1024 doesn't exactly seem that awsome as I tend to use 1600x1200 in some games.
4) Price.
5) Ghosting in general, such as titles scrolling down a screen would look awful or, one example I remember was GTA2 where the place name would scroll down the screen in a box at the top and the horizontal lines would flash like hell and look awful as if it was interlaced or something). Another example would be on my laptop when I scroll up text on say Google, it will ghost horribly, or if I scroll something with lighter text it is actually invisible while I am scrolling until I stop.
So, thoughts, ideas and things to quell my worries? My budget is probably around £200/£300, so I am looking for something to last quite some time and due to my anal nature, to be rather good...
AAAAnyway, onto the question. I thought I may as well get a TFT so that way I can take it to LANs easier (you try hauling this 21" 5 ton monster ANYWHERE, nevermind through the LADDER you have to climb to get in/out of my room) and will make general life easier as I spend more time doing work than gaming or anything.
There were just a few things that put me off TFTs before though, added to the experience of my laptop TFT kinda put me off completely, but using a very nice 17" Dell TFT at a friends house made me think twice. The issues I have are...
1) I won't accept a single dead pixel, not after having to live with it on my laptop (two bright green ones directly above each other just off center
).2) They used to look pants at any res other than native (try 800x600 or something on one, you'll see parts of the text look... pixel doubled slightly). This is kinda a big one because I can't run at the native res "all" the time as some things require a lower res). Lots of people don't seem to notice this but it is one of the first things I notice and is highly annoying as it is much an anomaly in my eyes as artifacting so it drives me mad.
3) 1280x1024 doesn't exactly seem that awsome as I tend to use 1600x1200 in some games.
4) Price.
5) Ghosting in general, such as titles scrolling down a screen would look awful or, one example I remember was GTA2 where the place name would scroll down the screen in a box at the top and the horizontal lines would flash like hell and look awful as if it was interlaced or something). Another example would be on my laptop when I scroll up text on say Google, it will ghost horribly, or if I scroll something with lighter text it is actually invisible while I am scrolling until I stop.
So, thoughts, ideas and things to quell my worries? My budget is probably around £200/£300, so I am looking for something to last quite some time and due to my anal nature, to be rather good...
0
Comments
things to consider....HDCP support for vista? do you want this? if so the only pc monitor with it right now that i can find is this gateway 21" widescreen...but it's $600 US.
http://www.gateway.com/programs/lcd/index.shtml?cmpid=index*home*Products*21lcd*programs/lcd/index~~shtml
if HDCP isn't important to you, try a dell 2005fpw widescreen lcd. wait for a deal and you can score one for under $450 no problem. there are always coupons for these every week or so floating around the net.
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/ProductDetail.aspx?sku=20053YR&c=us&cat=snp&category_id=6198&cs=19&l=en&Page=productlisting.aspx
if you want 4:3, then i would go with this samsung....or dell.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16824001194
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/ProductDetail.aspx?sku=20013YR&c=us&cat=snp&category_id=5194&cs=19&l=en&Page=productlisting.aspx
You can get them for around ~$300 or so if you can find a slick deal....
I would check slickdeals.net regularily as if it does go on sale for that price it will be on the front page.
I wanted to add how much I HATE dell as a company, but they do sell some great monitors!
In fact I just picked up one of their 42' plazma monitors and I love it. It is sooo awesome.
But if you ever have to deal with customer service issues from Dell, expect to be treated like straight up sh1t.
I have been put off Dell TFTs because it seems they are the worst out of all TFTs for "backlight bleeding" which is uneven backlight lighting.
I'd prefer a 4:3 TFT as I am going to be doing things which aren't at native resolution, and TFTs make things look bad enough as is without them having to do more dodgy resizing of the image. I couldn't give a rats about HDCP support to be honest as it just sounds like another Microsoft gimmick. I'm using Linux and old Windows stuff more often than not now.
The Dell 2005FPW from the Dell site here is £504 ($892) which is a "tad" out of my price range to say the least, hence my comment about trying to work out how much I have to spend in dollars, I'm not in the US.
I can't even look that Gateway up as they don't even give a model number, just "Widescreen 21"" Wow... descriptive of them.
I don't like the idea of the 21/20" monitors at the moment as they seem to have quite horrid response times.
The Samsung SyncMaster 204T 20'' is £401 so that is out. I could possibly get the Dell UltraSharp 2001FP but the 400:1 contrast ratio and "Edgelight system" bother me as it tends to make the screen look grey and not particually nice.
Any other ideas?
if you go lower than 20" you will drop down to a 1280x1024 native res.....is that acceptable?
if so, there are plenty of very nice 19" lcd's with low response times, etc...
ViewSonic VX922, 2ms
http://www.viewsonic.com/products/desktopdisplays/lcddisplays/xseries/vx922/
ViewSonic VX924, 3ms
http://www.viewsonic.com/products/desktopdisplays/lcddisplays/xseries/vx924/
SAMSUNG 930BF, 4ms
http://www.samsung.com/Products/Monitor/LCD_Digital/LS19BIDKBVXAA.asp
SAMSUNG 940b, 8ms
http://www.samsung.com/Products/Monitor/LCD_Digital/LS19HABKBXAA.asp
One note on the backlight issue, the first one they sent did that, but I called and complained, and they sent me a new one. The second one does not have the problem.
But I figured you could somehow get your currency converted to USD and buy one on credit or something in the states. That sux they gouge you guys like that.
Maybe you could pay someone here in the states somehow and they would mail it to you. There are definately people here at S-M I would trust not to rip me off. But then again, its not like if they do you can just drive there and kick his a$$
Personally I didnt see the bleeding issue as that big of a problem. You cant even see it most of the time, only when the screen is black.
Response time is really not an issue either. I can barely tell the difference between this and my 21inch CRT. I would definately rather play on the tft because the picture is so much brighter and more colorful.
my 2¢. I dont know what that translates to in your currency though
I'd get hit with 20% import tax and other charges as well as shipping.
It is a problem to me and bothers me quite a lot.
i agree though---a 19", 1600x1200, 8ms or lower with analog, dvi, component, s-video inputs for under $500 (or £300) would be nice.
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=91494&_LOC=UK
Does anyone know of any others though? The response time is still 24ms so it's not that great...
Curious, approxamately how much in USD would £289.99 be?
A pixel only has to go up or down - not both. Some monitors are slower one way than the other - they're just making sure you know their monitor is the same both directions.
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=14090694839&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=91494
But... one issue. The screen seems to ghost HORRIBLY if the moving thing is black on a coloured background. Black moving on white or visa versa is fine, but say you have black blocks or writing moving on a coloured background such as light orange, purple or something then it ghosts horribly. /me sighs
So much for a "non-issue"
Dude that sux! I always check the return policy before buy jic.
I hate to say I told you so, but I really did.
The response time is **** and no-where near 12, hell, it doesn't even seem near 40, so they better take it back as I sure as hell didn't spend a load of cash on a 60ms screen.
And is it really that hard to type out the words "Just in case"?
I would do anything to return that screen.
Viewsonic VX924
Xerox XA7-19i
Samsung SyncMaster 193P
NEC MultiSync 1970GX
Dell 1905FP
Those are all 19 inch screens that i have tested myself that is worth mentioning.
Unless you need 1600X1200, 19 inch should be your best bet in terms of portability and size of the work area. Personally, i have 2 of those Xerox screens and they have close to none ghosting, but they are very strong-lighted. I suggest you use a source of light behind the monitor cause in pitch black, your eyes will hurt after a couple of hours.
The Dell goes for 290 sterling after instant rebates. The others should be close to that or a little less.
Why is it so crap when its on something OTHER than black or white?
I have been looking at the monitors on Toms Hardware lately as they have their own pixel response test and it's interesting to see what things are compared to what they say (i.e. some of the "4ms" ones are really 27ms, etc).
So yeah, are one of the decent 19"s likely to be substancially better than this screen?
Just tried dragging a red square around a dark grey screen and it was AWFUL, it had to be in the hundreds. Really, I could almost draw a figure of eight at once. It was like using a sparkler, not to mention the top line of pixels of the red box were pink(!).
DOA
Damaged in Transit
Wrong item ordered
Wrong item delivered
Faulty under waranty
Duplicate order
Item not required
I mean none of these are really that accurate to be honest...