need your feedbacks on 21 inch LCD monitors?

My CRT monitor is dying because the inner parts seems to be heating up the plastics. It produce nauseating smell that almost knock me unconscious. I want to buy a new 21 inch LCD computer monitor. I done my research on all the brands in the market. I don't want to buy sony because its quality isn't as great as other brands.

I need your personal feedbacks on those large monitors.
Which LCD monitor brand , and model works well for you?
Does the resolution seem vivid, clear text display?

I bought the Viewera 192-SD. Although it required some adjustment out of the box I'm quite happy with it. Granted, this isn't a 21" monitor but if you're using a 21" CRT then a 19" LCD will give just about the same picture size. Samsung LCDs also get consistently good reviews on Newegg.

I'll also add that LCD is a big step up from CRT. The picture is much clearer, colors are better, contrast seems better, and of course there's no geometric distortion. Lower power consumption means that my system can run longer on my UPS if need be. My only complaints regarding LCDs are two. First off I really wish pixel pitch was at least 150 dpi (i.e. 1536 x 2048 for a 19" monitor) so that text would look smoother. With ClearType in XP 85 to 100 dpi test is passable but in Win98 with no ClearType you really notice the pixelation. Second, it seems that 4:3 monitors larger than 21" aren't going to be made. Widescreen might be good for TVs, but not for PCs.

If you can afford it... Iiyama is, I hear, nice.

I'm spoiled and would rather have two 19 monitors over a 21 inch. Right now I have a 19 inch LCD and an older 20 inch CRT.
I can clearly read a full page on both my monitors although the 19 inch is much better, and I have over 24 inches horizontally to play with.

I just returned a Costco Viewsonic 17" LCD monitor today, and picked up a nice new HP 19" from CompUSA (f1905e). For some reason, smaller fonts on the Viewsonic looked out of focus....blurry, if you will. It was causing eye strain, so today we took it back and got a new monitor. I have to say that so far I am very impressed with the HP - not only is it bigger, but it fixed the problem and even the tiniest of fonts look really good.

So out of my own personal experience, I haven't been that thrilled with Viewsonic, but it could have been a lemon. The HP model I have is very nice, and although it's not a 21", I'd expect you'd see similar performance in a larger version.

While it is difficult to find reviews of LCDs (partially because the models change so much I suspect), I would suggest you try to find reviews of the specific monitor models you are considering. Even the customer reviews from Amazon and Newegg can be very enlighting.

I've picked up some Planar PL2010M LCDs (now discontinued) for work a ways back and felt they were very nice for the price.

Personally, I tend to like Samsung LCDs, but I admit I just ordered some Dell LCDs for myself since they were cheaper.

If at all possible, make sure you get one that does DVI input (and get a video card that does DVI for an all-digital setup) and at least 700:1 contrast ratio.

-john

IlluminatingBikr said:

For some reason, smaller fonts on the Viewsonic looked out of focus....blurry, if you will.

Click to expand...

You were using a digital signal (DVI) and the native LCD resolution, right?

-john

From what I understand Dell has a 24 inch LCD that gamers drool over. I have a 42 inch sony LCD Grand Vega that I drool on... It's a TV though, but has vga and HDVI inputs.

Here is a post from a moderator at one of the computer forums I frequent. It mentions the Dell and a few others.

I purchased a Dell 21" widescreen w/5yr warrenty myself through a discount program from my old job. I realllllly like it. I normally run in 1280x960 though the native resolution is 1680x1050. This has DVI/VGA/Composite/SVideo inputs on it. Picture in Picture and Picture beside Picture... only Composite or Svideo can be used for the other window in these modes.

allthatwhichis said:

From what I understand Dell has a 24 inch LCD that gamers drool over. I have a 42 inch sony LCD Grand Vega that I drool on... It's a TV though, but has vga and HDVI inputs.


Here is a post from a moderator at one of the computer forums I frequent. It mentions the Dell and a few others.

Click to expand...

Have the dell 24 in on an arm, hooked up to a 550 hour tivo. It ROCKS!!!!:rock: look around for coupons, monitor around $750, arm $250.

FYI, the normal price on the Dell 24" wide screen LCD is $750 now. I actually just ordered a pair.

-john


EDIT: Also, note that the shipping Dell 24" LCD (2407) is a new model (replacing the 2405 IIRC). So make sure you are talking about the correct model when checking out reviews.

This LOOOONNNNGGG thread:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=31&threadid=1745344&enterthread=y
(I read each post and the thread at the time took me 6 hours to read through.)

and this site:

http://www.lcdresource.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

For my pho editing machine, I picked up a Samsung 215TW about 3 weeks back. Out of the box, it was too contrasty and bright, after calibrating with Monaco XR Pro...am quite pleased. With the recent price drops, these are now sub $500 and I hope (barring other expenses) buy another next week.

John N said:

You were using a digital signal (DVI) and the native LCD resolution, right?

-john

Click to expand...

Native resolution, yes. DVI, no.

The video card only supported VGA before, so that's what we used. We got a new video card now though (Radeon 9550) that supports DVI, and that's what we're using with the new monitor. Do you think that's what made the difference? Is VGA really that bad?

IlluminatingBikr said:

Native resolution, yes. DVI, no.

The video card only supported VGA before, so that's what we used. We got a new video card now though (Radeon 9550) that supports DVI, and that's what we're using with the new monitor. Do you think that's what made the difference? Is VGA really that bad?

Click to expand...

It's hard to say, but going digital -> analog -> cable -> analog -> digital isn't going to help things. Consider you have to consider the quality of the analog/digital conversion on both the video card and the monitor as well as the signal path (cable).

In addition to the inherent problems of doing those conversions, sometimes a decent panel will have so-so conversion.

I've done a small amount of A/B testing, switching between analog / DVI and you can really see a difference with hatched patterns. I assume this might also show up in various other places as well.

In any case, if you are going through the trouble of getting a digital display, I think it is worth while to go digital all the way.

-john

The large 20+" LCD panels are usually made by only a few OEMs and are sold to numerous consumer brands.
You can't go wrong with a Samsung 20.1" LCD panel, always highly rated.
I have a 20.1" Dell 1600x1200 native res. panel that's also ranked very high.
Make sure you buy one that accepts multiple inputs, ie. DVI, composite/svideo.
Large LCDs will only look their best fed a digital signal (DVI).

My current set up is 3 Dell Ultrasharps, two 18.1" and the 20.1" in between.

DVI is MUCH sharper than vga in my experience.

jtr1962 said:

Second, it seems that 4:3 monitors larger than 21" aren't going to be made. Widescreen might be good for TVs, but not for PCs.

Click to expand...

I strongly agree with jtr on that point. If you're not used to using LCD's then you might not know that many (not all) do pretty well when tilted 90-degrees so you get more height than width. That's okay for many things like tall documents etc. Sometimes then the monitor's too narrow in that orientation.

Of course, there's always the 30" option, hehe. But that $1999 price point combined with the required dual-link DVI card is a killer.

All joking aside about the 30", I have seen & recommended many Dell displays. They're pretty good in my experience. I haven't tended to like the Samsungs for viewing angle (too narrow) but I'm sure the latest ones are worlds different from the ones I casually reviewed 2 years ago.

Sooo... I guess I'm putting forward another vote for the Dell 2007FP, which is listed as 20.1 inch but very useable at 1600 x 1200 pixels and .255mm pixel pitch. That or the 2407WFP which is 24" widescreen and gives you much better features while keeping the 1200 vertical pixels that you lose on if you were to go widescreen near 21".

BTW -- Do you know that you will absolutely hate the display in anything other than "native/max resolution"? Unlike with CRT's, I don't know anyone except my dad with aging eyes who can tolerate the fuzziness of an LCD in anything other than the native resolution, so pay special attention to that spec.
Most displays these days have fantastic contrast ratio so 600:1 isn't uncommon.
Viewing angles are near 90-degrees. That's pretty good.

One more thing -- With both Dell and Apple (whose displays are good but pricey) and probably any others selling direct you can save a TON of money getting a refurb'd one. I don't see any good monitors at Dell's outlet right now, though.

binky said:

BTW -- Do you know that you will absolutely hate the display in anything other than "native/max resolution"? Unlike with CRT's, I don't know anyone except my dad with aging eyes who can tolerate the fuzziness of an LCD in anything other than the native resolution, so pay special attention to that spec.
Most displays these days have fantastic contrast ratio so 600:1 isn't uncommon.

Click to expand...

I currently run my Dell 20.1" Widescreen (2007FPW) in 1280x960. It's native resolution is 1680x1050. I do use MS's ClearType Tuning program for LCD displays.

It looks a little sharper in the native resolution, but I wouldn't call the 1280x960 to be 'fuzzy' by any means.

K A said:

I currently run my Dell 20.1" Widescreen (2007FPW) in 1280x960. It's native resolution is 1680x1050. I do use MS's ClearType Tuning program for LCD displays.

It looks a little sharper in the native resolution, but I wouldn't call the 1280x960 to be 'fuzzy' by any means.

Click to expand...

Okay, that's true and a good idea and I should probably do that for my dad. You can tune the font pixels in dpi to match up with some ratio of the screen resolution and come up with something not fuzzy. Okay. I guess I shouldn't have painted with such a broad stroke. I was considering someone taking the display, changing the resolution and that's it, which is where it ends for most users in my experience.