19' LCD monitor for games & work?

Anyone use 19' LCD monitor to play games and to do office work? I am curious to know which brand yoiu guys use every day. I want to buy new LCD monitor. I am leaning toward LG and Viewsonic because they make high quality hardware & software for the monitor. Their graphis are crystal clear and refresh rate is at 2ms.

High refresh speed matters for games and maybe movies. For office work it's less important. Most 19" monitors have 1280x1024 resolution, while 20" usually has 1600x1200 and costs somewhat more. I'd rather pay the extra and get the higher resolution.

Don't be fooled by specs like "refresh rate" alone; there's many ways to spec response time.

I tried a well reviewed Dell 1905FP ($300), which was fine for office work, has an excellent tilt/swivel/height/pivot stand - but it had funny color shifts on many moving objects. I'm now using a Viewsonic VP930b, which is very good, but $360.

LCD screens are always a set of compromises: cost, 6bit/8bit color, response time, viewing angles, stand flexibility, analog/digital inputs, etc. In general, the faster displays will tend to be 6 bit, with less color accuracy than slower, 8 bit screens. Gamers tend to want the speed at the expense of color accuracy. I went with a balance of 8 bit accuracy with decent speed, 2 analog and a DVI input, and versatile stand, but it cost me.

19' ... 19 foot, that is one big monitor...

-Bill

For general [office/internet] use I personally believe that your monitor should be as large as possible - it makes it so much easier to view documents and also to have several things on your desktop at once. My personal opinion is that 19" LCD monitors are cheap enough for them to be "standard" but I believe 17" LCD is still standard. There is a big difference though. I have a 19" monitor at home and a 17" at work and I wish I had ordered a 19" monitor when I had the chance [although policy states I don't need it].

For normal office work a generic 19" LCD is fine in my experience. However, for gaming, movies and graphics the better quality monitors do make a hell of a difference. If you're on a budget I'd suggest a smaller LCD of better quality rather than a larger one for those applications. Also, I understand that larger monitors require more resources to make the best of them. You may need to upgrade your PC or at least your graphics card to take full advantage...

Al

LCDs look fantastic as long as you run them at their native resolution. I have a 17" Dell at work with a native 1280 x 1024 and it looks superb at that res. Any other resolution looks like poo poo. So for games, I wouldn't recommend one and most hardcore gamers still prefer a CRT for that very reason.

Dave

Exactly. As I have **** poor eyesight, I generally run 800x600, bumping it up to 1024x768 for graphics work. Long live my CRT Viewsonic PF790. If it should die, I don't know if I can find a suitable replacement.

NickelPlate said:

LCDs look fantastic as long as you run them at their native resolution. I have a 17" Dell at work with a native 1280 x 1024 and it looks superb at that res. Any other resolution looks like poo poo. So for games, I wouldn't recommend one and most hardcore gamers still prefer a CRT for that very reason.

Dave

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ok I correct my mistake. The size is 19" monitor.

i would say to use separate machines for gaming and work. get a crt for the gaming rig, and get 2x 17's for the work rig. yes, they are smaller each, but they have the same resolution, and in so doing, you will have twice the desktop real estate. i started with 2 15'' about four years ago, and have since added a 17 in the center. once you start going to multiple monitors, it is extremely difficult to go to fewer. when i had 2, i couldn't stand going to 1, and now that i have 3, i can't stand even going back to 2... for work stuff though, nothing can really beat having dual/triple/etc. monitors.

or here's an idea if you don't want two separate rigs. get a crt and an lcd, set the crt as 'primary' so when you game, you will have the benefits of the crt, and when you do work, you will have dual monitors.

geepondy said:

Exactly. As I have **** poor eyesight, I generally run 800x600, bumping it up to 1024x768 for graphics work. Long live my CRT Viewsonic PF790. If it should die, I don't know if I can find a suitable replacement.

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If you try an LCD monitor, you might be pleasantly surprised. The only way you'll get mine is if you pry them from my cold dead hands.

I think you can set the size of everything on your screen independent of the resolution by changing the DPI settings. The only exception I'm aware of are some badly designed web pages.

To get an idea of what your post looks like on my LCD monitor, here are pictures of it at 96 DPI (normal), 120 DPI, and 144 DPI.

I found by accident that if you use the mouse scroll wheel* and hold the "Ctrl" key at the same time you can scale webpages text larger or smaller...

(*best invention ever for the computer. Quite how we managed without the scroll wheel I have no idea)

Size15's said:

I found by accident that if you use the mouse scroll wheel* and hold the "Ctrl" key at the same time you can scale webpages text larger or smaller...

(*best invention ever for the computer. Quite how we managed without the scroll wheel I have no idea)

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Cool. It works for most text, but there are those infuriating exceptions. Apparently there are two ways to specify font size on web pages. Inches or pixels. One way doesn't work, if you want to change the way they are displayed. And some text is actually an image which is immune from all attempts to make it readable.

Another thing I think worth repeating. Text is displayed better on LCD monitors if you use ClearType fonts. Inexplicably, XPs default is to not use ClearType fonts. You can and should change this, which you can do from the Appearance tab by clicking "Effects".

I have the 19 inch Viewsonic. I don't remember which model and it's not printed on the front.

I'm quite satisfied with it. It's native resolution is 1280x1024 and I run the video card in that mode. This gives a 1 to 1 match between the pixels on the screen and the pixels generated by the video card.

I run a lot of prgrams at once, so it's nice to have a large screan area. A 19 does not seem much bigger than a 17 inch, but some quick estimates give you;

19 inch diagonal is approx 12 * 15 = 180 sq inches
17 inch diagonal is approx 10.4 by 13 = 135.2 sq inches.

The 19 inch has 33% more screen area.

While it works best if you select a hardware resolution that matches your preferred video card resolution, the results can be quite acceptable in modern LCD monitors. I'm pretty sure the video card refresh rate does not matter as much as it does with an analog CRT, since the monitor's software in the CRT is transforming it to a rate it can display anyway (I think).

If you narrow the choice down to two similar models, let the contrast be the deciding factor. The higher contrast makes the colors so much more vivid.

Daniel

be careful of deciding based on contrast alone. so we know contrast is the difference between how 'black' the black is and how 'white' the white is. so there are two ways to increase the contrast ratio, by making black more 'black' or by increasing the brightness. it is much easier to increase the brightness. that is why a lot of lcd panels are in the 400+ cdmm. the best way to increase contrast is by making black more black - this will look much better. in fact having the screen too bright can even have negative consequences in regard to color rendition. now, given the same brightness, the one with a higher contrast ratio, should theoretically have much better color rendition.

also, in regards to 17-19. only difference is the actual size of the picture. the resolutions are the same. you can't do more on a 19 than as on a 17 as far as desktop real estate goes. now for games, and things in general - it will appear as if it is larger because of the scaling.

You also want to have a nice viewing angle on your LCD pannel. Try to find a LCD pannel with Inplane Switching (IPS). Its also known as "Flexview" for IBM, and has many other names dependant on brand (Trulife, etc)
Inplane switching should help eliminate the "color shift", but you'll lose brightness instead. It also makes colors look more accurate (Example - People's skintones in movies look more "warm" than a "cold blue")

also, in regards to 17-19. only difference is the actual size of the picture. the resolutions are the same. you can't do more on a 19 than as on a 17 as far as desktop real estate goes. now for games, and things in general - it will appear as if it is larger because of the scaling.

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That's a good point. A 1024x720 resolution monitor will display the same information whether on a 17 or 19 inch screen. BUT.... I can open 33% more documents with a 33% smalller font on the 19 inch monitor and still be able to read them easily. (The math is probably wrong, but you get the idea.)

The 19 inch monitor allows my display of 8 terminal sessions (8x25 chars) to 8 systems using a smaller font than would be usable with my old 17 inch. The 17 inch allowed only 6 sessions without overlapping.

BTW, i don't do a lot of gaming, but the Viewsonic does well with the MS flight simulator too.

Daniel

i agree. just a slight correction though - it is 1280x1024 for 17-19 inch lcds, and 1024x768 for 15 inch.

when there was a larger disparity in prices, and now to some extent, you could get two smaller lcds for the price of one larger lcd, for working and multitasking, there really isn't debate on which setup is better, but for gaming, you generally always want the larger screen.

- it is 1280x1024 for 17-19 inch lcds, and 1024x768 for 15 inch.

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Is that a given? I seem to recall pricing some 19 inch LCDs with all sorts of pixel sizes, and resolutions up to 1600 by something. I also recall finding 19 inch monitors that did not go up to 1280x1024. I could be wrong.


Daniel

i would say for desktop, yes, it is safe to assume it is 1280x1024, unless something changed recently. whenever i've looked, it's always been like that. now, laptop lcds on the other hand... a 15.4 inch widescreen display can go up to an amazing resolution, but everything will seem tiny.

i could definitely be wrong though since i haven't been looking for quite a while. have any links?

edit - i should clarify that this is for full screen monitors, not widescreen.