OT: What to know before buying an LCD monitor??

Renegade 13 · #1 January 24th, 2006, 11:25 PM

I'm looking to buy a 19" LCD monitor, and I'm wondering what I need to know before buying. Things like response time, characteristics LCD's have that aren't issues with CRT monitors, pixel pitch, contrast ratio, resolution limitations, etc. I know very little about any of the above, so anything you can tell me, or any helpful websites you can point me to would be awesome. I'm not a techno-idiot, but just haven't looked into LCD's yet in my internet travels.

Any opinions of optimal characteristics given would be very helpful as well. Thanks!!

Captain Kwok · #2 January 24th, 2006, 11:40 PM

Usually future shop or tigerdirect.ca have some good technical primers on these kinds of things.

Renegade 13 · #3 January 25th, 2006, 12:00 AM

One more thing; what are the big, trusted names in LCD's, and which brands should I avoid?

Fyron · #4 January 25th, 2006, 12:19 AM

I'd avoid Sony out of principle. Dell tends to make fairly good LCDs from what I gather.

Atrocities · #5 January 25th, 2006, 01:10 AM

I have a Hyundai and it working well for me.

DarkAnt · #6 January 25th, 2006, 01:22 AM

acer makes good ones. Just remember to check the native resolution and refresh rate

NullAshton · #7 January 25th, 2006, 09:12 AM

I have a MAG innovision display. I am happy to say that I have 0 dead pixels.

Also, there's programs avaliable to fix the colors on a LCD. I used the Monitor Calibration Wizard and the colors on my monitor are now a lot crisper. Stuff that's supposed to be absolute black are actually absolute black on my screen, after running that program.

Will · #8 January 26th, 2006, 02:20 AM

Quote:

NullAshton said:
Also, there's programs avaliable to fix the colors on a LCD. I used the Monitor Calibration Wizard and the colors on my monitor are now a lot crisper. Stuff that's supposed to be absolute black are actually absolute black on my screen, after running that program.

Wow, that actually worked pretty good. It's easier to watch dark movies on mine now... Seems that the straight linear signal map was causing blues and reds to not become visible until around 10% brightness. Thanks for the link!

AgentZero · #9 January 25th, 2006, 09:14 AM

Samsung make some pretty nice ones too, you can get a nice one with 700:1 contrast ratio & 4ms response time for around $460CAD. Or, if the response time isn't such a big issue for you, there's a 1000:1 constrast ratio with 8ms response time aronund $690CAD. Although the prices I'm quoting are conversions from GBP to CAD, so you can probably get them cheaper on your side of the Atlantic.

Caduceus · #10 January 25th, 2006, 05:58 PM

We've bought two Samsungs in the last year, 930B and 940B. The only differences are cosmetic as far as I can tell. 930B has green LED with buttons on the bottom of the front of the screen. THe 940B has blue LED buttons on the front - which make the computer I built, but was completely unintentional.

The first monitor arrived with no problems from the store (Comp USA), the second I got from NewEgg, was DOA and had to have another one sent to me.