Hey ppl.

I'm looking to buy a new monitor as my old one just decided to die. I'm looking for an LCD 19" and wanting to spend around $400-$500

can anyone guide me on the right path with good/bad experiences or suggestions?

thanks in advance.

ryan

posting in an epic thread

For $500 u can get a 20+inch widescreen... forget 19".

You can get a 22" Widescreen monitor for ~$450 these days. Are you after something widescreen or just standard?

I'm looking for an LCD 19" and wanting to spend around $400-$500

Does it have to specifically be 19" ?

The reason I ask is because you can pick up a decent-spec widescreen 20.1" for $485 with a very high viewing angle, high contrast ratio, decent response time, and DVI+VGA inputs:

Viewsonic VX2025WM:

VX2025WM product page with specifications
Umart Product Page

(Edit: added more info)

last edited by parabol at 22:07:14 04/Jan/07

it doesn't have to be 19" and widescreen would be great. suggestions :)

^^Beat by parabol

The Viewsonic I speak of is the one he recommends also.

Considered a 20" WS? Quite a few manufacturers making them and also within your budget.

I've got the Viewsonic 20" WS and it's pretty good, only bad things are a bit of backlight bleeding on black images and not enough inputs (Only has 1 dvi and 1 VGA).

Also there's only 1 game that I've kept my CRT for and that is ET/q3. Without vsync on I still notice most LCDs tearing and quake3 just feels weird with vsync on (also 60fps cap). Other games on the WS are excellent though, most can be patched to support the native res if the game doesn't already . http://www.widescreengamingforum.com


last edited by reso at 22:20:01 04/Jan/07

BenQ

I'd recommend a 22" WS.

I have the BenQ FP222W myself, but the favorite is the Chimei, which you can pick up for between $420-450 now.

Dell 20" for $486 or something not sure. I just scanned a spam fax about it??

BenQ

The main downside with BenQ LCDs is that they generally have a really, really cheap and s*** base/stand.

When I bought my BenQ, I had to immediately put 2 textbooks under it to raise it to a somewhat acceptable height.

last edited by parabol at 22:36:29 04/Jan/07

jeebers, cheaper than I thought, MSY now have the 22" Widescreen Chimei for $434. (DVI version + 5ms)

http://www.msy.com.au/Parts/PARTS.pdf

I would like to get a 20" widescreen monitor that can support aspect ratio scaling, meaning I don't want lower resolutions to stretch to the full size, such as running games at a lower resolution.
I have a Radeon X800 Pro graphics card with Catalyst version 6.5.

Just want to run desktop at proper native resolution and then games at the scaled sizes with black lines around.

Any help is much appreciated.
Cheers.

http://www.computeralliance.com.au/parts.aspx?qryPart=7224

that's an option in my nvidia control panel so I would assume with an LCD running DVI input it should come up on your control panel (mine didn't show up with a crt plugged in). However the one time I tried it with CS, it didn't do a thing & still made cs scale up to the full screen. WOrks on my laptop though, if you decrease the res it puts black lines around it.

Go the 22" widescreen ViewSonic. Cheap as and kicks some serious ass all over the place.

19" ws asus vw192T msy $319 <3

The Dell 20" Widescreens were only on sale till yesterday.

Although if u call them u could possibly get them to drop the price i dunno.

Ive got 2 of them coming to me :D

yup - another vote for the Viewsonic 22"


awesome for the money

Do FPS games play alright on a widescreen monitor?

Once you play a widescreen, you'll never want to play on a regular screen again.

sup guys... i'm thinking of upgrading my monitor to a lcd, but i'm unsure of a few things.

the only reason of upgrading is i want something easier on my eyes, i don't play any games, just movies and general web browsing.

Currently i have a sony Trinitron 17" flatscreen monitor running at 100hz 1024x768.


is it really worth upgrading to a lcd monitor? would it be less strain on my eyes?

if so, whats the cheapest best alternative to a lcd?

I thought that CRT's still actually gave a better picture than LCD's?

I was thinking of getting like a massive 22" design grade CRT on the cheap 2nd hand...

I worked for ages with a Sony 17" LCD and a Sony trinitron CRT running in dual monitor mode and the LCD was 100x better (at least to me).

I've had several Trinitron monitors also, and would prefer a mid to high-spec LCD.

Once you play a widescreen, you'll never want to play on a regular screen again.

I found CRT still felt crisper than LCD's for FPS games. I just don't play enough FPS games these days to worry about it.

Queue Hermi to post the photo's of my 30" Dell from the LAN we had the other week. Had one game running (Call of Juarez) that had everyone Oo'ing and Ah'ing.

get a chimei!

oi like seriouslt.. e:551. some dell s*** LOLOLOLOL i was goin it inventiery and that name... seriously... came up soooooooo much ...

get a chimei!

I bought one of these for my sons comp recently, 19 inch widescreen, $336 and its a pretty bloody good monitor, 5ms response time too. Got it a Surpass, their website show it to have an 8ms response time but their new shipment recently received are all 5ms now, wacthing the boy play some COD2 on it last night and I am very impressed with it visuals and gaming perf.

Myself I have a 22 inch Phillips professional monitor, big bastard, heavy, but awesome IQ and performance. It will easily handle 1600x1200 at 104hz which is sweet for gaming. Alas they cost over a grand. :(

:P

So is Samsung still da bomb when it comes to LCD monitors? It used to be everyone recommended Samsung for their crispness and good contrast ratio and whatever else, but theres lots of recommendations in here for stuff like Viewsonic now. Is that just cos its cheaper? Or has the playing field pretty much levelled out now?

Well I can only really speak from my experiance with LG and Dell, and I have to go with Dell out of the two.

So is Samsung still da bomb when it comes to LCD monitors?

For warranty purposes, yes .. but read on.

It used to be everyone recommended Samsung for their crispness and good contrast ratio and whatever else, but theres lots of recommendations in here for stuff like Viewsonic now. Is that just cos its cheaper?

You generally can't link a particular LCD brand to crispness and contrast ratio, except in the case of uber-expensive elitist LCD brands that most of us have never heard of ($2000+ price range).

The crispness/contrast is usually LCD-model-specific, so you'll find many brands like Samsung, Viewsonic, BenQ and others will have some very decent and similarly spec'd LCDs above the $500 range. For example, the Samsung 970P and Viewsonic 930B both have 8-bit colour, very high viewing angle, high contrast ratio, but cost a bit. They are good monitors.

Below that price point, many of the LCDs across different brands are very similar in quality. That is, they have low quality: low-ish viewing angle, low-ish contrast ratio, 6-bit colour, etc. You usually are best in this case to differentiate in terms of dead-pixel warranty, with Samsung currently on top with 3 years I believe. Viewsonic do 30 days, BenQ 7 days.

So to answer why so many people buy Samsung, I believe it started because the 19" Samsung 940B was the perfect price, looked nice and would be something mum and dad would buy for the study room or for their kids. Since many of these people were first-time LCD buyers they were impressed with LCDs in general and just pimped Samsung and that particular model, so more people heard positive feedback and bought one and the cycle repeated, giving Samsung a good name.

Keep in mind, the Samsung 940B doesn't sport very good specifications. It's only got 6-bit colour, low viewing angle, not too adjustable .. but it would look like a good buy to a first-buyer as I mentioned.

Personally I went for a 19" Viewsonic (VP930b) with a decent spec (8-bit colour, awesome viewing angle) for $700, and bought a second cheaper BenQ (FP91G+s) for $350 to sit next to it. You can definitely see that the BenQ has much lower quality side-by-side, but in isolation it looks alright and you can't really see what you're missing out on .. so I could imagine people without much experience saying that even that crappy BenQ is the best LCD in the world.

So to my main point, basically ignore anyone who pimps ONLY the LCD they bought without giving any specifications or reasons other than "it's a great monitor". Because 90% of the time they have not used another LCD for comparison and have no clue what they are talk about.

There you go Khel.

Do your want 8bit color or 7bit color?

The ChiMei and Benq are 7Bit color panels, as are most of the cheap "high speed grey to grey" monitors. To the average user it will make no difference at all, but to photographers and graphics people it does!

I believe the Dell 20" are 8bit.

http://www1.ap.dell.com/content/products/compare.aspx/20lcd?c=au&cs=audhs1&l=en&s=dhs

Well this begs the question again, is not a high-end CRT not still better?

like this puppy

http://www.mitsubishielectric.com.au/products/compp/monitors/index.html

of course it is enourmous ahah..

Has anyone got the ASUS MW221U? I done heaps of searching on it but haven't really been able to find feedback on it. From what I've read it uses the same panel as the other 22 inch LCDs but has HDCP which the others don't seem to have. That said it is about $50 more.

Le Cock I'm pretty sure that LCD's are cheaper to run because they draw less power, LCD draw about 1/3 that of a CRT depending on size.

http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/computers.html

Its a very interesting read, especially if you have like I do, more than 1 computer with CRT's which never get turned off (well they do now!) just hibernate!

I think I have narrowed it down to 2 monitors. Both are available from Umart here in Bris Vegas.

Samsung 225BW Wide 22inch TFT Monitor

Viewsonic VX2235WM 22 inch 5ms LCD 1680X1050 DVI speaker

Anybody have these monitors or could recommend a better one that is a 20-22" widescreen LCD?

i vote for dell as well, got myself the 2007wfp a few months back and the prices are pretty good

http://www1.ap.dell.com/content/products/compare.aspx/20lcd?c=au&cs=audhs1&l=en&s=dhs

All the 22" widescreens share the same TN panel (6 bit) and have the same strengths and weaknesses. Any differences between brands are minimal (other than the casing of course!).

Therefore I recommend the Chimei 221D 22" panel from MSY for $395 now since it is the cheapest, but comes with an awesome warranty.

these ones are all pretty cheap..