Very informative, as always. People just don’t realize how bad some typical monitors are. The cheap Dells being supplied to big government departments in Canberra are so poor it is hard to read text and see all the parts of an start menu icon, let alone view photographs.
Some LCD monitors which claim to have good color do not: they dither very few colors to achieve an illusion of more (and therefore flicker and ripple). Many have woefully inaccurate palettes and greyscale (my 2nd monitor even displays some oranges as yellow and it’s gamma varies at different angles of view).
For those with a good monitor budget, I heartily recommend Eizo: first monitor I have had which was correctly calibrated out of the box (and most that I have had which were not could not be completely calibrated anywhere near as accurate as the Eizo accomplishes effortlessly). Rock solid off-axis as well (unless you are almost side-on).
Visitors are still stunned by the vividness of photographs (and how poor my second monitor, an average Mitsubishi, looks in comparison).
Sadly, they are not cheap, but if you stare at one all day, worth every cent. Of course, an accurate greyscale and color palette can only make text easier on the eyes as well. And a good monitor can last several computer upgrades without needing to replace it.
Now if only there was a good LCD HDTV buying guide. I am so confused on which TV to buy. I guess one of the main confusions is whether Samsung is better than Philips in this area?
How are those Samsung 245BW screens working out in daily use? Are the limited viewing angles a noticeable distraction when coding? What about the glossy frame?
I have been trying to decide between the Samsung 245BW, a Dell 2407WFP-HC, and a BenQ FP241W for similar use to yours.
I use a CRT (Trinitron Multiscan G500) as my primary and a sketchy LCD (Viewsonic VG910s) as my secondary display. I paid $50 plus lunch for my boss who kindly picked up the CRT off of craigslist. It replaced an aging Trinitron of an older model (G410, notorious for contrast gradually increasing over time). Before I got the G500, I was using the LCD as my only display.
One of the other commenters claimed the response time on LCDs is fine for gaming. When I started using the LCD as my primary, I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was wrong, but it was disorienting. You can definitely get used to it eventually, but it is something that’s going to cause eye fatigue. Maybe my LCD is a little on the craptacular side and there are better performing LCDs, but I’d still rather have a CRT for a primary. Comparing equally priced CRTs to LCDs, the CRT is going to out perform the LCD.
I have always wandered: The current LCD’s cover the sRGB color space as they should. If they were to cover NTSC color space, they WOULD be able to display more colors, but in normal use all colors would be WRONG because of the color mapping.
So covering NTSC colors would only be usable to graphic designers, because they use software, like Photoshop, which can understand color profiles.
So my advide to developers would be: don’t get LCD’s with LEDs because you will get all colors wrong any you will pay additionally for that ‘feature’.
Informative post. At work I’m running two 19" Dell LCDs, both rotated 90 degrees. One is a 1905FP and the other a 1907FP. ONE of them has a terribly limited vertical viewing angle. And since I have them rotated to portrait orientation, if I shift my head slightly left or right, the “bad” one gets either dark or washed out. (It sucks to be me). I’m guessing it has something to do with this “TN” or “*VA” technology.
I can’t recommend the Samsung 226BW to anyone except for light general duty and perhaps gaming. The response time is very good but the color is so inconsistent its infuriating. Even slight changes in the viewing angle can dramatically change the color, making Photoshop work difficult at best.
Can anyone recommend a 22" widescreen that can be rotated in portrait orientation? Or is that something that the bigger screens just don’t do? I’m using a 20" widescreen in portrait mode at the moment, and it’s great.
“Click on “Export DDC” to dump the panel’s DDC info block to a text file. The last few lines of that file show the manufacturer’s part number – as reported by the panel itself. Once you have the part number, you can find the panel’s specs (and a list of other products that use the same panel) in http://tftcentral.co.uk 's panel database.”
Speaking of Eizo, it seems that they use TN panels, too. While the TN monitors are quite good compared with other TN monitors and have excellent adjustability and mechanical quality, the picture quality just is not there yet. I fell into this trap myself. Now the Eizo is going back and the old CRT is back on my desk. I really miss the screen area.
Apparently the NEC 2490 WUXI is the best 24" around (IPS). That one is not available in NZ, so I think the next one down is either the Dell 2408 or Samsung 245T (both use the same/equivalent panel, S-PVA). Unfortunately both suffer from input lag, but the Dell is about 1/3 cheaper than the Samsung and a new revision is due out in a couple of weeks which seeks to address its myriad or problems.
Such problems include uneven backlighting, red hue on the left side of the screen and halos around text due to the sharpness setting.
For LCDs which have pixel perfect accuracy, I dont know why there is even an option for sharpness.
