[Tyrian]

For a few years now, I've been using a NEC MultiSync 90GX2.  It's served me well over the years and still works great, but the 1280 x 1024 resolution just isn't enough real estate for me now that I'm dual majoring in electrical and computer engineering.  I want to relegate it to a secondary monitor, so I'm looking around at some other options.  Here's what I'm looking for in a new monitor:

 -- 1080 vertical resolution.
 -- Approximately 16" in height. (I'm set on these so that it'll line up nicely with my old monitor and give me some uniform screen space.  Also, it's a standard resolution.)
 -- Traditional contrast ratio of at least 1000:1. (My NEC is 700:1.)
 -- Cost of under $200.

This is what I've got on NewEgg so far:  Link

My problem is this:  I'm looking at all these brand names and, as I haven't kept up with monitor tech at all, I'm not seeing familiar companies.  Also, I'm seeing this "wonderous" mix of contrast ratios, including traditional ratios, dynamic ratios, and ASUS's ASCR ratios.  Anyone have any suggestions to weed out the valid specs from the BS?  I've done research on the traditional and dynamic ratios, and the former is good while the latter is only quasi-useful.  The ASCR is proprietary, so I can't tell if it's valid or made with handwavium. 

Any tips?

[Nuke]

im using a samsung syncmaster p2570, and i really like this monitor. it set me back 300 bucks but it was worth it.

[Liberator]

I recently got a HANNSG Hi221.  It's hella bright in some situations and required some tweaking, but the picture is great and it's relatively inexpensive.  Oh and it's 21 inches @ 1680x1050.

[Mongoose]

Are there any monitors out there that do better than 1080 vertical resolution?  The 1080p standard seems to be hyped all over the place, but that's only a hundred pixels more than my six-year-old CRT running at 1280x960.  I've never fully understood the huge push for widescreen in a computing context, since at least in my opinion, tasks like forum-browsing benefit far more from increased vertical space, rather than horizontal.

[iamzack]

this is a nice one:

[NGTM-1R]

this is a nice one:

I award you one internet.

[Klaustrophobia]

samsungs are really good.

[Tyrian]

I've flipped through some of the Samsungs, and they're really nice looking, especially the Samsung Syncmaster P2570.  I just can't afford the $250 price tag that a lot of them seem to be carrying...

One thing that I saw in my earlier link was Asus monitors that have a *lot* of really good reviews.  Plus, they're in my price range.  When did Asus get into monitors?  And is their apparent good reputation for them accurate?

[Klaustrophobia]

personally, i'm a little wary when companies start expanding out into fking everything like asus seems to.  could be completely unfounded, but i tend to stick to companies that focus on whatever product. 

[Nuke]

i dont even consider anything asus makes to be very high quality. ive just had too many problems with their stuff.

Are there any monitors out there that do better than 1080 vertical resolution?  The 1080p standard seems to be hyped all over the place, but that's only a hundred pixels more than my six-year-old CRT running at 1280x960.  I've never fully understood the huge push for widescreen in a computing context, since at least in my opinion, tasks like forum-browsing benefit far more from increased vertical space, rather than horizontal.

there are higher resolution screens but rarely in large sizes. but 1080p comes in handy for watching movies and is nice for games that support widescreen. most of the guis in operating systems and most software seems to be geared mainly for a 4:3 aspect ratio. however 16:9 does take better advantage of the human field of vision. i remember running my old crts at 1600x1200, i kinda wish they would have used that resolution on a few lcd screens.  only reason i decided to use 16:9 is because of how common its becoming.

[Mongoose]

I know that widescreen does take better advantage of our wide field of vision, and I'll admit that it can look really nice for gaming and movies, but I don't really see it as anything but a detriment for text purposes.  There's a reason why magazines and newspapers publish articles in relatively-narrow columns; hell, even published books limit the number of characters per line.  The longer a line stretches across a page/screen, the harder it becomes for your eyes to follow it, and it gets easier to mistakenly jump onto the previous or next line.  To avoid this on something like a 1920x1080 screen, you'd have to scale down your browser/document window horizontally...which essentially nixes some of the benefits that widescreen gives you anyway.  Like I said, I know why that standard is pushed so hard, but what I don't understand is why 4:3 seems to have almost completely died out.  That goes for TVs, too...things like older game systems look like ass when played on a 1080p screen.

[Iss Mneur]

i dont even consider anything asus makes to be very high quality. ive just had too many problems with their stuff.

Here's a contradictory anecdote.

One thing that I saw in my earlier link was Asus monitors that have a *lot* of really good reviews.  Plus, they're in my price range.  When did Asus get into monitors?  And is their apparent good reputation for them accurate?

Asus started selling monitors under their brand, about 2-3 years ago (at least thats when I noticed).  I am a huge fan of Asus main boards.  I don't think they actually make the panels themselves though.  Asus has been making laptops for much longer, and have earned a fantastic reputation in that as well.

As for the monitors, from what I have seen they have very good picture quality, the screens are evenly bright with a good contrast and great colour saturation (ie. they don't look washed out like the cheap Acers/E-machines do).  They also have a wide viewing angle.  Unfortunately, I have never owned any.

Personally, I have yet to see one returned to the store where I work at for any reason (which is more than I can say for E-machines).

To directly answer your last question, yes, I think there is every reason to believe that the apparent good reputation is actually very well deserved.

I've flipped through some of the Samsungs, and they're really nice looking, especially the Samsung Syncmaster P2570.  I just can't afford the $250 price tag that a lot of them seem to be carrying...

My current monitors are Samsung SyncMaster 932bfs.  I haven't had any issues with mine, and in general what I have seen and understand from my research is that Samsung along with Dell, HP, and Apple are the premium monitor manufacturers.  Thats not to say the monitors are any better, they just have more features.

[headdie]

 
http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews3255.html
 
 

[Nuke]

i dont even consider anything asus makes to be very high quality. ive just had too many problems with their stuff.

Here's a contradictory anecdote.

perhaps i should have just said asus is ****. but i was trying to be nice.

I know that widescreen does take better advantage of our wide field of vision, and I'll admit that it can look really nice for gaming and movies, but I don't really see it as anything but a detriment for text purposes.  There's a reason why magazines and newspapers publish articles in relatively-narrow columns; hell, even published books limit the number of characters per line.  The longer a line stretches across a page/screen, the harder it becomes for your eyes to follow it, and it gets easier to mistakenly jump onto the previous or next line.  To avoid this on something like a 1920x1080 screen, you'd have to scale down your browser/document window horizontally...which essentially nixes some of the benefits that widescreen gives you anyway.  Like I said, I know why that standard is pushed so hard, but what I don't understand is why 4:3 seems to have almost completely died out.  That goes for TVs, too...things like older game systems look like ass when played on a 1080p screen.

its not really that wide screen is inherently bad for everything that needs to display large blocks of text. its that programs are not optimized to use wide screen resolutions. you could have your start menu in a side bar form and have application toolbars and menus to the sides of the screen instead of at the top and bottom. or they could display multiple things at once side by side instead of stacking stuff. id like to see things like split screen views in browsers and other text applications. i really like widescreen when programming in some ides that support side by side views. it lets you work in two (or sometimes more) files simultaineously or at 2 different places in the same file. i find stuff like this really useful. such layouts may not be as useful for viewing web pages or word processing, but considering how much multitasking is being done these days, im surprised those dont have side by side views.

[Iss Mneur]

such layouts may not be as useful for viewing web pages or word processing, but considering how much multitasking is being done these days, im surprised those dont have side by side views.

Windows 7 supports a side by side view of two different windows. It is a part of Aero Snap.  Obviously its not implemented by an application directly like VS2010 can do, but it generally works pretty well with a large enough screen and something like Office 2007/2010 (with their ribbon bar) and a web browser.

It also falls down when you have two monitors, but another Snap feature, that allows you stretch a window to be full screen hight by touching a vertical resize to the top or the bottom of the screen, allows you get get around the dual monitor issue pretty well.

[Nuke]

snap is nice when dealing with programs that have fairly simple interfaces, like notepad. or working between a couple programs. but professional programs which allow for multiple files to be open in the same interface would really be powerful with split screen features. its better than having 2 instances of the software each with a duplicate interface taking up space. its better to keep both the files in the same interface so theirs not a whole lot of interface duplication. if theres one thing im picky about in a gui, its wasted space.

[Tyrian]

I've actually had nothing but positive experiences with Asus products.  That's why I was asking about their monitors.  I have an Asus laptop that's three years old that I use as an experimental platform and it's performed very well in that regard. 

The reason that I want widescreen is because all of my coding is done over SSH in my university's Unix share.  Many times I'll have a web browser open, along with 3 or 4 text editors and a terminal.  Hence my need for horizontal screen space. 

I'm not really a fan of anything in widescreen less than 1080, as I think it looks unnaturally "skinny". 

I think I'm going to spend some more time looking at Asus and Samsung monitors, unless anyone has any additional suggestions?

[Nuke]

most of the monitors ive owned have always been bought based on how cheap they are. ive only ever owned 2 lcd screens, the last one was a 19" 1280x1024 screen from a manufacturer whos name i no longer remember. before then i used whatever crt screens i could get my hands on. crt screens can be had for free if you know where to look. on the other hand ive always had a somewhat badass video card, and i thought it somewhat wasteful to be using monitors which i have acquired for practically beans with a $300+ video card. so i spent another 300 bucks and was somewhat satisfied with my samsung.

[Flaser]

I can't belive no one mentioned what actually matters when buying a monitor: the TFT panel.
Regardless what brand you buy, what really matters though is what technology the panel uses.

There are 3 flavors:

TN:
Pro:

• It's cheap
• It has a really good gray-to-gray response time

Con:

• Bad color fidelity, a lot of models only have 6 pixels/base color.
• Bad black level
• Narrow view angle

All in all good for gaming^*, office work and nothing else. Color fidelity is so bad your graphical efforts will be butchered. View angle is too narrow and black is too bright to watch movies.

_{*for those who don't care that what they view looks like ****e}

MVA/PVA
Pro:

• Better view angle
• Excellent black level and contrast
• Good color fidelity

Con:

• More expensive (+50-100% compared to TN)
• Worse response time than TN
• Worse color fidelity than IPS

All in all a very good compromise and excellent for watching movies.

IPS

Pro:

• Best color fidelity
• Good black level and contrast
• Very good view angles

Con:

• Very expensive! (+100-300% compared to TN)
• MVA/PVA have slightly better contrast
• Worst response time (nowadays still good enough for anything

The cream of TFT monitors, though unless you're rolling in money or produce graphics professionally you won't need one.

More on them here:

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/panel_technologies.htm

Final word:
Response time and other "magic numbers" matter little nowadays. Like response time, dynamic contrast, g2g numbers, etc. Most of that is pure marketing bull****. If you see a monitor a lot more expensive chances are it is *better* too, as it uses a more expensive technology. Most monitor reviews are also useless and are nothing more than marketing rabble. Unless they used an expensive color meter and monitor calibrator like this then they were just japing their mouth without doing any *testing*.

You should look up your monitor before buying and should do so with a clear idea in mind as to what you want. (MVA/PVA or TN).[/list][/list]

[CP5670]

IPS response times are actually not far off from TNs these days. VAs are much worse in this respect. Response times in general hit the limitations of LCD technology a long time ago, and we haven't seen any real improvements there for at least 3 years.

I don't think TNs are actually that bad anymore. They still dither colors, but the viewing angles have improved and the black levels are at least as good as IPS these days. They're also the only type of display you can get with 120hz input right now. I would probably take a 120hz TN over a 60hz IPS if I was buying something today, as it makes a big difference in motion quality.