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Group Testing Widescreen LCD Monitors

Posted by Zonk on Fri Mar 31, 2006 12:04 PM
from the tough-day-at-the-office dept.
Displays
An anonymous reader writes "If you're in the market for a new widescreen display, there's a group test of five models at the Bit-Tech site. The test focuses on real world gaming and DVD watching rather than artificial spec tests, and there's also discussion of design, ergonomics etc. An interesting read for those making the jump to wide." From the article: "Let's define the point of this test. We're going to make the assumption that you've got a half-decent graphics card, and you're looking for a new flat panel to connect to it. You want to watch movies on DVD and in hi-def (either as Apple trailers or via BitTorrent) and you want to play the latest games. The price range we're looking at is the £300-£400 range. Above that, you start to get into the territory of 24" screens from companies like Dell and Samsung. Below that, you're going into a range occupied mostly by 19" displays at 1280x1024."
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  • Hmm (Score:3, Insightful)

    by voice_of_all_reason (926702) on Friday March 31 2006, @12:10PM (#15034389)
    Is ~$600-$800 (US dollars) really a reasonable prince range for this audience, though?

    I made $55k, which grants me significant free funds for someone still living at home with his parents. Still, my co-workers aren't even looking at LCD monitors above three or four hundred. For that you can get an okay 21 incher if you're willing to risk your money on the internets.

    But twice that for just a PC monitor? That's easily as much as the rest of the system itself. You can watch DVDs on a regular big-screen TV. Granted, that will cost even more (several times, probably), but you can also use it for cable, and video games. I just can't see this stuff being in the range of the typical slashdotter.

    Feel free to prove me wrong if y'all are a bunch of Mr. Moneybags', though :)

    • Re:Hmm (Score:2, Funny)

      by hometoast (114833)
      I made $55k, which grants me significant free funds for someone still living at home with his parents.


      Get an apartment slacker!

      Its ok to mod me down ;)
    • I have an elderly 17" CRT monitor I'm going to replace when it dies. (Please die soon!) I've been watching the LCD prices drop and drop, now I'm thinking 21" if it dies now.

      That's nearly as big as my TV, so maybe it makes sense for me to spend double my

  • Toms Hardware constantly is doing reviews of monitors and such, and just released a new review of 19 monitors [tomshardware.com] the other day

  • Leaves out two most popular models (Score:4, Interesting)

    by n0mad6 (668307) on Friday March 31 2006, @12:14PM (#15034427)
    that are the Dell 2005FPW and the Apple Cinema Display. The Cinema Display may not fall in the £300-400 price range they're talking about but here in the US, you can certainly get the Dell for less than $500.

    • 2005FPW Threadjack (Score:3, Informative)

      by superid (46543)
      Thread contribution - I have a 2005FPW that I love. I found a sale at Dell for $380 shipped, and they apparently repeat that periodically. It looks great and I love the integrated USB. I game on it a lot and I've never noticed any stuck pixels or ghosts

      • Re:Games (Score:3, Interesting)

        by OctoberSky (888619)
        Maximum detail is the keyword there.

        I have a Dell 2005fpw ($397 to my door from Dell!) with a decent rig (AMD A64 3700+ (754), MSI K8n Neo Platinum, 1 gig Crucial Ram, 7200 RPM Segate SATA, Sapphire X850XTPE (AGP), on board sound, and everything OCed a bit

  • Dude... get a Dell (Score:5, Informative)

    by utexaspunk (527541) on Friday March 31 2006, @12:28PM (#15034526)
    I own one the Dell 24" display (2405FPW), and I have to say it is one of the best purchases I have made in a long time. The thing looks gorgeous, didn't have any stuck pixels or anything like that, has a nice thin bezel, it has DVI, VGA, RGB, Componenent and S-Video inputs, allows you to do PIP and side-by-side of 2 inputs. It functions as a USB hub and a memory card reader. The stand is well-made and adjusts smoothly with a wide range of motion (including being able to rotate it 90 degrees). It's also $500 cheaper than the 23" Apple cinema display. Dell's computers may be ugly pieces of crap, but I really feel like it is an unbelievably good buy.
    • I just bought the 2405 and someone is coming to look at it soon as it is for sale and it is only days old. Beware that dell has a 15% restocking fee.

      Make sure you like LCDs before you buy. They are very different than CRT.

      I like a dim screen. The 2405 is v
      • The VGA input on mine works fine. I have my desktop connected via DVI and frequently connect my laptop via VGA and the video quality is indistinguishable. Perhaps you have a problem with your video card?

        The component and s-video inputs are quite useful if

  • Dell 24" (Score:3, Informative)

    by flynt (248848) on Friday March 31 2006, @12:38PM (#15034591)
    They do not review the Dell 24" in this story, but let me say I have been so pleased with mine. You can usually get up to 20-25% off from Dell if you do a google search for Dell coupons. You will not be sorry if you get that monitor and have a card that can support the native resolution (1920x1200). I have had no problems with games (BF2) or movies on it.

  • Important part missing in summary (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ubersonic (943362) * on Friday March 31 2006, @12:39PM (#15034598) Homepage Journal
    None of the displays have HDMI connectors and none of them support HDCP. This means you're not going to get a digital connection to your HD-DVD movies, but there is currently very little on the market that will.
    So you're screwed in a year or two. Is this like easter-sale?

  • Vista-ready LCD (Score:4, Informative)

    by pin0chet (963774) on Friday March 31 2006, @12:44PM (#15034632)
    I recently purchased a Gateway FPD2185w 21" widescreen 1680x1050 monitor. It is AMAZING value. For about $500, I get a display with DVI-HDCP support, along with VGA, Component, S-video, and RCA inputs. Its got DCDi by Faroudja for flawless 1080i/480i deinterlacing, and top-notch scaling video processing with a 12ms response time. It looks fantastic with my PC via DVI, Xbox 360 via VGA, and Dish HD DVR via Component. Also, the customizable PiP options are very useful. Furthermore, when Vista comes out and the MPAA studios start implementing ICT on HD DVD/Blu-Ray discs, I won't have to buy a $300 Spatz HDCP stripper to view the full resolution 720p picture on my monitor.

  • no thanks (Score:3)

    by Lumpy (12016) on Friday March 31 2006, @12:52PM (#15034695) Homepage
    At least for what I have been doing the widescreens suck.

    Many games do not like them. C&C generals zero hour strecthes. Doom3 is slower in widescreen mode and older games simply hate them.

    I instead took the monitor back and grabbed a pair of 19" AOC Lcd's for less money than the single Widescreen.

    I also get much more realestate for video editing on the pair of 19" cheapies.
  • I have a 17" LCD monitor that does 1280x1024. I'd like to upgrade to a 19" monitor, but the only ones I've seen locally are also 1280x1024. In other words, the only difference between a 17" and 19" monitor are a couple hundred dollars and sitting a little closer to the screen.

    Why is that? A 19" CRT typically gets you more pixels than a 17" CRT, so why isn't the same true for LCDs? I'm sure I could buy find a higher-resolution model somewhere if I looked hard enough, but I'm really wondering why that seems to be the exception rather than the norm.

    • Re:hmmm (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Everybody knows that widescreen monitors are primarily used for viewing pornography anyway. This is about as newsworthy as a new brand of warming lubricating pleasure gel.

      • Re:hmmm (Score:3, Funny)

        by Firehed (942385)
        I've got a pair of widescreens, and I've got the dignity to not need to post as an AC. Widescreens are better suited to your eyes, and it's not just coincidence that the viewable area is roughly a golden rectangle.

    • Re:hmmm (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Psiren (6145)
      If you're an American this article is worthless to you.

      Welcome to our world. I don't see why it should be worthless though, a review is a review nonetheless. I quite often have to resort to reading US reviews of equipment because decent UK ones are not eas

    • Re:hmmm (Score:2, Insightful)

      by OneSeventeen (867010) *

      Maybe the story should have started with "If you live in Britain and...". If you're an American this article is worthless to you.

      That's the exact same reason I don't use Calculus, not being an Egyptian nor a Greek myself.

    • Maybe the story should have started with "If you live in Britain and...". If you're an American this article is worthless to you.

      But to some it was worth the 2 seconds of Schadenfreude from reading your post.

    • Re:DVD scaling? (Score:3, Informative)

      by ePhil_One (634771)
      The monitor shouldn't be handling DVD upscaling, it's done in software.

      If you are using a HTPC. I'm actually using a Dell 2405FPW as a TV (Higher resolution and cheaper than the "TV" LCDs), so actually I am relying on the built in upscaling. Also, users

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