Which 22" LCD? Samsung? Dell? ... HELP!

Sara08

Sara08

Sara08

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26 Feb 2008
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Hi. :) After my 19" Mitsubishi CRT croaked it's last breath earlier this year, I have resorted to using a borrowed 15" LCD. With it's measly 1024x768 resolution it's not easy to live with, especially when photo editing, so I am looking to replace it ASAP with something like a 22".

My current shortlist includes:

Samsung 2232BW
Dell Ultrasharp 2208WFP / or "Limited Edition" version

Both are similar in price, and I'm not looking too far outside of this kind of price range (£200-ish). My needs are general PC use, some photo editing, gaming, and usual web stuff. What's the best thing I can get for £200 - £250? Reading up on this stuff is frustrating! When I think I found one, someone posts a negative comment in a user review and I get put off.

One good thing about the Dell is the adjustability of the stand. I need a monitor that can tilt downwards when I'm sitting low. I'm not sure how adjustable the Samsung is or if can tilt down at all?
 
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Bump?

Any opinions?

I think I decided against both these monitors after reading more about them. I am thinking of waiting until the new Samsung 2253BW is available.
 
I switched from a 19" CRT to 24" LCD a few years ago and it was one of the biggest and best upgrades I have even done, the 24" DELL's are really very good and still have that WOW factor!

At the time I had to cough up close to £600 which is no small change to me but as my monitor doubles up as the lounge entertainment screen it was a bit easier to justify the purchase.

General windows use is much enhanced by having your desktop running at 1920x1200, you can have two windows open side by side (2x IE7, MS Word MS Excel etc) so it is almost a psedo dual display in a single screen.

Running any specialist software like Photoshop or Premier is also great as you have plenty of space for all your toolbars, timeline etc and still have your main work areas intact and unblocked, deffo can help make u more productive.

In hindsight the only two things that have been a problem for me personally is keeping my games running smoothly at the bigger resolutions, apart from the expense for the monitor itself there is also the expense of keeping a top end GPU in your machine to feed the graphics at 1920x1200.

The last minor thing is although the supplied DELL stand is pretty good it doesn't really allow you to pivot the screen from horizontal to vertical that easiliy, for that function I do believe you will be better served by investing in a custom adjustable wall mount, that will give u the greatest flexibility to position the monitor, sadly the custom wall bracket can also be quite pricey.

Waffle, waffle, try and get yourself a 24", treat yourself and your eyes! :)
 
Big.Wayne said:
I switched from a 19" CRT to 24" LCD a few years ago and it was one of the biggest and best upgrades I have even done, the 24" DELL's are really very good and still have that WOW factor!

At the time I had to cough up close to £600 which is no small change to me but as my monitor doubles up as the lounge entertainment screen it was a bit easier to justify the purchase.

General windows use is much enhanced by having your desktop running at 1920x1200, you can have two windows open side by side (2x IE7, MS Word MS Excel etc) so it is almost a psedo dual display in a single screen.

Running any specialist software like Photoshop or Premier is also great as you have plenty of space for all your toolbars, timeline etc and still have your main work areas intact and unblocked, deffo can help make u more productive.

In hindsight the only two things that have been a problem for me personally is keeping my games running smoothly at the bigger resolutions, apart from the expense for the monitor itself there is also the expense of keeping a top end GPU in your machine to feed the graphics at 1920x1200.

The last minor thing is although the supplied DELL stand is pretty good it doesn't really allow you to pivot the screen from horizontal to vertical that easiliy, for that function I do believe you will be better served by investing in a custom adjustable wall mount, that will give u the greatest flexibility to position the monitor, sadly the custom wall bracket can also be quite pricey.

Waffle, waffle, try and get yourself a 24", treat yourself and your eyes! :)
Click to expand...

I would love to be able to afford a decent 24 but it's pretty much out of my price range, unfortunately. My plan is to buy a decent 22 for now and grab a 24 when the prices are lower.

One consideration was the OcUK 24" but I have since decided against it. The main reason is a graphics card thing, as you mentioned. I only have an nVidia 6800 vanilla (although, it is unlocked to 16 pipes and 6 vertex shaders) which just isn't good enough to get the best out of the 1920 x 1200 resolution.

Thanks for the post, btw. ;)
 
do it anyway! the ocuk 24 inchers are good enough with 1680x1050 anyway, which as you probably know is the same resolution as the 22" panels. for your trouble you'll get pretty cheap casing, but the panel itself will give you a far better, sharper picture and of course more desktop space:)

having moved from a 22 to a 24", i couldnt recommend 22" panels to anybody now:)
 
The problem with having a 24" screen is you will always have to have the best or near best graphics card to run new games at it's native res.
I'd go with a samsung 226bw or 2232bw.
 
james.miller said:
having moved from a 22 to a 24", i couldnt recommend 22" panels to anybody now:)
Click to expand...
It's the truth!

C64 said:
The problem with having a 24" screen is you will always have to have the best or near best graphics card to run new games at it's native res.
Click to expand...
That's not quite true, the monitor scales very nicely when you change the resolution, I have used this feature many times in the past to help me acquire the magic 60fps I like in shooter games. I always read that a monitor *has* to be run at its native res as if you change it the picture looks bad however with a decent monitor that scales well this is not a problem.
 
Sara08 said:
I would love to be able to afford a decent 24 but it's pretty much out of my price range, unfortunately. My plan is to buy a decent 22 for now and grab a 24 when the prices are lower.
Click to expand...
Yup that all sounds like common sense but I wonder why you would want a 22" running at 1680x1050 when you could have a cheaper 20" monitor running the same 1680x1050 resolution? From a geeky perspective I dare say the picture would be sharper on the 20" all other things being equal.

The 24" monitors are your first step into the world of 1920x1200, and as Mr Miller has already stated, its a one-way-ticket!

The advantages over the 22" would be. . .

  • 1920x1200 - More Desktop Real Estate
  • Physical Size
  • Viewing *FULL HD*(1920x1080) films, clips, trailers if the monitor is HDCP varient
  • Free Anti-aliasing

Sara08 said:
One consideration was the OcUK 24" but I have since decided against it. The main reason is a graphics card thing, as you mentioned. I only have an nVidia 6800 vanilla (although, it is unlocked to 16 pipes and 6 vertex shaders) which just isn't good enough to get the best out of the 1920 x 1200 resolution.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't worry about that as if you get a decent 24" LCD it can scale downwards quite nicely. Even at 1280x1024 games still looks great on the DELL 24", although you begin to notice aliasing. The first game I really had to use this feature for was FAR-CRY, actually played most of the game on the 24" at 1024x768, really enjoyed that game and have been meaning to run through it again at 1920x1200.

The first graphics card I paired with the bigger screen was a Radeon 9800Pro 128MB, I wasn't even sure at the time if it could display a 1920x1200 desktop but my worries vanish after booting the PC and seeing my new gargantuan desktop! :D

24" all the way, once you scrimped and saved the money together and buy one you will see that it was money well spent! :)
 
get the one in my sig
i went from a dell 19" to this and the difference is astounding at native res
it scales superbly and looks the business
it wobbles a lot [most people will tell you] but is not a problem if its on a desk
 
Got my 22" Samsung 226BW today and so far very happy with it, though it's probably going to take me a while to get used to the extra viewing space since I've upgraded from a 17" Hyundai L70S+. :)
 
OK, I caved in! It has to be a 24". I do see the benefits to 1920 res and it's hard to resist! After looking around some more I realised there is no good enough reason not to spend the extra cash and have a 30% bigger working area, plus being able to run PS3 or 360 without messing with the picture would be very nice. Now it's just a question of how much extra I'll be spending. The BenQ G2400W looks pretty good and offers all the inputs I need. Casing is not flash, it's very basic looking, but that's fine by me as it's only the screen that matters and I'll probably upgrade again in 2 years.

Any thoughts on this one?
 
look at the back of the monitor what does it say

IMG0019702.jpg
 
Nothing and I've also tried the service menu and no option for panel type appears. I'll have a look and see if there is anything else available.
 
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