19" monitor for Image editing & DVD quality play...which one to go for
- Thread starter hoctagon
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the Samsung SM-913N 19" LCD Monitor - Silver seems to be the most popular choice, especially for what you pay for £200... 700:1 Contrast Ratio and a fast 8ms Response time... if you run a search for this monitor on this forum, you will see many good reviews/feedback of it... be sure to check out the pinned threads also.. or if your budget is £300, then maybe the Samsung SM-930BF 19" LCD Monitor - Silver/Black at £245 inc VAT at OCuk, 4ms Response time.
i would recommend looking at other models tbh in the 19" range. While the Samsung 913N and 930BF are fantastic screens, and are very well priced, they are very much aimed at the gamers market. Especially the 930BF which sacrifices in other areas to offer some extremely fast gaming performance. If your G/f is not needing a gamers screen, and wants a screen for image editing and DVD playback you would be much better looking at other panel technologies. Rather than going for a TN Film panel like these two Samsungs, have a look at PVA / MVA / IPS panels. The one which springs to mind is the Dell 1905FP for about £275.
This uses either a 20ms PVA or 8ms P-MVA panel from Samsung or AUO respectively. Let's assume you get the 20ms version since this is the one Dell still advertise. This offers much wider viewing angles than you would get from a TN panel, and the movie playback is also much smoother. The PVA panel also offers a true 8 bit colour depth as opposed to a dithered 6 bit depth from a TN panel. If she is looking for a good colour depth and a deep black (more than a TN panel can offer) then this would be a better option.
If you get the 8ms version then you still get these benefits as the P-MVA also offers wide viewing angles, 8 bit colour depth and smooth movie playback. However, the panel is also very responsive thanks to overdrive (same panel as used in the Viewsonic VP191B). A lot of ppl have received the 8ms ver recently, but since your g/f doesn't game, it won't really matter which version she gets really.
that would be my recommendation anyway, avoid the fast TN models if you're nto a gamer, no need to take the sacrifices they make to be good for gaming. more info on the 1905FP here: http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/guides/dell1905fp.htm
This uses either a 20ms PVA or 8ms P-MVA panel from Samsung or AUO respectively. Let's assume you get the 20ms version since this is the one Dell still advertise. This offers much wider viewing angles than you would get from a TN panel, and the movie playback is also much smoother. The PVA panel also offers a true 8 bit colour depth as opposed to a dithered 6 bit depth from a TN panel. If she is looking for a good colour depth and a deep black (more than a TN panel can offer) then this would be a better option.
If you get the 8ms version then you still get these benefits as the P-MVA also offers wide viewing angles, 8 bit colour depth and smooth movie playback. However, the panel is also very responsive thanks to overdrive (same panel as used in the Viewsonic VP191B). A lot of ppl have received the 8ms ver recently, but since your g/f doesn't game, it won't really matter which version she gets really.
that would be my recommendation anyway, avoid the fast TN models if you're nto a gamer, no need to take the sacrifices they make to be good for gaming. more info on the 1905FP here: http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/guides/dell1905fp.htm
Soldato
I'd also recommend the Dell 1905FP
Got some of the 20ms ones in at work and for 2D work they really are superb
Got some of the 20ms ones in at work and for 2D work they really are superb
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I agree with Baddass and ajgoodfellow. The 1905 was on my short-list when I was looking for a new monitor a couple of months back and it would have been my number one choice but my son decided to give me an early birthday present which allowed me to choose the Viewsonic VP930, more expensive but I believe they use the same or at least similar panel and I've found it to be excellent for photo editing. Lovely colours and good viewing angles, I can move about in my chair as much as I want without losing any of the quality of the display.
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Not that impressed with 1905FP (AUO) for photo work
Hi, I'm new to this forum and to TFTs. I bought a used Dell 1905FP last week, it has the AUO panel. I've found it pretty good for text but it has some weaknesses with tonal range and colour in comparison with my old Iiyama Vision Master Pro 410 CRT, leaving me unhappy with it for photo work. Maybe I'm not getting the best out of it - I'd appreciate any advice. I'm running Linux. Using D-sub connection.
Particular issues:
(1) Highlights are burnt out. E.g. grays in the RGB range fefefe-f3f3f3 appear white.
(2) Pale grays in the RGB range f2f2f2-e8e8e8 have a small but definite cyan tint, and are too light. E.g. my email program lists messages on an alternating white / light gray (eeeeee) background, but this appears as alternating white / "white with a hint of mint"! This problem is particularly noticeable in highlight areas on grayscale photos: the highlight burns out to white, surrounded by a minty-white halo.
(3) Subtleties of skin tone are missing: subtle gradations are replaced by exaggerated colours.
I have tried adjusting contrast, brightness and colour levels on the monitor, but the problems remain. Adjusting the graphics driver's gamma levels helps a bit: it allows me to reduce problem (1), but with the side-effect that dark colours become too dark or black.
Anyone had similar issues with the 1905FP/AUO? I'd be grateful for any suggestions. Is it likely that DVI would make much difference with these issues? I don't have DVI on my PC but I would consider getting a new graphics card if this was likely to bring a big improvement.
Sorry, didn't mean to hijack the thread!
Dave
Hi, I'm new to this forum and to TFTs. I bought a used Dell 1905FP last week, it has the AUO panel. I've found it pretty good for text but it has some weaknesses with tonal range and colour in comparison with my old Iiyama Vision Master Pro 410 CRT, leaving me unhappy with it for photo work. Maybe I'm not getting the best out of it - I'd appreciate any advice. I'm running Linux. Using D-sub connection.
Particular issues:
(1) Highlights are burnt out. E.g. grays in the RGB range fefefe-f3f3f3 appear white.
(2) Pale grays in the RGB range f2f2f2-e8e8e8 have a small but definite cyan tint, and are too light. E.g. my email program lists messages on an alternating white / light gray (eeeeee) background, but this appears as alternating white / "white with a hint of mint"! This problem is particularly noticeable in highlight areas on grayscale photos: the highlight burns out to white, surrounded by a minty-white halo.
(3) Subtleties of skin tone are missing: subtle gradations are replaced by exaggerated colours.
I have tried adjusting contrast, brightness and colour levels on the monitor, but the problems remain. Adjusting the graphics driver's gamma levels helps a bit: it allows me to reduce problem (1), but with the side-effect that dark colours become too dark or black.
Anyone had similar issues with the 1905FP/AUO? I'd be grateful for any suggestions. Is it likely that DVI would make much difference with these issues? I don't have DVI on my PC but I would consider getting a new graphics card if this was likely to bring a big improvement.
Sorry, didn't mean to hijack the thread!
Dave
Hi DaveJ and welcome to OCUK. I think the problem you migth be having is that the monitors can be quite difficult to calibrate when you are a professional user. It sounds like you are quite experienced with colour levels / photos etc and TFT's can be quite a change from a CRT. Colour reproduction is certainly very good on the 8ms panel, but still might be behind a CRT for a professional user. It's hard to say really, it might pay to download some monitor calibration tools to see if you can improve settings a bit, perhaps at the GFX card level. Colour reproduction on tFT's isn't perfect, but is very good on modern screens like this. You may find the DVI looks different on first use since some settings are locked with that. However, you should eb able to achieve the same appearance through VGA with calibration as you would from DVI, DVI should only really offer a slight improvement in clarity, not in colour level. you could try this tool to start, but you may find that without a professional calibration tool like a Lacie BlueEye or a Spyder or something, you won't get the levels you desire 
TFT's are like a minefield to me! So many different ones etc. All i want is a decent TFT, 19'', No ghosting, good for DVD's etc and not expensive!!
I very much like the AGNeovo F419 as some of you would have gathered by now!! I am hoping that Overclockers will include it in the 'For this week only'. Please!!!!!
I very much like the AGNeovo F419 as some of you would have gathered by now!! I am hoping that Overclockers will include it in the 'For this week only'. Please!!!!!
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Thanks for the reply, Baddass - a fellow Bristol-dweller, I see!
I'm not actually a professional graphics bod, just an amateur digital photographer who's maybe a bit fussy! Today I tried looking at some of the same test images & pages on a friend's Samsung 913N, connected to his Mac mini. Different computer, room and lighting - trickier lighting for the Samsung - so not a direct comparison, but they all looked better on the Samsung than on the Dell. The Samsung reproduced a wider range of grays on my grayscale test page (which has 256 shades), only losing the lightest 2-3 shades as white whereas the Dell loses the lightest 8-12, depending on gamma. Grayscale images maintained subtle shading on highlights that were bleached out on the Dell. No minty tinges! Pretty good subtlety of skin tones on highlights where the Dell was burnt out and oversaturated.
In general images on the Samsung looked more like those on my Iiyama CRT. I was surprised by how good the tonal range and colours were, considering that it has, I believe, a 6-bit panel. I'd like to evaluate it more carefully in better lighting conditions and side-by-side with the Dell, but first impressions were favourable.
Thanks for the link to the calibration tool, however this seems to be for Windows and I'm running Linux. As far as I can see the only calibration I have available at the driver level is gamma setting for each colour channel. I've played with this and calibrated the monitor with a gamma test image that I found (I'm learning about this stuff as I go along, not an expert). As I said, changing gamma brings some improvement but not enough, and at the expense of dark colours. What sort of parameters do proper calibration tools play around with?
I found a review of an Iiyama TFT where image quality in general, and tonal range in particular, was said to be much better with DVI than with D-sub:
http://www.iiyama.co.uk/default.asp?SID=&NAV=1384&PCAT=0
- Follow link "CRT v LCD". Maybe I'll try the Dell on the DVI connection on my friends Mac. Perhaps I just got a sub-standard unit.
Thanks again for the response.
I'm not actually a professional graphics bod, just an amateur digital photographer who's maybe a bit fussy! Today I tried looking at some of the same test images & pages on a friend's Samsung 913N, connected to his Mac mini. Different computer, room and lighting - trickier lighting for the Samsung - so not a direct comparison, but they all looked better on the Samsung than on the Dell. The Samsung reproduced a wider range of grays on my grayscale test page (which has 256 shades), only losing the lightest 2-3 shades as white whereas the Dell loses the lightest 8-12, depending on gamma. Grayscale images maintained subtle shading on highlights that were bleached out on the Dell. No minty tinges! Pretty good subtlety of skin tones on highlights where the Dell was burnt out and oversaturated.
In general images on the Samsung looked more like those on my Iiyama CRT. I was surprised by how good the tonal range and colours were, considering that it has, I believe, a 6-bit panel. I'd like to evaluate it more carefully in better lighting conditions and side-by-side with the Dell, but first impressions were favourable.
Thanks for the link to the calibration tool, however this seems to be for Windows and I'm running Linux. As far as I can see the only calibration I have available at the driver level is gamma setting for each colour channel. I've played with this and calibrated the monitor with a gamma test image that I found (I'm learning about this stuff as I go along, not an expert). As I said, changing gamma brings some improvement but not enough, and at the expense of dark colours. What sort of parameters do proper calibration tools play around with?
I found a review of an Iiyama TFT where image quality in general, and tonal range in particular, was said to be much better with DVI than with D-sub:
http://www.iiyama.co.uk/default.asp?SID=&NAV=1384&PCAT=0
- Follow link "CRT v LCD". Maybe I'll try the Dell on the DVI connection on my friends Mac. Perhaps I just got a sub-standard unit.
Thanks again for the response.
it would be odd that the 913N seems to ofer better colour production that the Dell. While the colour levels are very good on the Samsung, black level is not quite as deep (a flaw of TN Film panel technology compared with P-MVA for the Dell) and the colour depth is only 6 bit with dithering and not 8 bit like the Dell. The Sammy does offer good colour reproduction though, and all this makes very little difference if the screen and graphics card are not calibrated well. Perhaps try your screen on his PC, or visa versa, see how you do then?
My girlfriend received a new Dell 1905FP 8ms monitor last week and she is pretty happy with it.
I have a Samsung 930BF monitor and I did a comparision myself.
I am not an expert about TFTs however have to say pictures look better quality on the Dell than the Samsung I`ve got.
Both very sharp, Samsung maybe too sharp.
Color looks too artificial on the Samsung and setup is driving me nut.
DVD play and games, Samsung seems slightly superior.
Despite the good quality of Samsung, if you are after picture editing work etc would definately raccomend the Dell 1905FP
Dell 1905FP is for me the winner !.
I have a Samsung 930BF monitor and I did a comparision myself.
I am not an expert about TFTs however have to say pictures look better quality on the Dell than the Samsung I`ve got.
Both very sharp, Samsung maybe too sharp.
Color looks too artificial on the Samsung and setup is driving me nut.
DVD play and games, Samsung seems slightly superior.
Despite the good quality of Samsung, if you are after picture editing work etc would definately raccomend the Dell 1905FP
Dell 1905FP is for me the winner !.
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Test page for Dell 1905FP users
hocatgon - glad the Dell is performing well. Are you using D-sub or DVI?
I probably should have qualified my comments a bit more: on the whole I get good image quality from my 1905FP, but there's a specific issue with very light colours, e.g. strong highlight areas on photos and lists with alternating white/light gray backgrounds. When I looked at my test images on my friend's Mac/Samsung 913N, I was specifically looking to see if these same problems appeared, and they didn't. The viewing conditions were too different for me to make a proper judgement about which screen has the better overall image quality, and the ambient light was too bright to assess the Samsung's black level.
A grayscale test page that I created shows up the problem with my Dell very clearly. Grays down to about RGB f6f6f6 are indistinguishable from white, and f5f5f5 to ebebeb have a small but definite cyan tinge, giving them a minty-white look. That's with the best contrast/brightness/gamma settings I've found. I hope to try the Dell on DVI on my friend's Mac next week.
Dave
hocatgon - glad the Dell is performing well. Are you using D-sub or DVI?
I probably should have qualified my comments a bit more: on the whole I get good image quality from my 1905FP, but there's a specific issue with very light colours, e.g. strong highlight areas on photos and lists with alternating white/light gray backgrounds. When I looked at my test images on my friend's Mac/Samsung 913N, I was specifically looking to see if these same problems appeared, and they didn't. The viewing conditions were too different for me to make a proper judgement about which screen has the better overall image quality, and the ambient light was too bright to assess the Samsung's black level.
A grayscale test page that I created shows up the problem with my Dell very clearly. Grays down to about RGB f6f6f6 are indistinguishable from white, and f5f5f5 to ebebeb have a small but definite cyan tinge, giving them a minty-white look. That's with the best contrast/brightness/gamma settings I've found. I hope to try the Dell on DVI on my friend's Mac next week.
Dave
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Like a minefield out there with TFT choices!! My budget is not more than £200, max. Still not 100% sure what to go for. I do play a lot of games but i also work on the PC so need one that is good on my eyes too. I am waiting to see if the AG Neovo comes down a little in price first. That is my number one choice unless i can be persuaded otherwise!
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Dell 1905FP problems - update
An update on my Dell 1905FP problems. I tried it on a friend's Mac mini, using both DVI-D and VGA via a DVI-I to VGA adaptor. Results:
1) Didn't see any difference between DVI and VGA.
2) The Dell worked fine on the Mac: none of the problems I get on my PC were evident. Wide range of shades reproduced on grayscale test, only 2-3 of the lightest shades lost. No cyan tinges on pale grays. Good range of shades preserved on skin tone highlights.
3) Comparing the Dell with my friend's Samsung 913N, little difference on text, Dell better on images mainly because of the Samsung's limited vertical viewing angles: images appear bleached out viewed from slightly above and too dark from slightly below.
Maybe the Mac's lower gamma is making a difference here (1.8 vs 2.2). In any case I'm inclined to think that my PC's VGA output for some reason has problems driving the Dell, even though it works well with my Iiyama CRT. Has anyone come across something similar? I'm using onboard VGA (S3 UniChrome) on an MSI KM4M-L mobo. (Seriously low-end, I know, but I'm not a gamer.)
So I'm thinking I'll get a new graphics card. May as well have DVI. Apparently Linux has better support for nVidia than for ATI. Cheapest options seem to be MX4000 or FX5200 - any advice appreciated, I'm completely out of touch with graphics cards!
Thanks, Dave
An update on my Dell 1905FP problems. I tried it on a friend's Mac mini, using both DVI-D and VGA via a DVI-I to VGA adaptor. Results:
1) Didn't see any difference between DVI and VGA.
2) The Dell worked fine on the Mac: none of the problems I get on my PC were evident. Wide range of shades reproduced on grayscale test, only 2-3 of the lightest shades lost. No cyan tinges on pale grays. Good range of shades preserved on skin tone highlights.
3) Comparing the Dell with my friend's Samsung 913N, little difference on text, Dell better on images mainly because of the Samsung's limited vertical viewing angles: images appear bleached out viewed from slightly above and too dark from slightly below.
Maybe the Mac's lower gamma is making a difference here (1.8 vs 2.2). In any case I'm inclined to think that my PC's VGA output for some reason has problems driving the Dell, even though it works well with my Iiyama CRT. Has anyone come across something similar? I'm using onboard VGA (S3 UniChrome) on an MSI KM4M-L mobo. (Seriously low-end, I know, but I'm not a gamer.)
So I'm thinking I'll get a new graphics card. May as well have DVI. Apparently Linux has better support for nVidia than for ATI. Cheapest options seem to be MX4000 or FX5200 - any advice appreciated, I'm completely out of touch with graphics cards!
Thanks, Dave
Soldato
If you're running Linux definitely get nVidia. ATI cards are generally said to have better image quality but the difference is debatable and the Linux nVidia drivers are far better
Matrox are said to have the best 2D image quality and they have Linux drivers - see here. I've never used a Maxtrox card on a Linux system so I don't know how good their drivers are!
Matrox are said to have the best 2D image quality and they have Linux drivers - see here. I've never used a Maxtrox card on a Linux system so I don't know how good their drivers are!
Associate
Thanks for the replies. The MSI mobo has a 4x/8x 1.5V AGP slot.
I think I'll go for nVidia. Given that I'm not gaming, It will be a budget card. I'm thinking MX4000 or FX5200, based on price - are these a reasonable choice & how do they compare? Are there any manufacturers I should seek out or avoid? My main criteria are:
I think I'll go for nVidia. Given that I'm not gaming, It will be a budget card. I'm thinking MX4000 or FX5200, based on price - are these a reasonable choice & how do they compare? Are there any manufacturers I should seek out or avoid? My main criteria are:
- good static image quality, images & text
- very quiet
- can cope with occasional movie viewing
Soldato
Both should be fine for 2D output. You should be able to find a cheap Matrox card though if you don't mind buying second hand. New though, they are a fair bit more (£70)
Any make really will be fine. Get one with a passive heatsink - these cards don't generate much heat and some fit small fans which make the card rather noisy. The FX5200 is better than the MX4000, being a DX9 card vs a DX7 card
Any make really will be fine. Get one with a passive heatsink - these cards don't generate much heat and some fit small fans which make the card rather noisy. The FX5200 is better than the MX4000, being a DX9 card vs a DX7 card