22Inch monitor (yet another sorry!)

sp00d · 4 Jul 2008 at 16:47

Hey guys,

Sorry to add yet another "which monitor do I buy" but here goes:

I want to buy a 22inch monitor, specifically 22inch due to how close I will sit to it. 24inch might be ok, but 22inch is more ideal. I have had a 17inch Samsung 172X since the day it came out, and I love it, but it's a bit out of date now (even though it did cost me £350!). As it is a TN screen, I have no input lag at all with it, and the viewing angles are not a problem as the monitor is quite small.

I have a budget of £1000 to spend on a decent monitor, and do not want issues with input lag. However, I am wary of buying a 22inch TN screen as I feel that the extra size of the screen will make the viewing angle problem more noticeable. My general use of the monitor is pretty much everything, from gaming, to photo-editing in PS CS3, to watching movies, to coding in Eclipse. Therefore, I do not want to sacrifice quality for response time and vice versa. Does such a monitor exist at the moment?

I see that even the £700 NEC monitors, which although great for Photo editing and movies, still have bad input lag. I guess that overall, I would probably prefer restricted viewing angles and decent response time/input lag, but ideally I wouldn't have to choose. The image quality of my 17inch Samsung is pretty much perfect with DVI, but then, I am not experienced in how the current S-IPS screens look. Also, I would probably like to avoid PVA due to the weird colour shifts when changing viewing angles and the over-rich display.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated!

philjohn · 4 Jul 2008 at 17:00

Try and get to a shop that sells Apple Cinema Displays to have a look and see if you like S-IPS screens.

How far away from your screen do you sit? I'm only about a foot away from my 24" screen and find it perfectly usable (I can always lean back in my chair if needs be). I'd suggest also going to a retailer to have a look at the different sizes next to each other and get a feel for them.

If you don't want TN or PVA then you have ruled out any 22" monitors, they're all TN apart from a few such as the Lenovo l220x which is a PVA with 1920x1200 resolution (i.e. very small dot pitch). If you go up 1" you could get the 23" Apple Cinema Display, or the 23" Hazro which are both S-IPS screens. I don't know what their input lag is like, but I would wager it's pretty low as they are older panels (and hence have less response time compensation or "overdirve" which is what can cause the lag times we are seeing). They have slightly higher refresh rates G2G, but they are both meant to be very good.

Bottom line: make sure that you couldn't deal with 24" (it's only an extra 2" after all) and then have a gander in the flesh to get a feel for them (and then come to OcUK to buy them).

sp00d · 4 Jul 2008 at 17:56

I sit about 2 foot away from my monitor, so perhaps 24inch IS ok

I thought the apple ceinma display had around 16ms reponse, which will probably turn out to have high input lag due to manufacturers having different metrics with regard to response times.

Hudzy · 4 Jul 2008 at 23:57

I feel your pain. Forget the 22" market, it's worthless unfortunately.

philjohn · 5 Jul 2008 at 00:05

sp00d said:
I sit about 2 foot away from my monitor, so perhaps 24inch IS ok

I thought the apple ceinma display had around 16ms reponse, which will probably turn out to have high input lag due to manufacturers having different metrics with regard to response times.

Nope, response time and input lag tend to be inversely proportional. The input lag is caused by things like scalers and overdrive (speeds up the response time). That's why the new crop of monitors we're seeing tend to have higher input lag, whereas older panels for the most part don't (there are of course exceptions).

2 feet away will be fine with a 24", you've got a lot more options in that arena (TN, PVA and S-IPS).

sp00d · 5 Jul 2008 at 08:34

philjohn said:
Nope, response time and input lag tend to be inversely proportional. The input lag is caused by things like scalers and overdrive (speeds up the response time). That's why the new crop of monitors we're seeing tend to have higher input lag, whereas older panels for the most part don't (there are of course exceptions).

2 feet away will be fine with a 24", you've got a lot more options in that arena (TN, PVA and S-IPS).

Ah ok, I see. So....care to list any potential candidates?

I was looking at the BenQ FP241WZ, but reviewers have said they can definately notice ghosting compared to a TN panel. Is the quality difference between a TN and PVA so great that it really is worth putting up with input lag/ghosting? Also, the colour uniformity issue when looking left to right on a PVA worries me.

AgedIdiot · 5 Jul 2008 at 17:54

BenQ FP241WZ, but reviewers have said they can definately notice ghosting

have one myself and have not noticed any - not using the Perfect Motion tech either

Did upgrade from a Samsung 205BW TN panel - did notice a little ghosting once or twice but never a problem BUT the way that colours faded top to bottom drove me mad.

No such problems with the Benq - but it does suffer , occaisionaly from 'black screen' effect(suddenly the screen turns black - not off - and than reverts to normal) but not often enough for it to make me want to RMA it.