27"ish Monitors..

Glaceon

Glaceon

Glaceon

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30 Mar 2010
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How come all the 27" ish monitors have really, really bad designs for the stands and bezzels...

Are there any 27" monitors that are reasonably priced, have good designs and could be used as a TV/PS3/360 display medium? Ideally 16:9 1920x1080 with HDMI ports etc.

The Acer 23.6" screen is amazingly beautiful, but it's too small! :< Otherwise it's a sexy monitor.
MO-049-AC_400.jpg


The LG looks oook, i suppose :/, but the bezzel looks too large and the stand is really, really tacky.
MO-069-LG_400.jpg



Anyone suggest any models? Maybe something OCuk doesn't stock. Not asking for rival store names, but monitor models. Thanks!
 
Apple are supposedly releasing a 27" standalone screen, same one off the iMac IIRC. Reasonably priced though? Doubt it!
 
Beast06 said:
Apple are supposedly releasing a 27" standalone screen, same one off the iMac IIRC. Reasonably priced though? Doubt it!
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Aye, I doubt it also. By reasonably priced I mean you pay for what you get, and apple make you pay more.

If you were to choose between a Monitor with HDMI and a normal LCD Tv, in the 26" Ranges, which would produce the best image quality for usage with a 360 and PS3? I might just ditch the idea of getting a 26-27" Monitor and go with a 26" standalone LCD TV.
 
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So what exactly do you want in a monitor, one that perfoms well, or one that looks nice when you take pictures of the stand and bezel?

Personally you can't go wrong with the Hanns.G HZ281HPB 27.5" Widescreen LCD Monitor
 
To be honest, there is little difference between most LCD TVs smaller than 30in and LCD monitors, if you are buying from a good brand. The TVs generally cost a bit more, come with (pretty awful) speakers built in as well as a TV tuner.

So long as you get one that is from a good brand and has a 1080p (1920x1080) resolution then you will be reasonably happy with the image quality. However, if you are doing fast-paced gaming you may be a bit disappointed as they are more likely to exhibit high response time and input lag figures - these are things which monitors are designed to combat, but for TVs they don't matter so much.

If you are looking for a decent quality, decent price 27in monitor the hanns.g suggested by mysticsniper is a good one to go for. this offering by iiyama will be of similar quality and is pretty good price - plus it looks pretty swish. asus are also bringing out a 27in 120hz monitor that will be worth a look. these monitors use tn panels, these are the cheapest type of lcd panel but for most operations these will be fine, and for gaming they respond very fast.

if you budget is a little higher - i personally use a dell 2709w, this monitor uses a high quality s-pva panel and looks really nice. However, it is a bit on the expensive side at ~£550. Unfortunately, this monitor is now end-of-life (so will be tough to get hold of new) and is being replaced by the very impressive U2711, which is even more expensive. This new dell uses a H-IPS panel and the resolution is an amazing 2560x1440, this is the same panel as the beautiful new 27in iMac.
 
Lots of helpful information there. I used to have a Dell 24" that was really good, but it had problems with the 360 and PS3, mainly because of the aspect ratio being 16:10 and not 16:9, and it also suffered a lot of top screen tearing. It was a S-PVA though which made the viewing angles nice.

That Iiyama looks nice, but it's a shame it doesn't have a HDMI input. Or are HDMI inputs really necessary for ps3/360?

About that new 27inch Dell. With the resolution being 2560x1440, isnt that bad for Ps3/360?

It's looking more and more like it could be less complicated to just get a quality 26" Samsung LCD TV, or similar, for the ps3/360, and keep my existing 20" monitor for the pc.

Edit: Also, these 120hz LCD Monitors do sound cool. Does that mean, so long as your fps is below 120FPS, you wouldn't have to enable Vsync to keep the wscreen from tearing? Would they help with Consoles, too?
 
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To be honest, if you are mainly using the monitor for console gaming, then I would get a TV. TVs have inbuilt processing that makes consoles look better (as the games are usually only rendered at 600-720p and scaled up to 1080p). From memory, there is an LG 32in 1080p LCD TV that costs just over £300 and is great for consoles.

As for DVI ports, they are basically the same as an HDMI port, but with a different shape and no sound - electronically they are compatible with each other. If you have an DVI-only TV/monitor and a HDMI console - you can simply get and adapter or cable like this and the monitor will display the visuals in the same quality as HDMI would. However, you will need to sort out way of playing the sound.

For your problem with the Dell 24in and the games consoles - what was the model of the dell? Most Dell Ultrasharp 24in monitors have a feature called 1:1 scaling which means that the monitor gives a video source the exact number of pixels it requires and does not force it to fill the screen. So when this feature is enabled with a 1080p games console you get small black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, but the image is using the correct pixels and the aspect ratio of the image is 16:9.

For consoles, a 120Hz monitor is not nearly as useful as it is for PC gaming. it will refresh 120 times per second - but the console can only achieve 60FPS (often much less) - so the motion will not seem any smoother. There will be benfits using these kind of monitors, ghosting will be negligible (if it is even noticeable) and input lag will be very low - but these features can be achieved by using a standard 60Hz TN monitor. Again, you would find a TV to be more useful as the "100Hz"/"200Hz"/"300Hz" claims are actually taking a 50/60Hz source and inserting virtual frames in using the processing power of the TV. This makes DVDs/Blu-Rays/consoles (which have relatively low native refresh rates) appear much smoother than they would without the extra processing.
 
perry081064 said:
what he says.. however ive taken it off its stand and im using a desktop vesa bracket :)
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Oh man! I didn't think of doing something like that. My main problems with a lot of monitors are their ugly stands.

Thanks again cmdr_andi, your input is really appreciated and you seem to know your stuff. I think I will head down the LCD TV direction, as there are a lot of 26"-32" LCD Tv's that I like a lot - mainly Samsung. I'm 90% upgrading my display for the ps3/360, and don't really game that much on my PC - so I might as well save the hassle of having an all in one and just get a nice LCD TV to replace my widescreen CRT at the bottom of my bed. Haha.
 
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gareth170 said:
the colours are more true..
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Yea, but are they really? In the tests the Iiyama is slightly better, but we are still dealing with two 6-bit TN panels - exact colour accuracy is not a massive selling point and IMHO the other features of the Hanns.G (like being a bit bigger and cheaper) count in its favour.
 
cmndr_andi said:
Yea, but are they really? In the tests the Iiyama is slightly better, but we are still dealing with two 6-bit TN panels - exact colour accuracy is not a massive selling point and IMHO the other features of the Hanns.G (like being a bit bigger and cheaper) count in its favour.
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well my Hannspree 28" is colourful BUT on dark colours its so poor/wrong.

example, when UAC kicks in the background should go slightly darker and should be able to still see the background but on my Hannspree 28" is the background goes to a near black, the top and bottom goes to a full black.. also on dark images/colours theres a negative effect on top and bottom. also on lighter colours they look to full on, (if u get what i mean)...

in 1 review site it say the gamma is the issue on theses,

my Iiyama ProLite B2712HDS 27" doesn't have any issues like that...
 
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Gareth, sounds like you should sell your 28" on to me and get another Iiyama. :p

Give me a shout if so! I'm keeping an eye out for another Hannspree. Dead poor atm though...
 
Muel said:
Gareth, sounds like you should sell your 28" on to me and get another Iiyama. :p

Give me a shout if so! I'm keeping an eye out for another Hannspree. Dead poor atm though...
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i'll be rma it again for the last time.. if it's still same i'll be selling it....
 
T thought you got a good one when you RMA'd it last time?

TBH I wouldn't be bothered about getting one worse than this, it's only to replace my second 22".

But aye, let me know if and when. :)
 
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