Help! Non-Gaming Monitor

Rhubarb

Rhubarb

Rhubarb

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14 Apr 2006
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11
Hi

I'm looking for a TFT monitor to replace a deceased 17" Iiyama CRT screen for home use. I don't really want to spend more than £200 and would like 17" or 19" but will likely opt for 17" as I would expect to get a better quality device for the money.

My requirements are:

Office use: Browsing Internet, wordprocessing, spreadsheets, email etc.

Multimedia: Single person watching TV or DVD either full screen or in window while sitting where they would normally use the computer.

Photo use: Photoshop Elements - cropping images, adjusting levels and printing. I do little or no colour correction. Viewing digital photos.

No 3D gaming.

From what I've read, some monitors are more tolerant of not being used in their native resolution. My Wife uses it for "office" stuff as above and struggled with 1280x1024 on a 17" TFT we borrowed so she will likely use 1024 x 768.

I've spent hours trawling through this excellent forum looking for recommendations but most of the recent posts seem to refer to monitors for gaming and the the only recommendations I have found along the lines we reuire are quite old and refer to monitors that don't seem to be on sale on the OC site anymore.

Thanks for taking the time to read through my requirements, any help or recommendations will be appreciated.

Cheers - Andy
 
Well, looking at your criteria I would immediately recommend the Samsung SM-913N 19" lcd, you can buy it for £199 from OcUK and it does everything you want it to, it also happens to be very good for gaming as well, so you have probably seen it recommended for this purpose, but it'll do everything else quite nicely too, although it isn't the best for watching films on due to the type of panel it uses (a TN film) it is perfectly acceptable with a little gamma tweaking in the graphics properties and if you don't sit on the other side of the room, which you say you don't do anyway.

However, I picked the 19" over the 17" as all in all you are getting a larger display which will be better 90% of the time, and you mentioned that your wife was struggling with 1280x1024 on a 17", well the 19" lcd's have the same resolution but a larger dot pitch, which essentially means everything will appear bigger on them, although you should never need to adjust the default resolution for office work, I'd advise your wife to alter the font sizes instead, as running an lcd out of native res for desktop/office work is going to yield a blurry and rather nasty display.
 
Hi. Thanks for the reply. The SM913N was one of the screens I have been considering because it was within my price range. I was a little put off by the comments in the 19" 'sticky' above about it not being too suited to office applications and the narrow vertical viewing angle making the screen dark at the top and bottom. It seems from reviews everywhere that the current crop of faster TN screens are less than ideal for non-gaming applications and that one of the older 12 or 16 mS screens might suit my needs better. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be too many around.

I've probably got to stop looking at reviews and go somewhere and look at screens working and just pick one based on that. Mind you, finding somewhere to see a selection of screens will probably be as hard as wading through the bewildering array of reviews that are available. Do OC have monitors on display? The quest continues.

Andy
 
I'd agree actually, the current range of very fast TN film displays are not the best at non-gaming related work, although they are fine for office apps, it’s really videos and situations where their vertical viewing angles are going to be tested that they really fall down. But given your budget, you don't have all that much choice to be brutally honest, at least as far as I can see. But then again I am not one of the lcd gurus around here, I was hoping 'baddass' would have dropped by to lend you (and me :p) his wisdom by now.

The only non-TN display I can find that’s even close to your budget is the NEC LCD1970NXP ...and I can't actually find any data-sheets that confirm what type of panel is does use, I am basically making the assumption that it isn't TN film based on the viewing angles which are 176/176, which of course a TN panel can’t achieve.

Then of course there are the Samsung 970P & 770P but they are both even more expensive than the NEC, and the NEC is a 19" as opposed to the 770P which is 17".
 
I'm guessing when you say your wife struggled with 1280*1024 you mean the text was too small, in which case go with 19". 17" aren't a huge amount cheaper anyway. 1024*768 will be blurry on pretty much all screens which have a native res of 1280*1204, especially if you're dealing with text.

To be honest at £200 the only screens available are gaming ones with TN Film panels, which have poor viewing angles can't quite match the colour accuracy of the 24-bit MVA, PVA and IPS panels. The Formac Xtreme 3 1900 is MVA for around £240. A bit more and there's the MVA Dell. As you'll have seen, PVA screens are very pricey.

You shouldn't assume TN screens are unsuitable for photo editing though. You may be forced to go for one with your budget. In that case, go for a slower one to get better viewing angles, something like the Neovo F-419 maybe? Samsung 913N is a good screen, but it does have pretty bad viewing angles.
 
Hi. Thanks both for your input. I might be able to bend the budget a bit. ;)

That tends to happen once you get into these things. :D

Keep them coming.

Andy
 
:D ...hehe it's begun then, you're already infected if you're thinking about it.

It'll be this next ...i can only imagine someone trying to explain that to the wife :p

Oh and you're most welcome.
 
Bump!

Well, I've had a browse around some of the local stores looking at monitors. I have to say that I'm quite surprised that I could not find ONE that gave a uniform white screen from straight ahead viewing, they all seemed to have a darker/yellow tinge around the edges. Once I moved my head a few degrees off the centre line, they all became quite discoloured, far more so than you would expect from the quoted viewing angles. I have been loaned a Acer 1717 by a friend while he is away for a few days and I find that just the same. I accept that the Acer and many of the monitors I will have seen in local stores are at the budget end of the market but I would have expected uniform colouring at least from straight ahead.

I have a 3 year old Dell laptop that has been on almost 7/24 since new and the screen on that gives far better colour uniformity and viewing angle than anything I've seen on my travels. My son has a 2 year old cheapo Digimate TFT and that seems to be better than anything I've seen today!

I assume that the problems I'm seeing in the screens I've looked at is due to them all being the latest type TN screens that are optimised for speed above all else.

My questions:

1. Are the more expensive TN screens like the Samsung 913 better in this respect?

2. Are there any reasonably priced non-TN (PVA/MVA?) 17"/19" monitors around?

3. Do OC have monitors on display? (I'm about 1 hr drive from Stoke).

Andy
 
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