Need to buy a new monitor. Help please.

tophee

tophee

tophee

Associate
Joined
12 May 2005
Posts
460
Location
Cambridge, or somewhere else in the world
Hi all,
It's been a long while since I posted on the OCUK forums... Been playing with Linux media centres until recently so have been neglecting my PC.
(Nice to be back btw.)

But now my failthful old 17" crt has startd to go wrong. (Sometimes the image flickers and everything goes yellow.) Time to buy a new monitor.

I've about £200 to spend. I want min 19' monitor and a DVI input. Speakers... not interested (with 7.1's why would I need them?)

So I've looked at some of the threads - the Belina and Hans-G look good, with positive comments, but what would be my best bet/ best buy/bang for buck? Should I plump for a more established bran (Sony or something?) Or would a few exta ££ be worth it for a 20' or a 20.1' beast.

Mostly i play Oblivion and .. not much else really, surf the net and unfortunately I've another year of essays to write and planning for work - so good text reproduction is essential.

Ta.
 
So... no answers so far, so some choices and hopefully people with one, or another of these will give me some feedback.

I've been looking around here some more at the message board and on OCUK. Here are my choices from the one's available within my price bracket:
1. Viewsonic VX922 19" LCD Monitor - Black/Silver (MO-046-VS)
2. Samsung SM-940BF 19" LCD Monitor - Silver/Black (MO-041-SA)
3. OcUK Value Hanns-G HW191D 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Silver (MO-017-OK)
4. Hyundai ImageQuest B91D 19" LCD Monitor - Black (MO-045-HY)
5. Belinea 1925S1W 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Black/Silver (MO-005-BE)
and I might be able to stretch to this:
6. Belinea 102030W 20.1" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Black/Silver (MO-004-BE)
but I don't think i can power that high res with this graphics card :( . Not in games at least.

Is it worth getting a DVI connection over a VGA one?
I kinda like the idea of widescreen...
 
I'm getting the VX922 as it's meant to be one of the best 19" for gaming and I'll keep it for many years to come...this 19" CRT has lasted a while.

The main person you want to read your thread is Baddass, he's like The monitor guy on OcUK.

:)
 
Yeah, I had a look at that thread. Boy - there is a lot to get through. I was hoping to circumnavigate the need to read all of it. I've an essay deadline looming, a wonky monitor (actually it's behaving itself atm) and a girlfriend who insists i get on. (Only another 3000 words to go.)
 
I think with a £200 budget you have a choice of a few nice 19" models which are very popular and well estbalished. If you could push the budget abother £100 then the 20"WS market might be worth looking into, but i'll concentrate on the 19" models for now. When these kind of questions pop up, the usual models recommended are the Samsung 920N (previously 913N), Acer AL1916W and recently the Hanns-G HW191D and to some extent the Belinea 1925S1W. These are all very well priced and the Samsung and Acer are particularly well established.

If you're looking for a gaming screen, the Viewsonic VX922 is arguably the best in the market right now and might be worth pushing that extra ~£20 for. It has a DVI interface and offers excellent gaming performance certainly. This article covers the best gaming models available :)

Some thoughts about those ones you narrowed down as well:

1. Viewsonic VX922 19" LCD Monitor - Black/Silver (MO-046-VS) - see above

2. Samsung SM-940BF 19" LCD Monitor - Silver/Black (MO-041-SA) - good, but the overdrive application used to boost response time so much is not nearly as well controlled as that on the VX922. The result is various reports of white halo-ing on moving images and some bad overdrive ghosting in some cases. A good monitor, but not as good as the VX922 in performance

3. OcUK Value Hanns-G HW191D 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Silver (MO-017-OK) - popular recently. I'd recommend looking at the big thread about this for more. The addition of DVI is nice at the price, and this is a steal of a screen really. If you're wanting a 19"WS this would probably be a top choice. However, the performance can't quite match the VX922 in responsiveness, but it is still perfectly adequate for most users.

]4. Hyundai ImageQuest B91D 19" LCD Monitor - Black (MO-045-HY) - Same panel as the Samsung 940BF (well the 930BF which was the 4ms edition). Same kind of issues with overdrive artefacts as compared with some other models. Still good, but the VX922 is better controlled.

5. Belinea 1925S1W 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Black/Silver (MO-005-BE) - a new comer, worth a look if you want WS and using a slightly newer panel than the Acer / Hanns-G. No DVI though, but see below about that

6. Belinea 102030W 20.1" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Black/Silver (MO-004-BE) - Bargain price for this model. The extra size and resolution will certainly be nice. The good thing about the Belinea and a lot of the 20"WS range is that they don;t use TN Film panel technology (which all the models above do) and so don't suffer the drawbacks inherant to that technology. Viewing angles are wider on the Belinea (it uses a P-MVA panel), colour depth is better (8 bit instead of 6 bit +FRC) and movie playback is smoother. Black depth is also a bit better which is certainly a plus. Overall the Belinea is a very good all round performer. It can't quite match the performance of the VX922 / 940BF in terms of responsiveness, but is comparable to the 8ms TN Film generation like the Hanns-G, Acer, Samsung 920N etc as discussed before. As I said before though, this is certainly perfectly adequate for most people, just depends on how fussy you are and whether you think moving from a CRT > TFT might give you issues with gaming? If you can stretch, this is a very good all round screen :)
Click to expand...



Is it worth getting a DVI connection over a VGA one?
Click to expand...

Taken from the sticky ;)

Q. Does DVI make a difference?

A. This depends very much on the panel in question. Some users of some panels say that switching between VGA and DVI makes NO difference on their screens. Notably users of the Samsung range (171T, 181T, 172X) have said it makes little or no difference, and has even been tested by users with 2 side by side. Other users of different panels swear it DOES make a difference. For example, I have personally seen the LG1710B in action in both modes, and the DVI was noticeably better quality and much sharper than the VGA. However the DVI connection on the LG I would rate as comparable to the VGA on some TFT’s without DVI at all, including the AOC LM720a. It seems logical that perhaps some manufacturers who build their screens without DVI spend more time perfecting the VGA connection as that is all they offer. Whereas companies who supply both connections sensibly would expect their users to use the DVI connection, as it is there, and so sacrifice quality of the VGA as the DVI can show off the full potential of their panel. Therefore screens without DVI tend to have a better VGA than those with DVI and in some cases a good VGA connection can be comparable in quality to a DVI connection.

Quality of the VGA connection is also related to the GFX card used. Most modern GFX cards have a good VGA output and this is important in image quality of the TFT. NVidia cards have been said to have a slightly better VGA output than the ATI cards, but as said, most new cards will give u a good quality output. Good output combined with a good VGA input on the screen will give u a good quality picture.

One other thing to note is that when using DVI connection, most TFT's lose the option of some of the on screen settings like contrast and brightness, so if u use DVI and u cant change them, some people have found the screens too bright. Software fixes are available for this though (inc Powerstrip etc)

RILOT: "I have non DVI TFT’s and the picture quality is exactly the same as my friends Samsung TFT that does have DVI. We tested them both together. Oddly though, when using the Samsung with VGA input the image quality was significantly worse......If you have a card with a decent 2d quality output it shouldn't make any difference whatsoever."
Click to expand...

The VGA on the models above without DVI should be pretty good as they tend to generally be good nowadays, especially on the smaller (ie 20" and under) models.



hth
 
Thanks Baddass,
Really very much appreciated. Still in a quandry about what exactly I am to buy (and unfortunately it is that time of year for servicing, MoT and Tax...) so may delay a little longer.
Extending my budget to the £300 mark isn't really possible at the moment - tho might be able to push to £250, so some 20" are possible.
AS for gaming my Asus Radeon X800 XT Platinum edition (Zalman cooled) runs oblivion pretty well at 1280x1024 with most settings quite high - it only stutters a little outdoors with distance fade maxed on everything.
I'm not sure my little old pc could cope with 1600x1200 certailny not on oblivion at least. Would it cope with 1680x1050?
I guess I'd suffer a bottle neck with this Athlon Xp-M and an agp card. (New PC isn't a high priority right now.)
Further thoughts appreciated.

I guess it's a case of spend as much as you can.
 
i'd say if you can stretch the budget you might future proof yourself a little more and also afford yourself a more rounded TFT (as mentioned before, getting perhaps a P-MVA panel instead of TN Film). I think running a 1680 x 1050 res would be pretty much just as hard work as 1600 x 1200 so you may have to settle for running games at lower res and letting the screen upscale the res, or play with 1:1 pixel mapping if it supports it (see here).
 
I've just purchased 2 HPW19 19" Widescreen monitors and they are superb and only cost £150.00 each.

I've posted a couple of pics on the 'Show us your TFT setup' thread, go have a look I would highly recommend them :D
 
Hey Cerberous,
Had a look at your set up. Nice.
I'm guessing you got your HP monitors *elsewhere*? Couldn't see them when I looked here.
But google is my friend!

Thanks BaddAss for your input, muchos gracias amigo...
Yeah, I was kinda thinking that maybe I should *stretch*, though if I were stretching... I might just have to go a little more to Belinea 102035W 20.1" Widescreen coz of the DVI input.

Oh dear... decisions, decisions, decisions...
 
Got the Hanns-G yesterday - very impressed indeed! So cheap for 19" WS with DVI. Looks better than the pictures and mine has no dead pixels whatsoever.
 
Well, I am torn. On one hand, the Hanns-G would be kinder to the pocket and would work very well with my current rig. But, on the other hand I'm rather drawn to the Belinea. Much less wallet friendly and potential issues with underpowered graphics card/system.

Is there much degredation of the picture if the monitor scales the image up? This would affect my decision on buying more than the monety concern I think.
If I am spending £258.44 (plus delivery) on a monitor I need to feel I am justified in spending the extra.

Actually, just looked on the OC website and this has appeared:Hyundai ImageQuest N91W 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor
How is this one?
 
Last edited:
not really a problem in gaming nowadays with image interpolation, Windows yes, but gaming you just lose a little sharpness on the most part
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom