New monitor time. Talk me out of it...

[Gav]

if you can!!

I am looking for a new monitor and i am quite interested in this:

Viewsonic VA2025W (EDIT: not 2012w as previous)

Is there any reason not to go for it? It's main use will be photoshop and office packages so it shouldn't get to stressed but i am quite partial to a CS:S bout and maybe some UT and Quake from time to time.

Other systems specs are:

P4 3.0 on an Abit IC7Max3
1.5gig ddr400
6800GT (Edit: not a 7800GT as previously mentioned)

 

[Gav]

up to around £350. Dont fancy spending 500+ on an NEC

 

[Gav]

you can get dell 2005fpw's for £250 atm

a bit of searching is all you need

Ian

Not being funny but i am in the market for a decent monitor and, from what i have read on a few sites, these monitors just cant hack it. Too slow, not bright enough etc..

The NEC and the Viewsonic are rated extremely highly so all i have to do is decide which one.

 

[Gav]

mmm. starting to sway now but i still dont see why its worth the extra. After all the Viewsonic took top awards from Bit-tech

 

[Gav]

I'll have a go at talking you out of it Gav

The VA2012W is not a bad screen, but I think for your uses, you might not find it the best. It is based on an 8ms TN Film panel from CPT, and TN Film isn't really the best panel technolgy for photo work and colour accuracy. There have been good improvements over the last year or so in this area, but they still don't match the colour quality of PVA/MVA or IPS panels. The panel used is also only a 6-Bit panel, offering quite a low colour depth (really only 262k colours) but with dithering / FRC used to offer a viewable 16.2 million colours. Black depth is also not really TN Film's strong point, and this might be an issue to you too.

If you can stretch to the NEC LCD20WGX2, the AS-IPS panel offers some excellent colour reproduction, and a true 8 bit (16.7 million colours) colour depth. Black depth is good as well, and the use of LG.Philip's Digital Fine Contrast (DFC) helps in this area as well offering some staggering contrast ratio figures (1600:1!!!) and helping to improve black depth beyond what TN Film can offer. If you decide you don't want to extend the budget, then there are a couple of models like the Belinea 102035W which uses P-MVA panels. Again, these offer better colour reproduction and black depth than TN Film. I just think that as a photo worker, it would be a shame to settle for the drawbacks of TN Film when other panel technlogies are far more suited

hth

Cheers mate but i made a boo boo. It should have been the VX2025 model not the 2012 model. Still swaying towards the NEC though. !!

 

[Gav]

It's not so much of a buget issue. As a tight scotsman i hate spending money on things that simply arent worth it.

The Viewsonic looks impressive at that price and it did get the higher award. The NEC has a shiny screen and is about 70 quid more expensive. Is it worth it?

 

[Gav]

after much deliberation i have decided to go for the NEC. Cheers for the halp guys.