Philips 230W5BS / samsung SM215TW/dell24"/benq24" arggggh

[alterion]

Help so confused seems all i can read about monitors these days is negative so..
First the phillips- anyone know anything about this monitor? with all the problem that seem to be around the dell 24" anD the benq delays i've been looking at alternative and this is cheapish (apparently an s-ips panel) but that's all i've been able to find out.
Second - the samsung SM215TW for a decent sized but cheap option . However reports have seemed to suggest that this is only any good if you get a good panel and that there are quite a few with problems- can anyone say any more about this ( i knoiw from expereince how much of a pain online returning is.. also i'm petty and the UK version is silver which wouldn;t look as good next to my black 17" monitor here any help
Finally- The dell, i would say 25% of my time is in PS 35% in games and 40% on the desktop and for me banding and picture quality is an issue also i feel if i'm spending £560 on a monitor it should be able to work properly- i've pretty much ruled out the benq panel due to all the delays, the finall monitor is the 24" acer panel which is the same as the samsung 244T but without input lag apperently.. however it appears not to have hdcp or any other real inputs

anyway i'd like some user feedback (pics?) from anyone who has the above and any postive points you can make for or against any of them as well as any other suggestions ect. I'd put my imprtance list as Picture quality>inputs+range of inputs> ghosting/input lag your help is greatly appreciated

 

[Baddass]

wow, a lot of questions there, will try to answer as much as I can.

Philips 230W5BS - There isn't really a lot of information about this screen online, and I've not really seen any reviews of it. It does indeed use a 16ms LG.Philips S-IPS panel which should offer reliable colour reproduction important for photoshop work. However, the panel itself is reasonably old now and before the days of LG.Philips utilising their ODC (overdriving circuitry). Responsiveness might be somewhat lacking, but it depends on what games you are looking to play. The contrast ratio and brightness are also a little behind the times, and older S-IPS panels were never particularly great at black depth, this may also be limited on this older model.

Samsung 215TW - a nice looking screen certainly and very functional. Plenty of info and user comments about that here. Again, responsiveness is not as good as some of the other modern panels, but colour reproduction, gamut range and panel uniformity are good. I've not really heard many reports of problematic versions of this model tbh.

Dell 2407WFP - The banding issues have all but been resolved with the latest A02 / A03 revisions, but if you're using PS a lot, they may still be apparent. I'd suggest that in everday average use you would be hard pressed to see any adverse affects of this though, and even on an A00 (before they fixed it!) version of the 2007WFP I couldn't really say there were any issues in normal use, you'd have to go looking for it to see it really. It still might be worth considering because it certainly has the range of functionality and inputs you are looking for, and responsiveness is good as well. This is a tough one, as it's a fantastic screen but there is a chance with your PS usage that banding might become apparent.


I think it's a hard choice to make really. The BenQ might still be worth waiting for as it offers the functionality you are looking for, has good colour reproduction and no banding and offers decent responsiveness. If you don't want to wait (stock is expected by the beginning of Nov according to BenQ UK themselves) then I'd think the Dell might be the best best of the ones above really.

 

[alterion]

thanks badass. i think i'll go for the dell- £100 is a big difference over the benq and i've been trying to buy one since early september so i'm a bit fed up of waiting. The problem i was reffering to on the samsung all came from Hardforums. While banding could be a problem i've decided that the extra pixels would help make up for the difference. i might see and i'm skeptical that it would exist in reality in desktop mode once the farjung processing is disabled. From what I understand the panel has been used in other 24" models with no banding reported so i think it is probably just paranoia and actual searching for it. thanks for the help.