Buying a monitor

• Blogs
• Forums
• Photos
• Code Examples
• VS Movies

May 2012

Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31
		HOLIDAYS
May 28 - Memorial Day

Guardian Angels
Kia Purity's Site
Surtur's Fuge of the Damned
Malachit Room
The Nisan Sanctuary

[Surtur]

So I'm thinking of getting a monitor to go with my new computer.  This one seems pretty decent for the price (I can get it for about $230 CDN, after taxes and stuff).  I'm mostly attracted to the supposed 10000:1 contrast ratio, but... it sounds a little crazy/too-good-to-be-true.  The highest contrast ratio I'd heard of before I saw that was like 3000:1, but then, I'm not particularly knowledgeable about this stuff.  So I'm wondering if there seems to be some kind of catch somewhere in those specs listed on that page, or if it does in fact seem like a good deal.

Little help?

[Franz]

I don't think there's a catch at all - LG is a pretty reliable brand though I've never owned a monitor by them - but my biggest concern is whether or not it has that seemingly-trendy glossy coat over it. It really saturates the colors, sure, but if you're in room with a lotta light that shit is gonna bounce back on ya.

I've been meaning to get a new monitor as well, perhaps after my taxes. My biggest concern is the trueness of color because my current Samsung really sucks, especially after what I'm used to at work.

[TheContact]

I usually use this to make my hardware purchases.

[Surtur]

That was pretty helpful, for comparison's sake, although being as cheap as I am, the Budget Box monitor is still a bit more than I was hoping to pay, lol.  That whole article probably would have been more useful back when I was still looking for a new computer... I sent off an angry letter to let them know of my displeasure at their taking so long to put it out.  Jerks.

But at any rate, reading that article then prompted me to do some more research of my own, and eventually I found this page, which had some useful comments.  Particularly the last one:

"And since a higher contrast ratio means blacks are much blacker (though, sometimes losing out on gray detail), and whites are much brighter"

That is not necessarily the case. All you really need to do to increase this magical number called "contrast ratio" is turn up the brightness. It doesn't mean that you get better blacks and in most cases it doesn't mean that at all. It usually just means that someone in the lab figured out how to make the light brighter at which point someone in marketing goes, "yeah baby! Drop that sucker in and get me the new contrast ratio numbers!"

They don't bother with the fact that you can indeed wash out your picture when the brightness gets too high. They don't really care, they've got a bigger number to put on the box. A bigger number that everyone looks at and says "ooooo, 10K to 1! That's got to be better than 5K to 1 right?" Well...no. The only effective way, at this point, to really get any benefit from increased contrast ratios is to lower your black point. As Hello_Newman already stated he's got a 1K to 1 monitor that is awesome. In fact I think they say that anything over 400 or 500 to 1 is overkill in a computer monitor? Personally I would much rather have a monitor with a black point of .25 and a white point of 125 (for a contrast ratio of 500 to 1) than a monitor with a black point of .6 and a white point of 6000 (for a ratio of 10K to 1.) This number has become meaningless in todays tech speak. I would prefer if we just got the numbers for the 2 points (and then let people figure out the ratio for themselves if they wanted to.)

This is basically what I was kind of afraid of, that the 10,000:1 contrast ratio was just overkill... and not particularly, practically, useful.  So now I'm thinking of getting this monitor instead.  It's about the same price, and obviously has a lower contrast ratio (2500:1), but it's a slightly bigger screen and has a better resolution.  And it's also a TFT LCD, which I have read apparently are thought to be longer lasting/more durable or something?  So I suppose that'll probably be the one I get.

For the record, I have actually had issues with LG in the past, specifically LG DVD burners.  I've had 2 or 3, and they all crapped out on me.  I do have an LG DVD player (ie. for my tv, not in my comp), and that has been more than satisfactory, though... but I'm still a little wary about them.

[TheContact]

okay, so for the record, in video, there's "black level" and "white level".  Usually brightness = white level, and contrast = black level... but not exactly.  White level is how white something can be on the monitor.  Black level is how black something can be on the monitor.  The problem comes when you have something bright *and* something dark on the monitor at the same time.  Different monitors resolve this in different ways... but at the end of the day, you rarely get good specs for how that works.

[kostjan]

Screw the contrast ratio (it's not that important or noticeable in day to day work / play / porn). The reason I wouldn't buy this monitor it's because it's a TN panel (and uses 6 bits  per pixel + dithering to simulate 8 bit colors), which make sit unacceptable...

Oh, and I'm not really fond of LG brand either.. LG = Lucky + Goldstar, two Korean companies that used to have (before their merger) a very bad reputation about the quality of their products. Remember the times when Korean was considered to be as low quality as Chinese brands? Well, that's because of them... Not that it's relevant (99% of chance, any LCD panel you buy under any brand is actually OEMed in Taiwan anyway)...

Did I mention the price is a ripoff? You could get a 22 Inch BenQ for that price right now (http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=21648&vpn=FP222W&manufacture=BENQ&promoid=1060, offer alid only this week) ... sure, it has worse contrast ratio, but far more usable resolution... The pixel pitch on that LG will be equivalent of a stretched 15 inch monitor.. Welcome to the year 2000!

Add 50 bucks, and you can get yourself a budget 24 incher with a massive 1920x1200 res - the only limit is your desk space!! And yeah... Buying cheap things means paying twice over for them... Sure, you may not fit another 50 in your budget, but trust me - go for the best you can afford, else you'll regret.

[TheContact]

Yeah, but if you're getting it for gaming, are you really giong to find a fast-response and affordable display that's not a TN?  It's not that you can't make an 8-bit TN monitor, it's just that no one does because there's no demand for it at that price.  How fast are the fastest 8-bit IPS LCDs? 6ms?  At what cost?

Plus, the monitor you linked to is also a 6-bit TN

[kostjan]

Let's see.. April, May, June.. bah, 3 months, it's all good..

The linked monitor was indeed a TN, but the point was that for the same price, you had bigger res, and a (now-defunct?) Taiwanese brand instead of Korean (eeek)... But yeah.. 19 inchers are sooo 2003... It's all about 42" 1080p LCDs under 1500$ now..

Oh.. And my first LCD was a Samsung 17" bought for 1200$ back in 2001... It had a refresh rate of like 48ms, and I still managed to play games just fine (ghosting? what ghosting?)