Buying a monitor

Buying a monitor is hard work:)

[lajkonik86]

Heey guys.

A few weeks ago my old monitor blew up. At the moment i'm making do with a 15inch crc:)

I'm hoping you can help me decide which monitor to buy. My budget would be somewhere between 300-500 euros.

I have been checking out a lot of monitors. But I would like one which is easy on the eyes when spending a lot of time in front of it. It's really hard to find out which monitor will be nicer when sitting behind it for a few hours.
I'm looking for a 17inch tft with a max res of atleast 1280 pricerange: 300-500.

Anybody any ideas on which monitor to buy?

[Accelerator]

LG Flatron L1720B is very nice.

[lajkonik86]

Well i also spend a lot of time finding out everything about monitors. When buying a graphic card i know what i'm buying. But monitors, i really didn't have a clue about.

But now i know what monitor i would like to have.
Problem is that most stores have only a few monitors available. When i only look at the ones i'm interested in. 17 inch 1280 dvi&vga atleas 16ms
Only a few remain. And it aint really hard to decide on a product, just one little problem. Interpolation.
They don't tell you anything about interpolation.
But you really can't go with a monitor with bad interpolation.
I play some games at 800*600 and with a native res of 1280 and low quality interpolation i wouldnt be able to play anymore.

So basicly I would like some site which allows me to search for a monitor with all my demands.
And then tell me something about all interpolations.

[Macro]

If you're in the UK buy this month's PC Advisor magazine. It's got exactly what you are looking for. Seriously, the mags (and hardware review sites) are the best places to answer this query.

Incidentally, they like the LG as well

[lajkonik86]

Holland, hope they got it down here.

[Hester]

If you are going to depend on interpolation a lot, I'd really advise getting a quality CRT. TFTs aren't designed to handle non-native resolutions AFAIK.

Perhaps the interpolation depends on the graphics card? Maybe why no-one can talk about it much in the shops.

Ever hear of that horror story from the States? A company (might've been a library) had a set of rules for their computers, one of which was that all screens must be set to 800 x 600. Only they bought in a lot of 15" TFT screens. These were therefore all set to 800 x 600, even though they were designed for 1024 x 768. Naturally people hated using them! It was like viewing your TV from another room using binoculars. What a joke!

[lajkonik86]

Well it's not that i need interpolation to be perfect
If i would want that i would by a crt

But some tft's really have bad interpolation.
So you must look around a lot to find out what monitor is good and which isn't.

Today i bought a pc magazine which test 24 17 inch tft's after i'm done reading i'll share my experiences with you.

Greetz,
Thierry

[lajkonik86]

At the moment this monitor seems to be great:

[iiyama.co.uk...]

Both pc advisor and pcm loved the monitor.
The image quality is great the response time is 12ms
and the price is 389 euros. Furthermore it also has dvi and vga.
Seems like a great buy.

[Macro]

It seems to be a 10 ms response time.

Some of the lower end Iiyama monitors do not come with a DVI cable so that's something you may want to check before you buy. AFAIK, it's only the 4821s (19") and above that come with a DVI cable. But, this is a new model so there's no historic info on it. Iiyama have an excellent reputation for customer service.

[lajkonik86]

The 12 came from a grey to grey measurement by a computer magazine.

[Hester]

I read that to get decent interpolation, you need to be able to display a clear fraction of the native resolution. So my advice for anyone wishing to use 800 x 600 would be to go for a monitor that displays 1600 x 1200*, as half that will give you 800 x 600. Then there should be no fuzzy pixels.

*I'm not sure you can get TFTs at that size!

[Nobster]

I was looking at this monitor myself (IIyama 435S) as I can get it for £235.

BUT one thing has really put me off, and thats the footprint, according to the Iiyama website it has a 21cm footprint from the stand. This is overly large for a TFT and IMO takes up more space than necessary.

The footprint is actually 1 1/2 inches more than the model it replaces (431S) not exactly progress.

Obviously if your wall mounting it makes no difference whatsoever

[Hester]

In practice, I don't think you need to worry about the footprint too much. I mean, you're still saving masses of space compared to a CRT.

[lajkonik86]

I'm getting the iilyama tuesday i'll let you know how it performs.

[Macro]

so?

[lajkonik86]

WHOWW I'm very happy with my purchase
I bought the iilyama(black) for 360 euros

The screens quality is fantastic unlike anything i've ever used before. Its also great to work on. The only small defect is the high brightness. But your videocards offcourse takes care of that.
Pitty is the ati drivers only change the desktop which leaves you with a very bright mouse pointer. Maybe i need to get used to this but it anoys me a bit. The nvidia drivers adjust the mousepointer aswell.
The monitor isn't all that thick and it is very light.
There's absolutely no death pixels at all. And when playing nfsu2 at different resolutions there's no problem at all with response time or interpolation.

This screen rox! :D

[Hester]

Interestingly, black cased monitors score a lower ergonomic rating than beige cased ones. The reason? Apparently the contrast is too high with a black case. (But they look so cool...)