LCD recommendation?

[rileypetty]

Hello, this might not be the right place but I need to start somewhere. I use a CRT 17” HP monitor and was thinking of upgrading to an LCD. The problem is, most of the LCD monitors my friends have look washed out, sort of faded (maybe they’re just cheap). The colors are not crisp and the lines don’t look as perfect as they do on my CRT. When I look at the LCD’s at BestBuy or other places there are contrast ratios from 200 to 1 to 2000 to 1. I just don’t completely understand what the number should be to at least equal my CRT. Also, in the old days there was a number, dot pitch that I understood easily. My CRT is 23 dpi and I’ve noticed some LCD’s have a dot pitch number but never lower than 28. I use Photoshop a lot and I don’t want to lose the quality that (I think) I currently have. Can someone point me in the right direction so I can figure out what I need to buy?

 

[cdogg]

LCD's have gone through several generations of improvements over the last decade. Their advantages now outweigh the disadvantages. Here's a good article to start with:

http://compreviews.about.com/od/multimedia/a/CRTvsLCD.htm

The one thing that CRT will always have the upper hand in is the ability to display deep blacks. An LCD, on the other hand, will always triumph in producing less eye strain (due to the refresh rate). Also, a 15-inch LCD has about the same screen area as a 17-inch CRT. Think of the difference a 19-inch LCD will make over what you have now! This article talks about other LCD specs like response time:

http://pcworld.about.com/magazine/2106p024id110483.htm

Keep in mind too that your buddies could have been running their LCD's at a non-native resolution (causing blurred lines and edges) or had one from an earlier generation. As for dot pitch, you can find some at .26 and .27 if you look hard enough. Anything that makes it to the .29 mark is considered good enough for most use...

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein
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[rileypetty]

Thank you very much for the detailed response. I've read all and will probably read them again several times before making a decision. Riley

 

[wahnula]

Latest innovations include LED backlighting, much better than standard CCFL backlighting.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[Nelviticus]

Dot pitch is the distance between each pixel in millimetres. You can work it out yourself if you know the monitor's horizontal resolution. For wide-screen monitors, the width of the display is about 84.75% of the diagonal size (80% for a non-wide-screen), so a 19-inch wide-screen is actually 16.1 inches wide. As an inch is 25.4 millimetres that's 409mm wide. If it has a resolution of 1440 x 900 then it has 1,440 pixels in 409mm, so the dot pitch is 409/1440 = 0.28.

You can boil that down to this:
For wide-screens, dot pitch = (monitor size) * 21.5 / (horizontal resolution)
For non-wide, dot pitch = (monitor size) * 20.3 / (horizontal resolution).

For colour, an important thing to bear in mind is that most 'consumer' LCDs are just designed to look nice with a computer desktop, games and videos. Most cannot display a full range of 24-bit colours as they have only 6 bits per pixel rather than 8. If you want good colour accuracy - such as for graphic design work - you're going to need to pay a premium for a professional-grade monitor, or make sure that you buy a consumer-grade one that has 8 bits per pixel.

I found this article which is short and succinct and discusses the differences between 6-bit and 8-bit panels and whether it really matters.

'Contrast ratio' is a rather woolly term that is supposed to be a measure of how much brighter the brightest white is than the darkest black, so a contrast ratio of 2000:1 means that the brightest white is 2000 times brighter than the darkest black. But that could mean 1) the brightest white is extremely bright but the darkest black isn't all that black; 2) the darkest black is very very black but the brightest white isn't enormously bright; or 3) something in between!

You need to make sure that it has good enough contrast to distinguish shades of dark colour. You can do that by eye or by reading a good review from a trustworthy source. I have two LCD monitors at home - the cheaper one looks vibrantly colourful but in the shadowy areas of photographs, for instance, you can't make out much detail. If I drag that photo over to the more expensive monitor suddenly detail will spring out that couldn't be seen on the cheaper one.

My main monitor is a Samsung 225BW, a 22-inch wide-screen with an 8-bit panel. I'm very happy with it.

If you want to make sure you buy an LCD that meets your needs you have to do two things: 1) do some research to narrow down the choice of models; and 2) view them before you buy one.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[SimonDavies]

The Samsung 226BW has had lots of great reviews, I currently use a BENQ FP241W which is a 24inch beast, all I can say is wow. Price wise it wasn't that much more than the 226BW I had looked at (but always seemed out of stock).

SimonD.

The real world is not about exam scores, it's about ability.

 

[rileypetty]

Been out of town for a couple of days and just got back to a computer. Thanks for the additional information. The 8-Bit vs. article 6-Bit that Nelviticus pointed out was especially useful.
Riley

 

[wahnula]

There's an active suit against Apple for misleading information regarding their 6-bit displays here:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/03/31/apple_hit_with_another_millions_of_colors_lawsuit.html

Apple has already settled a previous claim for the same issue.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[felixc]

If you do a lot of Photoshop, then you have to look carefully at the reviews. The displays that look good in games are usually not those that look good for photo realism. Tom's Hardware used to ponder their test results for different types of applications. I'm not sure if they still do so.