Well after asking here (and a couple of other places) I decided to buy an LG W2453TX monitor. It seemed a reasonable price with the resolution I wanted and the inputs I wanted.
However it isn't as good as I expected and I'm returning it, hopefully under DSR so I won't lose much money. The problem I have with it is the inconsistency of brightness/contrast/colour across the screen. I may be extra critical because I have 'tall' (i.e. 60 line) terminal windows on the screen running mutt etc. but for me the inconsistency is *very* noticeable. E.g. my mutt screen has cyan[ish] status bars at the top and bottom and they are quite different colours on the W2453TX. Playing with the angle of view varies the difference between top and bottom but you can never get it the same. In addition the text at the bottom of the screen is very 'spindly' compared to the top.
My old screen (a Dell 2001FP) is *miles* better, the status bars are near enough identical (well I can't see any difference) and the text looks the same everywhere.
Since this (minor) debacle I have done a bit more research into LCD monitors and their technology and have discovered that there are two or three fundamentally different types. I've discovered some useful sites with information about this:- http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/ http://www.flatpanelshd.com/
The types are:- TN - most cheap and fast displays are TN, good for gaming but colour rendition and viewing angle poor. PVA and MVA - sort of middle of the road, not as fast as TN but better accuracy. IPS - best for accuracy, but expensive.
It turns out that the Dell 2001FP I have is an IPS screen so I have been spoilt as regards accuracy. Current 24" screens using this technology are *expensive*, like £500 and upwards!
I'm trying to find a PVA (or maybe MVA) screen which isn't too expensive but at the moment I'm not having much success.
I guess much of the problem is that the main pressure nowadays is towards response speed and TN screens win on that front. The trouble is that they are rubbish for viewing angle which is a much maligned figure as far as I can tell. The W2453TX has a figure of 170 degrees for viewing angle which is a total joke, any angle much more than 45 degrees off centre produces all sorts of odd effects. The 2001FP on the other hand one can look at from any angle and the colours are unchanged.
Chris G wrote:
Well after asking here (and a couple of other places) I decided to buy an LG W2453TX monitor. It seemed a reasonable price with the resolution I wanted and the inputs I wanted.
However it isn't as good as I expected and I'm returning it, hopefully under DSR so I won't lose much money.
Oh dear I have one of those on order, should be here tomorrow.
I'll report if my findings are different when I get it, that said my current 22" screen is also TN and either I have adjusted to or don't notice the effect you describe.
About the only time I notice the limitations on viewing angle are if I stand up and look down at my monitor, and even then it is viewable if not optimal.
On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 07:00:43PM +0000, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
Chris G wrote:
Well after asking here (and a couple of other places) I decided to buy an LG W2453TX monitor. It seemed a reasonable price with the resolution I wanted and the inputs I wanted.
However it isn't as good as I expected and I'm returning it, hopefully under DSR so I won't lose much money.
Oh dear I have one of those on order, should be here tomorrow.
I'll report if my findings are different when I get it, that said my current 22" screen is also TN and either I have adjusted to or don't notice the effect you describe.
About the only time I notice the limitations on viewing angle are if I stand up and look down at my monitor, and even then it is viewable if not optimal.
I'll be interested to hear what you think of it, especially compared with your other TN monitor.
Chris G wrote:
I'll be interested to hear what you think of it, especially compared with your other TN monitor.
I just hope it turns up, I ordered from Dabs initially but somehow that kicked off the fraud protection on my card. I cleared it but the site wouldn't let me retry on the same card and support weren't responding.
I gave up and canceled and ordered from Amazon yesterday Now I note from yesterday to today the price has jumped £40 on both sites (it's £209.94 now)
On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 11:58:02PM +0000, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
Chris G wrote:
I'll be interested to hear what you think of it, especially compared with your other TN monitor.
I just hope it turns up, I ordered from Dabs initially but somehow that kicked off the fraud protection on my card. I cleared it but the site wouldn't let me retry on the same card and support weren't responding.
I gave up and canceled and ordered from Amazon yesterday Now I note from yesterday to today the price has jumped £40 on both sites (it's £209.94 now)
Well if you have serious problems you can always have mine! :-)
I've not actually rturned it to CCL yet.
Chris G wrote:
Well if you have serious problems you can always have mine! :-)
I've not actually rturned it to CCL yet.
Thanks but it arrived today.
I must say personally I am impressed. Yes if you stand up over it the contrast changes wildly but over my regular viewing angles it's fine. I can't reproduce the colour imbalance you described (I use irssi which also has blue bands top and bottom) or notice the fuzzy text at the bottom, and after you mentioned these things I was actively looking for them.
It's definitely got a better contrast than my old benq panel, viewing angle is about the same and the colour profile out of the box seems better. The benq had a problem not so much with the default colour temperature but the linearity was a bit strange, you could have good darks or reasonable accurate colour but not both at the same time. The LG is far better in this respect. In fact the only thing I found wrong out of the box was the brightness was set way too high.
So maybe we have difference expectations/tolerances to these things.
For me given that I would probably have to spend at least twice as much to get a similar size panel that was significantly better (which is more than I can reasonably justify given I spend a lot of time on the laptop downstairs) I am more than happy. Oh and I love the fact that unlike so many other screens I have used the stand is at a reasonable height, I generally find most sit the screen too low.
One thing that did strike me is that if you were using the analogue inputs then the fuzzyness could be explained by the clocks not being set right as that will give you fuzzyness at different points on the screen, also I haven't tested mine on analogue so it may perform significantly worse, although naturally that won't solve the viewing angle thing.
I'd hope though that you were uisng DVI as really anything over 1280x1024 is asking a bit much of VGA in my opinion, I remember back in the days of CRT having to perform hardware mods on consumer grade nvidia cards to get them to be usable without massive blurring at 1600x1200
On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 05:22:57PM +0000, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
Chris G wrote:
Well if you have serious problems you can always have mine! :-)
I've not actually rturned it to CCL yet.
Thanks but it arrived today.
OK, good! :-)
CCL haven't complained about me returning it so I think that will go smoothly. CCL have always seemed pretty straightforward.
I must say personally I am impressed. Yes if you stand up over it the contrast changes wildly but over my regular viewing angles it's fine. I can't reproduce the colour imbalance you described (I use irssi which also has blue bands top and bottom) or notice the fuzzy text at the bottom, and after you mentioned these things I was actively looking for them.
It's definitely got a better contrast than my old benq panel, viewing angle is about the same and the colour profile out of the box seems better. The benq had a problem not so much with the default colour temperature but the linearity was a bit strange, you could have good darks or reasonable accurate colour but not both at the same time. The LG is far better in this respect. In fact the only thing I found wrong out of the box was the brightness was set way too high.
Glad to hear it looks good to you. I certainly thought it looked pretty good when I first turned it on too, it probably has more contrast than my Dell 2001FP, certainly it was 'brighter looking'. *All* the reviews complain about how bright it's set when you open the box though.
So maybe we have difference expectations/tolerances to these things.
Probably! :-)
For me given that I would probably have to spend at least twice as much to get a similar size panel that was significantly better (which is more than I can reasonably justify given I spend a lot of time on the laptop downstairs) I am more than happy. Oh and I love the fact that unlike so many other screens I have used the stand is at a reasonable height, I generally find most sit the screen too low.
I have just spent almost exactly that (twice as much that is) on a Dell U2410. It's from an Ebay supplier so I was able to use my 10% discount voucher on Ebay (which expires tomorrow) which brings the price down to £336. Since it's a company purchase (I was a contractor and my wife still works through the business) I recover the VAT too so that's another 15% less.
The U2410 is an H-IPS screen so should be as good as my old 2001FP, reviews seem very good.
One thing that did strike me is that if you were using the analogue inputs then the fuzzyness could be explained by the clocks not being set right as that will give you fuzzyness at different points on the screen, also I haven't tested mine on analogue so it may perform significantly worse, although naturally that won't solve the viewing angle thing.
No, I was using DVI-D and I think most of the issue was viewing angle. If I tipped the screen way back (more than it will adjust) and looked at it from 45 degrees off centre *below* centre then the colour and contrast were more consistent across the screen. Maybe I was just seeing a bad batch.
I'd hope though that you were uisng DVI as really anything over 1280x1024 is asking a bit much of VGA in my opinion, I remember back in the days of CRT having to perform hardware mods on consumer grade nvidia cards to get them to be usable without massive blurring at 1600x1200
I think it depends quite a lot on the quality of the drivers in the graphics card (as in the electronics that is) and the length of the cable. My 2001FP looked pretty good at 1600x1200 in VGA until something died and it acquired a permanent blue/green cast.
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Chris G -
Wayne Stallwood