A Guide to Choosing the Right 19" LCD Monitor - 7 Models Reviewed
by Kristopher Kubicki on November 30, 2004 12:04 AM EST- Posted in
- Displays
Quantitative Analysis
Luminance
Brightness ranked as one of our most important display qualities. The largest mistake that we see people make when they buy a new LCD is to put their new, bright LCD in a dim or dark room (and as a result, turn the LCD down to 25% brightness). Not only is this terrible for your eyes, but it also offsets hues unnecessarily. A blue screen in a dark room doesn't look the same as a blue screen in a well lit one! Staring at your monitor shouldn't feel like staring into the sun. If you have plenty of ambient light around, you would be surprised on how much of a difference a 250 nit LCD looks compared to a 300 nit LCD.Below, you can see a comparison of the brightness for each of our LCD monitors. All monitors are set to the maximum brightness level and this was maintained for the duration of the review. The blue bar represents the advertised luminance and the red bar indicates the measured.
Much to our surprise, the NuTech LCD actually performed brighter than what the AUO spec sheet would have us to believe.
Our Contrast Ratio
For all the bad things that we said about contrast ratios on the previous pages, don't let us mislead you. Contrast ratios are important; they just aren't measured on any sort of level playing field, since manufacturer A and manufacturer B will measure them differently in order to market their product better. We do not have equipment as sensitive as manufacturers to test our monitors, but if we tested them all with the same conditions, we will still show a meaningful distribution of our monitors.| Observed Contrast Ratio | |||
| Highest Recorded | Lowest Recorded | Observed Contrast Ratio | |
| BenQ FP931 | 256.4 | 3.6 | 71.2 |
| Dell 2001FP | 222.6 | 4.6 | 48.4 |
| NuTech L921G | 278.2 | 2.6 | 107.0 |
| Planar PE191M | 234.0 | 3.0 | 78.0 |
| Samsung 193P | 230.4 | 2.2 | 104.7 |
| Samsung 910V | 219.8 | 2.6 | 84.5 |
| Sony SDM S94 | 233.8 | 3.0 | 77.9 |
| ViewSonic Q190MB | 261.8 | 2.6 | 100.7 |
As you can tell, things pretty much run the gamut here. We were very surprised to see the NuTech L921G showing up with the highest observed contrast ratio, but as you will note from our measurements, we were only able to measure within an accuracy of 2/10 candela per meter squared. As we get better testing equipment, we will continue to update the results of these LCD units that we bought for the lab in future reviews.
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xann - Monday, January 14, 2008 - link
it is like:640*480 1 :1
800*600 1,25 :1,25
1024*768 1,6 :1,6
1152*864 1,8 :1,8
1280*1024 2 :2,13
1600*1200 2,5 :2,5
1440*900 2,25 :1,87
1680*1050 2,625 :2,1875
1920*1200 3 :2,5
2560*1600 4 :3,33333
wide screen resolutions are not one on one.
i look for 19" LCD with res 1600*1200
xann - Monday, January 14, 2008 - link
it is like:640*480 1 :1
800*600 1,25 :1,25
1024*768 1,6 :1,6
1152*864 1,8 :1,8
1280*1024 2 :2,13
1600*1200 2,5 :2,5
1440*900 2,25 :1,87
1680*1050 2,625 :2,1875
1920*1200 3 :2,5
2560*1600 4 :3,33333
Cay - Friday, December 17, 2004 - link
One of the main reasons I think PVA is in a completely different league regarding response time compared to TN/IPS, is this guide by X-Bit Labs.http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/other/display/lcd...
Cay - Friday, December 17, 2004 - link
The tips at the start were great though, and pointed out several important things I'd have overlooked otherwise.Cay - Friday, December 17, 2004 - link
This review wasn't very useful to me, frankly. It contains too much subjective talk, and barely any data. I miss the following:.) For each panel, clearly state the technology used (TN, M/PVA, IPS), as well as if it's 8 or 6 bit. This gives more meaningful information than all the manufacturer specs.
.) Screen photographs of select, demanding images taken under the same conditions. Here, I want to see how each image looks like on EACH screen, not just 3 samples total.
Printer reviews do this well. You can dedicate one HTML page for each test image (eg 1 for the Max Payne scene, 1 for the Morrowind pic), and put the results from different monitors right below each other. This would allow me to directly compare how still images look like. At the end of the image block, you can put your comments.
With well-chosen test images, this might give a pretty complete idea of how good a monitor's still image/color quality/contrast is.
.) A meaningful measurement of response time.
When you claim to "not notice any difference" between a PVA and a TN panel, I have to conclude that the Anandtech crew is much less sensitive to response time than most people. That's great for you, but bad for me - I'm not getting any response time information.
Build a device to measure all gray-black or grey-grey response times. Tom's Hardware and X-Bit have some you can use for inspiration.
Just including this measurement does not mean that you have to emphasize its importance. You can put it in a section together with your subjective response time interpretation.
610 - Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - link
Is the NuTech L921G currently available in the US?The article says that the review unit was not store-bought, but doesn't specify how it was obtained. I've found only one site anywhere that claims to sell it, and it's not listed in any of the usual price-comparison sites (like PriceScan, for example).
KristopherKubicki - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
ecove:I believe all of the monitors you mentioned use the same AUO panel. Performance will be very similar.
Hope that helps,
Kristopher
ecove - Thursday, December 9, 2004 - link
I've noticed in researching 19" LCDs that there are a number of models from various manufacturers (eg Princeton LCD19D, CTX S962A/G, Advueu ADV190DT) that all share what appear to be identical specs to the Nu and Viewsonic models reviewed here. Is it a safe assumption that these monitors all share the same panel and have essentially the same performance?stephenbrooks - Tuesday, December 7, 2004 - link
That sample blue image on the penultimate page really made me worry about the LCD I'm using to view it here because it looked terribly dithered! Fortunately I realised the image you showed there was actually a 256-colour GIF (?!) of the image you should have used.R3MF - Tuesday, December 7, 2004 - link
@ #69 -agreed, i would like to see what the Dell 1905FP is like too.........
@ #87 -
yes, the Dell 1905FP is rated at 20ms, and while it may not be best for games like UT2k4, but what about games like Mafia and Rome: TW where twitch gaming is irrelevant?
REMF