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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archcommus87 - Saturday, December 4, 2004 - link
Additionally, what are your thoughts on response time? I see that many of the monitors reviewed here are 20-25 ms monitors, however so many people claim that anything over 16 is simply unacceptable for gaming. Is this true or would 25 be plenty fine?archcommus87 - Friday, December 3, 2004 - link
So SOME out there are actually 4:3 physicall. How do you know which ones? They do list l x w x h, but I'm assuming that includes base. So you must read a review or physically measure it yourself to know this?Kristopher: What is your opinion on the quality of the image when it is upscaled in such a way, say trying to run a game at 10x7 on a 19" 1280x1024 monitor.
GOSHARKS - Friday, December 3, 2004 - link
KristopherKubicki, that may be the case with some models - BUT you imply that ALL 17-19" LCDs that are 5:4 in resolution are in reality 4:3 physically, which is incorrect and confusing for people reading your review."Most 19" and 17" LCDs have an aspect ratio of 5:4 (1280x1024). This is OK, but you're looking at a 5:4 signal crammed in a 4:3 box."
KristopherKubicki - Friday, December 3, 2004 - link
archcommus87: LCDs will naturally interpolate pixels if you choose a non-native resolution. Only a few monitors will scale the image down to the correct pixel size (ie the Samsung 192T). Of course, if you do that you just turned your 19" LCD into a 17" one.Kristopher
KristopherKubicki - Friday, December 3, 2004 - link
GOSHARKS: As i stated above in the comment addressed to #14, there are LCDs that are not the correct aspect ratio. A few viewsonic models come to mind. That was the only thing I was addressing in the aspect ratio portion of the guide.Kristopher
KristopherKubicki - Friday, December 3, 2004 - link
Peter: For these LCDs you are correct, they are all the correct aspect ratio. However, we have looked at 17" and 19" pannels in the past that are 4:3 (and not surprisingly they did not get good reviews).Kristopher
archcommus87 - Friday, December 3, 2004 - link
Are the options presented thus far really the only options for running games at resolutions other than native? If so how could anyone want an LCD for gaming? Unless you're positive you'll always have a beefy enough computer to run games at 1280x1024 or higher. Or unless you don't mind playing the game with black around all sides.vailr - Friday, December 3, 2004 - link
No information as to "color accuracy". Maybe this device would be useful?****************************
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Peter - Friday, December 3, 2004 - link
Or does the Anandtech high-tech lab not feature such an old fashioned tool like a wooden stick with a scale on it?http://emoties.murphology.com/strips/displayimage....
Peter - Friday, December 3, 2004 - link
... and I had said exactly that in #14 already. No correction so far? Boo...