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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MAME - Tuesday, November 30, 2004 - link
thank god the dell 2001fp is the (2nd) best one here. I got it for $650 a few days ago on a whim. The reviews are kinda mixed but there's a 21 day return policy. Problem is, it's 21 days from the invoice and the expected shipping date would put the LCD in my hands AFTER that time. Thus, I couldn't return it even .1 seconds after receiving it :-/Alas, it seems the monitor is a good choice nonetheless and I should have decent product on my hands soon. My eyes can't wait!
Peter - Tuesday, November 30, 2004 - link
Because that's a barenaked LCD Panel, not a finished product?Azsen - Tuesday, November 30, 2004 - link
Hi, why does no-one have any information on this monitor:http://www.samsung.com/Products/TFTLCD/Monitors_n_...
19" 8ms response, 600:1 ratio
Peter - Tuesday, November 30, 2004 - link
Regarding the aspect ratio: If someone had taken the time to actually MEASURE, they would have found that all those LCD panels that sport a 1280x1024 resolution actually do measure 5:4, thus having correct aspect ratio at that resolution. Moot point, actually.(Running a CRT at 1280x1024 is wrongwrongwrong, though.)
Peter
ceefka - Tuesday, November 30, 2004 - link
#4 Jeff7181: LCD's use less power, take up less space (especially from 19" on) and produce less interference and heat. That times 2 if you are working with 2 screens. If a CRT works for you, then fine. It's not so much ignorance as it is choice.KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, November 30, 2004 - link
D0rkIRL: Thanks for the catch. Fixed.bookem dano: We know of the problem and we should have it fixed soon.
klah: I was only aware of Xbitlabs doing so. We feel that the methods for measuring reponse time thus far are OK, but not represent gray to gray response time measurements well. Its something we are working on and we will probably have a better methodology before the next roundup.
Kristopher
bookem dano - Tuesday, November 30, 2004 - link
For some reason while looking at this article, my cpu was pegged at 100%.I tried IE, Net, FIre, all same thing. Quite annoying.
carlivar - Tuesday, November 30, 2004 - link
OK so the tips at the beginning say to get a monitor with the correct aspect ratio such as 1280x960 resolution. I agree. Then all of the monitors reviewed (other than the Dell) have 1280x1024, which they specifically warn against.I know that most 19" LCDs are 1280x1024 but couldn't they at least have explained why this is?
And actually, why is this?! I don't understand the popularity of 1280x1024 instead of 1280x960! IT DOES NOT MAKE ANY SENSE.
Googer - Tuesday, November 30, 2004 - link
You will have to pry MY CRT from my cold dead hands before I let an LCD connect to my Graphics Card.klah - Tuesday, November 30, 2004 - link
"The TrTf response time is normally a pretty useless measurement - but it makes for an easy specification in which to market LCDs. "Why not provide us with a graphs of response times across the entire spectrum? There are at least 2 sites that do so now: X-bit and Tom's.