LCD Monitor

[[JiF][AARP]Tissueman]

I've still got a beast of a 17 inch CRT sitting on my desk. I'd like to get a LCD monitor, but it's all so confusing. Is there a simple guide somewhere? I've been looking at Acer, Samsung and Viewsonic. I'd like a widescreen 19 or 20 inch that supports games, but doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I've been looking at Sam's Club and Newegg stuff.

[[JiF][AARP]Grimp]

I like my Samsung. Very clear and bright. Widescreen can be an issue with BF stuff, but I got use to it. That's about the extent of my help

[[JiF]corn]

I just bought this one for my kids and it was good price.
I never had any problems with Fry's rebates, but any savings may be eaten up by shipping costs.

http://shop2.outpost.com/%7B3qJS9cqKcUz ... IN_RSLT_PG

This is what i use,not sure if they make it anymore.

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Widescree ... 907&sr=8-1

I try to compromise between price and quality.

Newegg may have a better price.

[[JiF][AARP]Grimp]

That Samsung is if not the same very close to the one I have. Never lost a pixel yet.
I did have to send mine in for swap because it freaked and started buzzing when I plugged both DVI and VGA into my graphics card at the same time.
I don't know if the card caused it, the monitor, or the cable, but I was very surprized at how well Samsung handles the swaps. They give you a lot of options and don't charge you for shipping. I choose not to have mine repaired and just got a refurb swap which I then had to swap again because it had issues. All in all they make it quite easy on the website to do and keep track of the warranty period via your serial number. Probably the best return policy and proceedure I have had to deal with in a long time that involved shipping. Even when I called them they were easy to deal with. I have since been afraid to use the DVI on this particular monitor/vid card combination though.
I know it may sound like I had a lot of problems with mine, but I am really happy with it. It was awful having to go back to an CRT when it was out of service.

[[JiF]Brick]

I recently bougth a 22" widescreen AOC Envision for about $230.
I ended up also having to get a new video card too because the Geforce 5 series card the PC had did not support the resolution of the widescreen.
This was for a client to be used with some software I wrote that needed the screen real estate, so I don't know what the performace would be for gaming.
However, I did watch a video on it as was not impressed.

About a year ago, I bought a Viewsonic 22" for about $400 which I use with a KVM every day. I have been happy with it, and it performs well with the Geforce 6600 card in my gaming box.

As with most things, you get what you pay for.

Cnet and Zdnet have some pretty good reviews that explain what all of the specs mean. I would do some research and see what the gamer sites have to say. Watch out for the resoultion compatibilty issue I mentioned above.

[[JiF]KellysHero]

I'm in the hunt for a new LCD monitor and have been looking quite a bit of research. There are a few different types of panels out there and each has their pro's and con's.

Here's a pretty good breakdown. http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1039222

Boiling down the above and generalizing a bit, most panels out there that are inexpensive are the TN's. They will have fast response times, but for that you give up viewing angle, color reproduction, and some black levels. The higher priced ones use IPS/S-IPS, MVA etc... They are a bit slower in response time, but give better color and blacks.

Currently microcenter has some acer monitors on sale. The 20" widescreen is $179 after rebate and it's a TN. They also have a 20" Samsung 206BW that is 249 after rebate. Both use the TN screens and the Samsung has a lot of great reviews on newegg, 90%+ either excellent or good.

I had a dell 20" regular aspect screen that just went bad. It was the S-IPS version and I had no issues with ghosting and colors were great. I'm a bit hesitent to step down to a TN based panel, but if I do it'll be the Samsung. It maybe the newer TN panels are going to be better so there won't be a drop off in performance. The Dell is definitely pricey but does have the higher end panel in it.

The acer.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... AL2016WBbd

The samsung.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... &Tpk=206bw

The dell.
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/prod ... u=320-4688

Also, these run at 1680 x 1050, so make sure your video card supports that resolution. And when getting to the higher resolutions, it takes a beefier video card to power them.