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No matter what anyone tells you, size does matter. All the more so when youre talking about monitors; where the biggest, baddest monitors usually give you the best gaming and work experience. Thats why the 14, then the 15 monitors gave way so quickly to their larger brethren: Bigger is Better. With advances in technology, and decreases in production costs, even the largest monitors are now becoming affordable for the everyday household, and the office work environment. Who wants to work in 800x600 resolution when the kid next door is pushing polygons in 1280x1024? Especially if 19inch monitors are now fast approaching the point where we found 17inchers only a year or two ago. A pimped up system, with oodles of RAM, a Ghz CPU, and a shiny GeForce 3 isnt going to impress much when you dont have enough screen real estate. So isnt it time for an upgrade?
Theres always a balance between price and performance in every peripheral monitors are no exception. Here we decided to gun for those monitors that wont have your eyes bleeding in agony from low refresh rates and sappy colors. And at street prices below $550 each, they wont dry up 2 months rent either. In this first round, we took a look at bad boys from Samsung, Viewsonic, and Philips. All of them are Professional grade monitors, all of them are flat screen with 18.0 of beautiful viewable area, and they all pimp out rock solid 1600x1200 resolutions at 80Hz plus resolutions for images like you wouldnt believe.
How we tested
When it comes to monitors, its really only possible to do mostly subjective tests, though there are some objective tests that we performed in order to get a good idea of the technical capabilities of the monitors. For calibration and objective testing we used DisplayMate video calibration and testing software. For our subjective testing we used a variety of high resolution, high quality images of various styles and subjects, as well as still frame captures from popular games like Quake 3, Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Rune, and Heavy Metal FAKK.
In testing the monitors, we looked for things that would most concern the office professional and hardcore gamer. Such things as color saturation, color reproduction, screen geometry, convergence, text legibility, ease of use, and overall quality were most important to us. Were not CAD designers, and neither are most of you, so you will be purchasing these monitors for use in the very environments that we are testing in.
Specs
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http://www4.tomshardware.com/display/20020709/lcd-11.html
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1777&p=1
http://discuss.pcmag.com/pcmag/messages/?msg=18783.3
They compare some of the monitors and claims.
please help anybody
-Gxcad
(Btw all are 19")
KDS AV-195TF -
which is a pretty decent monitor good color, but kinda dark (atleast the instore model so who really knows..)
CPD-G400 -
Seems like a decent monitor, rather bright, I did see this one in the store btw, and it did look very nice. Well that is a saw a monitor based off the stuff (I believe), Best Buy had the 4 Port USB model instead of the Speaker model (CPD-G400).
Samsung SyncMaster 900NF -
I've only read reviews on this one, but from what I've heard it's a very good monitor, but again I just don't know.
Viewsonic P95f -
I read your review, and btw it is the only review out there on this monitor. From what is sounds you think that this is the best monitor out there? And is it brighter in than the Sony or as bright?
Basically, I'm looking for a good sharp, bright monitor, you know no fuzzy text, good for white and black. And some color of course, while I wont be staring a still pictures for life, I don't want to feel like I bought a mono-crome monitor either. Also, I wont be running any more than 1280 x 1024 well mostly so anything above that is irrelevant and extra features on the monitor doesn't matter.
Also, if it helps, I'm a college kid, which means I don't have a lot of money but I am willing to spurge and spend about $500 on this. While, I do play video games, I am spending increasingly more time programing and doing office work as well (gotta pay for that monitor some how). So that's why I'm looking for such a good all around monitor.
So, I'm kinda sensing that the Viewsonic P95F might just be the right one, but if it's darker than the Sony then I'm not quite so sure. And btw is it an Apiture grille? (my best guess is that it isn't).
I appreciate your help. Thanks again.
Thanks too for telling us about your experience with the "integrity" of Trinitron based tubes. I totally didn't know about that!!
integrity or 'straightness' of the horizontal scan.
I bought a Viewsonic, but the whole of the centre portion of the screen was pushed up. No controls
were provided to fix this problem! Amazing when you consider all the controls for vertical alignment
and linearity. At the bottom of the screen the centre portion is pushed up around 2mm and at the
top of screen the centre portion is pushed up, or bowed, around 1mm.
Unable to adjust this factor out, I tried several monitors of the same model (PF790 I think) and also
several other models by other manufacturers. Same problem to lesser or greater degrees.
Turns out this fault most normally occurs during shipment (don't ask me why!) and Viewsonic were
not very helpful when it came to opening the back of the case and making adjustments. In the end
I picked the least distorted display and thanked the store for their indulging me (CompUsa).
When reviewing a monitor it is very helpful to indicate what controls are available and especially
what controls are provided to adjust the horizontal bow (top and bottom) as these are most often
missing!
Just a thought, thanks for the review
All our street prices are obtained using our price search engine at http://prices.neoseeker.com.
Also, the prices for each of the products is linked in the article, on the left hand column, under the green link for prices. The prices I got from doing searches are as follows:
Philips 109P - lowest $383
Samsung 900NF - lowest $388
Viewsonic P95F - lowest $479
I am also being asked about the relative sizes of monitors.
Looking at the specs, the largest monitors are the Viewsonic and Samsung. The ViewSonic seemed to take up the most room though, or at least that's the perception I get from just eyeing the monitors.
Thanks for all the comments folks.