Help With Buying Lcd Monitor

[kkf123]

I would like to buy a 20inch-ish Flat Screen LCD monitor. I figure Pantip is the best place to look.

I need minimum resolution of 1600x1200

Here are some examples

Does anyone know where I can get one of these models in Pantip?

[Florin]

You could get a widescreen 20'' ACER Ferrari for about 22.900...20 inchers are still a bit pricey, I saw a DELL 19'' (just 1280x1024, but with DVI and USB) for 14.000...also, now is not the best time to buy if you could wait a little more, the Chinese New Year has driven prices up for stuff like this.

Try Fortune IT Mall as well, the DELL I mentioned can be found there...

[penzman]

To give you an idea on price, we got an Acer 19 in. LCD for 12 000 baht in Sri Racha. 1280x1024

[Abandon]

check the refreash rate - I read that some models have a low refresh rate making games and movies slightly jerky.

Nicest picture quality I have seen is the Apple, the Samsung and the Sony

You can get all these in Pantip. I found that one or two of the other computer centres are quite a bit more expensive than Pantip for these monitors.

Edited January 27, 2006 by Abandon

[dekka007]

I would get the Apple 20" Cinema Display from MiniMAC on the 3rd floor good company to deal with. No bull shit as they have branches in Fortune as well.

The Cinema Display in my opinion is the best looking of all 20" LCD's and has 15ms response time.

Downside its a pricey bit of kit. But if you have the cash go for the 23" Cinema Display High Definition.

[Florin]

check the refreash rate - I read that some models have a low refresh rate making games and movies slightly jerky.

You mean the response time, not the refresh rate...actually pretty much all new LCD monitors don't have an issue with that, any response time under 16ms is fine.

[Abandon]

DO I ? I thought that it was the refresh rate as in how many times a second the display is refreshed. I don't recall hearing about a response time ... what exactly does that mean?

I don't have an LCD yet so am not completely sure about them. I have the cash ready to buy one, but this old 17 inch monitor just keeps on going and going. I want it to die on me so I can justify getting a new one.

edit:

"At the moment, a CRT screen is more suitable than an LCD screen for the playing of motion graphics such as are in games and video. This is because LCD technology is not yet as rapid as CRT technology at refreshing the screen, the technical term for which is the refresh rate for a CRT monitor - the frequency at which the screen is redrawn, in Hertz (Hz), or cycles per second. At refresh rates below 70Hz, most people can see the screen flicker, which causes them eye-strain.

Strictly speaking, the refresh rate for an LCD monitor is called its pixel response time, because LCD technology doesn't refresh the screen in the same way as with a CRT monitor, but for the sake of convenience, I'll just call the process the refresh rate for both types of monitor. This is usually between 20 and 50 milliseconds. It is measured in milliseconds not Hz, as with CRT monitors. The lower the pixel response time, the faster the pixels refresh (turn off and on), making the screen update faster - an important factor for gamers. "

interesting site for lcd buyers ... http://www.pcbuyerbeware.co.uk/Monitor.htm though I guess that the technology improves pretty fast.

Edited January 27, 2006 by Abandon

[autonomous_unit]

DO I ? I thought that it was the refresh rate as in how many times a second the display is refreshed. I don't recall hearing about a response time ... what exactly does that mean?

The "refresh rate" is the rate at which new data is sent to the screen, putting an upper bound on the "frames per second". For most reasonable uses, nobody will notice 60 Hz (60 fps) being too slow... it is as fast as US television (other regions use 50 Hz) and over twice as fast as a film-projected movie. It is claimed that somewhere around 10-15 fps is the slowest you can go for "motion fusion" to perceive a sequence of images as motion. Some (but not all) people can tell the difference between film speed (24 fps) and 60 fps video.

The reason people want high refresh rates with CRTs is because the electron gun actually only "paints" the pixels as the data arrives. So, there is this one glowing spot on the screen that is racing along in a zig-zag fashion, and if it takes too long to get back around, you will notice the flicker of the screen going bright and then dim over and over. LCD displays do not have this problem. An LCD holds a constant color as long as the data is not changed. There is actually no reason to drive an LCD faster than 60 Hz, as it doesn't help flicker and it just slows down the graphics card (sending more data to the monitor per second means having less memory bandwidth left over for other purposes such as rendering the next graphics frame).

Response time in an LCD is how rapidly the pixel can change color when the data is changed by the computer. A 16 ms response time means that the LCD can just barely keep up with every change if the pixel is changing every frame at 60 Hz. Faster than 16 ms (smaller number) would mean that the screen more accurately portrays the moving pictures. The slower it is, the more "motion blur" and "ghosting" you will see. There is a similar issue with specialty CRTs that have either "fast" or "slow" phosphors. A slow phosphor keeps glowing for a while after the electron gun has moved on to another part of the screen. This helps reduce flicker, which is great for static text and images, but it means there is more ghosting where the old image is still glowing a little as the next image is being drawn, which is bad for full-motion images.

[penzman]

DO I ? I thought that it was the refresh rate as in how many times a second the display is refreshed. I don't recall hearing about a response time ... what exactly does that mean?

The "refresh rate" is the rate at which new data is sent to the screen, putting an upper bound on the "frames per second". For most reasonable uses, nobody will notice 60 Hz (60 fps) being too slow... it is as fast as US television (other regions use 50 Hz) and over twice as fast as a film-projected movie. It is claimed that somewhere around 10-15 fps is the slowest you can go for "motion fusion" to perceive a sequence of images as motion. Some (but not all) people can tell the difference between film speed (24 fps) and 60 fps video.

The reason people want high refresh rates with CRTs is because the electron gun actually only "paints" the pixels as the data arrives. So, there is this one glowing spot on the screen that is racing along in a zig-zag fashion, and if it takes too long to get back around, you will notice the flicker of the screen going bright and then dim over and over. LCD displays do not have this problem. An LCD holds a constant color as long as the data is not changed. There is actually no reason to drive an LCD faster than 60 Hz, as it doesn't help flicker and it just slows down the graphics card (sending more data to the monitor per second means having less memory bandwidth left over for other purposes such as rendering the next graphics frame).

Response time in an LCD is how rapidly the pixel can change color when the data is changed by the computer. A 16 ms response time means that the LCD can just barely keep up with every change if the pixel is changing every frame at 60 Hz. Faster than 16 ms (smaller number) would mean that the screen more accurately portrays the moving pictures. The slower it is, the more "motion blur" and "ghosting" you will see. There is a similar issue with specialty CRTs that have either "fast" or "slow" phosphors. A slow phosphor keeps glowing for a while after the electron gun has moved on to another part of the screen. This helps reduce flicker, which is great for static text and images, but it means there is more ghosting where the old image is still glowing a little as the next image is being drawn, which is bad for full-motion images.

You lost me there...

When I loook at my PLug and Play monitor settings I have 60, 70 and 75 Mhz available. Which one is better? The pc gets a lot of gaming as well.

[Florin]

If you're talking about the ACER you mentioned above, you won't see any difference between 60 or over, setting it to 70 or 75 would just put more strain on your graphics card.

The refresh rate for CRT monitors is relevant, 75-85 is optimal for one's eyes, but in the case of LCDs it makes no difference since technically speaking they don't have a "refresh rate" (different technology)...what does make a difference for LCDs is the factory-standard response time, which cannot be changed and is just listed in your monitor's specs...that's one of the main things to look for when buying one, and the lower it is, the better.

[JackFrost]

I just bought a 19" widescreen Acer from Pantip for 12,500. from the shop a few doors down from the Acer service centre at the top of the LONG escalator (rh side facing the front).

Most places that had what I wanted were the same price.

Works REALLY well for movies. Much better than my 2yo lcd.

The only thing I don't like about it is the seemingly flimsy stand - other than that it works great.

jack

[Jockstar]

I got a a BENQ 19' LCD. Cost 15,000 at Fortune. Got a response time of 8ms. No complaints here.