All you need to know... (Buyers Guide: Computer monitors)

Member Name: Technical Tobes

Product:	Buyers Guide: Computer monitors
Date:	13/05/01 (6121 review reads)
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● LAST UPDATED: 07/08/2001 ●

The monitor is one of the most important and most expensive parts of your PC, both in terms of being able to use it and use it comfortably.

Since you’re gonna by spending a fair bit of time staring at it while writing dooyoo opinions and reading mine (!) you will want to make sure that you get a good one.

There is quite a difference between good and bad monitors, get a bad one and you could end up getting bad headaches and/or eyestrain. Not everybody realises that a monitor can have this affect – until it’s too late!

There are currently two main types of computer monitor on the market, CRT and Flat panel or TFT (Thin Film Transistors/Technology) LCD (Liquid Crystal Display). CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) monitors are by far the most common and cheap option. Flat panels are however, much nicer, smaller but a lot lot more expensive.

First then, I will deal with the CRT monitors, there is a lot to consider for this type of monitor, here are the things to consider when buying a CRT monitor...



◦◊◊◊ MONITOR SIZE / PRICE ◊◊◊◦
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The size of a monitor is the most important part of choosing a monitor and has the most bearing on price; here is your selection and price guide...

● 14” : £75 - £90 (£15 spread)
● 15” : £90 - £130 (£40 spread)
● 17” : £130 - £270 (£140 spread)
● 19” : £200 - £400 (£200 spread)
● 21” : £500 - £750 (£250 spread)
● 22” : £600 - £900 (£300 spread)
● 24” : silly money! (£1,250+)

Forget about getting a 14”, these have been
pretty much discontinued now. Come to think of it, unless you’re very hard up, don’t bother with a 15”er either. (I know, there are 101 jokes to be made there!).

I would recommend either a 17” or 19”, there is a fair old price jump above that, although gamers, or graphic designers etc may want to opt for that extra bit of desktop real estate

There are some things to bear in mind however when deciding on the size of monitors you want; these are...

● Actual Screen Size ●
Manufacturers still insist on quoting the tube size as opposed to the actual visible screen size of a monitor, few actually quote the visible size as well – which can vary considerably.

In general the viewable size of a monitor is about 1 inch less that it’s tube size, thus a 19” monitor is about 18” viewable, a 17”, 16” viewable and so on. This should be considered a good benchmark or rule of thumb, any less is bad any more is good, but and inch less than stated is fine!

● Physical Size ●
The physical size of a large monitor can get very big, especially in depth so make sure you have the space to fit the monitor on your desk, and at a comfortable distance.

● Weight ●
The bigger the monitor, the heavier – and believe me, they can get very heavy. Make sure your desk is strong enough to support its weight, a lot of the cheap and cheerful desks are not.

● Heat ●
Monitors (CRT ones anyway) are renowned for giving off a lot of heat, and again, the bigger the monitor, the more heat it will generate. You’ll be amazed at how well this can heat up a room and in the summer this effect is even more noticeable. You can literally cook eggs on some of the larger monitors, so a well-ventilated area is best for these.

As you may have noticed from the prices above, there is a fair spread in price for ea
ch size monitor and that spread gets bigger, the bigger the monitor. This price difference can be explained by quality, the aspects of which I will go into in the following sections. At the end of the day, we all want the biggest we can afford and accommodate, however I would strongly advise against going for the cheaper end of each market for each sized monitor as quality really does rule of quantity (or size in this case!).



◦◊◊◊ MONITOR SCREEN TYPE ◊◊◊◦
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The type of screen used on a monitor is what makes for the majority of the spread in prices mentioned above, in the last section.

There are basically two types of screen used in today’s CRT monitors; these are...

● Curved ●
Found at the lower end of the price range, this is the old-fashioned type CRT display that, surprisingly, curves out at the corners. This makes for distortion, usually a less crisp image and glare is more of a problem.
Although not necessarily a crap monitor in the sense of the other qualities described later in this opinion, a non-curved one is certainly preferable.

● Flat Screen ●
Not too be confused with TFT LCD panels, flat screen CRT’s come under several different aliases (due to the manufacturers) all effectively the same thing (a flat screen!). Here’s what you find them called (note: some of these are used when referring to TFT flat panels screens too)...

▪ FST screen
▪ Trinitron
▪ DiamondTron
▪ FlatTron
▪ DynaFlat

Out of these, the Trinitron (devised by Sony) is probably the best, best known and most desirable.

Flat screen monitors get
rid of the disadvantages of the curved screen counterparts, and offer a crisper, less distorted display with less glare. The only disadvantage is that you may notice a fine honeycomb grid across the screen. This is down to how the monitors work and you quickly find that you just don’t notice it, the advantages of a flat display far outweigh the barely noticeable mesh on the screens – honest!

So, overall, a flat screen monitor is much preferred and will give a much better quality display.



◦◊◊◊ REFRESH RATES / RESOLUTION ◊◊◊◦
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This is another very important aspect of a good monitor, for those who don’t know, the refresh rate is the frequency in which the screen is redrawn (measured in Hz (hertz)) and the resolution is basically the amount of stuff that can be displayed on screen, basically how big your Windows desktop is (although paradoxically, things look smaller at a bigger resolution!).

In all cases, the minimum refresh rate you want to provide a good flicker free display is 85Hz (some say 80Hz – ignore them!). 75Hz and you will notice slight flicker, 60Hz and you will be reaching for your sick bowl! Any more than 85Hz is good, I always like 100Hz but to be honest it doesn’t make any noticeable difference. So, in any resolution you want to run, 85Hz is the minimum – it’s the law ok! (unofficial made up law!)

Here are the recommended resolutions and maximum recommended resolutions for each monitor size (those of you with bionic eyes may prefer even larger!)...

● 15” : 640x480 / 800x600
● 17” : 800x600 / 1024x768
● 19” : 1024x
768 / 1280x1024
● 21” : 1280x1024 / 1600x1200
● 22” : 1600x1200

...therefore, you should ensure that the monitor you purchase can support these resolutions at a refresh rate of at least 85Hz. This is where paying that bit more money helps quite a lot. In general, all but the really crap monitors will support the recommended resolution at 85Hz, but a fair few drop to 75Hz at the higher recommended resolution. 75Hz really does make me feel queasy, so I really would not recommend these! The bigger the margin above 85Hz, the better!

Unfortunately, it is frequently not made easy to discover this information. Looking through some ads I can see that often manufacturers either state the highest resolution possible which normally has a pants refresh rate or their own recommended resolution – which gives no hint to what other resolutions may give (oh, and often would give health and safety people a heart attack – 1600x1200 @ 78Hz on a 17” monitor, I feel sick already!!!). The one that did give good info was Taxan, unfortunately for them, it revealed that their monitor only just hit the grade!

● TIP ●
You can adjust your monitors refresh rate from within Windows, this can give you an idea of what I mean about flicker, here’s how...
▪ Right click anywhere on your Windows Desktop.
▪ Select ‘Properties’.
▪ Click on the ‘Settings’ tab.
▪ Click on ‘Advanced’.
▪ Click on either ‘Adapter’ or ‘Monitor’ (varies with Windows version).
You should see a list of refresh rates, ‘Optimal’ is often selected. Try setting a low refresh rate and see how much flicker you get, some monitors are worse than others!

NOTE: Please consult your monitors documentation for the maximum refresh rate supported before setting a high refresh rate – although 99
% of monitors will just display a blank screen if not supported, it has been known for this to damage monitors – particularly older monitors.



◦◊◊◊ DOT PITCH ◊◊◊◦
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Although not amazingly important these days and it won’t make a great noticeable difference to screen quality or price, it’s still worth a quick mention.

The dot pitch, sometimes referred to as aperture grille pitch is measured in mm (millimetres) and refers, basically, to the distance between each dot on the screen (more specifically, the distance between the nearest phosphor dots of the same colour – it gets complicated, check out...
◦ http://www.csf.org.uk/csf/dot-pitch/dotpit.htm ◦
...if you really want all the details!). The smaller, the better, crisper image you’ll get.

Overall, 0.24mm / 0.25mm dot pitch is a good figure to look out for, ranging up to 0.28 / 0.29 at worst. 15” monitors will frequently have higher values, although good quality ones will still be down around the 0.25mm mark.



◦◊◊◊ OTHER CONSIDERATIONS ◊◊◊◦
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Well, I’ve covered all the important bits of choosing a good monitor and should stress that they should be considered much more important than anything I say here.

So what are the other considerations you should bear in mind when choosing a monitor...

▪ Obviously, its appearance! There a
re some darn ugly monitors out there but also some really stylish ones. Beware however, style often lacks quality and feature in the computer market.

▪ Screen controls. All new monitors offer onscreen display, having a full set of controls will help adjust your monitor to perfection.

▪ Built in speakers? Many monitors offer built in speakers, these are gonna be basic tinny things (i.e. crap), but will do the job if you’re not into games or, err, music!

▪ Built in USB ports? Some of the more featured monitors boast a built in USB hub, this can be very handy if you’ve got a few USB devices (i.e. for quickly plugging in digital cameras etc).

▪ Warranty! Monitors very rarely go wrong, testimony to this is the fact that most manufacturers offer a generous 3-year onsite warranty, you don’t wanna RTB (Return To Base) warranty with a huge great monitor! Worth checking for, particularly for larger screens.

▪ A small, but good point is: does the monitor have a separate cable (the one that plugs from the monitor to computer)? If anything is going to go wrong with a monitor, 8 times out of 10 it's because of a dodgy cable. If the monitor cable is built directly into the monitor – you’re stuffed, otherwise you can go buy another one and problem is solved!

You will see countless other pretty pointless statements with the monitor advertising. Examples are plug and play compatible – all new monitors are! TCO99/95 standard (safety and efficiency standards), PC and Mac compatible. None of these things make any difference to the monitor in general!

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Well, that’s CRT monitors done and dusted! And there you were
thinking, I’ll just go and buy a new monitor, erm, that ones looks nice. And now I’ve just complicated things a whole lot! Still, at least you’re gonna end up with a decent monitor now – providing you’ve taken all this onboard!




Next up, Flat panel or TFT LCD monitors! Don’t worry, this bit is gonna be a lot briefer – honest! Here goes...



◦◊◊◊ MONITOR SIZE / PRICE ◊◊◊◦
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TFT screen prices are a bit silly and on a rather exponential scale. That said, they have dropped dramatically in the last few months, particularly for the 15” size. The reason for such high prices over traditional monitors is due to the failure rate of manufacturer, screens often end up with ‘dead pixels’ (i.e. dots that do not light up), if too many pixels are ‘dead’, the whole screen has too be chucked away. The bigger the screen, the more chance of ‘dead pixels’ and the higher the failure rate and it’s this that the higher prices compensate (along with the desirability factor). As manufacturing processes improve and demand increases the failure rate and thus price should drop, as they have done so recently.

Here’s a price guide, although prices are liable to vary considerably over time...

● 15” : £350 - £700 (£350 spread)
● 17” : £700 - £1,200 (£500 spread)
● 18” : £1,200 - £2,100 (£900 spread)
● 21/22” : £3,000 - £5,000 (£2,000 spread)

If you’ve just fainted, I do apologise! As you can see, unless you’re very wealthy, 15” is the only real option – and even that
’s a bit expensive! If you do have the cash for the bigger screens consider researching into projector and plasma displays too as these fall into this kind of price range.

Here are the things to consider when you go to purchase one of these stylish sexy status symbols...

▪ Fixed Resolution ▪
Flat panel TFT LCD screens have a pre-defined fixed resolution, 1024x768 for a 15” model. Although the vast majority of new models have the options to stretch or shrink different resolutions to fit, it will never have the same quality.

▪ Ghosting ▪
Although getting much better, all flat panel displays suffer from ghosting due to the slower redraw speed of LCDs (i.e. similar to enabling mouse trails in Windows). This makes for poor video / gaming performance.

▪ Digital vs Analogue Input ▪
Digital input is better, but is not much use if your graphics card does not provide digital output (most do not), so check before you buy!

▪ Viewing Angle ▪
Has been a problem for years with flat LCD screens, you ideally have to be looking straight at the screen or the image will fade away until invisible! A wide viewing angle will help, so look for something around 120˚ to 140˚ if possible, the more the better!

▪ Viewing Size ▪
Although, less of a problem with TFT screens, the viewable size does vary slightly. The good news is that, the actual size is correctly stated unlike with most CRT type monitors. Look out for 15.1”, 17.4”, 18.1” as these are the most common slightly bigger versions!

▪ ‘Dead’ Pixels ▪
As mentioned before, LCDs often have the odd ‘dead’ pixel, the manufacturer’s determine how many can be and where on the screen before the panel is discarded – and they write this into the warranty. This being, it not uncommon for a new panel to have the
odd ‘dead’ pixel somewhere. If one appears and it’s very close to the edge then it’s unlikely to be covered under warranty so you won’t be able to claim that it’s faulty – even though it may well be irritating to you! Try and see it up and running before you buy to minimize this risk.

▪ Other Features ▪
As with the CRT monitors, look out for built in speakers and other extras, auto adjusting screens and digital smoothing functions. A swivel stand is very hand on this type of monitors given the restricted viewing angle. Make sure you get a good warranty too, onsite if at all possible!

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Well that’s me all done on flat panels too, if anyone wants to donate one to me, feel free!

If you have the money, get a Sony monitor – they are top notch. Avoid makes like Belina and LG – they are not so good. Good luck with choosing your new monitor!



Well, I appear to have run out of stuff to say now (oi – I heard that!), so it’s time to bring this opinion to a close.
I hope it’s proved of use to you (‘very useful’ I hope!), feel free to leave any comments. I’ve taken note of previous comments about the layout and hopefully this is getting near perfection now!?!

Cheers, Tobes
(© 2001).

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