Need a new monitor

[Steve H]

I'm looking for a new monitor. My wife took over my 19" Sony LCD that I have had for the past two years. The CRT she had was too much glare, as she had a stroke on her optic nerve back in Janunary. The LCD is easier on her eyes. I would like to go with another LCD in the 19 - 20" range and keep it under $500.00 Any suggestions?

[Bogy]

I've got 3 Sonys, and I'm typing this while looking at my mom's Dell. They all look good. We like our Sonys, but we have had them for over a year, so they have been superceded by new models. The things we looked for were the response time, the brightness, and the contrast. What we got has a response time of 8 ms. My son and I play games on ours, and so we wanted to make sure the LCDs could keep up with gameplay. We used the internal video on the motherboard at first, until the PCIe boards had a little more development. With the better boards the graphics are really great, but even with the internal video we had no real problems. I would think that anything with that resonse or less would be good. I see lots of choices in the 19" range with good numbers for the price you want to spend. We went to a couple of stores and compared monitors. You can compare numbers, and listen to what other people like, but I think it is still somewhat subjective. A picture that one person likes is not what another one can stand.

[Steve H]

I'm not too worried about "speed". I do a lot of digital photo stuff so I do want good contrast & color. I know that whatever I get I will have to calibrate but that is not a big deal.

[Bogy]

I'm not too worried about "speed". I do a lot of digital photo stuff so I do want good contrast & color. I know that whatever I get I will have to calibrate but that is not a big deal.
Are you sure about the need to calibrate? That is one of the nice things with a digital monitor. Just for giggles I went through all the test patterns on mine, and changed VERY little. The very slight changes I made could very well been due to my own poor eyesight, not the display on the monitor. The monitors were good out of the box. OTOH, the CRT I use in my office, a 17" Viewsonic that is just a few years old, has to be adjusted fairly frequently.

As far as speed, or response time, when I posted before I was on my mom's computer. She has a 17" Dell analog lcd, with a 12 ms response time. She is also using the video card built into the motherboard, as opposed to the dedicated card I am using currently. I also have a gig of RAM on board, while she has 512 meg, and when I was using the on board video I had 256 meg dedicated to video, so we aren't comparing apples to apples. But even when I was using the on board video I never had the delayed effects I did last night. My daughter is in the Peace Corps in Kenya, and just found out she will be stationed at Sio Port, on Lake Victoria, at the end of her training. I was using Google Earth and World Wind to locate and explore where that was. These are programs that can test a video card and monitor. I can't say where the slowdown was for sure, but it was definitely there. This morning I was downloading some pictures to print out for her, and had some similar effects. Once the stuff gets processed, the picture is great, but getting there can take a little longer. Its your decision, but unless you are looking at a monitor with a slow response time that otherwise has tremendous contrast and color, I wouldn't ignore the response time. The cost is not that much different.

[Nick]

This Viewsonic 20" LCD TFT at Buy.com looks like a very good deal.

ViewSonic VG2021M - 20" Multimedia LCD TFT Display - 1400x1050 SXGA+, 500:1, 8ms (http://www.buy.com/prod/viewsonic_vg2021m_20_multimedia_lcd_tft_display_14 00x1050_500_1_8ms/q/loc/101/202507653.html)

$284.95

[Richard King]

http://www.buy.com/prod/Acer_Value_Line_AL2017_bmd_LCD_Monitor_20_LCD_Acti ve_Matrix_TFT_0/q/loc/62329/202474134.html
20" Acer $239. Not a bad deal.

[Steve H]

Thanks for the help. I wish there was a store in Southern Utah where I could compare more than 2 or 3 different brands.

[Cholly]

I have an 8 ms. Viewsonic 19 inch LCD and a 12 or 16 ms. Rosewill 19" LCD. Both are excellent monitors with no stuck pixels. IMHO you can't go wrong with an 8 ms. monitor from either of these tow manufacturers or Samsung. I got mine from www.newegg.com -- which I highly recommend. Of course, Dell and Sony both make very good monitors as well.

[Laverne]

I'm still happy with my Samsung 19" SyncMaster 930B. :) (Although quite a bit cheaper now at Sam's than what I paid for it over a year ago..) Richard, don't you have this monitor also? :grin:

[Steve H]

I have been seeing that a lot of the monitors that I have looked at on line have a "D-sub" input. Can anyone tell me what that is?

[DonLandis]

VGA 15 pin high density connector. Its the traditional connection for computers in the PC era. Many computer monitors today also have DVI.

The name d-sub comes from the shape of the connector being a D shape.

[cdru]

D-Sub/VGA/etc type connectors are analog.
DVI connectors are digital

D-Sub-only monitors are often cheaper then dual input or DVI-only.

I'd take a look around Fatwallet or Slickdeals to see if there are any "specials" going on right now. You should be able to find a pretty good 19" or 20" for 1/2 your budget amount.