Best 19in LCD Screen?

[Freefall]

Is there such a thing? It's not for me, but for a friend. He's been looking at a Sony and Samsung model (don't know which models) but the Samsung has a 25ms response time....which seems a bit high for gaming. Is there any other brands he should be looking at? I don't really know what all to look for in a monitor nor does he, but I know the lower the response time the better. I know CRT's are good, but he wants an LCD. Any recommendations? Thanks in advance.

Freefall

[jong2k4]

I'm not familiar with any 19" models, but I DO know that in making a monitor choice it's very helpful to go into a store and try it out. Preferably a store where they know how to turn off the demo video and let you REALLY try the monitor out, but those are few and far between. There's a lot of factors that make a monitor good besides the specs- how it's mounted, what the border looks like, what kind of controls you have in the monitor's adjustment menu (although that's more important for CRTs I think.) If you're anything like me you're going to be staring at your monitor for quite a lot of hours every day so it really does help if it's stylish. Also, the specs can be misleading, and monitors that manage a fast response time in tests might not manage those same response times under real usage conditions- there was a thread about this pretty recently, search around and you should find it. Finally, ordering online you can only return the monitor if a certain number of pixels or more is dead... if you look in-store, you can ask them to take out the actual monitor from the box that you are going to buy and inspect it for dead pixels right then and there.

If you find a good 19" LCD let me know... right now I'm in the market for a 17" but if I saw a good 19" I might be persuaded to upgrade my dreams.

[RJ]

but the Samsung has a 25ms response time....which seems a bit high for gaming.

Nope. 25ms is a very good response time. Under 50ms it's ok, under 30 it's very good. The problem is that this response time is only the minimum response time. A time you will likely never get in real.
And since it is only a minimum, there also must be a maximum. But of course, it's not mentioned, because it'd be bad for marketing. So, the advertised response time is only a guide. It's relevance for gaming is practically none, but you can use it along with the panel technology to find out the other response times, and this is how:
Check what panel technology is being used. There are TN / TN+Film, IPS / S-IPS, MVA / PVA.

If the panel type is TN or IPS, it will be good. The usual response times won't be much higher than 25ms. . they'd be 30ms, 40ms. . something like this. Only for a very small amount of colors it can be up to 2.5 times as high as the minimum, which would be about 60ms. Since it's only for a few colors, you will also seldom get 60ms out of that panel. Usually you'll get something like around 30ms to 40ms, which are good response times.

Now the MVA/PVA technology is far worse. It is not a good technology for gaming. The maximum response time can be up to 4x as high as the minimum one, and that applies to 1/3 of all possible colors. And that is pretty much.
So, the maximum response time in this case would be 100ms, which is extremely slow. Gaming with 100ms is just no joy. And for about 1/3 of the colors you'll get high response times like 70, 80 or even more ms. A friend of mine has a 19" MVA panel. . . with black on brown he gets 3" trails. I reckon that are the colors where his panel has a response time of 100ms. It's awful.

So, basically: 25ms are fine if the panel is not MVA or PVA.

And yep, the lower the response time is, the better. But keep in mind that this applies to all response times, not just the one you read in the datasheets (which is only the minimum).

Besides the response time and panel type, you should also look at these specs:

Size: A TFT monitor can use the entire size to display the picture, unlike a CRT. Therefore a TFT with the same size as a CRT will have a bigger picture. A 15" TFT equals a 17" CRT, a 17"/18"TFT equals a 19" CRT and so on.

Resolution: TFTs have a fixed resolution, which is called the native resolution. Only when using that resolution the picture will be sharp and crisp. Otherwise it won't be that sharp. It's 1024x768 for 15", 1280x1024 for 17"-19", and 1600x1200 for 20".
So you can also see that 17", 18" and 19" TFT have the same resolutions, and therefore their only difference is the size of the picture, but not its resolution. IMHO the picture on the 17" is too small, therefore 18" has always been my favourite. But well, that's a personal thing. Pick the one you like best.

Brightness: Usually 200 to 250cd/m². That is also enough. There are some TFTs who have more, but they'd be probably too bright. Just for comparison: A CRT has a max. brightness of about 120cd/m².
I guess they make brighter TFTs to create a good marketing contrast ratio.

Contrast Ratio: Minimum should be 300:1, and the more, the better. It's a measurement of contrast. 300:1 means that the white light is 300x brighter than the black one. The background light is always shining, so when a pixel opens, all the light can come through. But if it closes, it can't block the light completely, a little bit will still pass through, and therefore the black is not "true" black, but a bit brighter. Now the better the TFT, the less light it will let pass through, therefore the black becomes more real, and since the white light doesn't change, the contrast ratio gets better.
But this 300:1 being the minimum is only for normal brightnesses like 200 to 250cd/m². If you get a TFT with ultra hight brightness, of course the contrast ratio can be higher, like 500:1 or 600:1, but that's only because the white light is brighter, not because the black is more real. So that's a marketing trick.

Connection: DVI is the only real connection for a TFT. Unfortunately, many cheap ones don't have it. Technically, TFTs with VGA are nonsense, but well, the picture will still be good. Not as good as with DVI, but if you can't afford one with DVI, don't worry too much, the picture via VGA is also pretty good.

Colors: The TFT must support 16.7million colors (true color). If it supports less, it will have a bad effect on the response time. It will quite often double, because non-supporting colors have to be interpolated.

Viewing angle: This is also more a personal preference. IMHO 150°/140° is the minimum. More is better.

RJ