Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Rating The LCDs
Posted by Suhit Gupta in "ARTICLE" @ 10:00 AM
The Tech Report has an article reviewing seven top LCD monitors. The ones in the line up are Eizo FlexScan L795, the HP L1730, the HP L2035, the Philips 190B4CS, the Samsung 173MW, the Samsung 173T and the Sony HX93.
I personally use the ViewSonic VP201MB which is a 20" 1600X1200, 16ms refresh LCD monitor and it is fantastic. From reading the Tech Report article, the HP L2035 is probably closest to the one I use, although it is also the most expensive. The rest of the monitors all have maximum resolutions as 1280X1024 and 25ms refresh times. With 25ms refresh, the monitors are perfectly gaming worthy, however one may experience some ghosting on the screen. In my experience, this problem does not occur, or at least is hardly noticable, with a 16ms refresh screen.
It is because of this ghosting, streaking, etc. that some people into digital media have long had an aversion to LCD monitors. And this article certainly addresses some of these concern. "... eager to see how the screens dealt with more real-world ghosting and streaking. These artifacts are usually apparent when scrolling through light text on a black background, so I fired up HardOCP's front page for a few tests. In addition to scrolling through the front page, I also moved the entire browser window rapidly from left to right. As in our synthetic test, after-images were more visible on the brighter, bigger screens. Again, the HP L2035, with its 16 ms rated pixel response, led the way with the least visible streaking and ghosting, but even the quick flick of a scroll wheel would blur and discolor the text. Clearly, LCDs have a long way to go before ghosting and streaking is completely eliminated."
I personally use the ViewSonic VP201MB which is a 20" 1600X1200, 16ms refresh LCD monitor and it is fantastic. From reading the Tech Report article, the HP L2035 is probably closest to the one I use, although it is also the most expensive. The rest of the monitors all have maximum resolutions as 1280X1024 and 25ms refresh times. With 25ms refresh, the monitors are perfectly gaming worthy, however one may experience some ghosting on the screen. In my experience, this problem does not occur, or at least is hardly noticable, with a 16ms refresh screen.
It is because of this ghosting, streaking, etc. that some people into digital media have long had an aversion to LCD monitors. And this article certainly addresses some of these concern. "... eager to see how the screens dealt with more real-world ghosting and streaking. These artifacts are usually apparent when scrolling through light text on a black background, so I fired up HardOCP's front page for a few tests. In addition to scrolling through the front page, I also moved the entire browser window rapidly from left to right. As in our synthetic test, after-images were more visible on the brighter, bigger screens. Again, the HP L2035, with its 16 ms rated pixel response, led the way with the least visible streaking and ghosting, but even the quick flick of a scroll wheel would blur and discolor the text. Clearly, LCDs have a long way to go before ghosting and streaking is completely eliminated."
