LCD madness

[Kooldino]

I'll take Anad's word over some guy on a random forum. I've read too many reviews about little shortcomings on LCDs...including dead pixels that would drive me nuts. I won't touch them for at least a year...but within 2 years, it will likely be the standard, as they'll be "there" technology wise.

[The PIT]

Only ever seen one dead pixel so it isn't a major prob.
It's only now that reviewers have started looking at the response times rather than saying LCD's are CRT replacement GET ONE NOW.

[VJ]

I must say I notice dead/hot pixels on virtually every desktop LCD I have encountered (Compaq, Neovo, Philips, ...). While it is not such a big deal, I feel that if you buy something, it should be perfect...

GNEP also has a very good point, many LCD displays can be addressed in 16 bit, but don't display that depth. Esp. in photo-editing, this seems important to me. A bit (no pun intended) related is the fact that few LCDs still have a very uniform brightness, many tend to be brighter in the center.

So personally, I see too many cons for me for getting an LCD, but I can imagine other people have other needs.


Jörg

[GNEP]

Horses for courses...

[Seaspray]

Have no fear of LCD

Have no fear of LCD screen output. As a user I can tell you that the advantages way outweigh the disadvantages. Actually the only disadvantage now is price. Sure there may be cheaper screens out there that aren't so good but you get what you pay for and if you're prepared to shell out for a top quality 17-18" screen you won't regret it.

Brightness is now uniform and miles better than any CRT, plus suffers much less from reflection. Viewing angles are miles better than they used to be (to the point where its no longer an issue). A response time of <25ms is more than good enough, unless maybe you are one of those people who notices the difference between 100fps and 120fps in Quake 3, if so good luck to you.

The sharpness and brightness has to be seen, plus you got DVI input so no more worrying about the analog output quality of your video card. If you are not interested in the aesthetics or the space saving because you've got loads of room, and you already got a top notch CRT then you are very lucky, it may not be worth the expense for you.

All I can say is the TFT looks fantastic in the living room, everyone that comes round to my house always says "wow thats cool" and is totally blown away by the picture when I turn it on.

I have read that if you do a lot of work where colour reproduction is critical, maybe pro photo editing, image work or graphics then a TFT is not so good, but I can't really comment because I have't tried that myself.

I've had mine for 6 months and I can't see any dead pixels, but again maybe I'm not fussy enough, or maybe I'm just lucky.

UT2003 looks just fantastic @ 1200x1024x32, haven't tested Q3 but if anyone wants me to I will.

Of course its only one persons opinion but for what its worth, this is the best upgrade I ever bought for my pc.

Cheers

Jon

[The PIT]

I've got a Samsung 181T with a quoted 25ms response time. Now whether that means a combined rise and fall time or a rise and fall time of 25ms for both isn't clear. What I can say about it it's no good for gaming far to slow. You can use it for DVD just.
I love it for general usage word processing web browsing as theres no blurry text to look at due say in one corner of the screen due to misconvergance. No more headaches with this monitor. They've also given us flat screens at work what a differance.
Now if the 25ms response includes the both the rise and fall time than I would say a time of 15ms should be good enougth.

[Paulr]

Now these are the kind of reviews I like to read
It's all well and good reading reviews on sites and the like and yes I do listen to them and to a degree they do influence me.
However nothing can come close to somebody actually using the said item everyday of the week - they are the people who will point out problems, issues and the like.

I've still got time to change my mind, the Hitachi 16ms (combined) units are still not available and probably wont be untilt he end of next week now, so that's a week for me to read a review from a user who says they are absolutely terrible!