I bought my first LCD monitor some years ago, when the technology was in its infancy. Officeworks were advertising a special on 15 inch LG LCD monitors for the breakthrough price of $375, and replacing my old ADI CRT seemed like a good move – until I started using the LG. I found text hard to read and the general image quality disappointing. Within a couple of days I decided I hated it. I ended up taking the intruder back and getting a refund. Went to an auction and bought two second-hand Dell Trinitron 17 inch CRTs instead…for a mere $100 each!

This was the beginning of a blissful relationship, unfortunately truncated a few weeks ago, when one of my treasured twins died.

It didn’t take much investigation to realise that things had moved on in the world of LCD monitors since my unhappy encounter with the LG. CRT monitors are now all but obsolete, and LCD monitor prices have plummeted, especially in the last year or so. It made no sense to swim against the overwhelming LCD tide, so on the trail of the perfect LCD monitor choice I went.

After much web research – reviews, manufacturer websites and forums full of opinionated and mostly uninformed owners biased towards whatever LCD monitor they happened to own – I managed to confuse myself to a point of info-exhaustion. I developed the standard LCD buyer’s dead pixel paranoia, searching every corner of the web for buyer complaints on dead, dark or dull pixels for this, that and the other brand/model of LCD monitor. Laying my weary head to rest at night, I twitched and turned as terms like contrast ratio, dot pitch, HDCP compatible, response, brightness, dead pixel policy, TN panels and screen real estate paraded past like some abstract digital version of a merry-go-round. It was driving me nuts!

After one such disturbed night, I determined that I would not to do any more research on the Net. Rather, I would hit the local stores and trust my own judgement. It was time to see what all this theory and expert recommendation translated to in the real world.

It quickly became apparent that the range available locally was far smaller than that I had researched online. Further, most retailers were very slack in the presentation of their LCD monitors. Some, like Officeworks, didn’t even bother connecting their display models to power. Others had only one or two models plugged in for viewing and responded with expressions of extreme tedium when asked if they could demonstrate others they had in stock, but not on display. They filtered themselves out of contention with their attitude.

Harvey Norman had multiple connected monitors on display – a good store for comparison purposes. But their prices were exhorbitant: in some cases, $130+ higher than the smaller computer specialist stores. In the end, my bucks went to Austin Computers, of Osborne Park, for three reasons which are, in order:
1) they had a good range of monitors, and all models in stock were connected and operating side by side, running a loop of photographs that enabled direct comparisons of the images on display
2) their prices were amongst the lowest I could find and they have a price-matching policy
3) I’ve patronised them before and found them to be efficient and reliable.

So, what were my findings?

Owners of smaller LCD monitors might argue, but if you’re in the market now, don’t even think of buying anything smaller than 22 inches.

Why? 22 inches is the current price sweet spot. The monitor I ended up buying was $319. The cheapest 19 inch was only $65 cheaper – and the perceptual difference between 19 and 22 inches is formidable. 20 inch screens are betwixt and between, and many are more expensive than 22 inch monitors of equal or better quality. Further, my observations have led me to conclude that widescreen format does not work well in screen sizes less than 22 inches. In fact, if I had to go smaller than 22 inches, I would insist on the old 4:3 format (an endangered species, these days).

Next finding: there is bugger-all discernible difference in image quality between the most expensive and the budget 22 inch brands and models.

That is not to say there are no discernible differences at all – there are. The colour tones vary slightly, for example – and ALL are inaccurate. There’s a lot of guff bandied about on user forums and by reviewers who reverently refer to specs and technical tests that have no relevance whatever to actual viewing experience. Much fuss is made of the Samsung Syncmaster 226BW 22 inch monitor, for example, but I defy anyone to point out any visual aspects of the Samsung image that are superior to other, cheaper brands and models. Different perhaps, but superior? Not to my eyes.

There is a clear difference in the picture of a quality CRT compared with one of lesser quality. A Trinitron CRT, for example, is obviously superior to a run-of-the-mill model. You don’t have to be a buff with highly refined taste to notice – anyone can see the difference in an instant! The same does not apply to LCD technology. So why are LCD monitors like the Samsung 226BW “high-end” and priced accordingly? Partly branding. This thing is legendary. It will always appeal to people who want “the best”, and those people are well prepared to pay for the security and/or status of reputation. But that’s not the end of it.

The response time on the Samsung and other higher-end monitors is 2ms compared with 5ms on the mid-range and budget offerings. This is important for gamers, who want zero motion blur and instantaneous mouse click response. Super-fussy DVD viewers also care about response time, because in fast action sequences a slower response can result in slight motion blur. It should be kept in mind, though, that only a couple of years ago 5 ms was a blindingly fast state-of-the-art response rate that attracted prices of $1000+ for monitors smaller than 22 inches. Going back over some of those reviews, gamers were extolling the virtues of 5ms monitors, claiming zero motion blurring and zero mouse lag. Yet now we have resident forum experts sneering at the prospect of anything slower than 2ms.

I am not a gamer – maybe there is a significant difference in gaming experience in monitors with 2ms response. But I can assure you as a computer user whose needs are simply to work on spreadsheets or in programs like Word, to browse the web, email, participate in forum discussions, watch/listen to music clips and view the occasional DVD movie, any differences between 5ms and 2ms are not discernible. For people with my computing needs, then, this 5ms vs 2ms response thingo is a non-issue. Forking out an extra $100 for a feature that is indiscernible in real viewing terms is throwing away money.

Another feature that forum denizens and – less so – reviewers seemed to harp on about was HDCP compatibility. Without elaborating technically, if you have any intention of watching Blu-ray or HD DVD on your PC now or at some point in the future, HDCP support is a requirement. I thought about it and decided I watch DVDs so infrequently on my PC that this was not an issue for me. It’s not hard to find a mid-priced 22 inch LCD monitor with HDCP compatibility (see table below), so if you decide it’s a feature worth shelling out a few more bucks for, go for it.

OK, let’s cut to the chase. What did I choose and why? Once I had decided that there was bugger-all difference between the image quality of any of the available 22 inch monitors, it came down to warranty (most notably, defective pixel policy), price and cosmetics, in that order.

That brought the focus on to two contenders: the BenQ FP222W on special at $319 and the Chi Mei 221D (a critically lauded giant-killer that has caused so much fuss among reviewers and users that I couldn’t ignore it – especially at its price tag of $309). The warranties were both the standard 3 years, but the BenQ had a slightly better defective pixel policy – I decided in favour of the BenQ for that reason alone.

I have had the BenQ for a few weeks now. The verdict? Good, but with reservations – and I have no doubt that these reservations would apply to any of the LCD monitors I researched.

So what’s the good news?

Nice to have a 22 inch screen. Nice, not orgasmic. You hardly notice it after a while. And with the widescreen format, it really doesn’t look that large because it is not much deeper than my Dell 17 inch Trinitron – most of the extra screen real estate is in the width. When you want to compare or work on two documents side by side, the widescreen format comes into its own. But for standard web browsing, the extra size is not a big deal. Many websites are not even programmed for dynamic width, so you end up with a couple of thick blank vertical strips down either side of your screen with the website looking rather narrow in between, appearing no larger than on your old 4:3 screen. Even those sites that do sport flexible width can’t really take advantage of the extra side room because they still have to cater for the majority of users with 4:3 format monitors. The best they can offer is a bit of superfluous decoration at the sides, but all relevant content must remain within the parameters of the site proper, as viewable in 4:3 format.

More room on your desk is also a plus. LCD monitors are flat and light. A 22 inch CRT would be a backbreaking weight, with an encased body of electronics projecting way out the back, using up a lot of desk space.

NO FLICKER! That’s a real advantage of LCD technology. Less strain on the eyes…

BUT…and here’s the start of the negatives…

The screen is much brighter than a CRT, and that is not good for your eyes. I haven’t finalised my assessment on this yet, but my current sense is that I experience as much eye fatigue spending long hours on the BenQ as with the Dell Trinitron. Of course, you can adjust the brightness, but if you drop it below a certain threshold you lose colour tone and shading subtlety. It is not possible to lower the brightness to the level of a CRT while retaining good image and colour.

Text is significantly more difficult to read. There is no doubt about this – although you do become accustomed to LCD text presentation in time. You can enhance readability using Microsoft’s ClearType Tuner and by adjusting the LCD settings, but whatever the tweaks you make, you can’t get close to the text-comfort quality of a top CRT.

Accuracy of colour rendition on LCD computer monitors is way inferior to that of quality CRTs. This applies to the top-end as well as the budget end of the range. You won’t notice unless you are used to working with graphics programs on a CRT (as I am), but it can be quite disconcerting to view a website you’ve designed on a CRT and find that the colour shades aren’t even close to those you chose in your web design or graphics program. Not an issue for most people, though.

That’ll do. I could go on, but my purpose has been served, which was to provide a guide for folk who are looking to purchase a new LCD monitor and are feeling a little daunted by the mass of information on the web and confronted by the choices ahead of them, such as range of sizes, brands, models and prices.

In summary:

• don’t go smaller than 22 inch
• carefully consider your needs and don’t pay for features or specs you won’t use
• have an initial read-up of current reviews if you must, but my recommendation would be to forget all the tech talk, which has a high toss content – trust your own perception
• go for the best-priced monitor with the best warranty (and pay attention to the defective pixel policy)

Some words in parting…

LCD monitors made for the domestic computer market all use TN panels, which are built for speed, rather than image quality. For all the claims and counter-claims, many of them use identical panels, and the Taiwan-based Chi Mei company is one of the main panel manufacturers, servicing companies world-wide.

So the points of differentiation between top-end brands and models and those at the budget end are the features they offer, not the quality of the panels. ALL models of LCD monitors made for the domestic market come with the same image quality ceiling. Any differences in image you see are due to variations in the default settings of each brand/model (which are generally too bright, designed to impress in-store), lighting conditions in the store, the demo material being displayed and generally minimal differences in specs (contrast ratio etc).

It’s fair to say that the current models of the well-known brands – and some of the lesser-known ones, for that matter – are about equal in image quality. They’re all fine for most user purposes, and all flawed in the ways outlined above. Read the reviewers by all means, but just be aware that most of them belong to the same masturbatory gaggle as wine critics and audiophiles.

Specs and technical tests do not necessarily translate to a superior image in the real world. Trust your own perception and you’ll likely save yourself some bucks without compromising your PC viewing experience. My bet is that LCD computer monitor technology will improve dramatically in the next few years, or will be replaced by a superior new technology (laser, anyone?). You’re not buying for a lifetime, then, and at today’s prices you are not making a big financial commitment anyway. So don’t get yourself into a frazzle researching, as I did.

Finally, my strong hunch is that the angst about dead pixels you come across on web forums is largely paranoia. Earlier LCD monitors did have defective pixel issues, but according to my information, current technology has all but resolved the problems. I’ve run a test on my BenQ FP222W and it passed with flying colours – NO dead, dull or dark pixels. I don’t think I’m lucky – I believe this is now the norm.

It speaks volumes that the two leading brands, Samsung and LG, offer a zero dead pixel policy for the entire 3 year life of their LCD monitor warranties. The rest are pretty good, also, with all reputable stores offering a minimum 14 day return policy for any new monitor with dead pixels. Since defective pixels usually show themselves within days of a monitor’s first use, this means you can buy with confidence. There will always be unfortunate exceptions, but these days I believe they are quite rare. Sleep easy!