17-19" LCD monitors capable of 1600x1200

[TakeFlight]

Does anybody know of any LCD monitor manufacturer that makes an LCD monitor in the 17" to 19" range that is capable of displaying 1600x1200 native resolution? All the models I can find from (Viewsonic, Sony, NEC, Samsung, Sharp and so on) have native resolutions of 1280x1024 in the 17" to 19" range. Only Viewsonic offers one model (18" I believe) that is capable of displaying 1600x1200 but it's native resolution is 1280x1024. I want 1600x1200 resolution because I need to be able to squeeze more on my screen (I'm currently running 1280x1024 on my 19" CRT) yet I don't want to pay the prices for 20"+ monitors that usually start around $1400 and MUCH higher. I'd also prefer to get an LCD instead of a CRT. I don't understand why these products are so hard to find or why nobody makes them when you can (for example) easily order a Dell laptop with a 15" LCD with a native resolution of 1600x1200!!! What gives?

 

[Gosharkss]

It may simply be a supply and demand problem. A 1280 x 1024 panel has 3.9 million transistors. A 1600 x 1200 panels has 5.7 million transistors. A 17? 1600 x 1200 panel needs a pixel pitch in the 0.21mm range. The yields of these panels (reasonable amount of dead pixels for example) and the supply of mother glass simply is not yet to the point where they can produce mass market 1600 x 1200 desktop monitors. The big guys like Dell (for notebooks) take all of the available panels. BTW there is more margin in notebooks than desktop monitors thus higher profits. It is a combination of this and of the extremely tight pixel pitch and the extra 1.8 million transistors that make it so difficult to build 1600 x 1200 desktop monitors.

It is only fairly recent (within the last year or so) that 1280 x 1024 17 ? 18.1 panels became plentiful enough to serve the larger desktop market at a price point that is acceptable.

Are 1600 x 1200 15 / 17 / 19 monitors on there way. Yes, but don?t hold your breath.

The trends that I see are a move to 17? and 19? LCD monitors, following their CRT cousins. 18.1? IMHO will be squeezed out by the 17 and 19? competition, you can already see it happening with the 1280 x 1024 panels.

 

[Apex]

19.6" is currently the smallest in the mainline retail channels, I believe.

http://www.eizo.com/products/lcd/l771/contents.html

Specs are pretty poor though.

 

[TakeFlight]

Actually, I did find a 19" by Planar that does 1600x1200 but it's around $1900. I decided to suck it up and bought a ViewSonic VP201m which is 20.1" and does 1600x1200 and is a few hundred cheaper than the 19" Planar. I'm getting it for $1680. I didn't want to spend that much but I need a new monitor capable of 1600x1200 and I want it to be LCD so I really didn't have much of a choice but to cough up the green stuff.