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20" Widescreen LCDs-am I the only one who doesn't understand the point of them?

S

sindows

Golden Member
I mean I'm for widescreen and I like working with widescreen monitors but for some reason, 20" WS LCDs don't cut it for me. All they have over conventional 20" is an extra 60 pixels but they lose 150 vertically. For me personally, I would much rather take the standard 20". There just isn't enough horizontal space IMO

However if we were talking about 19" WS monitors, I would much rather take the WS as it has a 160 pixel advantage over the square versions thus making it much easier to work with multiple documents.

 
Originally posted by: sindows
I mean I'm for widescreen and I like working with widescreen monitors but for some reason, 20" WS LCDs don't cut it for me. All they have over conventional 20" is an extra 60 pixels but they lose 150 vertically. For me personally, I would much rather take the standard 20". There just isn't enough horizontal space IMO

However if we were talking about 19" WS monitors, I would much rather take the WS as it has a 160 pixel advantage over the square versions thus making it much easier to work with multiple documents.
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i love my 20.1inch Widescreen lcd.
 
Yep your the only one 😛

Well probably not but I have owned two 20.1" widescreens and I love em. Pricewise why buy a 19" widescreen? When the cost to get a DVI 19" Widescreen gets very close to getting a 20.1" for just a bit more.
 
Widescreen is best for gaming, and less good for everything else.

I wish there were some really good 1600x1200 LCDs out there, but they don't exist.

 
Originally posted by: MyStupidMouth
Originally posted by: sindows
I mean I'm for widescreen and I like working with widescreen monitors but for some reason, 20" WS LCDs don't cut it for me. All they have over conventional 20" is an extra 60 pixels but they lose 150 vertically. For me personally, I would much rather take the standard 20". There just isn't enough horizontal space IMO

However if we were talking about 19" WS monitors, I would much rather take the WS as it has a 160 pixel advantage over the square versions thus making it much easier to work with multiple documents.
Click to expand...

i love my 20.1inch Widescreen lcd.
Click to expand...


I do too, very much so

And I would never voluntarily go back to a non-widescreen

Also, I cannot afford to go 1920x1280 GPU-wise ATM
 
Originally posted by: Dethfrumbelo
Widescreen is best for gaming, and less good for everything else.

I wish there were some really good 1600x1200 LCDs out there, but they don't exist.
Click to expand...

:roll: you apparently dont use the computer for anything aside from email and AIM. try doing audio or video editing side by side with a 4:3/5:4 and 16:10...the difference is huge. you can open up 2 word documents side by side, full view, or A-AF in excel from row 1 to 65, or 2 or 3 instances of maple/matlab/multisim/etc. i could go on and on.
 
Originally posted by: MrDudeMan

:roll: you apparently dont use the computer for anything aside from email and AIM. try doing audio or video editing side by side with a 4:3/5:4 and 16:10...the difference is huge. you can open up 2 word documents side by side, full view, or A-AF in excel from row 1 to 65, or 2 or 3 instances of maple/matlab/multisim/etc. i could go on and on.
Click to expand...

You apparently can't do math. The 20" widescreen is 1680 pixels wide, the 20" 4:3 is 1600 that is a negligible difference. 80/1600 5% difference in width.

The 4:3 is 1200 lines high, the widescreen 1050. 150/1050 or 14%.

So the 4:3 is nearly the same width, but much taller. It has all the advantages of the widescreen and is taller as well. It is the bigger monitor.

Now if the 4:3 was 1400x1050 you might have an argument.

So at 20" 1600x1200 is definitely my favorite.



 
Originally posted by: guidryp
Originally posted by: MrDudeMan

:roll: you apparently dont use the computer for anything aside from email and AIM. try doing audio or video editing side by side with a 4:3/5:4 and 16:10...the difference is huge. you can open up 2 word documents side by side, full view, or A-AF in excel from row 1 to 65, or 2 or 3 instances of maple/matlab/multisim/etc. i could go on and on.
Click to expand...

You apparently can't do math. The 20" widescreen is 1680 pixels wide, the 20" 4:3 is 1600 that is a negligible difference. 80/1600 5% difference in width.

The 4:3 is 1200 lines high, the widescreen 1050. 150/1050 or 14%.

So the 4:3 is nearly the same width, but much taller. It has all the advantages of the widescreen and is taller as well. It is the bigger monitor.

Now if the 4:3 was 1400x1050 you might have an argument.

So at 20" 1600x1200 is definitely my favorite.
Click to expand...

wow, please stop wowing me with all that fancy multiplication. did i ever say the actual screen size was bigger? no, i didnt. you made up a reason to attack me...nice.
 
Originally posted by: sindows
I mean I'm for widescreen and I like working with widescreen monitors but for some reason, 20" WS LCDs don't cut it for me. All they have over conventional 20" is an extra 60 pixels but they lose 150 vertically. For me personally, I would much rather take the standard 20". There just isn't enough horizontal space IMO

However if we were talking about 19" WS monitors, I would much rather take the WS as it has a 160 pixel advantage over the square versions thus making it much easier to work with multiple documents.
Click to expand...

20" widescreens are better than 19" widescreens in every way; yet you have praise for the 19" and don't like the 20".

It's all about what you compare it to, and what application it's used for. If you're looking for total resolution (pixels), then yes, a 20" 4:3 screen is better.

For gaming, it's subjective, but some people (myself included) are hooked on widescreen. It just meshes with the human field of vision much better than 4:3 does (or rather, the information the human FOV can focus on; we can keep track of much more data in our horizontal peripheral vision than our vertical vision).

For certain apps, such as photo editing, widescreen is good because you can have a 4:3 image centered and blown up with toolbars on the sides; on 4:3 screens the toolbars hang over onto the image (depending on aspect ratio).

Nothing's perfect; a 19" 5:4 LCD is a good bit taller than a 20" widescreen, but then again a 24" widescreen beats both of those, handily.

For standard work on a desktop, I prefer 4:3 resolution screens. For gaming, I much prefer widescreen. Movies go to widescreen (of course).
 
The bad thing about 20" wide screens is that they're all 1680x1050, not good enough for 1080p content. I want at least WUXGA (1920x1200)

Widescreen is simply better all around; work (easier working with two documents ? side by side) ? play (WS gaming FTW) ? recreation (movies are made in widescreen, FS is for chumps)...
 
I'm not saying that a 19" widescreen is better than a 20" widescreen. What I'm saying is that I don't get why 20" widescreens are so popular when they offer very little extra advatange in terms of having extra horizontal screen space. I threw the 19" example into my original post because theres a much larger difference in the amount of extra horizontal real estate(160pixels vs. 60 if you went from 4:3 20" to widescreen 20") and if I had to choose between a widescreen 19" and a conventional, I would choose the widescreen.
 
Who cares about "lost pixels".. the pixels you do have a 20inch widescreen are actually USEFUL! Haha..

try coding with a rotated 20inch WS vs on a 20inch square. Or gaming, or movies.. pretty much anything is done better by a widescreen.

Counting pixels is a bad argument in selecting a screen.
An arguement that would make sense is usability, or color reproduction, or response time..

theres really nothing that a 20inch 4:3 display does better other than run legacy apps better due to a 4:3 native res.
I dont buy new computer parts for legacy apps.

Not to mention, Vista is designed for the WS length format.
Losing a few pixels is OK by me.. just give me the real future.

Not to mention the huge advantage WS gamers have in WS games like Half Life 2, Counterstrike, Day of Defeat ect.
Its almost cheating.
 
sindows...have you ever used a 20" widescreen LCD? I'm not talking about looking at it on the showroom floor or a display at Bestbuy (Staples, Officemax, whatever). I'm talking about actual real use. I have 4 hulking CRT's (between 20" and 23")that I need to get rid of because no one in the house likes them anymore. We all like our 20.1" widescreen LCD's better. There is a definite reason we like them better and it's not about size. I understand that a standard 20" LCD with a 1600x1200 resolution nets you more pixels. Believe it or not when you sit down with a 20" widescreen it seems much bigger than it is. In fact, if you sit down with one, you wouldn't even realize that it's roughly the same height (measuring the actual visible LCD) as a 17" LCD. It seems much bigger.

The widescreen aspect of the LCD also fills our vision better so it's actually a more natural view when gaming. The way we humans use our eyes, a widescreen aspect is much more natural and will fill much more of our vision. And when playing games, believe it or not, a widescreen LCD shows more game area than a normal 4:3 LCD. You get the same height but with extra peripheral view so you can catch any baddies sneaking up on you. Go to widescreengamingforum.com and click on the screenshots. The best example is the Day of Defeat: Source and Half-Life 2 screenshot as the person did not move and inch and it's the same exact shot except for one in widescreen and one in 4:3. Another advantage as someone else stated is the ability to open up and view more than one document side by side instead of having to flip between them. And for touching up photos or other picture editing, having all your floating pallettes on the side without cluttering up the picture you are editing is conducive to better work.

There are many many people who have knocked widescreens until they've tried using it on a daily basis. If all you're doing is measuring statistics then yes, a 20" widescreen LCD is not going to give you as much pixels nor be as tall screen height wise, though overall viewable area is the same if you really think about it.
 
Originally posted by: MrDudeMan
Originally posted by: Dethfrumbelo
Widescreen is best for gaming, and less good for everything else.

I wish there were some really good 1600x1200 LCDs out there, but they don't exist.
Click to expand...

:roll: you apparently dont use the computer for anything aside from email and AIM. try doing audio or video editing side by side with a 4:3/5:4 and 16:10...the difference is huge. you can open up 2 word documents side by side, full view, or A-AF in excel from row 1 to 65, or 2 or 3 instances of maple/matlab/multisim/etc. i could go on and on.
Click to expand...

LOL. I do tons of work in 3DSM and Maya at 1600x1200. And I also occasionally use Excel, etc. If I need it I can go to 1920x1440, it just doesn't look too sharp.



 
This is yet another one of those juvenile "isbetter" posts from someone who hasn't yet figured out that there's different kinds of stuff for different purposes.
There is no general "isbetter", and no ultimate "imright" either. Grow up.
 
The only reason I'm afraid to go Widescreen is game support 🙁
Still, anything must be better than this ancient 17" CRT.
 
I am on my first 20" widescreen and I love it compared to my 17" LCD I had before. I gained like 30 vertical pixels but more importantly, I gained a TON of width. Watching DVDs on it is most excellent and it's just nice for doing other stuff as well.
 
Originally posted by: MrDudeMan

wow, please stop wowing me with all that fancy multiplication. did i ever say the actual screen size was bigger? no, i didnt. you made up a reason to attack me...nice.
Click to expand...

I am responding in kind to your roll eyes contempt at the previous poster when you claimed you could go on and on about how much more productive widescreen is with a mere 80 additionaly pixels in width. This is nonsense.

If you are putting up two side by side documents they each get 840pixels in Widescreen, 800pixels in 4:3. A mere 40 pixel advantage makes ZERO effect on productivity. But the 4:3 will give each document and additional 150 pixels in height which is a much larger effect on productivity.


Originally posted by: sindows
What I'm saying is that I don't get why 20" widescreens are so popular when they offer very little extra advatange in terms of having extra horizontal screen space.
Click to expand...

1: The real number 1 reason is rationalizing. Some people will defend what they bought by parroting things without any thought. You see it in this thread where people are aping the "widescreen is better for two documents side by side" without actually thinking about the fact that the 4:3 20" is just as wide. Any claims on productivity being better on widescreen are just absurd rationalizations.

Some bought widescreens because that is what is popular with manufacturers, so now they defend their purchase. Why do manufacturers like them? Simple: smaller screens are cheaper to build.


2: Preference for aspect ratio. This is real legitimate reason. Some just like the look of the wider screen. This is a real legitimate preference. I too prefer the look of wider aspect. But not at the expense of less pixels.




I program for a living and have been using 1600x1200 on CRT, for 10 years on the job and at home. I had no interest in trying LCD until I could at least match this. My first LCD was the Dell 2405 at 1920 x 1200. But it turns out I couldn't stand the color shifts of a PVA screen(among other things), so I sold it.

So what next. Both the 2007wfp and 2007fp had S-IPS screen so I decided on the FP in seconds. The wide aspect is more asthetically pleasing, but I would never trade screen pixels away to simply get a more pleasing aspect. Something I notice primarily when the monitor is off. Especially when going to manufacturers used it as a way to sell me less screen at the same price. The 2007wfp is actually more expensive than the 2007fp in Canada!

Widescreen is nice, but only at a minimum 1920x1200 entry point for me.
 
I find 20" WS too small.

Now that i have a 20" 1600x1200 LCD, i won't go lower than that.

So that means the next upgrade is gonna have to be 1920x1200+
 
40 pixels, 150 pixels. Who cares. Windows in a GUI and documents in modern programs are not opened and set by how many pixels are in your screen. I understand what you're saying but arguing about pixels doesn't seem like a wrong way to get your point across as a 20" widescreen and a 20" 4:3 has roughly the same viewable screen space. As someone who uses Excel on a nearly daily basis for an hour or so of entry, I find being able to open two spreadsheets side by side much more conducive to my work. On a 4:3 you could still open two spreadsheets side by side but if you compare them between the 4:3 and the widescreen, you'll see more of the pages in both spreadsheets is viewable and useable. Pixels matter zero in this case and I'd argue in most cases. In the end, you are as productive as you want to be.

Some of the folks might be rationalizing but personally I'm of the opinion most of the people who have switched to widescreen genuinely likes the widescreen aspect ratio better. I know I do. And while I'm not rich, I can definitely afford these monitors. When a good 24-27" widescreen comes out, I'm likely to chuck my old CRT for a bigger widescreen. Currently using dual monitor, 21" CRT & 20.1" widescreen LCD, and would love to go dual widescreens.
 
There is one thing the OP is missing, Relativity. Who cares if you get more vertical pixels if to the majority of users the extra pixels dont make nearly as much differece as the relative difference that wide screen monitors do make. Also please add in the fact that there are not as many nice 20" LCDs as there are 20.1" LCDs.

Relativity 🙂
 
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