3 Dells: finally an LCD I like. Cheap 1707fp.

[Heartbreaker]

Well. I started near the top and worked my way down. It turns out I like the cheap panel better than the ones on top.

Dell 2405fpw
My first LCD . This was the most I was willing to spend.
Samsung PVA Panel.
Too bright even at zero brightness.
Very Poor viewing angles, anomolies from poor viewing angles. Hated this.
Killed my eyes.
Input lag.
Obvious motion smears.
Sold at small loss because nothing wrong with it. Just characteristics of the panel and there would be 15% restock fee.

Dell 2007fp
Next I bought this screen when they were supposed to be IPS. Half the price of 2405.
But PVA panel again. With same awful viewing angles.
Didn't notice any input lag.
Less motion smear.
But it had banding and text blur.
Returned it for refund rather than try again. Hated PVA big time and figured that is what replacement would be. Even fixed, could not stand the horizontal tone shifts due to that same PVA viewing angle issue.

Dell 1707fp
Gave up and bought another 21" Trinitron CRT.
Still had LCD bug, decided to get a small cheap screen to go with it, so I ordered the , A cheap 17" Dell TN screen. A quarter the price of the 2405. 19" didn't appeals as it is the same res with just bigger pixels. Now the surprise. It is the best of the bunch from my perspective:

Pros:
Comfortable brightness adjustment available.

No input lag. Seems as fast as my CRT when mirrored.

Extremely minimal motion smear, better than the 2007fp. MUCH better than 2405.

Colors look no different than the other panels. TN is known to be worse, but this is good.

Nice build. Looks sharp, very configurable stand, Both DVI/VGA cables included, no adaptor brick, power supply built in. No hums or sounds.

Most importantly: Much better horizontal viewing angles. I bolded that because the numbers say otherwise, but they are meaningless. Now I get almost zero tone shift moving side to side. It is only up/down that causes it. TN screen have much better side to side viewing angles than VA! Finally an LCD that doesn't drive me to distraction, and it is the cheapest one yet.

Cons:

Some banding, but less than banding on the 2007fp. Haven't noticed outside of testing yet. Paire with a trinitron now so I can use that for color sensitive stuff. Later will replace trinitron with S-IPS screen.

TN has poor vertical viewing angles. I found no issue in Landscape use, but I find it almost unusable in the portrait mode. Not a good choice for portrait usage.

Overall:

Overall take on the 1707. Great little monitor. Maybe a perfect cheap second to go with the 2007wfp. They are the same height. Or even a great single panel. I find myself turning on the the 1707 only most of the time, only turning on the CRT when I want dual screens, or to watch video on the bigger screen.

Changed my understanding of viewing angle issues. I now rate Panels as IPS first, TN second and PVA/MVA dead last due to tone shifting.

 

[xtknight]

Interesting. PVAs also hide details at a zero degree angle. Neither TNs or IPSes do this. I would recommend you try an S-PVA monitor though. You may be less disappointed than with the regular PVAs. S-IPS and AS-IPS are still tops and have higher color saturation at lower brightness. The Philips 230WP7NS or Sony SDM-P234 may be of your liking. Here's a comprehensive user review of the Philips:

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5235
And another: http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4098

And a pro review of the Philips and SDM-P234: http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/07/03/wide_format_lcd_monitors/page9.html

 

[Heartbreaker]

Thanks. I will note that the Dell 2007fp had an S-PVA monitor. It still had this bad angular behavior. Though there is some evidence this is much better on the newest Samsung S-PVA in 24" and 21" sizes. Though it is still not up to S-IPS which is cleary the best.

The interesting thing for me is that TN monitors register the poorest Horizontal angles factory numbers. But this only seems to record where the display breaks down completely and says nothing about the all important first 50 degrees. Where the TN screen behaves much better than typical PVA/MVA.

I don't plan on replacing the CRT anytime soon. By the time I upgrade it, it might be for something like the 30" S-IPS monster monitors...

Part of the point of this post was pointing out that TN monitors are not that bad(and the 1707 is a great little monitor). They get a bad reputation, but in actually use, I find it better than PVA/MVA. I have checked out more in retail outlets to insure that this is not some kind of anomaly. It isn't.

TN gets nailed on two fronts. Viewing angles, which if you stick in certain constraints (don't go into portrail mode) are better than VA technology. The other knock as been color. With dithering and 16.2M instead of 16.7. Happy to report it looks every bit as good as the my previous two LCD's, to my eye anyway. Only very slight banding on some of the banding tests that I am not any LCD would be entirely free of. Nothing like my 2007 A00 with the known banding issue.

 

[xtknight]

Having used both, I do agree with you that TN is superior to P-MVA/PVA for mild (by far the most common) changes in horizontal angle. Though on my P-MVA, I still have to move my head quite a bit until the image becomes 'uncomfortable' to my eyes.

TN definitely has potential. It's easiest to manufacture, cheap, it has high transmittance, blazing response time when combined with RTC, and good subtle horizontal viewing angle. It should not be knocked so often. They even tend to have less input lag. To P-MVA's credit it is still quite superior in black level and white level (contrast). In my mind its main shortcoming is not being able to display the full color scale without dithering methods. I think TNs technically could, but to achieve fast speeds they have to lower color accuracy. Maybe the "16.7M" ones do and I just don't know it. But I know at least Samsung still uses some "9-bit" dithering technique. Or maybe it's not dithering and just 'mapping'. I really don't know. It could also be dynamic contrast adjustment, and that would be quite a decent solution. The contrast of P-MVAs is jawdropping though. That said, the white level on the 2405FPW is horribly high and it's probably worse on the 2407WFP.

Maybe the reason TN is put down a lot is because all the cheap crap LCDs use it, and they give it a horrible reputation. A good TN is a good display.

BTW, VAs under 20" use dithering just like the TNs.

S-IPS is essentially TN on steroids, and PVA is a whole different animal with its own problems. We are comparing single domain LCDs (TN,S-IPS) with multi-domain (PVA,P-MVA) ones. PVAs still have dark transition response times of 50-80 ms. IPS is ~40-60 ms. TN is 20 ms. (and with RTC, down to 0~6 ms.)

 

[mastertech01]

What kills me with the Dell is the brightness. I went from a LaCie CRT to the 2001fp and it was blinding.... I was using a Matrox Parhelia at the time and it has no brightness/gamma adjustment in software, which left me to only the panel brightness level and as you state nothing would ease the pain.

I eventually purchased an Nvidia Geforce4 card and used the software gamma and brightness adjustments with it and it was MUCH MUCH better and highly pleasing then.

Only problem with that was the Gamma levels in the only game I play, Ghost Recon. I had to reset levels to default each time I played the game due to it being very dark and difficult to play. If you adjusted Gamma in the game up one notch it would bleach out.

Ive been using a CRT for the past year and have decided to give LCD another try but man the choices are so many to decide from. I really want to stay in a 20 incher for the resolution benefit but not a wide panel.

 

[jiffylube1024]

That's one of the "features" of LCD's mastertech - brightness, and tons of it. You get used to it, and everything else seems dim and lifeless in comparison after awhile. I don't like looking at CRT's anymore.

 

[EarthwormJim]

I really like my 2007fp, but I made sure to get one that had an S-IPS panel (bought from a private individual, not dell).

The viewing angles are great.