I bought the Benq FP937s monitor LCD for Christmas to replace my 21? Viewsonic G810 CRT (7 years old), I spent $475 which included 3 day delivery. I have never owned a LCD monitor before so I am only going to compare it to my 21? Viewsonic which is a little cheaper including $38 delivery from NewEgg. In fact you can get a higher spec Viewsonic 21? for the same price as the FP937s.
My monitor arrived via Los Angeles to Mexico going thru 2 friends and an airport and arrived with my sister-in-law on Christmas Eve with no damage and no dead pixels. It even came with a D-SUB and a DVI cable.
To start with, the monitor?s display area looks almost the same size as a 21? CRT (20? viewable). Everything looks sharper, a bit more colorful but a hell of a lot grainier. I had to turn the brightness and contrast down from the defaults as it was way too harsh on the eyes.
The first thing you notice is that type looks crap! You can make it look a lot better if you are running Win XP ?.. go here;
http://www.microsoft.com/typog......name=%20&fsize=
This will run ClearType, a huge improvement in webpage viewing. This only applies to the basic fonts and LCD monitors.
Heads-up everyone! Have you noticed the dot pitch specs on these LCD?s? The Benq is .29 which is golf ball size compared to my old CRT. I never noticed the screen grid on my CRT but you certainly can on a LCD. (yuck!)
As for ghosting, the FP937s does ghost. For those of you who say it doesn?t you have not played under all conditions. If you are playing as a foot soldier in games such as FarCry or Battlefield Vietnam or UT you will hardly see any ghosting unless you really spin your mouse hard, and then it?s only negligible. I played all these games at 1280X1024 @ 60 refresh (I don?t see any difference between 60 or 75) on a Radeon 9800 XT, 1 Gig of Corsair XMS Ram, and a 3400+ Athalon64, 4xAA. 8xAF,with the DVI cable.
If you fly a helicopter (BFV) vertical screen movement is fine, if you turn somewhat quickly horizontally, it ghost?s like a skid mark. If you spin, everything is a blur. This is flying with the nose cam on. If you fly with the cockpit and HUD view it?s a bit better, but still noticeable. Flying jets it was hardly noticeable.
Playing Doom 3 was good, but not amazing due to the darkness of the game and the inability of the LCD to render subtle dark tones well. Surprisingly, no ghosting in Doom 3. I ran it flawlessly at 1024X768 on high, at 1280X1024 it was a bit slower, but that was due to my graphic card.
As for movies, I played "I Robot" yesterday and it seemed fine. The colors looked great and it was really sharp.
Remember! LCD?s run and play better using the factory recommended resolution, which is usually the highest setting and refresh. In this case 1280 X 1024. The refresh rate from 60hz to 75hz doesn?t seem to make any difference in my testing. Anything lower than 1280 x 1024 you start to see a noticeable degradation in image quality. 1024 x 768 was acceptable.
If you want to do a simple test with a LCD and compare it to a CRT, right click an empty part of your desktop, select properties. You will get the ?Display? window. Stick your mouse pointer on the title bar and drag it around your desktop. It blurs like a hangover on the LCD.
The viewing angle is not that great. Benq rates the FP937s as 130 degrees, which is 30 degrees less than a lot of other models out there. What they should measure is the ?effective? viewing angle. This is different to what is ?observable? and what is legible.
This FP937s does not swivel, it just tilts vertically and can be wall mounted. The controls are simple and I bet any 6 year old could figure them out in 5 minutes.
So, if given the choice of a new 21? Viewsonic G810 or G220F PerfectFlat (.25 Dot pitch 2048x1536) model CRT or the Benq FP937s and taking into account that I?m a nitpicky hardcore gamer and designer, I would definitely not buy this or any other LCD until they get faster and finer in resolution, and that includes dot pitch. But I did buy it.
?but on the other hand, if you play at LAN parties, AND you don?t pilot a chopper, AND you are not a nitpicky graphic designer, you will probably love this monitor.
I'm still waiting on a reply from BenQ as to whether or they've released this yet or not. 
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