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Buying my first LCD monitor

G

Gretzky

Senior member
Finally im going to buy a Flat Screen monitor for college. I dont play games much only Warcraft3 times. My budget is about 400 dollars and i did some research to find out that my choice landed between two monitors.

Samsung SyncMaster 151S = 374 +22s/h
NEC MultiSync LCD1550V-BK = 335 +18s/h

Im still not sure which to buy because both monitors got great reviews and the price is similar. So which one to buy guys?
 
i've got two of the samsung 151s lcds and they are great, though kind of small overall (they arent on my main system)
i've also seen the nec and i prefer the samsung.
if you can make the jump to a 17" 1280x1024, it's worth it...
good luck
 
I've used the Samsung 151s at work and it's not that bad of a setup, though I don't like 1024x768 resolution (that's going to be the norm on any 15" panel though). As recommended by foofoo, go up to a 17" panel if you can. You can get a Hyundia ImageQuest L70a for $530 (shipped free); that's a bigger screen, higher resolution, and you get digital and analog connectors (I'm almost positive the 151s had only analog connectors; I have no experience w/ the NEC model).
 
wish i could go for the 17 inch but i have no money to spare. Im a college student heheh, also the Samsung 15s1 connecter will work with any graphics card? I have a visiontek geforce2.

Someone told me some monitors have different connectors.
 
the samsung 151s has only an analog input. but no worries. this will work perfectly with your gf2 or any other graphics card. be sure to read the manual and use the auto setup to adjust the picture. also, i find that 60hz is ideal for this monitor and gives the best picture quality. good luck
 
Go with the Samsung. My Dell Inspiron 8200 has a 15" Samsung SXGA+ LCD and it is by FAR the best LCD I've ever seen.
 
I saw a proview 17" at circuit city today that was pretty cheap....do yall have any experience with proview(good image quality, refresh rate, etc)?
also, I think it's only analog....I saw only one cord back there, similar to the ones on normal monitors. what's the advantage of having a analog and digital connector? and how do I know if it has that or not?
thanks! 😀
 
An analog connector is a regular monitor connector (15-pin dsub just like any crt monitor uses). A digital connector (called a DVI connector) is a bid wider and the pins look more square-ish than on the dsub/analog connector. Here's the advantage of digital:

All graphics are in digital form whilst "in your computer" being processed. A normal/crt monitor is an analog device though so video cards have traditionally had extra circuitry (the RAMDAC) which takes the digital signal and converts it to analog so that the monitor can use it (some newer crt's can take a digital signal now, but this means that they simply make the digital->analog conversion themselves). Ok, so you loose just a tad bit of quality (can very depending on RAMDAC quality) when you go from digital to analog. You signal is now also more succeptible to interference from it's source to it's destination ( a digital signal is actually degraded just as much as an analog signal, but because of the way it's setup the degredation can be almost completely filtered out on the other end). Just about anyone using a KVM switch knows about the signal degradation of an analog VGA signal (ghosting is a terrible thing . . .). Now, comes the interesting part: LCD panels are a digital device by nature. That means that if you send it an analog signal it has to convert it back to digital, therefore loosing a bit more quality because of the conversion. So with an analog flat panel you go digital->analog->digital . . . doesn't make any since does it? With a digital panel you pipe the digital signal from your computer straight to the panel: there's never any conversion. This lets you eliminate two picture degrading conversions, AND has the benefit of a digital transmission from your machine to the monitor. As you can imagine this produces a much cleaner picture. If you can at all afford to I'd go for a digital panel (my panel is digital but I'm using it's analog input because my KVM switch is analog and none of the DVI KVM switches are reasonably priced. it's a shame because a KVM environment is the most perfect use for DVI I can think of).
 
If you already have a CRT that works fine with not flaws, why don't you just wait until you get out of college and then buy the flat screen monitor. By then the 17" will prabably have dropped down to what you are willing to pay for a 15" now.
 
Originally posted by: farmercal
If you already have a CRT that works fine with not flaws, why don't you just wait until you get out of college and then buy the flat screen monitor. By then the 17" will prabably have dropped down to what you are willing to pay for a 15" now.
Click to expand...

Never been in a dorm have we? 😉 When you get out of college you got all the space you want to throw a CRT up on your desk. I keep trying to explain that to my dad when I say I want a laptop and he responds with "wait till after you get out of college". After I'm out of college I don't need one anymore!!! 🙂
 
Originally posted by: MGMorden
Originally posted by: farmercal
If you already have a CRT that works fine with not flaws, why don't you just wait until you get out of college and then buy the flat screen monitor. By then the 17" will prabably have dropped down to what you are willing to pay for a 15" now.
Click to expand...

Never been in a dorm have we? 😉 When you get out of college you got all the space you want to throw a CRT up on your desk. I keep trying to explain that to my dad when I say I want a laptop and he responds with "wait till after you get out of college". After I'm out of college I don't need one anymore!!! 🙂
Click to expand...

Haha, so true.

Anyhow, I bought a Samsung 151S in March for my sister, I had it hooked up for about 2 weeks when I was upgrading and had two rigs, looked pretty good to me, though I kept my Samsung 900NF which would collapse her desk😛
 
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