Help me choose between 970P and VP930B?

[kranky]

Since deciding to get an LCD monitor recently I've benefited a ton from the information here and read a ton of threads, the AT reviews, and reviews at other sites and at vendor sites to narrow it down to two choices. I appreciate that there are so many great members here who share what they know. A special thanks to xtknight for the stickied LCD Buyer's Guide thread.

System is a P4 2.8Ghz and will have a 6600GT PCIe video card.

I've narrowed it down to the Samsung 970P and the Viewsonic VP930B. I figure a monitor will last me a long time so I'm willing to get a top quality unit. The best price I found was $500 for the Samsung (local CompUSA) and $450 for the Viewsonic (zipzoomfly.com). Specs are very similar so I'm finding it tough to make a choice. Almost everyone who has one or the other seems to be very happy.

The reviews don't spend a lot of time on the included software, but even in that area the features seem very similar.

If it matters, the reasons I settled on these two are: screen rotates, high contrast ratio, 8-bit color, good response time, calibration software, excellent color fidelity, backlight bleedthrough is rare, good warranty. I will be doing photo/video editing, some gaming, lots of surfing, not much video watching.

Any suggestions on how to choose, other than the $50 price difference? Even that isn't a clincher, since I much prefer to buy local than by mailorder for something like this and would probably go the extra $50 just for that reason.

 

[xtknight]

Since I'm an honest person I'd have to say you'd probably be happier with the 970P. I picked up the VP930b but I'm not happy with all aspects of it. The X-shaped backlight leaking can be an infuriating issue on anything dark. I guess I shouldn't have believed people when they said they only noticed it on a black screen. You notice it on anything dark gray or dark brown, and even sometimes in darker-tinted general usage scenarios. It is serious compared to my old Samsung 710T LCD. Plus it doesn't connect to my HDTV tuner at 1280x720 for some reason when two other monitors do just fine. I picked the VP930b because it was cheaper, has a black bezel to match my setup, and it has OSD controls, whereas the Samsung 970P is only controllable by MagicTune/softMCCS/NVIDIA direct adjustment software. Then I read on flatpanels.dk that the 970P had some problems with the grayscale that the VP930b didn't. So it's hard to say...

From what I've seen on the BeHardware reviews, the VP930b is ever-so-slightly faster than the 970P, so that was another reason I chose it.

The thing I love about the VP930b is the high contrast, it's like nothing I've seen before. Be ready to calibrate this thing (using 16-step grayscale), but after you do, stuff looks great. It seems you want calibration software so if you want I'll send you the program I made that generates the 16-step grayscale. I haven't seen the 970P in person so I don't know how it'll be. Most likely just as good.

Overall, I'd recommend the 970P. If it weren't for the blatant/annoying backlight bleeding in dark scenes on the VP930b, I'd put it at the same level as the 970P. The black level on the VP930b is thus subpar because of the light leaking.

About ghosting: hardly noticeable at ALL on the VP930b 90% of the time. There is one transition that is very bad, but it's so rare you shouldn't worry about it. The same thing happens on all VA panel LCDs, like the 970P too.

If you do pick up the 970P could you post a review of it? Much appreciated...I want to know how it compares to the VP930b.

 

[kranky]

xtknight, you are the man! Thanks for your insights. :beer:

I'll be glad to post my thoughts but as this will be the first time I've used an LCD, I won't be very good at putting things in perspective.