Planar 17.4 vs. Dell 1702FP

[Dimitri]

Anybody have experience with these or know which would be better quality? Ghosting isn't a big factor since I don't play much FPS games, mostly do text reading and browsing. Don't do DVDs on my pc either. Still, the Planar seems to have better specs in brightness, contrast and slightly larger, but I don't think specs tell all necessarily. At Dell, the planar would be $80 more so would it be worth it?

TIA.

 

[kontrabass]

I'd say get the Planar. Though you'll find some people who complain about ghosting in games, the crystal clearness of this monitor is a joy to look at. My 17.4 inch has saved my eyeballs. There's minor ghosting in RTCW, but nothing I can't get used to. Makes it more realistic even, having the image blur a bit when you turn really fast

 

[azkiwi]

The Dell has finer pitch..but that is a result of a slightly smaller screen. If the 2000FP is anything to go on their monitors are excellent ( no-one has a bad word to say about the big one).
The Planar rotates to Portrait mode which the Dell does not. You probably pay a few extra bucks for the Planar badge. Brightness is overrated with MVA screens I think - no-one seems to complain about dim monitors any more. Contrast matters though I don't know if the difference between 350:1 and 400:1 is significant (or even how it is measured).

If the model you are buying has speakers you will probably find them worthless. So is the extra .4" (diagonal) and rotating screen worth $80?

 

[Dimitri]

$80 not worth it for those things but if the twice as fast pixel response makes a big enough difference in animation then it probably would be.

 

[azkiwi]

The response is 25ms - about par for the course currently - is the Dell slower?

 

[badga]

I am pretty sure i saw the spec as being 40 or 50 ms in a thread in another forum. Dell seems to have removed the spec from thier datasheets.....always a suspicious sign

 

[Dimitri]

Specs

Yeah, even though I don't play much fast action games, the 25ms response will probably be noticeably better than 50ms. I'll probably get the Planar then.

 

[nealr]

I have the planar 17.4" one I got from a dell deal about 2 mos ago. It's the greatest thing ever. I never thought it would be so good. I don't do games or anything, just work, or word/email/web stuff, and an occassional dvd, or divx, and it works flawlessly. I even like the built-in usb hub, since my computer is on top of my bookshelf.

 

[Dimitri]

How much did you pay for yours? Maybe I should wait till they have a deal on those. Only have free shipping right now which isn't that much for an LCD anyway.

 

[GetInMyFatBelly]

I think the 10% off coupon still works, but not as good as last week with 2 coupons for 604.10 shipped...

 

[Dimitri]

How do I get this 10% off coupon? Someone said signup for email notifications but I still don't see anything about that.

Thanks.

 

[kontrabass]

I wasn't aware of Dell's coupons when I paid $699 plus tax (Texas). But it was worth getting it from Dell - when my first Planar started showing signal noise right out of the box (dancing green and red pixels all over), they overnighted a replacement to me with a prepaid shipping label for the defect. But don't worry about getting a defective screen - After Dell's 30 day replacement, Planar's got a bad ass 3 year replacement warranty.

 

[Dimitri]

Mmm, found that 10% coupon. I was deciding between the black PV174 (would match keyboard/mouse) and the clear one which was $20 cheaper ($680). That decision was made easy once I saw Dell just raised the price of the translucent ones to $729, so I went with the $699 black one which totaled $629 shipped.

 

[Dimitri]

An update since I got my Planar PV174.
Had to keep contrast about half way otherwise a lot of intermediate colors wash out. Otherwise, color is pretty nice, but sitting next to my PF790 the white looks more beige than white and black isn't quite as black. I probably wouldn't have noticed this without being next to the CRT. Text looks great. Overall, very nice quality display. I did notice a defective pixel however. This appears a gray dot towards the right edge of screen and can only be seen on a very light background so I'm not sure what it is. It's pretty hard to even see but I was looking after all.

Gaming: I may be pickier than some but there is definitely noticeable ghosting/blurring in 3d shooters. The only 3d shooter I really play regularly (but not too often) is Half Life, which is basically always at 100 frames/sec. Overall, the LCD looked terrible next to the CRT. Colors more washed out, very blurry when scanning around although I don't think it affected my game much as I was still kicking everyone's ass. I tried the RtCW demo and noticed less ghosting there, which may be because everything's jacked up and I'm probably getting less FPS than Half Life. I only had less than an hour to play around before going to work so I will put it through exteme testing this weekend and then decide if I want to return it. I may possibly keep it AND the PF790 (I got the desk space) and have the best of both worlds, if I can figure out a good setup for it. I'll probably post more thoughts in the near future.

 

[badga]

My PV174 is great, buy i agree with your comments about ghosting in FPS. I decided that i would live with the trade off of reduced visual quality for the deskspace. Its me having a bad day v a good day that will tally up frags...not the monitor. I suspect i will also invest in the next generation LCD panel with significantly reduced response time. I am sure that you will see in many other threads that it is not the framerate that causes ghosting in LCDs but rather the response time of the pixels turning off and on measured in response time (ms). The best of breed is 20-25 ms currently but new technologies are on the horizon to cut that in half. Maybe by then nvidia will have a GF4 or GF5 with twinhead.

 

[Dimitri]

As far as ghosting, I wasn't trying to imply that high fps causes ghosting, but that ghosting just seems more noticeable at higher fps since there are more frames to ghost in a shorter amount of time. More pixels changing colors in a shorter amount of time would mean more ghosting IMO. I could be wrong but it seems logical to me. Believe me, the ghosting was WAY more noticeable in HL than RtCW. Luckily I don't play it much and even luckier I don't play Quake 3, hehe.