Question for anyone who owns a 20" LCD monitor

[justlnluck]

My grandparents are in their 80's and are looking for a relatively large monitor to make text easier to see with their eyes. I am thinking about purchasing them a 20" LCD monitor.

My question is, how would 1024x768 look on a 20" native 1600x1200 screen? I know their eyes aren't as discerning as ours, but I was wondering how blurry the interpolated pixels look? For anyone who owns a 20", can you change your monitor resolution real quick and tell me what 1024x768 looks like to you? Also, I want a 20", because I'm assuming a 19" with a 5:4 aspect ratio wouldn't be able to display 1024x768 properly. Is this correct?

Thanks so much for all your advice!

 

[moonboy403]

any resolution other than the native on lcd looks like crap

if you doing scaling, it'll look fine, but it'll be displayed in a smaller area thus defeating the purpose in your case

get a crt i'd say

 

[drum]

It would literally look like poop on the screen. You may be better off going with a 19" and 1280x1024

doing 1024x768 on a 20" lcd will make their eyes bleed

 

[darXoul]

Just get a 19 incher for them - 1280*1024 with 0.294 mm pixel pitch is pretty large. IMO, 1024*768 is not worth it - interpolated text always looks like crap, no matter how good an LCD is at scaling. If you want to make it easy on their eyes, stay away from image scaling. This is my take, others may disagree with me.

 

[SynthDude2001]

1024x768 would be usable on my monitor (I have a 2005FPW), but of course it's the wrong aspect ratio. After spending a little time running at non-native resolutions I kinda tend to think that all the reports of "horrible scaling/interpolation" are highly exaggerated. Sure, I'd rather use native resolution if I have the choice (I don't anyways have that luxury though in newer games), but I don't think lower resolutions look so bad as to be unusable at all. However, I agree with the above suggestions that for this use, a 19" LCD at 1280x1024 would probably be the best choice. The pixels would be relatively large (compared to other LCD sizes), and it will be sharper than scaling a lower resolution on a bigger monitor.

 

[akugami]

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
1024x768 would be usable on my monitor (I have a 2005FPW), but of course it's the wrong aspect ratio. After spending a little time running at non-native resolutions I kinda tend to think that all the reports of "horrible scaling/interpolation" are highly exaggerated. Sure, I'd rather use native resolution if I have the choice (I don't anyways have that luxury though in newer games), but I don't think lower resolutions look so bad as to be unusable at all. However, I agree with the above suggestions that for this use, a 19" LCD at 1280x1024 would probably be the best choice. The pixels would be relatively large (compared to other LCD sizes), and it will be sharper than scaling a lower resolution on a bigger monitor.

Definitely should be taken with a grain of salt. Today's LCD's are of much higher quality and interpolated text doesn't look nearly as bad as it's made out to be. At least on modern LCD's. That said, it's still not going to look nearly as good as running an LCD at it's native resolution.

But as the above few posters have said, definitely get a 19" LCD that runs natively at 1280x1024. No reason to go with a higher resolution monitor if it's going to waste and it's highly doubtful they will ever use the higher resolutions due to failing eyesight. And at 1280x1024 they are still having problems with reading text, you can always adjust Windows and most programs to display larger text.

 

[Aleatoric]

I'm running my 2005fpw on 1280x768 and it looks great. You guys need to remember we're talking about grandparents here, not highly scrutinizing nerds. Text will be fine with basically whatever resolution you set. I often go down to 720x480 when I watch a DVD, and if I have to do something while I'm on that res, the text is perfectly readable (just enormous). However, I'd agree that you'd be fine just getting a 19".

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: Aleatoric
I'm running my 2005fpw on 1280x768 and it looks great. You guys need to remember we're talking about grandparents here, not highly scrutinizing nerds. Text will be fine with basically whatever resolution you set. I often go down to 720x480 when I watch a DVD, and if I have to do something while I'm on that res, the text is perfectly readable (just enormous). However, I'd agree that you'd be fine just getting a 19".

*vomit*

If you love your text huge and blurry, I've got an old CRT you can have. Let me give that 2005fpw a loving home.

- M4H

 

[xtknight]

This is how 1024x768 (4:3) looks on my 1280x1024 (5:4) 19" monitor (ViewSonic VP930b). Here, the monitor is doing the scaling. It can also be fine tuned in the OSD a bit. (This is a Photoshop simulation, I didn't actually take a picture of it.)

Original 1280x1024: http://xtknight.atothosting.com/tools/1280x1024.png
Scaled to 1024x768 by monitor DSP: http://xtknight.atothosting.com/tools/1024x768-scaled.png

Perfect? No, but certainly acceptable IMO.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Get a 19" LCD and run with increased pixel size (120dpi over the regular 96pdi; you can go a bit higher if their vision is horrible).