Rookie question regarding choosing between 2 monitors

[grb137]

nevermind, its late, I'm tired

 

[Slappy00]

sure

 

[Bateluer]

Both of those are 19" panels, unless you linked to the wrong panel in the 21" link.

I don't trust the first one. 'Famous Brand'? WTF is that? I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. The second panel is actually a real brand, and looks to have decent spec's.

Also, keep in mind that the native res on a 19" LCD is still 1280x1024, most CRT 19"s can do 1600x1200 without issues. A 20"+ panel is needed for a native res of 1600x1200.

A 17" panel with higher spec's and the same res could also be had for around 400 as well. I've been looking at the Samsung 712N Black myself, as well as BenQ and Viewsonic 19" 12ms panels.

Good contrast ration, brightness, etc, all factor into the quality of a panel. The response time, how fast the monitor can go from black to white to black again, is very important if you play fast paced games. 16ms and below is pretty decent for gaming, especially on the higher quality panel. For contrast, 500:1 is decent. For brightness, I believe between 250 and 270 is about the standard. But I've seen panels that have a 250 brightness rating easily best panels with a 300 brightness rating. A lot depends on the quality of the panel itself.

Last spec you need to be concerned about is color. 6-bit or 8-bit. 6 bit panels dither the color to 16.2million colors, 8 bit panels display the full 16.7million. Officially, the human eye can only distinguish around 500,000, but I've looked at 16.2million panels and 16.7 million panels and the 16.7 panels do look visibly better in the gamin environment.

Edit - You made me type that up for nothing. A pox on you.

 

[grb137]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
Both of those are 19" panels, unless you linked to the wrong panel in the 21" link.

I don't trust the first one. 'Famous Brand'? WTF is that? I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. The second panel is actually a real brand, and looks to have decent spec's.

Also, keep in mind that the native res on a 19" LCD is still 1280x1024, most CRT 19"s can do 1600x1200 without issues. A 20"+ panel is needed for a native res of 1600x1200.

A 17" panel with higher spec's and the same res could also be had for around 400 as well. I've been looking at the Samsung 712N Black myself, as well as BenQ and Viewsonic 19" 12ms panels.

Good contrast ration, brightness, etc, all factor into the quality of a panel. The response time, how fast the monitor can go from black to white to black again, is very important if you play fast paced games. 16ms and below is pretty decent for gaming, especially on the higher quality panel. For contrast, 500:1 is decent. For brightness, I believe between 250 and 270 is about the standard. But I've seen panels that have a 250 brightness rating easily best panels with a 300 brightness rating. A lot depends on the quality of the panel itself.

Last spec you need to be concerned about is color. 6-bit or 8-bit. 6 bit panels dither the color to 16.2million colors, 8 bit panels display the full 16.7million. Officially, the human eye can only distinguish around 500,000, but I've looked at 16.2million panels and 16.7 million panels and the 16.7 panels do look visibly better in the gamin environment.

Edit - You made me type that up for nothing. A pox on you.

Sorry about making you type that - I had found the 2nd "21 inch" monitor from shopping.com, and then only after I posted my message did I realize it was actually a 19".

I'm not a gamer, so it sounds like response time isn't as important to me. You think 25ms would be enough for watching the streaming games on MLB.com?

As far as the brand issue - according tigerdirect when I called them, "Famous Brand" is what they call it when the manufacturer does not permit them to use their the real name. In this case, the monitor is made (and warrantied) by Sceptre.

Thanks for your response though, I didn't know about the color bit part.