Introduction
January 2005 is a very good month for fans of LCD monitors as some amazing changes have come about. Samsung announced that it will progressively move towards a zero dead pixel policy, and prices have decreased so much that supplies now exceed demand. The real winners of all these changes are buyers who now have the option of bigger and cheaper monitors.
Generally speaking, the price of 17” LCD monitors is now half of what it was last summer. Unless you have specific requirements, your budget for this type of screen shouldn’t be over 350€ / $400. For this sum it’s also possible to buy a mid-range 19” with the possibility of a 16ms AU Optronics TN panel. You may have to compromise with reduced ergonomics such as analogical input, fixed foot, a plastic body, etc. With higher prices you have more options, but don’t go overboard and spend more than 600€ for a 19”, because you won’t be able to take advantage of recent price reductions. So, what about products over 19”?
This is the other big change of the year, as 20” LCDs are now more and more affordable. These 1600 x 1200 pixels monitors, instead of 1280 x 1024 for 17” and 19”s, now target the general public. Prices are around 650 €, a relatively reasonable sum considering that this was the price of some 17”s last summer.
The release of reasonably priced 20” LCDs was, however, quite inevitable. They replace 22” CRTs which also have 1600 x 1200 pixels. The pixel size of the 20" LCD and 22" CRT is almost identical and the display surface the same (it’s even a couple of millimetres bigger for the LCD).
The same old story...Actually, monitor history just keeps repeating itself. The first “general public” 15” LCDs (approximately 740€ according to
our 2001 survey in French) included all the latest technology, and professional 17” monitors had slow VA and IPS panels. When the 17” reached the general public they featured the latest innovations: faster response time, TN panels, and better color quality. At the same time, 19” TFT monitors (new high end products) featured slow VA and IPS panels. During the last two months 19” LCDs are progressively replacing 17”s, which have now become basic models. So 20” LCD monitors are now the new high end models, which exclusively feature (as you may have already guessed) IPS and VA panels.
20” for whom and for what?First, let us profile a typical 20” LCD screen. Most are vertically adjustable and have a pivot mode, a feature very useful in writing documents and surfing the web (pages are vertical and not horizontal), or editing pictures. It’s of no interest whatsoever for games or video.
20” resolution is 1600x1200 except for one monitor (in this test), the Dell’s at 1680 x 1050 pixels. All the products in this survey have very high resolution and are perfect to work with documents or images. They are, however, still problematic for gaming, and it’s imperative to have a powerful graphic card to play the newest games.
Finally, 20" IPS response time is 16 ms and VA 25 ms. All monitors display 16.7 million colors. This should be perfect for video, but less so for games.
Which graphic card for play in 1600 x 1200 pixels
If you want to play games with this screen and its 1600x1200 standard resolution, you really need to invest in a serious graphic card as it actually needs to process 46% more pixels than in 1280*1024 (for 17” and 19” monitors).
So, if a 6600 GT or a 9800 Pro (200-250 € / $200-250) is enough to play 3D games on a 19” LCD monitor, you need a high end graphic card to play in 1600*1200 with a 20” monitor to reach an equivalent performance.
The NVIDIA 6800 or even the 6800 GT would be a good choice. For ATI we would recommend the X800 XL, unfortunately only available in PCI Express version for the moment. Of course, in investing more money you will be able to activate more effects with an equivalent resolution (anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering) without a reduction in performance
An interesting anecdoteWe published a
19” monitor survey in 2001 in 2001 (real diagonal size = 18” approximately). At the time, and we continue to hear it today, people used to say that LCD monitors would never be cheaper than CRTs. The average price of the 11 monitors was 4277 Francs (637€ US / $844). Today this price corresponds to a 20” monitor, twice more than a basic 19” model and three times more than a basic 17” LCD.
