The last CRT survey (page 8: Conclusion)

Conclusion

To be perfectly honest, this test was really a pleasure for me. It was nice to come back to their supposedly extraordinary qualities, verifying some like rendering in games were actually true, while others needed to be reviewed (color quality and brightness homogeneity).

Personally, I have abandoned tubes for years though I keep one for reference, using it maybe to test a new generation of LCD panels. After these three monitors, will I come back to CRT? No, because even if I don´t spend all day in front of one, the resulting ocular tiredness is much higher than with LCDs.
So I won´t get back to CRT even if games are much better. But what about as a secondary monitor? If I had to choose one it would be the ViewSonic P227FB. The others were in the end not ideal for sharpness and frequency in high resolutions.

Are gamers condemned to use CRTs? This is the question we posed to a real game specialist, Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, a professional gamer for six years and a real star in this domain. For those who don´t know him, he won the CPL World Tour PainKiller last November and took home $ 150,000.

Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel only plays with CRTs. The problems for him are afterglow and the lower frequency of images. The main fault of LCDs is the restriction in frequency and consequently fps. The possibility of having a 120 Hz LCD like Samsung, CMO and LG-Philips particularly interested him. If LCD really displayed 120 Hz, yes he will probably change to LCDs. We will have to verify if the first monitors of this type will truly display 120 different images per second or if they will display twice the same image with a black one between the two.

For graphic designers, do they have to continue to work with CRTs? If the three monitors tested were representative of overall CRT quality on the market, then they should change to LCDs. Choosing a panel with homogenous brightness, reducing the brightness to 110 cd/m² and calibrating is the best option. Ideally they could delay their purchase a few more weeks to wait for the first affordable LED backlit monitors expected out next Summer for Samsung and Sony (if they aren´t delayed).

Finally, if the power consumption is a problem, here are the figures for the three monitors tested compared to the ViewSonic VX2025wm 20" LCD.

A last amusing tidbit is that three of these four monitors continue to consume energy even if we turn them off with the switch in front. Apparently, some of the buttons are only used to switch off the LED but not to cut the power.