22 inches, the new size that will take over!
Even if manufacturers often predict future price raises (with great aspirations), they actually continue to drop regularly. In September, it’s even worse. A new size of diagonal has showed up, the 22 inch, which will may make quite an impact because of its very aggressive price. The Acer AL2216W is the first of its kind and will soon be followed by similar products released by ViewSonic, BenQ, Samsung. Up until their arrival, the Acer is available at the record breaking MSRP of 399€! This is cheaper than most 20 inch monitors and even some 19 inches. At this price, why should we go smaller?
First of all, we are going to play devil’s advocate. The characteristics of the AL2216W are very modest on paper. Resolution is the same as the 20 inch – 1680 x 1050 pixels – meaning that images will be bigger but not more precise. The TN panel contrast is 700:1 and the response time 5 ms.
We immediately assume that reaction time will be closer to the TN 8ms rather than the latest 2, 3 and 4 ms. There will also probably be a strong twinkling effect in movies and the inferior viewing angle will quickly turn dark. However, we have all of this in perspective. Our surveys are practical. We oppose two monitors and look at results to see the one or two winners. Now, you have to ask yourself if you really need "the best" monitor, the most perfect in everything. It is natural to want to have the best product on the market but honestly, we have to acknowledge that "bad" monitors are really rare. Most are satisfactory and do their job of displaying text, the web, videogames, and videos. We are meticulous on reaction time, and color quality, but the majority of users won’t necessarily see the differences.
Our main criterion in perspective
Color : it seems natural to prefer monitors with the best settings. The further we delve into the subject, the more it seems important. Working with inaccurate colors when you edit a picture can lead to catastrophic results once it is printed on paper or displayed on another monitor. It has also an influence on game rendering and movies…However,
we recently saw, that it is possible to manually adjust monitor rendering but you have to be patient and have a good eye. If you can save 100€ with this method it could be worth it.
Reaction time : with the first LCDs tested on Hardware.fr (
5 years ago... test in French), reaction time was one of the most important points. We saw them considerably progress until now with the fastest on the market being the TN 2, 3 and 4 ms (they all are 19" monitors, the ViewSonic VX922 and VX924, Huyndaï Q90U, and LG L1932P) and the IPS 6 ms (we only have tested one so far, the Nec MultiSync 20WGX²). They are undeniably faster than the VA 6 and 8 ms and the TN 8 ms. Here again, we have to put this result in perspective. A CRT fan will still find that the best LCD monitors have some downsides. This is all the more true that since the release of our last test, which shows the
the delay of LCD monitors compared to CRTs. So the difference between the reaction time of 2ms and 8 ms monitors might seem quite small, especially if 90% of users can´t tell the difference between the two if they don´t scrutinize them carefully. We even know one tester who says that he doesn´t see the afterglow on a 25 ms monitor. This isn´t our case and not everyone is equally sensitive to this problem.
Films : TN monitors with ISPs are the worst for movies in that they have a strong twinkling effect. It means that they considerably accentuate the compression defaults of SD and HD sequences. They sometimes even add some giving the impression of not being capable of displaying 16.7 million colors. We have tested so many monitors that we strongly react to this type of defect. However, if you step back 2 meters (except for a couple of monitors), the twinkling effect will no longer be perceptible. Especially if you have an NVIDIA or ATI graphic card with the noise reduction function activated. We saw recently that
this correction is very efficient.
DVI or VGA: Sometimes forum users say that the DVI input is the best for reaction time and colors. Honestly, after a couple of hundred monitor tests and with several series of probes, we have never seen the difference. Of course, it is best to use the numeric input. First of all, it avoids a useless double conversion of the signal. We, however, verified that it doesn´t lead to an additional delay in displaying the image and that it is generally very good. If it isn´t the case, you only have to launch the "Auto" function to correct a blurry image.
Another advantage of DVI input is that it is the only one in accordance with the
HDCP protection norm that is supposed to be indispensable to display protected HD content. Currently, monitors less than 24" are rarely HDCP compatible and this norm is only devoted to very big sizes for now.
Dead pixels: only a few manufacturers have very good policies on the subject. Asus and Ipure belong to this category for all their products, and ViewSonic and Philips for some of their screens. The others should make an effort and it’s unbelievable that they find it normal to sell a monitor with several dead pixels from the beginning…
So all of the above to say that, yes, we are very demanding, maybe too much for most users. Now, let’s move on to the test of a monitor with modest characteristics.
One last thing before we begin. Once you will have read this article, we invite you to continue with us in the race to find the best monitor. Even if I played devil´s advocate, I am one of those who want the fastest, most reliable monitors and who always pushes manufacturers to correct their mistakes. There will be very nice products to test in the months to come with response time falling to 1ms. Backlights will be replaced by new CCFL tubes with a wider gamut, then by LEDs. There will be the first OLED, and the first SED in 2008. But for now, today´s subject is not extraordinary technological improvements, but rather to know if this inexpensive monitor with such a big diagonal is a poor product or if it is a bargain for someone who isn´t really overly demanding.
The tests
Color fidelity and calibration, game reaction time, video quality, ergonomics, viewing angles, and the quality of interpolation-every aspect of each monitor is examined.
For color fidelity we use the LaCie Blue Eye Pro colorimeter, based on the Gretag tool and coupled with the new LaCie software suite. More evolved than the previous version, this helps us to compare a monitor’s display quality (color spectrum and DeltaE) in standard settings and after calibration. Results are sometimes surprising as it’s often best to take the time to manually adjust colors (or at least contrast, brightness and color temperature).
The results of the study of 18 patches makes it possible to draw patterns visually resituating the variation of colors compared to an ideal gray scale.
This test is complemented by another developed by
Colour Confidence. The profile created is compared to the reference profile of professional printers in CMJN, ISO Coated Fogra27. The result is visual and easily interpretable as the coloured part will be displayed on the monitor. Gray areas will be inaccessible to the monitor even if a professional printer might see color variations on paper. Be careful!
For game tests, after developing a response time measuring procedure last year with a probe and an oscilloscope, we eventually came to the conclusion that the measurements weren’t representative of what we actually saw on the screen. We then developed a new test procedure in the summer of 2005, based on pictures of images on the monitor. In this way we can capture afterglow in two environments. The first is between bright colors, and the second is for black and white (like in wire frame mode). The software used is
Pixel Persistence Analyzer (or PixPerAn for regular users). Pictures showing these ghosting effects are captured with a Canon 350D at a shutter speed of 1/1000 s. We take 50 pictures in burst mode for each test to precisely measure the progression of afterglow between images. This time results are consistent with what we see in games. Finally, practical tests are the same in games, HD and DVD video, web surf etc.
The test computer is self-assembled and has an AMD Athlon XP3500+ processor and NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT card.
