24”s: the new stars of the LCD world
As we said on previous occasions, we are convinced that the 24 inch will slowly eclipse the 22 inch. The Samsung 245B is already taking this direction and the new Iiyama Prolite B2403WS and Samsung SyncMaster 245T are going to even accelerate the situation. To our great pleasure, there are changes in technology and prices in the realm of LCD screens!
On the left: the Samsung 245T ; on the right: the Iiyama B2403WS; 1920 x 1200 pixels.
In the middle: the Samsung 226BW, 22 inch; 1680 x 1050 pixels.Iiyama Prolite B2403WS : 499 euros, TN 3 ms panel, vertically adjustable base, rotates, pivots, sober but rather elegant design, and HDMI with HDCP.
Samsung SyncMaster 245T : the first PVA wide gamut panel with MPA technology, and artificial screening competing with BenQ’s solution. In addition, there are multiple video inputs including HDMI and YUV, a 4 port USB hub, here again a vertically adjustable base, and it can be rotated and pivoted.
So here we have two extremes at the same time or rather two monitors that represent for us what the screens of tomorrow will be. On one side, Iiyama proposes an ultra attractive product. It matches all current needs, is complete, has high performances and all for a very reasonable price. This monitor is also factory pre-calibrated – no need to make any adjustments - and color fidelity is good from the start.
On the other side, we have the 245T with another interesting strategy. Its wide gamut should, in theory, seduce movie fans as much as professionals equipped with reflex cameras capable of producing the simple sRGB gamut. At least with this screen, they will be able to see all colors that were captured and which will be printed in photos.
The tests
We run tests for reaction time in games, delay of display, and video rendering (SD, HD 720p, HD 1080p). We also evaluate ergonomics, viewing angles, the quality of upscaling, and the panel's brightness homogeneity. In short, we look at all aspects of a screen.
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 our study of 18 patches makes it possible to create a table visually resituating the variation of colors compared to an ideal grey scale.
Rather than a response time measurement with an oscilloscope, we photograph the monitor in action. This is an effective way of capturing afterglow. The program used is
Pixel Persistence Analyzer (PixPerAn for short). 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. Otherwise, we haven't given up on the practical tests in games, HD and DVD video, web surfing, etc....
Finally, we measure the delay to display images compared to CRT monitors.
The test computer is self-assembled, has an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ processor and NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX card.
