A 27" Monitor for Work, PC and Xbox Gaming

[Kirano]

however the Xbox does not do 1080p, so for gaming you are stuck with 720p I believe

Uh? I'm pretty sure that the Xbox 360 does 1080p. All of the current gen consoles do (wikipedia confirms this), it's just that not all games are rendered above that (most being at 720p). It still upscales them to 1080p though...

The DGM does look appealing (for anyone following this thread, I believe Dareos is referring to this.. http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/dgm_ips-2701wph.htm) however it runs at 2560x1440. Though I'd love to have a screen with that high a resolution - as it's supposed to be amazing for PC Gaming - my budget can't really go that high at the moment. ALso I don't think the Xbox will scale well up to that high a resolution (though no-one has yet confirmed or denied this so...) and I'm pretty sure that my graphics card can't handle running at that kind of resolution on high graphics settings!

My intention is though, a few months or more down the line, to get a second 27" monitor that's 2560x1440 and upgrade my graphics card to something more suitable, so I'll definitely come back to the DGM then...

[Kirano]

Oh and another question...

Viewsonic offer a 3-year limited warranty
ASUS offer a 3-year system warranty and a 3-year panel warranty... Is there a difference? Which is better?

[hesham1516]

I dont think the xbox can go higher than 1080p, it will just stretch to fit and look fine.

I didn't know they made 1080p ips panels at 27", thaught it was only available on 24". At the same price range, I would highly recommend them over any TN panel as long as you are not a veteran FPS gamer, and by FPS, I mean the fast paced stuff, not modern military shooters. The difference in refresh rate will only be noticable side by side in other applications

Personally I would save for the DGM as it is an amazing monitor for the price and i've been eyeing it for a while. The thing about monitors is that they are generally the part you replace the least in custom pc's so you may as well get something that satisfies you or is future proof. A shame its a teeny bit on the ugly side.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Although the DGM has a better panel with a smaller dot pitch,also remember,you could alternatively spend more on the graphics card too.

[Kirano]

I dont think the xbox can go higher than 1080p, it will just stretch to fit and look fine.

You're right, it won't go over 1080p and this was why I was inclined to go with a panel that is native 1080p - that way I know I'm going to get the best image out of it. That said, do you run 1080p stuff, like hi-def videos on your DGM? How does that look? I've heard complaints about the stretching that can happen sometimes, and I want to see Halo 4 at it's absolute best! Some threads I've read more recently suggest that some 2560x1440 panels (if they don't come with an internal scaler) won't even display a 1080p picture - by this I mean when you plug in something non-computer based such as a console. You can display basically any res on a monitor from your computer because the GPU does the scaling itself. But no two threads are a-like in this regard! Everyone has a different opinion!

For reference...
http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.p...-Lite-possible
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/...-1440p-monitor

There's actually this thread that relates to the DGM
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...8417986&page=4
I've not read through the whole thing (32 pages) but the indication seemed to be that it did have a scaler. No indication of what la xbox looked like on that though....

I didn't know they made 1080p ips panels at 27", thaught it was only available on 24". At the same price range, I would highly recommend them over any TN panel as long as you are not a veteran FPS gamer, and by FPS, I mean the fast paced stuff, not modern military shooters. The difference in refresh rate will only be noticable side by side in other applications

I think they're a moderately recent addition. I do play FPS's with my friends (stuff like CS:GO) and occasionally stuff by myself (Dead Space 3 will likely be the next one in that category) but I guess nothing that you would describe as fast paced. My current 22" Dell monitor is over 4 years old now. I doubt it has a response time better than 5ms (if it even has that) so I probably won't see any difference with the 7ms on the Viewsonic.

Personally I would save for the DGM as it is an amazing monitor for the price and i've been eyeing it for a while. The thing about monitors is that they are generally the part you replace the least in custom pc's so you may as well get something that satisfies you or is future proof. A shame its a teeny bit on the ugly side.

I understand what you mean. The 1080p Viewsonic would satisfy me now; I know my graphics card can handle almost all my games at that res with high->very high settings. The 2560x1440 would future proof me at the expense of good quality in the present. And tbh, if I upgrade anything else in the next few months, it'll be replacing my hard drives with SSD's! There's a chance my sponsor's might buy me a new GPU anyway - I should probably wait to see if that materializes before buying a new GPU! Then again, maybe the 6970 wouldn't run that bad on the 2560x1440.... I just don't know!

Though temptation towards a 2560x1440 panel is growing, I feel myself about to go with the Viewsonic, shearly because it's looks a good quality screen and I know everything I want to run on it will run. I'll wait til the morning however, in case someone comes up with something else or I find something miraculous on the internetz...

Edit:
Then again this
http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/27-2...p-ocuk-1274813
and this...
http://91.151.218.11/showthread.php?p=22900955
suggest it will look fine!
*sigh*

[PowerPie5000]

Don't get anything over 1080p if you're goiing to use it with an Xbox 360. Most (if not all ) LCD monitors look a bit shabby if not running at their native resolution... The Xbox will always look better on a 27" 1080p screen than it would on a 27" 1440p screen.

[Kirano]

Don't get anything over 1080p if you're goiing to use it with an Xbox 360. Most (if not all ) LCD monitors look a bit shabby if not running at their native resolution... The Xbox will always look better on a 27" 1080p screen than it would on a 27" 1440p screen.

1080p it is then!

[Kirano]

Final call for suggestions before I seal the deal on this Viewsonic
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/27-vi...1-7ms-black-sp

Was still a little tempted by this Asus
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/27-as...-300-cd-m2-2ms

but a combination of CAT-THE-FIFTH and hesham1516's advice swung me in favour of an IPS panel and the ever so slightly better specs, better tilt (minor but important) and visual appeal of the Viewsonic pushed me towards that. I'm not 100% decided on that though... Impulse may push me to the AOC yet!

Thanks to everyone else who has posted as well. This area is a minefield, as so much of it is subjective, so thank you for helping me navigate to solution.... almost....

[PowerPie5000]

Final call for suggestions before I seal the deal on this Viewsonic
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/27-vi...1-7ms-black-sp

Was still a little tempted by this Asus
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/27-as...-300-cd-m2-2ms

but a combination of CAT-THE-FIFTH and hesham1516's advice swung me in favour of an IPS panel and the ever so slightly better specs, better tilt (minor but important) and visual appeal of the Viewsonic pushed me towards that. I'm not 100% decided on that though... Impulse may push me to the AOC yet!

Thanks to everyone else who has posted as well. This area is a minefield, as so much of it is subjective, so thank you for helping me navigate to solution.... almost....

I didn't know a 27" 1080p IPS panel existed (i thought all the 27" variety were 1440p )... If the monitor is mainly for gaming, then i personally wouldn't bother with IPS due to the slower response time (I notice slight streaking/motion blur/ghosting or whatever you want to call it with my 23" LG IPS screen). I'm actually planning on ditching IPS altogether until the panels get faster as i mainly game and want the fastest pixel response times. I'm looking for a decent 120hz monitor .

If you crave excellent colour reproduction, wide viewing angles and can put up with overly aggressive (grainy) AG coating and some motion blur, then IPS will be fine (you can get glossy, but it could end up like a mirror!). A calibrated TN panel can still display decent colours and the viewing angles are not as bad as they used to be a few years ago (most gamers tend to sit in front of the screen anyway)... They are also better when it comes gaming with the fastest response times and low input lag. I actually preferred my old 24" LG W2442PE (TN) to my current LG IPS235V (IPS).

[Kirano]

I didn't know a 27" 1080p IPS panel existed (i thought all the 27" variety were 1440p )... If the monitor is mainly for gaming, then i personally wouldn't bother with IPS due to the slower response time (I notice slight streaking/motion blur/ghosting or whatever you want to call it with my 23" LG IPS screen). I'm actually planning on ditching IPS altogether until the panels get faster as i mainly game and want the fastest pixel response times. I'm looking for a decent 120hz monitor .

If you crave excellent colour reproduction, wide viewing angles and can put up with overly aggressive (grainy) AG coating and some motion blur, then IPS will be fine (you can get glossy, but it could end up like a mirror!). A calibrated TN panel can still display decent colours and the viewing angles are not as bad as they used to be a few years ago (most gamers tend to sit in front of the screen anyway)... They are also better when it comes gaming with the fastest response times and low input lag. I actually preferred my old 24" LG W2442PE (TN) to my current LG IPS235V (IPS).

The difference between your TN and IPS panels was that noticeable then, PowerPie5000? Well that doesn't make my life easier at all!

I guess it's time to lay it on the line for myself, amalgamate the stuff I've learnt about screens and figure out exactly what I want...

(By the way PowerPie, I'm pretty sure I've stored some links somewhere on 120Hz screens. I'll try and hunt them out for you when I get my own one nailed!)

For my work all I really need is a screen I can view stuff on. Nothing about the screen is important beyond the fact that it's a screen that outputs coloured dots arranged to form a picture; the cheapest monitor on the planet could do that to satisfaction. In fact, a box with a person in it drawing things at 60 frames per second would suffice. Provided they don't mind getting screamed at when they draw *SEGMENTATION FAULT* or infinite-loop which requires me to hard-reboot! :rollseyes:

So I suppose the main point for me then is the gaming! Wanting to plug an Xbox in limits me to the 1080p. For good gaming a frame with low response times and low lag is ideal I gather. I notice the back light bleed on my current Dell sometimes in darker scenes, so something that displays good quality blacks with low bleed would be good (my dell screen was pretty cheap... I got it even cheaper because it was the last of a then discontinued line... frankly, anything I buy is probably going to look superb!) Looking around at reviews, IPS models tend to have back light bleed issues and you often get a funny 'black glow' that makes them look like very very dark greys.

Fairly consistently though, IPS models get great reviews for there colour accuracy and high viewing angles (which do look superb-I'd never really noticed how bad my screen looks from different angles so losing that must be great). The majority of the time however, I will be sat directly in front of the screen however, even when I'm on la xbox (though that may be on a bean bag on the floor rather than at my desk. Either way, I can get the screen so it's directly infront of me) so viewing angles aren't necessarily an issue. And the colour reviews for TN's are rarely below good (for reviews which are overall good I mean) Which would seem to point to a TN screen, right?

Every answer I come up with, I or somebody else eventually finds a flaw in it. I know from the onset I said this whole area was laced in subjectivity but I think a part of me was still hoping to, you know, find *the* answer. The one result I could know for definite would be perfect and result in no disappointment or need to compromise. Sadly, the one result which very rarely exists, in all aspects of life. The philosophy of buying a monitor.

Ok.

Post your final comments here... by 10pm I'll be ordering and getting this out of mind...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

If you look at the review of the AOC again:

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/aoc_i2757fm.htm

"We have first of all provided a comparison against 3 other popular 27" models. In practice, the performance of the AOC's IPS panel fairs very well. It is more responsive than the BenQ GW2750HM which uses a modern AMVA panel. Historically AMVA panels have been very slow, but this was one of the first of a new generation which showed a marked improvement. It has slightly more motion blur than the AOC, and also shows a slight dark overshoot which you can see in the image above, caused by a poorly controlled overdrive impulse. The HP ZR2740w is another 27" IPS panel, like the AOC, but is a 2560 x 1440 resolution model. It is free of any noticeable overshoot problems, but the motion blur is more apparent and it is not quite as fast as the AOC as a result. The recently tested Dell U2713HM performed very well in these tests, being a little faster than the AOC in fact and only showing a very slight dark trail. Another good example of why you can't always rely on the quoted specs as the Dell has a supposed 8ms G2G response time, while the AOC's 5ms G2G is somewhat exaggerated. The AOC performed comparatively very well really, and a pleasing sign for these new 1920 x 1080 resolution IPS panels it seems."

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Also,another contender enters the ring:

http://www.dabs.com/products/lg-elec...m_content=Q200

This thread might be useful to look at too:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...php?t=18454721

[Kirano]

Also,another contender enters the ring:

http://www.dabs.com/products/lg-elec...m_content=Q200

This thread might be useful to look at too:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...php?t=18454721

This thread suggest thats the AOC has the advantage over the LG.
http://www.overclock.net/t/1320913/l...vs-aoc-i2757fm
The AOC is also available from Scan now. The LG is not officially listed as in stock but "ordered upon request" from dabs which I imagine might mean they have a longer turn around. And I definitely want the screen this week, so that on the vague off-chance that i totally BOSS my work in the coming days, I can settle down for some Halo 4.

I'm sorry CAT-THE-FIFTH; either I didn't the read the review properly the first time or I got it confused with something else (I have read a *lot* of reviews on TFTcentral in the last week!) I thought the AOC had a lot more negatives than it actually does! The specifications on the AOC are very impressive. The aluminium brush effect didn't really appeal to me to begin with; I prefered something all black around the outsides. That said, most things that are all black around the edges also have glossy edges and having seen things that aren't glossy, I prefer not glossy. The AOC, apart from the bottom maybe, is not glossy. And I do like the 'bezel-less' design. And the lack of DVI isn't all that important given that it has two hdmi's and both my xbox and graphics cards have hdmi ports. Another sticking point was the spatial adjustments you can make with to the monitor. One of the reviews negatives is "Limited stand adjustments, with even the tilt range being narrow." Height adjustments aren't really something I've come to expect in a monitor (I was going to buy a couple of monitor stands - one for home, one for work) and the tilt range isn't actually *that* restrictive. I can't imagine needing to tilt it anymore than they show in the photos...

[Kirano]

So I went for the AOC. For a while I was contemplating going for the ASUS. It was similar in style to my current monitor and had seen a lot of mention in forum threads and few positive reviews. And I've had stuff from ASUS before and it's usually come out pretty well. The AOC grew on me however. As I heard more and more positive things about how good IPS panels are but was then told how important response time was for gaming, after reading the AOC review (after CAT-THE-FIFTH had to post it for the second time! ) it seemed a logical choice. It has all the benefits of IPS screen while being pretty reasonable in the response time and input lag departments.

Queue flood of posts starting with "oh you got that one? Haven't you read this review which says it's rubbish?"

I realise that I've been pretty rubbishy at tying off posts in the past. I've really given any final feedback on on final decisions made or whether problems got resolved or not... So this time, I'm going to try and do something a bit more helpful for yourselves and the future hexians who may stumble on this thread.

On Wednesday when it arrives, I'll take some photos of the monitor and it's contents and do a proper comparison between my current monitor and the new one and give some feedback on what I think of the choice. Hopefully it will prove useful/interesting to people!

[PowerPie5000]

So I went for the AOC. For a while I was contemplating going for the ASUS. It was similar in style to my current monitor and had seen a lot of mention in forum threads and few positive reviews. And I've had stuff from ASUS before and it's usually come out pretty well. The AOC grew on me however. As I heard more and more positive things about how good IPS panels are but was then told how important response time was for gaming, after reading the AOC review (after CAT-THE-FIFTH had to post it for the second time! ) it seemed a logical choice. It has all the benefits of IPS screen while being pretty reasonable in the response time and input lag departments.

Queue flood of posts starting with "oh you got that one? Haven't you read this review which says it's rubbish?"

I realise that I've been pretty rubbishy at tying off posts in the past. I've really given any final feedback on on final decisions made or whether problems got resolved or not... So this time, I'm going to try and do something a bit more helpful for yourselves and the future hexians who may stumble on this thread.

On Wednesday when it arrives, I'll take some photos of the monitor and it's contents and do a proper comparison between my current monitor and the new one and give some feedback on what I think of the choice. Hopefully it will prove useful/interesting to people!

The AOC does seem pretty good... Better than my LG it seems too! Please let us know what you think when you've tried it out . The only thing that might be off-putting is the AG coating which seems to be as aggressive as LG and Dell IPS screens (it can give the image a dirty/grainy look). It would also be good to know how much light bleed there is and how noticeable the IPS glow is. I'm still thinking about getting a 120hz TN screen and ditching my IPS... The 27" Asus VG278HE (which is actually 144hz!) seems pretty good .

[Kirano]

So far my first impression is... ZOMG!

But seriously, the screen itself looks amazing. The colours look much richer then compared to my old dell and everything is birght and crisp. I haven't even attempted any optimzing of the screen yet; I need to follow the TFTreview through and fiddle around with the settings to get it just right. Out of the box though it still looks pretty great!

As to whether 1080p goes on a 27" screen.... It looks great to me! I imagine if you had it at the normal distance you have, say, a 22inch monitor then yes, it would look a little pixelated. A screen this size benefits from being pushed back a little so you can really see all of the screen without your eyes and neck feeling uncomfortable.

One negative so far... The stand, where the monitor sockets in at the back, fills a little flimsy! :s You can easily grab the screen and wobble it a fair bit. If I grab my desk and shake that a little, the screen wobbles much more than the dell does. Despite that, it does still feel secure in the stand. And if I take the screen out of the stand and just rest it on the desk (as you can do because of how the screen is designed) it's very steady.

Also, a word of warning - when you dive under your desk late in the evening to check what connectors you have on the back of your graphics card.... hdmi slots and display port slots can look pretty similar! Especially if you have no idea what a display port looks like! Thankfully, I had a DVI to HDMI adapter at hand. There doesn't seem to have been any negative repercusions of this though so I think I'm in the clear.

Frustratingly, I have such a mind boggingly amount of work to do, all I really have time for right now is to just check that the screen works and things look okay before I hurry back to coding. I'll be taking photos of everything at the weekend (a few friends have also asked that I do a photo journal of unboxing the Halo 4 LE Console so I'll photo the monitor alongside this) and be doing some optimizing of the screen on Sunday.