Dell S2209W 22-inch

[john5527]

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I am looking a buying this monitor. Does anyone know much about it? I see that the max resolution is 1920x1080. Does that mean that the native resolution is not the usual for a 22inch. My concern is how does this display a true HD movie? Does it just shrink it by squeezing more pixels into a smaller space? Does anyone recommend this one?

[Pob255]

If I'm correct this is one of the new 1080p 22" screens, so it's native should be 1920x1080
No idea what they are like all told.

In all honesty I'd not be too worried about it, on anything under 24" you'll not notice any real difference between 720p and 1080p if you're more than 4.5 feet away from your monitor.
http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html viewing distance + screen size VS the human eye ( 20/20 )

For normal pc use resolution matters because you're so close. I find there is a comfort cut off point, eg 17" vs 19" when sat side by side I prefur a 19" even though they are the same resolution, the slightly smaller dots on a 17" can cause me to lean more, which is not great for seating posture.

I'll add to that that the only place I can find the dell s2209w for sale is dell's website at £219
and for the same price of £219 they have the new S2309W 23" full 1080p so unless that 1" is going to stop it fitting on your desk I'd go for the larger monitor, infact I'd look at a 24" instead if you want 1080p

[Webby]

In answer to your question and basically confirmation of what Pob has said the native resolution of that monitor is 1920*1080 the actual diagonal screen size is 21.5" by the way.

Now we get to the second part of Pob's post which is that monitors of the same resolution that are different sizes provide different experiences. This is to do with pixel depth (how many pixels are in a particular area) I measure pixel depth in pixels per inch (ppi) and depending on what suits you best will determine what is right for you.

We will have a little table now showing some panel sizes their resolution and the corresponding PPI.

17" - 1280*1024 - 96ppi
19" - 1280*1024 - 86ppi
19" - 1440*900 - 89ppi
20" - 1680*1050 - 99ppi
21.5" - 1920*1080 - 102ppi
22" - 1680*1050 - 90ppi
23" - 1920*1080 - 96ppi
24" - 1920*1200 - 94ppi

So what can we see from the table? First that ppi is related to both screen size and resolution and secondly that unless you work it out you could be in for a shock when a monitor arrived.

So what is the best ppi? This depends entirely on you, however the generally excepted rule is the higher the better (as it creates a sharper image) the problem comes when you go so high that text becomes hard to read and you find yourself squinting at the monitor. Some people find 24" monitors (94ppi) hard to read and yet 22" (90ppi) is fine personally this is not an issue for me and having used a 30" monitor (101ppi) I can happily say that even those high ppi are fine for me but everyone is different.

So my advice is quite simple find your current monitor size and resolution check the table above for its ppi (if it is not there let me know and I will calculate it for you) if your happy with its sharpness and text size then get the monitor which most closely matches the current ppi. If you feel that text is easily readable and you want a sharper image then go for a higher ppi. The best way to tell for sure is go somewhere like PC world and check out a few different monitor sizes and resolutions then you will be able to pick what is best for you, just remember to stand far enough away (same distance that you sit from your monitor) to get a good comparision no point in really liking a 100ppi monitor when your 12" from it but when you get home and sit 36" away its too small.

[Pob255]

Well there you go webby's put it far more succinctly than I did.

now one thing I'll try to clarify is my point about viewing distances
42" 1080p tv 1920*1080 = 52 PPI
42" 720p tv 1280*720 = 35 PPI
now at 5 feet or less you'll see a real difference between a 720p and 1080p being feed off a 1080p source.
but from over 7 feet away they will look the same as the human eye cannot distinguish the difference at that distance.
the smaller the screen the shorter this cutoff point is, if you look back at that chart the 720p cutoff point for a 25" screen is only 5 feet

Now most of us sit within/around 2'6" feet to a computer monitor (screen to eyeball) so these increases in resolution are noticeable, however very few of us sit that close to a screen when watching tv or movies

So if your pc is in your bed room and you like to sit on your bed across from it when watching
a dvd, then your probably going to be at least 5 feet away so the difference between a full 1920x1080 vs 1680x1050 on 22" will be totally unnoticeable, what will become more important is contrast and brightness.

[john5527]

Thank you both for the great information. One of my worries is if a get a 24inch monitor my graphics card may not be able to handle it. I have 8800GT. Someone told me that it takes a really strong card to play movies and newer games at 1920X1080 resolution. That is why I was looking for a 22inch. Will size affect my graphics card performance much? Right now I have a 5 year old 19inch LCD, but would like to upgrade. Can my card take advantage of a bigger monitor or should I stay with what I have?

Thanks

[matty-hodgson]

it is true that you need a decent GFX card. but i ran my 1920 x 1200 resolution monitor on my 8800GT and it played movies and games without a hiccup.
the only reason i upgraded my grachics was because i wanted to ramp up the display settings.

your 8800GT will be fine if you're willing to compromise the graphics slightly.

[Webby]

The size of the screen is irrelevant to the graphics card, the resolution on the other hand is the deciding factor. The higher the resolution the harder it is to display. So 1920*1080 is more demanding than 1680*1050. For movie it is not an issue a 8800GT will happily display 1080p content with no problems. Games are where you might run into problems but then you can always lower the resolution down to 1680*1050 (you will either get a black bar on each side and small bars top and bottom or you can stretch the image to fill the screen). Much better to have a higher resolution and be able to reduce it than to have a lower resolution and want to increase it and be unable to. Equally if/when you get a better graphics card you will be able to make use of the higher resolution in games - higher resolution = better graphics.

[Pob255]

As Webby said it's resolution not size, the whole size thing comes from up untill just recently all flat screen monitors were a standard resolution based on there size, so all 20" and 22" wide screens were 1680x1050 there were no other resolutions.
Not includeing tv's which came in two resolutions 1280*720 or 1930*1080 reguardless of size
These new monitors are basically breaking these standard resolutions.
As to the 8800gt you should be ok depending on game and you.

Many people are happy to play games below native resolution happly, the same way some of us don't mind frame rates of 30fps and some are never happy unless it's well above 60fps.

That said if you've got a 8800gt 256mb forget it, the 256mb version will still play movies happly at 1920x1080 but it will seriously struggle with games

[john5527]

I'll add to that that the only place I can find the dell s2209w for sale is dell's website at £219
and for the same price of £219 they have the new S2309W 23" full 1080p so unless that 1" is going to stop it fitting on your desk I'd go for the larger monitor, infact I'd look at a 24" instead if you want 1080p[/QUOTE]

Thanks. One reason I was looking at the 22 was the pixel/dot pitch was .248. I was always told the lower this number the better picture quality. Is this true? Is a lower pixel pitch better? I noticed that most of the 24 inch monitors have .282. Or does this really matter at all?

[Webby]

John see my original post, pixel pitch is the size of a pixel my pixel depth is the same measure just looking at it in how many pixels in an inch rather than the size of each pixel.

As I said while smaller pixels are preferable it depends on if you are happy with the smaller pixels in terms of reading text when playing games and watching movies smaller pixels are always better (as long as you can read any text in them ).

[Pob255]

on LCD's dot pitch and ppi are directly linked the higher the ppi the higher the dot pitch
so it's not that important in lcd monitors, it was important on CRT's as high dot pitch would result in "fuzzy" pixels.

A higher resolution at the same size screen will result in a sharper image (again depending on viewing distance)

here's a sudgestion, if you have a pc world near you go there, don't buy anything just go and look at some monitors, see what you think of 22" and 24" (they may have the new higher res 22")
it will give you a good idea of how they look. (if no pc world then try currys or dixon)

[nicolaskm]

Dears !

First ill tell you about myself. I am an Industrial Designer, so i design products.

I use programs such as Rhinoceros 3d, Autocad, doing renders of products in high definitions.

I want to buy this LCD to use it mainly for my job thou i love to see HD Movies, i have a Blue Ray
reproducer
and i also i am kind of a gamer.


I have 2 graphic cards,
NVidia Geforce 6800 (512MB)
and a NVidia Quadro 2500 (256MB)

Some people told me that the Quadro is perfect for my job but, i think that maybe de 6800 will
work better with games and other general stuff in this 1920x1080 screen beacuse it has more memory


So 2 things, first do you think this is a good LCD for me?
and on the other side, what do yo u think about the graphic cards?

THANK YOU GUYS!!!!

Nicolas

[icanhazburger]

I got this monitor yesterday from pcworld for 149.99, I'm pretty pleased with it, it does not compare with there more expensive 24" monitors but for the price its extremely good for a budget choice.