24" Monitor

Probably should have started a new thread previously. Anyway, suggestions for 24" monitor please.

What's important for me:

1. No obvious screen glitches, i.e. I'm not obsessive, but I will notice pink tints, uneven brightness, etc.
2. Reliable - fed up with parts lasting 2 years or less
3. Has to have decent game performance (but most do nowadays no?)
4. Would like it to work well with DVDs and iPlayer (etc)
5. Ergonomics - slim, black, easy controls preferred
6. No particular budget, but would not feel comfortable paying much over £300

TIA :help:

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Originally Posted by Thorsson

6. No particular budget, but would not feel comfortable paying much over £300

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Then I do not feel comfortable recommending a 24" moniter within your budget. I can however recommend this 22" moniter.

E-IPS panel, great build quality, excellent picture quality. There are S-IPS panels from both HP and Dell I would recommend in the 24" size range but they both cost just shy of £440.

Ditto with what nightkhaos said, but since you have clearly stated you would rather pay under £300, I can only recommend this http://www.ebuyer.com/product/160281...roduct_reviews

I have the 22" version, its very good once you have fiddled around with the settings for 20 minutes.

BTW, its not wall mountable.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150970

Is another I can recomend.....especially considering ebuyers price.

Wot they said. I couldn't afford good, so I went cheap with tons of pixels.

Samsung 23" 2048x1152

Scales quite nicely if you feed it lower resolution wide screen images. Dead chuffed with it generally.
Note the resolution is 2x DVD 576p widescreen res (1024x576) so not as bonkers as it first sounds.

I reckon this would be perfect for you:

NEC Multisync EA231WMi

It's a 23" with Full HD resolution. High quality IPS panel for much more accurate colours than TN panel. I almost bought one of these for myself, but ended up going for something bigger. NEC also have a good reputation for reliablility.

http://www.necdisplay.com/Products/P...d-c2fa8204f2a0

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=MO-031-NE (Note I dont really like OCUK, but as its a very new monitor they are one of the only retailers showing atm, i just wanted to link to show it is in budget (£299.)

24" height/swivel adjust LG 2442PA @ £183.34 currently. :mrgreen:

Review here.

There is always the Samsung 2494HM which is well over £200 you could consider.

I'm a little surprised that anyone would suggest a 22" monitor, however good. It's an overblown 20", which is not the same thing at all. The 23" stuff looks a little more interesting.

Now if I need to spend £440, then I can afford it. The question is do I need it for my use? I'm quite happy to take second best in other areas if they're a lot better value, especially as tech moves on. In 2 years time it's twice as good at half the price.

But monitors is always a difficult area. There are many more players and much less reviews. So tell me, is the £440 monitor that much better (for my use) than the £200 one recommended by shaithis?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Thorsson

I'm a little surprised that anyone would suggest a 22" monitor, however good. It's an overblown 20", which is not the same thing at all. The 23" stuff looks a little more interesting.

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I recommend because it is the best monitor on the market in your price range, bar none. You tend not to care about size when you have a monitor this good.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Thorsson

Now if I need to spend £440, then I can afford it. The question is do I need it for my use? I'm quite happy to take second best in other areas if they're a lot better value, especially as tech moves on. In 2 years time it's twice as good at half the price.

But monitors is always a difficult area. There are many more players and much less reviews. So tell me, is the £440 monitor that much better (for my use) than the £200 one recommended by shaithis?

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How about we throw some reviews your way?

We'll start with the Dell 24" U2410, which costs £439.86 on Scan. - Review

Then we'll go onto the slightly better HP LP2475W which is £435.22 from eBuyer. - Review

I would personally pay the extra to get one of these two, and also believe me when I say the 2 inches you lose for the much cheaper, and of comparable quality, for the Dell 22" 2209W is not worth mentioning. Friend of mine just installed a 2209 on his computer and we put it up against a standard TN, the difference is amazing. I would send you a photo but you couldn't quite capture the effect. :(

If you think that the 1650x1050 of the 2209 is not enough screen-space, and that you're not prepared to the £440 to either of the U2410 or the LP2475W, then I hope for your sake you never go to a LAN and find a guy with one of those monitors sitting next to you.

My previous monitor (bought before I started a family and hence had the money) was a £450 iiyama, and ten years on up to the day it failed was a superb image. If I had the money I would have spent the same sort of money again (allowing for inflation I guess that would be about 600 to 700 quids worth).

A good CPU lasts a couple of years at most. A good monitor is a keeper outlasting several PCs, and will be a joy at every use.

Having said that, my main need is pixels so the 23" Samsung is a pretty good match for my needs and I am happy. If I had more money would I have gone for one of the huge 2560x1600 or three of the samsungs for less money? Wish I had to make that tough call :D

Good point Spidey.

I look at reviews from that site nightkhaos has linked to and they pretty much always say that these top monitors really need calibrating. Does anywhere sell them pre-calibrated?

I also noted that the Dell has a "game mode", which sort of recognises that it has a bit slow response time in normal mode, although I'm not an FPS gamer so that may not be particularly relevant. No mention is made of how the monitor looks in game mode. I don't know if it's me but the HP looks fugly being really thick.

I don't spend very much time retouching photos, and the fact that my wallpaper would look nicer isn't that great a selling point - I understand that they have an advantage there. What I'm not clear on is how much better these monitors are for watching streaming video, DVDs or games, or whether the text on my large Excel spreadsheets or web pages would look crisper. These are the important features for me.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Thorsson

I don't spend very much time retouching photos, and the fact that my wallpaper would look nicer isn't that great a selling point - I understand that they have an advantage there. What I'm not clear on is how much better these monitors are for watching streaming video, DVDs or games, or whether the text on my large Excel spreadsheets or web pages would look crisper. These are the important features for me.

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I understand you perfectly. Until I actually saw the difference a PVA (my panel) or an IPS made against a TN panel I was like "what precisely is the fuss about?" and to be honest, until you actually see what "the fuss" is, nothing I say or do will convince you that it is worth spending twice as much for a supposelly better moniter.

The calibration issues you refer to are actually just the reviewers being picky. A well calibrated TN moniter looks better than a of the factory version, and why shouldn't the same be true for PVA and IPS panels?

They don't need calibration, but you'll be a fool not to calibrate it. You've spent half a grand on a moniter, and you're not gonna adapt it to the specific lighting conditions of your typical working enviroment? It's almost like saying you spent £200 on a cooling solution and you're not gonna overclock your machine?

And no, you can't get a pre-calbrated moniter, because calbration is about adjusting to external affects. What they should do is add an auto-calibrate feature that measures the ambient light and determines if the room where the moniter is housed is overly "blue" or "red", etc, and then adjust accordingly.

There are two problems with auto-adjustment however, such a system would make the moniters even more expensive, there was a set of speckers which auto-calibrated depending on the aucuostic affects of the enviroment, and they cost about £10,000 per speaker, and finally the typical user doesn't want perfectly colour balanced. They tend to have a slightly blue, red, or yellow hue because "it just looks better that way" and to explain why that is I'd need a few weeks. ;)

I would personally go with either the Dell 2009WA or LP2475W. Using an HP discount code and the cashback website Quidco many people on Hexus got the LP2475W for well under £400! I wish I had the spare dosh otherwise I would have got one too!! :(

Once you use an IPS,PVA or MVA type monitor it is hard to go back to a TN type panel.

A calibrator like a Colorvision Spyder 3 or Pantone Huey are under £70 brand new and of cause if you go on Ebay it may even cost less. However only get a calibrator if you need to do colour critical work.

In fact this monitor calibration web-page may even do the job for you for free:

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

Quote:

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Originally Posted by shaithis

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150970

Is another I can recomend.....especially considering ebuyers price.

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I have the Samsung T260HD - which is a 26" monitor... but in design, it is the same as this one ^

Looks lovely when you get used to it, but the damn edges of the screen are reflected in the high gloss frame. This can be a bit annoying.

Thanks, nightkhaos, for taking the time to educate me.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH

I would personally go with either the Dell 2009WA or LP2475W. Using an HP discount code and the cashback website Quidco many people on Hexus got the LP2475W for well under £400! I wish I had the spare dosh otherwise I would have got one too!! :(

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I'm one of those :)

In my experience, monitors outlast any other piece of computing kit by years and years, so you get a better return on your money than you do spending it on the latest CPU or whatever.

The LP2475W is lovely, but not cheap. On the other hand, you can drag the price to well under £400 with some judicious application of codes & cashbask: QuidCo is giving 8% off HP kit at the moment & HotUKdeals claims the code HPSHARE *might* still give you another 10% off. SAVE10HP might work too. Last year there were extra discount codes released around Halloween (HPBOO :) ) so it might be worth waiting a week if the previous 2 don't work. That's 18% off list, or about £360. If you do decide to go for the HP, note that it's in the business section only for some reason.

The best LCD review site I found was TFTCentral: worth a look if you care about the gory details.