Best 19" TFT for <£300?

[Enverex]

My faithful and good quality Sony P1110 Trinitron seems to be slowly dying, albiet very slowly, it's still dying and kinda annoying, heh. Few issues with it are that getting the convergance correct everywhere and being a perfectionist it kinda drives me loopy. Another weird issue is that if the screen is too cold when I turn it on, it whiirrs quietly and slowly starts going out of focus. Sometimes it will make a click sound and correct itself, but other times I have to turn it off for a few sections and turn it back on, and even then this process may repeat till it has warmed up enough. Some low res' on it also cause it to make an annoying high pitched noise, so yeah, I think it's dying.

AAAAnyway, onto the question. I thought I may as well get a TFT so that way I can take it to LANs easier (you try hauling this 21" 5 ton monster ANYWHERE, nevermind through the LADDER you have to climb to get in/out of my room) and will make general life easier as I spend more time doing work than gaming or anything.

There were just a few things that put me off TFTs before though, added to the experience of my laptop TFT kinda put me off completely, but using a very nice 17" Dell TFT at a friends house made me think twice. The issues I have are...

1) I won't accept a single dead pixel, not after having to live with it on my laptop (two bright green ones directly above each other just off center >( ).
2) They used to look pants at any res other than native (try 800x600 or something on one, you'll see parts of the text look... pixel doubled slightly). This is kinda a big one because I can't run at the native res "all" the time as some things require a lower res). Lots of people don't seem to notice this so I'll take a picture of it from my laptop.s display.
3) 1280x1024 doesn't exactly seem that awsome as I tend to use 1600x1200 in some games.
4) Price.
5) Ghosting in general, such as titles scrolling down a screen would look awful or, one example I remember was GTA2 where the place name would scroll down the screen in a box at the top and the horizontal lines would flash like hell and look awful as if it was interlaced or something).

So, thoughts, ideas and things to quell my worries?

[ed^chigliak]

I think some screens can run native at all resolutions by maintining a 1:1 pixel ratio occupying a smaller portion of the screen instead of the usual stretch to fit methods. ie 800x600 centred on a 1600x1200 TFT with black borders. I would look for a screen that atleast has this option so you have the choice not to stretch/scale the image to fit if it looks nasty.

[Enverex]

Ok, I've decided to spend a little more and get a 20" with 1600x1200 capability. What does everyone think of this one?

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=91494

[davidstone28]

To start with, its a unusual panel - 20" 16x12

Its also PVA/MVA, so you're going to have poor response times. 12/12 rise/fall suggests that real world performance is going to be pretty bad. 700:1 contrast for a panel of that size, is okayish but not particuarly great. Some of the latest Samsung/Sonys have 1000:1 for 19" panel. Its also cheap, which suggests that compromises have been made somewhere within the monitors - probably the quality of the panel itself, internal electronics, manufacturing QC etc

But as with all of things, specs only tell half the story.

BTW, there are millions of threads on "which TFT". Worth a search.

[davidstone28]

I think some screens can run native at all resolutions by maintining a 1:1 pixel ratio occupying a smaller portion of the screen instead of the usual stretch to fit methods. ie 800x600 centred on a 1600x1200 TFT with black borders. I would look for a screen that atleast has this option so you have the choice not to stretch/scale the image to fit if it looks nasty.

You don't need a screen to do that. The Nvidia and ATI drivers have that functionality already built in and are user selectable.

[oshta]

Due to samsungs incompmetance, i have had the plesure fo sampling both there 930BF 940T.

I wasnt a TFT person, and was very happy with my two 19" Samton 95Pplus CRT's
- But my parents forced my into a TFT, so i wasnt complaining, and did some reasearch. and ordered a "4ms" 930BF, which arrived just im time. (was late to uni waiting for the delveryman!)

It was the middle of my freashers week at the time, so i didnt get a huge amount of time to spend on the PC, which was a shame.
- BUT, i can say there both excellent screens, and very different in performance.

I had the 930BF first, and the first thing i noticed, what that in hotmail, even aftermessing with the colour corecntion stuff, it was almost compleat impossable to tell the diffrence between the (light yellow) 'new' messages, and the (white) old messages.
- But, after two rounds of Unreal Tourment at 200% game speed, i was very impressed, there was no notical lagg/ghosting, or any of the horrable things that had always put me off the idea of a TFT.
- Also, there was a small, sliughtly defecive area about a 1/3 of the way in from the top right corner, which is why it had to go back. (there where no dead pixcels tho)

When the 940T arrived in a 'direct' replacment for the 930BF, by first thoughts where "dam" thats not the one i decided was best. And a quick google revealed it at a 20ms pannel!!
- But i pluged it in anyway. becuase i want going to pass up the optunity of testing it for free!!

Anyway, i hooked it up, a played a round of UT, and i have to admit, i was wasnt overly impressed, it wasnt that bad, but there was a small, but noticable amount of ghosting/lag
- However, i used it for the reast of the day, and it began to grow on me!
- The brightness/colour/contast was much better than the 930bf, and it looked a bit sexyer (even thiner, 11mm, bezzal) and it has height adjustmen (which is usefull, and my desk is quite low, and im 6ft3) and a rotate feature. (which is a nice gimic, although i never use it)

So to sum it up, for games, LAN partys, etc, the 930BF is a great screen.
- But as long as your not bothered about the 20ms thing, the slightly more expensice 940T is a more sensable choice.

In the end, i considered there amount of time i spend on games, and keep the 940T, which im very happy with.
- IM acctually back home now and using my CRTs again after 12weeks, and i really dont like it at all, there Sooo curvey, and flickary (85hz), and the colours are so dull, eee, yucky!!


Daniel

[Enverex]

To start with, its a unusual panel - 20" 16x12

Its also PVA/MVA, so you're going to have poor response times. 12/12 rise/fall suggests that real world performance is going to be pretty bad. 700:1 contrast for a panel of that size, is okayish but not particuarly great. Some of the latest Samsung/Sonys have 1000:1 for 19" panel. Its also cheap, which suggests that compromises have been made somewhere within the monitors - probably the quality of the panel itself, internal electronics, manufacturing QC etc

But as with all of things, specs only tell half the story.

BTW, there are millions of threads on "which TFT". Worth a search.

Seems like you were right, generally the response times seem ok, but nothing great... but... then I noticed something that causes the screen to have nightmarishly awful response times. If something black or white is moving on a colour background then it ghosts MASSIVELY, and I mean very, very badly. Can't say I'm impressed at all.

Is there any way of sending the screen back due to it being, well, ****? (bought it from eBuyer). I was told a 12ms response time would be barely noticable if at all, but this is severe.