I have a 21" Monitor - however it takes up too mus#ch space & so was looking to go for an LCD monitor. However it seems to be the larger LCD'S (26" +) have the best resalution, I don't mind going for a large screen - but only if I'm going to benefit from it. Any advise would be great. John

I personally only use Sony TUBE monitors as I do highly critical color editing work. I haven't seen an LCD yet that delivers Professional level color details. In fact, about six months ago I purchased TWO brand new SONY 21 inch Professional color monitors from Overstock.Com for about $125.00 each and they PAID the shipping! I am keeping them as RESERVE monitors to replace my older SONY's, which are still running great after 7 years. (Those monitors would have been $500-600 before LCD's came out. Other than looking "cool" on a desktop, I don't think LCD's- SO FAR- represent PROGRESS in Color Fidelity...) I basically don't want to ever use an LCD. They are great for GAMES but NOT for critical color work...

You will not get 1600x1200 or above in anything less than a 20" LCD. If high resolution is vitally important to you, then yes you will need to get a larger LCD. The thing is that the actual pixel density doesn't increase much. You simply get the same density with a larger screen area, and therefore "higher resolution". The resolution of the unit taken as a while is higher, and so yes you can display more "virtual area" on your screen as a result, but you will not (for example) see finer detail, and pixels will not be less noticeable (in contrast with high resolution CRT's which can go up to 2048x1536 in 21" size, where you will see finer detail). The other thing to keep in mind with larger size LCD's is that the response time is typically lower than with smaller ones. The larger LCD's usually get technology innovations later than the smaller ones as generally speaking it is easier and cheaper to introduce new advances on smaller systems. The response time can definitely be an issue if you are a gamer and sometimes also for watching movies, or anything else with fast motion. My roommate has an LCD with a 12ms response time and as an avid gamer he finds it to be a bit too slow, with some noticeable ghosting. I think 8ms might be acceptable, but possibly even lower would be needed. Unfortunately the quoted manufacturer response times are also not always "accurate", or at least not all measured in the same way, so you may want to read the in-depth reviews at a site like http://www.tomshardware.com/ to get more realistic numbers. 19"-21" is probably the "sweet spot" for LCD's at this point. You get the best price-to-size ratio at 17", but 19" is close enough that it's worth the jump. Anything larger and you start to run into seriously escalating costs. Generally you will be limited to 1280x1024 on a 19" LCD, so if that simply isn't high enough for you, you will have to go larger. I still wouldn't recommend larger than 23" though. At 23" you start to be able to do 1920x1200, and that's really about the limit for desktop-oriented LCD's. Anything larger and you probably wouldn't want it on your desk. Apple's 30" "cinema" display notwithstanding. ;) Even that only does 2560x1600, which is larger in the width only because it is a widescreen monitor. Eventually LCD's, or a similar "flat/thin" technology, will be competitive for color critical work. In fact there are advances going on right now that make LCD's far more color-accurate and give LCD's much higher dynamic and contrast range than CRT's (HDR LCD's). However for the moment most LCD's are definitely sorely lacking in color reproduction. They can't reproduce a true black - period - (it's always a sort of gray) and the viewing angle issues mean that even if you're viewing square on, there is some amount of color, contrast, and brightness distortion at the edges of the screen (LCD users: you may not notice it, but it's there and measurable!). So yeah, if absolute color accuracy is vital (usually this is for print work - web work usually can't assume color accuracy because of the variability in people's home displays!), then an LCD is not a good idea at the moment. But otherwise, provided you are aware of the issues (no true black, potential response-time issues if you're a gamer, and viewing angle issues), and you buy a quality LCD, you should enjoy the benefits of lower desk-space usage, lower emissions, and lower power use. But I for one won't be buying an LCD for my main system any time soon. - Oshyan

24" Dell widescreen 2405FPW TFT...cost me just over 500 (bargain! lucky me :D), but I love it. It took me a lot to prize myself away from the superior colour reproduction of a quality CRT, but this TFT is great...haven't regretted a single penny I spent on it.

BTW. resolution is 1920x1200.

Oshyan, I agree with your comments about the colour reproduction on TFT's, but Apple's TFT displays (to name one) are renowned for their colour range and reproduction. It was exactly the same fear I had before I got my Dell, but I've had a couple of large prints done while using it and I really haven't noticed any difference...well, I have made a couple of idiot mistakes lately, but that was just because I had forgotten to switch between Adobe RGB and sRGB while working with a mixture of print and web images...duh! slap me around the face with a wet fish! :P

Cheers

Message edited on: 11/29/2005 18:42

Message edited on: 11/29/2005 18:43

Sony's patent on "Trinitron" CRT technology ran out years ago. Since then, all the best monitors as as good as Sony's AFAIK. Some monitor calibrators won't work with LCD displays (or dual monitors).

lcd is much softer on the eyes thats why i use it.