What Monitor should I Get?

There are many things to factor when looking to purchase a new monitor, such as type, size, resolution, response time and contrast ratio. I am going to try and help you understand exactly what those mean and the difference between some popular ones. Today we are going to look as if you were going to purchase a wide screen LCD monitor, as it seems to be the most popular among gamers and for general use today. We will look at the difference between an inexpensive and the top of the line models to see if the benefit in quality justifies the higher cost.

There are a few different types of monitors out on the market and we will see whats the benefit of each one. The different types we will be talking about are CRT, LCD, and your traditional LCD / Plasma Television.

When it comes to monitor size there are a few things to factor in, do you have a graphics card? Do you want to use it for gaming, video editing or just for surfing the web and using microsoft word? Now if you do have a graphics card you will want to do a bit of resaerch to find what resolution it can put out, and what it can handle in games. The part of the graphics card that is most closely associated with resolution and screen size is the VRAM, the more and higher speed VRAM you have the better your PC will perform at higher resolutions. To give you an idea of screen size compared to its native or recommended resolution I'll list a couple.

19" Wide Screen LCD - The two most common resolutions are 1440x900 and 1366x768
22" Wide Screen LCD - The two most common resolutions are 1920x1080 and 1680x1050

As you can see as the screen gets larger the resolution gets higher, and please note that higher resolution monitors of the same size will produce better picture but will also cost more in most cases. Now most mid to higher in graphics cards with GDDR3+ will be able to handle a 22" monitor, if you happen to be on a strict budget and have something like a Nvidia 9600gso or less you may want to look into 19" monitors as your picture will look nicer while still getting acceptable frame rates. Now some of the more hardcore gamers out there that are running high end cards in sli or crossfire may want to up the ante and get a 26" or even larger monitor, and if you believe your PC can handle it then I say go for it!

When you look further into the specifications of a monitor most will list a response time. The response time is listed in ms or milliseconds. What this means is the amount of time it takes to show the next picture on the screen. Have you ever made a flip book and made a short sketch? Its kinda like that but each page will flip every so many ms. Now a good and very common response time is 5ms, it seems to be the industry standard today on most LCD's. However for you hardcore gamers out there you can shell out a little extra cash and get a monitor sporting a super fast 2ms response time to ensure positively seamless game play. Now your average PC user or casual gamer will not really notice any difference between 5ms and 2ms response times. Another thing to keep in mind is the larger screen size LCD you go with (around 28-30" LCD) you will notice they traditionally have a lower response time and may result in blurry game play, but it shouldn't affect your average surf the web PC user.

Okay so now you have narrowed your search for the perfect LCD monitor but now its time to look at contrast ratio. Contrast ratio is the measure between the luminance of the lightest color white and the darkest color black. What that means is the higher the contrast ratio is the more defined and clear colors you will see in the color spectrum displayed on your screen. So in this case a higher contrast ratio means better overall picture quality I would recommend going with something that has a 20,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio or higher for a nice picture.

Now we will talk about different types of monitors and their benefits.

CRT

CRT monitors are your large bulky old style monitors, some people may think there's is no benefit to having one but in reality there are reasons why people still use them to this day. They provide excellent picture quality, (in a lot of cases better picture quality than LCD's) they have a very good response time in most cases, but when it comes to CRT there is no specification stated as response time its simply labeled in Hz. Many graphic designers use large CRT monitors due to the picture quality and also the ability to use them in many different resolutions. Even some gamers still beleive CRT monitors provide the best picture out there and that may be true when you compare LCD monitors in the same price range, but if you spend a little more cash you can find an LCD very comparable to CRT's quality.

LCD / Plasma Television

Some PC users link their Computer up to their LCD or Plasma television. This is most commonly used by users who use their PC as a media center. The benefit is they get a larger viewing area which is great for watching movies and viewing pictures. The downside is unless you paid top dollar for your large television it most likely will have a low response time and overall not as great of a picture quality as smaller LCD's. Also keep in mind that larger screens do normally mean higher resolutions so gamers will need a high end system with high end graphics cards to effectively game on these types of "monitors".

LCD Monitors

As you can see above we went through what specifications to look for when looking to purchase an LCD monitor now we are going to look at the benefits of using one. LCD monitors are more affordable than ever and they keep getting better, with an LCD monitor you can achieve great picture quality and with wide screen you can accomplish a new level of viewing pleasure not available with CRT monitors. The only real downside I can think of with using an LCD monitor compared to CRT for any gamer or common PC user is the viewing angle is often much less than that of a CRT.

Now that I have listed virtually all I know about different monitors i will link a couple that I feel would be a good buy. I will try to keep them as cheap as possible but I will not sacrifice picture quality for $20-$30 dollars.

22"
Acer H213Hbmid 22" Widescreen HD LCD Monitor - This monitor fits all the criteria for a good everyday use and gaming monitor and the price is not too high. Also Acer is not known as a "great buy" when it comes to PC's but their monitors hold up well.

19"
eMachines E191W BM 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor - This would make a great budget monitor it has virtuall everything you need. Although the contrast ratio is a bit lower than what we would like there is nothing in its price range that will produce the same picture quality. Again eMachines is not known as a "great buy" when it comes to PC's but their monitors hold up well.





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