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Budget LCD Roundup April 2005 April 07, 2005 Alexis Dang |
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Summary: Anyone can get a bunch of LCD monitors together and show off some pretty benchmarks. However, if the reviewers don't understand the numbers theyre getting from the benchmarks its pointless. Fortunately, you have a trusted partner at FiringSquad, where our team of gamers, videophiles, and pro-photographers can make sense of pixel refresh times and colorimetry. Weve pulled those Dang brothers out of retirement to let them take a look at 8 different budget LCDs.
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 15 ) |
How old is the monitor on your desk? How long did you own the monitor before that? If you’re like most people, you only go through new monitors every few years. That’s the best thing about monitors – as long as you choose the right monitor to begin with, you’ll get years of quality service. There aren’t many other computer components that can brag about being long-term investments.
Eulogy for the CRT
When LCD monitors were first introduced in the late 90’s, they were a bit of an oddity. Images were never razor-sharp due to the analog VGA connection. Gamers complained about ghosting and blurry screens while visual professionals complained about washed-out colors. Nevertheless, the appeal of the LCD was undeniable: They were thin, lightweight, and flicker-free.
That was then. LCD monitors became affordable years ago, DVI is found even on budget video cards, and advances in LCD technology have improved picture quality immensely. Likewise, PCs are fast enough to run games and video at native 1280x1024 resolutions (or higher if you’re lucky enough to have a 20”+ LCD panel). So, while CRTs still have some advantages, such as color reproduction, the difference has largely become theoretical rather than practical with “mid-range” LCD panels. For the vast majority of people, the differences are no longer significant on a day-to-day basis.
For those of you who still have a CRT monitor on your desk right now, know that it will likely be the last CRT you will ever own. Even if you aren’t upgrading just yet, unless you’re in the market for exotic $4000 CRTs, your next monitor will be a new LCD. Manufacturers simply aren’t putting any R&D into mainstream CRTs anymore. Your vintage high-end CRT is better than many of CRTs being produced today. There are even people “stocking up” on a vintage high-end CRT for this very reason; we don’t recommend doing that.
Shopping for an LCD
We all want the same thing from an LCD monitor: great picture quality at a great price. When it comes to a great picture there are two elements that come into play. You want the image to be rich in color, constrasty, and sharp. The other element that comes into play is the speed of the LCD and its ability to handle motion.
Special thanks to Newegg.com for providing the monitors and helping to make this article a reality.
SIDEBAR: Contrasty isn’t a real word.
| Pixel response times | Page:: ( 2 / 15 ) |
The Myth of the 8 ms Panel
The techie in all of us wants a monitor with the fastest possible pixel refresh rate. After all, the faster the better, right? Well, it turns out it is not quite that simple. It’s obvious that if your pixel refresh is too slow, there’s too much blurring. It’ll interfere with your gaming. However, when the motion blur reaches a threshold point, it’s no longer a hindrance to your gaming performance and actually helps to smooth out the framerates. On the other hand, monitors that are too aggressive with the pixel refresh times don’t have anywhere near the same color or contrast.
The real problem is that rated pixel refresh times are rarely quoted as “averages.” They’re often quoting the best-case scenario. This is further complicated by the fact that there are different types of LCD panels on the market: S-IPS, TN-film, and PVA/MVA. Think of them as being different CPU types (like a Pentium 4 vs. Athlon64). Depending on the type of LCD panel, there can be large differences in the pixel refresh depending on whether it’s going from black to white, or rom gray to gray. It can actually be slower to transition from black to gray than it is to go from black to white for some panels. That can be a bit counter-intuitive.
What this means for you is that a 25 ms S-IPS LCD panel works as fast as a 16 ms “TN-film” based LCD technology for the wide range of black to light gray. Only when a pixel is going from pure black to pure white is the TN-film actually faster. So in nearly every real-world application including first person shooters, the difference in smearing will be minimal. On the other hand, a PVA or MVA monitor that may be advertised as doing 25 ms when going from black to white may very well need 80 ms to transition from black to dark gray!
Speed isn’t everything. IPS panels typically offer better viewing angles with more accurate color, however contrast is poorer. TN-Film technology (the 8, 12 and 16 ms) panels only display 18-bit color. PVA/MVA panels on the other hand are famed for deep black levels and superb contrast ratios that typically come the expense of speed.
So, while pixel refresh is important, the way it’s advertised, it’s about as useful as megahertz ratings for CPUs or watts for amplifiers. It’ll help you decide within a panel type only. That is, an 8 ms TN-film screen is better than a 12 ms TN-film screen, but a 20 ms MVA screen will have significantly worse ghosting than a 25 ms IPS panel. In addition, all things equal 17-inch LCD panels tend to exhibit less smearing than 19-inch panels with the same advertised pixel refresh.
How fast?
With CRT monitors, it was important to have a high refresh rate to avoid flicker. This isn’t a problem with LCD panels anymore because instead of using an electron gun to energize phosphors, the LCD itself is a transparent film (like a 35mm slide) with a static light source behind the panel. The cold cathodes fluorescent tubes that light LCD panels operate at tens of thousands of hertz. Many LCD panels have a native display refresh of 60Hz, and if so, it’s actually better to run your LCD display at 60Hz rather than 75Hz. Both will be flicker free.
Does this mean that you only need a video card that does 60 fps? No, FiringSquad was one of the original proponents of 100+ frames per second benchmark scores when evaluating 3D graphics cards. The most common explanation for wanting this speed is that benchmarks reflect an average framerate, whereas it’s the minimum framerate under heavy load that matters for gaming. However, a more subtle distinction is the idea that games synchronize their display to user input as well. Having a higher framerate acts in a similar way as having a higher mouse refresh rate.
Even an 8 ms TN film panel is not immune to smearing (neither are CRTs). Fortunately at 12 ms or faster, we found the smearing associated with TN-film panels to be non-intrusive. You’ll be able to see the smearing when you’re looking for it, but it’s not at a point where it interferes with gaming, even at the professional competitive level. 16 ms TN-film is a good starting point as a minimum spec and most gamers will be happy with this level of blurring. We found the 12 ms PVA panels to perform similarly to the 16 ms TN-film panels. So, you will see smearing if you look for it, and for a skilled gamer, it’ll occasionally get in the way. By skilled gamer, that’s someone who consistently is in the top 2 spots for any given match. 25ms PVA panels were too slow for high-speed gaming and even casual gamers will notice the difference. That said, DVD movies will look fine. 25 ms IPS panels were on par with 16 ms TN-film panels.
SIDEBAR:
| Digital Video Interface | Page:: ( 3 / 15 ) |
Most people think that DVI is vastly superior to an analog VGA connection for a LCD flat panel. Those people are right.
It makes sense for DVI to be better. With DVI, images are inherently sharp because each pixel on the monitor reflects one pixel from the computer. In fact, there is no reason why non-DVI LCD panels should still exist since all LCD panels are inherently digital. An analog-only LCD panel actually requires additional circuitry to convert the information back to the digital format – with DVI, there’s a direct connection. More importantly for you, there’s no meaningful price difference. The cheapest 17” non-DVI monitor is $205 and the cheapest 17” DVI monitor is $220. If your budget is so tight that you cannot afford the $15 difference, you shouldn’t be spending your money on computer equipment in the first place. If there’s one absolute of buying an LCD monitor, it is to get a monitor with DVI support. As long as you stick with a DVI panel, your monitor will be sharp.
There are two myths when it comes to DVI. The first is that the analog VGA output allows better color. This is false and we’re not sure where the misconception comes from. With exception of $2000 exotic LCD panels, monitors can only work with 24-bit color. This means that the monitor can only consider integer values from 0 to 255 for red, blue, and green information. The DVI interface is perfect for transmitting these numbers. With the VGA, an “analog to digital converter” has to measure the voltage of the signal to figure out what integer is closest to the measured input.
The second myth is that analog VGA is just as sharp as DVI on today’s monitors thanks to today’s improved analog- to digital converters. This is a false statement perpetuated by well-intentioned but inexperienced reviewers. They’re well-intentioned because they’re trying to help you save money by saying that there’s no big difference – they’re hoping that there’s no difference. We want to help you save money too – but instead of telling you to go with a lower-quality but lower-priced monitor that you’ll need to upgrade in a year or two, we want to help you find the right monitor so that you only need to buy it once and not have to upgrade for another 5+ years.
There definitely has been an improvement in LCD panels running analog VGA, but it’s not due to the analog to digital converter. It’s due to improvements in sharpening algorithms. Let’s explore this using a once top-of-the-line Samsung 915N 19” LCD panel with an 8 ms pixel refresh.
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As you can see with a DVI signal, there’s no need to sharpen. If pixel #24609 is supposed to be black, the monitor shows black. This isn’t the case with analog. The unsharpened image reflects what’s really being received by the monitor. As you can see, it’s a terrible image. By applying a sharpen filter to the signal, it’s possible to increase the contrast between pixels. The problem is that this adds artifacts to the video. That’s the default sharpening set up by the “auto-adjust” feature. If you turn down sharpness to avoid the halo, the text gets blurry. Note that this test was done with a high-end analog-only LCD monitor and a modern flagship GPU – a budget panel, or a budget video card won’t have anywhere near as good of a picture. On the other hand, a budget DVI panel and budget DVI video card will essentially look just as sharp as a high-end setup when it comes to text.
Although today’s signal processing does a reasonable job and makes analog VGA usable, with a DVI connection you wouldn’t even need any signal processing to begin with. Since any video card capable of playing modern games is going to have a DVI output, we see no reason not to get a DVI panel. Remember, you don’t save money by getting a low-priced product that’ll need replacing in a few years – you save money by getting a low-priced product that has the endurance to last.
SIDEBAR: For 1280x1024 panels, DVI compliance is a non-issue.
| The Importance of Color Accuracy | Page:: ( 4 / 15 ) |
Contrast Ratio: It’s Not Everything
When it comes to picture quality, brightness and contrast ratio are often talked about. However, we want you to realize that the most important element is neither contrast ratio nor brightness, but color accuracy. It’s true that we want contrasty images that aren’t washed out, but when we use the term “contrasty,” we’re actually talking more about micro-contrast and color accuracy than actual contrast. To prove this to you, let’s see why contrast ratio alone isn’t a useful measurement.
“Contrast ratio” is measured by comparing the intensity of the brightest white and the darkest black. Let’s take a look at two images
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The top has a higher contrast ratio and obviously looks better. What’s important to notice is that your brain isn’t simply thinking of the second image as having less contrast, but is seeing it as being blurrier and less sharp. There’s actually no difference in resolving power, but that’s not how our brain interprets things. That’s why looking at test patterns alone won’t be effective.
That first set of images shouldn’t surprise anyone too much, but let’s take a look at another set of images:
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Which one looks more contrasty and less washed out? The second image is “less contrasty” and more washed out, but surprisingly, the contrast ratio in the washed out images is higher. There is a greater difference between the darkest black and brightest white in the washed out images than the nicer looking images. The problem is that contrast ratio only talks about the extremes of brightness and doesn’t say anything about the colors “in-between black and white.” That’s why looking at contrast ratio alone is misleading.
That’s not the only problem with contrast. Let’s look at these two images:
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Clearly the first picture looks better, but in this case, it’s not about the second image being “washed out.” The second image has a higher contrast because the difference in intensity between the clouds and the sky is greater. Still, it looks worse.
What’s really important is a concept related to local contrast and “microcontrast” which describes the local transition between the light and dark. It’s not that you want a big “overall” difference between dark and light portions of the image. You want the transitions between light and dark to be rapid and visible. In order for the clouds to look perfect, you want to see all of the texture rather than have all the colors be the same. You want to be able to see the fine differences in color. Micro-contrast is what gives images that 3-dimensional, looking-through-a-glass-window effect. You want to see the difference between the light blue and the slightly lighter blue.
SIDEBAR: If this is too much detail, don’t worry.
| Colorimetry | Page:: ( 5 / 15 ) |
Colorimetry, or the measurement of color, is an important part of measuring a monitor’s performance. A lot of people assume that color accuracy is only important for photography or graphic design and art. That’s true, but the more accurate the color and wider range of colors that can be reproduced, the better the micro-contrast too. Now the color experts out there will tell me that local contrast and color accuracy are NOT the same thing and that's true, but ponder this: if an intense yellow color ends up being reproduced as a pale yellow, the overall image will also lose contrast.
Color accuracy is actually extremely important for gaming too. Think about how much time you spend making sure your GPU isn’t faking its anisotropic texture filtering. What if a game with washed-out and drab textures only looked like that because it was your monitor? When artists and level designers create textures and lighting, they’re making their artistic choices based upon what they see on their monitor. We surveyed a number of successful software developers ranging from junior start-ups with only one or two hits under their belt, to the studio powerhouses creating games that push the limits of NVIDIA and ATI’s flagship products and define the direction of the industry. Nearly all of them reported using color calibrated LCDs and CRTs as part of their design environment. They’re taking the time to make sure their games look their best… so should you.
Measuring color is easy – you can use a color meter... or a colorimeter. But which colorimeter? We used the X-Rite DTP94 colorimeter. The DTP94 is almost twice as accurate as the ColorVision Spyder used by some other review websites and is also better than the first generation Lacie Blue Eye colorimeters used by other reviewers. In fact, the DTP94 is the colorimeter of choice for Kodak’s Matchprint Virtual Proofing System and FujiFilm’s Level One Monitor Profiling Package.
Still, the DTP94 is just a piece of hardware. It is nothing more than a glorified ultra-low resolution digital camera that can accurately quantify the color being displayed. For example, you could measure how red the red looks and get a number back or measure the reddest red and greenest green that can be displayed. The catch is that since monitors are non-linear, we need to look at more than the reds, greens, and blues. We need to look at more than 3 colors, but which colors? Fortunately, that’s an easy question. The colors we’ll be testing are those made famous by the GretagMacbeth ColorChecker. This is a patch of 24 scientifically selected colored squares in a wide range of colors that represent natural objects such as human skin, foliage, and blue skies and have stood up to the test of time. Doing well with these 24 colors is predictive for doing well with all 16.7M colors.
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You do not need a calibrated monitor to take advantage of these special images. While it’s true that a perfectly calibrated monitor will display all of the reference colors correctly, the absolute color isn’t what’s important. You want to compare the differences between this reference image generated using Photoshop, and the images generated from measurements of the monitor we are evaluating. The relative differences between the monitor will tell you how the monitor looks.
Let’s pretend that the colors from “Monitor X” are too blue. On a calibrated monitor, the grays in the reference image will be perfectly neutral while the image for “Monitor X” will have a slight blue-tint. If your personal monitor is too blue to begin with then, the reference image might have a blue tint to it, but the image for Monitor X image will look that much more blue. If your personal monitor is too red to begin with, then the reference image might actually look red-tinged but it will still be clear that the Monitor X looks less red. Remember, think “relative difference” and not “absolute image.”
We allowed all of our monitors to warm up for one hour. We focused our attention on out-of-the-box accuracy for D65. There are two reasons for this: If you don’t own a colorimeter but still want accurate color, it might make more sense to spend a little extra on a monitor that is more accurate to begin with. Second, although you can measure and correct the color being displayed in 3D games and desktop applications, the color ICC profiles do not affect video overlay. You are stuck with the uncalibrated output when watching movies.
SIDEBAR: There are $10,000 LCD TVs with better color than CRTs.
| Color Temperature | Page:: ( 6 / 15 ) |
There’s no single color that defines white. We all know that white light contains a mixture of all other colors, but there is actually a wide range of colors that our brain interprets as being white. That’s why the white from an old fluorescent bulb and a halogen desk lap still look white. Color temperature is one way we can describe the different types of white. A better way to describe white is to describe the color using a CIE illuminant. D65 is such an illuminant and is the formal standard for the Internet and gaming, as well as HDTV, video, and film. This is what all TVs and monitors should be calibrated to out of the box, but that’s rarely the case. (More on this later.)
Many manufacturers adopt a cooler temperature for white. They do this because they think you are stupid. By choosing a cooler temperature, all the colors will be off from what the game developers and filmmakers intended. The catch is that bluer monitors and TVs (and even diamonds) will appear brighter. Manufacturers think that if you see a bright TV, you’re more likely to buy it and assume it is better… Other manufacturers do a better job and may ship at the higher color temperature, but then have a setting called “Pro” mode or sRGB mode.
You might be wondering why we’re evaluating D65, an illuminant, instead of a color temperature of 6500K. The way to think about it is that on a chart of all possible colors, the 6500K color temperature is actually a line of white whereas D65 is a specific point of white. D65 reflects the true standard that studios calibrate to, and is actually 6504K. (D50 is an alternative illuminant used for calibration and is typically used in the print industry. This represents 5002 kelvin and helps artists better mimic what the printed output, when viewed under incandescent lamps.) Are these subtle distinctions between CIE illuminants and color temperature important? Yes, because review websites that try to quantify color accuracy using DeltaE measurements need to take this into account. DeltaE is the difference between what’s measured and what you’d expect from a blackbody radiator (the color temperature). A well-calibrated D50 monitor might have a DeltaE as high as 4.21 if you’re comparing it to a blackbody 5000K color temperature – it’s not supposed to be equal.
Enough shop talk, let’s take a look at the monitors.
SIDEBAR: The pictures tell the story too...
| The Monitors | Page:: ( 7 / 15 ) |
We wanted to get a good mix of “gaming” monitors for our first monitor roundup, so we asked Newegg to help us out. They’re definitely one of our favorite e-tailers, and we’re not just saying that because they’re advertisers here – both of us make personal purchases at Newegg too. We explained our goal of doing the most comprehensive LCD article to date, and sent Newegg a list of monitors we wanted. They were happy to oblige. Of course, they were a bit overzealous and sent us a bunch of non-DVI monitors (monitors that suck) but you have to give them credit for trying to be helpful. :) Still, without Newegg, this article wouldn’t exist and so we hope you’ll keep them in mind when you shop for PC components. Alright, that’s enough advertising for Newegg. ;)
In our round-up, we therefore have, in alphabetical order, the:
| LCD Monitor Comparison | ||||
| Monitor | DVI | Panel Type | Speed | Street Price |
| Dell 1703FP | Yes | PVA | 25ms | $350 (1704FPV) |
| NEC LCD1770NX | Yes | TN-film | 12ms | $360 |
| Planar PL1700 | No | TN-film | 16ms | $230 |
| Samsung 172x | Yes | PVA | 12ms | $360 |
| Samsung 710N | No | TN-film | 16ms | $280 |
| Samsung 915N | No | TN-film | 8ms | $399 (only 19" in roundup) |
| ViewSonic VE175 | No | TN-film | 16ms | $250 |
| ViewSonic VG710 | Yes | TN-film | 16ms | $320 |
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We only tested these monitors at their native resolution, and only using DVI (when it was available). Even the highest end scalers won’t look as perfect as a 1:1 native resolution. The rationale is pretty simple though: instead of spending extra cash on a 1280x1024 panel that can also run 1024x768 nicely, put that cash toward a video card that can handle 1280x1024 at the framerates you want.
On with the monitors…
SIDEBAR: If you can read this, you’re smart enough to know that non-DVI monitors don’t make sense.
| Eighth Place | Page:: ( 8 / 15 ) |
You would think that all of the non-DVI LCD monitors would fall at the back of the pack and be equally as bad. That’s what we would have anticipated also. To our surprise, both the Planar PL1700 and the Viewsonic VE175 stood out as being the sour lemons in our roundup.
Viewsonic VE175
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The real problem was with colors. Selecting the 6500K preset gave a color temperature of 6440K when measuring a white patch, but had an incredibly bad 27570K color temperature when measuring a gray patch. If you look at the two skin patches, you can definitely see the problem – it’s a little too pink. So, whenever you watch a movie, everyone looks like they’re slightly sunburned. This was also the monitor with the worst backlighting with clear hotspots and the worst when it came to viewing angles. Images dropped to 25% brightness at just 150 degrees.
| Seventh Place | Page:: ( 9 / 15 ) |
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That the Planar PL1700 scored so low was a surprise even to us. Even with a current generation graphics card such as a GeForce 6600 GT, the Planar PL1700 showed a ghosted double-image on fine detail, particularly with text. Unless you were dealing with black text on a white background, sharpening artifacts were prominent and distracting.
At its price of $230, the PL1700 is a poor choice for users who spend a lot of their time reading email or surfing the web. In games, the sharpening artifacts were less noticeable and the brisk 16 ms response time helped to keep smearing to a minimum. Grayscale linearity was reasonably good with the 6500K preset mode measuring 6206K (white) and 6965K (gray) although there was a rose tint to the gray. Once calibrated, the black point was measured at 0.34 cd/m2 and white was 157.04 cd/m2 giving a respectable contrast ratio of 461:1. Brightness dropped to 25% at 160 degrees, a mediocre score. Unfortunately, color was inaccurate and oversaturated, characteristic of Velvia chrome film. Interestingly, because the increased color saturation occurred across the board, skin tones look ruddy, but the overall presentation is still pleasant. In the grand scheme of things, it’s better to go with extra color saturation than it is to go the other way around. Likewise for movies and games, it’s almost always better to err on being a picture that’s too warm rather than being too cold. This monitor would be a poor choice for photography, but it’s not bad for games. It’s just the poor signal that really bothered us. As much as you game, you probably spend a good amount of your time on message boards and surfing the web.
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The poor performance of the Planar PL1700 was quite a surprise to us given that Planar’s flagship monitors from their PX line and their 20 and 23” monitors are super performers. For the PL1700, if they had equipped the monitor with a DVI connector, it’d be closer to the top of the pack. It’s similar to how the old BMW 318Ti wasn’t really deserving of the BMW 3-series badge. It had potential though…
Neither the PL1700 nor the VE175 were good enough to reach critical sharpness or color. We are strong believers of the DVI interface, and there’s little reason for a computer enthusiast to buy such a monitor. That said, if your company was going to buy you a new LCD monitor, and it was mandatory to pick an analog-VGA only 16ms monitor, the Planar is the better of the two.
SIDEBAR: Did I mention to you how bad non-DVI LCD panels are?
| Sixth Place | Page:: ( 10 / 15 ) |
Moving to the next tier of LCD screens is the Samsung 710N. This is a 12 ms TN film panel. The difference between 16 and 12 ms doesn’t sound like much, but we found that it was just enough where the smearing stopped being intrusive. Although the 710N was analog only, its sharpness was markedly superior to the Planar PL1700 and Viewsonic VE175 due in part to better sharpening algorithms and signal processing. The higher speed and sharpness were what brought this monitor ahead of the other two.
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Unfortunately, while we harped upon the VE175 for giving everyone a sunburned look, the color response of the 710N was disturbingly bad. Although grayscale tracking looked reasonable with 7084K measured at white and 12760K measured at gray, our Color Checker test says it all. Look at the skin tone (the first two) and how de-saturated and cold it looks. On the Samsung 710N, when you’re watching Pirates of Caribbean, Keira Knightley looks like she should belong with her ethereal captors under the moonlit night. Overall contrast was good with 0.42 cd/m2 measured at the black point and 203.9 cd/m2 for a 485:1 contrast ratio.
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SIDEBAR: Do you think there will ever be a Space Mountain movie?
| Fifth Place | Page:: ( 11 / 15 ) |
Coming in fifth place were the Samsung SyncMaster 172x and Viewsonic VG710s. The 12-ms PVA Samsung 172x should have been a sure winner. From a physical perspective, it’s a superb product. It features a thin-framed LCD with cleverly hidden monitor controls located on the bottom bezel (although this can make initial setup a bit cumbersome).
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Unfortunately, once turned on, our enthusiasm for the panel quickly dropped. The native color temperature of the panel visually appeared to be at least 8000K. In truth, the 172x was 6257K at white but 9202K for gray. So, while word processing was a joy, games, movies, and images looked cold and washed out. Unlike the other monitors in the mix, however, monitor-based color correction was not available via the DVI input (it is only enabled with VGA). This meant that the 172x required calibration from a colorimeter to look good but unfortunately did nothing for video. The strong point of the 172x was its excellent contrast. Uncalibrated it provided a superb contrast ratio of 690:1 from a 0.30 cd/m2 at black and 207.02 cd/m2 at white. Calibration required turning the backlight down a bit, resulting in 0.22 cd/m2 at black and 125.01 cd/m2 at white for a 568:1 contrast ratio.
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The 12 ms PVA panel did far better than expected when it came to real-world testing. Smearing was minimized to an acceptable level, but for gamers, it’s difficult to recommend this monitor because the colors are biased too far to the blue – the world of Half Life 2 just didn’t look right. That said, as a text monitor used in the office, the 172x is a solid product.
ViewSonic VG710s
Also tied for fifth place was the Viewsonic VG710s. This was Viewsonic’s next-model up from the VE175 and it shows.
Like the Samsung 172x, the VG710s was a solid gaming performer with its 16 ms TN-film panel comparing favorably to the 12ms PVA-based 172x. Viewing angles were better with the VG710s – 25% brightness occurred at 170 degrees rather than the 160 degrees of the 172x. However, there were still troubles with the color. Out of the box, color temperature was 6831K at white and 10741K for gray even with the sRGB preset. Blacks were measured at 0.53 cd/m2 and white was 229.31 cd/m2 while calibrated, resulting in a 432:1 color ratio.
Interestingly however, the Viewsonic was one of the best monitors when calibrated using a 3D-LUT ICC profile. Though it was a monitor we would enjoy having on our desktop, it couldn’t stand up to the competitors on the following pages.
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The Viewsonic had a better viewing angle with brightness dropping to 25% at 170 degrees (the Samsung lose 75% of its brightness by 160 degrees).
SIDEBAR: Good doesn’t cut it for a monitor. You want a *great* monitor that’ll last 5 years or more.
| Third Place | Page:: ( 12 / 15 ) |
It seems odd that in our roundup of LCD monitors, the 3rd place winner would include the Dell 1703FP, a 25ms PVA monitor. With a 25 ms pixel refresh and slower PVA technology, this is a monitor that had noticeable smearing when playing high-speed first person shooters. That said, FPS’s aren’t the only games you play. If you are a more casual FPS gamer or were more focused on RTS and RPG games, or were someone looking for a second monitor for surfing the web, watching movies, and working with digital photos, the Dell 1703FP is one of our top picks. Even though we knew the 1703FP was the only 24-bit color panel in our roundup, we were very surprised to see out of the box color accuracy approaching the quality of our uncalibrated iiyama CRT! Unique in this round-up, the 1703FP screen can be rotated for a portrait orientation, useful for surfing the web and working with photos.
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The real reason that we’ve got to give the 1703FP such a high score is its color performance. Once brightness was brought down to 79, black measured an impressive 0.18 cd/m2 and white was 197.7 cd/m2 for an impressive 1098:1 real-world contrast ratio. This even exceeds the official 600:1 measurement, but is on par with what is advertised for the Dell 1704FP which uses a similar panel. Likewise, the uncalibrated color was the most accurate of our LCD panels tested today, providing a very pleasant picture without any extra hardware. Dell’s flagship 17” LCD panels are actually manufactured by Samsung, and we would expect the Samsung 711T to offer similar performance. Gray scale tracking was also good with 6177K measured at white and 7954K measured at gray with the RGB set to the default 52/49/48. We can think of no other monitor in this price range with comparable contrast and color.
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Samsung 915N
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Overall, the Samsung 915N was a solid performer. The main reason we would not recommend it would be the lack of DVI. Hyundai markets a DVI-version of the panel, re-badged as the ImageQuest L90D+. If the color accuracy is just as good as Samsung’s 915N, it will be an interesting panel indeed.
| 1st place | Page:: ( 13 / 15 ) |
So far, we had been fairly disappointed with the LCD monitors that had come across. We had monitors that were great for games but poor for text such as the Samsung 915N, and monitors that were great for images but poor for games such as the Dell 1703FP. Where was my monitor that had the balance of being a great gaming monitor, a great productivity monitor, and a solid photo monitor? The answer came with the NEC 1770NX.
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Although the 1770NX uses an 18-bit color TN-film LCD panel, like most other high-speed panels, the NEC somehow provided superb color while maintaining its fast 12 ms TN-film performance. Everything about the NEC’s gaming panel reflected a keen understanding of the engineers making the right design choices throughout the entire process.
Competitive gamers will see pixel refresh as being critical and as we mentioned earlier in the article, although all LCD panels to date still have visible smearing, we found the NEC’s 12 ms TN-film panel to represent the point where smearing no longer interfered with the ability to perform at a professional competitive level. So, the NEC 1770NX is a monitor that’ll work for games.
One of the troubles we’ve seen with many of these LCD panels however is color accuracy. We’ve seen a lot of monitors transform gray into blue, making games, movies, and photographs look cold and lack any vibrancy. This was not the case with the NEC LCD1770NX. After selecting the sRGB preset, we got superb color that was virtually as good as the Dell 1703FP for color accuracy. For colors reflecting human skin tones it was actually better out-of-the-box. Color temperature was stable, measuring 6033K at white and 6759K at gray, and contrast was 521:1 with a black of 0.46 cd/m2 and a white of 239.72 cd/m2. 25% brightness occurred at 170 degrees. With DVI support, sharpness was never an issue.
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The design of the LCD1770NX was also well thought out with small, but usable buttons at the bottom of the screen and a nifty joystick navigation system for the OSD. With the exception of a portrait rotation mode, NEC has done everything right with this monitor.
How good are CRTs?
A question worth answering is how CRT monitors compare to these modern LCD monitors. We put our reference 4-year-old Iiyama i90A CRT (a special high-bandwidth version of the VisionMaster Pro 450) connected using a Nanao BNC cable and an 8-year old Sony CPD-200SX to the test. Due to phosphor persistence, smearing during high-speed motion was even noticeable with these CRTs although it was an order of magnitude superior to any other LCD. The Iiyama had a black level of 0.01 cd/m2 and a peak brightness of 94.15 cd/m2 for a staggering contrast ratio of almost 9415:1! In case you were wondering, our colorimeter was able to measure 0.02 cd/m2 when the brightness was turned up on notch and measured 0.00 cd/m2 when the monitor was turned off. Color temperature was also superb at 6520K at white, tracking down a warm 5901K at black. On the color checker, it’s clear that the warm tones resulted in a very rich brown skin tone, deeper greens, and more intense reds. Even then, the average color accuracy was notably more accurate than even the best LCD. Once calibrated, the Iiyama CRT was nearly flawless.
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On the other hand, our Sony CPD-200SX fared less well. There was a marked blue cast to the color, and the intensity of white was dim, clearly due from its age. Black was 0.04 cd/m2 with white reaching only 68.36 cd/m2 for a contrast ratio of 1709:1. White was measured at 8556K and gray was 9725K. Once calibrated, it wasn’t much better than a calibrated NEC 1770NX, calibrated Samsung 915N, or calibrated Dell 1703FP.
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SIDEBAR: The BFG GeForce 6600 GT was used as our video card
| Summary Benchmarks | Page:: ( 14 / 15 ) |
If you’ve jumped to this page instead of reading the article, I advise you to step back and read the article in order -- the most meaningful color accuracy benchmarks are found in the color charts we’ve put in the middle of the article, but this graph pretty much sums up what we have to say.
Overall uncalibrated color accuracy:
Overall Contrast Ratio:
Taking contrast ratio and color accuracy together helps you get a feel for the picture quality of the monitor. Remember that contrast has more to do with deeper blacks than actually a “more contrasty” image.
If we throw in iiyama i90A into the mix… well, the graph gets skewed.
Pixel Refresh and Smearing
Smearing occurs with all monitors, including CRTs. That said, the Samsung 915N and NEC 1770NX were fast enough where we don’t anticipate any gamers losing any performance with these monitors, even in the competitive arena. The 16 ms panels in our round-up as well as the 12 ms Samsung 172x all did a superb job with games and for most gamers, these monitors have made the threshold where your gaming performance isn’t affected by the smearing of the monitor. The Dell 1703FP was the worst of the group for first person shooters.
SIDEBAR: Remember, contrast ratio is important, but it’s not everything
| Conclusion | Page:: ( 15 / 15 ) |
Lessons Learned
We came to this article with a few hopes. One of these was that today’s high-speed LCD panels would be sufficient for gaming, and we’re glad to say that is true. While you’ll still be able to find smearing when you look for it, today’s higher-end panels are fast enough so that you can game at a very high skill level without encountering any problems. We had also come to this article expecting most monitors to be largely similar in performance, but our tests showed that it clearly wasn’t the case. The quality of the associated circuitry and backlight all affect the final picture quality. All of these monitors had similar paper specifications, but in this round-up, there were only two 17” LCD monitors that we would actually buy with our hard-earned cash: the Dell 1703FP (now replaced by the 1704FPV) and the NEC LCD1770NX, and only one of those, the NEC LCD1770NX would we buy for gaming. We think everyone will agree that the importance of having monitor reviews at FiringSquad is paramount.
We still have unanswered questions. It was incredible that the Samsung 915N did as well as it did for both gaming and still images. Without DVI support it’s impossible for FiringSquad to recommend the Samsung 915N, but Hyundai’s ImageQuest L90D+ looks like a potential candidate. With a similar design to the Samsung with the addition of a DVI connector, it is possible that the $370 19” Hyundai may very well be a gaming monitor of choice. Clearly we’ll need to bring more monitors into our labs.
In our future LCD round-ups, we’ll try to move in two directions. We’ve shown you that even today’s best non-DVI monitors are a poor choice, but what we’ll need to explore next is if $250 17” DVI monitors such as the ACER AL1715smd and Sony SDM-S74 can hold their own against the pricier NEC LCD1770NX. How will budget 19” DVI monitors from companies such as Hyundai compete against the flagship 17” monitors? In the same direction of high-end monitors it would be beneficial to explore modern S-IPS panels such as the S-IPS NEC LCD1970NX for gaming and take a closer look at Samsung’s own 1000:1 contrast ratio PVA monitor, the SyncMaster 920T.
Finally, we’ll want to take a look at the best of the best: Eizo’s ColorEdge panels with internal 30-bit color processing, the newly announced high-speed 4 ms Viewsonic Xtreme panels, the Formac Gallery Xtreme line-up featuring a 4th generation 15 ms Fujitsu ColorProof MVA technology, high-speed 16 ms S-IPS panels from Dell, and finally, what of the solo fighter attempting to preserve the flicker that remains of the once strong flame of CRT technology, NEC-Mitsubishi’s $5000, 77 lb, Diamondtron Ultra-Wide-Gamut 22” monitor?
The lights are still on in our benchmarking labs.