Widescreen LCD PC monitors

Anyone have one of these?
Mines on the blink here (old crt screen) and we are looking to upgrade both mine and Anne's for new LCD monitors, we have read plenty of info online about them but I would like to hear from widescreen LCD monitor users and hear what they think of them. Anything we should know about them from a photographers point of view, any pitfalls to avoid at all?

Regards and many thanks.

Steve...

 

Hi Steve, I have a dell 22" and it's bar far the best investment I've made in fact I'm considering buying another one for the downstairs PC as LCD screens have been going very cheaply recently.

You can have a look at this website ( http://gizmodo.com/5067130/giz-explains-how-to-buy-an-hdtv-like-a-pro ) which gives some good tips on what to look for:gnthb:

 

Any LCD monitor will be better and more reliable than CRT. CRT monitors needed the screen saver to stop the phosphor from being burnt off the screen, LCD do not need them (the screen saver actually does nothing for the LCD except hiding what's showing on screen from the casual passer by).

I have three computers and no CRT's, The only CRT I have is a spare 14" TV in my office. ALDI are doing a 19" wide screen LCD TV/DVD Combi this Thursday for £155, it should have HDMI and normal monitor connectors.

 

I picked up a 23" end of line LCD from Aldi a few days ago for £90. It's fantastic for watching BBC iPlayer and movies. My old 17"CRT looks grotesque now compared to it

 

Hi Steve R,

I have a 19" LCD monitor and for PC work it's fabulous. The resolution is crisp and clear so photo editing will be spot on. The only downside is that it is not HD, so when I plug my Xbox 360 into it I'm missing out on some quality HD gaming... :dh:

Go for it, and why not look at getting an HD model. In fact, my HD TV in the living room has all the connections for attaching it to a PC, so you may want to look at getting a small HD TV with all the connections instead. That was you can use it as a TV as well.

 

One thing I would say though is not to think that bigger is necessarily better as the larger the screen the smaller the text appears and also it can be very distracting when typing on a 32" monitor:pcpunch:

 

I recently noticed that youtube has gone widescreen so now with a standard 19in flatscreen monitor, if you expand the picture to full screen it looses sharpness.:(

 

You should be able to save a significant amount of electricity moving from CRT to LCD - but worth just checking what the running cost is.

 

Actually kristen you don't. My initial thoughts were that I would when I got my 19" wide screen. But I have a power monitor, and it said that there was no saving. I can't remember the exact figures, but my old CRT used abou 80 watts with a white screen and 60 watts with a black screen. I think the wide screen was about the same.

Its well worth having Steve, but remember that there are about three different qualities. I got the very cheapest and its been very good. No dead pixels, but the colours are a bit washed out. I noticed it at first, but I don't now. I always find it worth chatting to staff where they sell these things. Most staff don't know or care, but sometimes you find one who does. I forget the name but there is a measure something like 'contrast ratio' which essentially tells you how intense the colours are. However the highest quality screens are expensive.

 

Although my LCD Monitor quotes 1amp on the label (230watts) it does actually only take 20watts when in use, on standy it's 5watts.

 

My apologies. Larkshall and kristen - you are right. I have just put my power meter on my monitor, and there is a saving. My monitor uses 35 watts when in full use and exactly the same with the screen saver, though I am not sure that that is the same as standby.

I couldn't remember the figures, but I do remember that I was a bit disappointed that there was not more saving. By comparison my CRT television uses just 1 watt on standby.

 

Mine's a Dell monitor, but I bought it as a package. I love it.( the only thing that i have got that is more modern than my sisters :p) 02

 

Actually that's not entirely correct, Larkshall. Hospital where I worked had a new recovery room bult but turned out to have lots of problems so wasn't used for ages. Each one of the 6 bays had a computer terminal with an LCD monitor. For some reason, these were left on for ages (months if I remember!) and when we finally went to use them, all were totally burned out! Mind, I know no-one in their home is going to leave a monitor on for so long a time, but just shows, even LCDs need care.

 

"My monitor uses 35 watts when in full use and exactly the same with the screen saver, though I am not sure that that is the same as standby"

The screen saver will just display a picture of some sort - usually a moving graphic so that the same colour doesn't show in the same place all the time - so it gives the other colour, at that spot on the screen, "a rest" - so the Screen Saver will use as much power as normal running.

Separately from that should be an inactivity timer. When that cuts in the screen will switch to "standby" which SHOULD use less power - and there will be no picture on the screen (usually the green power indicator light changes to Orange, or somesuch)

But that doesn't compare to OFF of course.

Up until two years ago I had lots of stuff that was on Standby, then I decided that it was wasting either Coal, Oil, Gas or Nuclear - stuff that will run out at some point in the future, and my Children/Grand-children/etc might desperately need whilst they find alternative sources of power .... so now we turn everything OFF when it is not in use; and I mean OFF at the wall, not the On/Off switch (often computers and HiFi/TV stuff have electronic switches that aren't really OFF but are more like Standby).

So I have a 4-way wall-wart !! for stuff like computers, the TV/video/DVD boxes so that one switch kills the lot.

The savings are only a few tens of pounds a year, and as a planet we all need to do more than that I reckon, but putting that to one side a few tens-of-pounds multiplied by, say, 50,000,000 people in the UK does add up to quite a bit - a power station or two perhaps??

Anyways, I'm glad to hear that your CRT didn't use much juice. Steve R mentioned that his CRT was old - and I reckon if it is REALLY old!! it could easily be using quite a lot of juice, and I expect that there is a difference in power consumption for LCDs between the Best and the Worst, so might be worth considering.