How To Choose A Monitor

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Can't wait for OLED. Dell has one coming in a few months, but it's a professional monitor, with a professional price to match.

Look forward to incredible contrast ratio, response times, frame rates, color gamut, and brightness. All in one monitor. That's what OLED will enable.
 
I usually completely ignore the Low-Blue light feature, because that particular feature is completely moot if it has RGB colour control, and actual fatigue and eye damage coming from excessive blue light can be reduced by simply reducing the brightness of the screen and refraining from using the monitor in completely unlit rooms.

Besides, low blue light mode also gives the monitor a yellow tint, while I personally despise colour tints, yellow is worst of them, makes the screen look broken and dirty in general.
 
Actually, it's useful for late night usage, as blue light interferes with circadian rhythms. Those who have trouble falling asleep should try limiting their exposure to blue light, prior to bedtime.

And "blue light" doesn't have to be light that looks bluish. It's just the blue spectral component of any light. A white light counts, for example, as it necessarily contains some blue.
 
"By the end of their useful life, CRT monitors had reached vertical resolutions of over 1000 lines and could display full graphics. They were no longer limited to just text."

Huh? CRT displays never were limited to merely displaying text, the image they display is graphics by the virtue of how the function (scanning the screen line by line, changing intensity for each horizontal segment of the line, aka "pixel").

It actually takes additional electronics to make a display display text. Displays with this additional electronics were called "[dumb] terminals".

What is it with all the goofy statements on this website recently? The Intel CPU article yesterday and now this?
 
Ill drop in my 2 cents:
The biggest change for me in gaming was to go from Monitors to TVs (due to lower price at high size).

Yes, these are not the fastest response time, they also dont have 120Hz unless you overclock the signal (and even then it wont always work), and Input lag is horrific if you choose the wrong one.

But jumping from 20-24 inches to 32-40 was a massive change for me.
Unfortunately, I wanted a plasma TV for the picture quality and the smallest I could get before they vanished was 50 inches and thats too big for a monitor if you are sitting close.

I play windowed mode many times just because many games are too nauseating with such a huge screen at 50 cms away.

But when thats not a problem, is really something to behold. (And movies are great to watch as well).

The only reason I can see anyone going for a monitor is if the play competitively (and I mean top tier, I play multiplayers and I dont have any problems with getting head shots myself).

I will probably keep it till OLED is cheap.
 


All implementations of "low blue-light" I have seen invariably causes whites of the image to look warmer, or rather, yellowish, which is the kind of tint I personally hate the most, so it's mostly aesthetic reasons. I haven't seen any "low blue-light" implementation that does not upset white balance, which is why I am never a fan of that feature.
 
"Manufacturers combat flicker in a couple of different ways. One is to increase the number of cycles per second. Some PWM backlights cycle at speeds as high as 20mHz. "

Is that supposed to be 20kHz or 20MHz ? It's definitely not supposed to be 20mHz because that would be 20 milli Hertz, or about 1/50th of a cycle per second!
 
Size is also VERY important. I went from a solid 22 inch Dell to a budget 32 Inch TV. The user experience improved so much because gaming became much more immersive.

Size should be a top 3 factor when buying a monitor, way ahead of VSync-Gsync.
 
The only bit I might have added was in the 'resolution' section. One should look at the resolution a monitor they are considering, and check 5 or 6 games they play to see if they support that resolution *natively*. Using file edits or third party software to get the resolution you want in a game may work, but with issues like fish-eye and broken menu functionality.
 
Size DOES matter. Try going from 24" or even 27" 144Hz to 32" 75Hz and the much bigger size difference in screen will easily overtake those tiny screens with higher refresh rate.
 
60Hz displays just won't cut it? I would love to play modern titles above 60Hz at all times, but that just does not happen (yet). ROTR gives super high end cards a walloping.

I was looking forward to this article, but it's just like reading out of a textbook at school and it seems to be missing any detailed recommendations.
 
I bought a high-end plasma, in 2013. Up close, the image quality is crap (due to dithering noise). I have to get about 10 feet away, before it looks good. Even then, it still doesn't look as good as my Sony GDM-FW900 clone CRT monitor (up close).

But Nvidia dropped analog from the GTX 10xx series, so all of us analog hold-outs will finally have to upgrade.

Plasma was only good quality for its size range. In absolute terms, let's say I'm not sad to see it go. Can't wait for OLED.
 
Yes, it will upset the white balance - there's no way around that! But some people might be willing to put up with yellowish images, late at night, so they can get to sleep later.
 
Something else to add when shopping for a new monitor -- buy for the long term. If your get a monitor with the intent that it will last you through SEVERAL PC upgrade cycles. Yes it will cost more up front. but it will save you in the long run.
The next several PC upgrades you will have more to spend on components because you wont need a new monitor because you got a good one to start with.
 
<sigh> A FREE way (depending on if you place a high price on your time to set it up) to help ease eye strain is to "invert" colors in an app. Ya know, make the background a dark color, and the text a light color. Yes, I know that not all apps will support this, but windows can help some with those that follow Windows Color settings if they don't offer their own way to change color schemes.

Curious. What happened to a maximum response(gray to gray) timing recommendation? Is the ol' 5ms max for gaming been tossed to the curb? I know you covered this refresh timing, but you only really mentioned it for TN screens being able to get the fastest times possible.

This was not too shabby as a very quick overview, but it left questions unanswered. You could have, in passing mentioned some generalities in comparison, such as what the general range for gtg response time with each technology. After all, you did just that with the contrast ratio. At least the known fastest speeds for each tech.
 
Yes and no. A good monitor is important. But monitor tech is changing faster than it used to, yet PC upgrade cycles are growing ever longer.

If my monitor died tomorrow, it'd be tough. I want to buy a big, 4k+ OLED, in a couple years, so I wouldn't want to spend so much that it'd hurt to upgrade in 3. I've been waiting for OLED for so long, and now it's nearly here.
 
Every single monitor article ought to include a section deriding NVidia for their failed 3d Vision initiative and warning against their proprietary GSync for the same reason.
 
"An even better approach however is the constant-current backlight. This is an LED array that can be throttled like an incandescent light, by simply varying the voltage."

LEDs are CURRENT driven devices. Their brightness are dependent on current, not voltage. Their voltage is fixed.
 
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