Most vibrant monitor type?

[Arigo]

Hi, I was just wondering what would be the best type of monitor, for a clear, crisp, vibrant picture. I saw my brothers HP Envy's screen, and was amazed at how clear and vibrant it looked compared to mine.. I figured out its an LED monitor, so I started looking at those.

I heard that some brands use cheap LED lights, and you should look at ASUS monitors because they have good quality ones.

I was also wondering about the contrast ratio. Is a higher contrast ratio better?

Thanks.

 

[rofl_my_waffle]

Im not sure what you mean by "vibrant" but im going to assume you mean "color saturation"

The most color saturated display is the HP Dreamcolor. A H-IPS LCD panel with a full RGB backlight. Comes with a price tag of $3500.

Unfortunately anything less won't get you RGB LED backlighting. The cheap displays are only using "White LED" with significantly less color gamut. In fact white LEDs have a lower color gamut than CCFL backlighting. Manufacturers only borrowed the reputation of RGB LED backlighting from displays such as the HP Dreamcolor to mislead consumers that white LED actually makes a difference, which it doesn't. I would stop looking at white LED displays completely.

There are many high end displays but they come at a cost. Dell is one of the more value orientated brands for IPS based LCD monitors. The U2311H is an e-IPS panel with a color saturation of 92% NTSC, significantly higher than the 68% saturation white LED displays offer.

Dell's H-IPS line is more expensive but offer even better colors, 110% NTSC color gamut. Model such as the U2410, U2711, and U3011. They are quite expensive and come in higher than standard resolutions.

Higher contrast ratio but manufacturers have since destroyed all meaning of this spec with random advertising. You can no longer make heads or tales of what a panel is cappable of by looking at spec sheets. Dynamic contrast does not matter at all. Static contrast is more important but most panels are advertised as 1000:1 even though they can't do it. 99% of all LCD monitors are only cappable of 500:1 - 800:1.

If you want a good colors, stay away from TN Film panels. They only have 6-bit color, limited viewing angles, and nobody makes them with high quality CCFL backlighting. TN panels are cheap though.

I would look into a e-IPS panel if you are on a budget. An fancier S-IPS or even a H-IPS panel if you want something more fancy. Any S-IPS or H-IPS panel will come with high quality CCFL lamps with extra wide gamut.

 

[Arigo]

Thanks for the reply, lots of terms I don't really understand.. what are e-ips, s-ips, and h-ips panels, and what do you mean by "TN"? If you were to choose out of LED and LCD which would you choose?

I just need a monitor capable of 1080p, but I want it to have good picture quality, and be clear. Thanks again!

 

[jaguarskx]

Generally speaking you want monitor with a glossy screen rather than a matte finish screen with anti-glare if you are looking for the vibrant colors. The glossy coating helps with over saturating the colors to make them more vibrant. However, the price you pay is the screen will be highly reflective.

I don't like seeing reflections on my screen so I prefer monitors with matte finish.
Colors look flatter, but are not over saturated.

Click the following link to learn more about LCD technology:

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/specs.htm

 

[Arigo]

Thanks for the advice on the glossy tip, I also heard some where that 1080p would look better on a 24 inch, rather than a 27 inch. Is this true?

Also if a monitor says "Glossy" that might mean the bordering.. Is there anyway I can tell if the actual screen is?

 

[cjl]

Thanks for the reply, lots of terms I don't really understand.. what are e-ips, s-ips, and h-ips panels, and what do you mean by "TN"? If you were to choose out of LED and LCD which would you choose?

I just need a monitor capable of 1080p, but I want it to have good picture quality, and be clear. Thanks again!

For good picture quality, you want an IPS or VA panel, rather than TN. The colors will be better and more accurate, and the viewing angles are much better as well. The aforementioned Dell U2311H is a good choice, although the U2410 would do better still for vibrant colors.

 

[Arigo]

I cant really afford those types of monitors.. Do they even make desktop monitors glossy, like laptops? Can anbody link me to one? And like I asked before, would 1080p look better on a 24 inch, rather than a 27 inch?

Edit: I saw the U2311H, is that an IPS panel? If so, is there any ones that are bigger, such as 27 inch, but under $400? Also these monitors dont have the best response time.. I am intending this to use for gaming, and recording high quality games, and maybe blueray movies.

 

[rofl_my_waffle]

The response time is very low already. Response time is another thing random advertising has made a mess of mainly due to response time compensation.

Response time compensation (overdrive) is a way of reducing the response time of a LCD matrix however this technique creates blurring and artifacts of its own. Basically a way of decreasing blurring a bit but reducing what they print on the box by a lot.

IPS panels have almost the same response time as TN panels. However IPS panels do not take response time compensation as good. This is because TN panels have less grey tones to deal with (only 64 tones are possible). While IPS panels have at least 256 tones per-sub pixel.

Grey to grey response time is a very shady spec since manufacturers can decide which grey tones to test and print on the box of their product. You may read 2ms on the box but that is for a very specific grey tone to another. The slowest grey tone transistion will be something around 25ms. The average is somewhere between. So don't think a 2ms panel is 4x faster than a 8ms panel because it isn't, however it is slightly faster.

Back to TN panels only having 64 grey tones. This is what makes them so bad for color. They can only display 64 possible shades for red, green, and blue. Mix the 3 channels and you get 256,000 possible colors. IPS panels have at least 16.7 million colors and some can even do 1.07 billion.

 

[jaguarskx]

Edit: I saw the U2311H, is that an IPS panel? If so, is there any ones that are bigger, such as 27 inch, but under $400? Also these monitors dont have the best response time.. I am intending this to use for gaming, and recording high quality games, and maybe blueray movies.

The U2311h uses an e-IPS panel; it's an "economical" version of the IPS panel. There are no e-IPS that is larger than 23" to the best of my knowledge.

You can buy the 24" HP ZR24w for $419 + shipping & handling. It has a S-IPS panel which is better than an e-IPS panel when it comes to color accuracy (if that's important to you), and it also has 5ms response time, the best you can get from an IPS panel. It also has 10ms input lag which is pretty low for any LCD panel type.

http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/189924/HP-Performance-ZR24W-24-LCD-Monitor/?cm_mmc=Mercent-_-Google-_-Monitors_and_Projectors-_-189924

Here's an in-depth review:

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/hp_zr24w.htm

 

[jaguarskx]

IPS panels have at least 16.7 million colors and some can even do 1.07 billion.

Just to clarify....

IPS panel monitors can only display up to 16.7m at any given time. However, some professional IPS panel monitors have an internal color Look Up Table (LUT) which give a color pallet of 1.07 billion to choose from. This feature generally adds at least a couple of hundred dollars and increases input lag.

 

[Arigo]

The U2311h uses an e-IPS panel; it's an "economical" version of the IPS panel. There are no e-IPS that is larger than 23" to the best of my knowledge.

You can buy the 24" HP ZR24w for $419 + shipping & handling. It has a S-IPS panel which is better than an e-IPS panel when it comes to color accuracy (if that's important to you), and it also has 5ms response time, the best you can get from an IPS panel. It also has 10ms input lag which is pretty low for any LCD panel type.

http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/189924/HP-Performance-ZR24W-24-LCD-Monitor/?cm_mmc=Mercent-_-Google-_-Monitors_and_Projectors-_-189924

Here's an in-depth review:

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/hp_zr24w.htm

Thank you for that, I will look into it.

I noticed it has a resoluton of 1920X1200, I'm not sure how to explain this, but if I put my monitor into its max resolution (1680X1050) Everything it nice and clear, and good. But if I lower it to 1280X720 for 720p, everything seems stretched and blurry. Will it be the same for that resolution? If the max resolution is 1920X1200, will it be all stretched and blurry if I set it to 1900X1080 Thanks a lot for the help + info.

 

[jaguarskx]

Any time you use less than native (max) resolution, the text will always be slightly blurred or fuzzy.

If you set your video card to properly maintain the aspect ratio, then setting the resolution to 1920 x 1080 on a 1920 x 1200 will create bar at the top and bottom of the monitor so that nothing will be stretched.

If you are using a Radeon card then go into Catalyst Control, expand the Digital Panel section. Check off Enable GPU Scaling, then select Maintain Aspect Ratio.

 

[rexter]

I have the HP LP2475W and use it from editing photos to watching videos and it is perfect for me. I wanted the NEC but when I read a review somewhere... the HP isn't that bad considering it's almost half the price on the NEC. I gather the HP ZR24w would be as good since it replaces the LP2475W.

 

[Arigo]

Any time you use less than native (max) resolution, the text will always be slightly blurred or fuzzy.

If you set your video card to properly maintain the aspect ratio, then setting the resolution to 1920 x 1080 on a 1920 x 1200 will create bar at the top and bottom of the monitor so that nothing will be stretched.

If you are using a Radeon card then go into Catalyst Control, expand the Digital Panel section. Check off Enable GPU Scaling, then select Maintain Aspect Ratio.

One more question. If the monitor's native resolution is say, 1920X1200, and I play a game in 1080p, would it still looked stretched and what not?, and would it look better at 1920X1200.

P.S - I know it will probably look clearer at 1920X1200, but if I record it at 1920X1080, then it will be high def, and playback much more clearly.

 

[jaguarskx]

No, the game will not look stretched; you'll just have black horizontal bars across the top and bottom of the screen. It won't look any clearer than native resolution. However, your field of view will change.