Need suggestions for monitor upgrade

[kitkat12012]

I'm thinking about upgrading my monitor. I currently have a Dell SP2309W and I'm lovin it. But my girlfriend needs to get a monitor so she asked if I could buy myself a new one and she can have mine.


Basically I'm looking for an upgrade or side-upgrade, but definitely not something worse.

My main consideration is, I want something larger than 23 (25+ will work) that has a resolution larger than 1080p. I will be connecting my pc and my ps3 to it so I need something with multiple inputs (1 hdmi and 1 dvi would be good).

Some minor considerations but still kinda important, since I'm going to be playing ps3 games, I want it to be fairly fast with no ghosting and stuff. Color accuracy is not a top concern, but I do want something with nice brightness and contrast ratio that would look good with games and movies.

Budgetwise, let's try to stay around $500 although I'm still open for more expensive suggestions.





My second question, I've been searching around and I don't see a lot of large monitors with resolutions higher than 1080p, so if I did decide to just stick with 1080p instead, what could a monitor offer that a 1080p tv could not? I would guess that I could get a decent 32+ 1080p tv for the same price as a 24ish 1080p monitor. So what advantages would there be for getting a real monitor?


Hope you guys could shed some light. Thanks

 

[jaguarskx]

If gaming is more important than color than color accuracy then consider the 1920 x 120 Asus VW266H:

http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-VW266H-25-5-Inch-Widescreen-Monitor/dp/B001LYPNFQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1296672845&sr=8-1

It is possible to use a small HDTV as a monitor. Most of the time the desktop will either be larger or smaller than the screen so either the desktop will "fall off" the screen, or you will have black borders around the desktop area. You will need to adjust the scaling issue in your video card's control panel.

Text are a little less sharp on HDTV because the pixels are arranged more for shapes than text.

 

[kitkat12012]

^ yep, you're absolutely right. I figured text is gonna be blurry on a larger hdtv, and this is gonna be bad since I'm gonna use this for web browsing most of the time. I guess this answers one of my questions


I'm looking around and I'm interested in the Dell 24 inch ultra sharp. I know I said I don't really care about color accuracy but this thing has some good reviews. I'm actually more interested in the Dell 27 ultra sharp but it's way over my budget

Something like that, maybe minus the IPS, would be the one I'm looking for: large size + high resolution, great image quality



I'll check out the Asus VW266H. Thanks

 

[ssddx]

I use a 40" hdtv for my ps3/computer (games, movies, web) and what he said about text being slighty harder to read is true. what he stated about your desktop not being scaled right would only be true if the television had more or less pixels than 1920x1080. i've never had any issues with this.

 

[cjl]

The Dell Ultrasharps are excellent panels, and I would definitely recommend them if you have the budget.

 

[kitkat12012]

The Dell Ultrasharps are excellent panels, and I would definitely recommend them if you have the budget.

I would love to buy the 27 inch one but it's so expensive

I would probably go with the 24 inch if I still can't decide after a few months


How do they perform for games (ps3) anyways? I remember reading somewhere that they're a bit slower than tft but would that be noticable enough to bug me?

 

[ssddx]

there is an ongoing issue with certain types of computer lcd monitors and the ps3. make sure you get a HDCP-enabled monitor or you might not get any video feed showing.

any monitor that has an average response time of 16ms or less should do fine without any ghosting. another brand of monitors that are quite good is viewsonic. the professional (vp) series is great! you'd have to check on the HDCP-compatability though as I dont know offhand

 

[kitkat12012]

there is an ongoing issue with certain types of computer lcd monitors and the ps3. make sure you get a HDCP-enabled monitor or you might not get any video feed showing.

any monitor that has an average response time of 16ms or less should do fine without any ghosting. another brand of monitors that are quite good is viewsonic. the professional (vp) series is great! you'd have to check on the HDCP-compatability though as I dont know offhand

hmm, I though hdcp should have been standard by now

good point though, I haven't been checking for hdcp. i'll take a closer look next time just to be safe