What is a good refresh rate and contrast ratio?

[garyhope]

For a 19" wide screen monitor, what is a good contrast ratio for so called "ordinary" use for surfing the net and online stock trading with many 2 D charts?

Is 700:1 better than 500:1? Is this difference noticble?

What about the refresh rate? What's a good one?

Does any of this make much difference for my uses?

Tom's turns everyone into a fanatic hair splitter.

Thanks all.

I'm running this:

Asus A8N 5X
AMD X2 3800
Corsair XMS2048 3200
PNY Quadro NVS 440 PCIEX 16
WD Caviar SE16 2500KS
Samsung 16X DVD+R DVD
Sony IDE DVD-ROM
Samsung 1.44 3.5 floppy
Cooler Master RS 450
Cooler Master Centurion 5CAC-T05
Logitech X-230 32 Watts RMS 2.1 Speakers-OEM
2 AGM CW 19" wide screen monitors
MS XP Pro
NOD 32

 

[Jan286]

i would say get atleast a 1400:1 contrast ratio like the LG1952TX.

refresh rate for an LCD is usually 60Hz...

 

[garyhope]

Thanks Jan,

I didn't even know that there were such high contrast ratios as 1400:1 +.

I've seen 700:1 and 800:1 etc.

Geez, my AGM is a lousy 500:1

What exactly does a higher contrast ratio or look like compared to lower rates?

gar

 

[yumi_cheeseman]

700:1 is common now, for your use, most refresh rates are fine, as long as it doesn't strain your eyes to look at the screen, then you are fine. Fore gaming, I would suggest highest 8ms.

 

[Jan286]

Refresh rate is in Hz, response time is what you were asking maybe ?

I actually own an LG1952TX (great monitor btw) and it has a response time of 8ms. You don't want to go over 8-12ms.

 

[garyhope]

Thanks for the reply.

What I was asking about was the contrast ratio as opposed to the response time.

I have 2 AGM 19" widescreen that have a response time of 4 ms and a contrast ratio of 500:1.

I was just asking ( and was surpised by such high contrast ratio of 1400:1 that the LGM had) was what different contrast ratios do or look like and how relevant they are to a business user (mostly 2D charts, no gaming) like me if I buy additional monitors.

 

[bacis]

hi.
here is the missing point.
lg uses the dynamic contrast ratio which gets contrast at 2000:1 or even i see 2500:1 contrast ratio from monitors from lg.
however the true contrast of thesescreens is 600:1 or less.
here is the link to know more for contrst ratio.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrast_ratio

 

[Doughbuy]

The higher the contrast ratio, the blacker the blacks, yadda yadda yadda... for a buisness user, it would help some. Response time is more so for games and movies.

700:1 to 500:1 might be barely noticeble, but it won't magically transform your display into something much better.

 

[garyhope]

Thank you for a good informative answer.

 

[garyhope]

Good answer! Thank you. You can learn something everyday right here on Toms.

I ran the Nokia test on my monitors, and they looked ok. None of those darned dead pixels. The black looked pretty black to me too.

Thanks.