best bigscreen LCD

hi all-

Can anyone recommend a 20+" LCD?

so far I've been looking at the Samsung 21" 213-T, and the Formac 2010. the formac "seems" to have the best quality, but I've been scared off by the number of terrible reviews in Cnet where many people say it has terrible bugs or doesn't work at all. The Samsung looks great but has no reviews. any ideas?

thanx

The Samsung is VERY nice.

You might also want to look at the Sony P232W/B. It is Gorgeous!!!

ellen devito said:

hi all-

Can anyone recommend a 20+" LCD?

so far I've been looking at the Samsung 21" 213-T, and the Formac
2010. the formac "seems" to have the best quality, but I've been
scared off by the number of terrible reviews in Cnet where many
people say it has terrible bugs or doesn't work at all. The Samsung
looks great but has no reviews. any ideas?

thanx

Click to expand...

--
Peter Sills
Digital Focus
http://www.digitalfocus.net

IBM and ViewSonic both make a LCD that is 22" they have a 16x10 aspect ratio and a resolution of 3840x2400. That is 9.2 megapel at 204Dots per inch. They are very expensive the IBM one is model T221 and cost 9K with Matrox multi display adapter. With that resolution it takes an adapter that can drive four displays.
--
JJMack

I have been using an Apple 20" Cinema now for a week, and so far I love it. The screen is very bright, the brightest I have seen so far. Even at 50%, it is brighter than my Dell 4100 14" 1400x1050 screen at maximum brightness (which is an excelent laptop screen by the way). What amazes me even more is that its screen brightness is even from center to edges.

Here are the catches: to use it with a PC you will need an ADC to DVI converter. The one made by Apple costs $100. Probably all graphics cards with DVI ports will support it, but to drive it at its native resolution (to get the best clarity) of 1680x1050, you will need either an ATI Radeon card OR a third party software like PowerStrip because the resolution is not a standard PC res. The other drawback I am trying to overcome is that my monitor doesn't display anything until the POST process is completed and the Windows graphics mode started.

I really like the wide format of the Cinema display: landscape photos of 2:3 ratio fit better on this screen than a standard 3:4 screen, and I am using a Canon 10D.

Cosmestically, the screen is better made than any screens I have seen so far in stores. The 23" version is not as bright as well as having a slower pixel response, but still it was a great screen. It was difficult choosing between the two.

If you decide to evaluate one, make sure the store you deal with doesn't charge a 15% restocking fee in case you change your mind. I got mine from B&H for this reason, and it looks like it's a keeper.

I had the occation of sitting in front of a Dell 2000FP 20" Flat-Panel LCD Monitor: http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&cs=28&sku=320-4105 . It was fabulous. I really wasn't able to run it through its paces the way I would have liked but I have been looking forward to the oportunity. Has anyone here worked with it in a photo-intensive environment? It's certainly worth looking into.

What stuck me as exceptional is the vibrancy of the color, the sharpness, and how there was no perceptable change in the image when viewed from virtually and angle. It was really fast, too so there was no ghosting effect. Ya gotta have the DVI card. It makes a huge difference.

ssclaire

ellen devito said:

hi all-

Can anyone recommend a 20+" LCD?

so far I've been looking at the Samsung 21" 213-T, and the Formac
2010. the formac "seems" to have the best quality, but I've been
scared off by the number of terrible reviews in Cnet where many
people say it has terrible bugs or doesn't work at all. The Samsung
looks great but has no reviews. any ideas?

thanx

Click to expand...

thanks guys-

I think I'm going to get either a 20 or 21" monitor, anything above that is not only prohibitively expensive, but quality seems to drop bigtime. I was looking at the Apple 23 cinema compared to its smaller brother, the 23 is noticeably darker and has much poorer contrast, in PS the second darkest black that I could differentiate in a greyscale gradient was in the 30's, compared to others in the teens.

Macworld Aug 2003 just did a review of the 20 inchers, they recommended the Apple and the NEC.

have heard good things about the Dell, but I doubt they make them, wonder if they are rebranded?

re: Jung: I've seen posts on the net where it IS possible to see your BIOS and all the startup pre-windows boot info on the Apples, but I'm not sure how exactly. is interesting to note that people and reviews seem to pick displays with "weaker" stats, you would think that a 600:1 contrast ratio would look much better than the Apples with the 350:1, but consensus seems to be the Apple 20 inch is the tops. I'm just scared by compatibilty issues.

does anyone know of a good place to view these damn things? (NYC area?)
I'd rather see them in person.

Thanks to Peter Sills, I checked out the Samsung LCD panels. Today, I ordered the Samsung 213T. It is not the "BEST", but the best is just too expensive. For the price, I expect to be quite pleased with the Samsung.
For your info, I purchased from BCD 2000 and was quite happy with their service.
Steve

I have been VERY IMPRESSED with the new Samsungs. So far I would rate them tops as far as quality and at a reasonable price as well.

Let us know how you like it once you get it set up.

Peter

skeys said:

Thanks to Peter Sills, I checked out the Samsung LCD panels. Today,
I ordered the Samsung 213T. It is not the "BEST", but the best is
just too expensive. For the price, I expect to be quite pleased
with the Samsung.
For your info, I purchased from BCD 2000 and was quite happy with
their service.
Steve

Click to expand...

--
Peter Sills
Digital Focus
http://www.digitalfocus.net

I've put together the specs of the top conteneders in the 20/21" range. I excluded the Eizo's because their response time effectively limits them to still images.

THE CONTENDERS:

brightness / contrast / dot pitch / Response Time

PLANAR PL201M ------ 250 500:1 .255 15

FORMAC 2010 --------- 250 600:1 .255 15

IIYAMA AU5131DT ----- 250 500:1 .255 25

Samsung 213-T -------- 250 500:1 .27 25

ViewSonicVP211b ------- 250 600:1 .297 25

APPLE Cinema 20" -------- 230 350:1 .258 ??

NEC LCD2080UX --------- 250 350:1 .255 25

LACIE PHOTON20 ---------- 220 350:1 .255 25

SONY SDM-X202 --------- 250 350:1 .255 30

purely on specs, the planar has it, and can do portrait mode, which the formac can't. Interestingly, the Planar is also the cheapest 20" in its class @ $920 @ CDW. most of the others are $1300+.

what do you guys think? Can we trust the specs?

Take contrast ratio for instance. Until all the manufacturers use the same standard for measuring contrast ratio, such as the new VESA one, I don't know if one can draw meaningful conclusion from manufacturers' published contrast ratio.

Then there is the problem of uniformity: I would consider a screen with higher contrast ratio in the middle and average else where better than one with lower overall contrast but is able to maintain that contrast edge to edge.

Interestingly, the few expensive monitors I came across that claimed to have accurate color all have lower contrast ratio (less than 350:1) than even the much less expensive ones. I wonder if there are trade offs - that in order to maintain uniform display with current technology, contrast and brightness has to be sacrified a little.

Having gone through the evaluation process recently, I am convinced that it's impossible to select the best monitor from the specs alone.

I agree that relying on these specs could be misleading, but how on earth can we evaluate them otherwise?

there are no reviews out there that take all the major players into consideration, I'm lucky to find one or 2 on any of them.

and second, where can we see these darn displays? I'm here in NY, and all our stores have just about zero selection. I've never seen a Planar, I've never seen a Formac, so how the heck can I buy these things with any confidence?

Hi Ellen...

May I suggest you search on the term: "first impression" in the PC Tools forum (this forum).

You will find a thread started by Tom Melanson. I suggest you read the posts from beginning to end as there is a wealth of information there.
Steve

I understand your dilema. I was in the same situartion not so long ago. I think we are on the bleeding edge and that these displays haven't made it to the mainstream yet due to their prices which made it impossible to to compare them in the stores.

In my case, I compare the Apple 20" against my laptop which has a pretty decent screen, abeit narrow viewing angles. I was OK with the laptop display, and the Apple 20" was a significantly better, so I know I will be happy with it. I also looked at a few other screens that I could find on displays and found them to be inferior. In the end, I don't know whether the Apple screen is better or worse that a few other contenders, but the Apple 20" impressed me enough. Had I gone by the specs, I would not have bought the Apple.

I wish there were an independent lab that evaluate these monitors. I have read a few reviews and I don't think I could trust most of them. ZDNet monitors reviews are pretty good, but they usually stick to the more popular monitors.

ellen devito said:

I agree that relying on these specs could be misleading, but how on
earth can we evaluate them otherwise?

there are no reviews out there that take all the major players into
consideration, I'm lucky to find one or 2 on any of them.

and second, where can we see these darn displays? I'm here in NY,
and all our stores have just about zero selection. I've never seen
a Planar, I've never seen a Formac, so how the heck can I buy these
things with any confidence?

Click to expand...

aaron cohen said:

re: Jung: I've seen posts on the net where it IS possible to see
your BIOS and all the startup pre-windows boot info on the Apples,
but I'm not sure how exactly.

Click to expand...

According to a post in the Apple forum, the POST screen display problem is an issue with the newer ATI cards and Apple display. Other graphics card have no problem displaying POST info on Apple display. One nice thing about ATI drivers is their ability to detect the optimum resolution of the Aplle 20" automatically (1680x1050), but if you use any other card which can physically drive this resolution, you can install a program called Powerstrip to obtain this resolution, so it's not a big deal.