Prices are dropping, quality is improving, and vendors are even starting to offer warranties on dead pixels. Next time you upgrade monitors, flat panel LCDs are definitely worth a look.We received so many LCD monitors for this review that we have split it into two monthly instalments. This month in part one, we bring you the 17in monitors from AG Neovo, AOC, BenQ, IBM, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Sony, and Viewsonic. And then in part two next month, the saga continues and we bring you the report on 18in models from IBM and Philips and 20in+ models from BenQ, LG, Mitsubishi, Samsung, and Viewsonic.
LCD monitors are a perfect example of a product that has been through Gartner's hype cycle. For many years they were touted as "the display of the future", but never "the display of now". This is changing. While some early adopters forked out huge sums for LCD screens, things didn't take off until the prices dropped substantially. Even so, not everyone was happy. Many customers took the plunge only to discover that the 17in CRT they had just replaced with the decidedly more expensive 14 or 15in LCD still had better image quality and certainly better resolution and refresh rate. Then they discovered there were these funny dead pixels that were always black or always bright and that it wasn't covered by the warranty. Who had ever heard of a pixel policy before? It sounds decidedly Dilbert-esque. Not to mention the fact that whoever makes the pricing decisions on the LCD panels decided that now LCDs were popular, it was time to hike the prices back up. So LCDs entered what Gartner calls the trough of disillusionment, which lasted more than 12 months, until we started to slowly see LCD monitors on offer with retail computer packages. More integrators were beginning to offer them with corporate packages (better on the eyes, less radiation etc), while point-of-sale retailers saw their space-saving benefits and adopted them.
All this growth--combined with increased competition--has enabled the manufacturers to slowly bring the prices down and the features and sizes up, to a point where LCDs are still pricier than CRTs--and probably always will be--but are definitely a worthy consideration to add to your next PC system purchase, particularly if space is limited in your workplace.
It has been a while since the Labs have looked at LCDs. In the T&B feature, Panel beating: 15 LCD displays tested, from March 2002, the average price for a 15in LCD was AU$1000. In June 2000, 15in LCDs were around the $2500 price point!
Business benefits
- Space saving
- Weight saving (particularly if you have a wide geographically spread user base to ship these units to)
- Easier adjustment
- Less power consumption (particularly if you have an office building with hundreds of monitors or more, the average LCD should run at about a third the power of your average CRT monitor)
- Less radiation
- Most of the displays reviewed also allow wall mounting for commercial or retail display applications or for mounting to frames or ergonomic arms over desks etc.
CRT monitors do still have their own benefits such as slightly better and uniform colour reproduction (very important to graphic designers and photographers), and faster refresh times. CRT monitors also have a higher contrast ratio somewhere around 700:1 which means that the blacks are blacker and the whites are whiter.
Another issue to look at is viewing angle: it pays to check what is acceptable and what isn't within your office, particularly with some of the bigger screens. Especially if you are using them to monitor information, you may not necessarily have them sitting directly in front of you--for example stock market watching, server monitoring, or in multi-display modes. Most of the monitors in this report performed very well and had a wide field of view, but some were better than others.
And still the issue of pixel policies is around. These days, most manufacturers have an established policy on dead pixels. Check the features table to see specific manufacturers' policies.
With so many monitors on review, space is at a premium, but these brief reviews should hopefully give you enough to go on.
Help! From the above page, the links to the "Features Table", "What to Look for" etc. etc. do not work. Can you please fix?