Monitor is near death need advice

[Dan3345]

As the title says I am losing my two year old monitor.. Not sure why, and quite frankly I don't really care. I have been noticing strange artifacts like lines going horizontally across the monitor. It's more noticeable when I am in the dark or looking at a dark image.

 

The monitor is some sort of 24 inch 1080p Acer. It has no mounting holes (which I discovered after my return period expired much to my dismay). And now its dying. I know it isn't my video card as I have attached the monitor to three other computers in my house and still seen the same artifacts.

 

I really like this monitor from Dell. But I am worried about how it will respond during gaming. I have been reading reviews and some do say it has a bit of noticeable ghosting while others say it does not. I have watched videos of people playing games on it, but even when they say there is ghosting on screen or a black motion blur I cannot see it in the video. Which makes me think it is something you can't notice until you are actually looking at it.

 

Anyways so this is just one choice but am I really fond of it, and worried too. I would like a monitor that is 27" and possibly 1920 x 1080 or 1920 x 1200.

 

I do not to spend more than $400 on a monitor, and I know very little about what constitutes a good display so please help me out.

[Erik005]

From what I heard 1920x1080 doesn't really work for 27inch

 

Stick with 24inch if you don't want to spend a lot of money on a 2560x1440 27inch monitor.

[FMod]

Well, 1920x1080 is known to work pretty fine for 40" and 32", a lot of people use TVs for PC gaming (not even to count everyone who has a console). So why wouldn't it work for 27"?

 

This is, unfortunately, not a very good monitor. It's glossy and glare will kill you. Also, for gaming, PVA/MVA is mostly as good as IPS, and a bit faster; it offers better contrast at the expense of some loss of shadow detailing. Look for a matte screen so you don't need a darkened room to play.

Ghosting is a minor problem and most of the time there won't be any; the rest of the time, it's easy to learn not to care. It just looks like bad motion blur.

[Dan3345]

The problem is I can't afford to spend more than $350, and it seems to me its hard to find a 2560 x 1440 monitor for less than $450.

 

Unless I am looking in the wrong places..

[CommanderCrazy]

2 Suggestions from me.

I have this monitor on my home PC, and it functions very well for games and general use, no ghosting and a pretty slick response rate.

I use 2 of these monitors at work, and while they can be a little hard on the eyes for very extended periods of use, they are probably the best 27in monitors ive come across.

[FMod]

There is little point in a 2560x1440 monitor for games. I have a 2560x1600 and it doesn't add anything to what you see on a 1920x1080 TV. You don't see any extra detail, because there is none; maybe you can squint out more noise in distant textures. Games today are designed for low resolutions that hide their lack of fine detail; all a higher-than-HD display achieves is let you see polygons that would otherwise blend together as polygons. High-res texture packs only help up-close blur, seeing the polygons that are hidden at 720p and easy to intentionally ignore at 1080p is still there.

 

It's not that low resolution is good, but, for games, you want the lowest resolution at which the image doesn't get either blurry or pixelated. This is a problem for TV sets, because at 50"+, at 1080p, it does. But on a 27" monitor the difference is between crisp and very crisp. The former is just better.

This isn't even taking into account the load it puts on a video card. Hopefully one day games will work beyond 1080p, like they have been brought to work at 720-1080p. But that day is not today, even with all the high-res mods you can throw at it.

 

For CAD it's a very different story, of course.

[Dan3345]

It's not that I think a higher resolution will make games look noticeably better, I already know it won't. It's that I have been told 1920 x 1080 looks stretched and warped on a 27 inch monitor.

 

So FMod are you saying a 27" at 1920 x 1080 would look good? I am still a bit confused.

[FMod]

Don't see why it would be stretched or warped. I've seen such displays, nothing wrong with them, it's the correct aspect ratio.

You can make out individual pixels, as you can on smaller screens, but they don't stand out at 27" unless you're looking for them; that starts with larger, TV sizes. For the most part 27" 1080p is just like 24" plus a bit of fresh air in games and movies, as what used to be the bezel is now the screen.

[Dan3345]

Ah Ok good to hear. I am still open to ideas and recommendations of course but for now this is what I am getting. Asus has a good warranty, and judging by the few reviews I could find on this specific monitor it has good picture quality. And for the price, well.. It's right in my sweet spot for spending. I like that it has built in speakers though I am sure they are crap.. I don't have real speakers right now, and eventually I will probably buy some but for now speakers built into the monitor will be really nice for my limited desk space.

 

See anything wrong with the monitor though?

[FMod]

I don't think this is a good idea actually. It says 2ms... that means TN panel. TN panels have the least contrast and color accuracy out of all types. The one you were looking at first is considerably better, except for the glossy screen.

 

Look for ones that say 6ms (or 7ms). The convention is to specify 6ms for higher quality (MVA, PVA, IPS) panels, 5ms or 2ms for TN+film. These numbers are completely meaningless, different measurement methods can give 1ms or 20ms on the same panel, they have just become a marketing tool. Though recently makers play with these numbers even more (there are VA's that say 4ms, there may be TN that say 6ms). So check for the panel type in specs or look for reviews to say VA or IPS just in case. They usually say it, these panels are more expensive, so they have to advertise it.

 

This one looks ghetto-cheap: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824009424

$300 regular, $200 on promo. It's an Acer, a cheaper brand, but quality is little different from more expensive ones.

Alternately there is a whole lot of other 27" IPS and VA panel displays between $300 and $400.