PC Hobbyist

I am looking into getting a 17 or 19 inch TFT flatscreen monitor and was wondering if someone here could point me in the right direction in terms of what to look for and what to stay away from. Good brands, bad brands...

What features, specs and values should I pay attention to?

Is it safe to order one online (e.g. ebay) or should I actually go to a store to view the quality of image it displays? When I am at the store, it seems like some of them look pretty bad and the text on them is blurry, but I don't know how much of that depends on the settings they happen to have them on.

I mainly need it for general computer stuff and videos or TV through my pc.

Thanks.

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ReverseFluxx

Well, when I was shopping for my LCD, the main thing I looked for was response time. This determines how quickly the monitor displays things. It's especially important with gaming and watching videos. If you do either of these things, make sure and look for a monitor with a 12ms or less response time. Other features you could consider for your purchase are brightness and dot pitch, but most monitors nowadays have good enough specifications that you shouldn't have to worry about this too much.

Also, ordering online would be fine. A lot of the stores I've seen display their monitors with a really crappy video feed, which doesn't make any sense to me. I got my LCD without seeing it in person and I wasn't disappointed.

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Gaming: Athlon64 3500+, 1024MB RAM, PCI-e 6600GT, 200+400GB HDD, 19" LCD + 19" flat CRT, Windows XP Pro

Test Server: PIII 450Mhz, 320MB RAM, TNT2 32MB, 12+10+8GB HDD, Windows 2000 Pro

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PC Hobbyist

Thanks, that's good to know.

Now, what exactly is the dot pitch? Also, I see contrast values of 400:1 up to 700:1. What does that mean? Is that the dot pitch?

And the brightness.... should it be at least a given amound of cd/square-meter?

One more curiosity. I have seen some monitors that automatically adjust their brightness according to the surrounding light. Does anyone have any experience with this? Is it nifty or does it get annoying and can it be turned off?

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The_Other_One

Sorry if I say everything RF said again

*A resolution around what you'd typically use(LCDs and such get blurry at anything less than their native resolution)
*A fast responce time(12ms or faster)
*Higher Contrast and Brightness ratios and lower dot pitches
*DVI input(VGA is fine, actually using it now, but DVI is a bit better...)
*Built in power supply(external power-boxes can be annoying, but it's more preference here...)
*Height adjustment is a nice feature to look for.
*Don't get one just because of internal speakers as I've never heard any worth using

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Impr3ssiv3

a good response time would actually be good around 8ms or less

i found a 2ms one on NewEgg for around $239

Arm_Pit

Depending on what your using it fro your going to want a good responce time anything under 12 is generaly okay unless you play games, if you are a gamer your going to want something under 8. The next two things to look at would be resalution and contrast ratio.

IMO 1:600 would me min I would look for, the higher the better, it makes the picture better because because it allows more contrast and difference between the colors. Then the resaluion, well thats whatever you want your MAx reslaution to be I personally like 1600x1200 but that can get very expensive in flatscreens.

I would stay away from the AOC brand, Crap service IMO and know several people with bad experances.

PC Hobbyist

cool, thanks to everyone. I have a better idea now of what to look for. I'll go for:

8ms
minimum 600:1
highest brightness possible
1280 x 1024 res.
internal power supply and DVI input if possible
avoid AOC brand

And I guess getting one on ebay without first being able to see it working didn't seem to raise any red flags with anyone.

BTW - what exactly is the dot pitch (as mentioned by The_Other_One)?

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ReverseFluxx

Dot pitch is the distance between LCD cells of the same color. Basically, the smaller the dot pitch, the closer together your pixels will be, making images appear smoother.

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Gaming: Athlon64 3500+, 1024MB RAM, PCI-e 6600GT, 200+400GB HDD, 19" LCD + 19" flat CRT, Windows XP Pro

Test Server: PIII 450Mhz, 320MB RAM, TNT2 32MB, 12+10+8GB HDD, Windows 2000 Pro

Notebook: Turion64 ML-40, 1024MB RAM, ATI XPRESS 200M, 100GB HDD, 17" WXGA, Fedora Core 5 64-bit, Windows XP Pro

PC Hobbyist

great. makes more sense now. thanks ReverseFluxx!

Also, does anyone know what the ballpark "life expectancy" for TFT monitors is? I don't know if to consider bidding on used monitors on ebay or if to go for a new one. By "used" I mean about a year, max 2 years old.

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Arm_Pit

I would personally avoid a ebay one, because It wont be that much cheaper then a new one, and new ones ussaly come with 3-5 year warrenty's, So that way if you get any dead pixals(ussaly 8 or more to get replacement) or backlight dies you can get a replacment.