Recommends for 22" tft monitor

[Guest]

Can anyone give their views on TFT monitors of 22" from personal experience. I am about to build a new computer and feel that the time has come to take the plunge on a TFT screen and feel that one of this size would be ideal. Advice on contrast ratio, brightness and resolution, and whether adjustment of Height and tilt is advisable would be great.

[Ian]

Re: Recommends for 22" tft monitor

Can anyone give their views on TFT monitors of 22" from personal experience. I am about to build a new computer and feel that the time has come to take the plunge on a TFT screen and feel that one of this size would be ideal. Advice on contrast ratio, brightness and resolution, and whether adjustment of Height and tilt is advisable would be great.

Hi Dennis, I have had one of these for a couple of months:

http://www.iiyama.co.uk/default.asp?SID=&LNG=EN&NAV=236&PROD=9576

http://www.iiyama.co.uk/default.asp?SID=&LNG=EN&NAV=236&PROD=9523

Ian

[Chris]

Re: Recommends for 22" tft monitor

Can anyone give their views on TFT monitors of 22" from personal experience. I am about to build a new computer and feel that the time has come to take the plunge on a TFT screen and feel that one of this size would be ideal. Advice on contrast ratio, brightness and resolution, and whether adjustment of Height and tilt is advisable would be great.

Hi Dennis

I am using a Samsung Syncmaster 226bw. It is a 22" widescreen TFT. It replaced a Samsung 1200NF, a high resolution 22" flat screen CRT monitor.

On the whole, the monitor is better for text and general use, but two areas where the old high res crt was better was for photograph manipulation and video viewing. For photo work, I am less able to see the effects of sharpening with the TFT, because the panel type monitors have a level of sharpness that will not be evident in the finished print (the old CRT on its fine 1536 vertical lines was excellent for judging printed sharpness). You just learn to use more magnified view when sharpening to see what is going on. For video, the TFTs (televisions or monitors) are still way behind CRT in image quality terms.

Overall, I am very happy with the new monitor and will probably not go back to the CRT. I only changed because the CRT paffed out and no one makes the big high res ones now.

One thing to note. If you do go for a TFT monitor, make sure you use a video card and monitor that use DVI to transmit the picture. Because of the nature of TFT monitors, feeding them with VGA signals leads to aliasing effects where the signal goes in and out of sync across the screen, leading to areas that look out of focus. Dual channel DVI is needed to make any video you may run viewable. Single channel is really too slow for a big screen with a lot of pixels in my opinion.

Hope this helps.

Chris

[RCE]

Re: Recommends for 22" tft monitor

One thing to note. If you do go for a TFT monitor, make sure you use a video card and monitor that use DVI to transmit the picture. Because of the nature of TFT monitors, feeding them with VGA signals leads to aliasing effects where the signal goes in and out of sync across the screen, leading to areas that look out of focus.

I used to think this when I had an early Dell TFT with both DVI and VGA ports, on this you could see a definite difference in quality, but since having used a few more up to date TFT monitors this no longer seems to be the case.

As for a 22" I am now using a HP w2207h which is very nice, it has VGA, DVI, and HDMI inputs and was a very reasonable price from PC World. Again as per many of this type of screen the speakers are poor but what the hell I didn't buy it for the speakers.

[Unregistered]

Re: Recommends for 22" tft monitor

I used to think this when I had an early Dell TFT with both DVI and VGA ports, on this you could see a definite difference in quality, but since having used a few more up to date TFT monitors this no longer seems to be the case.

As for a 22" I am now using a HP w2207h which is very nice, it has VGA, DVI, and HDMI inputs and was a very reasonable price from PC World. Again as per many of this type of screen the speakers are poor but what the hell I didn't buy it for the speakers.

The Samsung is latest generation 2ms monitor. I tried driving it from a VGA card but suffered the slight softening of text as it went in and out of phase with the VGA signal across the screen. I think you could get away with it on some monitors, but you will only find out once you have it all plugged in. Getting a DVI card makes sense if you are building the system from scratch.

Chris

[Ian]

Re: Recommends for 22" tft monitor

Hi Dennis

I am using a Samsung Syncmaster 226bw. It is a 22" widescreen TFT. It replaced a Samsung 1200NF, a high resolution 22" flat screen CRT monitor.

On the whole, the monitor is better for text and general use, but two areas where the old high res crt was better was for photograph manipulation and video viewing. For photo work, I am less able to see the effects of sharpening with the TFT, because the panel type monitors have a level of sharpness that will not be evident in the finished print (the old CRT on its fine 1536 vertical lines was excellent for judging printed sharpness). You just learn to use more magnified view when sharpening to see what is going on. For video, the TFTs (televisions or monitors) are still way behind CRT in image quality terms.

Overall, I am very happy with the new monitor and will probably not go back to the CRT. I only changed because the CRT paffed out and no one makes the big high res ones now.

One thing to note. If you do go for a TFT monitor, make sure you use a video card and monitor that use DVI to transmit the picture. Because of the nature of TFT monitors, feeding them with VGA signals leads to aliasing effects where the signal goes in and out of sync across the screen, leading to areas that look out of focus. Dual channel DVI is needed to make any video you may run viewable. Single channel is really too slow for a big screen with a lot of pixels in my opinion.

Hope this helps.

Chris

I have connected my laptop to an enytry-level (VGA-pnly) 20" iiyama via the VGA/VGA and see a rock-steady picture. My understanding is that most up to date graphics cards and monitors work very well together. Of course if you have DVI at both ends, you should use that. Interesting to read about dual/single channel DVI comparison.

Ian

[Chris]

Re: Recommends for 22" tft monitor

I have connected my laptop to an enytry-level (VGA-pnly) 20" iiyama via the VGA/VGA and see a rock-steady picture. My understanding is that most up to date graphics cards and monitors work very well together. Of course if you have DVI at both ends, you should use that. Interesting to read about dual/single channel DVI comparison.

Ian

Hi Ian

I originally plugged the Samsung TFT into an old Radeon 7000VE card. There was aliasing evident. I have seen it on several machines, some old, some new.

The dual channel thing is fairly easy to sort out. If the monitor supports it, get a card that delivers it. That way, optimal results are assured.

Chris

[Guest]

Re: Recommends for 22" tft monitor

Thanks to all who replied with suggestions/tips etc. I mha today been out and purchased a 22" LG Flatron L226WTQ TFT monitor from Comet. I was drawn by the specs of this monitor ie 5000:1 contrast, 2ms timing, both DVI & Analogue inputs and the onscreen menu for changing all the settings such as brightness & contrast, colour, sharpness etc; plus the fact that a large range of screen resolutions can be selected from an displayed. My first impressions on connecting it to my newly built computer is "whow". Photographs look stunning on it and what is more I can choose a screen resolution that matches the the aspect ratio of my older analogue CRT monitor or I can choose wide screen for viewing DVD films etc

[Chris]

Re: Recommends for 22" tft monitor

Hi Dennis

Sounds like a good choice, possibly uses the same panel as the Samsung.

Chris