Ten affordable mid-sized Full HD monitors Monitors don’t age very well; growing, as they do, dimmer and yellower as time passes. Premium panel technologies are now also considerably cheaper than they once were, so if you haven’t updated your display in a while, the chances are it’s now more than a little bit rubbish. I’ve taken a look at ten of the best affordable …
Being the proud owner of an old Iiyama 24" from back in the day when 1920x1200 was more common I totally agree. However both Dell & Iiyama do a couple of reasonably priced 24" 1920x1200 IPS displays like this one at Scan: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/24-dell-u2412m-led-ips-monitor-full-hd-displayport-dvi-vga-1920x1200-8ms-300cd-m-10001-silver
However what puzzles me about this review of "affordable" monitors is including those expensive panels from Asus & Benq. When you're in the £300-350 range it's hard to imagine why someone looking for the improved colour performance that these offer would not spend a little extra for a 27" 2560x1600 IPS model seeing as there are several good options around the £450 mark.
And was it not possible to put in at least one monitor that the review felt able to recommend?? Poor show.
...27" 2560x1600 IPS model... ...good options around the £450 mark.
Namely? Not being smart - I would dearly love something like this but all I can find at that sort of price are on eBay and in Korea, so even assuming no other problems you can almost guarantee VAT and handling to be added on top. I am however shit at finding good deals online, hence my asking!
@DF118:
I lied - they are 2560x1440 - oops! Anway Scan have a few, starting with the Asus PB278Q, TFT Central review here.
"When you're in the £300-350 range it's hard to imagine why someone looking for the improved colour performance that these offer would not spend a little extra for a 27" 2560x1600 IPS model seeing as there are several good options around the £450 mark."
Well, because that immediately negates the chances for wide color gamut ie cheaper white-LED- based regular color performance eg Dell U2713HM: http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/dell_u2713hm.htm43
If you want the same 27" but with wide gamut then you will have to cough up ~50% more eg Dell U2713H or the older Dell U2711:
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/news_archive/27.htm#dell_u_2013
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/dell_u2711.htm
I never trust reviews of people who say nice things about 16:9 monitors because they're all junk, every last one.
In the same position replacing my old BenQ display, so I've been shopping around for a decent priced 24" 16:10 and considering the Dell U2412M mostly if anybody is looking for recommendations of an actually decent monitor at a reasonable price.
They also come with glossy screens, which causes eyestrain. I knew why I was getting headaches after using my late and unmissed glossy monitor (the thing was so glossy it could accurately be described as reflective) but a lot of people haven't even heard of eyestrain and will suffer in silence and assume that headaches just happen randomly.
I like the fact that el reg noted which screens had anti glare matte finishes. I had to go to a lot of trouble finding that out, sadly neither sales or support for a lot of companies actually know such basic things about their own products. I ended up buying the first one where the support people could actually tell me that the monitor had a matte finish.
CCL - £130.57 inc vat and delivery. I used google shopping with the model number (took about 15 seconds)
http://www.cclonline.com/product/70115/I2353FH/Monitors/AOC-i2353Fh-23-inch-LED-Monitor/MON0614/
There are cheaper people but I have no idea who the cheaper people are. Having bought from CCL before I know they exist! (You can go there if you like)
I just bought a similar monitor this weekend after much reading. I got hte LG IPS234V in the end and was surprised not to see it here.
My other choices appear in your ten here so I'm surprised the LG wasn't in it. I really like mine! Having said that, I'm in Asia and not in the UK so the prices might be different.
I have to agree .. picked up an LG IPS 235v at Best Buy for $190 on Christmas Eve .. checked Amazon and it was not available there, but it said Best Buy was the best price .. only one that looked as good was a Dell .. put them side by side at Best Buy .. and the LG won out on price by a few $$ .. looked slightly better and the Dell had a 8ms response time .. not that I have a problem with Dell .. but we all know they are not a manufacturer .. while LG is
That being said, there are some very nice Samsung monitors out there as well for good prices, and chances are Samsung made some of the monitors in this review .. so surprised a Samsung wasn't included
1920 x 1080 is just fine IMO , can put 2 windows side by side, plenty of productive real estate .. 5 ms response time is just fine for gaming .. I'd suggest this monitor to anyone
What I'd like to see for a small second monitor is not a dedicated device. Just put a hdmi or dvi input on a tablet so it can be used as a second monitor for a desktop/laptop (or connected to other devices such as cameras). Of course consumers will like only buying one 7" screen more than manufacturers will like only selling one 7" screen.
Enough of this widescreen POS we want lots of pixels in every direction 4:3 rules ok.
Being serious,
I use two Dell 24in 1920x1200 screens for my main dev work. slightly different model numbers, Totally different colour profiles. WTF! Thankfully I have a Spider and can calibrate them but the earlier post about colour profiles is very true. The makers all seem to think that the only thing we are going to show in these screens is the latest hollywood crap sequel/prequel.
Pah. Nuke them all I say!
1920x1200 is just so 2003, or even so 1990ish.
Please Please Please El'Reg can we have an editorial policy of referring to desktop display with less than 1200 lines as
Super low res.
or Maybe an El'Reg competition to find the best acronym for FullHD
Flaming Useless Low ??? Half Display
1080p is just junk, the whole pc monitor industry has been sucked into TV manufactures wet dreams for cheap panels.
We had affordable high resolution CRT's a decade ago and now years on unless you take out a bank loan were stuck with this low resolution crap. Whats even worse is that 4K is here apparently but only in 55" screens or above, unless of course you take out the afformentioned bank loan.
If tech sites like the Reg and many other really really wanted to address their audiences views and requirements they should mark down any 1080p panel with a vocal explanation in each review. My ipad now has a higher resolution that the monitor I use for content creation which is rediculous.
How many of these monitors can be rotated to operate in portrait-mode?
I'm eternally perplexed why, after a couple of millennia of developing the human-interface aspects of 2-dimensional information-presentation and almost universal adoption of portrait-mode, the computer-world fell for landscape-mode.
[Hint: how many magazines/newspapers/letters do you get in landscape-mode? How often do you have to scroll up/down when viewing websites? I'm always scrolling up/down!]
Support the campaign for portrait-mode !
Thats still a bit of a downgrade - give me 1536x2048 (like I get on my current Trinitron) or better.
I don't go with the "more screen-area-is-better" game - I want more pixels-per-square-inch not the same number of pixies spread over more square-inches.
Now, a 21-inch portrait-mode Apple Retina display would be worth auctioning a kidney for.
Well, our field of view is wider than it is tall, so portrait is a little odd in that respect. Cinema and TV were landscape long before computer monitors went in that direction.
The one downside to turning an LCD through 90degs is that things like cleartype no longer work properly. You'll generally get better font rendering in landscape.
It's obvious what we need. The bits on the wide ends of the panel need to slide round grooves in the side (bezel free obviously), until they're at the top. So you can be widescreen when you need it, and square when you don't.
I'm sure this wouldn't take more than 5 minutes of R&D from a competent engineer. I'll get Dilbert on it right away...
Signed
PHB
>our field of view is wider than it is tall,
Yeah, I was having this argument with a mate who wanted a circular display like he'd seen in some 1960s TV spy series. "But our eyeballs are circular!" he said.
I decided to look it up, and all I found was an old NASA document, with a diagram that looked like the mask film-makers use to denote "protagonist is looking through binoculars" showing sharp areas, with a different shade of grey around the edges to denote more peripheral vision.
They say that the sharpest area we can perceive is equivalent to a thumbnail at arms length, so the solution is clear, gentlemen: We need a small sharp monitor that moves around according to the position of our eyeballs! (Joke, obviously!)
Of course the Xerox Alto had a portrait display, trying as it was to replace the paper office.
Well want the sub-pixels to work in portrait, get an Apple, also the font would keep it's correct form and WYSIWYG would work.
But then if you don't have a retina display, get ready to have "i" and "e" less sharp during certain circumstances. But at least the font is correctly rendered.
I remember a Xerox about 1977 or so that was Portrait.
I'd love a 133 dpi 1600 x 3200 portrait screen, about 30cm x 60cm visible. Or a 150 dpi 1920 x 3840 would proof A3 nicely with some space left over (slightly more than 32.5 x 67cm visible)
But actually it would be grand on a swivel to do landscape too.
Cleartype etc is sub-pixel addressing. If it doesn't work in Portrait, that's a bug. It should have an option to input the pixel layout.
You can thank cleartype that distorts fonts to look sharp for all the low res screens. It's the masses who don't have no understanding of the physics behind that buy these low res screens cause cleartype makes it sharp for them.
But they have no idea what WYSISWYG means either.
I did read it yes, no need to be a twat about it.
IMO those things you talk about IPS screens and viewing angles are just not that important to me. Pretty much any monitor now will give an acceptable display free from ghosting. The monitors I have really are nice screens to look at with no dead pixels or backlight bleed. As far as resolution I want a big monitor at 1920 x 1200 because 2560 x 1600 just means I need more grunt for games and when I have 2 monitors additional desktop space isn't really a concern.
"I have 2 of these bad boys"
Congratulations
"What more do you want?"
Accurate colour reproduction is always nice for colour monitors, and that's before you move your head a few degrees off-axis. There's a noticeable colour shift across the screen of even small TN monitors simply because they subtend a non-zero angle within the user's field of view. The pixel density is poor by today's standards. About the only thing it's got going for it is that it's not 16:9.
My choice is greatly influenced by past experience of various manufacturer's after-sales service. I'm prejudiced towards Iiyama and Philips. With Iiyama, warranty service has been completely hassle-free on the rare occasions it's been needed ... and I've never yet had a Philips monitor fail in warranty, and very rarely even many years after.
YMMV? Any other good recs or war stories about warranty service?
These monitors have been affordable for a couple of years now ... serious screen-users probably have a pair of them by now. State-of-the-art is 2560x1600, but they don't come cheap! (Personally I really wish you could still get affordable 1920x1200, the extra vertical pixels make a lot of difference ... but I understand why PC monitors have converged on HDTV format. They probably sell ten HDTVs for every high-res monitor. )
IPS and LED are two totally different things. IPS I don't entirely understand (Someone on here may be able to explain) but it is to do with the display panels construction. LED refers to the backlighting of the display. Thus you can have a display from either Dell, Samsung or a number of other manufacturers with one, the other or both of the features you mentioned.
One thing to caution you with. Avoid cheap Samsung IPS monitors. A friend of mine bought five and had three go wrong within a matter of months!
They are amazing....the title of this post though is balls... Firstly "Full HD" 1920×1080 monitors for a start have been around for ages. . Secondly "AFFORDABLE" ? really? my BenQ monitors Burnt a huge hole in my wallet and social life (as i couldn't spend money for months). "Affordable" should be changed to "desirable". Lastly "MID-SIZED" my two BenQ monitors take up an entire work desk THEY ARE HUGE!
Try this title:
10 big ass desirable monitors to make you wet, but ultimately you should get the BenQ 1's because the colours are so vibrant that they will burn your eyes out! The rest of the extras (2ms, 120hz, hdmi sockets) are just a bonus!
Subtitle:
Your wallet will hurt..!!
I've just being trying to track one down on the net.. about a year ago a brand - can't remember if it were Hanns G or Hanspree or neither- released a monitor that used the same panel as the 27" (or maybe 30") Cinema Display for half Apple's asking price, but I can't find it. It was said to be good, but the backlighting was quite as consistent as the fruity one.
Can anyone jog my memory?
>Ones with win8 touch certification would be a bonus
Consider this, perhaps: Leapmotion.com/product a £50 Kinect-like controller, that traces your fingertips. Just an idea, wait for its release and in-depth reviews.
Maybe you are meaning the 30" LG, don't remember the model off hand. It was the same as the Apple one, it was a S-IPS, but only Phillips/LG sold it. They sold it BEFORE Apple Cinema and for a much cheaper price. Knowing those 2 things made the choice of the Apple Cinema to be naive at best, however people still bought it.
Apparently, without doing any research at all, I assume it was too good and Apple had them pull it, or Phillips/LG didn't want to ruin Apple's late to the party celebration. Again, I'm guessing at that, but the vanishing of that monitor for no known reason and not having it replaced by a similar, has me thinking that. I'm not sure how licensing works with IPS, but Phillips/LG are the creators of IPS. So if you want a good x-IPS panel, look there first.
I almost bought 2 of those LG's in 2009, sometimes wish I had. The only thing comparable is higher up were you meet the prices of Lacie, Eizo, etc... I'm holding out for now, there really isn't a great monitor I can find under 2000usd, and I can't justify paying more than 500 for a monitor. I want CRT resolutions and refresh rates in a LCD!
Answering my own question...
Apparently the all-in-one Lenovo ideacentre A720 has a 27" touch screen (I can't find the resolution specs tho') with Win8.
http://shop.lenovo.com/gbweb/gb/en/learn/products/desktops/ideacentre/a-series/
All fine and dandy, but I'm looking for the panel on it's own.
*Edit: Turns out it's only 1920x1080. Boo. Turns out I want the XPS One 27 for 2500x1440 with touch.
1200 vertical pixels is fine for films... you just get black bars top and bottom- not a bad place for your media controls to sit, as it happens.
You are often going to get black bars anyway, because some films are wider than 16:9. Plus, older TV content is more 4:3.
(smug, sat a laptop with a 17" 1920x1200 screen)
Full HD is 1920x1080 which is 16:9 ratio.
1920x1200 is 16:10 ratio.
So same width in pixels, just more height. So assuming the vid is 1080p, width is same, so just black bars top and bottom. And as pointed out, this is useful for subs and controls, as they don't get in the way of the image itself.
If you use a higher res monitor, then you just scale to fit.
It's older than "HD", so it is actually a decently high res, I can't see any obvious problems with it going dim/yellow, it's ridiculously thin for an older lcd panel, pretty thin for a modern one, and most importantly it's 4:3!
So useful for working on a computer rather than just watching films. The only minor issue is that it's old enough to not be HDCP compliant so my blu-ray drive doesn't like it.
So five monitors share equal first place at 85%.
Five more monitors share equal sixth place at 80%.
Is the competition really that close?
I'm no closer to being able to chose my new monitor now than I was 20 minutes ago.
I'm sorry El Reg, I'm not a habitual flamer; but please give me more specs and numbers. Tell me how many dvi/rgb/dp connectors the screen has, also please give me a review score that doesn't end in a zero or a five.
Finally, the BenQ XL2420T gets 85% at £290 - also the AOC i2353Fh gets 85% at £130. Is the BenQ really more than twice as good in order to justify the price? Is it really so impossible to pick between these two that on a scale of one to 100, they both get exactly the same marks?
Samsung T240M is 24" 1920 x 1200, takes DVI, HDMI, RCA for your vintage VHS, and analog Tv tuner with coaxial cable. Did nothing change in 3 years? I dont care if its a TN panel, to fit in my tiny den. There are no angles but straight up front. There was a newer version from samsung, where you'd be back at 1080. Fail. It was cheap then.... out of stock now.
A 24" monitor with 1920x1080 pixels is rather crappy resolution (90dpi). IMHO, anything less than 100dpi is simply unacceptable, and I'd really like at least 120dpi for something I'm going to use more than a few minutes a day. Maybe other people like being able to see individual pixels, but I'd rather not. (Sorry about the imperial units.)
My ancient Iiyama happily displayed 1600 x 1200 before it rolled over and died. Why the actual fuck would I want to spend money on something that's worse?
Right now I'm using a naff Philips monitor somebody gave me, until such time as I can get the readies for a decent new monitor. The article itself was useless; the comments were a damn sight more help.
Could do better, El Reg.
Sorry, got to add to the 86 comments...
Monitors don’t age very well; growing, as they do, dimmer and yellower as time passes.
Wrong. My 12-year-old near-perfect £600 CRT is going on the skip today, as it has just started to flicker occasionally (Mitsubishi Diamond Plus, 22", 1280x1024). This replaced my near-perfect Hitachi 21" CRT (also 1280x1024), which lasted about 10 years (cost about £1000 in ~1991).
The only replacement I've got lying around the office is a cheap 24" Philips 244E (1920x1080). It's pretty much unusable for development work. Lots of real estate, but it doesn't have the pin-sharp clarity of a good CRT.
Any why are you reviewing affordable monitors? I though this was a site for IT professionals? Your readers sit in front of a monitor all day, every day. Nobody in their right mind is going to save a couple of hundred quid on a second-rate monitor.
Another review, please: good monitors, for text-based work, that I can sit on front of all day long. We don't all sit around watching DVDs at work.
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