New monitor buying advice needed

[lti]

I am looking for a new monitor for my parents' computer. Their old 17" CRT is having issues, and it would be nice to get a monitor that works well at higher resolutions than 1024x768. They want to spend between $100 and $150 and purchase it at a local store. I am currently looking at 20" monitors.

I want to know if it is worth the extra $30 to buy an LED backlit monitor. Do these last longer than normal LCD monitors, aside from bad caps?

Are there any monitors in this price range that I should avoid due to poor picture quality or high failure rate?

Is there anything I need to do to enable widescreen resolutions in Windows XP?

[Uranium-235]

Re: New monitor buying advice needed

for your parents? no LED isn't required

Acer is good mons

[lti]

Re: New monitor buying advice needed

I know that I don't need it. I just want to know if it is worth the extra money. This computer is used for Web surfing, online games, and watching movies. Even though the old monitor displays gray as brown, flickers, and makes some colors appear darker than they should be, it still gives a better picture than their $300 22" LCD TV.

[ratdude747]

Re: New monitor buying advice needed

it will help in terms of how much $ goes tot he electric bill... the LED use far less power than the cfcl's do... if you don't go LED, then you will actually use MORE power than a CRT.

perhaps you will have a lower fail rate since the LEDs do not need an inverter, often the most PITA part of an lcd to troubleshoot and fix. trust me, bad inverters will drive you nutz.

honestly, I would keep my eyes out for a good newer used sony trintron CRT... much better picture quality than an LCD. the colors are truer and you are not as fixed on a specific screen resolution.

actually, another good 17" unit is the envision EN-710e. using one now... got it free used, oldish but it has the specs of a trinitron and has a nice video quality. they are noisy (clicks) when you change resolution but otherwise they are a "sleeper" in the CRT world. this beast will do anything up to a 1280x1024. they may look old becuase they are beige, but they really deliver a good picture.

[Wizard]

Re: New monitor buying advice needed

Smallest LED-LCD monitor currently is 18" and that's at 1366x768 and inexpensive.
next up is 20", 22" and 23". And some of them use 1920x1080 which is perfect on 20" and make do as TV & Monitor using PC to play DVD (PC upconvert this to 1080 rather good I used VLC, and bluray).

Buying a LED-LCD is a must now due to drastic power saving and cost alone is coming down all the time now.

Cheers, Wizard

[jsog]

Re: New monitor buying advice needed

it will help in terms of how much $ goes tot he electric bill... the LED use far less power than the cfcl's do... if you don't go LED, then you will actually use MORE power than a CRT.

What? Have you checked that with a Kill-a-watt? LCDs with CCFL tubes use about half the power of a CRT. LED is probably about the same as CCFL.

As far as the original question... find a 19-inch non-widescreen with bad caps and repair it. The 19" 1280x1024 have large pixels so font sizes can stay at default.

Give it to the parents and tell them to save the other $130.

[Wizard]

Re: New monitor buying advice needed

Jsoj, Do not state this unless you have measured the watts on a LED-LCD monitor. There is big difference. CCFL runs much warmer.

Still, I prefer LED-LCD stuff and I suggest to others to consider them first.

Cheers, Wizard

[ratdude747]

Re: New monitor buying advice needed

IIRC pcbonez (or someone one else) did measure the watts and the crt used less.

CCFL tubes are essentially flourscent lights. they and their suppling inverter use a lot of power. more so than the electron guns in a CRT.

LEDs use very little power... they are half the secret to why netbooks get such impressive battery lives (its not just the CPU). they even have CRTs beat in terms of power usage. they also are more eco-friendly (no mercury like a CCFL).

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: New monitor buying advice needed

As far as the original question... find a 19-inch non-widescreen with bad caps and repair it. The 19" 1280x1024 have large pixels so font sizes can stay at default.

Agreed 100%.

@ ratdude747, sorry, but you're wrong on this one. All my TVs are still CRT, and i've gone back to my trusty old 19" CRT monitor too. Summer's in and this place gets pretty darn hot due to all them tubes.

Ever compared a typical CRT power supply with a typical LCD power supply? A 17" uses about 70W average. My 19" eats around 100W, and a 21" CRT uses 150W continuous, plus the 4kW surge when it does degaussing at power on. Degaussing surges on big monitors are known to damage crappy wiring and blow undersized breakers. TVs use a little less, the standard 24" CRT TVs that i got are rated at 75W each. Speaking of which, i have to fix the Sammy in the living room again. It's getting old... about time i changed it for a big widescreen, but no $$$ so i have to patch it up again.

A 19" LCD uses something like 35W. Half of what the CRT uses. A LED based screen will use even less, but there were flickering problems with the first generation panels, and you're likely to get one of those if you go to best buy or similar.

[ratdude747]

Re: New monitor buying advice needed

so pcbonez (or whoever it was) got it wrong.

whatever then... at least CRTs still have better picture quality.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: New monitor buying advice needed

whatever then... at least CRTs still have better picture quality.

Yeah, when they're still in good shape. The Sammy TV in the living room is, in almost every aspect, off... The convergence is bad even though i calibrated the darn thing last year, focus goes soft if the contrast is turned past 30%, and lately it's been flickering back to black several times before it turns on (it has a delay feature, which keeps the screen blank until the picture tube has warmed up). And in TVs you don't get the fancy pots that you get on monitors, you have to physically move the yoke to achieve correct convergence while also keeping geometry in check.

All these are symptoms of a worn tube. It's understandable though - it's more than 10 years old, and my mom always forgets to turn it off or program the sleep timer when she goes to sleep, so it has A LOT of hours. Had a single capacitor failure in its entire life though, fixed that last year. It's held up alright i guess.

[Wizard]

Re: New monitor buying advice needed

Th3_uN1Qu3 is correct and this depends on quality of CRT that take least convergence work and more important dot-pitch (minimum is .28). But the ultimate winner is LCD in general at high resolution and adjust the DPI to help with people who can't read text that small.

CRT have negative side is huge wattage consumption esp CRT monitors. Next down is CCFL LCDs (40-60W on average depending on low to high end. The most least of all is LED-LCD. The ultra low pico-watt is e-ink panels.

I had all 3 generations of monitors: (two generations of CRT), then LCD then LED-LCD. I know and really appreciate the least heat from the LED-LCD in my bedroom during summer.

Cheers, Wizard

[lti]

Re: New monitor buying advice needed

there were flickering problems with the first generation panels, and you're likely to get one of those if you go to best buy or similar.

Where should I look? Best Buy is the best place I know of to buy a monitor locally.

find a 19-inch non-widescreen with bad caps and repair it.

Where am I supposed to find a broken monitor?

Smallest LED-LCD monitor currently is 18" and that's at 1366x768 and inexpensive.

1366x768 resolution is too small. Some Web elements that are supposed to fill the entire screen do not fit in such a small resolution.

The old monitor supports resolutions up to 1280x1024, but it looks like shit above 1024x768, especially in its current state. I'm thinking that the picture tube is bad. As I'm typing this, the screen is altermating between a green tint and a red tint rapidly and keeps getting brighter and dimmer.

[jsog]

Re: New monitor buying advice needed

Nonworking LCD monitors are all over. Online classifeds, recyclers, schools, businesses, governement. Ask around. "Broken" often implies cracked screen. But then, the ones with cracked screens often didn't have time to fail electronically. If you can get two of the same model, it's easier.

[yyonline]

Re: New monitor buying advice needed

I'd try using a LED monitor before purchasing one. Personally, LED backlight displays give me headaches. Unfortunately, I am forced to use one at work. There is some barely perceptible flicker to them that isn't present in CCFL backlight LCDs. I've read this is because LEDs are either on or off, so to achieve different levels of brightness, they must rapidly flicker on and off. Then again, I am the only person in the office who complains about this, so I am perhaps the exception rather than the norm.

[Evil Lurker]

Re: New monitor buying advice needed

Personally I like a nice big CRT, specially those flat screen Trinitrons.

But, the damn things are klonkity taking up a bunch of desktop real estate not to mention they weigh a freaking ton.

Went to 19" non widescreen LCD in 2004, haven't looked back.

[lti]

Re: New monitor buying advice needed

All I can find locally are widescreen LCDs. Many websites and programs are designed for widescreen displays and do not fit on a 4:3 display unless the resolution is extremely high. I have seen some Web elements that seemed to have been designed to be displayed at a 1440x900 resolution.

Do LED backlit monitors flicker badly? I can't see 60Hz flicker on a CRT monitor or flickering in fluorescent light fixtures, but I did see an LED holiday light set that instantly gave me a headache due to the 60Hz flicker.