LCD monitors?

[GT40FIED]

Anybody have suggestions on where I can get a good price on an LCD flat panel monitor? I currently have a 17" CRT that's starting to flutter on me for no reason. It's starting to piss me off, but it was cheap so whatever. I'd like to get another 17" LCD, but I'm not opposed to a 15" if the price is right. Newegg seemed to have some good prices (the cheapest around $235), but is there anywhere better to look?

[ebpda9]

ebay. that;s where i got mine from for around $150 about 2 years ago

[GT40FIED]

New or used?

[ebpda9]

brand spanking new. it's an actual 15" but in crt talk the screen is as big as a 17"

[GT40FIED]

I checked Ebay out...some damn good prices. Looks like I may be surfing HST in better resolution soon. Mwahahaha.

[94_AcCoRd_EX]

Watch out buying LCDs though. They often will come with dead pixels and some places will only replace them if you have 5+ dead pixels. Newegg is great for everything else, but their policy on LCDs is bad IIRC.

Also, if you game at all, you'll need to pay a lot for a low pixel response time or you'll see ghosting all over the place. Not sure if that's an issue watching movies or not too...

[Racing Rice]

The ones on newegg looked really nice. They had fast response times and good contrast ratings. Id like to check one out.

[GT40FIED]

So what am I looking for in terms of response time? Contrast I get...but response time means nothing to me. I don't do any gaming but do watch some movies here and there. Any idea what I should be looking for as a minimum? And WTF is this active matrix stuff?

[ebpda9]

well active matrix plays the matrix as your screen saver :o j/k

anyway an active matrix display has a transistor for each pixel there is on the screen. that translates in better image quality, faster refreshes, better contrast, and require a lot of power to operate/

a passive matrix has a transistor for each line on each axis. the image quality is not that good, but they require less power that's why they are the top choice in portables. They require a lot of cleaning too to keep the image sharp.

[94_AcCoRd_EX]

Originally posted by GT40FIED
So what am I looking for in terms of response time? Contrast I get...but response time means nothing to me. I don't do any gaming but do watch some movies here and there. Any idea what I should be looking for as a minimum? And WTF is this active matrix stuff?

For gaming, 16 ms is a must. For action movies, I think that 16 ms would also be great, but you could probably get away with 25 ms. I wouldn't get anything higher than that.

One way to check out a monitor is to go to Staples or Office Max (whichever has the 30 day money back guarantee) and try one out to see if you like it.

[Racing Rice]

Like Trev said, if your a gamer you should get one that is 16ms or less. (The lower the better.) For just everyday use, a 25ms monitor works fine.

Check out www.bensbargains.net They have some killer deals on there sometimes. The Dell LCDs are really nice.