What monitor, looking for contrast + color accuracy?

[[XC] Lead Head]

My old desktop was an Opteron 165 + HD4770. It couldn't push many pixels, but that's okay because I ran it on a 13 year old Sony Trinitron @ 1365x1024. Recently I purchased a laptop for school, and it basically wipes the floor with my desktop (HD6570, i7).

The problem is the screen on this laptop is just awful, terrible contrast and the color accuracy is dreadful. I spend a lot of time at a desk, so I like to "dock" my laptop. When I hook the trinitron up to my laptop, I'm just blown away by how rich the colors are and just how dark the blacks can be (one interesting bit is how "dark" the dark colors on modern websites and games seem to be. I often have to turn the brightness up. If I had to guess, it's designers trying to make their sites appear better on crap LCDs?).

But of course, the trinitron is getting very old at this point. It's starting to loose sharpness and the convergence drifts a bit now, and well it's just plain huge. I'm looking for the LCD that can get me at least close to what this trinitron offers me. 17-21" would probably be fine.

Any suggestions?

[zanzabar]

asus and lg have some entry level ips.

asus 21.5 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236205
lg 21.5 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824005287
lg 23 (same price as the lg 21.5) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824005240

if you have the space and money i would go for a yamasaki, you can get them on ebay and they use lg super ips panels but they are generally 27" and they are the OEM that makes the monitors for apple, dell, and basically any other monitor with an lg panel so they are priced lower than you will find a branded one.

[[XC] Lead Head]

Thanks for the suggestions.

How do modern LCD's handle less than native input resolutions? My laptop really doesn't have the horsepower to push 1920x1080 with the settings turned up while gaming, but 1600x900 wouldn't be a problem.

[zanzabar]

you dont really have a choice since the only ones that have ips are 1080p or better now, but it should be fine using a non native rez. with modern games there is really no drop in frames based on resolution unless you run out of vram though so i would stick with low settings 1080p over lower rez with aa or something like that.

[s1nykuL]

I am in awe of my Asus P238Q 1920x1080i/p. They do a 1920x1200 too but it is almost twice the price. I code and mess with graphics for print so colour accuracy is important, I also game and this monitor has impressed. might be newer cheaper and possibly better out there now though, it has been about 6 months since I last investigated.

There are lots of reviews out there, it's worth checking out. Also check out light bleed with respect to this model. Some batches bled a little too much, I decided to take the gamble and got good hardware. I figured from what I had read it was worth an RMA or two to get a good one. I just got lucky first time.

[tived]

look for NEC or EIZO, for color accuracy, just pick the size that suits, they both go up to 30", i personally use an NEC 26", and will be looking at two 30" in the near $$$ future ;-)

on the cheaper end have a look at some of the Dell screens, they are not bad either, but you need to check the specs! in particular if you are doing photo editing, as i do - obviously if you do not calibrate your monitor, just get a HDTV instead and look through a coke bottle

Best of luck

Henrik

[andressergio]

CROSSOVER 27Q the best LCD ever