So here is the million dollar question: is a monitor that can display 1900x1200 (24"-27" ) really worth it??

I'm hoping that the knowledgeable people here at Tom's can give me some solid feedback.

I'm looking to upgrade my monitor, video card and processor. The plan so far is a E2160 (OC~2.80ghz) and 8800GTS (G92) w/ 2GB DDR2. I was thinking about getting one of the following:

(1) 22" monitor
(2) 24" monitor
(3) 32" 720p HDTV

A 24" monitor will obviously give the best resolution, however, I remember seeing somewhere that the human eye really can't tell a difference between 720p and 1080p until you reach screen sizes of 42" and up (I believe Panasonic or Pioneer did this test). I realize that the 24" monitor actually has a resolution higher than 1080p (iirc).

However, I don't think I will be able to run games (COD4 mainly) maxed out at that resolution (1900x1200), or if I will even be able to tell the difference graphically over a 22" or 32", hence considering a 32" hdtv.

30" monitors are out of my price range (<$750), so they are not an option.

I'm planing on using this display as my bedroom theater/computer setup, so movies will be watched frequently as well as playing games. A little photo editing will be splashed in, but nothing too crazy. I have a tuner card on my PC, so the tuner on the 32" isn't a huge deal.

I'm looking at Samsung displays right down the line for all three of the options, but other brands aren't out of the question.

Please feel free to give any feedback and suggestions, and flame only if entirely necessary

The human eye not seeing the difference between 720p and 1080p is only true at distances of 9' and greater. I'm about a 18" away from my monitor and can tell the difference quite clearly.

Don't really understand that as you can buy a 1920 x 1200 monitor from 22", 24, 26, 26" and up.

I'm recommending the Lenovo L220x which is a S-PVA panel and at $464 is the only non TN panel I have seen under $500. It's also the first 22" panel with this resolution meaning that it will have a sharper image than any 24". Text shrinks a tiny bit ...like an 8 pint looks like 7.5 point.

Sorry, I didn't know of that monitor.

Even still will I really see that much of a differnece between a S-PVA and a TN if the TN colors are adjusted properly? I know that 'movie blur,' or whatever you'd like to call it is a problem with TN's, but not having any experience with anything other than TN's, I guess I don't really have anything to compare it to.

I'm planning on using this montior for both gaming and movies, which I suppose puts me in a tough spot choosing between response time and quality.

I've also notice at Newegg that they often don't say what type of panel it is. Are we just supposed to know based on the viewing angle?

Also, what about the contrast ratios?? I've seen as high as 10,000:1 on TN panels, and only around 1000:1 for others? Wouldn't this affect picture quality?

Back a few years you had MVA and PVA as well as IPS as the high end monitors. The reason that LCD's weren't favored by gamers is the response times which gave motion blur....the TN panel had the smallest response time and it's cheap so that's why consumer models have gravitated towards TN. Ya can learn more here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-PVA#PVA

So vendors went nuts and started pulling a few fast ones....

a) They started fudging response times....advertised times never seem to approach actual tested ones except in pro series makers like Eizo.

b) They started sending out IPS / PVA panels to reviewers and then after switching to TN.

Then along came S-PVA as a compromise between TN and PVA/IPS. It's only marginally slower than TN but still give great color accuracy....not as good as the $3k - 5k jobs from Eizo but pretty darn good. If ya want a lot of sources to read on the topic as well as sources where you can find out what panel is actually used in what monitor, see this thread:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/249375-33-does

Thanks very much for the info, it is quite helpful.

I do have some more questions however. I understand that PVA/IPS panels have a better color accuracy, but how does the contrast ratio come into play? If a TN panel has a 10,000:1 contrast ratio vs a 3000:1 PVA, wouldn't the higher range allow for a more accurate color representation after proper calibration? Or is it because the TN cannot support the full 16.7 million that it won't be as good looking as a PVA/IPS?

1900X1200 worth it? In my opinon, YES!

Well their specs and advertised specs. Probably the most recognized deception in the puter industry is "How come when you get your 500 GB HD installed, you can only out 451 GB worth of stuff on it ?" That's cause the peeps in marketing decided that bytes don't go in multiples of 1024 (2 to the 10th power)but in multiples of 1,000. Now the more times you multiple them, 1024 x 1024 keeps getting farther and farther from 1,000 x 1,000. And they do this of course because when selling to stoooopid consumers who don't know any better, 500 is bigger than 451.

Same deal....look at this link from DisplayMate. These are the dudes who make monitor testing and calibration software that was probably used in every review you have ever read.

http://www.displaymate.com/crtvslcd.html

and scroll down to Contrast

It's the same thing with response time. Read a few old TH Eizo reviews and you will see the author stating that unlike all the other reviews they have ever done, Eizo actually rates their response time conservatively. Everyone else has created their own standard b2w, g3g version a, g2g version b so they can fool the customer. LCD's by their nature are just not very good at producing deep black colors. My LCD for example "goes black" after midnite if you don't change the channel or do something else after an hour or so. Despite it "being black", if I wake up to take a leak, the light from the black screen is enough to keep me from walking into something. Now before anyone shouts, this is NOT the same as a monitor going into power save mode where all power to the screen is cut and you do get a real black.

You can read here about some of the games played with contrast ratios on wikipedia. One trick for example is to talk about Dynamic Contrast Ratios rather than Static. One of the ways they cheat is to lower the LCD backlight when most of the screen is dark......so when you have a dark room with light coming in from a window, the colors outside the window will be flat.

But note that for example when you see a movie in a theater, the contrast ratio is at best 500:1

If you see a monitor advertising much higher than 1,000:1, the only thing you should take away from that is that they are more than likely to be exaggerating their response times by a similar factor.

here's a quote:

http://www.projectorcentral.com/contrast_ratios.htm

http://www.practical-home-theater- [...] ratio.html

http://www.ausmedia.com.au/project [...] 0ratio.htm

Im trying to get a 24" as well, but Ive just realised that during gaming it is quite hard to see the whole of the screen without sitting further away which is inconvenient.

Instead of using peripheral vision to spot enemies now I have to move my eyes a lot which is in itself bad in terms of gaming. (only me though) plus running games at native resolution would require even more horse power in which to enjoy them at native resolution you have to invest even more to get decent FPS. This is basically the main point that turned me off, Ill just stick with my 22" or else my impulsive character would make me wanna go for dual card solution which is gonna burn holes in my pocket.

But for office work a 24" is adream i think.

You can get a 24" 8bit panel for $300 at Officemax (BE SURE YOU LOOK AT THE MANUFACTURE DATE) It has to be 11-07 or earlier to ensure you get the 8 bit panel. sometime later they changed to 6 bit. It is not suppose to be HDCP compliant but if you are watching movies though the PC you can use anyDVD and watch the High def stuff.

Yeah, methinks 22" is the sweet spot. I'm using the monitors 8-10 hours a day to do work, and then after that I need to annihilate a few monsters to "chill out". And if you think about the history of the market, it kinda indicates that the manufacturers market analyses gave them the same info. Back in the days where CRT's were prominent, they grew and grew from 14 to 15 to 17 to 20 to 21/22 and then just kinda stopped......then 30" ones appeared. LCD's followed the same path with the jump from 21/22 to 30 and then later filling in the missing sizes as vendors tried to do the "mines bigger" thing hoping to price their 24 and the competitors 22 level and make the sale accordingly.

The problem with the big ones though is because the dpi is < 100, you can see the individual pixels which makes the screens look grainy when you sit at normal "typing distance".