Samsung 920N (19", 1280x1024, 90 deg tilt option):
Noisiest of my displays. Squeels annoyingly when leaving power saving. During boot-up it squeels on and off almost constantly when changing resolution, and while video output is temporarily cut during boot process (display doesn't wait a single second if video input disappear: it goes in and out of power saving half a dozen times during reboot).

Some whine/buzz when in operating state. When in power saving, some alternating whine. LED blinks in power saving: when it's lit, it's almost inaudible, when it's unlit, monitor whines. Annoying.

Monitor's OSD brightness controls pixels, not backlighting, thus doesn't affect noise.

Not as bad as one might expect reading my words. It didn't bother me until I took my silencing to ridiculous levels (i.e swapping and undervolting PSU fan, running Prescott passively, etc.). But it still is noisy compared to my other TFTs.

One intermittently stuck red sub-pixel. Disappears by pressing it and stays away between 1 to billion seconds. Usually reappears if I bump the monitor.

Note: this monitor is already quite old. I don't know if noises were present when new. Didn't care to listen to it back then.

Fujitsu-Siemens S3260W (26" WS, 1920x1200):
Slight buzzing when listened up close from the backside, inaudible from normal viewing position. More buzzing if backlight brightness is reduced below 95%. Between 0 and 90 the noise is audible from normal viewing distance and is of low frequency (maybe some benefit from soft material between monitor and desk).

Some whining at certain colour patterns. Sharp black text on white makes whine on AIDA32 monitor test but in practice viewing webpages with lots of text cause no problem.

Also some almost uniform looking backgrounds on some webpages makes monitors whine. Tight lines of various shades with small contrast difference? Or dithering causing noise?

El cheapo of 26 inch FullHDs. No bad pixels. Surprizingly good.

Bought last summer.

Hyundai HLT-42V2FH (42", 1920x1080):
Buzzing. But as normal viewing distance of this FullHD TV is more than two meters, it's inaudible from that position.

No variable backlighting. Always bright. Very bright. Is dimmed with GPU software or through TV's OSD, gratuitous amounts of backlight bleed.

El cheapo of 42 inch FullHDs. One dead green sub-pixel (always black). No DVB-tuner integrated, analogue only. 2 HDMI ports, of which only one accepts 1080p input. Which is enough for my purposes as secondary computer display...

Bought one year ago.

Eizo FlexScan S2401W: If I put my ear very close to the top of the monitor I can hear a very quiet buzzing that I've never noticed before. It gets louder with increasing brightness, but even at maximum brightness I don't hear it during normal use. (I can't rule out the possibility that I would hear it if the computer and the ventilation were silent.) However, the monitor sometimes emits a ringing sound when it displays certain black and white patterns, such as repeating the same character all over the screen. This ringing can get quite annoying, but luckily such patterns don't occur very often.

ViewSonic VG175: Highly annoying whine; could even be heard in another room.

NEC MultiSync LCD1990SX: Virtually silent @ 40% brightness and 50% contrast.

BenQ FP241W

I just replaced my old whining LG L204WT with a brand new BenQ. This one makes very quiet buzz at brightness <70%. When getting lower in brightness it starts high-pitched squealing. Luckily there is a quiet zone (just the buzz) between 10 and 25%.

Edit: I wouldn't call the buzz very quiet any more, it is audible to a distance of ~50 cm when there's very little ambient noise.

Acer 2016W - Brightness 50, there's a noticable whine that comes from the screen when first turned on. After the power supply warms up though, they're silent.

Samsung 2443BW - Any brightness setting - zero noise at startup or during general use. Along with great picture quality and response rate, they're anybody's dream monitor.



*drool*

2x Samsung 970P
3 years old.

Perfectly Silent.

viewsonic 2235 = very faint whine when under 98% brightness
Samsung 19" LCD unknown model# about 3 years old = silent
Dell 2408 = Silent, currently set to 92%

Samsung SyncMaster 940BW: No sound at all, in high brigthnees mode but there is a high pitch sound as soons as it gets dimmer.
If anyone ever used MagicBright feature of syncmaster brand :
No noise ==> Sports, Movie, Game, configuration
Hight pitch noise ==> Text , Internet configuration

Also the high pitch noise is only audible, and really annoying at night in complete silence. That sound is over my three nexus regular fans and pwn nexus fan at quite low speed.

Acer P221w 22" flat panel

When brightness is below 97 monitor has pretty high pitched whine. Its worse in back but is somewhat audiable from 1 feet away. With brightness 97 or over, P221w is silent so far. I will test more this display as I just installed it.

Edit: When enabling ACM, the Dynamic contrast, monitor starts making whine even at 97 brightness. With 100 brightness, ACM mode doesn't make whine. Luckily I can adjust brightness via VGA drivers.

2nd Edit:
After 48 hours of testing:

1) Without ACM ( Advance Contrast Manager ) brightness below 97 makes whine. It starts quite quietly and around 77 to somewhere 40ish the whine is loudest..

2) With the ACM on the monitor whines constantly. However with 100 brightness and ACM on. Its very hard to distinguish the whine from a feet away, unless its completely silent.

Whine is not highest pitch one but pitch is still relatively high. Not as distinguishable as my old Dell P992 CRT. Lower the brightness is, higher it gets, until in somewhere 40ish it starts quiet down again.

Benq FP241W - loud (audible in the whole living room) buzzing + whine at all brightness-levels below 98% (Even zero brightness is still too bright imho) - totally unacceptable for me
Samsung 2443 BW - faint or medium buzz+whine when below 95% brightness (minima at 55% (too bright) and below 10% (little too dark)) in any case noticeable, even at daytime - still annoying

I need to say that my hearing is usually regarded as very good, and I was using these monitors with a audible but quite silent Macbook Pro.

@Nick Geraedts:
Are your sure there is no noise from your 2443BW at any brightness level? -If so I would try to exchange mine instead of returning it.

Can anyone tell me if the Samsung 2493HM or 2693HM are silent? I'm considering between the Benq G2400WD and the Samsung 2493HM.
Thanks.

Eizo s2431w very silent at all brightness settings. Extremely low volume chirping ... but really hardly noticeable at approx. 10 cm distance. -> dead silent

Mike I suppose you are probably interested in relatively new models, so buyers can make informed choices with their next purchases.
But there's always used-monitor purchases, so I'll add mine to the list.

It's more than five years old now.
Samsung 570V 15" TFT LCD monitor.
Silent all these years.

LG L1954TQ

I have 3 of these and only one is emmitting whine @ 50% brightness

I haven't noticed any whining from my monitors at all. I usually have them set at about 70% brightness.

My Acer monitors, on the other hand, had a very distinct whining sound on startup, but went away as soon as the power supply warmed up.

LG W2242S 22": Buzzes at anything less than 100% brightness, audible throughout a medium sized room.
Viewsonic VA2226W 22": Generates a medium-pitched whine at any brightness below about 95%. Easily audible whilst sitting infront of it in a quiet room with a quiet PC. Not as loud as the LG, but the higher pitched whine makes it as noticeable.
Dell E2209W: An audible but not-too-loud whine for any brightness lower than 65. Silent with brightness greater than 65. I find that with brightness at 66 and a bit of fiddling with the RGB settings, the monitor can be made to be non-eye-searingly bright whilst also silent. The only (minor) drawback is a bit of backlight leakage at the top and bottom of the screen, but that's almost insignificant next to the value of having a silent monitor!

Sony HS75B - silent.

Dell 2407WFP: Completely silent even at a brightness setting as low as 3% (color calibrated using an X-Rite Eye-One Display 2). Before color calibration, I never ran the brightness any higher than 20%. No noise there either.

Dell 2405

high frequency buzz - only if it's turned off! It is almost completely silent if it's in stand by or turned on.

HP LP2475w



I have exactly the same experience - I returned my first HP LP2475w as it made audible hum under 80% brightness (normal home office environment, HDD laptop next to it).

Replacement was identical - silent above 80%, audible hum under. You need brightness below 40% to even use this thing without pain :-)

Frequency of hum is set at a pitch i can't seem to ignore.

Oct and Nov 08 manufacture dates, from CZ factory, fwiw.

Everything else about this monitor is fantastic, esp. at the price point, but I need silence when I work (the tftcentral review's explicit mention of lack of noise swung the purchase for me)...this might go back for a refund. real shame :-(

Well here are some more:
2443BW (a second sample) same problem as posted here before, which means - faint or medium buzz+whine when below 95% brightness (minima at 55% (too bright) and below 10% (little too dark)) in any case noticeable (annoying for me)
2343BW gorgeous 2048x1142 pixels ... but sadly exactly the same noise as the 2443 BW

Wow glad I saw this, I was wondering what the heck was going on, raised the brightness and the noise went away. Noise comes from video card, all of them that I tried w/ this monitor.

Hanns G Hi221DPB 22" Wines at 75% brightness or less. Below 30% its bad sitting right next to it(computer on desk). 30-75% its audible sitting next to it I can hear it, barely, not real annoying, but then it gets louder. Contrast level has no effect. Again I sit ~1' from my computer on my desk

Thanks again

Samsung Syncmaster 226 BW 22" hums at less than 100% brightness even when using the software controls from the video card.

Fujitsu Siemens Scaleoview L22-w 22" is silent.

Thanks for initiating this survey. It will undoubtedly be helpful next time I'm in the market for a monitor.

Jon

Talking about Samsung SyncMaster 2443BW.. Does it emit any kind of sound @ full brightness ?

I currently have an 22" LCD from LG with very annoying constant high pitch whine at any given brightness. At brightness below maximum the whine is more like a "buzz" whereas @ 100% it's like "squeal".

So does the 2443BW have the same syndrome? Is it _DEAD SILENT_ @ 100% or is the "squeal" there?

@john
Both samples of the 2443BW I used seemed absolutely silent to me at 100% brightness (to bright for me). Below it's a different story.

Thx 4 the quick reply

Are you absolutely sure theres no slightest whine at 100% brightness because it can be different from the usual buzz sound that comes with brightness below maximum. I wouldn't want to spend another 250€ for a display with such a defect .

Also do you consider yourself a guy who usually hears even the most quiet noises ?

Most Samsung monitors tend to be fairly silent at 100% brightness. Less than that and they whine and/or buzz.

Samsung Syncmaster 191T: Silent.
Acer AL2016: Incredibly annoying buzz at any brightness level below 95%. Sent it back to Acer (along with a printout from an electronics site that discusses the problem and implies that the CCFL inverters that exhibit this problem are faulty). They replaced it (after a long, long wait) with...
Acer AL2023: ... which is silent again, but is currently also back with Acer because it switches itself off and then (eventually) on again during use (I'm not having much luck with Acer products, sigh, although they did upgrade me from the 2016 to the 2023 because of the long delay in getting a replacement, which was nice).

The discussion of this problem I've seen on other sites indicates that this can be little more than pot luck in some cases, with people reporting that they've had to resort to repeatedly RMA'ing monitors until they get one that's silent. This may indicate that (at least in some cases) the fact that someone's reported a model as being silent doesn't mean that another monitor won't buzz or whine.

Thankfully with the move to LED backlighting this problem should go away, at least when it's caused by CCFL inverters.

Having said that, can we get comments from people with monitors that use LED rather than CCFL backlighting? It'd be good to get some data on whether this problem also crops up with LED backlights. In addition if you get noise from an LED monitor is it a buzz (which I'd only expect from a CCFL due to the inverter) or a whine?

Dell 3007WFP: 165-170Hz hum at lowest brightness, decreases in volume as brightness increases. Would guess it is around 18dB or so. Quietest at one setting from max brightness, very minor buzz. Max brightness has very noticeable buzz.

Dell 3008WFP: Pretty much silent, a tiny buzz, but only audible from about 6 inches in normal environment, maybe 1 foot to 18 inches in a silent room.

Benq FP241W - emits a very loud and headache inducing high frequency buzzing sound regardless of brightness setting. Totally unacceptable, this one is going back.

Nec 20WGX2 - Completely silent at all brightness levels. In standby mode it is irritatingly loud though, the buzzing sound also fluctuates in it's frequency. I just turn the monitor of, rather than using standby, so not really a problem for me.

My search for a quality panel 24"/26"/27" monitor continues.