I hope I used the term correctly there. :P
Anyway, I fairly recently got myself a G2420HDBL. It's somewhat decent i guess... but I can't say I was overly impressed.
Someone called it's.. err, viewing angle in the Y-axis (direct translation with fancy term added in, nice!) catastrophical. Well, it's something like that.
Using this forum's default theme as an example, the white lines between every forum category are easily spotted at the top of my monitor, but difficult to distinguish at the bottom. And brightness is set to 70 to add in some extra damage to that. I mean... sure, this screen is bigger than my old screen(1920x1080 vs 1440x900), but is this normal? I'm actually more impressed with my old screen now. Some random '07 asus screen winning over a '09 benq screen in this aspect? It's almost painful. =/
Hmm, i'm good at dragging things out, aren't I? >_>
tl;dr - should I expect a TN monitor to have a spot with darker color or gradual darkening from bottom to top (hard to tell which for sure)? I can't remember my old screen having this issue, at least not this visible.
How much should I expect from a TN monitor?
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
Screen quality even in the realm of TN panels can vary widely, but from the sound of it you have a pretty bad screen :-/
For comparison, I have two monitors: an HP LP2475w - a $625 H-IPS panel used for color critical work, and a Dell SE198WFP - a pretty bad TN panel that was about $100 a few years ago. Doing the same "SPCR forum" test that you described, I can easily distinguish the white lines between every category with the HP. On the cheap Dell, however, it is pretty hard to see the lines. Both monitors have been properly calibrated with an i1 Display 2 colorimeter, by the way.
Now, TN panels are known to be pretty abhorrid when it comes to color fidelity and such, but I have seen some that are pretty good. What concerns me is that my cheapo Dell monitor seems to have similar quality as your BenQ monitor. I'm sure if you spent around $250-$300 on a good TN panel, you would see better results. Of course, it's not gonna be comparable to a good PVA/IPS panel, but at half the price it may be worth it.
For comparison, I have two monitors: an HP LP2475w - a $625 H-IPS panel used for color critical work, and a Dell SE198WFP - a pretty bad TN panel that was about $100 a few years ago. Doing the same "SPCR forum" test that you described, I can easily distinguish the white lines between every category with the HP. On the cheap Dell, however, it is pretty hard to see the lines. Both monitors have been properly calibrated with an i1 Display 2 colorimeter, by the way.
Now, TN panels are known to be pretty abhorrid when it comes to color fidelity and such, but I have seen some that are pretty good. What concerns me is that my cheapo Dell monitor seems to have similar quality as your BenQ monitor. I'm sure if you spent around $250-$300 on a good TN panel, you would see better results. Of course, it's not gonna be comparable to a good PVA/IPS panel, but at half the price it may be worth it.
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silentplummet
- Posts: 33
- Joined: Wed Feb 28, 2007 4:55 pm
TN panels suck. Remember that in most cases the companies selling these monitors (i.e. Dell, BenQ, etc.) have next to nothing to do with the companies manufacturing them.
The two things that determine the quality of an LCD screen are the panel that goes into it, and the circuitry driving the display. There is no easy way to quantify or inspect the second one before a purchase, but the first one is easy. Before you buy an LCD screen, find out what panel goes into it. There is no escaping view angle issues with TN panels, and all manufacturers state them "optimistically", which is to say they out and out lie. Most TN panels I have looked at do not have a viewing angle wide enough to present a uniform screen to the eye even if you view directly on-axis and sit a generous distance away. They also tend to have abysmal performance on black level and white saturation.
But as the previous poster stated, even within TN hell there is a wide range of quality; research what the good panels are and find the monitors that utilize them.
My primary display is an 22" Eizo S-PVA 1920x1200 (~$800 at office depot online store), and even it does not present a perfectly uniform display, but it is very close. If you want a quality display, be prepared to open your wallet. Most people continue to subsidize the el-cheapo TN panel industry because they are either bamboozled by "optimistic" tech specs or they simply don't care about their eyes. I had to actually go and bring this back from Japan in my suitcase to get a reasonable price on it.
For most people, the most accessible and cheapest monitor with an excellent display is going to be the Apple 23" cinema display. This features an IPS panel with wide gamut LED backlighting, and it looks very good indeed.
Personally, now that I have a display I can live with, I'm waiting until the next display technology (OLED? SED?) renders el-cheapo TN panels obsolete.
The two things that determine the quality of an LCD screen are the panel that goes into it, and the circuitry driving the display. There is no easy way to quantify or inspect the second one before a purchase, but the first one is easy. Before you buy an LCD screen, find out what panel goes into it. There is no escaping view angle issues with TN panels, and all manufacturers state them "optimistically", which is to say they out and out lie. Most TN panels I have looked at do not have a viewing angle wide enough to present a uniform screen to the eye even if you view directly on-axis and sit a generous distance away. They also tend to have abysmal performance on black level and white saturation.
But as the previous poster stated, even within TN hell there is a wide range of quality; research what the good panels are and find the monitors that utilize them.
My primary display is an 22" Eizo S-PVA 1920x1200 (~$800 at office depot online store), and even it does not present a perfectly uniform display, but it is very close. If you want a quality display, be prepared to open your wallet. Most people continue to subsidize the el-cheapo TN panel industry because they are either bamboozled by "optimistic" tech specs or they simply don't care about their eyes. I had to actually go and bring this back from Japan in my suitcase to get a reasonable price on it.
For most people, the most accessible and cheapest monitor with an excellent display is going to be the Apple 23" cinema display. This features an IPS panel with wide gamut LED backlighting, and it looks very good indeed.
Personally, now that I have a display I can live with, I'm waiting until the next display technology (OLED? SED?) renders el-cheapo TN panels obsolete.
A good point here, settings are also important. I should fiddle around with my monitor settings to darken it a bit. Of course, this won't change the fact that part of the screen already had an acceptable level (for me, anyway).Both monitors have been properly calibrated with an i1 Display 2 colorimeter, by the way.
Yeah, I guess I didn't do my research well enough. :PNow, TN panels are known to be pretty abhorrid when it comes to color fidelity and such, but I have seen some that are pretty good. What concerns me is that my cheapo Dell monitor seems to have similar quality as your BenQ monitor. I'm sure if you spent around $250-$300 on a good TN panel, you would see better results.
Fortunately, I can live with it. It's something I notice now and then though.
silentplummet:
I guess there's always a risk with buying TN panel monitors. :P
I wasn't ready to pay for a monitor with a better panel, I didn't think I would be that picky since the screen I had then looked pretty good to me. I'll probably keep this screen til something like OLED comes around i think... even if that is years away.
Re: How much should I expect from a TN monitor?
my hg281dpb has this issue.. in a sense. it's really finicky about viewing angles, so you have to be looking perpendicular to it at the top of the screen in order to view the whole screen at the same brightness.Fred wrote:I hope I used the term correctly there.
Anyway, I fairly recently got myself a G2420HDBL. It's somewhat decent i guess... but I can't say I was overly impressed.
Someone called it's.. err, viewing angle in the Y-axis (direct translation with fancy term added in, nice!) catastrophical. Well, it's something like that.
Using this forum's default theme as an example, the white lines between every forum category are easily spotted at the top of my monitor, but difficult to distinguish at the bottom. And brightness is set to 70 to add in some extra damage to that. I mean... sure, this screen is bigger than my old screen(1920x1080 vs 1440x900), but is this normal? I'm actually more impressed with my old screen now. Some random '07 asus screen winning over a '09 benq screen in this aspect? It's almost painful. =/
Hmm, i'm good at dragging things out, aren't I? >_>
tl;dr - should I expect a TN monitor to have a spot with darker color or gradual darkening from bottom to top (hard to tell which for sure)? I can't remember my old screen having this issue, at least not this visible.
in order to facilitate that, i wallmounted my screen and pointed it down slightly.