Mid-Range to High-End Buyer's Guide, January 2006
by Jarred Walton on January 2, 2006 1:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Display Recommendations
I've left the displays for last, and since this is Mid-Range and above, the choices will be confined to LCDs. Your eyes have to stare at the computer screen for hours at a time (at least, if you use a computer as much as most of us at AnandTech do), so skimping on the display is a poor choice. I've always been a proponent of overspending on displays, from my first 21" CRT 10 years ago to my recent upgrade to a Dell 2405FPW. There's no such thing as having a display that's "too big" if you ask me...although, dropping a 32" LCD TV on your desk is probably getting close to proving me wrong. It's too bad that LCD TVs are mostly limited to 1366x768 or lower resolutions, as otherwise, they could be a cost-effective alternative for large computer LCDs. Most of us can only dream of owning the 30" Apple Cinema displays, unfortunately.
Mid-Range LCD Recommendation: Acer AL1914smd 19 inch 8ms LCD
Price: $293 shipped (Retail)
Other than a slight drop in price, our LCD recommendation remains with the Acer AL1914smd 19" display. There are better 19" LCDs out there, but they all cost quite a bit more. One thing that you really need to look for is actual color depth. There are many low response time LCDs that only have 6-bit color depths and use dithering to approximate 24-bit color. The result can range from satisfactory to mildly annoying, and I would sacrifice a bit in the way of response times for better colors. The Acer certainly isn't the best in terms of colors, but the documentation appears to indicate that it is a native 8-bit panel, so at least dithering won't be required, and the price is right.
If you're looking for guaranteed 8-bit panels and are willing to spend a bit more money, upgrading to a 20" LCD - 1600x1200 standard aspect ratio or 1680x1050 widescreen - would be a better choice than looking at more expensive 19" panels. The Dell 2005FPW and 2001FP are both good choices. If you don't want to buy a Dell LCD, you might look at the Samsung 204T (20" 4:3 AR) or the Philips 200W6CB/27 (20" WS) or 200P4VS/74 (20" 4:3 AR), although you can almost certainly get a Dell on sale for less money than any of those. All five of these - the Dell, Samsung, and Philips models - are 16ms displays, but response times become less important once you get below 20ms. I don't have issues with most 16ms displays when gaming, but you might want to try out a display in person before making a purchase, as some people still feel that there's too much "motion blur" when gaming.
High-End LCD Recommendation: Acer AL2416Wd 24 inch 6ms LCD
Price: $980 shipped (Retail)
The High-End display choice is really high-end, so if spending $1000 on a quality display is too much, you might want to go back and read that last paragraph again. You can get two good quality 20" LCDs for the price of a single 24" LCD, but I've always preferred a single large display. Acer gets the recommendation again, though there are quite a few reasonable alternatives. First, the good points of the Acer. You can find it for $980 online, without any need to wait for a sale. It's a 24" 1920x1200 panel, and it boasts a 6 ms pixel response time - the best of any current 23/24" LCD, though there is definitely an element of marketing in the various manufacturer response times. $1000 is a lot of money to spend on just the display, but hopefully, the display will last you at least five years, and your eyes might thank you later.
Let's look at some of the other alternatives. The Dell 2405FPW is actually better in several areas: it has S-VIDEO, Composite, Component, DVI, and VGA connections, and you can switch between the five at the press of a button. (I have mine connected to two different PCs, and I've found this feature to be very useful.) If you can find the Dell on sale, you can get it for less money than the Acer, but you might end up waiting months for the right opportunity. The HP L2335 and Philips 230W5VS are 23" LCDs that are similar in price to the Acer, give or take $50. The extra inch of display size is going to be difficult to notice, but paying more for less is questionable. Warranties on most large LCDs are 3 years from the manufacturer, though you'll want to double-check on pixel defect policies before buying most likely. Sony also has a 23" display, the SDM-P234, but at $200 more than the HP and Philips, you're just paying extra for the name.
In the end, the decision comes down to the Dell and the Acer. The Acer wasn't around when I purchased my 2405FPW, or else it would probably be sitting on my desk. Still, if you're living in an apartment or dorm room and don't have a lot of space for a TV and a computer, the Dell can multitask between the two, with 720p and 1080i/p support. For a high-end system, there is nothing as likely to inspire awe and envy as a great looking display, and the 24" LCDs are the display to have these days. A friend came over with his 7800 GTX SLI system sporting an X2 4800+ a few months ago, and upon seeing the 2405FPW connected to my "pathetic" 6800GT/3200+, he was ready to return a few parts just so that he could upgrade monitors. Four years from now, any current CPU/GPU combination is going to be outdated, but you can still continue to run a 24" LCD happily until it finally breaks down. Money well spent, if you ask me.
I've left the displays for last, and since this is Mid-Range and above, the choices will be confined to LCDs. Your eyes have to stare at the computer screen for hours at a time (at least, if you use a computer as much as most of us at AnandTech do), so skimping on the display is a poor choice. I've always been a proponent of overspending on displays, from my first 21" CRT 10 years ago to my recent upgrade to a Dell 2405FPW. There's no such thing as having a display that's "too big" if you ask me...although, dropping a 32" LCD TV on your desk is probably getting close to proving me wrong. It's too bad that LCD TVs are mostly limited to 1366x768 or lower resolutions, as otherwise, they could be a cost-effective alternative for large computer LCDs. Most of us can only dream of owning the 30" Apple Cinema displays, unfortunately.
Click to enlarge.
Mid-Range LCD Recommendation: Acer AL1914smd 19 inch 8ms LCD
Price: $293 shipped (Retail)
Other than a slight drop in price, our LCD recommendation remains with the Acer AL1914smd 19" display. There are better 19" LCDs out there, but they all cost quite a bit more. One thing that you really need to look for is actual color depth. There are many low response time LCDs that only have 6-bit color depths and use dithering to approximate 24-bit color. The result can range from satisfactory to mildly annoying, and I would sacrifice a bit in the way of response times for better colors. The Acer certainly isn't the best in terms of colors, but the documentation appears to indicate that it is a native 8-bit panel, so at least dithering won't be required, and the price is right.
If you're looking for guaranteed 8-bit panels and are willing to spend a bit more money, upgrading to a 20" LCD - 1600x1200 standard aspect ratio or 1680x1050 widescreen - would be a better choice than looking at more expensive 19" panels. The Dell 2005FPW and 2001FP are both good choices. If you don't want to buy a Dell LCD, you might look at the Samsung 204T (20" 4:3 AR) or the Philips 200W6CB/27 (20" WS) or 200P4VS/74 (20" 4:3 AR), although you can almost certainly get a Dell on sale for less money than any of those. All five of these - the Dell, Samsung, and Philips models - are 16ms displays, but response times become less important once you get below 20ms. I don't have issues with most 16ms displays when gaming, but you might want to try out a display in person before making a purchase, as some people still feel that there's too much "motion blur" when gaming.
Click to enlarge.
High-End LCD Recommendation: Acer AL2416Wd 24 inch 6ms LCD
Price: $980 shipped (Retail)
The High-End display choice is really high-end, so if spending $1000 on a quality display is too much, you might want to go back and read that last paragraph again. You can get two good quality 20" LCDs for the price of a single 24" LCD, but I've always preferred a single large display. Acer gets the recommendation again, though there are quite a few reasonable alternatives. First, the good points of the Acer. You can find it for $980 online, without any need to wait for a sale. It's a 24" 1920x1200 panel, and it boasts a 6 ms pixel response time - the best of any current 23/24" LCD, though there is definitely an element of marketing in the various manufacturer response times. $1000 is a lot of money to spend on just the display, but hopefully, the display will last you at least five years, and your eyes might thank you later.
Let's look at some of the other alternatives. The Dell 2405FPW is actually better in several areas: it has S-VIDEO, Composite, Component, DVI, and VGA connections, and you can switch between the five at the press of a button. (I have mine connected to two different PCs, and I've found this feature to be very useful.) If you can find the Dell on sale, you can get it for less money than the Acer, but you might end up waiting months for the right opportunity. The HP L2335 and Philips 230W5VS are 23" LCDs that are similar in price to the Acer, give or take $50. The extra inch of display size is going to be difficult to notice, but paying more for less is questionable. Warranties on most large LCDs are 3 years from the manufacturer, though you'll want to double-check on pixel defect policies before buying most likely. Sony also has a 23" display, the SDM-P234, but at $200 more than the HP and Philips, you're just paying extra for the name.
In the end, the decision comes down to the Dell and the Acer. The Acer wasn't around when I purchased my 2405FPW, or else it would probably be sitting on my desk. Still, if you're living in an apartment or dorm room and don't have a lot of space for a TV and a computer, the Dell can multitask between the two, with 720p and 1080i/p support. For a high-end system, there is nothing as likely to inspire awe and envy as a great looking display, and the 24" LCDs are the display to have these days. A friend came over with his 7800 GTX SLI system sporting an X2 4800+ a few months ago, and upon seeing the 2405FPW connected to my "pathetic" 6800GT/3200+, he was ready to return a few parts just so that he could upgrade monitors. Four years from now, any current CPU/GPU combination is going to be outdated, but you can still continue to run a 24" LCD happily until it finally breaks down. Money well spent, if you ask me.
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archcommus - Tuesday, January 3, 2006 - link
Not just music, but DVDs and games, as well.JarredWalton - Tuesday, January 3, 2006 - link
The Klipsch are also very good speakers - some would say better, others would just say they're different. When you start getting into high-end speakers, a lot of stuff becomes more subjective. I don't know if this still holds, but in the past, Klipsch was regarded as having great customer support. I can't say the same for Logitech, but then I've never personally used customer support for either one. I think the Klipsch Ultra 5.1 speakers go for about $350 new, so they're more expensive and they lack the digital decoder. They probably sound a bit better, though.yacoub - Wednesday, January 4, 2006 - link
Well Klipsch had quality issues for a while with dead and fried amps. Then again Logitech's lower end models were pretty poor quality as well.Either way both systems are likely close enough in quality that you won't notice the difference hooked up to the same soundcard. You would find a much greater difference by improving the soundcard over switching from one of those two speaker systems to the other.
Also, if you're so anal as to be able to detect a huge difference between the two you probably aren't going to be happy with either one and should instead get a real home theatre system and hook your soundcard to the receiver. Then you have no more limitations of a computer speaker system and can swap in and out your separates as you wish and really configure it all finely and use much better quality components.
yacoub - Tuesday, January 3, 2006 - link
There's no reason for the high-end case recommendation to be anything other than the Antec P-150, which is essentially the perfect case. If more room is needed (which would be the rare instance) the P-180 would be the alternative recommendation.jiulemoigt - Monday, January 2, 2006 - link
one were the crt left out due to shipping costs? I got my 75lbs 22" Philips shipped free simply by buying from a local (ground shipping was free, fedex 2 day was several hundred dollars so I can see why shipping costs on a decent size crt could be an issue) based estore. I just wondered as I have yet to see a lcd that comes close to a professional crt in color or crispness, and if your willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a videocard to play games why not three to five on the monitor?the other question is I keep hearing about corsairs 3500 ll xms is it vaporware or did you guys simply miss this one or does it not live up to the hype? I did not see it on the price link or really any mention of it which leads me to wonder?
JarredWalton - Tuesday, January 3, 2006 - link
On the CRTs, there are no new CRTs being made with good specs. I've been over that ground in previous Guides. Basically, you can get a new 22" CRT that is worse than 4 year old models, or you can try to find a 4 year old model, or you can give in and upgrade to LCD. It's unfortunate, but profit margins are better on LCDs, consumers like them more ("oooo - it's THIN!"), and so all R&D is now focused on improving LCDs rather than on CRTs. I fought the CRT battle for a few years, and now that I've upgraded to LCD I just don't miss the CRT anymore. 24" WS and plenty of desk space - what's not to love? :)Turin39789 - Tuesday, January 3, 2006 - link
I'm sticking with my dual 22'inch crt's, a few years old made them available for ~150 each shipped and I like the colors/refresh rate/resolutions better than any crt's I've seen around for twice that money.And an 8 foot desk means never having to worry about space.
Calin - Tuesday, January 3, 2006 - link
The performance of the CRT displays is decreasing even in the 17" world - monitors from three years ago had better refresh rates and resolution than what you can buy now. CRT world is dying :(tjpark1111 - Tuesday, January 3, 2006 - link
I was wondering about LCD size you guys.(that rhymes hehe) I currently have a 15" LCD on a laptop that has a 1024x768 resolution. Sometimes I find it that things are a bit too big especially in videos. I was going to buy a 17" LCD, but then a 19" was recommended here, and I was wondering if you 19" owners are bothered by, or you think that there is a lack of resolution for the huge size. I've seen a 17" and 19" side by side and the size improvement was so big, but I didn't get a chance to look closely, especially when playing video, so I don't know if 1280x1024 is all that bad on a 19". Thank you.Calin - Tuesday, January 3, 2006 - link
I would very much prefer a lower resolution on the 17" LCDs - that 1152 by something would be great. I somewhat find the 1280 by 1024 too small, and just perfect on the 19" displays.