General WARNING: If you buy ANYTHING purely based on specs you are most likely going to make a bad decision. Specs never tell the complete story.
Many reviews are very basic and don’t tell you very much at all. You really need to see the monitors and compare.
In regards to response time:
All Apple monitors are fine but be careful with other brands (eg Samsung has 6ms response time but apparently a 30ms lag due to the technical implementation of S-PVA). It seems that people just make wild unjustifiable statements about Apple monitors being too slow for games etc simply from reading specs.
Lots of non-professional reviews around on the net with comments like “don’t get an Apple display unless you want to pay extra for aesthetics”. Sorry, but that’s complete bs. The Apple displays are made with quality panels (S-IPS) and a lot of thought has gone into design. I do audio and I can’t have a display right in front of my face that hums and buzzes. Apple decided to put the power adaptor in a box away from the monitor which eliminates most of this problem (and it really is a problem when your environment is quiet). Apple monitors are almost completely silent. The Samsung 305T+ was totally unacceptable with both buzzing and humming.
A lot of people talking about products out there seem to have very low standards. How anyone could choose a Samsung 305T+ over an Apple ADC is completely beyond my understanding. The difference in quality is night and day. I purchased a 305T+ and got a sinking feeling as soon as I turned it on. This monitor was like having a CRT in the lack of sharpness. My eyes started to hurt after a short time of reading text (I’m not exaggerating). There was a red fringe that could be seen 1 pixel to the left on a white line with black background which went some way to explain the blurriness. Then there was the noise coming from it. The stand was of such poor quality that the monitor was about 1cm higher on one side (ie impossible to get level horizontally).
To their credit they took the monitor back and decided that they could not offer me a product that would meet my standards.
I think the quality of a monitor has a lot to do with the type of panel used, however, I have seen Dell monitors which apparently use the same panels as Apple and I have to say, although the Dells are pretty close, the Apple monitors still look sharper, better with evenness of backlight, better with colour accuracy and of course more solidly built. Also I found the Dells to be too bright even at minimal settings and blacks were too grey in a dark room.
Hope this helps...
Tom
Many reviews are very basic and don’t tell you very much at all. You really need to see the monitors and compare.
In regards to response time:
All Apple monitors are fine but be careful with other brands (eg Samsung has 6ms response time but apparently a 30ms lag due to the technical implementation of S-PVA). It seems that people just make wild unjustifiable statements about Apple monitors being too slow for games etc simply from reading specs.
Lots of non-professional reviews around on the net with comments like “don’t get an Apple display unless you want to pay extra for aesthetics”. Sorry, but that’s complete bs. The Apple displays are made with quality panels (S-IPS) and a lot of thought has gone into design. I do audio and I can’t have a display right in front of my face that hums and buzzes. Apple decided to put the power adaptor in a box away from the monitor which eliminates most of this problem (and it really is a problem when your environment is quiet). Apple monitors are almost completely silent. The Samsung 305T+ was totally unacceptable with both buzzing and humming.
A lot of people talking about products out there seem to have very low standards. How anyone could choose a Samsung 305T+ over an Apple ADC is completely beyond my understanding. The difference in quality is night and day. I purchased a 305T+ and got a sinking feeling as soon as I turned it on. This monitor was like having a CRT in the lack of sharpness. My eyes started to hurt after a short time of reading text (I’m not exaggerating). There was a red fringe that could be seen 1 pixel to the left on a white line with black background which went some way to explain the blurriness. Then there was the noise coming from it. The stand was of such poor quality that the monitor was about 1cm higher on one side (ie impossible to get level horizontally).
To their credit they took the monitor back and decided that they could not offer me a product that would meet my standards.
I think the quality of a monitor has a lot to do with the type of panel used, however, I have seen Dell monitors which apparently use the same panels as Apple and I have to say, although the Dells are pretty close, the Apple monitors still look sharper, better with evenness of backlight, better with colour accuracy and of course more solidly built. Also I found the Dells to be too bright even at minimal settings and blacks were too grey in a dark room.
Hope this helps...
Tom