CRT's, LCD's, and LED's~ What's best?

[Simple554]

I have a 10 year old iMac with a CRT, obviously, and it's been dimming at an increasingly noticable rate the last six months. I'm considering buying a new Mac, but the LCD display concerns me. I've always been of the opinion CRT's are the de-facto standard for video, and last longer than anything out there.

What are your experiences/feelings about the LCD displays, and would waiting for an LED display iMac be worthwhile?

I've even thought about buying a MacMini, and connecting it with a good CRT, if I could even find one, nowadays.

 

[CubeHacker]

I personally prefer CRTs to LCDs, even to this day. Though if I would have to buy a new monitor, I wouldn't recommend anyone buy a CRT - there are no good ones being made any longer. And a good IPS LCD display comes pretty close in image quality to a CRT with the exception of maybe viewing angles.

LCD and LED are the same exact thing, except when you say 'LED', you are referring to an LCD display with LED backlighting instead of the older cathode lighting. The displays will look pretty much the same. What you might be thinking of is the next generation of displays - OLED, which is very different from LCD, and will take several years before it becomes mature and cheap enough to use on a high resolution display.

 

[Shake 'n' Bake]

LED-backlight iMac will probably be here with the next revision.

AFAIK, only the 24'' models have IPS panels, so you'll want that. Look at the 24'' and 20'' iMac back to back in the store; there's a huge difference.

CRTs are much better at blacks than anything else, but they're huge, consume a lot of power, and are hard to find.

I recommend the Dell 2209WA or 2408WFP. Apple's display is too expensive, especially when compared to either Dell.

 

[Hellhammer]

LED-backlight iMac will probably be here with the next revision.

Maybe, maybe not. I think it won't be there until late 2010. Why? Because LED panels are still expensive so if (and when) iMacs are getting a price cut, LED would kill that. IMO Apple will add LED when they redesign iMac which will be within ~1 year. Just my opinions...

 

[alphaod]

CRTs are the best of course; they can scale to any resolution and definitely won't have dead pixels. They off rich blacks and bright whites. It's also fun to degauss them Only drawback is their size and power consumption.

As with LCDs, LED is a backlighting technique for the LCDs, so what you should be comparing LED backlighting to is CCFL. That said, LED is brighter, is instead on, uses less power, and over time it does not dim (it just goes off one day). That said, CCFL is still an excellent technology for displays, but it contains chemicals like mercury which are harmful to the environment.

 

[stainlessliquid]

CRT's are really overrated. I went from an expensive aperture grille Viewsonic CRT to an S-IPS LCD and the only redeeming quality of the CRT was the response time. All but the best CRT's create an uneven image with various distortion issues, a good LCD is perfect from edge to edge. Youd need a really expensive CRT to beat out a a decent S-IPS LCD, but there are also really expensive LCD's from companies like Eizo to rank as well.