Which flat panel display?

Hey,

The first thing to consider is what you're going to use it for. Do you need coloue accuracy for photo/graphics work? I presume by the fact you're looking to buy cheap the answer is no.

What do you want to use the monitor for? Is it just for basic computing stuff? Will there be any gaming?

 

make sure the refresh rate is below 20ms, 16ms or below is good.

DVI for the connection method, vga for 2nd connecter is good if you want to connect 2 machines to the same Monitor.

Other groovy things are Composite and S -Video connecters for hooking up Games consoles, TV Tuners etc.

Some monitrs allow you to flip the screen, FANTASTIC for playing arcade shoot em ups via MAME on vertical screen mode.

USB 2 is common on a lot, 1 cable connects to your Mac and you can hook up a few (2 or 4 ports are common) devices.

Apple have FireWire on their Monitors and have come down in price a bit, there very good quality but Value wise Dell give you more for your £££$$$

And buy the biggest you can afford.

 

There is a thread wich will show you the difference between DVI and VGA

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=1266978#post1266978

If you don't bother look at the pic

 

Cause you are dealing with decimals. Refreshing every .0016 sec is faster than .0020.

 

lower number means less time b/w each refresh. refresh rate is measured in time b/w refresh, not # of refresh per time. so the less time b/w refresh the better!

 

I've started at least three threads in the last couple months asking for advice on monitors. Have a search and you should find some good advice.

If you want colour accuracy you'll have to pay really, especially with an LCD. Of course, you can get accurate CRT's cheap. Perhaps a cheap LCD and a cheap CRT? What's your budget exactly? What's the most you'll spend?

 

guys !

LCD monitors have a refresh rate of 60hz !!!

16ms or 20ms or whatever, is the *response* time of the display. this means a pixel can go from black to white in 16ms. obviously, faster is better. and 16ms does not cover all colors, but is used as an average.

an example of a slow response time would be the original black&white game boy. any motion on the screen caused blurriness because the pixels could not respond in time.

go with an apple cinema display. i had one of those fancy dell 20" widescreen lcd's next to my 20" apple cinema display. it seriously is night and day between the two. the dell had hotspots, and uneven backlighting. the apple had consistent backlight and the colors even looked better. and yes, i color calibrated both of them.