Displays Widescreen displays ~ £200

I'm thinking of replacing my aging CRT for a nice widescreen. I've heard good things about the Samsung SM215TW which looks ideal. It's not the prettiest screen in the world, though.

Basically, are there any other alternatives in this sort of price range worth looking at?

It's mainly for general use (Internet, office etc) plus Media Centre and watching films. DVI is a requirement, HDCP would also be a good thing (though I don't have Vista/a compatible video card, yet). A USB hub would be nice. Speakers I would never use. Picture in Picture again not important.

The cheaper the better.

 

I just bought this one by Chimei and love it. It's also one of the highest rated monitors (or maybe it IS the highest) of 22" monitors on newegg's site.

 

Chimei? Never heard of them, but it looks about right. Shame Newegg is US though

 

215TW. Best in class without a doubt. Just do it and don't look back

 

I just brought my Acer AL1916WABD, great price and a great product. Has duel DVI-VGA inputs

 

Kikatek have them for £255ish including vat and delivery. Can't grumble at that.

 

Hmmm. At the moment I'm looking at the 226BW. It's cheaper, bigger (though same res) and looks loooads nicer. Though the extra inputs would be nice (on the 215), I'm not sure that i'd use them. Anyone got anything to say on the matter?

http://www.trustedreviews.com/displays/review/2007/03/09/Samsung-SyncMaster-226BW/p1

 

Depends how much you require image quality...

The 215TW is in a class of its own on the image quality front... the 226BW uses a much cheaper panel (hence the price). It's not a bad monitor, but it's not great.

I was making a similar choice and I went for the 215TW. More Computers has it for ~245 inc delivery.

I think there are three of us (on bit/TR) that have the 215TW and I know there are at least another three that are considering buying one after the recent pricedrop from £300+ to £250.

 

Hmmm, I can't get over how much better the 226 looks. I know that's stupid, but if I'm spending £250, it'd wanna look pretty damn good on my desk.

With regards the image quality, what sort of difference are we looking at? Both are apparently 8bit, so the difference isn't going to be huge is it? Bear in mind, that I'm coming from a very old gnr (who?) CRT, which I doubt is up to much in the IQ department. I do use photoshop a lot though, so I guess faithful colour reproduction is more important than response times etc.

 

The 215TW has a better panel so it would be more ideally suited to Photoshop. It's got the additional inputs for component, composite and S-video, which the 226BW doesn't have and it also has height adjustment, pivot, swivel and tilt (I think the 226BW has just tilt, and you can of course swivel it by just moving it on your desk).

Of course, I'm going to defend my purchase (everyone does) but based on what I've seen of both of them, it's a better screen. That's not to say that the 226BW is a bad screen - it's just not as good as the 215TW. If you think that the additional features on the 215 aren't useful to you, the 226 is unlikely to disappoint you and it's a much flashier looking screen too.

Any response time below 12ms should be more than enough for gaming - it's one of the biggest (and most damaging) myths in the monitor industry. Hell, HDTVs have arguably better image quality than most TFTs because of the low response time race that has unfortunately caused a degradation in image quality, not an improvement. I've spent a lot of time playing games on my 215 since buying it and I'm yet to see any signs of ghosting - I don't even know the response time off the top of my head, and I won't care until I see ghosting.

 

My Brother has just upgraded from a 19" Viewsonic to a 215TW, and I'm actuall really envious of him. Its a sick screen.

 

New Samsung monitors being released. I wonder if they're any different, I might have to wait for some reviews. Hurry up, Bit/TR

http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/11/samsung-announces-245bw-and-226cw-widescreen-monitors/

 

I can tell you that the 245BW is definitely a lower-quality panel - I don't know how bad it is, but I believe there are viewing angle issues (if you check newegg, there are some customer reviews on there).

Regardless, I think it will be the start of a pricewar on 24" monitors.

We've been trying to get hold of the 245 for a few weeks, but we've had no luck yet.

 

You could always show them your psyco bunny!

If the 245 ends up being under £400,we should have some nice reduction in 24" prices.

 

That site has it all messed up!

They (correctly) describe it as a 21" screen in the product title, yet (incorrectly) say it's a "24 Inch TFT LCD" on the first line of the product description

 

Sorry to hijack this thread, but I'm in the same boat here and have a quick question about the 215TW if you dont mind.

Does it have an option to run lower resolutions in a Window? For example, 1024x768 in that many pixels instead of being stretched across it? My laptop does, but I'm unsure if this is featured on the monitors themselves?

 

What do people think of the LG L226WTQ? I have seen this available for under £200 and it looks quite good. Any one have any experience of this.

 

Why would you want 4:3 over 16:10 ratios? :| Widescreen > Normal.

 

I was actually wondering the same thing. For example, counter-strike source zips along at 1024 for me, but if I increase the res, my graphics card throws a wobbly (probably because it's OC'd too much with new firmware and I can't remember how (/CBA) to undo it). So I'd probably run CS:S at 1024 on the wide monitor, I assumed it would work fine?

Can anyone confirm?

 

good info thank u guys