I have been receiving emails asking me about LCD monitor criteria, and have
seen questions posted from time to time by people shopping for one. I
thought I would post this.
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Some Notes When Shopping For An LCD Monitor
Check for bad pixels. Check for lit pixels on a black screen, then grey
screen (if possible), and on a white screen. Look carefully from edge to
edge. All the manufactures have a bad pixel policy, where they may define
that the monitor is good if there are less than 5 to 7 bad pixels in any one
quadrant of the screen area. Some may be dark, lit, or partial lit,
depending on their defect.
Check on a black screen for the evenness of the back light. There will be
variations from one monitor to the next, even in the same make.
Check for the viewing angle, and evenness of the picture brightness. It is
normal to have some fall-off of evenness. More than about 10% error may be
considered unacceptable by most manufactures.
Check for the sharpness of the letters. LCD screens in their native mode
should be razor sharp on the fonts, and edges. Use the auto-set-up to make
sure that the monitor is set up to the display card. Generally in the
non-native resolution, LCD or TFT screens do not perform well.
Make sure that the monitor has at least a 3 year warranty with it. This
should include the backlight. Most are rated at 20,000 hours. This means
that at 20,000 hours, the back light may be at 50% of its brightness from
new. Most TFT monitors are rated with an MTBF of 20,000 hours. CRT
monitors are rated to about 30,000 to 40,000 hours depending on the make and
model. MTBF = Mean Time Between Failure.
Purchase a TFT screen on the basis of a lifespan of about 3 to 5 years
maximum when used at home.
NEVER touch the screen or rub the screen with your fingers. Always use a
moistened soft tissue to clean, and be gentle. The transparent plastic
optical surface can scratch very easily. The LCD matrix can be very easily
damaged by pressing on the screen.
Don't expect to use this type of monitor for doing serious picture or photo
work. They are not accurate for this unless a lot of money is put in to
them, and even then, they are not as good as a CRT monitor for this type of
work. A medium priced CRT monitor would be better for photo work.
The plus side is there is very little power consumption, little heat, no
radiation, no UV rays, and no RF interference, as like from a CRT monitor.
The result is better health for the user, less eye-sore, and more production
because of less tiredness. Many companies found that with these monitors,
there was a large increase of productivity from the employees.
The typical TFT monitor will draw about 40 to 50 Watts. The typical 17 to
19 inch CRT monitor will pull about 150 to 170 Watts. This makes a big
difference especially when these are on the computer with a UPS, and you
want to finish up during a power failure. As for power cost savings, the
TFT monitor uses about 1/3 of the power of a CRT monitor, therefore costs
about 1/3 to run. Depending on your electricity costs, some people have
claimed that the they recovered some of the cost difference just in the
power savings over the life span of the TFT monitor. Over a 5 year period
of heavy use, I can see this to be viable to some degree.
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Greetings,
Jerry Greenberg GLG Technologies GLG
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