Computer Monitors

For too many computer purchasers, the monitor is an afterthought, and that’s a shame. After all, you’ll be spending hours staring at your computer’s screen.

Monitors are available in sizes ranging from 15 inches all the way up to 21 inches or larger. Prices have dropped considerably in recent years, making 17-inch and even 19-inch displays affordable. A new CRT design, called natural flat, perfect flat, or some similar name, takes most of the curve out of the screen, making the display more accurate than ever.

Flat-panel LCD screens are still more expensive than traditional monitors but are good options when desk space is a limited. Active-matrix LCD panels provide a bright and crisp image. They also provide a true viewable area that’s often larger than many 15-inch or 17-inch monitors with traditional CRTs − in a form that’s just a few inches thick. LCD panels are also much more energy-efficient than CRT-based computer monitors and produce almost no heat. On the downside, a 15-inch LCD display can cost two times the price of the equivalent CRT monitor.

The first thing to consider is whether you want a traditional monitor or a flat-panel LCD screen. Your eyes will appreciate the biggest monitor you can afford, but be sure to check how much space you have available on your computer desk. Very large monitors can be very deep and therefore difficult to fit into some setups. They can also be heavy enough to warp an inexpensive desk or table.

Important specifications are dot or aperture grille pitch and resolution. Aperture grille CRTs are more expensive than those that use standard shadow mask technology but provide a crisper and sharper image.

Resolution is not as important as it might seem. Few users other than those in the graphic arts use a resolution that exceeds 1,280 x 1,024, even on large 19-inch monitors. Don’t, however, buy any display with an optimum resolution of less than 1,024 x 768, even if you currently use a lower resolution. Also keep in mind that your video card will play a large part in how good images look at high resolutions.

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Features

Resolution and Refresh Rate 

The resolution is the number of pixels in the horizontal and vertical directions. The higher the resolution, the more information you can see on the screen at once. Refresh rate refers to the number of times a monitor redraws the screen each second. Higher refresh rates mean less flicker on the screen and less strain on the eye. Refresh rate is irrelevant on LCDs, which are usually optimized for a fixed resolution.

Almost all CRTs sold today can display a range of resolutions, but there is a limit to the number of pixels you can see clearly. Any monitor worth its tube will support 75Hz or higher at a given resolution. Most graphics cards are more than ready to meet these same rates, although you should check first if you're planning on running particularly high resolutions.

Though 1,024 x 768 is the optimum resolution for most mainstream work, it's not usable on smaller displays. Also, if you buy a larger display, we recommend a slightly higher refresh rate of 85Hz, something that any new card and monitor should support up to at least 1,280 x 1,024.

Monitor Depth 

If your desk isn't as spacious as you'd like, you may want to consider a short-depth monitor (sometimes referred to as a short-neck unit). These monitors are based on CRT tubes, which are shallower than the typical tube for that size. For instance, a typical
17-inch monitor is about 17 inches deep, but a short-depth version would be less than
16 inches deep. Some manufacturers go an extra step to shrink a monitor's footprint, such as indenting the cable connections. If your work area is really tight, you may have to spend a few hundred dollars more for a flat-panel display, which has the smallest footprint of any monitor technology.

Dot Pitch  

Dot pitch, the distance between physical phosphors, only applies to CRT displays. In general, the smaller the pitch, the sharper the image--a key concern for graphics professionals. To support the high resolutions you need to view thin lines or greeked text, look for a horizontal dot pitch of 0.25mm or less. Keep in mind that there are different ways to measure pitch, and they aren't exactly comparable. Aperture-grille tubes (Trinitron, DiamondTron) usually label dot pitch by the horizontal measurement, but many dot-mask tubes (most other types) still measure by the diagonal. Multiply 0.866 by the diagonal dot pitch for the horizontal measurement when comparing. Thus, a 0.28mm dot pitch is 0.24mm horizontally and potentially slightly better than a 0.25mm Trinitron.

Controls  

Mainstream Users

Most displays now use digital controls and onscreen menus, but there is still a lot of variation in their quality and ease of use. Virtually all CRTs sold today have the basic control set of contrast, brightness, image size, and image location. Most will also include basic geometry controls (pincushion, trapezoid, and parallelogram), and often colour temperature (how warm or cool the colours appear overall, based on a white screen) and convergence (alignment of the red, green, and blue electron guns for crisp lines) as well. These will be sufficient for most office and home workers.

Graphics Professionals

People who work with graphics, publishing, and other areas where color is important will want separate RGB color adjustments and perhaps gamma, as well as advanced geometry controls, such as corner pincushion (to adjust the bowing of straight vertical lines in the screen corners). Hardware-based color calibration and the ability to adjust convergence separately for different areas of the screen come with only a few very high-end monitors.

Extras: USB ports  

A USB hub in the monitor is a convenience. It's usually easier to get to the back of your display than to the back of your system when you want to add peripherals, especially if the system is under your desk. Generally, these hubs don't add a lot to the cost of the display. Other options you might want to consider are dual inputs to connect two computers to the same monitor, built-in speakers, and microphone and headphone jacks.

For LCDs, look for the ability to switch between portrait and landscape modes. Though speakers seem like an obvious choice, the sound quality of the built-ins doesn't match that of a separate satellite-and-subwoofer system. One nice extra on LCDs is that you don't need to worry about monitor emissions causing interference with the sound.

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Terminology

Aperture grille 

A tube construction method that uses a grille of very fine wires in front of the phosphor face plate instead of a conventional shadow mask. Because the grille has less thermal mass, it doesn’t heat up as much and provides greater protection against electron-beam overspill. This results in a shaper and brighter image.

Convergence

How well the three-color electron beams (red, blue, and green) are adjusted. If a display is mis-converged, images will have a colour halo around them and will eventually cause eyestrain.

Dot (or aperture grille) pitch

The distance between adjacent dots (or stripes on an aperture grille tube) of the same colour phosphor. The smaller this pitch, the sharper the image.

Geometry

The relationship of the displayed image to the screen boundaries. Poor screen geometry results in pin cushioning, barrelling, hooking, and other distortions. Quality monitors have controls that let you correct many of these conditions.

Natural Flat

A new tube construction method that greatly reduces the amount of curvature on the face of the CRT. This, in turn, reduces distortion and reflected glare.

OSD 

On-Screen Display. Used by most vendors, this lets you adjust various parameters of the display using an on-screen menu.

Refresh rate

How frequently the video card rewrites the screen. The closer to the AC power frequency of 60Hz the refresh rate is, the more likely the screen is to show flicker.

Resolution

How many horizontal dots and vertical lines the display can image. The resolution is given in horizontal dots by vertical lines (H x V). Your monitor should have a resolution that’s appropriate for the kind of tasks you perform. For Web surfing, this will probably be 800 x 600 or 1,024 x 768. Even on large CRTs, many applications such as word processing programs are more difficult to use when the resolution exceeds 1,280 x 1,024.

Shadow mask

The most common type of CRT tube technology. This uses a metal mask with closely spaced holes placed in front of the phosphors on the faceplate. This cuts down on the electron beams spilling over onto the wrong phosphor dots.