Tripping on LCD
Written: Feb 05 '02
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Pros: crisp text, light weight, less power consumption, price
Cons: no digital input
The Bottom Line: Great buy. If you want an affordable LCD this is what you want.
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| madlee's Full Review: Samsung SyncMaster 570V (15 in.) Flat Panel (TFT) ... |
I work with graphics and video and I was disappointed to hear that LCDs aren't for people like me. I didn't want to spend money on a big heavy CRT just because it was good for graphics. I did what they said. I bought a 19 inch shadow mask because it was cheap and thought that maybe in a year LCD technology would be cheaper and better.
Having never seen an LCD Screen except on a laptop, I assumed there was going to be a performance issue. I was wrong.
Like any different type of technology, there are positives and there are negatives. When comparing LCDs to CRTs that is also true.
PCworld recently reviewed this monitor as their best buy for 15 inch LCDs. Again, my interest was peaked by their vote of recommendation.
I had heard that LCDs were not good for video. The problem is that they don't refresh the same way a CRT does. A CRT redraws the entire screen per clock cycle and does it very quickly. An LCD only switches the pixels that change. It is done by setting a charge through the liquid crystal so it lines up letting light through. When they first started doing this, there was a easily discernable lag time. Current technology is way beyond that. The CRT I had bought wasn't cutting it and decided to take a look at LCDs.
I went to Compusa to see first hand. They only had the 17 inch model hooked up and I spent about 30 minutes playing some shooter game. I was blown away. I didn't notice any performance issues whatsoever. They had the 570v hooked up to a dvd player playing a movie. It didn't look like the CRT, but it didn't look bad either. Just different. It seemed sharper, but you could also see the grid of the pixels. I decided to see it for myself.
Samsung is currently promoting this monitor with an 80 dollar rebate. I shopped and shopped. No one had it in stock. Eventually I found a great deal.
Gateway Accessory Store was selling the monitor for 400 bucks. Throw in a 35 dollar coupon, free shipping and the 80 dollar rebate.. 285 bucks delivered.
The monitor is 15 inches from screen corner to screen corner. It has a native resolution of 1024x768 which means that is the number of actual pixels on the monitor. To go higher res or lower res requires special software and blurs the native resolution so that it resembles the lower or higher res. Don't waste your time with that. Basically it's a 1024x768 monitor and that's that.
The color and image quality are very good, but it still suffers from LCD type problems. Viewing angle really is important but since you are usually sedentary while at the computer, it's not really a problem.
The thing that convinced me, was the legibility of text. Text is very crisp and super easy to read. I do some work with video and I was concerned about the supposed lag. A CRT is better for doing video, but I don't know if it's necessary.
The monitor has very easy to understand controls. It also has an auto calibrate feature. The stand is very stable, but the connections are awkward because the video and power jacks are located next to the stand.
The one thing I really like about this monitor is the zero flicker. Because of the TFT technology (thin film transistor)only the pixels that need to be changed are changed. There is no full screen refresh which causes that flicker. LCDs also truly have perfectly flat screens. No CRT has that. There is no distortion on the edges, unlike a CRT.
As a product the 570v really has no detriments. Yeah, a digital input would've been nice, but that's the only thing I wish was different. It is a small monitor for a computer professional, but perfectly fine for the average user. I bought two for the dual head graffics card. More desktop space for cheaper than a 17in LCD! I am completely satisfied. It has a 3 year warranty and supposedly has one of the easiest backlights to change. One of the few purchases with no regrets especially if you can buy it for 285 bucks.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 285.00
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
madlee
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Reviews written: 32
Trusted by: 13 members
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