DailyTech - Viewsonic Announces Three New 5ms LCD Displays

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Hardware Viewsonic Announces Three New 5ms LCD Displays
Tuan Nguyen (Blog) - November 27, 2006 10:04 PM

17 comment(s) - last by DEredita.. on Nov 28 at 11:18 PM

Viewsonic's VX2235vm wide aspect LCD

Fast response times but slightly low resolution

Viewsonic today announced a number of new LCD displays that target the sweet-spot 19-inch to 23-inch market, and all of them at very affordable prices. New to the scene is Viewsonic's VX1935wm, VX2035vm and VX223vm, ranging from 19-inches, 20-inches and 22-inches respectively. The screens are targetting at gaming and video users but Viewsonic says business uesrs can also benefit from all three screen's 5 milliseconds response time. The following are quick specifications for the screens:

VX2235vm
Size: 22-inch
Resolution: 1680x1050
Brightness: 280 nits
Contrast: 700:1

VX2035vm
Size: 20-inch
Resolution: 1680x1050
Brightness: 300 nits
Contrast: 800:1

VX1935vm
Size: 19-inch
Resolution: 1440x900
Brightness: 300 nits
Contrast: 700:1

The odd screen out of the bunch is Viewsonic's 22-inch VX2235vm, which being two inches larger than the VX2035vm, should over more resolution. Other 22-inch and 23-inch screens from other manufacturers offer up to 1920x1200 resolution, which is even available on some notebook computer screens. According to Viewsonic:

All three displays offer more screen real-estate, helping business users increase productivity by managing multiple documents at once and providing gamers with more room to roam their richly detailed in-game surroundings or toggle on-screen menus. The VX2235wm, VX2035wm and VX1935wm also feature a newly designed thin bezel with integrated full-sound stereo speakers and power supply, helping users keep their desktops free of cable clutter.

Fast response times seem to be the primary focus for many of today's leading LCD manufacturers. More and more consumers are purchasing LCDs for movie watching, game playing as well as typical office work. All three displays from Viewsonic are available in gray or black and are priced at $199, $349 and $399 respectively.

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Resolutions

By Runiteshark on 11/27/2006 10:41:34 PM , Rating: 2

Is there some definitive reason why they feel like making low resolution crap? I personally run a 21" CRT @ 2048x1536, and I would love to move to a nice big LCD with good resolution and decent response timings, but that simply doesn't exist. Its not so difficult for them to use a smaller pixel pitch, my 17" laptop has a 1920x1440 screen, why can't I have a beautiful 30" WQUXGA (3840×2400) monitor with say 16ms response times? I know its possible.

I don't see why they like to crap all this low res crap, especially at such a large size (anything less then 1600x1200 or 1920x1200 at 20+ inches looks like crap, unless of course you have difficulty reading) since its not so hard for them to do it.

Oh well, one can dream.

And no don't link me to those monitors that are QUXGA monitors with 50ms response times.

RE: Resolutions

By retrospooty on 11/27/2006 11:23:20 PM , Rating: 2

HAve you seen the Dell or Apple 30" LCD monitors in person? I recommend you do it... there is no CRT in the world that can come close to how great it looks. Its 2560x1600 so at 30" its not as tight as a 20" screen of a CRT but the extra 10 inches buys you alot. No comparison at all.

I have a Dell 24" at 1920x1200 and I saw the 30" the other day and was absolutly amazed by it. It was just incredible, huge and sharp, great color rep as well.

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RE: Resolutions

By BZDTemp on 11/28/2006 5:22:27 AM , Rating: 2

The 30" ones are nice but they offer nowhere near the amount of pixels they should for that size. Also the Apple one is slow responding and I suspect it's the same with the Dell one.

I'm right with the other poster - give me a big really high res screen but until then I'm sticking with my Sony F520 21" CRT and it's 2048*1536.

Some years ago IBM sold a super 22" LCD named the T221 which had a resolution of 3840*2400 and that's what we need. At the time it cost like $10.000+ but they can be found on Ebay for more humane prices today on problem is they need a special Matrox graphics card and they are also slow as in not for moving pictures.

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RE: Resolutions

By jmunjr on 11/28/2006 1:19:18 AM , Rating: 2

You need to hang out with some older people. They simply cannot read text on small screens with high resolutions. I am almost 38 and have trouble now on my 20" Dell widescreen. A 23" widescreen at 1680x1050 would be a blessing for me. Changing fonts doesn't help enough either in XP.

My father who is 78 runs his 19" LCD at 1024x768, possible 800x600 in that interpolated crap because he can't read anything smaller, even wearing his glasses specially made for using the computer.

So, there are A LOT of people who can't read this tiny stuff and need bigger text. Maybe Vista will have a better solution than simply switching to large fonts.

Oh and btw several years ago I searched without success for a 17" LCD that was native at 1024x768 for this very reason.

Now thankfully there are 20" 4:3 LCDs that run at 1440x1050 and of course the 22" and 23" that run 1680x1050..

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RE: Resolutions

By slashbinslashbash on 11/28/2006 2:24:39 AM , Rating: 1

So make lower-resolution displays as well as higher-resolution displays. It's not like we want to deprive old people of being able to read their monitors. It's just that the low-pitch LCD panels are already out there (for laptops) and we (young people who are programmers, graphic designers, students or businessmen with many docs on screen at the same time) are just dying for a 20" with the same resolution as the current 30" displays.

Who cares if old people can't read it? There will still be lower-density displays out there. I can read it, and I'd be the one buying it, and if others need to run at a lesser resolution, they can -- with higher-rez panels it's much easier to find a good downscaling ratio (e.g. view a 2560x1600 panel at 1280x800 -- which doesn't make sense when the display is 30", but it does when it's 20"). Once you get the pixels small enough, you can have the best of both worlds in one reasonably-sized display.

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RE: Resolutions

By TomZ on 11/28/2006 8:09:55 AM , Rating: 2

I agree - I have good vision, and I'd like to see much higher resolution displays for larger desktops.

Also, readability is a function of size and DPI, not actually resolution. What I mean is that in the future, you'll be able to buy a high-resolution, large panel, and run Vista in a high-DPI mode to increase readability. Microsoft has for a while been encouraging developers to design their applications to support higher DPIs properly. Most older applications don't run well with "large fonts" selected.

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RE: Resolutions

By Hydrofirex on 11/28/2006 1:52:25 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
Is there some definitive reason why they feel like making low resolution crap? I personally run a 21" CRT @ 2048x1536

Well, if you're talking about running a top of the line game at that resolution I really hope you have another 1000+ bucks for a dual VGA setup, otherwise you're definitely going to be compromising on the effects. This is the HUGE drawback of LCD s: One resolution.

HfX

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22" LCDs

By bunnyfubbles on 11/27/2006 10:35:19 PM , Rating: 2

All 22" LCDs(or the vast majority) are 1680x1050 as far as I know.

19" LCDs should be more than 1280x1024, as that's the same resolution 17" LCDs were/are.

RE: 22" LCDs

By kkwst2 on 11/27/2006 10:47:30 PM , Rating: 2

Yes, 23" is usually the cutoff where it bumps to 1920x1200.

I'm not really sure what's new here, as there are many lcd's which claim 5ms response. These seem like typical resolutions and response times of recent monitors.

Price points are pretty unremarkable too. Slow news day?

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RE: 22" LCDs

By GaryJohnson on 11/28/2006 2:18:38 AM , Rating: 2

I'm confused as well; how do these models differ from Viewsonic's existing 5ms (or better) models? New bezel?

There are currently 31 Viewsonic LCDs available at NewEgg.com. Do they really need more LCD models?

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RE: 22" LCDs

By otispunkmeyer on 11/28/2006 4:35:30 AM , Rating: 2

check out the video forum at AT

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid...

alot of these new 22 inchers are all using the same chi mei(or whatever they are called) 22inch LCD panels

5ms response, 700:1 contrast, 1680x1050 res

they are 6 bit TN panels, but they use a new Hi-FRC dithering technique to emulate 16.7million colours and apparently its quite hard to tell and is certainly alot better than the old 2x2 dithering used on older 6bit panels.

still 8bit S-IPS panels are the way to go for me.

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Ugly desgin

By Loc13 on 11/28/2006 9:52:18 AM , Rating: 2

Costco had the viewsonic 22in on sale about a month ago for $300 I believe. I checked it out in store, the monitor is UGLY!! The benzel that surrounds the screen is shiny and too plastic looking.

RE: Ugly desgin

By DEredita on 11/28/2006 11:18:07 PM , Rating: 2

I disagree. I think it looks pretty good. Since it's almost all black - my eyes stay looking at the screen. It also looks good on my desk. But enough with how it looks. It's the picture quality that counts, and I find the picture quality to be very good. For the $299 I paid for it, it was worth every penny.

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Need Higher Resolution

By TomZ on 11/27/2006 10:06:31 PM , Rating: 2

I like some of the specs, but I really strongly prefer 1600x1200 or 1920x1200 monitors - I wish these would become more mainstream. It seems like the trend is still toward lower-resolution, wide-format monitors. I'd rather have more pixels overall.

By DEredita on 11/28/2006 1:10:08 AM , Rating: 2

I currently own a ViewSonic 22" LCD, which I recently purchased at Costco for $299 a few weeks ago. I'm very happy with it. I have hooked it up to both a Mac and a PC. The only issue I had with it was the DVI didn't work good with the G4 Mac Mini, had to use the VGA cable for it. Other than that - it's a great monitor for a great price. The highest resolution it will support is 1680x1050.

I've played some of the HD videos from Apple's HD Quicktime video site: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/ and they look fantastic on this monitor.