Needing bigger monitor

BBones

I need to get something like a 21 inch display to edit pictures on. Laptop screen is tooooooo small. Problem is, I need it to be a flat panel due to the room I have to work with. Any recommendations on a good one? Needs to be 21 inches or more so I can get the 1600x1200 resolution.

bkriete

Check out Dell's flat-panel displays...they are very reasonably priced and of good quality. Make sure you stop by fatwallet.com or techbargains.com to get the lowdown on current pricing and coupons. If I hadn't bought the very nice 2005FPW shortly before Christmas, I would probably be purchasing the 2405FPW soon. You should be able to pick up the 2005FPW for around $500 these days. The 2405 will run you more (~$800?) but it is larger (duh) and has an integrated cardreader built into one side.

Anandtech (www.anandtech.com) has done several reviews of Dell's monitors, rating them quite highly. They also have VESA standard mounts, so they are easy to find mounting accessories for.

bkriete

Just checked techbargains...looks like the 2005 is available right now for under $400 with the right coupon codes...you will need to add something cheap to your cart to get the total over the magic $750...here are the coupon codes you need:

C621VV5TS$75M9 (90 off 750)
S0BDZ6HBTFDPSL

You won't find a better deal than this for a while, I don't think.

BBones

My manager bought one of those but we were unable to find the dot pitch on them. I would be worried to edit high detail pictures (eyes, hair, sponsors on bikes) with a bad dot pitch.

bkriete wrote:

Check out Dell's flat-panel displays...they are very reasonably priced and of good quality. Make sure you stop by fatwallet.com or techbargains.com to get the lowdown on current pricing and coupons. If I hadn't bought the very nice 2005FPW shortly before Christmas, I would probably be purchasing the 2405FPW soon. You should be able to pick up the 2005FPW for around $500 these days. The 2405 will run you more (~$800?) but it is larger (duh) and has an integrated cardreader built into one side.

Anandtech (www.anandtech.com) has done several reviews of Dell's monitors, rating them quite highly. They also have VESA standard mounts, so they are easy to find mounting accessories for.

colourbox

In the strict technical sense, dot pitch has no meaning for flat panel monitors. My understanding is that dot pitch is derived from performance attributes specific to CRT technology only.

For LCDs, a useful measure may be to work out the resolution of the monitor by dividing the dimensions of the screen area by its pixel dimensions. If a monitor's native setting is 1600x1200 and its visible area is 16 inches wide, then you'll get 100 dots per inch.

If you are buying a flat panel and are concerned about sharpness for editing, then you also want to buy a monitor that has a DVI (Digital Video Interface) port and connect it with a DVI cable. If you use the analog/VGA port, the same resolution will not be as sharp. Therefore even the resolution number itself isn't an absolute measure of sharpness.

ubergeek

dot pitch
I second this--the dot pitch for a "fixed pixel" display such as LCD, DLP, plasma, etc. is merely a mathematical derivation from the size of the display and the (native) resolution. (Note also that you generally won't want to drive such a display at anything other than its native resolution, or else some sort of artifacts/blurring will necessarily occur.)

Dot pitch is important with CRTs because it's possible for a CRT to support (that is, sync to) a higher resolution than the number of phosphors on its screen actually could resolve. Dot pitch refers to the spacing of the phosphors; it's possible to derive what the maximum dot pitch should be for a given resolution and screen size; the screen's actual dot pitch should not exceed this figure.

Cheers,
Jeremy