X-bit labs

LCD Monitors Buyer's Guide: Fall 2007

Category: Other

by Oleg Artamonov

[ 10/30/2007 | 03:37 PM ]

This article is intended to serve as a guide. Without delving into technicalities and features of each monitor we go through the list of currently available models, pointing out the most interesting offers. Hopefully you will find our advice alongside with the links to corresponding reviews in this Fall 2007 Guide helpful.

Table of contents:

• 17” Monitors
  
• 19” Monitors
  
• 20”-22” Monitors
  
• 23” and 24” Monitors
  
• 24”+ Monitors
  

We have tested lots of LCD monitors, from modest 15-inchers to huge 30-inch models, in the last few years (see Other section for detailed reviews). Unfortunately, too much information may be confusing rather than helpful as you have to read a lot of reviews and keep a lot of things in your memory to compare different products and choose the one that suits you best.

This article was conceived to serve as a guide. Without delving into technicalities and features of each monitor I just browsed through the catalogue of currently available models, pointing out the most interesting offers.

Explaining my preference of one model to some other one would have made the article a full-size review, provoking the above-mentioned problem, so I’ll be trying to keep as concise as possible, throwing out unnecessary details. If you want those details, there is a link to our review after the name of each monitor model (for models that we tested in our labs). Overall, this article is a summary of my experience, perhaps subjective and biased, but it is the experience of a man who has seen and tested a lot of various monitors. The models I’ll mention below are the models that I most often name when asked the question, “what should I buy if…”

Of course, it is impossible to cover all the products selling today. Fortunately, most of them present little interest since many monitors are part of an unexciting mass with similar characteristics (and the problem of choice is reduced to the customer liking or disliking the particular monitor’s exterior design) or stand out among others with an inadequately high price, which makes them only interesting for people who like the particular brand.

I don’t mean that monitors not included into this article are not worthy of your interest. It is just impossible to cover them all, so the lists below should be regarded only as a guide directing you where you should go.

There is a brief summary at the end of each section: a few categories with one or a few models in each that are considered by me worthy of the customer’s attention, if not the best ones in the category. I didn’t include a “monitor for processing text” category because each normal monitor would have fitted into it. The other categories should be regarded in the literal sense. That is, models from the “monitor for games and movies” category are indeed monitors that suit well for games and movies but are likely to be a poor choice for editing photographs. Otherwise they would have been included into the “universal monitor” category.