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Thread: LED Computer Screen

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    Email problem pietpetoors's Avatar
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    LED Computer Screen

    What is the do and dont's of buying a LED screen for my computer?
    What is a good resolution, etc.
    I spend at least 8 hours a day in front of this thing and my eyes are taking strain so I need to get a better screen but do not know what to look for.
    Any help and advice would be appreciated.
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    Gold Member irneb's Avatar
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    What screen do you have now? A CRT? If so even a "normal" LCD would be softer on your eyes. I've seen people get sunburns from sitting in front of CRT's for hours on end. Though I've also seen sunburns happen in front of a laptop LCD (but that's because they were outside using it )

    BTW, does anyone know if there's a "real" LED screen, or are they all simply LED backlit with normal LCD in the front? The "older" LCD technology simply had a florescent light-source behind the LCD glass. Most (at least all that I've seen) LED screens have simply replaced that light source with a bank of LED's. I guess making Red Green & Blue LED's small and "sardined" enough to get a decent resolution would just be too exorbitant at present.

    Anyhow, about the resolution/size that's a bit of a personal preference. It greatly depends on several factors:

    1. What type of work do you do on your PC? Lots of fine graphics or just text - or somewhere in between?
    2. How is your focus at screen distance? Do you need glasses to read. Remember higher resolution would make for smaller text, and setting the "larger" text fonts on windows doesn't always solve this in all cases.
    3. What size monitor are you going for: http://thescreamonline.com/technolog...nitor_res.html
    4. How far away do you sit from your monitor - further is better for your eyes (not to mention your back, usually 500mm to 800mm should be around right)? Similar applies as when choosing a TV: http://myhometheater.homestead.com/v...alculator.html

    My office LCD is a 19" at 1680x1050, my laptop 17" @ 1440x900, and my personal LED/LCD 23" @ 1920x1080. The laptop is by necessity quite close to me, but the other 2 screens are pushed as far back on the table as they can go - this then asks for a larger screen size. Fortunately my eyes are still good so I don't have to fiddle with larger text fonts.

    Mainly I work on extremely fine graphics - CAD drawings, therefore I need as much resolution as possible. Some people in my line tend to go for 2 or more screens attached to the same PC so they can move the toolbars and such to the 2nd - maximizing the drawing area. But that's probably a "niche" idea, very seldom needed by the "average" user.

    Another thing you may want to look out for is the viewing angle. This is also a preference. With a TV you want an angle as large as possible (closest to 180 degrees) so you can view the screen obliquely just as well as you would perpendicularly. With PC monitors you may want some privacy, so you don't want people seeing what you're doing all the time - in such case you're looking for as small as possible view angle. Where you fit into this is up to you.

    Further the usual applies about good track record of company, service, etc.
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    Email problem pietpetoors's Avatar
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    Thanx a million, that is the type of info I need. Now I also understand the LED screen better

    I do a mixture of building web sites , normal communication and graphics. Graphics only about 20% of the time. I must say if I hgave to fiddle with the coding of a web site I concentrate a lot on the screen. I dont have the worries of privacy as I work from home, all alone in my office and I sit about 500-700mm from the screen. Currently I work on my laptop screen only, 17".

    I did have one of the first 17" LCD screens but that was even worse than the laptop. I guess its resolution must not have been good or something. It always feel as if it is a bit out of focus.

    I am considering going for at least 21" maybe 23" but perhaps 23" is a bit of an overkill.

    I am starting to think that the hours I spend in front of the square block is too much. That is the thing of making a living on the Internet, your work and pleasure are at the same place. So during the day I do my work and in the evening I chat on the forums resulting in 8 to 12 hours per day in front of the screen.

    Besides the size, what do one have to look for with the resolution, what is good, what is bad. I guess LCD dont have refresh rates anymore, do they have some kind of flicker or something one also have to keep in mind?
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    Gold Member irneb's Avatar
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    You're welcome!

    The one I've got at home is: http://www.pricecheck.co.za/offers/1...7+LCD+Monitor/
    While at the office - that one's no longer for sale.

    I forgot another thing: Glossy / Non-glossy. One thing I dislike about my office monitor is it's got a glossy finish. Thus I always need to close blinds behind me. With the matt finish on my personal one, this is no problem at all.

    Edit: LCD/LED "refresh" rates are usually so short as to be of much less importance than those on CRT. Usually 60Hz works best on LCD, but very often there's only the one setting anyway - you'd probably pay through your neck for anything over that. More to the point is the response time of each pixel and the fade time as well. This is more important when playing games as a long response may cause some artefacts at fast moving scenes. As will long fade times cause a "ghosting" effect - especially with mostly dark scenes.
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    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by irneb View Post
    I forgot another thing: Glossy / Non-glossy. One thing I dislike about my office monitor is it's got a glossy finish. Thus I always need to close blinds behind me. With the matt finish on my personal one, this is no problem at all.
    I've found glare to be a major contributor to "monitor fatigue". In fact I'd say placement and having the right sort of lighting are probably the biggest factors.

    For the screens I do a lot of work on, I try to make the monitor "match" the background.

    Quote Originally Posted by pietpetoors View Post
    I guess its resolution must not have been good or something. It always feel as if it is a bit out of focus.
    The really matt finished screens will also do that to you.

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    Diamond Member AndyD's Avatar
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    I used to use a 24 inch monitor and used the one pc for everything. The large monitor was because I do quite a lot of drawing but I found the larger screen gave me more eyestrain for general use. I've now split the CAD onto another machine and kept the 24" on my CAD pc but I've gone back to a 17" which has 4x3 AR for my general pc.
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    Gold Member irneb's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by pietpetoors View Post
    I did have one of the first 17" LCD screens but that was even worse than the laptop. I guess its resolution must not have been good or something. It always feel as if it is a bit out of focus.
    It may also be that your settings weren't specific to the LCD's native resolution. If you change the windows resolution to something other than what the LCD truly displays you'll always see a blurring as some pixels will get used twice to account for a line which falls in between them.

    Quote Originally Posted by AndyD View Post
    I used to use a 24 inch monitor and used the one pc for everything. The large monitor was because I do quite a lot of drawing but I found the larger screen gave me more eyestrain for general use. I've now split the CAD onto another machine and kept the 24" on my CAD pc but I've gone back to a 17" which has 4x3 AR for my general pc.
    Very good point! It's what I was trying to drive at about the type of work you do. You may want a lower resolution & smaller screen for doing emails / web-browsing/ word docs, etc. Especially also as you'd find moving the mouse about to find a button at the top-right and then back to the bottom left of the page not only takes extra time - you also move your eyes / head about all the time.

    As for going 21/23" ... I don't really believe the difference between those 2 is that great. Especially not if you view it in light of the price difference.

    The best bet I can think of would be for you to take a gander to your closest Infamous Corruptions (not that you need to buy it from them, just that they'd usually have a large selection on display) and ask them if you could test some of their screens (various sizes, say 17, 19 & 23) with different resolutions as well. That way you'll get more of a feel as to what works best for you. Then test for stuff like glossy/matt, note though good matt screens are usually a lot more expensive than their equivalent glossy - Dave's post shows why.
    Gold is the money of kings; silver is the money of gentlemen; barter is the money of peasants; but debt is the money of slaves. - Norm Franz
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    Email problem pietpetoors's Avatar
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    Thanx, your advice helped a lot.
    I will most definitely go for a matt finish and as you said, the difference between 21 and 23 is not that much. Another new comment I have to look at is what you said about choosing the correct resolution for the screen, I think with my previous screen that might have been one of the problems, I did not even know there was something like that.

    I think after sliced toast and the wheel, forums must be one of the greatest inventions ever.
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    Gold Member twinscythe12332's Avatar
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    something else to consider is brightness. If the monitor is too dim or overly bright, you're going to suffer. LED has made quite a difference to what angles you can view your screen (taking further what high end LCD monitors do now), so the picture dimming that normally becomes so evident on a laptop isn't as noticeable.

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