Dell 1907fp mini-review
Well, with a 19" LCD monitor for $220 after all the shenanigans, coming with a three year warranty, it was hard not to jump on the deal, so I bit.
My reticence with getting an LCD was twofold -- first, the ghosting, second, the colors. Both of them play into gaming, the latter plays into everything else. The idea here is that if you wiggle the mouse around, you'll see "streaks" where the LCD monitor hasn't quite caught up with the action that you've done. It isn't a problem with CRT's as they beam electrons at you, but with LCD's, there's actually little switches that are letting light through or not letting light through. the color thing is something else entirely, and the first generations of LCDs had awful color and were "fast", or had decent color and were "slow." I put these in quotes, because to a CRT, which if you have a good Sony or NEC (like moi) everything is instantaneous and the color reproduction is superb.
The third issue here is the "dead pixel" issue. I couldn't imagine spending tons on a monitor only to have it broken and no one would take it back, because it wasn't broken enough.
The difficulty with the CRT, naturally, is that as you get a larger and larger screen, the monitor itself gets excessively large. My 19" CRT must have weighed 50 or 60 pounds and was enormous. Simply enormous. Great color, but man, just huge. As LCD's get bigger, the footprint doesn't necessarily get bigger.
Let's go to the Dell now. It came in a lovely box, packed nicely, with the normal 15 pin analog connection attached. It also came with the DVI, so that immediately went in. It also comes with a little USB hub, and my goodness, what a fabulous idea! Now you don't have to bend down and get to the back of your computer, you can just plug it into the side or your monitor! What "it" is can be anything, but most usually a USB pen drive. Then, you have to factor in that this thing has a height and rotation adjustment -- i.e., you can move the screen up and down, to a point, and physically rotate the thing 90 degrees if you're reading text (you have to manually switch this with the aid of your video card's taskbar icon, but that's quick). What a brilliant idea! It's been around forever, but, what a brilliant idea!
Color isn't a CRT. But it ain't bad. Text is crisper, naturally, since it's not being beamed at the screen but it actually a physical pixel on the screen. When it's not in native resolution, yeah, it's a little griany, but that only affects games that need serious horsepower and my computer won't be able to handle nicely at the native 1280x1024. Back to the color -- as with all LCD's, there is no true "black", since the light is ALWAYS shining from the back of the monitor, and it's just being attempted to be prevented from sort of squeaking through. It's the difference between it being a cloud-covered night outside (a CRT) and pulling down the shades on a sunny day (LCD). It's not awful, but it's noticeable to my sensitive eyes. The color reproduction isn't bad, again, I have no scientific analysis, but the color is certainly vibrant, and while not quite a CRT, you'd be hard pressed to really find flaws with it. I wouldn't use it were I a professional photographer, but for the little editing I do, it's good enough.
Ghosting not so much an issue, again, I have sensitive eyes, but you really have to be working at it (i.e., shaking the mouse violently while playing a game) to notice anything significant while gaming. There is a little streaking while going left to right extremely quickly, but really, it's not quite so bad as I had feared. I can play just as fine on this as I did on the CRT (which ain't too good! ha!), with no fear about ghosting or weird artifacts. This was a concern for me, but it's not anymore. It really does handle this stuff well.
All in all, given the extreme deal, I would give this a 5/5. I paid just a bit less for a 17" NEC Diamondtron CRT a few years back, and given the difference in size, the convenience of the rotation and the USB, the crispness of text, you just can't beat that deal. Recommended -- I am very happy with this purchase.
My reticence with getting an LCD was twofold -- first, the ghosting, second, the colors. Both of them play into gaming, the latter plays into everything else. The idea here is that if you wiggle the mouse around, you'll see "streaks" where the LCD monitor hasn't quite caught up with the action that you've done. It isn't a problem with CRT's as they beam electrons at you, but with LCD's, there's actually little switches that are letting light through or not letting light through. the color thing is something else entirely, and the first generations of LCDs had awful color and were "fast", or had decent color and were "slow." I put these in quotes, because to a CRT, which if you have a good Sony or NEC (like moi) everything is instantaneous and the color reproduction is superb.
The third issue here is the "dead pixel" issue. I couldn't imagine spending tons on a monitor only to have it broken and no one would take it back, because it wasn't broken enough.
The difficulty with the CRT, naturally, is that as you get a larger and larger screen, the monitor itself gets excessively large. My 19" CRT must have weighed 50 or 60 pounds and was enormous. Simply enormous. Great color, but man, just huge. As LCD's get bigger, the footprint doesn't necessarily get bigger.
Let's go to the Dell now. It came in a lovely box, packed nicely, with the normal 15 pin analog connection attached. It also came with the DVI, so that immediately went in. It also comes with a little USB hub, and my goodness, what a fabulous idea! Now you don't have to bend down and get to the back of your computer, you can just plug it into the side or your monitor! What "it" is can be anything, but most usually a USB pen drive. Then, you have to factor in that this thing has a height and rotation adjustment -- i.e., you can move the screen up and down, to a point, and physically rotate the thing 90 degrees if you're reading text (you have to manually switch this with the aid of your video card's taskbar icon, but that's quick). What a brilliant idea! It's been around forever, but, what a brilliant idea!
Color isn't a CRT. But it ain't bad. Text is crisper, naturally, since it's not being beamed at the screen but it actually a physical pixel on the screen. When it's not in native resolution, yeah, it's a little griany, but that only affects games that need serious horsepower and my computer won't be able to handle nicely at the native 1280x1024. Back to the color -- as with all LCD's, there is no true "black", since the light is ALWAYS shining from the back of the monitor, and it's just being attempted to be prevented from sort of squeaking through. It's the difference between it being a cloud-covered night outside (a CRT) and pulling down the shades on a sunny day (LCD). It's not awful, but it's noticeable to my sensitive eyes. The color reproduction isn't bad, again, I have no scientific analysis, but the color is certainly vibrant, and while not quite a CRT, you'd be hard pressed to really find flaws with it. I wouldn't use it were I a professional photographer, but for the little editing I do, it's good enough.
Ghosting not so much an issue, again, I have sensitive eyes, but you really have to be working at it (i.e., shaking the mouse violently while playing a game) to notice anything significant while gaming. There is a little streaking while going left to right extremely quickly, but really, it's not quite so bad as I had feared. I can play just as fine on this as I did on the CRT (which ain't too good! ha!), with no fear about ghosting or weird artifacts. This was a concern for me, but it's not anymore. It really does handle this stuff well.
All in all, given the extreme deal, I would give this a 5/5. I paid just a bit less for a 17" NEC Diamondtron CRT a few years back, and given the difference in size, the convenience of the rotation and the USB, the crispness of text, you just can't beat that deal. Recommended -- I am very happy with this purchase.
posted by Aeschulus | 10:34 AM
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