LCD monitor recommendations for my home PC

Question

I'm planning to buy a new LCD monitor for my home PC and I'm a bit lost in all those specs. Can you please recommend me what I should be paying attention to when choosing it?

Here is how it's going to be used:

• Mostly coding and reading (websites and books). I'd say about 70% of the time.
• Gaming. About 25% of the time.
• Veeeery rarely, watching some films. 5% at most.

And here are some of the specs I'd like to hear your advice about:

• Pixel pitch: Less is better, I suppose? What is the optimal value? Will the picture look 'grainy' with bigger pitch, or something like that?
• Brightness: Brighter is better? Or will it burn out holes in my brain at some point? :) What is the optimal value?
• Viewing angle: Doesn't matter, since I'm the only one looking at it and I usually sit right in front of it. Or does it?

By 'optimal value' I understand some value that gives best results/quality without costing obscene amount of money. I know it is very subjective, but I need some approximate value range to pick from.

If you have any suggestions/recommendations about other specs, I'll be glad to hear them too.

ED: Update

So far so good. Here's what I have gathered from the answers, comments and a bit on my own:

• DVI is preferable. Analog signal processing has improved greatly in the past few years, so the difference is not that noticeable, but still - DVI doesn't have inherent distortion problems like analog. (Wiki)
• Response time greater than ~10ms is bad. But you should take that value with a grain of salt, as there is no unified measurement standard and some manufacturers prefer to measure it 'creatively' instead of improving it. (Resource)
• Contrast ratio is important for reading. Somewhere around 40,000:1 or higher is good. But there is the same problem as with response time - manufacturers choose different 'methods' to measure it. Backlighting may improve contrast ratio greatly. (Resource)
• Display ratio doesn't mater that much if you can rotate your screen. That will make it really multipurpose. And the bigger display size is, the better (as long as your video card and wallet can handle it).
• I'll consider buying separate mount (like these, for example). It won't limit me to the choice of rotating monitors only, will solve the height adjustability problem and some of my problems with free space. The only drawback - good ones are not cheap.

Special thanks to Col, salmonmoose and Turismo for their great advice.

Any other ideas or opinions will be appreciated and interesting ones - at least upvoted.

Answer 1

If you're main use is going to be reading from the screen, I'd look for something with a high contrast ration. I'd definitely recommend DVI since it eliminates the shimmer you quite often get when using analogue connections. As far as the gaming side of things goes it very much depends on your graphics card since there's no point buying an ultra hi res screen if your graphics card can't cope with it.

I've used a variety of monitors at home and at work and I can't say I've noticed a lot of difference for screens with different response times besides which you need to be very careful with the numbers quoted by the manufacturer since there is no standard way of measuring it.

As far as pivoting goes I've had the option before but found I used it very little maybe 4 or 5 times in a period of 3 or 4 years. It just never seems worth the effort for the benefit. You'll have difficulty finding any new monitor that isn't widescreen of one sort or another either 16:9 or 16:10.

Generally unless you buy something cheap and nasty you should be fine.

One last thing, depending on your desk setup you might need to make sure your screen is height adjustable. Believe it or not this can make as much of a difference as any of the other factors since spending hours staring at a screen at the wrong height is a recipe for neck problems and headaches.

Answer 2

• If you like to pivot a screen then you need a SIPS or SPVA panel. TN will look horrible when turned vertical (that's why pivot feet are very rare on TN panels). You can recognize S-IPS/SPVA by checking the viewing angles. They are reported as 176/176 178/178. Not 1 degree less!
• Contrast ratio is complete useless information unless it is static contrast. Rougly you can say: TN panels have 1:800-1:1000 contrast, S-IPS around 1:800, H-IPS around 1:1000, S-PVA around 1:1200-1:1400, laptop TN screens around 1:300-1:500. Anything higher is marketing crap!
• VGA does not distort, the only problem with VGA is that the colour can be off or the gamma curve can be wrong. With DVI most screens can be set to sRGB or adobeRGB, and if it is a higher quality SIPS or SPVA screen, the calibration to sRGB/adobeRGB is mostly pretty accurate for general use.

Recommendations are:

• 20 inch 1600x1200 with awesome pivot: HP LP2065, fast enough for games
• 24 inch king of the inputs with awesome pivot and nice multimedia hookup (PS3, component DVD player and much more)/viewing abgles/wide gamut: HP LP2475W, not so fast for gaming, but its better than the SPVA Dell's
• Best 26 inch gaming screen: LG W2600HP, looks great vertical too, but no pivot feet, have to mount it vertical with vesa addon
• Great Dell displays: Dell ultrasharps 2209, 2408, 2709, 2410U, all pivot well too, but the input lag for games is tacky, except with the 2410u which is pretty fast as that one is not SPVA but H-IPS. The HP LP2475W, The LG W2600HP, The Dell 2408, 2410u and the 2709 are all capable of 1:1 full HD playback with excellent viewing angles to deliver your audience a great picture as well.

Answer 3

I have a 20" 4:3 Viewsonic for Coding, it rotates, a portrait ratio is perfect for websites and code.

For games I use a 27" Widescreen Dell - it's brighter, and well, big.

Response time is a bit of a black art - not all measurements are equal.

DVI is an absolute must.

I imagine the Dell would be good for movies, but my TV is just a few feet away, and bigger still; ;)