Which Monitor

[d71146]

I am considering purchasing a larger monitor for the computer my question is this what do members feel is the better type CRT or TFT I have asked around most folk are about 50-50-in their preferences some say a CRT is far better clarity in particular for the good ol Flight Sim.
Do fellow members have a view on this?.

[spannersatcx]

Had a TFT for a couple of years now, won't go back to CRT. TFT far better all round.

[bjkeates]

I think it probably depends what you get. I've got a 19" widescreen TFT monitor (Acer AL1916W) - great for watching DVDs and general working, and it runs software such as Flight Sim 2004 absolutely fine. I think it's great, and of course then there's the obvious advantage of desk space as well. They do cost quite a bit more than their CRT counterparts though - it depends how much you want to spend. For a basic 17" CRT you're looking at £65 or thereabouts; my 19" widescreen TFT was £179 by comparison.

[Saab Dastard]

Hi, there was a thread on this forum a while back here that you might find useful.

SD

[Conan the Librarian]

Catch with FS or any other game, is that of response time. Quick movements on an LCD screen have until recently been somewhat slow, by comparison to CRT. However, these days, that response time, which lead to ghosting, even on DVD movies, has reduced to a very creditable 12 or 8MS, which rather destroys the initial argument.

Thing is, that unless your requirement is very specialised, (read "Graphics") you will never, ever again want a CRT. If you fancy an old but excellent 19 inch Dell CRT then PM me. It is yours. I might even get a car in the garage after shifting that.


Conan

[innuendo]

You might have a look here and do a search on the subject.
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1004
The site is photography oriented but there has been a lot of traffic on monitors. Top grade CRT monitors are becoming hard to find and those that are available are expensive.
There are LCD panels that are down to very low response times aimed at the gaming market and the 16:9 ratio wide screens are the size for watching DVD format.

[Jhieminga]

If you want the most bang for your buck you can't beat a CRT. You can get a great looking screen for incredible prices these days if you don't need an outrageous size.

While I've been staring at a TFT for almost a year now and love it, I do want to point out that there is a catch when you decide to go for the flat screens. While a CRT is happy to switch between resolutions and show them all with a fair sharpness, a TFT has a fixed amount of pixels which gives it a 'hardcoded' resolution. This means that at anything but this setting the screen will interpolate pixels to give you what you're asking for, leaving you with a slightly blurry screen. For most 17" monitors this resolution will be 1280x1024, but for most 19" monitors it is also 1280x1024. This means that as you switch from one to the other you will not have any more room to play with on your desktop, it just looks bigger.

Also if your eyesight isn't perfect, or you are uncomfortable staring at very small print for a long time you might find the standard setting on a 17" TFT too fine for your liking. My advise therefore would be to check thoroughly if the 'standard' setting on the TFT that you're after is one that you would be happy to look at for longer times, especially when viewing Internet pages or Word documents or stuff like that. In the same way your games would also only look their best in this fixed resolution, so check that this is what you want before you buy.

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

TFT is best for me, not least because it is actually moveable without incurring a hernia! I would advise you to avoid the Relisys make, 19" size. I am currently on my third such monitor and although the company instantly replaced the troublesome one by free courier service it has proved somewhat inconvenient.