LCD Flat Screens Reviews

Help you Find, Compare, and buy LCD Flat Screens that matches your need with Review and Special Deal.

Liquid crystal display television or LCD TV uses LCD TFT technology, more often than not, for visual output as opposed to the conventional cathode ray (of the original TV) or plasma technology.

LCD television initially faced problems entering the market, particularly when it came to viewing fast paced action. Also, the viewing angle was rather limited. However, with the advancement in technology, these problems have more or less been wiped out. Today LCD television commands a burgeoning market, especially in the Asian region.

For quite a long time, the general consensus was that the technology used for LCD television was appropriate for small televisions only, and would invariably fall short of plasma technology when it came to bigger televisions. However giant corporations like Samsung, Sharp Corporation and LG Philips have challenged this notion by coming up with LCD televisions with distinctly large panels. 40″ to 45″ televisions were widely in the market a year ago. Sharp Corporation has successfully produced a 65″ panel LCD television. In 2004, Samsung and Sony joined hands to build a factory, with the intention of manufacturing 60,000 panels every month. In 2005, Samsung proclaimed the successful completion of an 82″ HDTV TFT panel. It is believed that the LCD market is potentially worth billions of dollars, and television is seen as the main market.

TVs based on S-PVA LCD panels produce good viewing angles. They also give sufficient ?contrast ratio? for viewing scenes that are bright, as well as dark scenes in bright conditions. Also ?dynamic contrast? technology improves contrast when one is viewing dark scenes in dark conditions. Also, there are LCD televisions that throw light on the background to help make dark scenes look darker.

Today, LCD televisions are offering greater viewing angles and better quality images. LCD televisions can also be deemed direct competition to the fashionable plasma televisions. However, LCDs are distinctly lighter and comparatively more durable.

LCD technology is “non-emissive”, in that it does not give off radiation like conventional televisions. Furthermore, their operation requires less power than plasma or CRT technology.

If you’ve been in the market for a new computer monitor fairly recently, you might have noticed just how many more LCD monitors you see in the stores now.

It’s obvious that the main benefit that’s being pushed about computer LCD monitors is that they’re flat, and you can put them almost anywhere, but you might be curious about just what you’re giving up by going LCD. To tell you the truth, an LCD monitor can be a worthwhile investment to your home computer system if you’re not hung up on the budget models, and if you can truly benefit from the added space.

Alright, first thing’s first. LCD monitors will never be as good as CRT’s (cathode ray tube monitors, the big box made like a TV), although when you get far up in the price range with LCD’s, you may have a hard time telling the difference. But 90% of the time, the graphics and animation that can be produced by a tube are far and away better than anything you’ll see from an LCD. You really notice this with moving pictures. This is because LCD’s are a chemical reaction technology. Pictures run and bleed across the screen because the reaction is only going to be so fast, and there’s no real way to speed it up.

You might notice, however, that more expensive models are smoother than budget models. That’s because the budget models do not reflect the full capability of the LCD reaction, even though it is limited.

Just for a little background, LCD monitors started making their way into the stores in the mid 90’s. Usually, they were black and white, and built-into part of those old pre-laptop portable computers.

The ones that then came out as standalones were never really able to grab a big part of the mass market, mainly because they weren’t any good for much other than word processing. The picture would bleed horribly across the screen no matter what you were doing. Forget moving graphics of any kind. Sure, they were flat, but this wasn’t really seen as a benefit at the time because people had been used to heavy, bulky monitors taking up the space.

Oh, not to mention the price. If you think some of the more high-end LCD monitors now are expensive, try back then. With all these factors put together, I’m a little surprised they caught on at all.

Of course, just walk into any major home electronics retailer and you’ll see just how far LCD monitors have come. Cutting edge companies like Sony continue to churn out more and more precise video reproduction from LCD. Today with the better LCD’s, you can get still images as sharp as CRT’s, and graphics animation nearly as smooth.

The 20″ Sony that I have is not made for you to sit with you face right in front of the screen. Like most of the larger ones, it’s meant to be viewed from a few feet back. And when you do that, you seriously cannot tell the difference between that and a CRT.

The true quality of CRT’s still cannot be questioned. You can get a sharp, crisp picture, that blows away the cheap LCD’s and is only a little better than the nice LCD’s, but you’ll always need a ton of desk space (and help carrying it in) if you want to go with a CRT.

Size and weight are another issue. There’s a screen size limit that CRT’s actually don’t get larger than solely because after you hit about 28″, they become ridiculously heavy. Of course, LCD’s, being light, and flat, now allow for computer monitors to be made in some interesting sizes.

As far as brands go, Dell’s “Ultrasharp” LCD monitors are great. Sony’s always been known as a prime quality name, and visual technology pioneer. 15″ and 17″ LCD’s will serve the purpose, but you really see what these monitors have to offer when you move up in the sizes, like 20″ and up. I’d stay away from the budget names. You’ll know them when you see them because you’ll see them at your major home electronics retailers, but you’ve never heard of them before.

Whether you’re looking for some extra desktop space, or looking for the high-end PC graphics experience from a larger monitor, it’s no doubt that the LCD monitors of today can more than meet your needs.

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Computer LCD Monitors

If Contrast Ratios and Nit levels haven’t confused you enough, then let’s bring more terms into the discussion! In this 2nd part of “Choosing An LCD Monitor”, we’re going to take a look at response times, and how there are two very important and yet different response time specifications.

Black-To-White-To-Black Response Time

When LCDs began surfacing in the consumer market more noticeably a few years ago due to lower price costs, a measurement of how well the monitor responded to changes to input data on the screen was usually observed in the specifications of the product. This became known as Response Time.

The response times of various monitors were expressed in terms of milliseconds and gave the consumer an idea of how fast the LCD monitor could display images. At the time, playing movie content on the computer was just catching on and becoming rather popular and convenient.

The response time of the LCD monitor was not only expressed in milliseconds, but additionally meant how long it took for a pixel of the monitor (which is the smallest unit of an image on an LCD monitor) to change from “off” to “on” and back to “off” again. This also meant how quickly a monitor could change from black to white to back once again.

Initially, lower millisecond ratings meant the higher quality of the monitor and the quicker it could draw images as they were being fed to the monitor’s input panel. If the response time was slower than another monitor, this meant the slower monitor could not interpret the transition of one image to another, and created “afterimages” or a blurring effect. Many users also refer to this effect as ghosting.

Gray-To-Gray Response Time

While response time was a good indicator of a monitor’s performance, it did not demonstrate another important specification which was transitions between gray levels (i.e., Gray-To-Gray response time). Images include gray levels of color and not just black and white colors, so recently, LCD monitor specifications have included Gray-To-Gray response times.

Gray-To-Gray response times are a little more telling of a monitor because an LCD’s crystal molecules respond faster to the high voltage needed for black-to-white transitions versus the lower voltage requirement for gray-to-gray transitions. What this means is that it can actually take longer for gray level transitions to finish, which will result in lower response times, regardless of the black-to-white response time.

Potential LCD users might wonder why the gray transitions would be more difficult for a monitor to produce than black-to-white transitions. A higher voltage excites the LCD crystal molecules much more easily than at a lower voltage.

A Tale Of Two Monitors

When purchasing an LCD monitor, you may come across two of them (or more) which have the same black-to-white response times. It is recommended you also look at the gray-to-gray response times. Most LCD manufacturers are now listing gray-to-gray response times, so this certainly helps you make the right choice.

For example, Monitor A could have a black-to-white response time of 16ms, while Monitor B has 20ms. You would normally think the one with the faster response time is better, but if the gray-to-gray response time of Monitor A is higher than Monitor B, ghosting and afterimage effects will be more prevalent for Monitor A. Today, LCD manufacturers are still playing around with both of these response times. Many response times are not quantified so you do not know which response time the numbers are supposed to be referenced from.

Investigate And Ask

The best investment, is a wise investment. Accordingly, if you’re going to spend a significant amount, you really should contact the manufacturer if the response time of the LCD monitor are unclear. Demand an answer. A few emails and even a few calls to your prospective LCD purchase could save you a lot of trouble.

Liquid Crystal Display is what LCD stands for, and you thought crystals could only be a solid. Liquid crystals were actually first discovered in 1888 and took more then 100 years to progress into the LCD monitors that we see for computers, laptops, calculators and so one. So why the history lesson you ask, because most likely you are interested in getting an LCD monitor for your computer, but want to get the best deal and quality of monitor. So you need to know everything that you can about LCD’s, or you might purchase the wrong one for you.

The difference between a good old fashioned CRT monitor and an LCD is not just the size, far from it. LCD’s produce a clearer picture and use a digital connection between the computer and the monitor instead of an analog one like CRT monitors. As we all know, digital is much better then analog since there is less signal loss.

In addition to its picture quality as a main benefit, LCD monitors also consume less power, which actually saves you money on your electric bill. Sure it won’t be much, but after awhile the savings will add up and make up for the cost difference between a CRT and an LCD monitor. So in the end you paid just about the same amount for an LCD as you would have for a big old clunky CRT monitor.

Okay let’s say you want to buy an LCD monitor now, but you don’t know which one to get. Well let me first tell you that all LCD’s are not created equal and the quality really depends on the manufacturer and a few certain other aspects. There are so many LCD monitor manufacturers these days that deciding which one to buy simply by the company name is much too hard. What you should do to find the best LCD monitor amongst all those other pesky inferior ones, is to compare the contrast ratio. The screen with the highest contrast ratio will have better picture and color quality, which is the whole reason we use a monitor anyways, too look at it.

Another factor that determines the picture quality of your LCD monitor is the response time. This basically means how long it takes to transform the liquid crystal to the state that will display the correct color. The higher the response time, the more blurry the images will be, especially images moving on black backgrounds.

The connection between the LCD monitor and the computer also makes a major difference in picture quality. LCD monitors have an AGP port just like CRT’s do, but they also have another port called DVI, which instead of being analog it uses a digital signal. Digital connections have less picture and color loss than an analog one, but do require you to have a DVI port on your computer. If your computer doesn’t have one, then you have to buy a new video card that does and install it.

Now that you have the basic knowledge that you need to know when buying an LCD monitor, you are prepared to buy one at your local store or online. Before you go though, I just wanted to say that I have owned an LCD for the past 2 years and I could never go back to a CRT monitor, my eyes have been spoiled! The picture quality is just that good, plus not to mention how much more desk space I have and the fact that I am using less power feels good too. I guarantee that once you have an LCD monitor you won’t be able to go back to a CRT either.

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Because LCD monitors have become so popular, everyone is ready to go out and get one. The only problem is, though, that they are still expensive. If you buy an LCD monitor for your computer, you can expect to spend as much as $600. Sure, the picture is better, eye fatigue goes down, your space on your desk is better, and the contrast makes it easier to read typed words on the screen. Buying cheap LCD monitor tips can help you get all the benefits of an LCD monitor without spending a fortune to get it.

Check in the Right Places

In almost every case, you can expect to pay a lot less for your LCD monitor if you buy it online. The key, though, is to look at the right sites. Everyone has heard the horror stories about buying online only to get stuck with an inferior product or no product at all. There is, though, a way to find a cheap LCD monitor online with minimal risk.

Once you have done your search engine search for the LCD monitor, and when you have found a site that seems to have the prices you want, you want to contact the company. The best way is to find a way to get on the phone and actually speak with someone. Talking to a real person is a good sign. Additionally, make sure you ask them if they are an authorized dealer of the LCD monitor you are thinking of buying. An authorized dealer will ensure that you can get the manufacturer warranty and that it will stay in tact.

Another way of buying an LCD monitor online is through an auction site. There, you can find new and used monitors and you will be buying them from real people. Once you have won the auction, you deal directly with the person. That means you will know exactly where you are purchasing the monitor from. In fact, if you look for close by product, you can actually see and touch the monitor before you take it. That means you will be able to get a great price and still make sure you don’t get a lemon.

Finally, check with business outlet stores and discount electronics stores to get a cheap LCD flat screen monitor. If you know what you are looking for and are in no hurry to get it, you can take your time shopping the discount electronic stores. That way, when you see what you want at the price you want, it is easy to just grab it. Finding a cheap LCD monitor is about being ready and having good timing as much as anything.

Hopefully buying cheap LCD monitor tips will help you when you go to upgrade your home office. Take the time to shop around if you want to buy in person and keep yourself at the ready. If, though, you choose to go the online route it is really just about making sure you have gotten a good company and are keeping warranties and guarantees in tact.

Stu Pearson has an interest in Business & Technology related topics. To access more information on lcd monitor or on lcd flat screen monitor, please click on the links.