Monitoring business needs - evaluation of nine 17-inch color monitors - Hardware Review - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, Feb, 1995 by Angela Gunn

Prices drop, power increases, and monitors become bigger and brighter. Just as the powerhouse Pentium or Quadra became an affordable necessity, a larger monitor is probably in your future. Once the domain of design professionals and other graphics-intensive users, today's 17-inch monitors won't leave you squinting at your bank statement or the screen.

Why do you need a 17-inch screen? Won't your old 14-incher suffice? Your varied tasks mean that you spend more time with multiple applications than other computer users. A larger monitor's extra screen room gives you the space to work more efficiently with three or four applications--just as the increased work space of an expansive desk can increase productivity.

Chances are your computer's carrying a heavier graphics load than it did a year ago. Multimedia, graphical operating environments, and online services have dazzling new interfaces. Can your monitor support the higher resolutions needed today?

New monitors also conform to the government's Energy Star requirements, which aim to reduce power consumption and pollution. You'll need an Energy Star-compliant video card (or a software workaround) to take advantage of this feature, but the benefits are real. Monitors suck more juice than any other component. Reduce the amount of electricity that they consume, and you'll cut back on utility bills.

Basic Requirements We looked at nine $639 to $1,069 (street price) 17-inch monitors. All meet the basic requirements for a hardworking small- or homeoffice system.

We sought monitors with sharp, crisp images. ID this review, no monitor's dot pitch (the distance between the centers of the colored dots that make up the screen) is greater than 0.28mm. The "aperture grille" measurement of Trinitron-based monitors is approximately the same thing.

Each unit handles 640 by 480, 800 by 600, and 1,024 by 768 pixel resolutions. A pixel is one group of three dots (red, blue, green) that create all images onscreen. The higher the resolution (that is, the more pixels on the screen), the more images you can cram onscreen. Each added pixel, however, requires additional video-card processing power to keep video speed high. We avoided monitors that use interlacing to achieve higher resolutions because interlaced images are of poor quality and usually flicker.

Resolution and interlacing are crucial factors in determining sharpness and speed, but monitors also rely heavily on the refresh rate (how often the image onscreen is redrawn). Refresh includes both how fast the monitor redraws the image and how often the video card in your computer tells it to redraw. Make sure your video card and monitor both refresh at 70 to 76Hz (cycles per second) rates. Higher refresh rates are easier on the eyes because they flicker less, although sometimes monitors with a high refresh rate will appear slightly bluffy. Be aware, however, that monitors with crisp, high refresh rates at lower resolutions generally drop to blurrier low refresh rates at higher resolutions.

Now That You're Here... We tested each monitor with various applications and then put them through the rigorous Video Obstacle Course included in Sonera Technologies's DisplayMate for Windows [9081 747-6886, [800] 932-6323). Designed to tease out every last flaw in a monitor's display, this test suite left no monitor unscathed.

For sharp images, we prefer the Trinitron-based screens pioneered by Sony but used by other manufacturers. Because it displays curves more smoothly and with fewer jagged edges, the images are more distinct. Various technologies also help some monitors compensate better than others for the technical problem of keeping all areas of the screen in focus.

Because of the mechanics of creating large images, various types of distortion problems are endemic to larger monitors. The edges of the screens tend to pincushion, that is, to look as if they're squeezed toward the middle of the screen. The opposite condition is bowing, where the screen bows out like a barrel in the middle. In addition, some monitors distort along just one area of the screen, creating a somewhat trapezoidal shape.

Moire, a common psychedelic-like effect caused when the background pattern is slightly out of sync with the mask or grille behind a screen, is similar to the effect you get when you hold two pieces of window screen together. Almost every monitor we saw showed some tendency to moire when displaying fine dot patterns.

A monitor with poor registration can't align reds, greens, and blues tightly. You may have seen this effect in newspapers when the color-printing process runs amuck. Although no monitor has perfect registration, some manage better than others. We also saw assorted ghosting and streaking of whites on black that reminded us of the bad old days of monochrome.

Controls help minimize these distortion problems. All but two monitors also provide a degauss control to ensure screen uniformity in the face of the stray magnetic fields that unshielded speakers, steel walls, and other metal objects create.