We've lost the monitor, we think he's bought it...

Lillymon

Lillymon

New member
Well, I haven't been round these parts in a while. I'll regale you with my tales of the (ongoing) Great YouTube Backlog of 2011, which I fully intend to post on my website someday, but that's for another day.

Why I'm here is my monitor. A 22 inch 1680x1050 LCD monitor dating from 2008 that has just died on me. I turned it off, went away for a few hours, came back, and all it would display is a stark white display. Testing with the same PC with my plasma TV has confirmed there's nothing wrong with the PC, it's just the monitor that's busted.

So, I am now in the market for a new computer monitor, and I've got a few criteria to be met:

#1: I want an LED display this time. I was waiting to replace this monitor until LED monitors came inside my price range, and that seems to have happened so it seems now's the best time to make the switch.

#2: I want a resolution of 1920x1080 or greater. I'm used to 16:10 monitors so I was sort of hoping for 1920x1200, but all the new monitors seem to be 16:9, and 1920x1080 would still be an upgrade for me, plus it would fit all those 16:9 videos I watch better. So I guess I'd prefer 1920x1080. In other words, 1920x1080 please.

#3: I want an adjustable base. It's not too much to ask, is it? My current (broken) monitor didn't have one and it always irritated me, so I'd like my new monitor to be able to tilt and swivel.

#4: My price limit is £200. I guess I could go slightly above this (£5-10 above would be acceptable if necessary) but less than £200 is my target.

#5: Also remember that I do live in Britain, so monitors only available in the US or Canada aren't much good to me. Online ordering is perfectly acceptable though.

You helped me when I asked for Linux distros and I'm hoping you can help me again. Help me get Shizuku back on her feet.
 
With any hardware, my recommendation is to search NewEgg to see an item's rating and the customer comments because they seem to be extremely accurate. You won't be able to order from NewEgg, since they don't ship internationally, but you'll be able to assemble a list of good candidates and then look for them in the UK.

NewEgg suggests this Acer monitor fits all of your criteria. (There was an HP one that was rated even higher that met all of the criteria except for swivel. One thing to consider is that for a few dollars, you could always buy a lazy susan to set your monitor on if it doesn't have the ability to swivel on it's own. (All of the candidates appeared to have tilt capability.)

I don't give enough of a shit to bother checking which options are available in the UK but I needed to kill a few minutes waiting for my girlfriend to get off work, so I figured I'd do a bit of searching on NewEgg to see what they had to say about it.
 
Well after some looking I'm revising my specifications. I was hoping for an LED monitor. You know actual LED as in organic LED, not another fucking LCD with LED backlights for no good reason like every single 'LED monitor' on the market seems to be, making liars of every monitor manufacturer the world over.

So fuck it, I don't even care any more. LCD with no care what's actually producing that light because I don't fucking care about that part! Also, swivel is not strictly necessary, though it would be nice since every CRT I've ever had going back to 1996 did it, but now it seems that's out in favour of screwing you over even harder for a bit more money.

So forget LEDs, forget swivelling (but keep tilting, tilting is essential), and upgrade the size to 24 inches because I fucking deserve it. Also I'd like to avoid Samsung if possible since they seem to have a habit of selling monitors with Europlugs in the UK market, i.e. selling us monitors that we can't even plug in. Seriously, what?

If I get no further responses soon, I'm probably just going to go out and buy whatever seems best. I really hate looking for monitors.

Edit: Or not. The monitor came back to life, somehow. No idea why it died, even less why it started working again. Also, this monitor can tilt, I just never realized that in three years of having it because it was really stiff.

So... yeah.
 
Lillymon said:
Well after some ...... [snip]
So... yeah.
Click to expand...

Well, it could be that the thing got too hot and just whited out. if it feels hot, and i mean AMD Cook-An-Egg-On-It-Duron heat than there's something fucked up with it, and it's gonna end up going down when you least want it, or have a catastrophic failure (read: fire or busted capacitor, or other crap) I'd replace it relatively soon. but. . . when your monitor goes eventually, which might be sooner rather than later. . .

the screen technology you wanted was called OLED. and it's extremely expensive (Sony puts a 10in. screen at over 2k iirc). the benefit to having a "LED" monitor is that it can be significantly thinner, simpler, and it draws far less power to the original CCFL monitors that are used (40w vs. 200w or so) also they don't use the heavy duty caps or inverters to power them, so they're more reliable, and generate less heat.

resolution is more or less standardized now, it's pretty much 1080p resolution now if its wide screen. though if you spend more than USD 1 grand you could get one of those that supports that super high res 2560x1600 resolution, but I'd never spend that much on a monitor. ever. unless it came with some sort of servant feeding me grapes while another fans me and another that does my work for me.

Brand I recommend is Samsung in the NA market, but I'd probably go with LG for you cause you're not on my side of the pond. Supposedly Asus is pretty solid, but i've never tried them myself.

As for swivel I've never used it once the monitor was in the right position, but 89% can tilt (usually the cheap to really cheap ones can't). the lighter LED monitors are easier to turn and are usually ~5kg or so, so i can move mine with one hand, so it's I guess not a real issue. however, some can rotate, and auto-sense when they rotate, so you can use a wide screen monitor vertically if you had a long document to write, Which I guess is pretty cool if you need that.

BTW, the diff between 23in and 24in is minor. and usually you can save yourself a few bucks by going 23in. my last one was a 22in gateway (garbage from day 1), and I replaced it with a 23in samsung LED, and really, aside from it being a bitch to put next to my commodore 64 monitor on my desk, it really wasn't much of a marked difference. the resolution change from 1680x1050 however, was so much nicer when i swapped to 1920x1080 that it made me cry tears of joy.

I agree with inverse though, you should check newegg for any sort of major hardware purchase. (I also tend to double check models with amazon once I've narrowed it down too)
 
Well, it seems you were right kaluce, the monitor went again yesterday and I decided I'd had it. So I'm now the proud owner of a brand-new HP S2331a. Cost just under £160, 16:9, 23 inches, 1920x1080, and with a 12 month warranty so I'm liking it so far.

Now it's time to remake all of those wallpaper I tweaked so precisely for my old 1680x1050 monitor. This will take a while.
 
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