On LCD Monitors

[Concillian]

Some basic specs for it:

Westinghouse LCM-17v8

Native Resolution: 1280x1024
Response Time: 8ms
Contrast Ratio: 450:1
Maximum Brightness: 300 Nits (What's a Nit?)

While the 8ms response time is a good thing, as I recall, I'm worried about the contrast ratio. From what I've read (reviews for 17" LCDs are fairly old), it should be at least 500:1 to 600:1; will a 450:1 cause significant differences in color richness and depth?

Printed LCD specs are almost useless.

1) the "response time" is usually a black to white measurement, and more often you are changing from some medium color to some other medium color, which actually generally take longer. Some monitors handle the whole range well, others will handle black to white much, much better than middle color transitions. The worst offenders will have great black to white transitions, so the spec sheet looks great, but actual practical color changes can take twice as long or longer. 8ms is probably okay, just look at how it handles motion, either DVDs or games or whatever. As long as it looks okay for you, then it's performance is adequate.

2) Contrast ratio is nice, but most people view at some much lower brightness level than this is measured at. Somewhere around 100 nits or so is "typical" and what is more important than contrast ratio (which is usually measured at max brighness) is a "blackness" measure at a more normal viewing brightness. To me the level of "blackness" is more what I'm after than overall contrast ratio. As long as my black is black, the other stuff doesn't need to be super bright, but I generally compute in low light.

3) 300 nits is it's max brightness (nit = units of a brightness measurement). Anything over 200 is probably more than adequate. As mentioned earlier, something around 100 nits or so is considered a "normal" brightness level for office applications. Maybe a little higher for movies and games.

If you can find out what actual screen is used in your monitor you can find out a lot more about it. There are hundreds of LCD monitors but only a handful of actual screen manufacturers, many monitors share the same screen component, and there is probably another monitor of a more well known brand that uses the same screen as your monitor, and you'd be more likely to find some reviews that way.

The reviews at Tom's Hardware are pretty excellent for LCDs. I don't particularly like some of their other hardware reviews, but they rock on LCD reviews.

An example review:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/06/27/xxl...lays/index.html