LCD for secondary display

    I'm working on figuring out a good monitor for my secondary display at the moment. Right now I've got two CRT's, one of them is getting pretty old and I'm about to toss it. It's not super important that it has perfect color because all that work is done on the primary monitor. However, because it's the secondary monitor, it sits off to the side a bit, meaning it would be useful to me to have a display with a wide angle of view. I definately want a display that supports the full 16.7 million colors natively. One other big thing is that I'm planning on switching to a Macintosh eventually and I've seen that some of the monitors out there are not supported at native resolution on the Mac platform. My budget sits at about $300.00 or less. I figure that puts me in the range of a 17-inch, but I've seen elsewhere on the forum that 17's aren't being made at the same level of quality as 19's right now.


    I've been doing a lot of research, but I can't seem to sort out monitors based on what sort of technology they actually use. None of the manufacturers seem to want to say how their monitors work.


    Anyway, any insight would be greatly appreciated.

    Hi there,
    Where are you from/ Where will you buy the monitor? The reason I'm aksing is because the range of models available in North America greatly differs from those available in Europe or Asia.
    But you should be able to get a 19 inch LCD with DVI around 300 dollars.
    As for the 16.7 million colors, just make sure the monitor does NOT have a TN panel - which leaves MVA/PVA or IPS panels as the only options. Don't know about Mac though. What's their native resolution? Make sure the gfx card in the MAC you are going to buy has a DVI output, if not, look for adpaters.

    I'm from the states, and I'd definitely be purchasing here. I'll make sure to stay away from the TN panels. From what I've read on the site, S-IPS seems like the best choice, but the manufacturers often don't list such information on their sites. Whatever computer I get will have DVI output on it. I'm not sure about native resolutions for the Mac. I thought they could do 1280x1024, but I've never had a monitor on one that I would actually want at that resolution. Actually I'm quite annoyed that all 19" monitors are at that resolution due to the aspect ratio being off. I'd much rather have one doing 1280x960. Anyway, thanks for the reply.

    Finding a 19 incher with 1280 x 960 seems impossible to me. But you can still always select the 1280 x 960 , choose "aspect" display mode in OSD or graphics card menu (mostly for DVI only) and thereby have an uninterpolated 4:3 ratio with small black bars at the top and the bottom.
    If there's no panel type given, you can spot and avoid TN panels by looking at the specified viewing angles. 160 and less is TN. 170 and more is always MVA or IPS.
    I saw some 19 inch LGs around 250 bucks at newegg.


    take care

    That's interesting... Is that "aspect" mode available on pretty much all 19" LCD's or just a select few? I don't know whether I'd really like having the black bars, but I figure if I was able to get used to the lines on an aperture grille I can deal with it.


    How are those LG panels? I've heard both good and bad about them, but they made panels for Apple's cinema displays for a while didn't they?

    LG Philips is the world's largest manufacturer of LCD panels.

    Most LCD monitors on the market have an LG Philips panel in them.
    They used to have some flaws earlier, but that's pretty much handled by now.


    Aspect mode is very common, but I'd recommend you to first download the PDF manual and look up whether its in the OSD once you've shortlisted some models. Even if not, - ATI and NVidia offer this feature in their control panels. Don't know about their Apple drivers though.

    Nice. I think that gives me all the information I need. Thanks a bunch!