Some background info for introduction. Sorry for long text, so skip this if you arent interested. Im a gamer and audiophile (who also appreciates good picture quality). After building a completely new rig (and SILENT!) for gaming and music, my good old 17" CRT had to go. A good-bang-for-the-buck Samtron with its low resolutions wasnt exactly something immersive for gaming. And since LCD technology had jumped forward in big leaps lately, I turned my eyes on 22" LCDs.
First I bought Samsung 226BW. Reading all about panel lottery, etc... I still decided to take a shot. If the serial number comparison had any truth behind it, I ended up having C-panel. However, unlikely all the bad talk about that panel, my colors were rather good in Internet Mode. I guess I was lucky and had C-panel with good precalibration, or it was actually S-panel. Either way, little bit of adjusting in blue slider without harming skin colors and nature pictures, and it was very good. Viewing angels were bad and even when watched directly from front the upper part of the picture was dimmer but I could take it. However, the worst thing was that backlight bleed was something inhuman. In slightly dimmer light, shadows and dark caves were more silvery and grey than black. Since I play games with a lot of dark colors, off it goes.
Then I got Viewsonic VX2240W which I use now. A bit bland colord compared to 226BW, but good and more natural. Not as fast either, but still very fast gaming monitor and backlight bleeding is not as bad either. It has bit more banding though. However, it has one stupid bug. Dynamic Contrast refuses to stay fully off! Unlike Dynamic Contrast that usually adjusts backlight, VX2240W also adjusts colors. And does it badly, they look WAY off. Wouldnt matter since I keep gimmicks like that off, but whenever I turn off the monitor, a program changes resolution or monitor goes in to powersaving mode etc... colors go off like DC would be on. Backlight isnt adjusted, but colors look crap. I have to enable DC and put it back off and colors look normal again. Not a big deal, but it annoys me to do it every time I turn monitor on. A middle finger for the Viewsonic from me, and away this monitor goes!
Now, to the question at hand. I want to venture away from TN panels. Why I first didnt go for other LCD technologies was because not as good response time, and most of all very long input lags. Lately I saw few MVA panels in the web with rather short, if not non-existent, input lags and speed that were comparable to 2ms-5ms TN panels despite having longer rated ms time. First one that caught my eye was Iolair MB24W 24" MVA panel or some its clones from Pixmania, DGM or Yuraku. Minimal input lag, decent colors and VERY fast actual response time and cheap price. Why I didnt buy this was that backlight is very strong and below 50% it doesnt get dimmer but picture is digitally darkened washing out black details. No go, I dont want a new 226BW backlight issue. There are hardware mods to help this, but Im not exactly happy about the idea of opening new monitor and start modding it. It used same panels as older Acer AL2423W which was great gaming monitor and not for a bad price either, but to my big dissapointment it has turned to TN panel and older batches with MVA panel are about impossible to find anymore.
Are there any other good non-TN paneled gaming monitors out there? Something from 20" to 24" category?
I have read of some extreme measurements on 245T input lag, even digital versus measured rather extreme and stable lag of 58ms as average (3-5 frames estimated?). I wonder if Samsung has fixed it a little bit in later batches?