How to choose a great new monitor

The old-fashioned cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor is dead – it’s official. Sony’s Trinitron brand has long been the leading name in CRT screens, and in March this year the company finally announced it was to stop making them. Flat-panel, liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors have never been more affordable – which is good news for space-saving, energy-conscious computer users. LCD monitors, on average, consume a third of the electricity of their CRT brethren. They also emit less radiation than the old-style screens. But there are many other things you need to consider when choosing your new monitor, from cost to fitness for purpose.

Form and function

The first question you should ask is, what will my monitor be used for? If games and graphics are a priority then a good-quality monitor with a standard aspect ratio of 4:3 – the same as your old CRT – will do the job. If video work and watching movies are more your scene, you might want to pick a widescreen model that can handle high-definition input. For many people, a home PC is a workhorse for web surfing and word processing – a smaller, more economic monitor should satisfy those needs.

In all of these scenarios there are several things you should check before getting out your credit card. You can narrow your search straight away by choosing a monitor size that suits your purposes. For example, modern high-definition movies need a widescreen monitor capable of coping with a resolution of at least 1,280x1,080 pixels. A small to medium-sized monitor, around the 19-inch mark, should support this resolution. Look out for the ‘HD Ready’ label and expect to pay between £100 and £150 for a screen in this class. True 1,152-line HD support requires a resolution of 1,920x1,080 pixels. Larger professional monitors of 24 inches or more will support this resolution out of the box, though you’ll pay a premium of between £350 and £450. If you want to play HD DVD or Blu-ray discs on the monitor, look for the term ‘HDCP compliant’ in the tech specs. This is a copy protection standard for playing back high-definition disc content.

One piece of hardware that might affect the resolution your monitor can support is your video card. If your PC is powerful enough to run Windows Vista, it should be able to run an HD Ready monitor. However, you’ll need a video card with either an HDMI or DVI output or you’ll be stuck with the analogue quality of old-fashioned VGA.

The same advice goes for the monitor itself. Ensure that it has the right sockets to support your computer. VGA socket support (or D-Sub connector) is fine for office-type software and web browsing, but modern graphics and video work require digital connectivity via a DVI (Digital Visual Interface) socket or HDMI port. It’s important to check this as there are still widescreen LCD monitors on the market that only have VGA sockets.

The bigger picture

Consider the monitor’s response time, particularly if games are important to you. Measured in milliseconds, the lower the number, the faster the monitor. Game players may crave a response time of 2ms. For image editing, web browsing or watching videos, between 5 and 8 milliseconds should do the job. Also look out for a feature called ‘viewing angle’. Older CRT monitors can be viewed from just about any angle, but with LCD models the picture can disappear if it’s viewed from the side or above. While this is less of a problem with current models, check that your monitor has a viewing angle of at least 160 degrees above and below. Better still, look at it switched on before you buy.

You should be able to find this specification data in the monitor’s description if you buy online. If you buy from the high street, make sure you get the technical specifications on paper before you hand over any cash.

One final thing to consider – watch out for dead pixels (pixels that appear as black dots on the screen). To guard against this check that your warranty has a ‘dead pixel policy’. The problem can get worse over time and you’ll want to replace a faulty monitor at the first sign of a problem.

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