LG L246WP-BN or Samsung 245BW?

[hjlane3]

First off I'd like to say I love these forums. I started looking into investing in an LCD monitor, and every time I came across helpful info it was mostly from here.

Now, here's my situation:

About 2 weeks ago I decided to make the move to go from CRT to LCD. The main thing I was concerned about, is that I do quite a bit of gaming and was concerned about response times and input lag.

First I was looking at the fairly well priced 22" screens, and my eyes fell onto the Samsung 226BW. My first research into found awesome reviews of the screen. But as I took a deeper look, I saw the issues with newer models being panels made from different manufactures, with 3 diff panels out there: "S" "A" 'C". "S" being the original and best, next being "A" with some color issues, and "C" being the worst of the 3.

After much thought, I decided to bite the bullet and grab a 226BW from local CompUSA and cross my fingers for an "S" panel. Well, turned out I got a "C".

After about 10days of being highly annoyed with the colors, the backlight bleeding, poor vertical viewing angel, and a really annoying problem of the display constantly shifting (using DVI) and having to hit the menu button to re-center; I decided to cash the thing back in.

Now the 2 displays i'm looking at are the LG L246WP-BN and the Samsung 245BW. Now the LG is a good ~$100-150 more than the Samsung, but I'm willing to pay that if it's really worth it.

I've found a wealth of information on the forums here about the L246WP, and see the overall opinions of the display are very very good. I like the adjustable stand, variety of inputs, PIP, pivot, etc.

But I've found it very difficult to find information and opinions of the 245BW. Now obviously it's a TN panel, so right there it puts a sour taste in people's mouth. It also lacks all the other inputs that the L246WP-BIN has, but at a cheaper cost and faster response time (seemingly because it's a TN).

I use my PC for gaming, coding, and TV/video. So I'm looking for clear text, good picture, and good response time. Now, is the slightly faster response time really worth the bad viewing angles and colors (since TN panels are all 6bit correct?) ?

When I had the 226BW, I tested playing my games (mainly WoW and BF2142) with and without the overdrive (RTA, that enables the 2ms response time, when it reality it's a 5ms/6ms screen right?) and I really never noticed a difference.

And like I said, I'm willing to spend the extra ~$100-150 for the LG if it really is a better investment.

[BlueMak]

Well I just ordered the L245WMP-BN which I think are almost the same model so if you wait a few days I will post a new thread about it.

[R0achTheWarHero]

they have both in best buy, go mess with them

[hjlane3]

Honestly it's reviews/opinions of the 245BW I'm mostly interested in, or a comparison. There's a ton of information even just on these forums about the L246WP-BN (245 is same thing, just diff button positioning, it's the online reseller model of the 246).

[hjlane3]

Hmm I didn't realize BB had them both... The store credit I have is for CompUSA.. but I'm gonna stop by BB first and take a look. Thanks for the info.

[R0achTheWarHero]

I looked at the 24inch samsung TN panel and the viewing angels weren't bad at all. I only saw screensavers and stuff on it, but it looked similar to a 226bw S panel. If you do games I would be leaning towards the samsung 24inch TN panel unless you can find online a test of someone measuring input lag on the LG.

All LCD's have input lag, you will see tons of fools say "my blah blah monitor has no input lag", well thats wrong. They were either too shitty at games in the first place or just grew used to the input lag and don't notice it. Most non-TN panels have something like 28-32ms input lag which totally ruins gaming for me personally and I would expect the LG if its new to have a best case scenario of 22ms and worst case 32 while the samsung TN panel would probably have half that.

It really depends how important gaming is for you, but I can tell you without a doubt that gaming sucks on every LCD out except for 2-5ms TN panels and 5ms is still stretching it. Seriously drive to every store in town till you find an S panel on display and buy it, thats what I did. The A panel is almost as fast, I would probably buy a display model A panel too over any other panel for gaming besides the 'S'.

[hjlane3]

So i stopped at BB and took a look at the 2 side by side... they're both hooked with DVI, at a 1280x1024 res, and with just still images, it was really hard to choose from any of it.

I decided to pick up the LG over the samsung (for now atleast) because of all the good reviews i've seen for the LG, and the bad taste for samsung that 226bw "c" panel left with me.

Picture is very very nice, colors too, awesome viewing angle, design. The one thing I do notice though; the difference between this 8ms response time, and the 226bw's 2ms. It feels smoothe, i'm not feeling any input lag. But I can see it not being as smooth or something. It's not bad really, but just seems a little off.

Maybe it's the fact i'm only running off 1 video card, but an 8800GTS should be good with gaming at 1920x1200 right?

I'm tempted to return this one, get a 245bw and try it out, and then return it for this again if need be but worried it'll be problematic.

[XeeN]

Here's a link to the input lag tests I ran on my LG 245WP vs. my CRT ( http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1031092691&postcount=182 ). This post is inside of the larger 246 post here on the forums, but I just linked to this in another thread so I thought I'd post it here.

If you DO try the Samsung, I'd be very interested in seeing you run a similar test.

I'm pretty sure TN panels are usually faster, but the LG has 8-bit pixel support so you should see better colors (16.7million with 8-bit vs. I believe around 200k for 6-bit). The monitor will translate the 6-bit color depth into the best representation it can, though.

See how the LG fares for you once you get into some twitch-shot fights and see if you can tell a difference there. It's hard comparing products when your brain is telling you that this one *should* be slower. I'm interested to hear how other gamers experience this display.

[edit]

I just posted the following in another thread, but it applies here:

And to clarify for readers wondering, there are two different definitions of "delay" that get confused (please correct me if I'm wrong here):

"Response time" is often advertised. This is the time for a gray pixel on an LCD to turn to black. On the latest TN monitors this is often screamed as "2 ms response time!!" but this doesn't exactly relate to:

"Input lag" is the actual time taken for the signal from the video card to be translated into the image on the screen. The signal is processed in the panel and then displayed - and this, while correlating to some aspects of response time, is often far from the "2ms" for TN panels or "8ms" for panels like a P-MVA. Thankfully the timing is getting closer and closer to what is being advertised on "response time" spec sheets.

It seems like it really comes down to a side-by-side to a CRT test with digital photos being taken to track ghosting effects and any delay between what you see on the CRT vs. what gets translated and displayed on the LCD. Usually a large timer on the cloned displays is what people are using to test everything.

For the bored, here are some reading links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_lag

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20020084968.html

http://www.videosift.com/video/Could-using-a-LCD-delay-what-you-see-on-the-screen-by-120s

[hjlane3]

"It's hard comparing products when your brain is telling you that this one *should* be slower. I'm interested to hear how other gamers experience this display."

The single biggest problem I'm having right now, is that. Lol

Everything of this monitor looks nice, feels nice. But keep getting lingering feeling like "but there's faster... so this can't be that good."

[XeeN]

"It's hard comparing products when your brain is telling you that this one *should* be slower. I'm interested to hear how other gamers experience this display."

The single biggest problem I'm having right now, is that. Lol

Everything of this monitor looks nice, feels nice. But keep getting lingering feeling like "but there's faster... so this can't be that good."

It's a hard call. =) If I were you, I'd stick with the LG for the better color quality - even if it's 6ms slower at turning gray pixels to black than the TN panel. ;)

[bootstrap]

"It's hard comparing products when your brain is telling you that this one *should* be slower. I'm interested to hear how other gamers experience this display."

The single biggest problem I'm having right now, is that. Lol

Everything of this monitor looks nice, feels nice. But keep getting lingering feeling like "but there's faster... so this can't be that good."
My own feeling on this is that if you're really interested in comparing the two, you should go out and pick up the Samsung and place it side-by-side with the LG (assuming you have the financial resources) and then return the one you don't want. IMO it would be a waste to try and compare both of them unless you can see them both at the same time -- the immediately obvious things like viewing angles can be seen just by looking at both on display in the store, and you'll just end up second guessing yourself about more subtle differences ("did the LG really have that much more lag than this?"). Remember too that even the color on the "better" monitor can be made to look worse if you don't spend a sufficient amount of time optimizing the settings on each.

Honestly, unless someone has owned both monitors side-by-side, I would take any responses you get in this thread with a grain of salt. I recently bought the LG, and like XeeN, I can confirm that the color is excellent (for my purposes, at least) and I don't perceive any lag when gaming, but my only basis for comparison is my previous monitor (a Dell 1905fp), so that doesn't really qualify me to give my opinion on which is better for your needs (beyond the usual TN vs. MVA stereotypes, of course). And, having followed the threads on both of these monitors, I can't recall a single person who's owned both of them, so I'm not sure there's anyone here who can definitively say which is "better".

I find the "truisms" that people love to quote in these threads (e.g. "anything besides a TN panel is too slow for gaming", "if you want to do photo work you need IPS", etc) to be generally useless, as no one else knows how YOU value these different factors and what you consider to be useful trade-offs -- like XeeN, I'd gladly give up a slightly faster response time in exchange for better color and viewing angles, but if you have the opportunity to compare both monitors, you may disagree. So to summarize, I don't think there's really any substitute for putting both of them side-by-side, setting your video card to mirror the displays, and testing them in applications that you'll primarily use the monitor for. If you do have the opportunity to do this, be sure and let us know what you decide, as the info will probably be useful to others. :)

[Manon66]

Comment from one owner " Overall I'm not impressed with this monitor and wouldn't buy it again, what disappoints me the most is how it handles resolutions other than the native 1920x1200. This monitor doesn't do very well with non-native resolutions, many games don't even support 1920x1200 and they look very jaggy and pixelated running in any other resolution. BenQ, Samsung, Acer and Dell 24 monitors I have seen all look better than this monitor at non-native resolutions. If you plan to use anything other than 1920x1200 then avoid this monitor. If 1920x1200 is all you'll ever use then this monitor is an okay purchase. "

So ??

[hjlane3]

Comment from one owner " Overall I'm not impressed with this monitor and wouldn't buy it again, what disappoints me the most is how it handles resolutions other than the native 1920x1200. This monitor doesn't do very well with non-native resolutions, many games don't even support 1920x1200 and they look very jaggy and pixelated running in any other resolution. BenQ, Samsung, Acer and Dell 24 monitors I have seen all look better than this monitor at non-native resolutions. If you plan to use anything other than 1920x1200 then avoid this monitor. If 1920x1200 is all you'll ever use then this monitor is an okay purchase. "

So ??

Now I'm not finding that true at all. I've been playing games in both 1920x1200 and 1680x1050 and they still look and play great at 1680.

[XeeN]

Comment from one owner " Overall I'm not impressed with this monitor and wouldn't buy it again, what disappoints me the most is how it handles resolutions other than the native 1920x1200. This monitor doesn't do very well with non-native resolutions, many games don't even support 1920x1200 and they look very jaggy and pixelated running in any other resolution. BenQ, Samsung, Acer and Dell 24 monitors I have seen all look better than this monitor at non-native resolutions. If you plan to use anything other than 1920x1200 then avoid this monitor. If 1920x1200 is all you'll ever use then this monitor is an okay purchase. "

So ??

Is this the Samsung 245 or the LG 245 you're talking about?

[hjlane3]

Ok, about to get to bed after spending a full day gaming binge using this LG 246wp, and i'm very happy with it.

[bootstrap]

Now I'm not finding that true at all. I've been playing games in both 1920x1200 and 1680x1050 and they still look and play great at 1680.
Same here, I found the scaling to be quite good. Perhaps that owner didn't make sure to use the aspect ratio controls to make sure non 16:10 resolutions weren't being stretched to full screen? That would certainly cause noticeable distortion.

[Manon66]

No that's the point..... there is no scaling involve in 1:1 mode ! So how does 1680x1050 look when stretch.. Can you tell if it's stretch or not when playing a game ?

[hjlane3]

I play bf2142 in fullscreen mode with the widescreen support switch at resolution of 1680x1050, and it looks great.

[R0achTheWarHero]

I've never seen a LCD in my life that looks "great" at non-native rez.... Your definition of great must be something like "text is still kind of readable" or something lol.

[hjlane3]

My definition of "great" is that I can play my games at the scaled down rez (1680x1050) without noticing during game play unless i really really look for it. IE, not noticeably horrible.