Are finer resolutioned LCD's really better???

jack_r

Weaksauce
Joined
Jul 20, 2004
Messages
77
By finer resolutioned I mean lower dot pitch. Here are the pertinant specs on the most common monitors...

15" Monitor, 1024x768 native resolution, 297mm dot pitch
17" Monitor, 1280x1024 native resolution, .264mm dot pitch
18.1" Monitor, 1280x1024 native resolution, .2805mm dot pitch
19" Monitor, 1280x1024 native resolution, .294mm dot pitch
20.1" Monitor, 1600x1200 native resolution, .255mm dot pitch
23" Monitor, 1600x1200 native resolution, .294mm dot pitch

Of course there are many other qualities which make a great monitor. But in this thread lets argue dot pitch. Which is better... higher or lower dot pitch? And why???
 
You forgot...

23" monitor, 1920x1200 native resolution, .258mm dot pitch

Larger screen w/ higher resolution + smaller dot pitch = more megapixels. I'll take as many as I can get please. That works out to 2.3MP on my current monitor (HP L2335). What I really want is resolution on this scale: IBM 9.2MP. With 9.2MP, 0.1245mm dot pitch and 204 pixels per inch, this thing owns for graphics (well, at least it comes close to displaying my 11MP EOS-1Ds' pictures natively). Only thing left is to get this bad boy to 16ms refresh for gaming. :D
 
I happen to prefer larger dot pitch screens like the current 19" monitors. The reason? ... Text scaling using windows on an LCD stinks. If you buy a low dot pitch screen, the native fonts will be quite small. Some people thrive on the extra room this provides for running multiple programs, editing pictures, CAD, etc... others find reading text quite an eye strain. Just go into any thread of new Dell 2001FP owners and someone will be returning it because they dislike the small text. I'm only 25 and while I can easily read these smaller characters, there is noticably less eye strain for me reading larger characters... especially after a couple of hours in front of the screen.

If you find yourself in this catagory of owning a low dot pitch monitor you have three options. Use "Large" fonts under Display Properties/Appearance... increase font DPI under Display Properties/Settings/Advanced/General... or turn on MS Cleartype under Display properties/Appearance/Effects. To me, the resulting larger fonts look dorky... they are not scaled up images of the text I'm used to seeing... but rather a sort of grotesque charactature which is too tall, too narrow and two thin. Often, you'll find areas of Windows (such as some webpages) that don't actually get the enlarged fonts. You'll also notice that even though the characters are larger, the straight parts of letters (like the main part of the letter "I") are still only one pixel wide. On a lower dot pitch monitor this pixel column will be narrower and thus still harder to see. The third option of MS Cleartype reminds me of one of those beer T-shirts with the intentionallly blurred lettering. Why buy a super sharp LCD only to turn around and blur the lettering. I'm not saying that Windows text scaling is unusable... but it leaves a lot to be desired.

This leaves me buying a 19" LCD... so I can have a decent amount of room to work with, but still have nice crisp large text that I can sit back in my easy chair, relax and read. I also find another advantage to the 19" screens. My video card will run the latest games with a good frame rate at 1280x1024... this means I don't have to run at non-native resolutions and incur ugly scaling issues... and no playing in a box in the middle of the screen either... just 19" of glorious gaming:) I'm not willing to rush out and pay $300 every year just so I can play the latest games at 1600x1200. So there you have it... its a 19" for me...
 
jack-r makes a good arguement, particularly for those of use that work from home and use the same monitor for work and recreation. I'd have a 23" HP sitting here right now if I could solve the issues jack-r describes. Trying to use it for database work, spreadsheets and similar would be painful. CAD drawings and graphics would be great, however I only refer to them briefly or review and sign off on them, so I don't spend more than an hour a day at it. From what I've seen, even the LCD's that scale the best don't display text all that well at lower than native rez.

For me it looks like dual monitors of different resolutions and a graphics card that will support that. A single 19" would work as well, but I'm not sure I'd be happy with it.

oc
 
jack_r said:
The third option of MS Cleartype reminds me of one of those beer T-shirts with the intentionallly blurred lettering. Why buy a super sharp LCD only to turn around and blur the lettering.

ClearType works by increasing the effective resolution of font rendering by taking advantage of the way pixels are physicall laid out on an LCD. Each pixel is actually 3 sub-pixels (red, green, blue) laid out left-to-right. So they triple the horizontal resolution they render at and map every 3rd pixel to red, every 3rd+1 pixel to green, and every 3rd+2 pixel to blue. It's not blurred at all.
 
jack_r said:
I happen to prefer larger dot pitch screens like the current 19" monitors. The reason? ... Text scaling using windows on an LCD stinks. If you buy a low dot pitch screen, the native fonts will be quite small. Some people thrive on the extra room this provides for running multiple programs, editing pictures, CAD, etc... others find reading text quite an eye strain. Just go into any thread of new Dell 2001FP owners and someone will be returning it because they dislike the small text. I'm only 25 and while I can easily read these smaller characters, there is noticably less eye strain for me reading larger characters... especially after a couple of hours in front of the screen.

If you find yourself in this catagory of owning a low dot pitch monitor you have three options. Use "Large" fonts under Display Properties/Appearance... increase font DPI under Display Properties/Settings/Advanced/General... or turn on MS Cleartype under Display properties/Appearance/Effects. To me, the resulting larger fonts look dorky... they are not scaled up images of the text I'm used to seeing... but rather a sort of grotesque charactature which is too tall, too narrow and two thin. Often, you'll find areas of Windows (such as some webpages) that don't actually get the enlarged fonts. You'll also notice that even though the characters are larger, the straight parts of letters (like the main part of the letter "I") are still only one pixel wide. On a lower dot pitch monitor this pixel column will be narrower and thus still harder to see. The third option of MS Cleartype reminds me of one of those beer T-shirts with the intentionallly blurred lettering. Why buy a super sharp LCD only to turn around and blur the lettering. I'm not saying that Windows text scaling is unusable... but it leaves a lot to be desired.

This leaves me buying a 19" LCD... so I can have a decent amount of room to work with, but still have nice crisp large text that I can sit back in my easy chair, relax and read. I also find another advantage to the 19" screens. My video card will run the latest games with a good frame rate at 1280x1024... this means I don't have to run at non-native resolutions and incur ugly scaling issues... and no playing in a box in the middle of the screen either... just 19" of glorious gaming:) I'm not willing to rush out and pay $300 every year just so I can play the latest games at 1600x1200. So there you have it... its a 19" for me...


Oh man, he is SOOOOOOOOOO RIGHT! Im running a samsung 710T with a 0.264 dot pitch, and text is hard for me to read, and im about 18 years old. This is With clear type. ~_~

I came from a 4 year old 19" sony trinitron CRT (18" viewable @ 1280x960 85Hz), and its just harder to read text, especially on hardforum where the text increases in IE6 do not apply to the forum text., i wish it did ~_~ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The dot pitch comes in handy with games though, i like my 710T better then my CRT... colors look a little better.

I wish the new sony 19" 12ms was 16.7mil colors, because i would jump on that right now.

I think deep down, i should be using a 19" for text, and i might wait a little while to find a good one if this 710T does'nt get better with DVI-D with my new computer (i currently have analog, but i don't think there will be any size increase)

0.264 dot pitch does look nice for graphics though, i must admit ^_^

~Hope this helps
 
i personally like the smaller dot pitch. Maybe your eye's are just going bad? When I went out and purchased a monitor, i choose based on the resolution it offers. 17" and 19" lcd monitors have the same resolution, so you are not gaining any desktop space. All you are doing is streching the pixels that much (two inches diagonal of more empty space). I guess you can make the argument that it helps make the picture appear bigger, but in reality it's not. It simply has more space in between each pixel.

Back in the day of CRT's people always tried to get the lowest dot pitch available, and now for some reason the lcd's are actually reversing that. Many CRT's have .20mm dot pitches with smaller screens for the same resolution, yet people claimed the smaller the better. I can't see any reason why an LCD would be different.

I also find that on a 17" LCD with a 1280x1024 resolution, you get realistic sizes on screen compared to actual print. A 19" would make it harder to compare the two.

I have tried MS Cleartype but I hate it. It's not fuzzy, but the techology doesn't always line up all the pixels correctly, so you get misplaced red and green fringe on the text. Maybe thats because i'm using an Analoge connection.
 
i also have a 710t, and personally, i find that while text is the right size, without the cleartype, its tends to be a strain to read, it almost appears"too" sharp, and i find myself leaning closer to the moniter to read some words

i also agree that some of the letters appear "colorful" but until i find a better alternative ill stick to this

linux's X display system renders text beautifully, i wish there was a way to implement this into windows
 
the more dot pitch on CRT = clearer the text, oddly.

18" viewable @ 1600x1200 is perfect to me
 
omega-x said:
18" viewable @ 1600x1200 is perfect to me
Whether that is good for you or not is mostly application dependent. At that rez on that size screen, lower case Arial 10pt measures right at .025" high. If 1600x1200 on 18" viewable is perfect, what you are telling us is that you don't spend all day reviewing technical documents that are in 10pt fonts. Perfect for games or for Photoshop doesn't mean much to a person that rarely does either, and the converse is also true. If you are trying to display 11MP images native as canislupy does, a 19" display @ 1280x1024 will be frustrating.

oc
 
towert7 said:
I came from a 4 year old 19" sony trinitron CRT (18" viewable @ 1280x960 85Hz), and its just harder to read text, especially on hardforum where the text increases in IE6 do not apply to the forum text., i wish it did ~_~ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Use firefox, you can increase the text size just fine.
 
jack_r said:
I happen to prefer larger dot pitch screens like the current 19" monitors. The reason? ... Text scaling using windows on an LCD stinks. If you buy a low dot pitch screen, the native fonts will be quite small. Some people thrive on the extra room this provides for running multiple programs, editing pictures, CAD, etc... others find reading text quite an eye strain. Just go into any thread of new Dell 2001FP owners and someone will be returning it because they dislike the small text. I'm only 25 and while I can easily read these smaller characters, there is noticably less eye strain for me reading larger characters... especially after a couple of hours in front of the screen. ...


You seem to be familiar with this issue.

I currently have a 17" LCD and I'm fine with the text size at 1280x1024.


Would a 20" LCD like the 2001fp at 1600x1200 produce similar sized text?
 
text size and text dpi size is all adjustable in windows if you know how. I have a HP L2335 @ 1920x1200 and can see text just fine
 
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