LG L204WT: 5ms and 2000:1 contrast

Crispness and clarity, both text and video, is the signature of this monitor. If you are getting any grainy images, it is either defective or something with your system is causing a conflict somewhere.

Your VGA connection is not the problem, as the DVI connection only makes a small difference in video playback-- and I think that has more to do with the better PureVideo and Avivo features of the more recent video cards.
 
I purchased this monitor last night at Circuit City and I love it so far...played Titan Quest for several hours and it looks much better than my old CRT. No dead pixals that I've found yet.

The instore price was $369 but they honored their website price of $339. I also used the $40 off $199+ purchase coupon found on Slickdeals so my price out the door was $319.

I was annoyed though that CC's DVI cables were $79!!! I went across the street to Best Buy and bought one for $20...I didn't want to wait for getting a cheaper one shipped from a webstore.
 
You are lucky buddy. I got one yesterday for $317,7 after tax. I also get the online special price in the store for 339 and use the printed 40 0ff 199 coupon. No need to buy from ebay just print it out. I play it for 7 hours and the colour and brightness is very good compare with my 20 inch sony CRT. What is the setting for your guys? Can anyone post it? mine is: 9300 k; Brightness: 51, contrast 70, Gammar 0;, red 56; green 44; blue 50. However in the movie mode when I watch DVD and DIVX it's very very dark even the brightness is 100. Is that because I am using the analog cable? I bought a DVI-D from ebay but I need to wait for the shipping. Hope this can solve the problem. I also find one dead pixel on the left bottom. I will exchange it today. Another things I want to mention is that I still can feel the delay (ghost) when I am playing CS-source. In the map de_inferno, I use bunny jump and I can feel the big difference with my CRT. The bunny jump is continuely jumping and the speed is very fast, When I was jumping I can saw the ghost. But when I am shooting or doing anything else the monitor is working fine and I think this is not a big deal. And the f-engine delay is quite obvious. When you came from the black to the bright place you can see the f-engnine change the brightness. Ok. Could any one post his set up of the LCD?
 
james111 said:
Has anyone noticed backlight bleeding on this monitor and banding on the monitor?
how does the backlight compare to the dell 2005/2007 lcds?
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No banding here. There is only a minimal amount of backlight bleeding at the extreme top/bottom of the display, nothing in the centre or corners as far as I can see. You really only see it with a completely black background or maybe when watching DVD's (black bars at the top/bottom)... but it truly is minimal.

I tried to take some photos lastnight but was too tired to do anything useful... will try again tonight when I get home.
 
The Movie mode is splendid using DVI connection for DVD playback or good quality video files (e.g. dvd rip, 800+MB movie files). Using a VGA connection, the Text mode is better for movies.

Most people seem to be using a 40-50 brightness setting, and a 60-70 contrast setting; but, those with very sensitive eyes are going even lower on those settings. Does anyone know if a lowering of the brightness/contrast settings has any effect in the Movie or Text modes? Changes in those settings seem to only affect the Normal and User modes.
 
Hey guys. After reading all the comments on this monitor I decided to go down to futureshop and pick one up. I recently also bought a samsung 215tw (21" widescreen) so I will compare the two. I got the samsung from futureshop for $550 when it was on sale for $200 off.

First off, between the two monitors, the samsung wins hands down. The colors, blacks, brightness, etc... are amazing on the samsung. Dont get me woring, the lg is nice too, but the samsung has it beat. The one area where the lg beats the samsung is response time. Although I rarely notice blurring with samsung (8ms), I never notice it with the LG. It is definetely faster. Although, if you are dealing with graphics, etc.. the samsung definetely has a better picture. The samsung also costs $200 more, so that is a big difference right there. For the money the LG is an excellent monitor, but if you are looking for the best picture, you have to pay $$ for it.

Im going to return the lg, not because i dont like it, but because I feel the extra $200 is well spent on the samsung.
 
I'm using it with contrast at 80, brightness at 25-30 for movies or when there's more light in the room, zero for text when the room is dark. I have the color temp at 6500, and have it calibrated.

I'll repeat my experience that I found nothing about the 215TW's picture superior to that of the 204WT. The LG has better contrast, no doubt darker darks. The 215TW had minor banding compared to the LG. Both had excellent backlights, with no apparent bleeding. Both produced great color once calibrated, but the LG was closer to being correct out of the box. Blur on the Samsung was very minor but noticeable, whereas it's yet to have been noticeable on the LG.
 
would someone with this monitor please give me their msn in private message so i can contact them....mine seems to be weird and im wondering whats wrong...and well, its faster to talk on msn...do not worry, i wont use your email for anything else.

thank you
 
I always forget to post the best feature the monitor has... you can turn off the led through the lcd's menu!.. lol.

One complain i now have, is because my desk is a table on wheels, it tends to shake a bit, and because of the very flexible/loose base of the lcd, it ends up shaking when i type. but i'm pretty confident that removing the wheels off my desk would fix it.
 
Well, I got around to snapping a few photos. I learnt something tho, it's hard to get a decent photo of a display that doesn't detract from it. For example, I was getting a little moire showing up in some shots but that's due my camera/lens, not the display... some readers may not understand that. Anyway, here they are...

desktop_01.jpg

desktop_02.jpg

game_01.jpg

game_02.jpg

dvd_01.jpg

dvd_02.jpg


Let me know if you have any questions or would like to see a particular photo of the display. It might be take me 1-2 days to get a photo up, but I will try my best.

For the record, I am quite pleased with display, especially for the $$$ ($369CDN + tax). No dead/stuck pixels and the desktop space is amazing for graphics work, browsing and writing documents. TN panels may not be known for colour accuracy but i'm going through the ~2000 photos I took in Scotland/England this summer and they're quite stunning, a few have made people gasp, so the LG must be doing them a fair amount of justice. It's also much easier on the eyes in the long term, at least once you tweak the brightness/contrast. Games appear to be quite smooth and the colouring is well saturated. DVD's are decent but they're not razor sharp if you've got your nose to the panel... how much can one expect tho. Maybe bumping the sharpness would help, not to imply that DVD playback is unacceptable or anything.

Another cool feature is the Flatron "F-Engine". You can swith between normal, user, text and video modes. The cool part is that as you switch between modes only half the screen changes, so you can compare the new setting to the last used... side-by-side.

I'd still like to get my hands on the Samsung 205BW for comparison sake. It's the only other monitor on my list given the price and feature set. ViewSonic is out due to HDCP/HDMI and, to be honest, their design is a little clunky. There's BenQ and Acer as well but, to be honest, I find the Acer build quality to be kinda cheap. I also work with Acer desktop/notebook systems daily and haven't been entirely pleased. Not much experience with BenQ but nothing has pushed me towards them yet either... tho I did play with a BenQ 23" LCD in-store once and it was respectable.

As for my settings:

Picture - Brightness: 52
Picture - Contrast: 50
Picture - Gamma: 0

Color - Preset: 6500K
Color - Red: 52
Color - Green: 50
Color - Blue: 50

Tracking - Clock: 50
Tracking - Phase: 50
Tracking - Sharpness: 6
 
james111 said:
Is that backlight leaking I see there? :confused:
Click to expand...

It's been discussed above. There is a very slight amount of backlighting that bleeds through the extreme upper/lower portions of the panel. Again, very slight. I have no issue with it what so ever.

The particular shot you've isolated was taken from the side to reduce moire patterns introduced by my camera. I suspect that while the angle reduced/eliminated the moire it increased the apparent backlight bleeding. If you look at the loading screen from Far Cry or the menu shot of the DVD, which are both straight-ahead shots, you don't see any backlight issues at all...

Here's an example of some strong bleeding on a pair of Dell 2005FWP's:

2005fpw_small.jpg
 
Kick, great pictures! Do you have an Xbox 360 hooked up to it? If so, I'd love a picture of that!
 
If only picture quality is considered is this LCD better than the Dell 2007FPW?
 
Please, where is this $40 Circuit City coupon?

Also as of August 11th I see the L204WT online price is $369 not $339
 
cecy said:
Also as of August 11th I see the L204WT online price is $369 not $339
Click to expand...
Yeah, I noticed they raised on the 10th, too. Although, strangely they would not take the coupon and the online deal in store: they said I could only use the price online or the coupon. I was considering citing someone here who used both, but didn't really know how to respond. The coupon was better so I used that. Thinking back perhaps I should have used the online price then gone in later and used the coupon.
 
hmm I just started noticing some backlight bleeding on the bottom left side in the corner.

its very small and faint. about 1.5 inches up and across, and like an 1/8 of an inch out.

its ssmall. but now that I notice it bugs me. but theres no dead pixels. and It does not look any where close to those dell pics.
 
insanity said:
Kick, great pictures! Do you have an Xbox 360 hooked up to it? If so, I'd love a picture of that!
Click to expand...

Thanks. Glad to help out. It's hard to get a photo that truly does the LG justice tho. Unfortunately, I don't own any gaming consoles so I can't get a photo for you...
 
After a week of usage, id have to say that this monitor is not as good as I thought. Returning this shit tomorrow and going to invest in a better one. I dont know if its just me but my DVD video quality is just Horrible. Pictures are just grainy, especially my high resolution photo's. This monitor is NOT crystal clear as people say it is. Well, its decently clear on the desktop. Very grainy images on photo's, video's, webpages, and GAMES. At first when i bought this monitor and fired it up, the colors pretty good. After a while the monitor really shows its cheap $329.99 price tag. This monitor is decent for games, thats about it. YOU GET WHAT U PAY FOR.
 
XLeezardx said:
After a week of usage, id have to say that this monitor is not as good as I thought. Returning this shit tomorrow and going to invest in a better one. I dont know if its just me but my DVD video quality is just Horrible. Pictures are just grainy, especially my high resolution photo's. This monitor is NOT crystal clear as people say it is. We, its decently clear on the desktop. Very grainy images on photo's, video's, webpages, and GAMES. At first when i bought this monitor and fired it up, the colors pretty good. After a while the monitor really shows its cheap $329.99 price tag. This monitor is decent for games, thats about it. YOU GET WHAT U PAY FOR.
Click to expand...

I am agreeing with you, I got one too and I will take it back. No wonder why it's cheap...they couldn't really sell it for $5-600...
 
Picked this one up a couple nights ago at Futureshop, so far I think this is the first lcd I'm likely to keep (helps that the price of $369 cdn was quite reasonable imo), I've bought 3 other lcds in the past and always ended up crawling back to my 17" crt rather quickly (I just couldn't seem to graduate out of the 1024x768 @ 85Hz club).

My biggest issue with all lcds, this one included, is the intensity of the pure white (blank explorer window, text file, etc) before you adjust the settings, I'm not sure if it's just dvi or what, but the bright whites have always really done a number on my eyes. I think I may have finally found a happy medium between good color and non-blinding white on this one which is definitely a good sign (currently at 60/60 brightness/contrast which from what i'm reading is still higher than what most people use, go figure).

I have absolutely no complaints about this monitor for gaming, having never used a widescreen monitor before that aspect is very nice for first person type games and the sheer size is very nice as well. I have also seen certain colors brought out that I never saw before so that must be the benefits of dvi.

I don't really watch dvd movies on my computer so it's hard to comment, although video clips run in wmp seem fine.

I do have one question though, I've noticed that several of the settings on this monitor are locked... I doubt I would want to adjust them anyway (clock, phase, etc), but there must be a way to unlock them right?

Thanks, and if anyone has any other suggestions on how to avoid the intense whites without completely washing out the color, I'd love to hear them.
 
XLeezardx said:
After a week of usage, id have to say that this monitor is not as good as I thought. Returning this shit tomorrow and going to invest in a better one. I dont know if its just me but my DVD video quality is just Horrible. Pictures are just grainy, especially my high resolution photo's. This monitor is NOT crystal clear as people say it is. We, its decently clear on the desktop. Very grainy images on photo's, video's, webpages, and GAMES. At first when i bought this monitor and fired it up, the colors pretty good. After a while the monitor really shows its cheap $329.99 price tag. This monitor is decent for games, thats about it. YOU GET WHAT U PAY FOR.
Click to expand...

As with most purchases, you most certainly get what you pay for. But, I don't consider your choice in words as being an accurate description of the LG L204WT. If it doesn't meet your specific needs or expectations then so be it. If graphics and video performance is your priority then you probably should not have been looking at displays that use TN panels in the first place, tho current TN panels are quite good. But there are other technologies that would better suit your needs, at a cost. Hell, I know some people who are heavy into digital imaging and have not been pleased with any LCD or panel technology for that matter...

However, for those of us looking for an LCD for general desktop duty, games and some moderate graphics/video use, I think newer TN panels, including the one used in the LG L204WT, are most certainly a viable option. And the pricing makes them a great buy given the feature set. I too have noticed, and mentioned above, that DVD playback on the LG L204WT isn't exactly razor sharp. I wouldn't describe it using your words either since almost every LCD i've seen lacks sharpness or introduces grain/artifacts... including my mothers 42" Toshiba. We're not talking $3000 plasma's or even mid-range DLP's. We're taking consumer-oriented LCD displays with a fairly attractive price point. As for graphics, I have no immediate complains with the LG. Photos from my Nikon D50 look stunning with no noticable grain, aside from what was introduced by the camera at ISO800/1600. Seriously tho, digital images are rarely done justice when viewed on a display or at 100%...

All that said, I managed to track down stock on the Samsung 205BW with a 30-return policy. I'm going to pick one up this weekend and compare it with the LG L204WT. I'll post any findings and some photos here. As mentioned before, the Samsung 205WB was the only display in this price range that made my short list due to HDCP and the desire to stay with a major-product that has a strong warranty. I know I could probably do better, but i'm simply unwilling to spend $600CDN on a display. It's not warranted by my intended use.
 
ZealPath said:
I do have one question though, I've noticed that several of the settings on this monitor are locked... I doubt I would want to adjust them anyway (clock, phase, etc), but there must be a way to unlock them right?

Thanks, and if anyone has any other suggestions on how to avoid the intense whites without completely washing out the color, I'd love to hear them.
Click to expand...

I too noticed that some of the menu options were locked. I haven't consulted the manual on that one but it appears to happen depending on your settings for "Color -> Presets". If you back it off to sRGB then you can control other aspects of the display. If you bump the temp to 6500K or higher then some of the settings lock.

As for the whites, yeah, they can be intense. I just about fried my eyes when I first powered up the LG. I've since tweaked the display and think I found a happy medium for my eyes... see pg13 for my settings. Others have posted theirs as well.
 
ZealPath said:
I do have one question though, I've noticed that several of the settings on this monitor are locked... I doubt I would want to adjust them anyway (clock, phase, etc), but there must be a way to unlock them right?
Click to expand...

The locked options are for adjustments when using a VGA cable. (i'd just use the "autoadjust" button anyways..)
 
kick said:
Thanks. Glad to help out. It's hard to get a photo that truly does the LG justice tho. Unfortunately, I don't own any gaming consoles so I can't get a photo for you...
Click to expand...


Okay, thanks for the response anyway :)
 
Druneau said:
The locked options are for adjustments when using a VGA cable. (i'd just use the "autoadjust" button anyways..)
Click to expand...

I'm thinking this is a dumb question but where is the autoadjust button? I didn't see it in the OSD menu or the Service Menu.

Also, anyone else use the Nvidia driver tool for color calibration?
 
alaweni said:
I'm thinking this is a dumb question but where is the autoadjust button? I didn't see it in the OSD menu or the Service Menu.
Click to expand...

If you look at it from the back (I know, it's weird...) the adjustment buttons on the right side are labelled in a secondary way... source, auto-adjust, etc. I believe the "arrow" button, 2nd from the bottom is the one.
 
ZealPath said:
If you look at it from the back (I know, it's weird...) the adjustment buttons on the right side are labelled in a secondary way... source, auto-adjust, etc. I believe the "arrow" button, 2nd from the bottom is the one.
Click to expand...

Thanks :0 I didn't realize there were second labels on the back...
 
Well I just want to ask all the people that bought this card a few questions,

How are the bright questions?

Is there any noticable ghosting?

does it blow away a dell 2007wfp?
 
I think people dissaponted with dvd playback, might be seeing a limit of DVDs,

The resolution on dvds is 854x480
this lcd is what 1600x1050. or about 4 times the size. And I do not think it has a scaler. which in windows would not manner anyway.

So what that means is your dvd is being magnifed roughly 4 times by windows. off course it will look more grainy.

This is where a good/great software program is needed that corrects the dvd output to make it look sharper.

anything 2d that is at native res, is displayed clearly on this lcd. Not grainy at all. and if you see some grain it does have a sharpness control. which at 0 will make things fuzzy. and at 5 is pretty good, but you can crank it up.

Its a TN panel. with low input lag. fast response time. and better then average colors. I would say for someone that plays games at least a good amount of time this is a great monitor. If your into pictures. problably not. But I feel it makes the best comprimises out there. Fast, more accurate colors. low backlight bleed. ect.

I do not understand how a display can be 'grainy'. if setup right.
 
opfreak said:
I think people dissaponted with dvd playback, might be seeing a limit of DVDs,

The resolution on dvds is 854x480
this lcd is what 1600x1050. or about 4 times the size. And I do not think it has a scaler. which in windows would not manner anyway.

So what that means is your dvd is being magnifed roughly 4 times by windows. off course it will look more grainy.

This is where a good/great software program is needed that corrects the dvd output to make it look sharper.

anything 2d that is at native res, is displayed clearly on this lcd. Not grainy at all. and if you see some grain it does have a sharpness control. which at 0 will make things fuzzy. and at 5 is pretty good, but you can crank it up.

Its a TN panel. with low input lag. fast response time. and better then average colors. I would say for someone that plays games at least a good amount of time this is a great monitor. If your into pictures. problably not. But I feel it makes the best comprimises out there. Fast, more accurate colors. low backlight bleed. ect.

I do not understand how a display can be 'grainy'. if setup right.
Click to expand...


Makes sense to me, thanks for the explaination :D
 
Its grainy as hell trust me, especially while surfing porn :D . All the little gallery images are blurry. Ive tried all sorts of settings on my monitor including the video card display settings for over 3-4 hours. My gf really noticed it as well. DVD's from a far away distance (4-5 ft) is so grainy that it looks like your watching a VCD. Tried the monitor and video card scaling settings, no improvement. To some it might look super sharp, but to me it isnt. I had the TN 19 inch Samsung 940B LCD before this LG and it looked alot better. Look at your screen, you can see the tiny pixels very clearly. Open up high quality photo's and they will look kinda grainy, especially when your looking at it from a slight angle. I dunno maybee its just me and my monitor.
 
I love this LCD because the color is damn great. The black is black and the white looks like milk :). I usually don't like LCD and use CRT for a long long time. I bought a 16ms 17 inch LCD 3 years ago for $400 when it came out. That definitely is a TN panel. At that time 16 ms is the fastest LCD I can find. It's a Chimei panel. The brightness is damn high (6 LED backlight) But the color is very very ugly. I use it for a while and then bought a 20 inch sony Trinitron CRT. And this LCD is sentenced to death. I never touch it again before I sold it for $90. What a waste of money. But the CRT monitor is too big and heavy. I am always waiting for a good LCD which is fast enough and have great color. Now I think I got it. This LG is what I am looking for. 2000:1 contrast and 5 ms response time plus $317 price is amazing. The color is quite good and it's fast enough. I am a heavy gamer. I play Counter-strike for 5 years and now I am playing CSS in CAL. it's hard to find ghost in the game. And I can't believe that the color and contrast is better than my sony Trinitron CRT. The crossfire in the game is quite clear in CS source. You know compare with CS 1.6 the crossfire color in CSS is harder to identify. However with 2000:1 contrast there is no problem at all! I only can say that I love this LCD. It definitely can help my performance in CSS.
This LCD is good for game and TEXT. However just like other people mention, it's not good for DVD playback. You can easily find a lot of noise and dots in the screen when DVD. Now I am still wait for my DVI-D cable. So I can only say that in analog mode DVD performance is not that great. One possible reason maybe because the resolution for the LCD is too high compare with DVD's. Or maybe it's just because of the TN panel.
Whatever, after 14 hours usage of this LCD I am satisfied. It's a good LCD for a gamer and web surfing. But not great for movie.
Can anyone compare this LCD with DELL or Samsung in DVD? And please send the picture here. Thank you.
 
XLeezardx said:
Its grainy as hell trust me, especially while surfing porn :D . All the little gallery images are blurry. Ive tried all sorts of settings on my monitor including the video card display settings for over 3-4 hours. My gf really noticed it as well. DVD's from a far away distance (4-5 ft) is so grainy that it looks like your watching a VCD.
Click to expand...

Blurry or grainy, which is it? Because in my book they are opposite. I have tried 3 LCD and they all present grainy/noise video, none of them were blurry. There are two things at work. Each pixel is distinct on an LCD, so each spec of noise stands out more than on CRT. On a CRT each spec would blend in with surrounding pixels. Also some noise that may have been lost in black on CRT will be more prominant on LCD due to the way black is handled differently.

I also see the effect on photos. They look sharper but noisier on LCD. Edges especially look smoother on CRT and ragged on LCD. I would suspect only a defective LCD would not do this. Or one that had some kind of blur/sharp control to meld neighboring pixels together.
 
Snowdog said:
Blurry or grainy, which is it? Because in my book they are opposite. I have tried 3 LCD and they all present grainy/noise video, none of them were blurry. There are two things at work. Each pixel is distinct on an LCD, so each spec of noise stands out more than on CRT. On a CRT each spec would blend in with surrounding pixels. Also some noise that may have been lost in black on CRT will be more prominant on LCD due to the way black is handled differently.

I also see the effect on photos. They look sharper but noisier on LCD. Edges especially look smoother on CRT and ragged on LCD. I would suspect only a defective LCD would not do this. Or one that had some kind of blur/sharp control to meld neighboring pixels together.
Click to expand...

I understand exaclty what your saying. What i see is that the Big high resolution photo are a bit grainy, and the smaller gallery images are kinda blurry. Colors are very bright and looks brilliant, but the image quality just doesnt do it for me, and im not the only one who notice this. maybee something is just wrong with mine, who knows. Im purchasing the Samsung 215TW and ill do a side by side comparison.
 
XLeezardx said:
Its grainy as hell trust me, especially while surfing porn :D . All the little gallery images are blurry. Ive tried all sorts of settings on my monitor including the video card display settings for over 3-4 hours. My gf really noticed it as well. DVD's from a far away distance (4-5 ft) is so grainy that it looks like your watching a VCD. Tried the monitor and video card scaling settings, no improvement. To some it might look super sharp, but to me it isnt. I had the TN 19 inch Samsung 940B LCD before this LG and it looked alot better. Look at your screen, you can see the tiny pixels very clearly. Open up high quality photo's and they will look kinda grainy, especially when your looking at it from a slight angle. I dunno maybee its just me and my monitor.
Click to expand...

That's really too bad. What video card? Are you connecting the display via VGA or DVI? Would you mind posting your display settings? As has been mentioned by a few people, DVD quality is not overwhelming, and a plausible explaination has been posted above. Personally, I have never been terribly pleased with DVD playback on LCD's... they all tend to be pixelated or produce artifacts.

As for your issues with photos/graphics, I can't help but think that the problem is unique to your setup or that you have a defective display. I'm currently processing ~2000 shots I took when in Scotland/England this summer. If I set Picasa2 to show thumbnails at their smallest size (1" x .5" thumbnails) there is still plenty of detail and sharpness to discern the content of each photo. I don't normally work with thumbnails set this small, but it shows that the LG L204WT sitting on my desk can still resolve fine detail when scaling down an image with reasonably high resolution. There is no visible blur or grain. Enlarging an image to 100% doesn't show any additional grain either and the images are quite sharp. All of these photos were taken in either JPEG/RAW with a 6MP Nikon D50 dSLR.

Also, I have my LG connected via DVI to a Sapphire X1600XT w/ Catalyst 6.2 drivers. Can you describe your setup?
 
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